Mixed Success - Winning and Losing in Tabletop Roleplaying Games - Extra Credits
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2019
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Tabletop roleplaying games don't have an overall "win" or "loss" condition, but they do have individual moments of wins and losses that can be exaggerated and customized for more engaging gameplay.
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Do you have any epic "yes/no, and/but" stories from your tabletop RPG experiences? We want to read them!
Well, recently, me and my friends tried capturing and questioning a guy who we suspected was an assassin. We spent the whole session tailing his convoy, and I distracted the audience with a card magic show while we kidnapped the guy successfuly.
But.
He wasn't the assassin. So now we were stuck with this blindfolded rich person, who had lots of influence and could easily track us (since he saw my face in the show).
So we decided to knock him out and pretend both him and I were attacked and robbed. AND we got his wallet to boot.
But.
After we got back to town, we connected the dots and figured he was a slave trader, who adopts small kids with magical power in one city and sells them in a city where slavery is legal. AND we let him get away scot free, except for his money and a broken nose.
No, but I'm sure I'll have them in the future.
*tried to steal keys from 40 year old potion making widow* *she catches me* *i pull a fake romance role as I pull the keys away* *shes into it* Long story short in order to not get caught my gay character let her smash
i was playing a rpg with my parents called dragon's dream and my mother's caracter rolled an 100 wich is the worst "no and" roll possible in this game and she burnt all the fish, an enormous piece of ham and almost turn the tent that i just very hardly created with magic and we were left with no food so yeah... that was not epic but still pretty bad
Warhammer Fantasy RPG's most recent edition, 4e, has this happen a lot in the combat since you roll an active attack and active defense at the same time. I once had a player kill a Beastman with a strong roll, but the Beastman scored a crit for defense, breaking the character's arm with his shield before going down. It's a fantastic RPG that I fully reccomend for darker fantasy.
Playing DnD. My friend was a thief and disguised themselves as royalty. They had to open a door by some guards and pretend to have the key. They utterly failed the lock picking, but did an amazing job at the bluff when the guard saw this happen. So the story turned out with the guard going "do you need help?" and unlocked the door for them. I would count this as a "No, but".
I think it could be.
My group defeated a dragon but they turned out to be royalty, so they were sued by the nearby town and had to win a court case.
@@arandomsquidward7761 Damn, guess you'll need a good lawyer for dragon regicide.
Ace Attorney: D&D Edition
I’ve never played before but I want to play that so much rn
"I don't know how, but you used the wrong formula and got the correct answer"
"task failed successfully"
You used conversion and algebra to get to your answer. Essentially creating your own formula.
This is how I bs my way through school. And teaching.
Best moment in a recent Pathfinder session: the bard of the party successfully convinced a group of goblins who were minions to a barghest that was using them to steal food and treasure (and incidentally hoarding both for itself) that he was a union negotiator and got them to lead him to their lair, and then stand back while he and his team "negotiated" with their boss. After the barghest was killed, he informed the goblins that the negotiations broke down, but that the boss had left and so they could have all the food they wanted now. He then talked them into paying his service fee of 700 GP.
And people say bards are useless.
I don't know pathfinder, but in D&D a warlock, sorcerer or paladin could've done the same, even some rogue builds... But that story sounds awesome!
My first thought was that your bard got the idea from Shrek.
That....is awesome. We have a dwarf trader in our group that has a similar inclination. They where once chased by a barge of slavers and when they made stop at an island i threw in two pocket dragons (weak but can still give low level chars a run for their money). Instead of fighting them like i had planned, he struck up a conversation with them and a few tests in negotiation, charm and constitution later he had them drunk on the hunters hooch and sicked them on the enemy slavers. One burned down sail later they had half a day longer to prepare for the attack.
Reminds me of DM of the Rings. www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=773
Was playing an elf Assassin, and was with my friend as paladin to claim the bounty for killing a monster. His 15 charisma somehow does not pan out as he rolls two consecutive fails, and the mayor kicks us out. With my dismal 6 charisma I roll 3 successes, one of which Nat 20, to start a peasant revolt that eventually takes over the city
I'd blame that on the mayor being corrupt.
But... even if that's not true, the peasants still bought it... :D
Actually an amazing plot.
What the
You want to read a yes and story? Here we go: (D&D 5e)
The group is in a giant cave, needing to cross a 25 feet chasm.
player one: I want to bind the rope to the javelin and throw the javelin into the roof.
I let him roll intelligence - acrobatics for the knot, it's a 12 in total, the knot holds tight, then a strength - athletes check for the javelin throw, it's a 19 so it's stuck up there.
