5 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

But what do they do to make that happen? It's not solely the GMs responsibility. As a GM, I just have to allow the opportunity for them to be heroes, then it's up to them to take that opportunity, or not, as they choose. When they do take that opportunity, they still risk failure because not everyone that tries to be awesome will succeed.

Solely? No. If players opt to diddle around and not invest in the game, there's nothing a GM can do about it other than to opt out of the session.

It's the good GM's job to be the silent cheerleader for the players and recognize when certain elements of the game - situations, story beats, or dice roles - are hindering play and adjust accordingly. Like keeping a child alive is the bare minimum responsibility for a parent, providing an opportunity for success is the bare minimum responsibility for a gamemaster. Otherwise the game is no longer a game, it's an argument with no conclusion. A good GM doesn't allow an unsuccessful mechanical resolution to end the game or end a character's fictional existence in a matter unsatisfying for a player.

Failure to pass a Skulduggery roll isn't required to mean failure to open the door, like most trad games propose. Failure can also mean a penalty or the depletion of a resource. However, if failure does mean that the door doesn't open and the players need to get past the door, there had better be a ready opportunity to take a different approach to solving the problem.

13 minutes ago, themensch said:

Preaching to the choir here my good fellow human, but I would have to point out that it just doesn't apply to everyone. That's where I'm picking nits. It's impossible to classify player motivations despite the wealth of resources on the topic.

No, nothing applies to everyone. We all have different motivations for gaming. That's why there are Pathfinder fans and there are FATE fans. However, I know that most of us gamers have seen the exact same complaints about games come up for years, if not decades. The frustrating part is when games are held (metaphorically) hostage by gatekeeper purist fans who prevent changes that would (probably) fix most complaints and invite a broader base of gamers into the game. We all want more people to like what we like but we aren't willing to accommodate a diversity of ideas and play styles because of tradition.

In 2017, I would rather see a leading RPG be a beautiful melding of the best of Pathfinder and Burning Wheel rather than yet another minor upgrade to Gygax's wargaming rules.

2 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

Solely? No. If players opt to diddle around and not invest in the game, there's nothing a GM can do about it other than to opt out of the session.

It's the good GM's job to be the silent cheerleader for the players and recognize when certain elements of the game - situations, story beats, or dice roles - are hindering play and adjust accordingly. Like keeping a child alive is the bare minimum responsibility for a parent, providing an opportunity for success is the bare minimum responsibility for a gamemaster. Otherwise the game is no longer a game, it's an argument with no conclusion. A good GM doesn't allow an unsuccessful mechanical resolution to end the game or end a character's fictional existence in a matter unsatisfying for a player.

Failure to pass a Skulduggery roll isn't required to mean failure to open the door, like most trad games propose. Failure can also mean a penalty or the depletion of a resource. However, if failure does mean that the door doesn't open and the players need to get past the door, there had better be a ready opportunity to take a different approach to solving the problem.

I always provide the opportunity for success. It is always accompanied by the opportunity for failure.

As for your statement of what a "good GM" doesn't allow, I'll just shake my head and say you're wrong. An unsatisfied player can always leave, and I'd encourage that if they are not willing to accept the results of the dice. When the dice are rolled, I expect my players to be big boys and girls and take the results, good and bad.

Are your dice sentient, deciding the outcomes of their rolls themselves? I thought it was the GM's job to adjudicate that.

6 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

Are your dice sentient, deciding the outcomes of their rolls themselves? I thought it was the GM's job to adjudicate that.

While Threat, Advantage, Despair, and Triumph are spent by players (including the GM), Success and Failure are pretty straightforward in the results they produce. They require no significant adjudication by the players, nor by sentient dice if you believe in that sort of thing.

22 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I always provide the opportunity for success. It is always accompanied by the opportunity for failure.

As for your statement of what a "good GM" doesn't allow, I'll just shake my head and say you're wrong. An unsatisfied player can always leave, and I'd encourage that if they are not willing to accept the results of the dice. When the dice are rolled, I expect my players to be big boys and girls and take the results, good and bad.

"An unsatisfied player can always leave" sounds like "I have no responsibility for ensuring everyone's having a good time." Outside of assigning damage in combat, there are very few rules-required dice roll interpretations.

4 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

While Threat, Advantage, Despair, and Triumph are spent by players (including the GM), Success and Failure are pretty straightforward in the results they produce. They require no significant adjudication by the players, nor by sentient dice if you believe in that sort of thing.

