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Thundersteel
2018-11-09, 11:52 AM
So, here's a paradox I've noted:
PC Death, in theory, raises the stakes of a game. It also, unless very carefully timed, brings your narrative to a grinding halt and generally makes players have Not a Good Time. As a result, as a GM, I want to structure encounters in such a way that I know the players will win, thus avoiding character death.

Ergo, I've been brainstorming possible consequences for PC's losing a combat encounter besides "you all die, the game is over now."
I've become a really big fan of the concept of 'failing forward' on skill checks (a la most Apocalypse World games), and I'm thinking about how that concept can be applied to combat in general.

What I've got so far:
-The heroes are left for dead. They wake up in a gutter somewhere, or being nursed back to health in a peasant's cottage, or something of that nature.
-Someone else dies. They failed to beat the dragon, and as a result, it burns down the village.
-The heroes are publicly humiliated. They lost a rumble with a rival gang, who left them strung naked in a public square.
-The heroes are taken prisoner. This is a pretty solid one for moving the story forward, as it usually re-deposits the heroes directly in the villain's lair.
-They -do- die, and the next session or arc is about escaping from the underworld and returning to the world of the living.

JeenLeen
2018-11-09, 12:04 PM
I think a lot of these are good ideas. However, to maintain verisimilitude, it requires them not-dying to make sense. Sure, random bandits or thugs might just beat you senseless and embarrass you, but the Big Bad shouldn't be that dumb (though maybe he is that overconfident, or his minions are), and some monsters would just eat you. The 'wake up in a peasant hut', because they thought you were dead, makes sense to an extent, but could stretch suspension of disbelief. At least, if your players care a lot about an internally consistent setting. I personally care a lot about that, but I realize it's not needed for fun and sometimes you gotta handwave some stuff for the sake of a good game.

You could have something whereby death is temporary. Dying definitely sets you back as 1) embarrassment and 2) enemies continue their goals as you are out of commission. A game that handles this well is In Nomine, where you generally play celestial beings inhabiting human vessels. Die on earth, and in most cases you wake up a few days to a couple weeks later. Get a new body and try to pick up the mess you left.

Harder to fit something like that in most games, unless you are the Chosen One(s) that the gods/McGuffin revive when they die.



-The heroes are taken prisoner. This is a pretty solid one for moving the story forward, as it usually re-deposits the heroes directly in the villain's lair.
-They -do- die, and the next session or arc is about escaping from the underworld and returning to the world of the living.

These two are dangerous in different ways.

The first could potentially put the PCs somewhere they are nowhere near strong enough for yet. It's fine if you plan things out (or your system is such that) power levels don't change too much between areas and thus you'd be okay, but I reckon in a game like D&D this sets you up for unbeatable foes. In other words, it takes careful planning for this to be a good option.

The second changes the theme and flavor of the game a lot, and presumably side-tracks the party from the goals they already care about. Some players could be turned off by this. If you go this route, I definitely advise letting the players know such can occur. (It's also helpful since some players like to design backup characters in games where resurrection is rare. If such isn't an option, they should know.)
Also, if it happens 2+ times, it probably gets boring. If just 1 PC dies, that means the party is split and it's hard for everyone to play at the same time.

gkathellar
2018-11-09, 12:14 PM
13th Age (itself written by people who are big fans of the "fail forward" concept) floats the idea of a "campaign loss" - i.e., rather than suffering a TPK, the party manages a daring escape but suffers the loss of things they care about and/or fails at certain narrative objectives. More or less in line with your second, third, fourth, and maybe fifth ideas. This can make for good drama, although how effective it is will depend on player investment.

The potentially tricky thing about this approach is, I think, making it feel like you weren't setting things up to happen this way. If your response to a party wipe is, "ah, yes, but I have a plan for that," some players are going to assume that you hit them with an impossible fight in order to railroad them into a dramatic loss (ironic, since DMing this way usually requires a willingness to adapt and shake up you own plans). Trust required - but when isn't it?

Some games work this into their fundamental formula. Eclipse Phase and IIRC Planet Mercenary both use cloning/consciousness uploading to allow for player death on a relatively frequent basis. Ars Magica gives each player multiple characters, some of whom are more fragile than others, in a sort of mixed approach. Can't think of any others offhand, but I'm sure they're around.


-The heroes are left for dead. They wake up in a gutter somewhere, or being nursed back to health in a peasant's cottage, or something of that nature.

I think in general this approach is not great for the tabletop. It's seen in some video games, and it can be fine there, but it impresses upon the player that the challenge is the point, rather than the narrative stakes of the battle itself. This also applies a bit to the fifth idea: you want to be careful not to trivialize important things, like loss and death.

Pelle
2018-11-09, 12:25 PM
Not sure if it was intentional, but you have limited your solutions to just changing the results of deadly combats. Change the scope of the combat instead, while keeping the combat meaningful.

The combat itself is easy, but can you
- kill the guard fast enough that he won't have time to raise the alarm?
- kill both guards before they have time to shut the gate?
- kill all of the patrol members without anyone escaping?
- stop the enchanter without hurting the innocent commoners he mind controls?

etc

DMThac0
2018-11-09, 12:28 PM
While I understand where you're coming from, and I have played almost every variant you've listed, I strongly believe that characters can/should die if/when it's appropriate.

You are a group of lvl 1 newbies who stumble across a black dragon's lair...sure you'll make it out alive. Stripped of all possessions and made to trudge through the swamp to get back to town. Killing them off that early is just going to leave a big black cloud over the rest of the game. On the other hand, if you've got a group of lvl 6 players who've been introduced to the extreme dangers of a dragon, and they choose to walk into the dragon's lair, and they choose to poke it with sharp metal toothpicks...they risk death.

A player sees a pit, in this pit there are about two dozen rusty spears planted in the ground to meet anything that falls in. In this pit, hung on an impaled skeleton, is a platinum necklace with a large gem in it.
-Player "I'm going to jump in and grab the spear!"
-DM "...Are you sure you want to do that...there's a lot of rusty spears down there..."
-Player "yup, I jump in and go for the necklace"
-DM "You going to do anything else before you jump in?"
-Player "Nope, I want that necklace, I'm going for it."
-DM "Roll athletics to see if you can avoid the spears as you jump in. *rolls some d8s for the spears *rolls another d6 for the surprise round because a dire rat was hiding in the pit"
-Player "Wait, why am I taking all this damage?"
-DM "You jumped, not climbed down, jumped into a pit full of rusty spears, you didn't look for any other dangers, and you didn't tell your friends what you were doing...You take 15 damage from the spears and another 7 points from the rat swarm."
-Player "I'm at 0 hp"
-DM "The rats attack again, that's 2 failed saves"

By the time the players could save the fool he's probably going to be dead, and he was given multiple chances to change his mind. I'm not going to give the player a "win" for being silly enough to choose to do something deadly when there were much safer ways to do it.

NichG
2018-11-09, 12:34 PM
Probably the first thing you have to do is to start to think about combat not as a means by which a life and death grievance is brought to resolution, but as a way to seize control of a given moment, location, person, etc which is more important to all parties involved than their relationship to each-other. If combat almost never occurs in a circumstance where the participants have as their goal 'kill the other side', then it's much easier both to make it so that death is an incidental risk rather than a guarantee associated with failure, and so that failures on the part of one side move some sort of agenda forward in a way such that play can continue.

One way to sort of force that issue is to make sure that most factions which might participate in combat have strong mutually assured destruction fallbacks if their entire position appears to have become untenable. Then, combat is never about long-term resolution of the power balance between the factions but rather it just has to do with escalation in the vicinity of things with high opportunity costs and values - e.g. the factions all want at most a cold war as their continued state of being, but there are other things that are locally sufficiently important that a temporary state of violence might break out. If that's the case, then there's motivation for all sides to use non-lethal measures when possible, because it leaves open the door for returning to the cold war status after the conflict ends.