Player 1 does the Tarzan move and lands on the other side, players 2 and 3 follow, but then comes the paladin, wich a a big weapon and armor hoarding type, he grabs the rope, jumps and all players are shocked when they see the rope fall of the javelin.
Player 1 jumps to grab the rope, and does so but is now above the chasm mid air, player 2 jumps and grabs player 1s feet and player 3 grabs his feet, barely hanging on to them. Player 4 crashes into the wall and starts climbing. In the end player 4 and 3 drag player 1 and 2 up. Then the group looked at me and said (out of character) "even though this was awesome, don't you dare pull these cartoon moves on us again!"
Been there before. It pissed the GM off because he was secretly trying to finally have the lucky SOB that I saved by doing that finally die from the stupid stuff he kept doing.
I'm picturing that, and it's hilarious XD
I've DM'ed almost exact situation and I hate my self for that but no regret.
"That's grim, Eddy" - words which have been said before and will be said again.
My thought: Turned into Dogmeat? Neat he is a good boy.. oh, that kind.
Those are some freaking adorable doggos. Good job, artist!
yes
I might be showing my age here, but the "no-but" was always the GM's job
DnD teens, ARRISE!
I played 1st edition back when there were no other editions (because I'm an old fart)
Good GMs have always found ways to turn failures into fun story beats-though there’s a stereotype that the *really* old-school dungeonmasters were more fond of the “Yes, but...” and “No, and...” than the “No, but...”. “Yes, and...” has always been popular though.
John Smith And pretty much always will be. Fudging rolls my dude
I've had World of Darkness games, with player influenced "no-but"s like a bodged roll ending in disfigurement of your choice, or something like that.
In HOI4, you can win some and lose some. Along the way, you learn more about what it's like to take control of militaries and make decisions as leader
unless you are as bad as me and you cheat every game because you suck
I remember trying to play as Communist America and invade Mexico. In order to shorten the war a little bit, I sponsored a communist coup in the country, which gave extra allied troops and extra territory I didn’t have to worry about. The problem was that my core which I used to justify on them, Yucatán, was now in my own allies hands, and I really wanted it. I was also about to declare war on Germany so I couldn’t really turn my back on them quite yet. Plus we were both allied to the Soviets and I had asked for troops to help win the war and some were still in my border (hence why I was about to go to war with Germany) so I knew that if I betrayed them I would be begging for trouble.
Hi there
Yep. Paradox games are great at this stuff.
Or just shadowpuppet and order 66.
Well you can loose in theory,but in practice actually win:When i played total war shogun 2,i was involved in a defensive siege against a 2k army with my 500,even tho i lost the castle, i managed to get 1.3k soldiers and their general, destroying the enemies army and basically finishing the war after that battle.
@@bombkirby ah shit, sorry i just found out i pressed "o" twice.
YOU MUST RELEASE THAT AS A VIDEO, I WANT TO LEARN OF YOUR GODLINESS
@@umueri1877 there are way better total war players in youtube than me,like mr.smart donkey
A classic Pyrrhic victory for the enemy.
When King Phyrrus won a similar battle against the Romans, he had so many losses he said "another victory like this and I am defeated." He won another battle and then lost the war.
Tactical victory, strategic loss. Classic.
I've had more than a few "Yes/but" moments with my play group.
My favorite one is when they nailed a concert but their costume choice seduced a serial killer.
In a game I used to play, we had the concept of 'Overshoot' which was a version if 'yes, but...' Where you successfully do something, but do so in the most excessive way possible. Eg: casting a fireball to toast the enemy, killing the enemy, but now the room's on fire
Please caption your videos. You use a script, so that should be easy. 5 minutes of work on your end will make your videos SO much more accessible.
I think they get auto captions, so just wait a while.
@@insaincaldo Autocaptions are already there. Turn them on, watch some videos with them on. You'll notice that they're rubbish, especially if there are words used that are not common in US English, or pronounced with any sort of accent other than Silicon Valley - You know, like you'd get in history, myth or video game discussions.
@@jessicakorte I donno if they have people on it, but seems like it's generally a community thing to manually review them nowadays. Which I'm assuming is also the case here, cause if they had people on their end to do that work, it would be done before upload.
5:41 Isn't that called, you know, the GM not wanting to end the campaign there? I wouldnt' call that recent.
That depends on the system in play. In D&D, yeah, that's probably the GM going, No, but THE SHOW MUST GO ON! But D&D isn't the only TTRPG and there are plenty with much simpler and condensed systems that might require the GM to fight back against the players using their own resources and in order to keep the game fun, the GM would need to consider if they may have come up with something that hard counters the players and ends the game prematurely with disappointment among the group.
