Distinct Game Modes: Combat vs Social vs Exploration etc...

[Fenris-77]

For my part, I don't play with the goal of creating great dialogue (though if it occurs, I have no objection to it). But I do want this:
Gripping and exciting scenes, including social scenes, are something I do want in my RPGing.

Gripping scenes are something I think that partial success mechanics scaffold really well. Watch any TV show and you'll see how much suspense and drama accrues from failure and partial failure especially. Binary mechanics struggle to do the same thing without a lot of unscripted additions by the GM.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, the suggestion that the damage/hit point systems is just an afterthought - that beating a Pit Fiend in combat is just a modest mechanical variant on climbing a cliff - is pretty odd.

I'm kind of fond of the social hit points models of BW/BE/MG, 2d20 STA/Dune, and TOR. Three different approaches to it, all of which worked well enough for me and mine.

 

[pemerton]

Gripping scenes are something I think that partial success mechanics scaffold really well. Watch any TV show and you'll see how much suspense and drama accrues from failure and partial failure especially. Binary mechanics struggle to do the same thing without a lot of unscripted additions by the GM.

You probably won't be shocked that I'm going to put in a good word for Burning Wheel here: generally it uses binary success/failure on the roll; but by distinguishing intent and task, and emphasising that failure means failure of intent, it allows for similar sorts of consequences as does a partial success approach.

 

[aramis erak]

You probably won't be shocked that I'm going to put in a good word for Burning Wheel here: generally it uses binary success/failure on the roll; but by distinguishing intent and task, and emphasising that failure means failure of intent, it allows for similar sorts of consequences as does a partial success approach.

it's fair to say that, especially in BE and MG, success of action but failure of intent is the suggested default mode for Luke's games. This is still boolean, but with the option of painful complications/devil's bargains for complicated succeess of intent, it feels a lot more robust than it actually is, mechanically, in terms of outcome space.

The extended conflict mechanisms, however, do give robust, negotiated, spectrum-of-outcome.

 

[pemerton]

The extended conflict mechanisms, however, do give robust, negotiated, spectrum-of-outcome.

Absolutely! This is true in Torchbearer also.

it's fair to say that, especially in BE and MG, success of action but failure of intent is the suggested default mode for Luke's games. This is still boolean, but with the option of painful complications/devil's bargains for complicated succeess of intent, it feels a lot more robust than it actually is, mechanically, in terms of outcome space.

I'd say that it not only feels robust, but is robust.

 

[zakael19]

I think any time you have a robust scaffold for exploding an overarching intent/conflict/goal into a multi-part set of checks you have the space for a similar feeling as inherent "partial success" mechanics. You can judge the twist in the situation from each success or failure under the larger umbrella, and look at how close you got to failure before success or vice versa for how to frame the outcome.

4e Skill Challenges / Draw Steel! Montages and Negotiations have felt like that consistently for me, hitting the social and exploration pillars pretty well.