No. Even FFG produced materials, including the mini-missions in Nexus of Power , have provided examples of penalties for a failure on a roll that don't equate to stopping the game's momentum. Strain, wounds, or setting up a more difficult encounter down the road are rules-supported responses to an unsuccessful skill roll.

What's the point of having failure set up a more difficult encounter if you're just going to bail them out of that one too? Sorry, your approach doesn't interest me.

As for having a responsibility to make sure everyone is entertained, that's shared by everyone at the table. Those that are not entertaining, or those that are not themselves entertained, have the responsibility to fix it or leave, and leaving isn't a bad thing.

It's not a binary choice between "no consequences" and "cruel unforgiving universe where death comes easily". When you're "bailing out" players from an encounter, if you're establishing consequences well, they still come out worse for it. The failure has negative consequences, those consequences just don't end the campaign then and there. And if these consequences build up enough, it could easily be campaign ending. But by that point the players should clearly see the writing on the wall, and the opportunity to course correct should be provided, even if the players opt not to take it.

10 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

What's the point of having failure set up a more difficult encounter if you're just going to bail them out of that one too? Sorry, your approach doesn't interest me.

As for having a responsibility to make sure everyone is entertained, that's shared by everyone at the table. Those that are not entertaining, or those that are not themselves entertained, have the responsibility to fix it or leave, and leaving isn't a bad thing.

That's a nice strawman argument. "Bailing out" a player (your words, not mine) doesn't mean getting off scot free. There are degrees of penalization to apply. Again, I'll point to what I said just 15 minutes ago.

You can't both retain your cake and eat it. Either the GM carries a shared responsibility in ensuring that players have a good time or he doesn't and it's up to the player to have a good time by shutting up and accepting boring, game ending consequences off a die roll.

20 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

It's not a binary choice between "no consequences" and "cruel unforgiving universe where death comes easily". When you're "bailing out" players from an encounter, if you're establishing consequences well, they still come out worse for it. The failure has negative consequences, those consequences just don't end the campaign then and there. And if these consequences build up enough, it could easily be campaign ending. But by that point the players should clearly see the writing on the wall, and the opportunity to course correct should be provided, even if the players opt not to take it.

See how annoying it can be when the other side excludes the middle?

1 minute ago, Concise Locket said:

That's a nice strawman argument. "Bailing out" a player (your words, not mine) doesn't mean getting off scot free. There are degrees of penalization to apply. Again, I'll point to what I said just 15 minutes ago.

You can't both retain your cake and eat it. Either the GM carries a shared responsibility in ensuring that players have a good time or he doesn't and it's up to the player to have a good time by shutting up and accepting boring, game ending consequences off a die roll.

I can retain my cake and eat it too. I've stocked up on plenty of cake, and I'm just awesome like that.

5 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

See how annoying it can be when the other side excludes the middle?

What's the middle ground between "all fail is fail" and "failure is penalization/setback"?

27 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

What's the middle ground between "all fail is fail" and "failure is penalization/setback"?

Re-read the post I replied to. That's the middle I excluded.

On 8/13/2017 at 3:43 AM, 2P51 said:

I think if you insert pass/fail checks as absolutes you insert plot choke points and that leads to where everyone sits looking at one another and says "now what". Invariably that leads to trying again somewhere else, or in the same place, and I am of the mind if you're just going to keep rolling till you succeed why roll at all?

I think there's a lot more you can do to get through a locked door besides picking said lock. Athletics to break the door down, coercion after scouting out the joint and abducting some hapless guard, stealth to hide and wait for a guard to pass through then atfacking him, athletics to break the door down, ranged (light) to shoot through the lock...

There are lots of available options, but sometimes your first choice isn't successful. Rolling skullduggery until it works shouldn't be an option, unless you're trying to circumvent a different defense systemwith your check or picking the pocket of the guy who can get through without a check.

I agree, but the picking the lock is the least intrusive and if it failed I would just say they got in one of those other ways, but those ways would have down sides like the people inside are alerted. Again, if one is going to just keep coming up with different checks to be rolled until there is a success that's random number generation, and the question stands, why roll the dice at all if you're going to just roll them until you get a success?

4 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I agree, but the picking the lock is the least intrusive and if it failed I would just say they got in one of those other ways, but those ways would have down sides like the people inside are alerted. Again, if one is going to just keep coming up with different checks to be rolled until there is a success that's random number generation, and the question stands, why roll the dice at all if you're going to just roll them until you get a success?

