Over on the always-excellent ars ludi, Ben Robbins writes about learning to explain PC failure:
As a GM the urge is to overlook failure, just nod at the bad roll and move along to spare the player the shame. Big mistake. The worst insult to a character in the game world is to have no impact.
He goes on to talk about describing failure as the result of bad luck or other unfortunate circumstances, and not just a screw-up on the part of the PC — much like Jonathon Tweet’s Kirk Rule (Captain Kirk never fails!).
Good stuff all around — every GM should consider this often-overlooked topic.
Both articles are great GMing advice in my opinion. Thanks for sharing them!
Indeed, a great resource. I’ve always trouble with players failing, they die so easily. But with the circumstance and bad luck descriptions this will definitely come more easy. Can’t wait to try this out 😉 Thanks for the link.
Interesting article. I do sometimes explain PC failure (and even NPC failure), but I don’t do so for every roll. In something like D&D, I think using these sorts of explanations for every roll would be too much, especially when one considers that the explanation should actually have minimal impact on the campaign environment unless the rules allow for it (simply missing a swing at a goblin should not hit the wall instead, bringing the ceiling down – unless the rules allow for such).
But the article, and the Kirk Rule get at another issue that compounds things. Players include as a given things in their character concept that are at the core of the resolution system. One way to solve this of course is to change the system so the concept is inviolate, but I think a better way is to choose character concepts that fit the game system. Combined with choosing a game system that resolves the things you want to resolve, and leaves the things you don’t want mechanics to resolve up to the players, via character concept or color description.
Frank
I like the idea of dovetailing character concepts with what a particular RPG does best, but in practice that’s not always easy to do. How do you spot what you need to make that work, Frank?
The first step is to identify what the core of resolution in the system is. The other factor, and something that I was thinking about this morning before logging on, is that character concept must not attempt to define bits that are up to the resolution system. For example, in D&D, the core of resolution, and what the game is about, is combat. So in D&D, character concept that says “this character is a champion fighter who has fought his way to the top of the heap in the cities arenas” is probably off base. Because either the PC is starting at 1st level, and one presumes there are higher level NPCs that fight in the arena, and in any case, D&D is all about meeting ever more powerfull foes as one gains levels.
Really it comes down to does the character concept attempt to define future performance in the system? It can lay down trends (this guy is a fighter, that guy is a mage, the fighter will generally be better at swinging a sword than the mage, but a 10th level mage might be better with a sword than a 1st level fighter). It can spell out hopes (this guy hopes to become a dragon slayer), and those hopes might or might not be central to the campaign (this is another area where character concepts can clash, play groups who do not enforce compatibility of character hopes). But a concept that demands the character be good at something that the mechanics do not guarantee how good the character will be in the future are doomed to failure.
Something else I was thinking about this morning was in respect to Dogs in the Vinyard. In DitV, the numbers are NOT how good your character is at something, but how important that something is to the story. You can have “I’m a terrible shot – 2d10” as a trait. It means that shooting will be important, and in fact, the fact that you’re a terrible shot will be important.
A lot of the trouble with character concept comes from players “finishing their character’s story” as part of character concept. I see this as a reaction to games pushing failure on the PCs, often due to GM force (cheating the player out of success, by re-defining success, putting unreasonable challenges out, or whatever), and sometimes due to system (a 1st level D&D character is pretty wimpy, that can be disconcerting to a player thinking he’s about to play a Conan like character).
Turning this back to handling failure, I think the primary consideration is to be clear up front where the game leaves up to the players to define success, and where the game leaves it up to mechanics (often including dice, sometimes with very wild swings in possible results). If particpancs (players and GMs) enter the game with a solid understanding, then they can not be disappointed with the dice results.
It also helps for the GM (and players) to be aware of the possibilities for character creation to produce PCs that are marginalized by the system. As attributes became more important, this meant we started to allow re-rolling of characters with poor looking attribute scores. As character creation became more complex, we had to start watching out for innefective designs, and allowing re-design, or replacement characters. And with increasingly complex character design, we also had to watch out for mechanically effective characters that simply were irrelevant to the campaign (being a super anit-undead cleric in D&D in a campaign featuring no undead is a recipe for dissapointment). Now some new fangled games allow wide open character generation (while at the same times often severely limiting character concept), but give instruction to the GM on how to target the game at the actual characters. Dogs in the Vinyard is a really good example of this type of game (your traits can be almost anything you want, on the other hand, you are also a Mormon watchdog of the faith, and you will be going on circuit rides and dealing with frontier towns and their problems, other character concepts need not apply).
It might also be worth pointing out that the core of what Dogs in the Vinyard does prevents the PLAYERS from ever failing. They ALWAYS get to make a statement about what’s going on. What they don’t control is whether their character survives, or is even able to push an agenda.
Frank
Good analysis, Frank — thank you. That’s useful stuff, and not something I’d ever considered before in any kind of formalized way.
On a basic level (no pun intended), it’s one of the reasons I generally prefer skill-driven systems to level-based ones: starting character concepts can include being good at stuff, and everyone doesn’t automatically have to be a wimp.
Sure, skill based systems often allow characters to start off competant, though not always (for example, RuneQuest characters started off pretty bad, and Traveller characters could be pretty bad also). The problem is that many (most) skill systems don’t have a good way of making sure the PC’s skills are actually relevant to the game, so your PC may be really great at something that doesn’t matter. Sometimes it may also not be obvious how skilled you have to be to be reasonably competant.
And it’s just those skill based systems which I see tend to produce PC’s whose story is “finished.”
By the way, one thing I do like about RuneQuest is that the cults serve to tell the player which skills are relevant for his PC.
I also have to say that the only successfull campaigns I have ever run with skill systems are Traveller (with a very modified system, that allowed character advancement, and also guaranteed a minimal level of starting competance) and RuneQuest.
Frank
Frank, I think you need to firm up everything you said in your comments on this topic and publish it (PDF, blog post, etc.). Seriously — it’s insightful in a way that makes it sound obvious once you’ve read it (which is a very good thing), and it could benefit a lot of GMs and players alike. Flesh it out with some specific examples, trim the edges to keep it tight and concise, and it’d be golden.
I’d be happy to publish the results as a guest post/PDF here, if you like.
I second that. You have a lot of good stuff to say here Frank, and I’d like to see it elaborated upon. Generally I prefer stuff like this to be presented system neutral, but you bounce through a lot of different systems and how they handle pc failure. That is a better way to do it in this case, and it prevents it from being the standard “I play dnd, other systems whaaa???” that sometimes pops up in discussions of gaming.
I’m not sure when I’d have time to pull this all together, but I can certainly consider it.
Frank