A strong law of narrative causality breaks the game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now that you-know-who seems to be gone, I can start this thread upon the idea of heroism and failure. First of all, I want to state that I can agree with this person's underlying point that in order for a story to be interesting there needs to be a chance of failure. And not just a pretend chance of failure like in comic books but a real honest-to-good 'we might die like dogs here' chance.

For those of you not familiar with TVtropes or Discworld, the basic idea of this theory is that things happen in a story because they're dramatically appropriate.

This does need to be true, to a point, especially in works with a strong element of the supernatural. 1st level PCs can't face ancient red dragons while exploring a cave, even though it'sn completely possible for them to do so.

However, this law should be kept at a bare minimum for the game not to explode on itself; while PCs should not be teleport ambushed by Mordenkainen, there does need to be a chance for the PCs to fail and fail catastrophically even if it wrecks the story or the campaign. What do I mean by this?

It means that when the PCs are fighting their way up the castle to rescue the princess, it means that the PCs should actually have a chance of dying to an army of mooks guarding the corriders. It also means that the PCs should also have a chance of not getting to the throne room in time before the evil chancellor sacrifices her to blight the kingdom. It means that sometimes PCs try to give a rousing speech to the resistance in their darkest hour, and not only does the speech not inspire people but it causes people to fucking desert the movement in their hour of need.

If the story makes it so that the mooks suddenly stop using good tactics or the chancellor extends the sacrifice with a filibuster or some little kid tries (and succeeds) to rescue the speech this is no different from railroading.

[Psychic Robot]

It's just railroading that makes the players happy.

Also, I believe he shall be called "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named."

[Maxus]

Narrative causality is an interesting device when the characters know it happens.

I seem to remember a piece of Nanny Ogg's advice saying that when you're inviting all the local magic users to a child's naming party, you must also invite the evil ones and see to it they have a nice time. Otherwise someone will break out in maniacal laughter in the middle of the party and then you're in curse territory and have to go through all that business with spinning wheels. But if you play your cards right, the kid could end up with an extra blessing.

But, yeah, even if you have that, it does break some of drama if the PCs know that they can make stuff happen by setting up the right conditions. On the other hand, watching a bunch of PCs scramble around trying to make things happen is comedy gold.

[Surgo]

I'm not too inclined to care that there's no risk of failure. I can tell you for sure that if the PCs try to give a rousing speech to the resistance in their darkest hour, and not only does the speech not inspire people but it causes people to fucking desert the movement in their hour of need, they would all get really fucking pissed. And that's kind of the opposite effect of what I want to happen in a game -- what I really want is to make everybody happy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Then why actually roll dice to determine the outcome, then?

Why can't the players just say 'and with our kickass speech, then we win the battle. I used a variety of cool techniques and lopped off the head of the Dark Lord' if what's going to happen is a forgone conclusion?

[sake]

Then why actually roll dice to determine the outcome, then?

To create the illusion that there's a risk involved. It's like sky diving I suppose, you want to have the thrill and risk of freefall but without a splat at the end.

[Draco_Argentum]

IMO it should be really damn unlikely for bad rolls to result in the PCs getting the bad ending cutscene. Bad choices is another matter, those can screw the PCs harder and faster.

[Fuchs]

As long as the players can expect that they will come out on top in the end (which can be a looooong way coming), bad rolls and the resulting troubles can be very entertaining for everyone.

[Thymos]

I want players to fail because of their choices, not because of the dice.

Dice I guess have a few reasons.

1. To make the choices not as obvious.

2. As mentioned before, to give the illusion of failure.

3. Epic successes happen just like Epic failures, and those moments are made more special when they are unlikely as opposed to standard.

A character in Feng Shui was shooting a hole in the floor Underworld style. It fitted the style of the game, so I said sure, but since there was a fight going on below him, roll a fortune check to see where he landed.

He had a 3 in evolution, and rolled a 17 I believe. If you know Feng Shui, you know how nutty good that roll was. I declared that he landed on the enemy and ended combat, because damn, that was incredible.

The problem with some of the failures you mentioned is that, to use the speech as an example, if you fail to give a rousing speech because of one die roll, I'm pretty sure you'll feel gypped by the dice, not that you made the wrong choice.

[angelfromanotherpin]

However, this law should be kept at a bare minimum for the game not to explode on itself; while PCs should not be teleport ambushed by Mordenkainen, there does need to be a chance for the PCs to fail and fail catastrophically even if it wrecks the story or the campaign.

If you want this sort of thing to work, you have to give up the notion that the story or campaign even can be wrecked.

Sometimes a desperate seige plays out like the battle of Helm's Deep, and sometimes it plays out like the Alamo. Both of those are perfectly good stories, and in a collaborative story game you shouldn't decide in advance which one it's going to be. Figuring out what happens is the whole point of playing.

[Username17]

I want players to fail because of their choices, not because of the dice.

Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.

-Username17

[Thymos]

I completely agree that guess the number the DM is thinking of is godawful.

I want everything to be open, and players to be informed about the chances they face and the possible consequences of their actions. I like systems that don't require much DM arbitration so that players understand what they are doing, not guessing what the DM thinks that they are doing.

If they fail though, I want it to be because of them, not because of a random number generator, and not because the DM is a dick.

The gygaxian games problem is partly the DM is an asshole, partly that the players are playing in the dark. It's the mentality that death is an acceptable consequence for guessing (and I do mean guessing) the wrong door.

