Role-Playing and Inevitability
Jun. 7th, 2005 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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theferrett's livejournal, he's been discussing role-playing games and the quest for the perfect "art" game and how various games and their mechanics measure up. I agree with him about some of the games. Champions is a very flexible system--at the cost of mind-numbing complexity. Unknown Armies has some really nifty ideas, but I don't care for the mechanics. One of the issues he mentions is creative mechanics.
Fudge is a very rules-light system (which is why I like it) that can be made as crunchy as you like. I've seen tomes devoted to converting Transhuman Space (from Steve Jackson Games) into a Fudge version, maintaining all the complexity and crunchiness. Don't see the point myself. If you're not looking for a simple system, why convert to Fudge at all? But...different strokes.
Just today, however, a message was posted to the Fudge mailing list. It suggested a somewhat different approach to character challenges and the resolution of those challenges. I've quoted the entire message behind the cut tag. But basically it boils down to this:
We know the heroes (PCs) are going to succeed. The suspense comes in wondering what it's going to cost them to succeed. So stop pretending otherwise. Admit up front that the PCs will ultimately prevail. If the PC fails a vital* die roll, the player is free to offer up a scenario in which he succeeds--at some (variable) cost to the character. That cost could be injuries, plot complications, even death.
Many games, including Fudge, have some kind of meta-game mechanic that allows players to, uh, fudge the results of die rolls in the crunch. Most of them, though, are limited--you have to hoard your fudge points or whatever lest you run out of them. If you do run out of them, a bad die roll can still ruin your whole day or kill your PC. This approach does away with that mindset--without depending on the GM to orchestrate a victory that may feel scripted. The PCs are going to succeed; the only question is how much they have to pay in blood, sweat or tears to do so.
*what constitutes a vital die roll? That's part of the beauty of this approach. That's up to the player. If he doesn't care, or doesn't care enough to offer up a setback to justify changing the result, the PC has to live with the failure.
Hi, everyone! I've been lurking on the list for a few weeks now, and thought I'd introduce myself.
I've been a roleplayer for years, but not GMed a huge amount in that time. I've played various systems over the years, starting with Basic D&D and ranging through numerous others, but they've all been fairly rules-heavy. I "discovered" Fudge in the late 90s, in a period when I wasn't doing any roleplaying in my life, and really liked the philosophy and design of the system. I didn't start playing Fudge when I started gaming again, though... I was invited in to an already running game as a player, and was just happy to be playing again! So I forgot about Fudge for a few more years.
More recently, my group has been doing rotating GMs with one-shot scenarios each fortnight since our long-standing Mage: The Ascension game finished, and so I looked up Fudge again. I think I'll try running a Fudge one-shot, possibly "Bad Day at the Lab" from FF, to try to introduce the group to Fudge.
Style-wise, I'm trying to wean myself off reliance on rules. I'm one of those gamers who read roleplaying systems just to see how the system works, and I have a moderately good memory for them, so I have the reputation of being a walking rulesbook in our group. However, after all those rules, I've come to believe that there should be something better, and it might be a GM embraced "just fudge it", so I'm going to screw up my courage and give it a shot myself.
Anyway, enough about me. I had an actual Fudge thought that I wanted to share and get feedback on. In working through the Fudge List archives, I came across some posts from 2002 linking to this site:
http://septemberquestion.org/lumpley/
which seems to be the site of Vincent Baker, who is called "Lumpley" on the Forge RPG group (which is something I haven't read, but I'm peripherally aware of it). He has various interesting ideas about narrative-ist RPing, but one comment he makes in his "hardcore" section stuck out for me:
----
*Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.*
I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on the edge of our seats! What's up with that?
*Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.*
What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't know what it will cost.
..
Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?
---
He has a mechanic derived from this in one of his games ("Chalk Outlines") that can be adapted to Fudge (or to any dice-based game, really) which I can see working quite well: if a character tries to make a roll and fails, allow them to "buy up" to a marginal success (i.e. up to exactly what they need to /just/ succeed) by offering up personal setbacks... Bad Stuff that happens to their character to achieve the task anyway, but at personal cost. The player, rather than the GM, would narrate the setback(s), getting to describe how it all works, and then the GM would (hopefully) run with it from there.
The Bad Stuff would have to actually /matter/ to the character: something that's a significant short-term setback, or which escalates the situation, or which is a permanent loss. You'd decide on a baseline injury for a 1-point setback, and then work from that baseline to gauge other things. Maybe suffering a Hurt (in a setting without magical or techno-magical healing) could be your baseline. Of course, if the player was prepared to suffer the setback of "dying heroically to achieve their goal", then that should be worth any amount needed to succeed.