An example of this might be something like a World of Darkness type of setup where, collectively, each supernatural faction is more afraid of being exposed than they are of failing their goals. If everyone in such a setting could go nova but in doing so would breach the secrecy of the supernatural world, then logically no one should want to push anyone else into such a corner that they might as well pull the trigger and use a big ability in public. E.g. if they know they would certainly die/suffer a fate worse than death if they don't pull the trigger, then even if pulling the trigger guarantees lethal reprisals from the supernatural community they might as well do so since the alternative is equally bad. So such a setting could have an etiquette of combat designed around that risk, even to elaborate levels such as 'it's okay to use overwhelming lethal force, but only once and only from surprise; if it fails, the one who attempted it must forfeit their involvement'.

Anyhow, if you can think of what combat is for when none of the parties have the luxury of killing each-other without a great cost, then the rest should follow.

Thundersteel
2018-11-09, 12:35 PM
While I understand where you're coming from, and I have played almost every variant you've listed, I strongly believe that characters can/should die if/when it's appropriate.

You are a group of lvl 1 newbies who stumble across a black dragon's lair...sure you'll make it out alive. Stripped of all possessions and made to trudge through the swamp to get back to town. Killing them off that early is just going to leave a big black cloud over the rest of the game. On the other hand, if you've got a group of lvl 6 players who've been introduced to the extreme dangers of a dragon, and they choose to walk into the dragon's lair, and they choose to poke it with sharp metal toothpicks...they risk death.

A player sees a pit, in this pit there are about two dozen rusty spears planted in the ground to meet anything that falls in. In this pit, hung on an impaled skeleton, is a platinum necklace with a large gem in it.
-Player "I'm going to jump in and grab the spear!"
-DM "...Are you sure you want to do that...there's a lot of rusty spears down there..."
-Player "yup, I jump in and go for the necklace"
-DM "You going to do anything else before you jump in?"
-Player "Nope, I want that necklace, I'm going for it."
-DM "Roll athletics to see if you can avoid the spears as you jump in. *rolls some d8s for the spears *rolls another d6 for the surprise round because a dire rat was hiding in the pit"
-Player "Wait, why am I taking all this damage?"
-DM "You jumped, not climbed down, jumped into a pit full of rusty spears, you didn't look for any other dangers, and you didn't tell your friends what you were doing...You take 15 damage from the spears and another 7 points from the rat swarm."
-Player "I'm at 0 hp"
-DM "The rats attack again, that's 2 failed saves"

By the time the players could save the fool he's probably going to be dead, and he was given multiple chances to change his mind. I'm not going to give the player a "win" for being silly enough to choose to do something deadly when there were much safer ways to do it.

Eeeeeeh a lot of those examples feel like they're coming from a very 1980's "Player vs GM" mindset.

Thundersteel
2018-11-09, 12:48 PM
The second changes the theme and flavor of the game a lot, and presumably side-tracks the party from the goals they already care about. Some players could be turned off by this. If you go this route, I definitely advise letting the players know such can occur. (It's also helpful since some players like to design backup characters in games where resurrection is rare. If such isn't an option, they should know.)
Also, if it happens 2+ times, it probably gets boring. If just 1 PC dies, that means the party is split and it's hard for everyone to play at the same time.

Yeah, "journey through the underworld" is a pretty hard move as far changing the course of the game goes, and I agree that it's definitely the type of trick a GM should only play once. Your post immediately calls to mind the God of War games, and how journeying through Hades was pretty cool the 1st time around, but by the 3rd time, had really lost it's sting.

DMThac0
2018-11-09, 01:07 PM
Eeeeeeh a lot of those examples feel like they're coming from a very 1980's "Player vs GM" mindset.

How so? If the player is given the information, given a choice, and given agency to do as they please, how is the DM going against the player?

If the information was withheld, the fact it was a dragon's lair or that there were spikes in the pit, that is DM vs Player. If there were no options to avoid death, such as run away or use a rope to climb down, that is DM vs Player. I get that there are DMs who do this, and they are doing their position an injustice.

As the DM, is it their job to go "Hey, guys, this is a dragon's lair, he's got a CR of 15, your total party level is an average of 6, you probably can't win. Don't go in there."
or
is it's the DM's job to go "You walk into the cave and the first thing you note is the walls have gouges in them, like some large and very sharp object tore through the stone as if it were nothing. There are bones of creatures littered about, many of them seem to be from creatures as large or larger than a horse. There's a smell in the air, it's an acrid odor, it makes the back of your throat itch and your eyes burn."

The first one will save the players and not hide any information from them, guaranteeing that it's not DM vs Player. Where as the 2nd one gives a description from the eyes of the characters and could, potentially, be misinterpreted and cause a death at the hands of a black dragon. Is that Dm vs player or is it giving a narrative?

Giving the players information doesn't always come in the black and white regurgitation of the information from the books, it's a colorful narrative from the PC's perspective (or close to it). What the players do with that information could, and should, lead to their deaths if they do not take the time to realize what's being given to them, or simply choose to do something irrational.

Tajerio
2018-11-09, 02:09 PM
How so? If the player is given the information, given a choice, and given agency to do as they please, how is the DM going against the player?

If the information was withheld, the fact it was a dragon's lair or that there were spikes in the pit, that is DM vs Player. If there were no options to avoid death, such as run away or use a rope to climb down, that is DM vs Player. I get that there are DMs who do this, and they are doing their position an injustice.

As the DM, is it their job to go "Hey, guys, this is a dragon's lair, he's got a CR of 15, your total party level is an average of 6, you probably can't win. Don't go in there."
or
is it's the DM's job to go "You walk into the cave and the first thing you note is the walls have gouges in them, like some large and very sharp object tore through the stone as if it were nothing. There are bones of creatures littered about, many of them seem to be from creatures as large or larger than a horse. There's a smell in the air, it's an acrid odor, it makes the back of your throat itch and your eyes burn."

The first one will save the players and not hide any information from them, guaranteeing that it's not DM vs Player. Where as the 2nd one gives a description from the eyes of the characters and could, potentially, be misinterpreted and cause a death at the hands of a black dragon. Is that Dm vs player or is it giving a narrative?

Giving the players information doesn't always come in the black and white regurgitation of the information from the books, it's a colorful narrative from the PC's perspective (or close to it). What the players do with that information could, and should, lead to their deaths if they do not take the time to realize what's being given to them, or simply choose to do something irrational.

I absolutely agree with you generally, but I'm not sure your specific example is great. A CR-appropriate black dragon for a 6th level party could still very well fit most, if not all, of that description. I also think that colorful description can very easily mislead the party, unless the DM is very careful to emphasize the details that the players would naturally take away if they could see what their characters saw.

On the general point of the thread, it's always been my view that strictly avoiding PC death makes the game less enjoyable. But if you really want to cut down on death, one option you have is to make it clear to the players that retreat is an option. Unless their enemies need them dead in order to win, the PCs should be able to run screaming from the field of battle with their lives, though not, perhaps, their dignity. Players generally have a knee-jerk reaction against this, I've found, but it could be worth a try.

Players, of course, will never let their enemies retreat, because those enemies have loot.

DMThac0
2018-11-09, 02:29 PM
I absolutely agree with you generally, but I'm not sure your specific example is great. A CR-appropriate black dragon for a 6th level party could still very well fit most, if not all, of that description. I also think that colorful description can very easily mislead the party, unless the DM is very careful to emphasize the details that the players would naturally take away if they could see what their characters saw.


I get the misleading part, I had my party run away from an Ettin when I described the scenario. The party could have won with little trouble, but I played it up just to force them into considering that fighting was a bad idea. However, for me, I will use every narrative cue I can muster to help my players avoid dead rather than mislead them into a situation they shouldn't be in.



On the general point of the thread, it's always been my view that strictly avoiding PC death makes the game less enjoyable. But if you really want to cut down on death, one option you have is to make it clear to the players that retreat is an option. Unless their enemies need them dead in order to win, the PCs should be able to run screaming from the field of battle with their lives, though not, perhaps, their dignity. Players generally have a knee-jerk reaction against this, I've found, but it could be worth a try.

Players, of course, will never let their enemies retreat, because those enemies have loot.

Everything you can do to help the players realize they don't need to kill everything that they encounter is beneficial. From monsters that run, to repercussions for being murder-hobos. If you can turn a failed scenario into a learning experience then it's a win. If the players continue to take nothing from a failed exercise, then it's time to bring out the bigger guns.

