Examples of good non-combat resolution mechanics?

[silva]

Whats the problem with those again ?

The 'problem' appears to be that the 'cost' can be anything from 'virtually nothing' to 'virtually death'.

I dont see how it can be virtually "death". (care to give an example?)

Other than that, youre right. The stakes can be wildly different, but then what ? On a traditional task-resolution game a GM can also include wildly different consequences for your actions just the same.

Say, you achieve a critical sucess in lockpicking a door without making any noise, but then when you open it, the GM says everybody inside is already alert and awaiting you.

See ?

The only difference is that in D&D or Shadowrun the GM fill in details between the resolutions, while AW lets the GM fill in details through the resolutions.

If the GM is a [EDITED], he will do it whatever the model.

[Omegonthesane]

Whats the problem with those again ?

The 'problem' appears to be that the 'cost' can be anything from 'virtually nothing' to 'virtually death'.

I dont see how it can be virtually "death". (care to give an example?)

"You successfully drive your car under fire, BUT on literally the last yard you hit a landmine thereby destroying the vehicle's engine and severing three of your legs. But hey, you delivered the candy and are in shape to tackle Lord Doomenstein in an hour right? Right?"

[Kaelik]

You don't even fail the most important part of the task (scouting the base, killing the lord, stealing the horn). And nothing about "you had to fucking kill someone" means you can't dispose of the body - in fact, do it right, and in the case of the lord and the horn they'll be specifically hunting for the suddenly missing guard for weeks instead of thinking it might have been a break-in.

This is the thing. You the fucking DM are deciding that they still succeeded, but the players may not think so. If you goal is for something to look like an accident, the goal is to look like an accident, not to not be personally blamed.
The goal is to obtain useful information, not information that will be irrelevant when they change the layout of their camp in response to knowing you came in. The goal is for them to think they have the horn, but not have the horn, not for them to go off looking for it instead of engaging in behaviour that is safe with the horn but dangerous without the horn.

[silva]

The 'problem' appears to be that the 'cost' can be anything from 'virtually nothing' to 'virtually death'.

I dont see how it can be virtually "death". (care to give an example?)

"You successfully drive your car under fire, BUT on literally the last yard you hit a landmine thereby destroying the vehicle's engine and severing three of your legs. But hey, you delivered the candy and are in shape to tackle Lord Doomenstein in an hour right? Right?"

Let me convert it to Shadowrun:

GM: roll your Ground Vehicle driving skill to avoid the minefield.
Player: I roll a sucess!
GM: Ok, you avoided the minefield... but then you hear something falling from the sky and its an ASTEROID ! BOOM! It destroyed the vehicle's engine and severed three of your legs. But hey, you delivered the candy and are in shape to tackle Lord Doomenstein in an hour right? Right?"

See ?

[Kaelik]

Let me convert it to Shadowrun:

GM: roll your Ground Vehicle driving skill to avoid the minefield.
Player: I roll a sucess!
GM: Ok, you avoided the minefield... but then you hear something falling from the sky and its an ASTEROID ! BOOM! It destroyed the vehicle's engine and severed three of your legs. But hey, you delivered the candy and are in shape to tackle Lord Doomenstein in an hour right? Right?"

See ?

And do you not see how the AW version is encouraged by the rules and the Shadowrun version is strictly prohibited and immediately causes the DM to get fucked by a chair leg because the players can see that he broke the rules because he actually broke the rules?

[fectin]

the one thing rolling dice is actually for, which is to resolve whether or not we succeed at the task at hand.

Let's derail here, because that point is actually much more interesting than the current experiment ("How many 4rries can bad debate reconjure?"), and less likely to end in wrong-on-the-Internet insomnia.

So, I remember (vaguely) a tarot based RPG, where the basic mechanic was drawing a card: reversed meant failure, upright was success. Each card was also a hangman or whatever, so it doubled as plot suggestion. Tabling the question of whether *World has crappy mechanics, why can't you randomize "what happens next?" instead of "did I succeed?"

[Omegonthesane]

You don't even fail the most important part of the task (scouting the base, killing the lord, stealing the horn). And nothing about "you had to fucking kill someone" means you can't dispose of the body - in fact, do it right, and in the case of the lord and the horn they'll be specifically hunting for the suddenly missing guard for weeks instead of thinking it might have been a break-in.

This is the thing. You the fucking DM are deciding that they still succeeded, but the players may not think so. If you goal is for something to look like an accident, the goal is to look like an accident, not to not be personally blamed.
The goal is to obtain useful information, not information that will be irrelevant when they change the layout of their camp in response to knowing you came in. The goal is for them to think they have the horn, but not have the horn, not for them to go off looking for it instead of engaging in behaviour that is safe with the horn but dangerous without the horn.