This system could either replace or supplement Fudge Points, at the group's discretion. Unlike Fudge points, you have a near-limitless number of personal setbacks to offer up, if you're prepared to pay the price. I think you'd need to require that the whole amount needs to be payed... you can't buy up one level to make a catastrophic failure into a normal failure, for instance, you need to go up all the levels to a marginal success. If you're unwilling to take (say) six setbacks, then you can live with the failure. Also, you can't use it to *exceed* a marginal success, just to scrape by.
What I like about this idea is that it's entirely in the player's hands, so it comes down to whether they actually care about this particular roll, like Fudge Points, but doesn't require or encourage bean-counting. You won't put off paying on a somewhat important roll based on a concern that you'll need your Fudge Points later, but rather based on whether you're
prepared to suffer some Bad Stuff in order to succeed. A player would most likely choose to exercise this option in the sort of plot-breaking roll that kind GMs traditionally want to do out of view of the players, in case they need to fudge the result.
First example: your group of dungeon-bashing vagrants are camped out in the wilderness, as is their wont, when suddenly a black-cloaked assassin leaps into the circle of light of the camp fire! He lunges at your character as you leap to your feet, poison dripping from his razor-sharp blade. Roll a dodge!
"Oh, missed it by two. Hmm. Hang on - I grab his dagger-hand and stagger backwards as I try to halt his momentum and stop the blade touching my skin. Off balance, I'm forced to step into the campfire... Ahhhh! I take a Hurt result, and my pants are starting to smoulder... is that worth two?"
Second example: Trying to defuse the nuke before the timer reaches zero, Jack (of all) Trades is out of his depth, but he's the only one still standing with any chance. He rolls well, but not well enough...
"Ok, trying desperately to trace those wires, I have to remove the shielding around the plutonium case. I don't know how much of a radiation dose I just exposed myself to, and that may have been a whiff of powder out of one of the screw holes I just stirred up into the air, but I managed to work out which wire to cut..."
Third example:
GM: Ok, you enter into the cavern, and before you are the Cracks of Doom. Lava swirls in the depths and the air shimmers with heat; it's almost overwhelming, you can't stay here long. What do you do?
JRR Tolkien: I approach the crack and throw the Ring in!
GM: You approach this end to all your trials, ring in hand... but then your eyes are caught by the ring. It's so beautiful, perfect. You stare at it in wonder... how could you think about destroying it? Make a Willpower roll, and I'm afraid that here in the heart of its power, you'll need a Legendary result.
JRR Tolkien: (rolls). Damn.
GM: You place the Ring on your finger instead. Instantly, you sense Sauron's mind, and know that he perceives you, and where you are, and the mortal danger he's in. In your mind, he cowers before you. You feel that you are more powerful than anything or anyone in the world...
JRR Tolkien: Hang on... suddenly, Gollum leaps on me from behind! We struggle for a moment, then he lifts my invisible hand to his mouth and bites my finger off! Shrieking with glee, he dances around with his Precious, until he slips and falls down the crack. I collapse to the ground, clutching my maimed hand.
GM: (brief silence) Awesome!
(obviously, the GM in the 3rd example is willing to let players take significant control of their situation. Also, in this example, while the end result of destroying the Ring was the same as if he'd made the Willpower roll, it wasn't simply "I pull myself together and toss it in".)
So, do people think this could work? I feel that it could add a lot to certain make-or-break rolls. It won't grant players immunity in combat, because a Hurt result for each level of relative margin is likely worse than just taking the blow, unless the weapon is poisoned or similar, like in the first example, or say if the opponent is enormous.
My worries are
a) it might be hard to decide exactly how much a given example of Bad Stuff is worth. I wouldn't want to have to interrupt what is probably a pretty pivotal scene to argue the relative worth of setbacks.
b) Players might start to expect rewards or payback for bad things that happen to their character in normal play... "Hey, if that's what happens when I fail, I might as well take it as Bad Stuff and succeed!"
c) GMs may throw nastier situations at the players, expecting them to suffer Bad Stuff in order to succeed... for example, it would be a pretty harsh GM who would inflict the second example on the players, giving them a live nuke with a character that isn't highly skilled in defusing such things.
d) You might get lots of "hang on"s as players try to decide if they really failed or not :)
Have fun,
Rob Rendell.