For example, in Dusk City Outlaws, players play as members of a crime syndicate and try and pull off a heist of some sort. There are things the players do that give the GM a resource called 'Heat' that they can then spend to put wrenches in the players' plans. It's important for the GM to know when to hold back when spending Heat for the sake of creating an entertaining experience for everyone, rather than trying to 'win' the game against the players.
Yeah, "failing forward" has always seemed like a straw man to me. If the players are roleplaying their characters (i.e. trying to pursue their characters' goals) and the GM is roleplaying the world (deciding what happens next based on the past actions of the PCs and NPCs), the story shouldn't be in danger of coming to a complete stop just from the failure of one task.
Difference is... in more traditional rpgs (D&D, Vampire, etc) the game rules say nothing about this, so someone (the GM) has to "fix the game when it breaks" ... acting out of the game rules (cheating) to change an undesirable experience. The game failed, so people have to fix the mess.
In more modern rpgs (Fate, Apocalypse World, 13th Age) the game rules explicitly include systems and mechanics to avoid, handle and solve this problem and many others. This produces better game experiences in a more consistent way. The game fails less, so people can focus on play rather than fixing problems.
A super-experienced veteran GM with great skills in storytelling, improv, empathy and game design can do the same on the fly... but you need to have such a great person in the role of GM! Not everyone is so lucky :P
With better rules, even complete n00bs can produce very good results and LEARN FROM THE GAME how to play/gm better.
Even good old D&D started acknowledging this with the 5th edition. It's still veeery traditional, but has introduced a host of design tricks both big and small to help players have a better experience out of the game, with less work for the GM to "fix problems". Same goes for the latest Vampire edition.
It's a great time to be a roleplayer :D
skyrim and similar games could use more of that. In skyrim its usually win/reload
I think that's more to do with the habits of players than it is with the design of the game itself. In Skyrim, you can fail on a speech check and end up having to pay money/ do a quest to get back on with the story, and those quests can be more fun than skipping it. You can get caught stealing and either pay a fine or go to jail, and jails often have opportunities for quests in themselves. The problem is players optimizing the fun out of the game.
The problem is that there's no incentive to live with the consequences of mistakes or bad rolls. In TES I don't really see a way to mitigate it without fundamentally changing how the save/load system works, but in an unrelated IP you could reward players for completing objectives without dying or reloading previous saves. It would have to be tweaked for whatever game it is, but essentially by making reloading the previous save something that comes with it's own punishment you encourage players to live with their mistakes and try to work their way out of a sticky situation.
it just works!
@@stephens7136 It is a mod already but... Not on Nexus. :P
@@stephens7136 www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/13264
Yes you did save the town, BUT THE VILLAN WAS YOUR FATHER! And you killed him!
Too much?
Did you just write a star war?
Lost an arm, father figure, mentor, actual father, but hey at least the galaxy is safe.. right?
Tabletop games, Magic the Gathering... you guys are talking about some of my favorite stuff. :D It's great!
The Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG handles the "yes/no, and/but" approach really well, I feel. Their dice use combinations of success, failure, advantage, and threat to create really interesting outcomes much like what the video describes. Definitely one of my favorite tabletop systems.
ZorlockDarksoul yea they almost described the rules literally in the video
Yes! Genesys is my absolute favorite system because of its dice system!
I love that tabletop games have these ultra-varied options. Some video games have attempted to follow through on interesting losses, but they often fail to move stories forward at all, or because of natural player abilities (rather than character statistics), just result in consistently terrible outcomes; like a dice weighted against your favor.
I actually had the idea for a very basic, textual, story video game in which you have a hero clearly on a journey, but rather than controlling the hero's choices, you basically just control each of their successes and failures. Something players would learn is that the least interesting outcomes are when they continually select one pre-chosen option (Success / Fail); often not even the one they'd want - and that the most interesting outcomes would arise from picking a general mix, embracing some level of loss and destruction, and handing over those comebacks at crucial moments.
2 D&D party members: "we got some big guys comming".
A Tiny Kobald (Me), and my familiar walk up, overhear this, and bow.
Thats what i talk about.
I think one of the best systems I have ever seen involving this concept is the Fantasy Flight Star Wars/Genesys system where dice have symbols to interpret that can basically correlate to "Yes and", "Yes but", "No and", "No but", as well as adding in critical symbols that could be looked at as "heck" as in "Heck Yes!" or "Heck No!"