You can change a camp in a day?

Debating the exact examples matters little. Ultimately, if you want your task to be a complete success, roll a 10+ or get the fuck out - on a 7-9 it's not a complete success.

(Before anyone says anything about "strong successes", that's called a 12+.)

[Omegonthesane]

the one thing rolling dice is actually for, which is to resolve whether or not we succeed at the task at hand.

Let's derail here, because that point is actually much more interesting than the current experiment ("How many 4rries can bad debate reconjure?"), and less likely to end in wrong-on-the-Internet insomnia.

So, I remember (vaguely) a tarot based RPG, where the basic mechanic was drawing a card: reversed meant failure, upright was success. Each card was also a hangman or whatever, so it doubled as plot suggestion. Tabling the question of whether *World has crappy mechanics, why can't you randomize "what happens next?" instead of "did I succeed?"

Where's the player input in that case? It's far harder to generalise "roll to see what happens next" than "roll to see if what you said happens".

[silva]

Let me convert it to Shadowrun:

GM: roll your Ground Vehicle driving skill to avoid the minefield.
Player: I roll a sucess!
GM: Ok, you avoided the minefield... but then you hear something falling from the sky and its an ASTEROID ! BOOM! It destroyed the vehicle's engine and severed three of your legs. But hey, you delivered the candy and are in shape to tackle Lord Doomenstein in an hour right? Right?"

See ?

And do you not see how the AW version is encouraged by the rules and the Shadowrun version is strictly prohibited and immediately causes the DM to get fucked by a chair leg because the players can see that he broke the rules because he actually broke the rules?

What ?

THere are no rules in SR for prohibiting the GM from framing the scene as he wishes. So, if you suceed in hacking a maglock, there is no rule in place to forbid him from saying "and the room is full of power 10 Fire Elementals ready to attack".

[Corsair114]

Each card was also a hangman or whatever, so it doubled as plot suggestion. Tabling the question of whether *World has crappy mechanics, why can't you randomize "what happens next?" instead of "did I succeed?"

Its a question of player, including the GM, agency in the story and world. The more you move to "randomly determined by X," where X is a card draw, die roll, or the position of the stars, the less engaged and less important anything your players do in the story becomes.

There's also the potential for sudden breaks in mood or theme to occur: "Okay, we've just vanquished the cult that was trying to summon a demon. Let's draw a card to see what happens next... 'You get wind of a cult trying to summon a demon.' Dammit, we just did this story. Let's try another... 'You are attacked by clowns.' " This pretty much prevents any kind of natural consequences or progression of the campaign... and if it doesn't, you're likely hewing awful close to pre-planned adventure, anyway.

Still further, such a system is likely going to have trouble not breaking in half in the face of players that want to go completely sideways when it comes to dealing with quests or objectives, since they're being roped into following the cards/dice in the first place... and if they're not, why the hell are you using them to begin with?

[fectin]

As a sketch for demonstration (not goodness):
All conflicts are resolved by rock-paper-scissors. On a tie, roll a d6:
1. An ally arrives (if roll was PVP, flip a coin for whose ally) and helps
2. An enemy arrives (as above) and interferes
3. Beer makes everything better. You end up in a bar. What were you doing again?
4. Lightening strikes you. You fail.
5. Close Air Support. You succeed.
6. Suddenly, an explosion! (100 ft away in a random direction. Re-RPS for success)

Now, those are pretty random, sure. But there's plenty of room for player agency still.

[Omegonthesane]

As a sketch for demonstration (not goodness):
All conflicts are resolved by rock-paper-scissors. On a tie, roll a d6:
1. An ally arrives (if roll was PVP, flip a coin for whose ally) and helps
2. An enemy arrives (as above) and interferes
3. Beer makes everything better. You end up in a bar. What were you doing again?
4. Lightening strikes you. You fail.
5. Close Air Support. You succeed.
6. Suddenly, an explosion! (100 ft away in a random direction. Re-RPS for success)

Now, those are pretty random, sure. But there's plenty of room for player agency still.

Randomising what happens on a tie is a slightly different beast - I thought at first you were proposing to replace "pass/fail" with "and now for something completely different".

Presumably in the above example there's a range between "full pass" and "full fail" where the Random Shit Table is invoked if you're trying to do a thing that isn't really a conflict, such as climbing rain a cliff face.

[fectin]

Well, I think you could write it so only the randomization was needed ("you succeed in a tricky way," etc), but this seemed clearer.

I think you'd want to go with much less rolling, and mostly just auto-succeed or autofail, but I don't see an inherent problem with that kind of system. Am I missing something?