-- -----------------------------------------------------------
The Fudge List FAQ is at http://fudge.phoenyx.net/listfaq.html
** Don't start deliberately off-topic threads. **
I've been thinking about running a Fudge game for my wife and some friends. If I do, I think I'll make use of this idea.
theferrett's livejournal, he's been discussing role-playing games and the quest for the perfect "art" game and how various games and their mechanics measure up. I agree with him about some of the games. Champions is a very flexible system--at the cost of mind-numbing complexity. Unknown Armies has some really nifty ideas, but I don't care for the mechanics. One of the issues he mentions is creative mechanics.Fudge is a very rules-light system (which is why I like it) that can be made as crunchy as you like. I've seen tomes devoted to converting Transhuman Space (from Steve Jackson Games) into a Fudge version, maintaining all the complexity and crunchiness. Don't see the point myself. If you're not looking for a simple system, why convert to Fudge at all? But...different strokes.
Just today, however, a message was posted to the Fudge mailing list. It suggested a somewhat different approach to character challenges and the resolution of those challenges. I've quoted the entire message behind the cut tag. But basically it boils down to this:
We know the heroes (PCs) are going to succeed. The suspense comes in wondering what it's going to cost them to succeed. So stop pretending otherwise. Admit up front that the PCs will ultimately prevail. If the PC fails a vital* die roll, the player is free to offer up a scenario in which he succeeds--at some (variable) cost to the character. That cost could be injuries, plot complications, even death.
Many games, including Fudge, have some kind of meta-game mechanic that allows players to, uh, fudge the results of die rolls in the crunch. Most of them, though, are limited--you have to hoard your fudge points or whatever lest you run out of them. If you do run out of them, a bad die roll can still ruin your whole day or kill your PC. This approach does away with that mindset--without depending on the GM to orchestrate a victory that may feel scripted. The PCs are going to succeed; the only question is how much they have to pay in blood, sweat or tears to do so.
*what constitutes a vital die roll? That's part of the beauty of this approach. That's up to the player. If he doesn't care, or doesn't care enough to offer up a setback to justify changing the result, the PC has to live with the failure.
Hi, everyone! I've been lurking on the list for a few weeks now, and thought I'd introduce myself.
I've been a roleplayer for years, but not GMed a huge amount in that time. I've played various systems over the years, starting with Basic D&D and ranging through numerous others, but they've all been fairly rules-heavy. I "discovered" Fudge in the late 90s, in a period when I wasn't doing any roleplaying in my life, and really liked the philosophy and design of the system. I didn't start playing Fudge when I started gaming again, though... I was invited in to an already running game as a player, and was just happy to be playing again! So I forgot about Fudge for a few more years.
More recently, my group has been doing rotating GMs with one-shot scenarios each fortnight since our long-standing Mage: The Ascension game finished, and so I looked up Fudge again. I think I'll try running a Fudge one-shot, possibly "Bad Day at the Lab" from FF, to try to introduce the group to Fudge.
Style-wise, I'm trying to wean myself off reliance on rules. I'm one of those gamers who read roleplaying systems just to see how the system works, and I have a moderately good memory for them, so I have the reputation of being a walking rulesbook in our group. However, after all those rules, I've come to believe that there should be something better, and it might be a GM embraced "just fudge it", so I'm going to screw up my courage and give it a shot myself.
Anyway, enough about me. I had an actual Fudge thought that I wanted to share and get feedback on. In working through the Fudge List archives, I came across some posts from 2002 linking to this site:
http://septemberquestion.org/lumpley/
which seems to be the site of Vincent Baker, who is called "Lumpley" on the Forge RPG group (which is something I haven't read, but I'm peripherally aware of it). He has various interesting ideas about narrative-ist RPing, but one comment he makes in his "hardcore" section stuck out for me:
----
*Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.*
I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on the edge of our seats! What's up with that?
*Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.*
What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't know what it will cost.
..
Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?
---
He has a mechanic derived from this in one of his games ("Chalk Outlines") that can be adapted to Fudge (or to any dice-based game, really) which I can see working quite well: if a character tries to make a roll and fails, allow them to "buy up" to a marginal success (i.e. up to exactly what they need to /just/ succeed) by offering up personal setbacks... Bad Stuff that happens to their character to achieve the task anyway, but at personal cost. The player, rather than the GM, would narrate the setback(s), getting to describe how it all works, and then the GM would (hopefully) run with it from there.
The Bad Stuff would have to actually /matter/ to the character: something that's a significant short-term setback, or which escalates the situation, or which is a permanent loss. You'd decide on a baseline injury for a 1-point setback, and then work from that baseline to gauge other things. Maybe suffering a Hurt (in a setting without magical or techno-magical healing) could be your baseline. Of course, if the player was prepared to suffer the setback of "dying heroically to achieve their goal", then that should be worth any amount needed to succeed.
