Doyce points to this collection of little RPG tidbits collected from various Lumpley essays and forum posts, etc., over a couple of years. In some ways, it’s “Indie Game Concepts 101.” Some fine bits in there:
Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that’s another topic, but they don’t exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That’s their sole and crucial function.
In task resolution, what’s at stake is the task itself. “I crack the safe!” “Why?” “Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!” What’s at stake is: do you crack the safe?
In conflict resolution, what’s at stake is why you’re doing the task. “I crack the safe!” “Why?” “Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!” What’s at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?
Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That’s how you tell whether it’s task resolution or conflict resolution.
Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.
Suspense doesn’t come from uncertain outcomes.
I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we’re on the edge of our seats! What’s up with that?
Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.
What’s up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don’t know what it will cost.
Everybody with me still? If you’re not, give it a try: watch a movie. Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to buy victory, it’s as straightforward as that. That’s why the payoff at the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we’re like ah, finally.
[…] Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I’m not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that’s the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.
So here’s a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.
Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?
When a character dies in a novel or a movie, it’s a) to establish what’s at stake, b) to escalate the conflict, or c) to make a final statement. Or perhaps some combination. It’s never by accident or for no good reason, unlike in real life.
[…] PCs, like protagonists in fiction, don’t get to die to show what’s at stake or to escalate conflict. They only get to die to make final statements.
Character death can never be a possible outcome moment-to-moment. Having your character’s survival be uncertain doesn’t contribute to suspense, as above, just like we don’t actually ever believe that Bruce Willis’ character in Die Hard will die. Instead, character death should fit into what it will cost. This thing, is it worth dying for? Obi-wan Kenobi and Leon say yes.
[…] In fiction, You never die for something you haven’t staked your life on.
So: resolution, why?
The answer is: because interesting play depends on good conflicts, and creating good conflicts means hitting characters you like right where they’re weak, and hitting a character you like, whose player is someone you like, right where she’s or he’s weak – it’s not easy.
The right rules will show you how to do it. They’ll make it the only natural thing.
Stan noted that the comments on this post were (unintentionally) off, so he e-mailed (and I hope it’s okay to post same):
You miss the second part of the question. The PC is going to “win” because, in story telling terms, the hero always wins. The question becomes, win at what cost.
So — Luke Skywalker is going to win. We understand that from the first moment he shows up on the screen. But it’s going to cost him — and his rash acts along the way make it cost more. It costs him his family … his innocence … his hand … seeing his friends tortured because of him … his illusions about his father, and about his surrogate father (Ben) … a lot of friends he sees blown up around him … a love interest won then lost …
Yeah, he wins … but it’s not a cheap, easy, consequences-less win.
If someone’s going to do something really stupid, off the wall, careless — then the consequences are going to be significant, and likely more painful than “mere” death. (And if it’s a habit, they probably won’t be invited back to the table.)
Yes, amongst goofy folks, it’s an invitation to tell silly Mary Sue stories. So is straight D20 (as Knights of the Dinner Table demonstrates).
The point is, it’s sillier to have a system that casually allows meaningless death for random ill fate, even among the most wise and invested of a player.
I’m sure that kids were.
Take another example, similar in some ways: Charlotte’s Web. We’re pretty certain that Wilbur isn’t going to get turned into bacon. The question is, how will he avoid it, and what will it cost him and his friends.
It takes a life to save a life in the Charlotte’s Web story.
Here’s a fact about d20 fantasy: it’ll kill your character by the time you reach fifth level, again by the time you reach 10th, again by 15th, and again by 20th. Minimum. Unless you’re lucky.
And yet people play d20 games for years with the same guy, and they don’t die. How?
* Because the GM lies and fudges rolls to keep from killing characters when it would be stupid for them die.
* Because the Players lie and fudge rolls when they want to see their guy win, and the dice are against them.
* Because some other player makes up a rule from the book that changes what the outcome should be.
((And I’m not going to argue whether or not people do that. People do that. Everyone has done it, usually often. I fudged past stupid, accidental TPKs or mostly-TPKs so many times in so many systems I can’t even begin to tell you, and I am not special — I can sit at a table and watch the GM and know when they’re doing it… it’s not a special trick — it’s obvious when a rule is being elided because it’s “getting in the way.”
People just don’t like it being acknowledged. Squishy, undocumented GM-Fiat is fine — a game that says “listen, you aren’t going to die unless you officially put your guy on the line and say ‘my life is at stake for THIS, right here’, and otherwise, you won’t die” is somehow NOT fine.
That’s BS. (1) Saying it overtly doesn’t make it wrong — it’s makes it system-supported. (2) There are SO many more interesting things that can happen to a character besides dying.))
It’s why ADRPG was so popular in so many circles for so long: GM Fiat is the whole rules system.
So — fudging — why does it happen?
Because (usually) they want a good STORY. They’d like to be the hero or, barring that, to die for SOMETHING IMPORTANT. They don’t want ‘the hero’ to be taken out by a damn kobold’s crossbow crit at level two.
Again, why? Because all that death serves is to show what’s at stake or to up the conflict and, in their head, they are the Protagonist, and protagonists are meant to die for more important things. To “Say something.”