[Whipstitch]

Its a question of player, including the GM, agency in the story and world. The more you move to "randomly determined by X," where X is a card draw, die roll, or the position of the stars, the less engaged and less important anything your players do in the story becomes.

That's true, to a degree, but I'd argue that AW is on the wrong end of that balancing act. Rules with more stringent guidelines and more robust mechanics than AW are often varied enough to switch things up a bit by forcing your character to have strengths and weaknesses that allow you to either stack the odds greatly in your favor by making use of the character abilities you chose or even bypass rolls in many situations entirely without relying on MC fiat. E.g, a soldier bashing an ordinary door down rather than picking the lock, or a wizard using flight magic rather than trying to climb out of the ravine. Such capability is a compromise solution between unpredictability and player influence, but I certainly prefer it over what AW is doing, given that AW features a tiny RNG that is purposely geared towards maintaining player uncertainty and spits out unpredictable results even when players are throwing around some decent rolls. Basically, I'll take a system that is at least occasionally capable of transparency rather than one that just throws its hand up in the ir and punts the issue. I mean, either way I might get railroaded into fighting the dragon, but at least with a more transparent rules system I can make better decisions about how to actually beat the damn thing. Lemme put it this way, poker is a game of both luck and skill, but that's in large part because the dealer isn't asked to make judgement calls about whether a full house beats a pair.

[Username17]

If I recall the Tarot game correctly, you still actually generate whether you succeed or fail, even if it's basically a 50/50 shot. But while "coin flip" resolution of that sort is stupid, it does fulfill the basic criteria of an action resolution system: that it actually fucking resolves the action.

Fundamentally, the only reason we roll dice, draw cards, flip coins, or spin spinners is to resolve conflict. We're playing Cops and Robbers, and one person says "Bang! I shot you!" and the other person says "No, you missed!" and now we need some sort of impartial resolution to determine who is right and who is dead.

It's actually totally fine to non-binary results from your RNG. Just as you could imagine a cop shooting at a robber and hitting without bringing the robber down, you could have a result that allowed the cop or the robber to succeed at their action without succeeding at their goal. But it still has to resolve the fundamental question of whether you fucking hit or not.

Which of course, Apocalypse World does not do. Thereby making it useless for the resolution of Cops and Robbers, and therefore a bad resolution system generally.

-Username17

[talozin]

So, I remember (vaguely) a tarot based RPG, where the basic mechanic was drawing a card: reversed meant failure, upright was success. Each card was also a hangman or whatever, so it doubled as plot suggestion. Tabling the question of whether *World has crappy mechanics, why can't you randomize "what happens next?" instead of "did I succeed?"

You may be thinking of Everway, which uses a deck of cards that are tarot-esque but not literal tarot cards as its only randomization mechanic. There's probably an actual tarot-based game out there also, but fuck if I know what it is.

Everway does not universally use card drawing for conflict resolution. The base stat system strongly resembles the Amber DRPG (four stats, high stat wins) although the actual stats and their areas of applicability are different. The card drawing thing is typically used in combination with that, more to determine degrees of success than actual success except where success or failure is unclear. One of the examples given is for a warrior fighting a creature with notably inferior stats -- I'd have to go dig my copy out of storage to verify, but virtually all the sample card draws end with the warrior winning. Some have a clearly applicable interpretation ("Drowning in Armor", meaning "protective measures turn dangerous", leads to the warrior's shield arm getting hurt). Some don't, and in those cases the situation is resolved purely on the stats. So it in fact did more or less what you suggest, and would probably be amenable to being played in that manner if you wanted to fiddle around with it a little.

The game has some neat ideas (it was one of Jonathan Tweet's post-Ars Magica efforts) and I've pillaged it for them more than once. But the actual system is barely there, and while that's not always a bad thing, it does mean that there's not a whole lot to say about it.

[Username17]

There are lots of games that use a Tarot deck to one degree or another. I know Psychosis (Ship of Fools or Solitary Confinement) uses the Tarot deck for all action resolution, and I'm sure there are others.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, how does Dungeon World compare to Apocalypse World?

Exact same system, but different flavor like GURPs? Mostly the same but with some key differences? What?

[RobbyPants]

If I put Frank on "Ignore", does it count for this thread only ?

Nope, it will apply everywhere. You can still view the posts on a one-for-one basis, but you have to click "view post" each time, and the page does a full postback to view it, which is a bit of a pain.

Do note that those sort of dick-you-over interpretations are supported at least twice in the examples of the rule book.

Sorry but I don’t get it.

In the Read a Sitch, the GM just describes something that was already established previously (TUM-TUm Water Cult followers), instead of creating something out of their ass.