This system could either replace or supplement Fudge Points, at the group's discretion. Unlike Fudge points, you have a near-limitless number of personal setbacks to offer up, if you're prepared to pay the price. I think you'd need to require that the whole amount needs to be payed... you can't buy up one level to make a catastrophic failure into a normal failure, for instance, you need to go up all the levels to a marginal success. If you're unwilling to take (say) six setbacks, then you can live with the failure. Also, you can't use it to *exceed* a marginal success, just to scrape by.
What I like about this idea is that it's entirely in the player's hands, so it comes down to whether they actually care about this particular roll, like Fudge Points, but doesn't require or encourage bean-counting. You won't put off paying on a somewhat important roll based on a concern that you'll need your Fudge Points later, but rather based on whether you're
prepared to suffer some Bad Stuff in order to succeed. A player would most likely choose to exercise this option in the sort of plot-breaking roll that kind GMs traditionally want to do out of view of the players, in case they need to fudge the result.
First example: your group of dungeon-bashing vagrants are camped out in the wilderness, as is their wont, when suddenly a black-cloaked assassin leaps into the circle of light of the camp fire! He lunges at your character as you leap to your feet, poison dripping from his razor-sharp blade. Roll a dodge!
"Oh, missed it by two. Hmm. Hang on - I grab his dagger-hand and stagger backwards as I try to halt his momentum and stop the blade touching my skin. Off balance, I'm forced to step into the campfire... Ahhhh! I take a Hurt result, and my pants are starting to smoulder... is that worth two?"
Second example: Trying to defuse the nuke before the timer reaches zero, Jack (of all) Trades is out of his depth, but he's the only one still standing with any chance. He rolls well, but not well enough...
"Ok, trying desperately to trace those wires, I have to remove the shielding around the plutonium case. I don't know how much of a radiation dose I just exposed myself to, and that may have been a whiff of powder out of one of the screw holes I just stirred up into the air, but I managed to work out which wire to cut..."
Third example:
GM: Ok, you enter into the cavern, and before you are the Cracks of Doom. Lava swirls in the depths and the air shimmers with heat; it's almost overwhelming, you can't stay here long. What do you do?
JRR Tolkien: I approach the crack and throw the Ring in!
GM: You approach this end to all your trials, ring in hand... but then your eyes are caught by the ring. It's so beautiful, perfect. You stare at it in wonder... how could you think about destroying it? Make a Willpower roll, and I'm afraid that here in the heart of its power, you'll need a Legendary result.
JRR Tolkien: (rolls). Damn.
GM: You place the Ring on your finger instead. Instantly, you sense Sauron's mind, and know that he perceives you, and where you are, and the mortal danger he's in. In your mind, he cowers before you. You feel that you are more powerful than anything or anyone in the world...
JRR Tolkien: Hang on... suddenly, Gollum leaps on me from behind! We struggle for a moment, then he lifts my invisible hand to his mouth and bites my finger off! Shrieking with glee, he dances around with his Precious, until he slips and falls down the crack. I collapse to the ground, clutching my maimed hand.
GM: (brief silence) Awesome!
(obviously, the GM in the 3rd example is willing to let players take significant control of their situation. Also, in this example, while the end result of destroying the Ring was the same as if he'd made the Willpower roll, it wasn't simply "I pull myself together and toss it in".)
So, do people think this could work? I feel that it could add a lot to certain make-or-break rolls. It won't grant players immunity in combat, because a Hurt result for each level of relative margin is likely worse than just taking the blow, unless the weapon is poisoned or similar, like in the first example, or say if the opponent is enormous.
My worries are
a) it might be hard to decide exactly how much a given example of Bad Stuff is worth. I wouldn't want to have to interrupt what is probably a pretty pivotal scene to argue the relative worth of setbacks.
b) Players might start to expect rewards or payback for bad things that happen to their character in normal play... "Hey, if that's what happens when I fail, I might as well take it as Bad Stuff and succeed!"
c) GMs may throw nastier situations at the players, expecting them to suffer Bad Stuff in order to succeed... for example, it would be a pretty harsh GM who would inflict the second example on the players, giving them a live nuke with a character that isn't highly skilled in defusing such things.
d) You might get lots of "hang on"s as players try to decide if they really failed or not :)
Have fun,
Rob Rendell.
-- -----------------------------------------------------------
The Fudge List FAQ is at http://fudge.phoenyx.net/listfaq.html
** Don't start deliberately off-topic threads. **
I've been thinking about running a Fudge game for my wife and some friends. If I do, I think I'll make use of this idea.
We sort of do that.
Date: 2005-06-08 01:16 pm (UTC)Mechanicswise I've often supplied the players with "Karma" or "Fortune" points which they could use to undo events, reroll dice, etc.