Rolling vs Role-ing

Whatever's on your mind
Post Reply
User avatar
Blake Ryan Batman
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:31 pm
Contact:

Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by Blake Ryan Batman »

When the Dice fail the Player...

Example 1-Played vampire the masquerade, failed 5 rolls in a row during my intro.

GM laughed and other players treated me like a loser.

Because I failed those rolls, 1-I failed the tasks, 2-I failed my character concept, and 3-I failed my role in the group.

Example 2-made a dual weilding druid in pathfinder. by 6th level the badies Armour classes were so high I couldn't hit anything, because I was outside the IDEAL min/max build. Again-1-I failed the tasks, 2-I failed my character concept, and 3-I failed my role in the group.

so in fail/success games like wod/dnd/pathfinder, bad rolls can really screw up the whole game.

Don't get me wrong, I love failing that ads to the story, its why I run PBTA and my players are loving it.

You have to Add extra stuff onto dnd/wod etc to get a more narrative flowing game and allow people to enjoy their concepts, even in failure.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Lord Alfred Tennyson - Ulysses
Regards,
Blake Ryan
scotryder
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Jul 22, 2019 11:44 am
Contact:

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by scotryder »

I appreciate that 13th Age highly recommends the fail forward method for its flavor of f20. It's much more interesting from a mechanical and narrative perspective, essentially making all fails the equivalent of 6- and 7-9 rolls in Apocalypse World Engine games.
Rolistespod
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jul 26, 2019 4:11 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by Rolistespod »

There was a good, albeit tongue in cheek, article about death in the last Grogzine.

It was highlighting how, at least in "old" groups, the stories which became legendary and were told again and again by players were more often than not stories of deaths.

Those death were epic not by the stakes but because of how gruesome or ridiculous they turned out to be.

I matches my experience.

I guess it means some players, including often myself, are not that invested at the Story Layer.


With that said my last 5e session as a player and I found it frustrating.

Maybe not because of the death itself but because the whole thing felt kinda pointless and "meh".

I am not convinced by what I played of CoS "Death House"
User avatar
Ang
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:25 pm

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by Ang »

I've often pondered how to handle this as a GM. I take that whole 'Be a fan of the characters' thing to heart and I want to see the protagonists defeat the big bad or even the minor and annoying bad. But what do you do when the dice are fully working against a player? Even in a fail-forward game like a PbtA game, this can get really frustrating for players. Sure, the game keeps moving forward, but they never really get their cool, bad-ass moment.

This is one reason why I like the Tales from the Loop 'Pride' rule. Basically, if the player can narrate how they call on their pride fuel them in that moment, they get one automatic success. The example I like to give is that the Jock was the only one who could physically get to the weird device in time, but she had absolutely no tech skills. So the player called on her pride. "I am the reason the girls JV team went to state. My team needed me then and this team needs me now. I can't let them down!" SLAM, the button gets pushed and she got to have a bad-ass moment when she really needed it.

At the very least, I definitely try not to belittle the characters endlessly when the player is having a bad night with the dice. Sure, a little bit of fun can be had at the character's mishaps (like the bard who tried to jump up to a fire-escape and instead landed in the open sewer - she rolled a 1 and came up with the result herself), but if you turn that into the only thing the character is, then the player's going to get frustrated and annoyed. The games I play and run, the characters are supposed to be competent, y'know?
User avatar
Ang
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:25 pm

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by Ang »

As a player, I regularly punish and exile my dice for misbehaving and always come with multiple sets. ;)
User avatar
Emmett
Posts: 82
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 12:44 pm
Contact:

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by Emmett »

I guess this comes down to if you're interested in playing to find out what happens or if you play to craft a story. I doubt anyone is exclusive in one of those directions. It seems like people fall somewhere in the middle but often drifting to one side.

I lean towards playing to find out but I like to allow the players to choose between a fail that does nothing and to succeed at a cost. In my groups, the default player choice is a failure that does nothing.
User avatar
GMGERRYMANDER
Posts: 219
Joined: Mon Jul 22, 2019 12:57 pm

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by GMGERRYMANDER »

I think more games should use Fail-Foreward and I now try to incorporate it into most of the games I run.

(Friend of GEM, Brett B, has a nice description in the KotN AP of Streets of Avalon describing how he uses partial successes in a d20 game).
UncleOok
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:18 pm

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by UncleOok »

I'm half-Murphy and that namesake law seems to plague my life in TTRPG. I roll badly. Even when I'm rolling well, I tend to roll badly when it counts. I rolled so poorly in our Masks game that my character's failures became the de facto storyline.

It's gotten to the point that I find myself unwilling to narrate my character performing an awe-inspiring action before rolling, because I will tank that check when it comes down to it.

In many ways I've translated my poor rolls into my role-playing. My Masks Janus because a bundle of confidence issues who always felt she was letting the team down. My halfling sorcerer/bard had a meltdown when a lower level warlock was far outstripping him in the dungeon to the point that he worried that he was being replaced. My Kids on Bikes popular kid was sliding towards a nervous breakdown (although Tyler pretty much always nailed his Charm rolls, which was weird for me). Playing nervous, doomed Call of Cthulhu characters was super enjoyable.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to play a skilled, confident character. Alas, with my luck...
User avatar
OldSchoolDM
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Jul 25, 2019 5:50 pm
Location: Oakland
Contact:

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by OldSchoolDM »

OldschoolDM, asleep in his chair in the corner, lifts his head, grumbles "False dichotomy..." and drops back off to sleep for a few seconds - then snaps alert ad says:

Lots of people have tools to provide ways for parties to assist and contribute to party member success:

Some have been listed already.

I have OldSchoolDM’s Fudge (-+1) Token Rules, which works very well for my tables... Amazing how quickly people help each other succeed...

Rolls (succeed or fail) create opportunities create opportunities for play.
...Papercraft terrain is my Minecraft...
User avatar
GMGERRYMANDER
Posts: 219
Joined: Mon Jul 22, 2019 12:57 pm

Re: Rolling vs Role-ing

Post by GMGERRYMANDER »

As long as it isn't a Crit Fail (and more on that later), I think it's OK to give players a partial success.

If they are looking for info or trying a skill test, give them just enough to keep the story going and toss in a complication. Or ask Leading Questions - see what I did there - to get them involved in describing the partial failure. The players may feel less "Useless" if they get to describe what happens.

Critical Failures can work the same way. This past weekend, I was in a game where tow of the players described another game they were in on a weekly basis where the GM treated all critical failures (double "1s" in Savage Worlds) as very detrimental. Crit Fails on a simple heal test would cause extra wounds. Crit Fail in combat and you hit one of your allies. Etc. And that seems outdated.



I used to be a "Critical Failures are extreme, almost slapstick failures" GM back in my teens and early 20s. But now, I prefer to see them as characters showing poor judgement or slipping. The warrior overextends her reach. The rogue jams the lock and now it has to be unstuck before they can attempt another picking roll. The bard misreads the target and says something uncomfortable that makes things more complicated.

Most of the time, this can be mechanically represented by giving the player "Disadvantage" (or whatever you want to call it - rolling twice and taking the worse result) on the next attempt. Or giving opponents "Advantage" on the next attack.

This has worked for me so far and doesn't cripple the story.
Post Reply

Return to “General Discussion”