The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'll break this off, because it could turn into its own discussion, and I don't want to derail the other thread.

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistIf the speech was really that good, you probably should never have rolled at all, or, if the speech was good but the roll was bad, a "Yes, but..." outcome seems to introduce far more interesting possibilities.

This is an excellent point, and a great way of handling cludgy social mechanics!  Do you have any examples of "yes but..." social scenarios?

So, you (the player) make a brilliant speech, the other players love it, the GM loves it and even gives you a +2 or something on your roll for being so awesome, and the roll is made and... you fail. Big time.

What now?

Maybe the outcome is sabotaged by means beyond your control, like your appeal for peace made to the Blorpian ambassador would have been great had you remembered that in the East Blorpian dialect that she speaks, the word you think means "peace" actually refers to some extremely perverse and taboo sex act. Or the king and his audience found your speech highly compelling, until his sniveling and snarky ass of an advisor points out a completely nitpicky factual error that undermines your entire point.

Another possibility is you get what you asked for, but not necessarily what you want, like the crazy evil genie who grants wishes completely literally. If you asked for a "ton of money," you get a pile of gold bricks fall on you. More abstractly, this could "pay it forward" to future bad effects: Everyone loves your motivating, jingoistic speech! The kingdom is galvanized for war! Too bad the war will turn out to be an utter disaster and bring unrest and ruin upon the land.

Finally, and sort of related to the previous two, something else bad happens. Like, you make the speech, it's a huge success, but you're so busy putting your all into making a rousing speech you don't even notice the assassin that is coming up behind you to stab you in the back, so he gets to make an attack without even a chance to detect him.

As an aside, the Asura stunt system is full of this kind of stuff, because the idea is that the stunt happens as described, no matter what the dice say. However, the mechanics still govern the flow of the game. This means if your stunt describes cutting off a guy's head, and you roll a critical miss, the head still comes off-- but the guy is still alive and making a retaliatory attack. The GM is encouraged if not outright compelled to be as creative and sadistic as possible at this point.

Whoops! I just posted a response to SP in the other thread, but you summed it up way better here anyways :P

Quote from: Steerpike

Quote from: sparkletwistIf the speech was really that good, you probably should never have rolled at all, or, if the speech was good but the roll was bad, a "Yes, but..." outcome seems to introduce far more interesting possibilities.

This is an excellent point, and a great way of handling cludgy social mechanics!  Do you have any examples of "yes but..." social scenarios?

To go back to this since I realize I never got around to answering it, I personally love "yes, but..." scenarios. FATE (and Asura!) pretty much thrive off this stuff. I can't say I have the most experience with them, but a few examples might be, say, a player giving a powerful speech before an audience (rolls poorly despite some awesome roleplaying) BUT! maybe some nemesis or rival happens to burst into the end of it and tries and spin things on their head. The player still "succeeded" on the social roll, but the failure resulted in the story taking an unexpected and likely unfavorable twist for the player (or, at least the PC; I generally have a lot of fun when this stuff happens as a player).

You could also have it that a player is trying to convince some law officer that they're innocent of a crime and, as they deliver a clever and convincing bluff (or speak truthfully) they botch the roll, have it so that though the officer is convinced of their innocence, some form of evidence shows up that compounds his original bluff so that the player will have to jump through some further hoops to wiggle themselves out of this one.

Generally anything that isn't so much "You failed" and more "Nice try, but you're not out of the woods yet..." is better, in my opinion. I hate telling players they missed all their attacks or that they failed their skill checks, but when you take a failed roll and turn it into a monkey wrench to throw at them, it's usually more engaging and fun. Some things are certainly going to remain Pass/Fail, but I think that less reliance on those makes for a better game.

I cleaned it up.  :grin:

D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."

I get your point, but that is an oversimplification.  Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences."  A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap.  Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall.  and so on.  So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.

Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."