Nifft
2018-11-09, 03:39 PM
The conflict here is due to the requirement that deadly combat must exist in the same game as pre-ordained victorious heroes.

You can do things old school, and have normal mortal PCs who live & die as the dice-gods dictate. The victorious heroes are the PCs at the end of the campaign, who might not have existed at the beginning.

OR you can do things literary-style, where the main characters of the story survive all tribulations through to the end. The main characters faced off against the appearance of risk, but there was no actual risk because their ultimate success was written in advance.

If you try to have both at once, you encounter the OP's conflict.


Both styles are viable, though the former is more easily available in a game with deadly combat rules, and the latter is more easily adapted to a fixed story (like a book or a video game).

The questions you need to ask are:
- Do I want a game with PC death as a risk?
- If not, what am I willing to put at risk?
- If so, how specifically should the risk of death be signaled?

Slipperychicken
2018-11-09, 03:42 PM
What I've got so far:
-The heroes are left for dead. They wake up in a gutter somewhere, or being nursed back to health in a peasant's cottage, or something of that nature.
-Someone else dies. They failed to beat the dragon, and as a result, it burns down the village.
-The heroes are publicly humiliated. They lost a rumble with a rival gang, who left them strung naked in a public square.
-The heroes are taken prisoner. This is a pretty solid one for moving the story forward, as it usually re-deposits the heroes directly in the villain's lair.
-They -do- die, and the next session or arc is about escaping from the underworld and returning to the world of the living.

-Weeks or months of recovery time for any serious injuries sustained during the fight (can happen on any result, depending on the game's rules), during which the antagonists gain significant ground in the long-term struggle; collecting infinity stones, butchering towns, getting closer to El Dorado, whatever they're trying to do
-Baddies take stuff from the PCs. Definitely all liquid assets on their person (money, jewelry, gold-plated firearms, lightsabers, super-science gadgets, items of obvious value), items of clear value to the overall conflict (i.e. envelope labeled 'for the senator's eyes only'), possibly also equipment or provisions too, depending on their needs
-Baddies complete whatever their objective was at the time; stealing a princess, robbing someone, looting a temple, and so on
-Baddies dump them into a ditch or elaborate death-trap
-Baddies perform a cosmetic mutilation on the PCs; cutting off an ear, toe, finger, drawing "loser" on their cheek, or branding them with a mark relating to their faction
-PCs' luck stat permanently decreases, to indicate that they got lucky that time but cannot keep losing forever

Letting them outright crawl out of hell just strips the game of stakes. When you mess with the finality of death, it presents a lot of issues. And if the PCs are butchering people themselves, then I'd want a good explanation for why the bad guys don't return the favor. It's better to do something which either sets the players back in a significant way or results in a lose-condition.

Darth Ultron
2018-11-09, 04:11 PM
So, here's a paradox I've noted:
PC Death, in theory, raises the stakes of a game. It also, unless very carefully timed, brings your narrative to a grinding halt and generally makes players have Not a Good Time. As a result, as a GM, I want to structure encounters in such a way that I know the players will win, thus avoiding character death.

I don't think that character death ''brings and end to the narrative" or makes the game ''not a good time".

If you want to avoid character death, you might as well take away combat, hit points, weapons and all the rest too. What is really the point if it's just ''some times lose a couple points, but it does not matter"? You might as well just switch to a pure non-combat game. Then when you have ''conflict" the two sides can have a debate or something (''well your side made the more convincing argument so the demons go home").

But, note character death only stops the narrative for the effected characters: but not the players. The players have a outside narrative view point. And this can be fun like:

Reboot 2.0-the idea here is the characters were not meant to die by fate/destiny. So someone, assembles a close copy (that is each player makes a close copy of their previous character but with tweaks and differences) of the characters and has them try again.

Reincarnation-the idea is the souls of the old characters are reborn in new bodies, but with their full memories .. This can be a real fun one if the players switch characters too (Player Bob with dwarf fighter character Dun, now plays elf wizard Zimala; while Player Tina with elf wizard Zoeta, now plays dwarf fighter Bork).

Legacy -kids, or other family members of the PCs take up the failed quest or job...with each having a journal from the original PC.

Jay R
2018-11-09, 08:35 PM
I favor having the dead PCs wake up chained to an oar in the hold of a slave galley bound for an exotic land.

Time to organize a revolt, and the potential rewards are a ship and its contents (but not their old magic items).

Quertus
2018-11-09, 11:22 PM
It's really hard for me to say anything more constructive than "no" to this thread, but I'll try.

If you want a consequence other than death, and you care about your world having stakes, then you need to design your encounters with different stakes.

Personally, I'm not a fan, because, in constantly trying to avoid the possibility of death, you almost invariably get stuff that feels contrived, and it devalues the game.

Curiously, unlike some of the people I game with, I'm fine with Fate Points / other metacurrency you can spend avoid bad things happening. Or, at least, I am, so long as "being lucky" is an observable, recognizable fact in the world.

Anyway, to return to a "me" standard, know your players. Know what they'll accept, and what will turn them off of your game. We can only tell you what we - and the players were have observed - seem to like or hate. For myself, I hate unrealistic death only slightly more than unrealistic survival. But unless we happen to be your players, that's of but so much value compared to the likes and dislikes of your actual players.

weckar
2018-11-10, 05:59 AM
Some players will purposely play recklessly in order to die because the are bored of a character. Implementing these 'features' will just frustrate them.

Thundersteel
2018-11-10, 02:39 PM
Some players will purposely play recklessly in order to die because the are bored of a character. Implementing these 'features' will just frustrate them.

Eh? Do your players not talk to you?
Like, if you want to quit a game, or write a new character, you can just.... talk to your group about doing that.

Becca Stareyes
2018-11-10, 02:59 PM
I'm with some of the other folks. A mix of 'what do the enemies actually want that they are willing to fight for it' and signaling that combat can be ended with surrender/negotiations or fleeing early on, so the PCs pick up that such things are tactics they can use. As a GM, I want the players to know the difference between a minor setback ('if we don't stop these bandits, they will rob us and may kill us... but we can offer to surrender and give them money if it looks like we might die in the fight, and they might just knock us out and leave us in our underwear in the woods if we lose') and a major setback ('if we don't stop the cultists from opening a gate to the Abyss, the entire area will be overrun with demons so dying to stop them is reasonable, and a loss means we'll die').

Which means I need to signal. If a player keeps charging into combat every time like it's the final boss, eventually I'm going to break the hints-in-narration and remind them that, while I design encounters to be survivable, I'm not going to give the enemies the Idiot Ball to keep PCs alive.

weckar
2018-11-10, 09:21 PM
Eh? Do your players not talk to you?
Like, if you want to quit a game, or write a new character, you can just.... talk to your group about doing that.That does not really work in our group. No replacements unless by death or reasonable retirement - like losing limbs. It is to create that epic narrative feel. It is also a matter of awkwardness because it tends to be the same players who always want the new guy.

Yora
2018-11-11, 02:00 AM
Players, of course, will never let their enemies retreat, because those enemies have loot.

And that's the inherent problem of D&D, which carries over to the whole d20 system. It's not a problem for a high-risk dungeon crawler with frequent and quick character replacement. That's what it's designed for. It does become a problem when you try to use the system to play out the PC's dramatic life story. The story tells you to do one thing, the mechanics tell you to do another thing. There is an inherent mismatch and conflict.

Pauly
2018-11-11, 02:56 AM
Consequences of failing an encounter, as previously stated depends on the type of encounter and the baddies. Some other consequences other than TPC
- saved by a high level wizard (or equivalent) who puts them under a geas and makes them his slaves to achieve a purpose.
- characters being defiled (physically or religiously) and then needing to be cleansed. Being physically defiled needs to be handled very carefully
- permanent injury that restricts their abilities - loss of a limb or an eye kind of injury.
- In a d20 environment being permanently level drained, in sci-fi setting a memory wipe. Normally half the character’s levels being lost is appropriate.
- reversible aging/youthening effects. Turn the characters into children or doddering elders and let them try to find a cure. They keep their XP but their physical skills are reduced and tasks requiring concentration have a 50-50 chance of failure due to an inability to maintain concentration.

kyoryu
2018-11-12, 04:56 PM
They key is really to have defined stakes for the combat - a question that the combat answers. And "do they live or die" is really kind of boring.