[Username17]

I want everything to be open, and players to be informed about the chances they face and the possible consequences of their actions. I like systems that don't require much DM arbitration so that players understand what they are doing, not guessing what the DM thinks that they are doing.

If they fail though, I want it to be because of them, not because of a random number generator, and not because the DM is a dick.

That's completely incompatible. Upon finding out what the chances are of your actions succeeding, the action will actually succeed or fail because of the results on the random number generator. The only alternative is to have the DM lie to you about the chances, in which case it really doesn't matter what you do.

-Username17

[Thymos]

Not completely incompatible. Upon finding out the chances of succeeding, and the chances of other options succeeding you can choose which action you will do, full well knowing your chance of failure. A part of gygax dickery is finding out your chances of failure after committing to your action.

Players can choose their action, and the probability of them succeeding at whatever they choose just makes their choice more complex. This is only for a single roll though.

If they lose a combat, for example, hopefully it will be bad tactics at fault, maybe bad tactics compounded by poor dice rolls.

I don't think anyone wants players to frequently lose combat where they had exceptional tactics purely due to bad die rolls. It's ok occasionally, but when they lose combat, we want it to be because of bad tactics most of the time.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So people will still win or loose because of a random number generator, they'll just have perfect knowledge of how likely they are to win or loose because of the random number generator.

[Josh_Kablack]

Sometimes a desperate seige plays out like the battle of Helm's Deep, and sometimes it plays out like the Alamo. Both of those are perfectly good stories, and in a collaborative story game you shouldn't decide in advance which one it's going to be. Figuring out what happens is the whole point of playing.

Amen.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

At level 5ish, I put a Mind Flayer in a recent campaign as a dragon's minion. Yes, they were overmatched, but they also had a "Sword of Dragonslaying" (if it hits, at +5, it kills, no questions).

The closest thing this campaign has to a Fighter was a Vampire/Shadow Warrior.

Our 'Fighter', bless his heart, decides to grapple the Mindflayer (there is actually a published picture of this that we didn't find until later on page 88 of the Spell Compendium). Everyone at the table is stunned that he would even think of it. Anyways, after 2 rounds of being blood drained (he is down something like 12 Con) through astonishingly good rolls, the Mind Flayer actually yields and will help the players any way he can to defeat the dragon (and readies a Plane Shift to the Fire Plane, should they not agree).

Point being, sometimes bad tactics and good die rolls work. Sometimes good tactics and bad die rolls don't.

However, when it comes to "give a rousing speech", if my players have made a bang-up speech and given it at the table, you had better damned well hope it will work, despite any bad roll. Also, social rolls are usually stupid.

[Crissa]

Well, we don't want a 5% chance that you drown on every lap you run as an olympic swimmer, right?

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

Well, we don't want a 5% chance that you drown on every lap you run as an olympic swimmer, right?

If you assume that the Swim DC to avoid drowning in a pool is 5, and that an Olympic swimmer has a Swim bonus of at least +4, that won't be a problem.

Although it might add some spice to the Olympics.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Pshaw, they take 10, right?

[RandomCasualty2]

Fuck that Gygaxian bullshit. The game "guess the number or solution the DM was thinking of" is a fucked game and I don't want to play it.

So long as the solution is logical and the DM is open to other solutions that could work, I don't really have a problem with this.

In fact, I generally prefer that sort of game over the "you must face tremendous risk and the only way to survive is to roll a 10 or better." game of death. At least the Gygaxian game has a right answer. There really is no way to get out of the killer RNG game, you just have to be lucky. And that game just isn't fun. It's the main argument against 4E, you don't have any meaningful choices. Which means that it's just the RNG game of "You win" or it's the RNG game of "you probably die." but in either case, ti's not an interesting game.

If I wanted to play craps or roulette I'd go to a casino. I want to make meaningful choices and have those have a big impact on the game.

[Kaelik]

RC there is a huge difference between having choices, and having those choices be noticeably different, and DM only one soultion BS.

For example that /tg thread PR linked us to, or someone.

Gygaxian BS is that you have to send someone across the chasm on carts ect.

Choices is having the ability to send your flying familiar across.

Choices don't matter when you have a BS Gygax DM, they matter less, because anything you can think of that would work and that isn't mind reading auto fails.

[Ice9]

Well yeah, but that's still succeeding or failing based on choices. "Guess what the DM is thinking" is no good - but still, for the players to succeed based on their choices they must also be able to fail.

[Kaelik]

Well yeah, but that's still succeeding or failing based on choices. "Guess what the DM is thinking" is no good - but still, for the players to succeed based on their choices they must also be able to fail.

Yes, but I'm explicitly calling out RC for supporting Gygaxian BS as the same kind of thing as actual choices.

No one here wants flip a coin to see who wins, with no choices.

But to claim that "you face three doors in front of you, pick a door: 1=death 2=death 3=correct" is the same thing as an actually good game run by an actually good DM where the DM is dumb.

You can run a game where it's a decision tree, and you flip a coin to see which way you go, and that's bad.

You can run a game where it's a decision tree and you pick one, but you have no idea what the rest of the decision tree looks like because the world reflects only the DMs opinions, and that's also bad.

You can also run the world as an actual world, where you have effectively infinite choices, and they all respond realistically.

[Psychic Robot]

As a complete side note, I wouldn't make my players roll for a rousing speech if they RPed it well. If they were just like, "I make a rousing speech," I'd make them roll a Diplomacy check or something.