My favorite lose+win is when a player is a point or two away from succeeding a lockpicking attempt.
"The door is unlocked... with a loud THUNK! And everyone knows who did it. Roll for initiative."
I love the Dramatic failure system from Chronicles of Darkness. When you roll a failure, you can either *choose to have it be a normal failure (the simple "no", or a "no, but", or you can make it a dramatic failure where something really bad happens, but you get xp. This makes a failure into an interesting choice where it's between "should I complicate the mission even more for that sweet sweet xp?" And can even create sessions where the players are like "damn it! Everything went according to plans! We didn't take enough risk!"
Powered by the Apocalypse engine games THRIVE on this for rules-lite story-based games.
I got to work with artists, improvisers, theatre kids, and other creatives with these games and a time spectacular compared to standard D&D circles.
Why this look like a bot though.
@@greatesthater7438 lol like a bot? Sorry didn't mean for that. Still think PbtA games need a ton of love tho
Losing in a table top game is drunkly casting fireball in a pub and having to roll to see how many civilians you killed, then once you roll you find out you killed 69 people. Then you get the wave of disappointment when the dm tells you that no xp was gained.
Nice
Nice
We had one moment from my Dark Heresy group that immediately went from "No, and the daemon prince has just possessed the fresh corpse of your team mate" to "Yes, and Ernst (our cleric) has successfully grappled the now manifest daemon, beaten its obnoxious Unnatural Strength modifier, and bodily thrown it into a plasma reactor. Start running, you don't want to be around when reality decides what it's supposed to do next".
Ernst was a walking manifestation of such moments. There was also the time we went from "... and the crowd you're in has turned into a panicked stampede in response to the attempted assassination of the Duke" to "Ernst somehow rolls well enough to try to clear a path through the crowd that they've collectively had a brief vision of a vast golden armoured figure stood over him and fallen to their knees in awe".
For the record, that was the *second* time he turned a rioting mob into a pious congregation.
~~~~~
On a more general level, this got me thinking about the general point of "No, but" and "No, and", which fundamentally are about making losing fun... or at least entertaining.
In that respect, the less common PvP-type RPGs can actually do pretty well if you've got players with the right mindset (the "I'm here to play my characters" rather than the "I'm here to win") and players aren't penalised too much for losing.
I've got some very fond memories of games of "Inquisitor" (GW's part-skirmish/part-RPG offering from 2001) that I technically lost - when it's not an omniscient and omnipotent GM defeating you, you can far more marvel at the creative strategies the other players use.
(For similar reasons, I also love GMing for Inquisitor, as the players working against each other makes it far more unpredictable, rather than the going into the game with the knowledge that it's probably going to turn out roughly as your notes say. The 13-player game I once ran managed to end with the characters turning two of the four tables into slag, and I'm still not entirely sure how).
the Genesys System from fantasy flight games which they also use in their starwars RPG works exacly like this since instead of number dice, you have a range of falure and disadvantage dice as well as success and advantage dice. And some dice have triumphs and others disasters on them, just for good measure (rolling a disaster and a triumph at the same time is when the real fun starts!)
Reminds me of Genesys RPG. In that system, in addition to symbols that help you succeed or fail, there are also symbols that determine advantages or threats, creating yes/no-buts all the time. What's interesting is that because there's never more than 2 symbols on any given side a good roll for success is less likely to give you a yes-and or a no-and than an or roll.
I think one of my favorite thing in "Madoka Magica : The RPG" is that, if one of your players got turned into a witch, you can, as a game master, force said player to control the witch to make their actions more hurtful, instead of taking direct control. It may not be related to the video, but it's a feature that I find very interesting since it can had more drama in your story, if that makes sense.
I know your focus was on game rules, BUT framing an RPG in terms of 'winning' and 'losing' can be a double edged sword. If players believe that there is a 'win' to D&D like in other board games that can make an adversarial environment where the Player Characters might see the Game Master as the opposing player. Going back to the poker analogy, you want to win against and compete against the other players now the Player Characters want to win against the Game Master and vice versa and that can cause a game to slowly become less and less fun.
part of the video is that it isnt a game win
but a personal win
small things people can win and lose in that can summise into big things, just like in life
It's less framing and more "having fun moments is the equivalent of winning in context and that doesn't always mean succeeding."
I remember back when we had our first TabletopRPG like game. Back then it was a board game, we didn't know, it was made by a franchise of TTRPG. We also were really young and since it was like each player has 1 hero and another player controls all enemies, it at least felt like a 4 vs 1. Though, it probably was meant like a gamemaster with 4 players.