Movie focused, but useful: https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-you-should-never-write-action-scenes-into-your-tent-511712234

Combat is deadly (or should be). Why are people fighting? Why don't they run away? In most cases, if your choice is between "run away" and "maybe die", you should run away - unless there's something important enough that you're willing to stick it out. Those are your stakes. Once that's settled, it's reasonable to assume that either side will run away once it becomes obvious that they will lose.

Combine these, and players can start losing combats all the time, without having to endure TPKs. This is great for adding tension, as the players will legitimately not know if they will succeed, and if the question that is asked will go their way or not.

Knaight
2018-11-12, 05:43 PM
And that's the inherent problem of D&D, which carries over to the whole d20 system. It's not a problem for a high-risk dungeon crawler with frequent and quick character replacement. That's what it's designed for. It does become a problem when you try to use the system to play out the PC's dramatic life story. The story tells you to do one thing, the mechanics tell you to do another thing. There is an inherent mismatch and conflict.

The mechanics stopped being consistent about what they were telling you several editions ago. A high risk dungeon crawler with frequent and quick character replacement is a functional design type. A high risk dungeon crawler with frequent and staggeringly glacial character replacement isn't so much, and D&D started moving in that direction with 2e, reached that point with 3.5 (where you have people talking about spending days planning their character), and is moving away from that point currently but is still not particularly near "quick".

Psikerlord
2018-11-12, 10:24 PM
For me the obvious alternative to death is ... persistent injuries and setbacks.

When the PC hits zero, if they don't die, instead roll on a table, including things like fractured hand, eye injury, lose a foot, break a weapon, hireling dies, animal injured, lose 1d4 Str due to muscle strain, gain a madness, big scar, etc. I'd keep the chance of actually losing a limb very low, and restricted to forelimbs which can be replaced (hook hands, peg legs, etc, not whole leg, whole arm). This keeps combat nice and scary, with real consequences, without needing PCs to actually die. For a high magic game, change magic to make removing such injuries time consuming (eg 1d6 days with magic, or 2 months without).

icefractal
2018-11-13, 01:28 PM
Ironically, I feel like a lot of suggestions here would make a campaign notably more brutal than death does, to the point you may want to check whether your players are up for that level of consequences.

Yes, IRL, death is plenty horrific, but in a game:
* It's usually depicted in a fairly "clean" cinematic style, if at all.
* After dying, you get to play as a new, non-crippled, non-"defiled" character.
* Because too much character replacement usually limits narrative, GMs are self-restrained in how deadly they make things.

Change those, and it's effectively harsher OOC. Possibly harsher than I'd personally enjoy in a game where you can lose by pure luck as easily as D&D.

Nifft
2018-11-13, 03:21 PM
Ironically, I feel like a lot of suggestions here would make a campaign notably more brutal than death does, to the point you may want to check whether your players are up for that level of consequences.

Yes, IRL, death is plenty horrific, but in a game:
* It's usually depicted in a fairly "clean" cinematic style, if at all.
* After dying, you get to play as a new, non-crippled, non-"defiled" character.
* Because too much character replacement usually limits narrative, GMs are self-restrained in how deadly they make things.

Change those, and it's effectively harsher OOC. Possibly harsher than I'd personally enjoy in a game where you can lose by pure luck as easily as D&D.

Heh, good point.

Usually the penalty for utter failure is ... you get to make a new PC, with perfect custom magical gear, who can better respond to whatever killed your previous PC.

Without PC death, the penalty for utter failure is... you must keep your PC who couldn't survive the previous frustration, except now your PC is worse.


In a very real way, making (a) new PC(s) to better respond to a lethal failure is "failing forward". Certainly more forward than forcing the players to keep their apparently ineffective PCs plus making those PCs worse by inflicting a permanent injury upon them.

Tvtyrant
2018-11-13, 07:22 PM
So, here's a paradox I've noted:
PC Death, in theory, raises the stakes of a game. It also, unless very carefully timed, brings your narrative to a grinding halt and generally makes players have Not a Good Time. As a result, as a GM, I want to structure encounters in such a way that I know the players will win, thus avoiding character death.

Ergo, I've been brainstorming possible consequences for PC's losing a combat encounter besides "you all die, the game is over now."
I've become a really big fan of the concept of 'failing forward' on skill checks (a la most Apocalypse World games), and I'm thinking about how that concept can be applied to combat in general.

What I've got so far:
-The heroes are left for dead. They wake up in a gutter somewhere, or being nursed back to health in a peasant's cottage, or something of that nature.
-Someone else dies. They failed to beat the dragon, and as a result, it burns down the village.
-The heroes are publicly humiliated. They lost a rumble with a rival gang, who left them strung naked in a public square.
-The heroes are taken prisoner. This is a pretty solid one for moving the story forward, as it usually re-deposits the heroes directly in the villain's lair.
-They -do- die, and the next session or arc is about escaping from the underworld and returning to the world of the living.

My rule has pretty much always been that people don't die during combat. If you drop below 0 you take a major wound, if an opponent drops below 0 it flops around like a fish, and victory or defeat involves groups fleeing or capturing each other. That came about after one too many instantly dead characters from crits, falling off of cliffs, falling off of walls, falling off an airship, and falling off a boat.

So now the group is only captured or TPKd if they all go down, but enemies are much stronger relative to them as a result.

Pauly
2018-11-13, 07:48 PM
Ironically, I feel like a lot of suggestions here would make a campaign notably more brutal than death does, to the point you may want to check whether your players are up for that level of consequences.

Yes, IRL, death is plenty horrific, but in a game:
* It's usually depicted in a fairly "clean" cinematic style, if at all.
* After dying, you get to play as a new, non-crippled, non-"defiled" character.
* Because too much character replacement usually limits narrative, GMs are self-restrained in how deadly they make things.

Change those, and it's effectively harsher OOC. Possibly harsher than I'd personally enjoy in a game where you can lose by pure luck as easily as D&D.

It depends on how harsh and how permanent the GM wants to make the conditions and how generous the campaign is with new characters.

Tvtyrant
2018-11-13, 07:54 PM
Heh, good point.

Usually the penalty for utter failure is ... you get to make a new PC, with perfect custom magical gear, who can better respond to whatever killed your previous PC.

Without PC death, the penalty for utter failure is... you must keep your PC who couldn't survive the previous frustration, except now your PC is worse.


In a very real way, making (a) new PC(s) to better respond to a lethal failure is "failing forward". Certainly more forward than forcing the players to keep their apparently ineffective PCs plus making those PCs worse by inflicting a permanent injury upon them.

I actually like this better for that reason. Having a character develop flaws over time makes you more invested in that character, an optimal character is basically a race car and a somewhat damaged character who keeps on trucking is your high school car that you can't bring yourself to get rid of for a mini-van at 28.

Knaight
2018-11-13, 08:28 PM
In a very real way, making (a) new PC(s) to better respond to a lethal failure is "failing forward". Certainly more forward than forcing the players to keep their apparently ineffective PCs plus making those PCs worse by inflicting a permanent injury upon them.

Failing forward is more about continuity than anything - and while a new PC is going to likely be more able to mechanically contribute they don't have the history of an old PC. There's a discontinuity when they switch, and nowhere is this more apparent than in TPKs and near TPKs.

kyoryu
2018-11-13, 09:21 PM
For me the obvious alternative to death is ... persistent injuries and setbacks.

When the PC hits zero, if they don't die, instead roll on a table, including things like fractured hand, eye injury, lose a foot, break a weapon, hireling dies, animal injured, lose 1d4 Str due to muscle strain, gain a madness, big scar, etc. I'd keep the chance of actually losing a limb very low, and restricted to forelimbs which can be replaced (hook hands, peg legs, etc, not whole leg, whole arm). This keeps combat nice and scary, with real consequences, without needing PCs to actually die. For a high magic game, change magic to make removing such injuries time consuming (eg 1d6 days with magic, or 2 months without).

I personally prefer plot-level setbacks.

But that goes against the desire for many people to have pre-planned, written out "stories" so meh.