I get your point, but that is an oversimplification.  Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences."  A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap.  Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall.  and so on.  So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.

Very true. In the past, as a D&D GM, I used to make a lot of rolls for silly and trivial things, that, if the players wanted to, I should've just let them do it. What FATE and other systems have taught me is that the best times to roll are when success and failure are both interesting. In PF, a failed acrobatics check that ends in death is not an interesting scenario. However, that doesn't mean if they choose to walk along the tiny ledge of a 700 foot high cliff they shouldn't make a check, but rather than equating failure to immediate death have it that there are some low roots or branches they can brag hold of. Maybe they're in loose soil and can only hold for a moment. Maybe there's enough footholds in the cliffside to attempt to climb back up. Those situations provide tension and liven up the game in otherwise simple encounters. That's something I find really useful when GMing.

My examples could apply to any system, really. They may not apply to "traditional" D&D as much, but, then again, this is a new edition-- the perfect time (at least if WotC were smart) to kill some sacred cows and bring in mechanics that roleplayers nowadays like to see.

Quote from: Weave

Quote from: Seraphine_Harmonium

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
D&D is a problematic example for this sort of thing to begin with, because the default result for any missed roll is "nothing happens."

I get your point, but that is an oversimplification.  Missed saving throws are "suffer bad consequences."  A (badly enough) Failed Disable Device means you trigger the trap.  Failed balance (or Acrobatics) means you fall.  and so on.  So the default for MOST failed checks may be "nothing happens" but not for ALL checks.

Very true. In the past, as a D&D GM, I used to make a lot of rolls for silly and trivial things, that, if the players wanted to, I should've just let them do it. What FATE and other systems have taught me is that the best times to roll are when success and failure are both interesting. In PF, a failed acrobatics check that ends in death is not an interesting scenario. However, that doesn't mean if they choose to walk along the tiny ledge of a 700 foot high cliff they shouldn't make a check, but rather than equating failure to immediate death have it that there are some low roots or branches they can brag hold of. Maybe they're in loose soil and can only hold for a moment. Maybe there's enough footholds in the cliffside to attempt to climb back up. Those situations provide tension and liven up the game in otherwise simple encounters. That's something I find really useful when GMing.

That would make for an exciting encounter indeed!

And it's true that you can probably find a way to keep most failed rolls from meaning failure without hope of recovery.  Make a fail a setback, and give them a way back from there.  In a social situation, a failed bluff means they see through you.  Maybe that makes them more hostile, and you have to diplomacy your way out of trouble, or come up with an even better lie about WHY you lied.  Or maybe you could make a perform check to try and pass it off as a bit of new-wave interactive theater. 

Saying the right thing in the wrong way is very, very common.

RPing a good speech and rolling low, represents that.

Rolling also helps mitigate problems with players who may not know exactly the right thing to say but are playing the party's face. Think about it from the opposite angle - There's no thought or obtuse questioning given to a fat, out-of-shape player role playing as super buff Conan-type character who wants to rip a door off its hinges or smack the troll with his sword. The same should be true for the introverted role player playing a suave 007 type character sweet talking the princess or inspiring soldiers before battle.

As with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one. 

Quote from: Elemental_ElfAs with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one. 

That's one of the few things I actually liked seeing with 4e: that They put forward the tables for success in a social encounter, where it's a series of something like 5 checks.  Each success moving you up the scale in how well things go, each failure moving you down.

That and the suggestions about questions to answer while building a character's persona. 

I had an odd moment with a player in the last session I ran. IIRC it went something like this...

Him: I want to Persuade the guards to let us in.
Me: Okay, what do you say to them?
Him: ... I was kind of hoping my Persuade skill would take care of that.

To be honest, I was kind of shocked at his line of thinking, especially as he had so far been very keen on speaking and acting in-character (it was only my second session with him)
Anyway, I told him that he still had to come up with some form of argument as to why they should be let in, the Persuade roll would just determine whether the guards were convinced by it or not.
Basically, this seems like a diametrically opposite line of thought to the one you started this thread with, so I thought it might be worth throwing into the mix.

