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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6284665" data-attributes="member: 42582">Increasingly, my preference is for "genre-constrained" resolution. I know at least two basic models for this, and I imagine there could be others.One is Burning Wheel: skills/abilities are rather narrow, DCs are set "objectively", action declaration by a player requires specifying both task (what is your PC doing) and intent (what is your PC hoping to achieve). On a successful check, the PC succeeds at the task and realises his/her intention. On a failed check, the PC fails to realise his/her intention, and the GM is empowered to introduce, into the fiction, the reason why this happened. Which may or may not involve the PC failing at the attempted task. The GM is encouraged to make it clear to the player what the likely consequences of failure are, although the rulebooks (including descriptions of the author's own play practices) leave it open how the balance is to be struck here between explicit framing and what is implicit in the situation as it has evolved out of the play in which everyone at the table is engaged.Aspects of this approach resemble Runequest, Rolemaster and Traveller (and perhaps also some approaches to 3E/PF, though I know them less well): the "objective" DCs, the long and detailed list of rather narrow skills, etc. So in framing a check "reality" is certainly playing a role: the GM is instructed by the rules to use DC-setting, for instance, to communicate facts in a consistent way about the nature of the setting; and the player in framing intent and task is expected to be thinking about the capabilities of his/her PC. (BW PCs are generally less gonzo than D&D ones - another point of resemblance to RQ and Traveller). And if the check succeeds, then all is well and these conceptions of the ingame "reality" of the setting and of the PC are affirmed.But if the check fails, the GM is not obliged to narrate that failure by reference to "realistic" considerations of causation. The GM simply has to introduce elements into the fiction which explain why the PC's intention was not realised. Thus, at the point in resolution which is the most obvious flashpoint for contention between players and GM - namely, the GM's adjudication of failure - the GM's obligations are decoupled from the constraints of "reality". Instead s/he is encouraged to have regard to the dramatic and genre logic of the scene. The failed jump, for instance, can be narrated as a stumble during the run-up (something for which there is generally no adjudicative mechanism in RQ, RM, Traveller or 3E unless the GM has made a prior stipulation of difficult terrain). So the jump fails, but the PC does not plunge to his/her doom. Or if the PC fails to extinguish the fire, the GM does not need to have regard to the sort of knowledge Balesir has of fires and fireballs. Some countervailing agent, for instance, can be introduced into the scene ("There are angry fire spirits thwarting your efforts") that fit the dramatic and genre logic of the situation and keep the focus of play on those matters, rather than on the "realism" of the details of the mechanical resolution.The other model for "genre-constrained" resolution that I know of is more thoroughgoing. It bears very little resemblance to RQ, RM or Traveller. Games I know of that exemplify it include Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, Marvel Heroic RP and the 4e skill system (with the exception of some checks - mostly Acro, Aths, Perception and Stealth - made as part of combat resolution). In these systems there are no "objective" DCs: DCs are set in accordance with metagame guidelines for managing pacing, dramatic intensity and the like, and have no objective meaning in terms of communicating the consistency of the setting. Consistency is maintained, rather, by the GM's narrative framing of situations having regard to the metagame-mandated DCs (eg if the guidelines tell you to set a high DC, you describe to the players a dramatically challenging situation). Declarations of action still follow the BW "intent and task" model, but the decoupling of DCs and skill bonuses from modelling the setting means that the question of what sorts of tasks a PC can attempt is settled by shared understandings of, and negotiations around, the dramatic and genre logic of the situation and of the game more broadly. Can the player declare as a task for his/her PC that s/he will climb the Pillars of Chaos (via an Aths check)? Or, in Marvel Heroic RP, can s/he declare that s/he will punch the villain so hard that the latter is knocked clean across the Hudson River into New Jersey? There is no "objective" mechanical answer to this (eg no table of DCs and skill checks telling you how hard the Pillars are to climb, and what sort of skill bonus would make you good enough to do so). The framing is up to the GM and players on the basis of logic and drama, with the understanding that the GM has the final word (in HeroQuest revised this is called the "credibility test"; in MHRP (p 55) the rules say that a declared action "must fall within the realm of possibility" for a character, and makes it clear that the GM is the final arbiter of this).As with BW, so in these systems "fail forward" is the basic approach to failed checks - the GM draws upon the framing of the situation, and the underlying dramatic and genre logic, to introduce additional details into the fiction that explain why the PC's intent was not realised. This may or may not include failing at the attempted task, as the GM thinks is most appropriate to maintain the impetus of play.At least as I have experienced them, these approaches to resolution reduce the need to have detailed rules that model "realistic" processes, instead taking advantage of the shared dramatic and genre expectations of the participants in the game. And one important way they do this is via "fail forward": at the crunch point where player/GM tensions and disagreements can be most intense, they point all the participants back to those shared expectations, with the goal of keeping the game moving rather than letting it get stuck on disagreements about what would "really" happen in the imagined situation.</blockquote>

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