Nifft
2018-11-13, 09:42 PM
I actually like this better for that reason. Having a character develop flaws over time makes you more invested in that character, an optimal character is basically a race car and a somewhat damaged character who keeps on trucking is your high school car that you can't bring yourself to get rid of for a mini-van at 28.


Failing forward is more about continuity than anything - and while a new PC is going to likely be more able to mechanically contribute they don't have the history of an old PC. There's a discontinuity when they switch, and nowhere is this more apparent than in TPKs and near TPKs.

Here's where I'm seeing a useful definition: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemaddock/2012/10/10/if-you-have-to-fail-and-you-do-fail-forward/

Failing forward seems to be about iteration and adaptation. It's about maximizing learning and minimizing the sorts of trauma and self-doubt which might reduce future success.

Increasing your failed investment isn't failing forward -- it's just embracing a sunk cost fallacy.

Continuity sounds like an anti-adaptation argument at best, anti-learning at worst. The players are the thing you want to optimize for, not the characters. Characters are useful only when they are useful. Making a player stick with a losing strategy is like staying in a bad marriage for the kids -- except in this case, only the kids are actual people. Don't punish real people for the sake of pretend ones.


Now there may be valid reasons to stick with one PC, to increase investment and continuity, but that reason is NOT "failing forward". Failing forward tells you to do the opposite -- try new things, recognize failures when they happen, learn from these failures, and then make changes based on what you learned. Don't enshrine a mistake just because you spent a long time making it -- that's just plain failing, not failing forward.

Again, there are probably solid reasons to do what you guys are advocating, but what you're advocating is NOT "failing forward".

Knaight
2018-11-13, 10:06 PM
Here's where I'm seeing a useful definition: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemaddock/2012/10/10/if-you-have-to-fail-and-you-do-fail-forward/

Failing forward seems to be about iteration and adaptation. It's about maximizing learning and minimizing the sorts of trauma and self-doubt which might reduce future success.

Increasing your failed investment isn't failing forward -- it's just embracing a sunk cost fallacy.

Continuity sounds like an anti-adaptation argument at best, anti-learning at worst. The players are the thing you want to optimize for, not the characters. Characters are useful only when they are useful. Making a player stick with a losing strategy is like staying in a bad marriage for the kids -- except in this case, only the kids are actual people. Don't punish real people for the sake of pretend ones.

Fail forward the RPG jargon is not the same thing as fail forward as listed as forbes - and the whole analogy where characters are sunk costs and/or misses the point of why the people who favor fail forward are playing RPGs spectacularly - which is generally more on the shared creative storytelling end, where the ups and downs of one group of characters that win some and lose some are interesting, and throwing a whole bunch of disposable characters at a challenge totally defeats the point of the style.

Tvtyrant
2018-11-13, 10:28 PM
Here's where I'm seeing a useful definition: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemaddock/2012/10/10/if-you-have-to-fail-and-you-do-fail-forward/

Failing forward seems to be about iteration and adaptation. It's about maximizing learning and minimizing the sorts of trauma and self-doubt which might reduce future success.

Increasing your failed investment isn't failing forward -- it's just embracing a sunk cost fallacy.

Continuity sounds like an anti-adaptation argument at best, anti-learning at worst. The players are the thing you want to optimize for, not the characters. Characters are useful only when they are useful. Making a player stick with a losing strategy is like staying in a bad marriage for the kids -- except in this case, only the kids are actual people. Don't punish real people for the sake of pretend ones.


Now there may be valid reasons to stick with one PC, to increase investment and continuity, but that reason is NOT "failing forward". Failing forward tells you to do the opposite -- try new things, recognize failures when they happen, learn from these failures, and then make changes based on what you learned. Don't enshrine a mistake just because you spent a long time making it -- that's just plain failing, not failing forward.

Again, there are probably solid reasons to do what you guys are advocating, but what you're advocating is NOT "failing forward".

Hmm, I can see your point ablut definitions. I suppose constructive failing might be a better term.

If I play a shooter where I come back instantly after death I am going to respond differently than if there is a distant savepoint, and way differently from a perma death like Fortnite. As death has more consequences I become more cautious.

Injuries and scars have as much effect or more on my willingness to be reckless or cautious as dying and spawning a new person, while also being better IMO for connecting the player with their character. Collab story telling is my biggest goal in playing RPGs.

I also wouldn't force anyone to keep a character they no longer want. If they feel like rerolling someone without a eye missing or a peg leg I would be on board, I just don't want changing characters to be a consequence of mechanical effects.

Nifft
2018-11-13, 10:58 PM
The conflict here is due to the requirement that deadly combat must exist in the same game as pre-ordained victorious heroes.

You can do things old school, and have normal mortal PCs who live & die as the dice-gods dictate. The victorious heroes are the PCs at the end of the campaign, who might not have existed at the beginning.

OR you can do things literary-style, where the main characters of the story survive all tribulations through to the end. The main characters faced off against the appearance of risk, but there was no actual risk because their ultimate success was written in advance.

If you try to have both at once, you encounter the OP's conflict.


Both styles are viable, though the former is more easily available in a game with deadly combat rules, and the latter is more easily adapted to a fixed story (like a book or a video game).

The questions you need to ask are:
- Do I want a game with PC death as a risk?
- If not, what am I willing to put at risk?
- If so, how specifically should the risk of death be signaled?


Fail forward the RPG jargon is not the same thing as fail forward as listed as forbes - and the whole analogy where characters are sunk costs and/or misses the point of why the people who favor fail forward are playing RPGs spectacularly - which is generally more on the shared creative storytelling end, where the ups and downs of one group of characters that win some and lose some are interesting, and throwing a whole bunch of disposable characters at a challenge totally defeats the point of the style. So you're talking about games with pre-ordaned designated victorious heroes, and the stories of the struggles & failures & eventual success that gets them from session zero to their inevitable victory.

That's cool, but as mentioned in An Earlier Post that's incompatible with ye olde schoole lethal-combat games.

I don't think of that game style as fail forward, though. It seems very confusing to use that as a label for a game that's about:
- Non-Lethal Risks
- Designated Champions
- Guaranteed (Eventual) Success

By some metrics, you cannot fail in such a game. Clearly those metrics are irrelevant if the games are "spectacular", so it seems a lot more useful to define these games in positive terms which don't obfuscate their method.



Hmm, I can see your point ablut definitions. I suppose constructive failing might be a better term.

If I play a shooter where I come back instantly after death I am going to respond differently than if there is a distant savepoint, and way differently from a perma death like Fortnite. As death has more consequences I become more cautious.

Injuries and scars have as much effect or more on my willingness to be reckless or cautious as dying and spawning a new person, while also being better IMO for connecting the player with their character. Collab story telling is my biggest goal in playing RPGs.

I also wouldn't force anyone to keep a character they no longer want. If they feel like rerolling someone without a eye missing or a peg leg I would be on board, I just don't want changing characters to be a consequence of mechanical effects. Let me try to think of a game that I think might be included in your description.

How about FATE (specifically Dresden Files RPG)? In that game, your character won't die mechanically. You'll have a chance to suffer "consequences" which have impact for a number of scenes or a span of game time, but which you can recover from completely given sufficient time and/or resources. If you "die" in an encounter, you're "taken out" (you don't contribute further to the encounter, and you don't get to help dictate the conflict's eventual resolution). You can give yourself a Consequence of varying duration instead of being "taken out", so you should only take a Consequence when you think you've got a shot at taking out your opposition.

If you get taken out, you lose -- and in the case of a TPKO, the GM dictates the conflict outcome unilaterally -- but you gain Fate Points for being taken out, so you gain an edge for your next conflict.

Hmm, I think FATE / DFRPG may suit both the general definition and the one that you guys are using.

Knaight
2018-11-13, 11:19 PM
So you're talking about games with pre-ordaned designated victorious heroes, and the stories of the struggles & failures & eventual success that gets them from session zero to their inevitable victory.

Not at all - there's no guarantee of eventual success. Continuity is not the same thing as victory, and it could easily end up being about how they fail in their goals and then are slowly ground down running ineffective damage control until they're eventually dealt with for good by their victorious enemies. They fail, the failure persists, then the game moves forward, through different events than it would have moved through in the context of a success.