We KNOW how a story is supposed to go, and we know when it makes sense for the protagonist’s life to be on the line, and when a game doesn’t DO that, we whistle to ourselves and look at the ceiling and kick the game back out into the fairway.
I’ve got nothing against systems that simulate the brutal reality of warfare or guns. I don’t. They aren’t meant for telling thematic stories, is all. D20 is great for small-unit tactics. It’s terrible for telling a thematic story — you’d need 15 tries to get to Rivendell without one of the Hobbits getting one-shotted by Old Man Willow or a Nazgul, if you play the game totally straight.
Most games of that era can’t actually tell the story of the genre they’re based on without eliding the rules at some point, because most of those systems allow for random death and story-inappropriate moments.
It’s not about Mary Sue. It’s about being able to say “the main characters don’t die on page twenty,” officially.
Two additional bits:
Whoa. There is no where in the quoted text that says the protagonists can’t FAIL. Of course you can fail. In fact, in most of these games, you’ll fail more than you’re used to from a traditional system, because no one’s fudging the results.
The difference is, death isn’t on the line. In a D20 combat, the ultimate result of every combat is death for someone. (Or effective death, in that the defeated NPC will never be a threat to the PCs ever again.)
So, in this set up, what’s at stake?
“You’re dueling. What’s at stake is… are you made a laughing stock in front of the Court?”
“You’re fighting. The question to answer is… do you get up the Rebma stairs with enough troops to take the castle?”
“You’re socializing. The risk is… will you seduce her before her father notices you?”
Of COURSE you can fail, and in these cases, Failure is Interesting and potentially very very fun, but don’t tell me there’s no cost, just because it’s not fatal.
When is “will you die” the thing that’s at stake? When what your character wants is SO IMPORTANT that they’re willing to die to achieve it.
– Proving to my father, in a gunfight, that I am his true son.
– Saving my son from a life of crime.
– Saving my sister from being sacrificed to close a dimensional rift.
There has been a confusion of understanding here, in which what was written was “the protagonist shouldn’t die unless it’s at a point where they’re putting their life officially at risk for a goal” and what’s being read is “there should be no risk to the character.”
Killing a character is easy. Hitting them with consequences that just keep escalating the cost for The Thing They Want… that’s hard.
“Okay, Eric puts out your eyes and throws you in a dungeon.”
“I’m not giving up.”
No problem Dave, would have done so if comments worked earlier.
And yes, any game style or play type can be goofy (as proven in any number of games systems/styles), but Loss has to mean something for it to matter as does failier. Failing to open the safe does not mean you find the stuff in the trash can, it mean you come up with a plan be otherwise it feels like a cheat and cheapens the entertainment.
For me it does, sorry to say. As does puzzle/problem solving and a really cool scene that sings. What works for story telling does not always make for good RP, to much of a chance of Plot wagonning because the GM has a really cool idea (one too many plot wagons for me for that to be entertainment), or some planned ending that they have in mind where you really have no say in the matter.
Also for me, PC interaction plays a larger part then “story”, some of the best memories from gaming have been wonderful and inventive give and takes between the PC’s, or scenes that happen organically and on the spur of them moment (there were some great bits in IDC that I still smile about).
Anyways, my two cents.
Also: “off the wall” and “stupid” ideas or statements of “what I’m doing now” fall under the purview of the social contract for the group.
Stupid Player: “I’m going to run straight up the wall, grab the ruler’s arm, and pull him down with me, turning in mid-air and falling on top of him as he’s crushed to death on the paving stones of the courtyard.”
Everyone else: “Dude, we’re playing a Twilight 2000 style game. Grow up.”
You don’t need a rules system to tell you something doesn’t fit.
—
Finally: the last scene in Babe was totally tense. When that crowd cheered after the dead silence, I think I gasped aloud.
…and it truncated the rest of my post, oh well.
Stan, you need to back and re-read what was actually written by Vincent: you are not disagreeing.
He says this, straight out:
“If you succeed in your skill check, when the goal is ‘get the info’, and the GM says ‘you open the safe, but find nothing,’ that’s the GM cheating you out to make things happen his way.”
“If you fail in your skill check, when the goal is ‘get the info’, and the GM says ‘You don’t open the safe, but hey look! There’s something in the wastebasket,’ that is *also* the GM cheating to make things happen his way.”
Lemme ask this: what’s conflict?
It’s when two people want different things in the same scene.
If I as the GM want you find the info, and you want to find the info… why the hell are we rolling? There’s NO CONFLICT about whether or not you find the info; it’s just dice-rolling porn.
Also: in that case, failure (“you find nothing, what now?”) is boring.
How about “Do you find the info without alerting the guards?” Instead?
Either way, succeed or fail, you find the info, wherever it makes sense for the GM to have the info be — because that’s not the conflict. The conflict is whether or not the guards find out — FAILURE IS INTERESTING. Something else that is cool will happen, either way.
Also… somewhere in your post, there’s some kind of thing that ties this whole thing into the GM fudging things to make a story go toward some pre-conceived destination, which I agree sucks.