As for your ideas for yes-but failures in the original post, I love them. They're one of those concepts that you feel should have existed all along, and seeing them written out just codifies something you may have been subconsciously wanting or trying to do all along :)

And in response to people being against nothing-happens failures (or at least non-social ones), I don't think they're as terrible as they might at first seem, at least not as long as the pace of the game is quick so the player doesn't have to wait too long for another chance to do something cool. There's also a big difference between describing a mechanically nothing-happens failures as "You miss" and describing the same event as "You swing at him, your sword tracing a glittering steel arc, but he brings up his shield and - THUNK! - your blow hits only wood and hide" or whatever.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfRolling also helps mitigate problems with players who may not know exactly the right thing to say but are playing the party's face. Think about it from the opposite angle - There's no thought or obtuse questioning given to a fat, out-of-shape player role playing as super buff Conan-type character who wants to rip a door off its hinges or smack the troll with his sword. The same should be true for the introverted role player playing a suave 007 type character sweet talking the princess or inspiring soldiers before battle.

The thing is, though, the idea of playing a role playing game is that there is still an element of player skill. It's something of a necessity when dealing with something where there are rules, challenges to be overcome, and whatnot. Honestly, nothing in an RPG is completely glossed over, so there's no reason socialization needs to be. Players who learn the rules and intricacies of the system well and build well-optimized characters are going to have more going for them than players who do not. Obviously, in combat, physical skills are glossed over because it's not a physical game, but player skill is not entirely removed from combat, either. A player who has sound grasp of the game's combat tactics is going to do better than a player who does not. When searching for things, players who are active and inquisitive and know what kinds of questions to ask are probably going to do better than ones who don't. So, along the same lines, socially speaking, players who are able to get into their social roles are probably going to do better. They don't have to be as good as the character, obviously-- not nearly. There's a lot less pressure, for one, just messing around with friends in a game between actually being in some tense social situation. The GM is likely to grant a lot of leeway, too, but it's always good to have an idea what the player is trying to do, in just a general sense.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfAs with Combat, a role playing encounter should rely on multiple successful rolls rather than a single crucial one.

I mostly agree with this. I'll just clarify (and I think this is what you meant, anyway) that I think that it's not so much that picking up the dice and throwing them multiple times is the important thing, but rather that there is a flow to the encounter with players having more input, with chances for there to be changing tactics, reversals of fortune, retreat for one side or the other if things go badly, and so on.

I think the Asura nugget where sometimes things have to happen exactly as a player described yet still fail somehow is a great sort of mental calisthenics. It seems like it would force you, as the GM, to come up with some crazy outcomes which bring in interesting elements from "outside" the situation, when then could become part of the story in their own right, so failed rolls actually embellish the fiction by introducing new ideas. Is this anything like how it has turned out in practice?

I think Apocalypse World is potentially a great source of inspiration, partly because it has graduated degrees of success (instead of binary success/failure, there is a miss at 6 or less, a hit at 7-9, and a really solid hit at 10+, where the whole point of the 7-9 range is "yes, but", a technical success that also introduces complications or flaws), and partly because a lot of the outcomes involve someone (sometimes the player, sometimes the GM) making difficult choices. This setup encourages actions to have a wide range of possible outcomes which are built into the rules, not just "you succeed/you fail, now figure out how".

If you were going to generalize a similar setup in a system-neutral way, it might look like this:

QuoteWhen you make your demands at the lordsmeet (or whatever), roll [blah]. On a result of [really good], choose four of the following:
- the majority of lords present support your proposal
- you don't make any powerful new enemies
- you don't have to give up a major concession to get your way
- you build onto your reputation as a competent and effective leader
- your style impresses some lord who takes an interest in fostering your career
- a fight doesn't break out over your proposal

On a roll of [barely good enough], choose two of the above.