In the Sneak in Undetected, it’s a perfectly logical "success at a cost" - you succeed at sneaking into the camp at the cost of killing a youth sentry.

Whats the problem with those again ?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the bears one. The bears were previously established and the GM knew about it. Did the players know about it? If not, it's hard to make a decision when something else can completely obviate a successful action. Couldn't the GM have resolve the "look! bears!" part outside of that action? It seems weird that getting a "success" makes things worse.

I didn't say that it wasn't logically possible to have to kill someone on a partial success. That's why I threw it in my bulleted list earlier. I included a wide range of possible outcomes for the same die-roll range, and you agreed they were all valid. It just seems impossible for the players to have any idea what to expect when they pick an action and roll dice. Once the action is picked and the dice are rolled, the GM has the ability to pick anything off a very wide range of outcomes, that seems to overlap with adjacent dice-rolling (I'm sure you could come up with "failure, and" and "success!" rolls that would fall in the range of the list I provided).

At this point, it seems more like you're reading a story and less like you're playing a game. You can pick the actions you want your player to take, but the actual outcome is controlled by the GM far more than it is controlled by the dice.

[Omegonthesane]

So, how does Dungeon World compare to Apocalypse World?

Exact same system, but different flavor like GURPs? Mostly the same but with some key differences? What?

Mostly the same but with different moves. The idea that 7-9 is a partial success is still enshrined in basic attacks - on a 7-9 in melee you and your opponent hit eachother, while a 7-9 to shoot someone means you choose one of "use up ammo, do d6 less damage, or get put in danger of MC's choice".

Crucially though, their "generic" move, "Defy Danger", although it can now key off any stat depending on how you're "Defying Danger", has the same wording as AW's "Act Under Fire" for a 7-9:

the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice.

It doesn't have examples of the kind recently portrayed as "partial success ~= horrifying catastrophic failure", but then it doesn't have examples at all, so the utility is limited.

[fectin]

So, I remember (vaguely) a tarot based RPG, where the basic mechanic was drawing a card: reversed meant failure, upright was success. Each card was also a hangman or whatever, so it doubled as plot suggestion. Tabling the question of whether *World has crappy mechanics, why can't you randomize "what happens next?" instead of "did I succeed?"

You may be thinking of Everway, which uses a deck of cards that are tarot-esque but not literal tarot cards as its only randomization mechanic. There's probably an actual tarot-based game out there also, but fuck if I know what it is.

That's exactly what I was thinking of. Sorry I was vague. I remember getting it demoed for me because someone had a pre-release copy, but as it apparently came out in '95, that makes the last time I saw it ~20 years ago.

[Foxwarrior]

So how come nobody mentioned that * World has the Skill Challenges problem? The DM only gets to make bad things happen when a player rolls a 9 or less (or uses "Read a Sitch" to ask the DM to introduce any unintroduced enemies), and players act in no particular order, so making a move when you have a suboptimal bonus instead of waiting for some other player to make a move is actively harmful.

[Username17]

So how come nobody mentioned that * World has the Skill Challenges problem? The DM only gets to make bad things happen when a player rolls a 9 or less (or uses "Read a Sitch" to ask the DM to introduce any unintroduced enemies), and players act in no particular order, so making a move when you have a suboptimal bonus instead of waiting for some other player to make a move is actively harmful.

Because the MC can make "good things" be silver linings to horrible things that force the PCs to act in response to that, making the distinction largely meaningless. The examples of "great success" include totally noticing that an arbitrarily large bear attack is coming that they cannot possibly defeat. This is "success", because even though the player doesn't get to do what they want to do and now has to go through the MC's newly introduced "escape with your life" mini-railroad, they get to act first. Success!

In many of the other *World games, this is less explicit because everything is less explicit. But in Dungeon World, for example, one of the benefits of rolling total success on a Carousing check is that the player gets to specify a short list of horrible things that don't happen. But the MC can still simply decide that any of a number of other bad things do happen, even though total success was made.

The MC only gets to "make a move" when the players roll badly. But the MC is free to include terrible things happening to the players that force them into new and unwanted directions when describing a "success", so who gives a fuck?

-Username17

[silva]

Just remembered this thread here:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?649 ... rld)/page3

Its interesting to see how tactical the game can get, even if relying more on fiction-based rules than math-based ones.

[Whipstitch]

That thread is actually pretty illuminating, but not for the reasons Silva apparently thinks it is. The first page consists of some dudes acknowledging that Apocalypse World doesn't feature a tactical minigame capable of providing consistent results from table to table and how that may upset some people. Afterwards, someone gives a gameplay example followed by a round of internet dick tugs.