The winning in table-top rpgs is finding fun and imaginative solutions to imaginative problems. Unfortunately most of these games focus too much on building balance and combat instead of crafting detailed and interactive environments.
Edge of empire system. Success advantage disadvantage failure triumph. Its great
forgot dispair :)
@@icedragon769 yes I did. Good catch
This is exactly what that system is designed for.
I was looking for someone who mentioned exactly this
The new Genesys system from the same group also does this.
No by name mention of FF Star Wars or Burning Wheel's mixed successes surprised me
Failing forward is one of the most important concepts in tabletop RPGs, and people coming from video games tend to not expect or understand it at first. In a video game like XCOM or Divinity Original Sin (or related CRPGs), I often feel like I almost HAVE to save-scum out of lethal errors to keep from experiencing total disaster (game over, lost character, etc). It's so ingrained in players like me, games like Darkest Dungeon have to perform internal save-deletion shenanigans to keep players from doing this so they experience the game the devs intended (doing so also gives you *permission* to experience the full brutal game and eat failures, rather than feel like we're playing suboptimally by not save-scumming).
But you cannot -- and should not feel like you'd have to -- save scum in a tabletop RPG, nor should the game shut down because of random chance or slight mistake not favoring the players. Ideally unless you've outright died or suffered an equally permanent failure (which should take some doing), you should always have a way forward. Degrees of Success and Failure modulate the outcome; you don't necessarily get everything you want, but you still get to continue somehow from a failure. Having to get out of the jail cell after getting caught is a great example! That didn't go the way you'd planned, and things are complicated now, BUT the game isn't over. You're being challenged instead of harshly punished or completely ejected; the game isn't over, it's just getting interesting. Likewise, degrees of success reward cleverness and the odd natural 20, giving you more exciting results, or special options in the future.
This means players are given explicit permission by the game master and the game itself to play the game *in a fun way*. Think carefully, BUT take risks, make mistakes, enjoy the fruits of your labor and always keep moving forward. A game shouldn't feel like depression; it should feel like leaving depression behind and being who you want to be. With Fail Forward, I particularly like when I can reward creativity, resiliency, and fun attitudes with fail-but and succeed-and results, because that rewards deeper engagement. That player who wants to be strategic? He can enjoy a higher reward for success, or a moderated failure. The player who wants to take an ill-planned but creative risk? Fail-but can reward his creative solution even if the idea was hazardous or the dice betray him. And when someone is feeling down or disengaged, that fail-but gives them one or more options to pursue despite their setbacks and discouragement.
Whether the game is overall relaxed, or brutal like Darkest Dungeon, I like to have fail-forward be a part of it. Worth noting that despite its brutality, it's impossible to lose at Darkest Dungeon -- you might lose your favorite heroes, lose the trinkets they were carrying, experience damage in the towns etc, but those are all merely setbacks. You can keep moving forward from there. There's no "you had to get this one right or the game is over" state; you just keep trying. Loss means losing a bit of work, reassessing, and building back up; you don't start over from scratch with a new town.
Though you do have to moderate all of this with real consequences, or else the game feels weightless. I particularly hate discovering that we're so railroaded we can't even die or fail no matter what, because the GM needs us to get through this segment for his campaign to move forward. (very common in one-hour campaigns at conventions) It all feels so empty; any roleplay or strategy we pick amounts to nothing in that case; it's all just window-dressing for the railroad. There need to be real consequences, good and bad, to look forward to and work toward, to fear and hedge against, for it all to legitimately feel like it matters. I wouldn't put especially harsh fail states entirely in the hands of luck, or make them easy to hit accidentally, but they should never be removed entirely. Darkest Dungeon wouldn't be the same game if your characters didn't die from a massive failure -- you can move forward, but it still stings! And it must. Pure positive reinforcement is numbing; you need danger and failure too.
My most favorite Choice of Games titles are like this, even if you fail your stat checks, the story doesn’t end and it doesn’t beat you to the ground with devastating consequences
This reminds me of how Dale Friesen runs his "Dice Friends" campaigns. In fact, he gives his players options on the outcomes.
I will say some of the most fun and memorable moments in D&D and other tabletop games I've played happened when one character failed in a spectacular manner. This isn't always due to dice rolls, though bad rolling can certainly exacerbate bad decisions. I find this works best when the character is then put in a position that they or the rest of the party have to really step up their game to solve.
Though also one of my favorite moments was still in a Pathfinder game where I punched out a soldier who, while surprised to see us, was not on guard, immediately after I uttered the line "You know, I really should have come up with a plan."