Meanwhile being able to substitute in new characters until they're successful is much closer to the designated victorious heroes style, as it's just a matter of which heroes end up in that slot. Similarly it's pretty easy to define metrics where you can't fail here, as you just keep getting more tries.

Nifft
2018-11-14, 12:04 AM
Not at all - there's no guarantee of eventual success. Continuity is not the same thing as victory, and it could easily end up being about how they fail in their goals and then are slowly ground down running ineffective damage control until they're eventually dealt with for good by their victorious enemies. They fail, the failure persists, then the game moves forward, through different events than it would have moved through in the context of a success. That sounds spectacularly depressing.


Meanwhile being able to substitute in new characters until they're successful is much closer to the designated victorious heroes style, as it's just a matter of which heroes end up in that slot. Similarly it's pretty easy to define metrics where you can't fail here, as you just keep getting more tries. Hmm, it looks like you think "designated victorious heroes" is a term of derision, so you're trying to apply it to (what you perceive as) "my side". It's not, and it's not.

1) Ye olde school high-lethality games are not "my side", and they're not claimed to be better -- it's merely a style that is incompatible with "designated victorious heroes". That's why I contrast them.

2) Under lethality + new PCs, if the new PCs have different goals, then abandoning a failed goal isn't failing forward -- and it isn't continuity except insofar as players desire continuity. The point of failure demands that the player decide on goals for the new PC, and that might be a different ("discontinuous") direction.

You're not throwing more bodies at Gandalf's sub-plot after Gandalf leaves the party. You focus on what the other PCs are into.

Knaight
2018-11-14, 12:50 AM
That sounds spectacularly depressing.
Sometimes bleak and hopeless is an aesthetic that can be enjoyable, if not necessarily fun qua fun (though beer and pretzels bleak and hopeless can be fun). After all character focused stories in other media are routinely tragic. That said, outside of the sort of games outright pitched as "you'll be attempting a futile, symbolic gesture doomed to failure" that tends to be more a hypothetical worst case scenario than what actually happens, which is more a mixed end than anything.


Hmm, it looks like you think "designated victorious heroes" is a term of derision, so you're trying to apply it to (what you perceive as) "my side". It's not, and it's not.

1) Ye olde school high-lethality games are not "my side", and they're not claimed to be better -- it's merely a style that is incompatible with "designated victorious heroes". That's why I contrast them.
I have no issue with the designated victorious heroes approach - I'm just saying that to a large extent the replacement character approach often fits them better, particularly if you substitute in comparable characters. It's analogous to the roguelike genre of video games, and the thing about them is that if you play enough you'll eventually win. It's a totally viable design, if not one I have any interest in with this particular medium.


You're not throwing more bodies at Gandalf's sub-plot after Gandalf leaves the party. You focus on what the other PCs are into.
Sure, but that's still going to involve Sauron - and at least in my experience the high lethality games are disproportionately likely to be main plot focused instead of character focused, precisely because of the character turnover.

Psikerlord
2018-11-14, 06:37 AM
Heh, good point.

Usually the penalty for utter failure is ... you get to make a new PC, with perfect custom magical gear, who can better respond to whatever killed your previous PC.

Without PC death, the penalty for utter failure is... you must keep your PC who couldn't survive the previous frustration, except now your PC is worse.


In a very real way, making (a) new PC(s) to better respond to a lethal failure is "failing forward". Certainly more forward than forcing the players to keep their apparently ineffective PCs plus making those PCs worse by inflicting a permanent injury upon them.

I dont know if this is actually that common. When you die in our game, you start again at level 1, but advance twice as quickly till you catch up. No free magic items, etc.

Psikerlord
2018-11-14, 06:39 AM
I personally prefer plot-level setbacks.

But that goes against the desire for many people to have pre-planned, written out "stories" so meh.

Well you can have both injuries and plot setbacks. Neednt be exclusive.

Spore
2018-11-14, 06:54 AM
-Someone else dies. They failed to beat the dragon, and as a result, it burns down the village.


We played out the deciding battle in a war by skill checks, attack rolls and somesuch. It was pretty free form but each individual check meant something good or bad for a major NPC or large groups of soldiers. If we screwed up, we would have even lost (our country winning the war was not vital for the plot).

Here is what the DM did.

"My attack roll was a 17."
"The enemy commander got a 27. Sorry. Your battalion is dispersed and they take the opportunity to kill the old cleric in the midst of it, responsible for your soldier's resilience."

Many tears were shed because a good villain (and a good DM) usually threatens the things PCs like and love, and not the PCs themselves - unless they are heartless bastards and/or chaotic stupid.

Nifft
2018-11-14, 01:05 PM
Sure, but that's still going to involve Sauron - and at least in my experience the high lethality games are disproportionately likely to be main plot focused instead of character focused, precisely because of the character turnover. I started out playing in what I'd describe as a High-Lethality Sandbox, with the [Hex-Crawl] subtype. The world reacted to the characters, who were generally explorers and treasure-hunters and bandits (ostensibly cut from the cloth of Robin Hood or Zorro).

If you're on an Adventure Path, then I guess your path is going to persist no mater how many bodies you throw at it. But that's not the only style of lethal game.


Hmm, maybe Gandalf was a bad example.

How about Boromir? His conflict about wanting to use the Ring for humanity died with him, and the replacement PC (Gollum) brought a very different conflict -- though it was clearly the same player, and you can tell because of how both PCs tried to steal the Ring.


I dont know if this is actually that common. When you die in our game, you start again at level 1, but advance twice as quickly till you catch up. No free magic items, etc.

Hmm, that's surprisingly similar to Knaight's analogy of Roguelike games.

Using your rules, a player does get to rebuild her PC after learning more about the world, but putting the lessons into practice isn't quite as easy as getting to start as a level-appropriate character.

Knaight
2018-11-14, 02:18 PM
I started out playing in what I'd describe as a High-Lethality Sandbox, with the [Hex-Crawl] subtype. The world reacted to the characters, who were generally explorers and treasure-hunters and bandits (ostensibly cut from the cloth of Robin Hood or Zorro).

If you're on an Adventure Path, then I guess your path is going to persist no mater how many bodies you throw at it. But that's not the only style of lethal game.
It's not the only style at all - but I'd argue that the specific context of the improvement of character building being desirable because a specific encounter went poorly makes a lot more sense in the context of that encounter effectively being repeated. A new character doing other things dodges that entirely.


Hmm, maybe Gandalf was a bad example.

How about Boromir? His conflict about wanting to use the Ring for humanity died with him, and the replacement PC (Gollum) brought a very different conflict -- though it was clearly the same player, and you can tell because of how both PCs tried to steal the Ring.
His conflict does, but it still fit within the parameter of the overall quest structure - even if you don't take the perspective that Boromir was on the same quest as everyone else until the ring basically killed him via manipulation he's still mostly working with the fellowship.


Hmm, that's surprisingly similar to Knaight's analogy of Roguelike games.

Using your rules, a player does get to rebuild her PC after learning more about the world, but putting the lessons into practice isn't quite as easy as getting to start as a level-appropriate character.
It occured to me after I wrote it that the analogy fit better for that sort of thing than where I used it, given that roguelikes generally involve losing your progress, for all that the game persists.

Silva
2018-11-14, 08:48 PM
This is already present in Apocalypse World in a way: Every time you fill your health clock, you may, instead of dying, take a debility that permanently reduces a stat (crippled reduces Hard, disfigured reduces Hot, etc).

I think 2e changed that though. Don't remember how.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-11-14, 09:08 PM
This is already present in Apocalypse World in a way: Every time you fill your health clock, you may, instead of dying, take a debility that permanently reduces a stat (crippled reduces Hard, disfigured reduces Hot, etc).

I think 2e changed that though. Don't remember how.

When life becomes untenable:
come back with -1hard
come back with +1weird(max+3)
change to a new playbook
die

Conaldar
2018-11-14, 11:32 PM
Don't roll dice.

Dice control outcomes in D&D. It's how the game works. I've been running games since the early 80's and no matter how proficient a party was, the dice could betray them and end their adventure. Dead stop. Usually when you, as G/DM least expect it.