Because if a check can't outright fail, then there's no real reason to make it. If the consequences of not investing in skullduggery results in a fight, I'm not going to invest points into a skill that gets me through an obstacle on a failure, I'm going to put those points into combat skills. Go ahead and stack all the black dice on my check for heavy armor and wrist-mounted weaponry you want; we both know I'm going to make it through because the plot will gently guide me in and congratulate me for how hard I tried, before I butcher everyone in the room with Last Man Standing and autofire.

This system already has advantages and threats for complications, we don't need to convert the actual measurement for whether you succeed with your intended action into more of that.

On 9/27/2017 at 0:05 PM, Concise Locket said:

What's the middle ground between "all fail is fail" and "failure is penalization/setback"?

Advantages/threats and triumphs/despairs. Those are there so that simply succeeding or failing is just a starting point.

7 minutes ago, Degenerate Mind said:

Because if a check can't outright fail, then there's no real reason to make it. If the consequences of not investing in skullduggery results in a fight, I'm not going to invest points into a skill that gets me through an obstacle on a failure, I'm going to put those points into combat skills. Go ahead and stack all the black dice on my check for heavy armor and wrist-mounted weaponry you want; we both know I'm going to make it through because the plot will gently guide me in and congratulate me for how hard I tried, before I butcher everyone in the room with Last Man Standing and autofire.

This system already has advantages and threats for complications, we don't need to convert the actual measurement for whether you succeed with your intended action into more of that.

I disagree. If on a spectacular success with a Skulduggery check you have both gained entry, disabled the alarm, turned off the security cameras, and learned a maintenance PIN that will allow you to access systems once inside, I have provided you ample rationale for investing heavily in Skulduggery. I have used that lone dice pool result to both create a narrative explanation for the positive result, provided motivation for mechanical development of the Skill, and not bogged table time down with multiple uses of the dice to simply generate a binary pass/fail result.

In addition the Skulduggery check also isn't meant for picking the lock, the goal is gaining entry to whatever, my approach simply lays out how that occurs with a single clean and concise roll of the dice once.

3 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I disagree. If on a spectacular success with a Skulduggery check you have both gained entry, disabled the alarm, turned off the security cameras, and learned a maintenance PIN that will allow you to access systems once inside, I have provided you ample rationale for investing heavily in Skulduggery. I have used that lone dice pool result to both create a narrative explanation for the positive result, provided motivation for mechanical development of the Skill, and not bogged table time down with multiple uses of the dice to simply generate a binary pass/fail result.

And if on failing my skullduggery check we get in anyway and start a fight, then the only person that won was the munchkin carrying around a space gatling gun. The losers are the characters that invested in coercion, athletics, stealth, ranged (light), or any way around that I didn't think of that someone else would. It is not your job to come up with how I cope with failure - that's mine, and I resent it when a DM takes agency away from me so that I don't fail a specific check. I bet the people who wanted to make skill checks of their own to try and get through resent it, too.

On top of that, everything you've suggested with alternatives to failure upon failing a check is already covered with the advantages and threats. If I got two threats, by all means, call the guards. But if my check didn't actually net a single solitary success, that should mean the lock actually served its intended purpose.

I disagree. Good day.

2 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I disagree. Good day.

See you around.

On 10/6/2017 at 11:16 AM, Degenerate Mind said:

Advantages/threats and triumphs/despairs. Those are there so that simply succeeding or failing is just a starting point.

That's not a middle ground. That's requiring that a GM have a contingency plan for every roll that's required to carry the story forward.

It's much easier to GM this game if a GM isn't sweating over a potential die roll upsetting the game's momentum. Part of GMing a narrative system is interpreting mechanical rolls that carry the game forward and hold player attention, not drive it to a screeching halt. It gives the GM a lot more latitude but a lot more responsibility too. Otherwise you run into the Call of Cthulhu problem where a failed Library roll to get the cult manuscript effectively ends the game. Or the failed Acrobatics roll in D&D resulting in fatal falling damage from a character who has succeeded on the check a dozen times before.

Failing forward is not a new game design concept. In narratives, the heroes make it across the deep chasm. The only difference is if they're graceful or if they land badly causing them to lose equipment, get the wind knocked out of them, and/or get a stylish gash across the face.

17 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

That's not a middle ground. That's requiring that a GM have a contingency plan for every roll that's required to carry the story forward.