In our D&D session, we had a "No, and" moment. My character wanted to look around in a tavern whether she could see her other team members, but I rolled a 1. So, she stared at and into the bread that was on a nearby table, and decided that it was the most beautiful bread she had ever seen. Now, my character wants to become a baker, in order to make even better bread than in the tavern, and steals every bakery recipe in sight xD
53 seconds in but I have to say this:
If your always-bored paladin is getting exasperated at your hyperactive bard's obsession with picking up rocks, then you're winning.
One learns from failures more than successes and the little wins keep you going to make more of both.
Leave the world a better place than you found it and cherish both wins and losses.
I really like all of the table top episodes! Hopefully, a lot more are in the pipeline.
Roleplaying games, letting you when and lose at the same time. Certainly leads to some memorable outcomes.
Always brightens up my Wednesday to see this notification. Hype for the jam next month!
No, but:
DnD, we accidentally stumbled into a den of harpies when they were out. While fumbling about looking for loot, they came back.
At first I thought we'll have to fight them, but then we managed to convince them to let us go if they get to "play" with one of our party members.
"Failing forward" just seems like a description of my life
Our bard once missed a a fleeing bandit with a molotov cocktail, which just so happened to hit the mayor's home.
Every attempt at extinguishing the spreading fire just made it worse, such as using his acid breath to try to destroy the flaming parts.
The mayor came outside, so of course he blamed the bandits.
Natural 1, but he luckily had one Inspiration left to reroll the dice.
"They went too far this time", the mayor yelled as he lead the town to revolt against the remaining bandits.
The town then held a party for our help.
Quite a neat concept! It's really good to see a larger granularity of success / failure states being used in RPGs. A lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games seem to go for "Success, but", but mostly framing those as "Success at a cost".
The Genesys System by Fantasyflight Games has a more elaborate way to generate those situations by using proprietary dice (modified from what they use in their Star Wars RPG), if you're interested.
These 6 outcomes aren't the only factor to consider. One thing I appreciate about dnd 3.x is the fact that check results tell you how good you did regardless of success or failure, and that can be used in narrating the outcome. For example, if the number you need to beat is 25, but you only got a 21, that is still good enough to be a truly masterful display of skill despite not being good enough to succeed.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I really do love that dnd does this.
I've had a No And (or possibly No But, though it definitely looked like we were screwed), become a Yes And. It's my favorite D&D story.
You guys should talk about Blades in the Dark system's "success with cost" (yes but) or Fantasy flights Boost/threat + triumph/catastrophe system that run parallel to its successful system for checks
Recently had a one off Pathfinder session where we were graduating dragon hunters on our way to bag each our first kill. After some bumbling around on the way, with some standard encounters and a clever talk out of getting us selves into a tough midway battle, we finally reached the layer.
We surveyed our surroundings engaged our young unfortunate prey, had a tough, even close fight and it was all a success.
But the town who hired us had stated one dragon menace and we killed 4 young ones... Hey, even after the town was iced halfway to oblivion by the raging mother, we did manage to sort off sort out a sub plot evolving some corrupt bards guild who had managed to use the dragon.
Oh and as we ended we all decided our heroes would go clear out the layer for abandoned loot in pursuit of the mother and then go correct our failure, by gaining some levels and getting that mother.
Great example of what you talking about here is SPIRE - THE CITY MUST FALL.
Amazing game with brilliant and slick system.
this is the concept that makes me like tabletop rpgs so much cause life is much the same way it isn't just victory or defeat you can have a victory not be as good or feel bad depending how you get there and defeat can still yield a good result or an unexpected one that turns out to be better than if you had gotten that victory
I had a very funny and memorable "No, but..." moment in Breath of the Wild.
I needed to cross a ravine but my max stamina was too low to glide down and climb back up. I put a remote bomb at the edge and took a running start, detonating it behind me to blow myself across...it failed spectacularly and sent me flying sideways instead of forward and bringing my health bar to half a heart. BUT...the blast just so happened to knock down a nearby tree which fell PERFECTLY across the gap creating a bridge over the ravine I had just tried to Ziggs my way past.
When you play Scion: Hero, you are encouraged to take a stunt. If you describe and incredible action you get bonus dice to make your action.
As it turns out the real winning was the friends we made along the way
The one system among dozens I tried over the years got the "Yes/No/Yes, and/Yes, but/No, and/No, but" concept the best, while also adding 'also, great news' and 'also, awful news' to the mix was Genesys RPG by Fantasy Flight Games, and the Star Wars FFG line of games they did previously. Yes, it uses those weird proprietary dice with icons on thems instead of numbers. But the way story comes out of every single roll is superb; the dice are true MVP of this game.