A more narrative approach works: just RP combat. That allows a clear path to the sort of outcome you're wanting. You can play D&D anyway you want based on group agreement (outside of Adventure League/Tournament play).

But rolling that d20, based on what you want, is counter-productive.

Knaight
2018-11-15, 03:52 AM
Don't roll dice.

Dice control outcomes in D&D. It's how the game works. I've been running games since the early 80's and no matter how proficient a party was, the dice could betray them and end their adventure. Dead stop. Usually when you, as G/DM least expect it.

A more narrative approach works: just RP combat. That allows a clear path to the sort of outcome you're wanting. You can play D&D anyway you want based on group agreement (outside of Adventure League/Tournament play).

But rolling that d20, based on what you want, is counter-productive.

Dice work just fine for this - the way D&D happens to use them isn't ideal, but neither is just RPing combat if you want to have both the options of failing forward and success open, and to allocate that decision to a rules set with built in uncertainty. That doesn't have to be dice, but they're a great way to do it.

kyoryu
2018-11-15, 08:00 PM
So you're talking about games with pre-ordaned designated victorious heroes, and the stories of the struggles & failures & eventual success that gets them from session zero to their inevitable victory.

No.


That's cool, but as mentioned in An Earlier Post that's incompatible with ye olde schoole lethal-combat games.

That's fairly true. These games typically don't have one-shot kills or other things. The games are more about finding out what happens in the world than not dying. That said, since 99% of the "fudging yay!" posts use "character death" as a reason to fudge, I doubt that the actual death rate in most games is that different.


I don't think of that game style as fail forward, though. It seems very confusing to use that as a label for a game that's about:
- Non-Lethal Risks
- Designated Champions
- Guaranteed (Eventual) Success


Well, you'd certainly have non-lethal risks in addition to lethal variety. Typically the games focus on in-world consequences to characters vs character death, though character death will be on the table in appropriate situations.

Guaranteed (Eventual) Success is not a thing AT ALL. Most of the games using Fail Forward are very much in favor of letting people deal with the consequences of the failure. You fail to stop the portal from opening? Cool. Now you're in a demon infested world, and the game has changed to surviving in that world. Have fun with that, chumps.

Designated Champions can be a thing, but isn't necessarily, any more than it is in D&D.

What Fail Forward really means is that, on a failure, something happens. What you don't see is:

"I pick the lock."
"You fail. What do you do?"
"I pick the lock again."
"You still fail. What do you do?"

and so on and so forth. In a fail-forward game, the presumption is that if you have infinite time and resource you will succeed - so what does failure mean? What happens that you don't continue? What resource or time limitation do you run up against? With fail forward, you'd do something more like this:

"I pick the lock"
"It's taking longer than you'd like. As you're working on it, a pair of guards comes around the corner".

Depending on feel, you could just have the guards heard but not seen, allowing them to react, etc.. Or just have them show up. In either case, due to failure, their situation has become worse.


How about FATE (specifically Dresden Files RPG)? In that game, your character won't die mechanically. You'll have a chance to suffer "consequences" which have impact for a number of scenes or a span of game time, but which you can recover from completely given sufficient time and/or resources.

Partially true.

First off, Consequences represent non-permanent impacts that you have - something that many systems don't bother with *at all* outside of death. So in most cases, you're likely to come out of a Conflict with some amount of lasting pain that will impact you far more than mere hp - and lasting pain that can't be mitigated until the appropriate time is passed. Apart from death, that's often more lasting pain than most other systems.

Secondly, there are Extreme Consequences, which never completely heal. They might be mitigated to some extent, but they negatively and permanently change your character.


If you "die" in an encounter, you're "taken out" (you don't contribute further to the encounter, and you don't get to help dictate the conflict's eventual resolution). You can give yourself a Consequence of varying duration instead of being "taken out", so you should only take a Consequence when you think you've got a shot at taking out your opposition.

Taken Out can absolutely mean dead. It doesn't have to, but it can. If you're Taken Out, the player that took you out, including the GM, has unilateral say on what happens. That can absolutely include death.

It doesn't have to, and because of that, it frees the GM to play very, very hard if they want. Since a PC can never be "accidentally" killed, the GM can pretty much go as hard as they want. Failure is super common in Fate games - to the point that I have to explain that explicitly to new players to Fate.


If you get taken out, you lose -- and in the case of a TPKO, the GM dictates the conflict outcome unilaterally -- but you gain Fate Points for being taken out, so you gain an edge for your next conflict.

No. If you are Taken Out, you're just Taken Out, and the GM decides what happens to you (possibly including death). If you bow out of the conflict *before* you're Taken Out, you can avoid parts of it, but the bad guys get what they want. That's the case where you can get a Fate Point or two to help in the future.

So, no, a game like Fate isn't really based on "guaranteed eventual success". It's not easy mode. You "lose" fights/conflicts/whatever usually 1/3-1/2 of the time. I screw with my players in Fate games really, really hard, and when I've asked them if they thought my games were easy mode (and these are long-term, traditionally minded players) they laughed in my face.

I can understand your assumptions - I actually shared them myself before someone on this very board corrected me, and got me to investigate the games more. And I found I liked what I saw - not because they were easy, or allowed "the story" (screw "the story") to go along the designated path, but because they gave players choice and let me cause so, so much pain to them.

Nifft
2018-11-15, 08:31 PM
No.

Hey Knaight - this guy apparently wants to answer questions directed to you.

Is this guy your designated spokesperson?

Knaight
2018-11-16, 04:33 AM
Hey Knaight - this guy apparently wants to answer questions directed to you.

Is this guy your designated spokesperson?

No, but we have sufficiently similar stylistic preferences and jargon that their answers all work fine for me. I'm also far from the first person to use the terminology in this thread, so those questions directed at me are all pretty open as far as I'm concerned.

Silva
2018-11-17, 03:37 PM
When life becomes untenable:
come back with -1hard
come back with +1weird(max+3)
change to a new playbook
die
Thanks! Hmm that's interesting. I wouldn't expect that Weird increase, but it seems to fit the implicit setting well.

Psikerlord
2018-11-18, 06:53 AM
Don't roll dice.

Dice control outcomes in D&D. It's how the game works. I've been running games since the early 80's and no matter how proficient a party was, the dice could betray them and end their adventure. Dead stop. Usually when you, as G/DM least expect it.

A more narrative approach works: just RP combat. That allows a clear path to the sort of outcome you're wanting. You can play D&D anyway you want based on group agreement (outside of Adventure League/Tournament play).

But rolling that d20, based on what you want, is counter-productive.
I am firmly in the opposite camp. I want the dice to decide what happens next. For me that is where the fun is, for me gameplay > plot. There will still be a great story, but it will be an improvised one, partly from the dice, partly what the PCs choose to do. If the party survives, that means something in and of itself - they earnt it.

Mechalich
2018-11-18, 07:22 AM
I am firmly in the opposite camp. I want the dice to decide what happens next. For me that is where the fun is, for me gameplay > plot. There will still be a great story, but it will be an improvised one, partly from the dice, partly what the PCs choose to do. If the party survives, that means something in and of itself - they earnt it.

Using dice to produce consequences also has a conflict reduction element at most tables. The GM doesn't want to be arbitrarily murdering off PCs, that's going to sound mean no matter how deserved it is, to the point that it is usually worthwhile to actually get out the dice and roll even if the result is mathematically certain to produce death (ex. rolling Xd6 damage where x > than the character's hp).

It most situations, as the GM, you probably have a small number of scenarios for outcomes, ie. good, neutral, or bad, and the general range of both player choices and dice outcomes should dictate where things land. The players might plan really well but roll poorly and end up with a neutral outcome, or plan badly but roll well and still get the good outcome, but extreme results should generally only occur if the players do something extremely unexpected (this is usually bad, simply because the number of catastrophically stupid things one can do tends to outnumber the corresponding number of unbelievably awesome ideas out there) or if they dice produce a spectacularly unlikely result. in d20 this isn't even particularly unlikely since a two critical success or two critical failures in a row each have a 1 in 400 chance of happening, meaning it's likely to occur at least once a campaign.