It's much easier to GM this game if a GM isn't sweating over a potential die roll upsetting the game's momentum. Part of GMing a narrative system is interpreting mechanical rolls that carry the game forward and hold player attention, not drive it to a screeching halt. It gives the GM a lot more latitude but a lot more responsibility too. Otherwise you run into the Call of Cthulhu problem where a failed Library roll to get the cult manuscript effectively ends the game. Or the failed Acrobatics roll in D&D resulting in fatal falling damage from a character who has succeeded on the check a dozen times before.

Failing forward is not a new game design concept. In narratives, the heroes make it across the deep chasm. The only difference is if they're graceful or if they land badly causing them to lose equipment, get the wind knocked out of them, and/or get a stylish gash across the face.

Making a situation where there is only one path forward is the problem. As I explained in another post, if your character is unable to pick a lock on a door, he is perfectly capable of looking for another way around - a window, stealing a key, holding someone who knows the password at gun point, or even just breaking the door down. I would much rather have an opportunity to look for a more effective solution to the problem in front of me than for the GM to arbitrarily decide that my failed check was a success and to just tack on some slap on the wrist. This is especially true when the system is literally built to give you options outside of simply saying the check failed, with the advantage/threat system.

Let's take your example: players crossing a chasm. Your wording seems to imply that they are trying to jump across it, but I could be reading too far into that - if so, I apologize and request that you clarify your example. From a game master's point of view, the chasm could be there for one of two reasons: you either want your players to cross it, or you don't. The specific circumstances and the specific canyon are most likely tailored to the purpose: a ten foot gap through the middle of a room in a long-forgotten temple is clearly there to be crossed, while the canyons on either side of a pirate outpost with anti-aircraft guns are most likely there to discourage your players from taking that path.

If you are jumping across the chasm in the aforementioned temple without any kind of gear, even though the Vigilance skill and Destiny Points are both there to let you just say you have the right gear on you, and some characters will even be able to cobble together a bridge or just pull a grapnel launcher out of their pocket through class features, you clearly haven't thought things through. If they fail, I'll hide my disappointment in their short-sighted decision, and deal a bit of damage based on their degrees of failure. They are now at the bottom of a pit, and need to find a way out. With threat, there is a grumpy animal or two at the bottom, and they think you look tasty. A despair means you're in quicksand, cause a small rockslide that leaves you cut off from the rest of the party, or suffer from whatever suitable environmental hazard works for the situation. Possibly with grumpy animal(s) if you got two despairs. Failure does not mean you get across but with consequences, because there is already a rule system in place for that. Now get up, dust yourself off, and use your head to puzzle this challenge out. Better yet, spend a destiny point to remember that grapnel you completely forgot about.

If, on the other hand, you try jumping the canyon, I'm just going to break your leg and knock you unconscious about fifty feet down, because that's what happens when you try to jump over a canyon. Idiot. Now the challenge is 50 feet of a sheer slope, and the goal is to save the mouth-breathing invalid who thought he could jump over a canyon before he dies from exposure to the elements. I don't reccomend a straight athletics check.

You guys seem to be arguing, but ending up in the same place. Whether the failed lock picking results in stormtroopers coming out on patrol right then , or the PCs have to find another way in is still "failing forward". Roadblocks are when there is no alternative: where the secret door must be found or you can't get into the treasure vault, the contact must be charmed because only she has the information, the chasm must be crossed because the enemy is faster but they can't jump because they're snakes.

Either of your approaches work because they adapt to the situation.

Just now, whafrog said:

You guys seem to be arguing, but ending up in the same place. Whether the failed lock picking results in stormtroopers coming out on patrol right then , or the PCs have to find another way in is still "failing forward". Roadblocks are when there is no alternative: where the secret door must be found or you can't get into the treasure vault, the contact must be charmed because only she has the information, the chasm must be crossed because the enemy is faster but they can't jump because they're snakes.

Either of your approaches work because they adapt to the situation.

I have picked up on that, but what I'm arguing against is the lack of risk of failure. I don't like the idea that the first thing I try is going to advance the plot regardless of whether it works or not. Adapting to the situation is the player's job, and when the GM takes that position over, that really raises my hackles. I'm an obsessive nut who plans contingency after contingency after contingency; if I can't pick the lock, I want to try something new. It also allows me to adapt to unexpected behaviors from other players - not because I have every possibility accounted for, but because I'm well acquainted with how disappointing when you don't get a chance to try an alternative solution out. It makes me more want to make sure there are multiple avenues to success, and that what I've planned is flexible enough to allow for stuff I wasn't expecting. I also put challenges that require more consideration to get around, and have little pity for people that won't try anything but beating their head against it.

"Life is hard, but if you're stupid it's really hard." - probably John Wayne