That’s not what this is about — it’s not about the GM and some kind of plot-wagon at all.
I’ve done it. I’m not necessarily proud of it, nor particularly apologetic. I’ll assert I’ve done it for good, not-purely-selfish reasons (“You’ve fudged rolls?” “But they were all bad!”).
Sometimes the (apparently) main characters do die on page twenty. But it almost always means something. It’s done for a purpose, or in service to the other main characters (Gandalf at the Bridge), or to show what the *stakes* are for the main characters. “Wow — we could all *die* here.” “If Gandalf can’t survive, how can we?” “Let us be inspired by his sacrifice for us — his death will not be in vain!”
Unless you’re telling a tale of the ultimate futility and meaninglessness of life, then acknowledging up front that there will be some victory for the players/protagonists is important (that’s probably a big reason they’re there). What kind of victory — ah, there’s the question.
Another example. We learn in the first handful of episodes of B5 that (a) Londo will become Emperor of the Centauri, and (b) he will die with G’kar’s hands around his throat. Does that make the rest of his tale a romp in the park, a foregone conclusion, an exercise in boredom? Hardly. Londo ends up going through an amazing cycle of triumphs and tragedies — many of his own making — before his ultimate success. And that success, ultimately, is not the victory he wanted (either his throne or the Centauri restored to greatness), but seizing control of his horrific situation and saving his friends and his people.
In another universe, Londo dies piloting the shuttle down to Epsilon 3. Or fails his monthly poisoning check. Or encounters the wrong wandering monster in Down Below. Or happens to be in a sector of the ship that gets hit by some sort of explosion. Oh well — roll up someone new … hey, wouldn’t a Drazi be cool?
I had a long rendition of the results of Corwin’s folly — Doyce stole it at the end of the post, so I can’t. But the results of what Corwin goes through for doing something goofy like assaulting his brother at the center of his power — getting tossed in the dungeon, his eyes put out, not to mention all his followers getting killed — is a far better “failure” than “Endless Stair Mook #547 rolls a crit … you die.” It’s more interesting, plus it lets the story go to the next question of how you get out of the situation and how it affects you and how you triumph (maybe) in a different way.
That’s always a danger — but is as much a danger in D20 or other trad RPGs as in something more story-telling. (Endless comic strips in Dork Tower, etc., attest to that.) If the game is solely about the GM telling a story, yes, the GM should just write a novel and be done with it. My sense of these sorts of systems, though, is there’s substantial narrative control by the players, making it difficult to railroad things in any particular direction (or by any particular person); this is something *I’m* struggling with a bit, trying to figure out the right degree of control and collaboration.
So you’re not going to be on the plot wagon unless everyone else is — and it’s a lot easier to steer it off in your own direction (or to make something else of it) than in a normal D&D-style module.
Which makes me smile. 🙂 See?
To me, those are all *part* of the story — the difference being that in a more story-telling sort of system, those bits are encouraged and rewarded, not merely some byplay while the GM was looking up rules or time-passing before the dice come out again for the next combat.
Rrg. Sorry about the truncation. I did go in and fix your blockquote tags, though. 🙂
Note (now that my IDC juices have been stirred) that finding the info in the waste basket could be info in and of itself. “Huh. Why was the info here? Is it useless? Is it a plant? Is this guy sloppy? Did someone else break into the safe, riffle through stuff, and toss away something they couldn’t use?”
Not that it has anything to do with the conversation.
I think the point being made is pretty straightforward:
Conflict and the risk of failure (including death) should be about something, not just random, meaningless (from a story perspective) occurrences.
(Ironically, “random, meaningless occurrences” seem to play a much bigger role in Real Life. Maybe that’s why we play games.)
If that’s true, then framing conflicts, and the consequences of failure (and success), in terms of what the players (and GM) individually and collaboratively want to have happen makes the most sense. A system that acknowledges that, and rewards it, can provide a more satisfactory experience than a small unit tactical battle game overlaid onto a fantasy setting.
That having been said, I enjoy D20 a lot — but I’m a wargamer from waaaaaay back, and that crunchy stuff can be a lot of fun. But it only scratches certain itches well. For the sort of storytelling I want to do (or be part of), some of these other systems, reflected in the comments above, seem a lot better suited.
I keep coming back to this:
That gets back to the “why are you/we rolling for this?” question when there’s no need. It also gets back to what’s important in a game. For D20-types of games, it’s mostly about combat (how do we know who’s the better combatant? by rolling these dice under these rules based on these actions, creating results that the GM and Players have agreed to abide by — except when they decide to fudge the results … in which case, why roll dice?). For non-combat bits, either folks cast around for skills to use (“I use my Influence Others to see if I can convince the gal to let me in” “Hmmm, let me think of the modifiers to that role”) or just RP it with an arbitrary — or consensual — decision as to whether it’s a success (in which case how is that different from some of what’s being discussed?).
It’s not easy making that transition, in some ways. I’ve sort of strugged with these same issues and concerns. Having now done some of it with Dogs and PTA and a bit of Mortal Coil and (more blended) HQ and the like, I can tell you it can work very nicely.