Silva
2018-11-18, 10:55 AM
I am firmly in the opposite camp. I want the dice to decide what happens next. For me that is where the fun is, for me gameplay > plot. There will still be a great story, but it will be an improvised one, partly from the dice, partly what the PCs choose to do.
Yep, and that's exactly what Fail Forward does.

Max_Killjoy
2018-11-20, 04:17 PM
Someone might have said something along these lines already, but...

From what I've read in these threads, there are two kinds of "fail forward", and one is a lot less useful than the other.

One is "the game should have ways to continue forward even if the PCs fail at an individual task or at a whole scheme". The GM should have contingencies and/or improvisation on hand such that the game isn't stalled by the failure of a single roll ("Oh, goody, we're still here trying to pick this lock for the 37th time.") or a plan ("Well, we couldn't bluff the guards to get into the castle, what now?"). This one, I can get behind. Don't stall the fun, keep moving in a generally onward direction.

The other is when there's so much determination to move "down the road" that success and failure don't matter at all, the outcome is functionally the same regardless. Ends up looking a lot like railroading.

Nifft
2018-11-20, 06:22 PM
What Fail Forward really means is that, on a failure, something happens. What you don't see is:

"I pick the lock."
"You fail. What do you do?"
"I pick the lock again."
"You still fail. What do you do?"

and so on and so forth. In a fail-forward game, the presumption is that if you have infinite time and resource you will succeed - so what does failure mean? What happens that you don't continue? What resource or time limitation do you run up against? With fail forward, you'd do something more like this:

"I pick the lock"
"It's taking longer than you'd like. As you're working on it, a pair of guards comes around the corner".

Depending on feel, you could just have the guards heard but not seen, allowing them to react, etc.. Or just have them show up. In either case, due to failure, their situation has become worse. No. You're making a distinction where there is no difference, or you're talking about rail-roading on failure ("failroading"?). Neither of those is remotely fail-forward.

Here's a more detailed look at your first case:


Player: "I pick the lock."

DM: That took one time unit. Dice are rolled behind the DM's screen. There is risk! Danger! Uncertainty! You don't know if you can afford to take more time doing this! "You fail. What do you do?"

Player: Guys, we only have six time units in the castle before our excuse for being here runs dry, and we need at least 3 of them for the main operation and extraction. We can afford one loss here but we can't afford another. "I pick the lock again."

DM: Heh, now you realize why Count Muddlespont sneered at your threats. This castle's security is above your skill level. You start to doubt your ability to get away clean even if you did succeed. Also I'mma roll for wandering monsters and smirk about the result. "You still fail. What do you do?"

Player: Damn it, we're down to four time units! Oh my gods we're going to have to do something drastic!

DM: Now I'mma roll Hide vs. your passive Spot...


Instead of your "try-once-then-combat" Failroading™ thing, the more open approach allows the DM to just let the world react to whatever the PCs try to do. If they keep trying the same thing, the world may react the same way each time -- or it may react differently, depending on what the dice say.

Having random encounters, and having success be a thing that arises naturally from the actions of the PCs rather than being a way-station on your railroad of plot -- that's part of the game for me.




Taken Out can absolutely mean dead. It doesn't have to, but it can. If you're Taken Out, the player that took you out, including the GM, has unilateral say on what happens. That can absolutely include death.

It doesn't have to, and because of that, it frees the GM to play very, very hard if they want. Since a PC can never be "accidentally" killed, the GM can pretty much go as hard as they want. Failure is super common in Fate games - to the point that I have to explain that explicitly to new players to Fate. Technically somewhat correct, but misleading: I'm discussing the difference between baseline D&D, where losing a fight is far more likely to result in death.

Repeating how FATE "taken out" can also result in death is downplaying the fact that the D&D equivalent is far more heavily slanted towards death.



No. If you are Taken Out, you're just Taken Out, and the GM decides what happens to you (possibly including death). If you bow out of the conflict *before* you're Taken Out, you can avoid parts of it, but the bad guys get what they want. That's the case where you can get a Fate Point or two to help in the future. Wrong. You're not the only person at the table. You getting taken out means you won't participate in the resolution -- it doesn't mean no other player can participate, only you are excluded by having your PC taken out.

It's quite possible for your PC to get "taken out" and then for the rest of the group to retreat (shouldering your unconscious bulk or whatnot).



So, no, a game like Fate isn't really based on "guaranteed eventual success". It's not easy mode. You "lose" fights/conflicts/whatever usually 1/3-1/2 of the time. I screw with my players in Fate games really, really hard, and when I've asked them if they thought my games were easy mode (and these are long-term, traditionally minded players) they laughed in my face.

I can understand your assumptions - I actually shared them myself before someone on this very board corrected me, and got me to investigate the games more. And I found I liked what I saw - not because they were easy, or allowed "the story" (screw "the story") to go along the designated path, but because they gave players choice and let me cause so, so much pain to them. I'm talking about eventual success without the risk of PC death, which is not the same thing as "easy mode".

This "easy mode" thing seems to be your straw man. If you were genuinely confused about the distinction between "easy mode" and what I'm talking about, let me know.

Anyway, hope that helped a bit.

Silva
2018-11-20, 10:19 PM
@Nifft, I honestly don't know the concept of Fail Forward as you put it, and find Kyoryu is spot on with his definition. Failing Forward has nothing to do with "Designated Champions", it simply means keeping the game state moving/changing, instead of coming to a halt. The lockpick example is perfect, by the way.

What game have you seen describe the concept? Because the ones I've read or played (Powered by the Apocalypse games, Mutant Year Zero, Fate, Burning Wheel) all fall under Kyoryu definition.

Nifft
2018-11-21, 12:06 AM
@Nifft, I honestly don't know the concept of Fail Forward as you put it, and find Kyoryu is spot on with his definition. Failing Forward has nothing to do with "Designated Champions", it simply means keeping the game state moving/changing, instead of coming to a halt. The lockpick example is perfect, by the way.

Which one is perfect -- Kyoryu's Zork example, or my more plausible table-top re-write?



What game have you seen describe the concept? Because the ones I've read or played (Powered by the Apocalypse games, Mutant Year Zero, Fate, Burning Wheel) all fall under Kyoryu definition.

I found the concept defined as a business & engineering practice pre-dating those games.

The games I've seen discussed so far seem to have tried to implement that practice, and gotten parts right, but also gotten parts wrong.

NichG
2018-11-21, 03:50 AM
The business terminology arises from trying to understand how to design strategies for playing the game successfully in a universe which has to be taken as given. That isn't really relevant to the usage in gaming, where the problem is inverted: design the universe such that it gives rise to the game that we'd like to play.

The point of fail forward design in terms of game and scenario design has to do with challenging the perspective of formulating a game as a series of instances of obstacles with checks (either simple, like a literal die roll, or elaborate like a combat encounter) to see whether or not the characters can pass them. Such a design has two flaws - one, in that it is possible for checks to become irrelevant if they revert state on failure, because they may be tried an arbitrary number of times until success is statistically guaranteed; the other, in that it is possible for the game to enter a dead end state, in which there are no viable moves forward (at which point, the players+DM will inevitably fiat a continuation of the activity in the form of e.g. scrapping everything and rolling new characters, starting a new campaign, etc).

So instead of designing things from the perspective of pass-and-continue, fail-and-return-to-state type interactions, a fail-forward design philosophy focuses on forks - each point at which something is decided (via whatever mechanism) should not question 'does the game continue?', it should only and entirely question 'in which direction does the game continue?' taking continuation as a strict given. This generally means that you reduce the number of times that the system/DM/players engage with the mechanics to ask a spurious question, e.g. one where there's either only one inevitable answer or one acceptable answer.

The pre-existing business term isn't really meaningful here.

Eldan
2018-11-21, 06:31 AM
I'm definitely on the "plot-level setback" side. I usually plan relatively few combats. One per session, occasionaly two, and usually a few ways to not have that combat. Mostly, I try to plan my adventures out as trees, and a combat is usually a branching point:

-The PCs kill the villain
-The PCs take the villain prisoner
-The VIllain escapes
-The PCs escape, but the villain wins
-The villain wins, the PCs are defeated
-The PCs never meet the villain

As usual branching points, with a few notes on what might happen on each one.