A player in my recent game tried looting some guns from the fallen enemies without the party noticing. He rolled a 'success with disadvantage' result on his dice, stealing a high-caliber revolver unnoticed... But stuck it into his boot in a way that made the gun trigger when pulled out, shooting himself in the foot when trying to sell the stolen stuff.
On the other hand, another player was disassembling a shield-projecting alien drone they managed to secure during the operation, trying to repurpose all of it's internals for use in their tech. He rolled 'Failure, Advantage and Ruin' result... So the drone exploded once the shield generator was taken out. Poor guy got some burns, and not much was left of the drone... But hey, he got a shield generator!
Or, in a social encounter at a local nobility gathering, one of the PCs got into a verbal duel with the host. Trying to get the host distracted, while some members of the party were sneaking behind the curtain, he went into a rant about issues he personally took with the reception; rolled 'sucess with advantage' - and as a result, not only captured the host's attention, but found one of their weaknesses - poor ability to handle critique, which he immediately used to manipulate them and defame the host in front of other guests, before making their escape with the stolen goods.
Yeah, Genesys made my life as a GM, especially making memorable encounters with unique results, super-duper easy.
This is the very same concept I put into and use with my core system "Go Beyond". A great example of a "Yes but" is when my players snuck into the capital of the country there faction was at war with to assassinate it's leader. For this assassination attempt, they used a magical staff they procured from a lesser god in an earlier adventure. This staff, when used, turned anything it was shot at into another random entity (heavily based on the wabbajack from the elder scroll's games). When they used it, I would do two dice roll's. One roll determined if the entity would be stronger or weaker then the original one the spell was cast on. The other roll would determine how much stronger or weaker this new entity was compared to the original.
They decided to use the staff on a guard patrolling the wall's of the palace where there target was located. They planned to do this until either they got a monster strong enough to destroy the palace/kill there target, or until they were discovered and would be forced to flee. On the first attempt I rolled an 18 for the first roll and a 20 for the second roll. They started laughing and cheering. seeing only success in there mission and assuming the monster summoned would be plenty strong to complete there mission for them. They were right
but... they didn't know I had a rule for this item. If the first roll was an 18 or over and the second roll was a 20 then they would summon atleast one of the four cataclysms. The cataclysms, in my worlds lore, were gigantic monsters that had brought about full societal collapse twice before in the worlds history. They were, to pull from my world lore, “Apa’s The Devour” a great maw of teeth and many tentacles for tongues with thousands of small legs that tower over even the colossus of Rhoads’s.“Teras The Night Maker” a great black dragon with rotting flesh whose wings block out the very sun and whose breath removes the souls of mortals. “Masakh The Maddening” a beast the size of a mountain in the shape of a man covered in grey wrappings. Set in his torso is a great eye as large as Vatican square and all who fall beneath its gaze set upon each-other in fits of murderous rage. Finally, “Daryaye The Air Shatterer” A mix between a giant lizard and a kraken. It’s Roar can be heard on the other side of the world and it bellows from the gills on its sides.
My players had the misfortune of summoning Masakh the Maddening on top of the palace of the emperor they were trying to kill; Which, by the way, was in the middle of the most heavily populated city on the planet. When Masakh opened his great eye everyone in the city excluding my players (they had a cursed amulet that protected them) turned on each other with horrible murderous intent. The streets ran with blood and my players had to fight there way out of a city which was tearing itself apart and trying to tear them apart.
They made it out, but just barely, and as they ran away from the city they saw Apas the Devour rise from the earth and begin devouring the city. I then informed them that when one cataclysm awakens so do the others in due time, and that when all are awakened they begin the process of a "collapse" which is the matriculate destruction of organized society via the destruction of cities and massive amounts of the population. Basically the end of the world.
So, my players succeeded in assassinating there target, but they inadvertently started the apocalypse. If that's not a "Yes, but..." moment I don't know what is.
Also, if your wondering, my players did succeed in saving the world. Though that's a story for another time.
Sounds like a great metaphor for the game we call life.
Rogue managed to climb his way into an antimagic tower, so he could open the door for the party from the inside.
He opened the door, then walked through it so the door closed behind him...setting the party right back to sqaure 1.
I have a bunch. One of my friends even has a dice with those six options on it for his otherwise diceless games.