On a roll of [sadtrombone], your proposal fails; the GM can make as hard a move as desired.

This kind of thing does a whole scene in a single roll, but it's not a binary succeed/fail thing; there are multiple parts that suggest all sorts of interactions and force players to prioritize, and all the things that don't get chosen introduce new elements to the fiction. If a player rolls the moderate success and chooses to have a majority support their political initiative and chooses not to make a powerful new enemy in the process (reasonable choices), the GM immediately gets to complicate that outcome by dealing with what the player's major concession had to be to get that done, what they did to screw up their reputation in front of all the assembled rulers, and the cause and outcome of the fight that broke out over the player's idea. That's all fuel to lead to more story elements, more conflicts, and more branching rolls like this one.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonIs this anything like how it has turned out in practice?

Kind of. In all honesty, in what little Asura has been played (not enough!), there have not been any truly crazy outcomes coming out of nowhere, largely because there have been few chances for such things to happen. Players have always been a little more modest with their stunts than I hoped. I'm not sure if it's because it's kind of a weird paradigm that people who come from the dominant D&D-ish gaming school of thought (a school of thought I largely used to belong to, I admit!) just haven't internalized enough to have it come up in during a game of something like Asura, or if they're afraid of what kind of crazy and deadly thing I'll come up with to throw at them if they get too audacious. If it's the second one, then that fear is probably because the players might not have internalized the more "narrativist" approach Asura takes to the consequences of failure-- it's all about keeping things interesting, and just saying "rocks fall, everyone dies" isn't interesting.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonThis setup encourages actions to have a wide range of possible outcomes which are built into the rules, not just "you succeed/you fail, now figure out how".

I like this approach, too. While I don't have any experience with Apocalypse World, I definitely like other systems (like FATE! or Asura, of course) that make an effort to tell you not just whether or not you succeeded at an action, but how well you succeeded. I've noticed that d20 occasionally makes an effort to include stuff like "if you beat the DC by N, something else happens," but it always feels like a weird afterthought because that notion isn't well-embedded into the system with the potential for "degree of success/failure" type things to happen to you on every roll.

I'm not a particular fan of making a rather metagamey list like that and essentially working that out outside of the roleplaying framework, but I definitely like the idea, and I believe that a similar thing could be achieved somewhat more organically through the use of maneuvers and consequences in a more FATE-like system. It would add a lot of depth to social combat, allowing for more than "you win, you get everything you want" and "you lose, gtfo" which is what a d20 Diplomacy roll often turns into.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon
If you were going to generalize a similar setup in a system-neutral way, it might look like this:

QuoteWhen you make your demands at the lordsmeet (or whatever), roll [blah]. On a result of [really good], choose four of the following:
- the majority of lords present support your proposal
- you don't make any powerful new enemies
- you don't have to give up a major concession to get your way
- you build onto your reputation as a competent and effective leader
- your style impresses some lord who takes an interest in fostering your career
- a fight doesn't break out over your proposal

On a roll of [barely good enough], choose two of the above.

On a roll of [sadtrombone], your proposal fails; the GM can make as hard a move as desired.

This kind of thing does a whole scene in a single roll, but it's not a binary succeed/fail thing; there are multiple parts that suggest all sorts of interactions and force players to prioritize, and all the things that don't get chosen introduce new elements to the fiction. If a player rolls the moderate success and chooses to have a majority support their political initiative and chooses not to make a powerful new enemy in the process (reasonable choices), the GM immediately gets to complicate that outcome by dealing with what the player's major concession had to be to get that done, what they did to screw up their reputation in front of all the assembled rulers, and the cause and outcome of the fight that broke out over the player's idea. That's all fuel to lead to more story elements, more conflicts, and more branching rolls like this one.

This is awesome, LC!  I may steal this (or make up something similar)