Some of my favourites though:
In a whitewolf game, the NPC Werewolf hunter got a big Fail-And. He scored so badly that the GM decreed that the only way he would ever be able to recognize my character as a werewolf was if he literally saw her change
Another whitewolf was a Yes-But, which was purely GM spite. He hadn't wanted the party to stay exploring an area, so when we kept at it, he spawned an NPC who was going to "tell" us something before getting attacked by the big bad, so we were motivated to follow the enemy. The enemy infected the guy with a virus starting in his arm and eating its' way up. The party tried to treat him, but the first player who tried Failed-And'd it, using the future-tech machine and having it mangle the NPC's arm rather than remove the infection. We were all gearing up that the NPC was just going to die when someone raised the point that we were right by a mourge… The first player didn't want to try using their medical skill again after the botch, so I stepped in. Against GM protests I rolled. I got such a critical success he had to grudgingly say that yes, I had successfully exorcised the infection, and reattached a new limb to replace the mangled one… BUT the arm we were able to grab was a big muscled black-skinned one, on a tiny white dude. The NPC was so shocked he wouldn't stop screaming despite the fact he wouldn't be dying anymore, and eventually passed out - no more information from him!
And last, but not least, or even mine, we must consider the tale of Mr. Bearington. The D&D character who was simply a bear with max in Bluff and a manservant.
The only character to perceive the bear was considered to be a madman, as he ran around screaming that the gruff, charming gentleman was just an ordinary bear.
Blades in the Dark, a steampunk crime game, has an built-in mechanic for a "mixed success" which can lead to harm, reduced effect, or an added complication.
At one point it lead one of the players I was running to angle a lightning pylon at a giant sea monster closing in on their ship, by conducting the current through his own frickin' body!
This is less "quest objective" and more "random messing around", but a few of our party members were trying to get the dolphins by their ship to help them fish by playing a "game" where the dolphins flipped fish into the air and the wizard caught it with Mage Hand. The first time they did this the wizard rolled a natural one, and without missing a beat the DM said, "the dolphin snatches the fish out of the air and says, 'I got it first, I win!'" Not sure if that's a "no, but" or a "no, and" but it turned a fishing experiment into a friendly wizard-dolphin fish-catching competition (the dolphin won two out of three and was very proud of itself)
In addition to "no, but" and "no, and", you can also have "no, and...but", where you failed, and it had further consequences, but something good came out as well, and the same applies to "yes".
Outward is one of the few video game RPGs I've ever seen take the "no, but/and" design fully to heart.
What I got from this video was that there are 6 outcomes, but two outcomes when it comes to the dice. The die may still be a passing or failing roll but there are three courses of events for either outcome, The And, The But, and The Standard.
The Powered by The Apocalypse system really tackles the narrative structure of success and failure in tabletop roleplaying games very very well, and I think the system really deserves a nice good look as less of a new creation, and more of a codification of best practices that good GMs have been doing for a long time
Failing forward is one of my favorite DMing techniques. I find players tend to enjoy a success so much more when something bad happens first, and then they overcome it.
this has got to be my favorite video, at least artwise
Also in Fate: you are actively rewarded for having things go wrong with the fuel necessary to make things go epicly right later.
I was just reading through Fate Core earlier today, nice timing!
Ultimately, whether or not the players win on the whole is determined by two factors:
1. How much fun did everyone have
2. How good was the story which was told
This is a great video. Thank you Extra Team! I have been performing Improv theater and short form for several years and I have always felt it lent itself to tabletop RPG's of all sorts. Plus, Yes And is a good philosophy of life itself... Within reason.
BTW, will you be at GenCon this week? I would love to see a love panel of yours!
This is where the more advanced and perceptive viewers get to combine this idea with the imagination of last week's episode and realize that winning and losing can be interpreted in video games too. Yes, you won over the heart of that pretty boi on the other side of the chasm of floating platforms, but the best friend character hates you for it, possibly all expressed entirely in happy or sad faces on the characters.
Also, what about "ironic yes" and "ironic no"? You slip past the guard successfully, which was all part of the villain's plan as he turns up smiling on the other side of the door. Or you get caught while opening the door, only for the surprise to startle you into smacking the door into their face.
The Edge of Empire (Genesys) system is great for this. They build the whole system around success and failure, with but/ands. I find it much more narratively dynamic
I am the dungeon master, so I don't have any experiences I remember, but I do have one that was part of the story. So the characters were hunting down a rebel agent in an alley. Yes, they caught him and were able to get some information out of him, but the rebel then managed to trick them to his side and then sent them out on a mercenary expedition for which they won't get any pay and possibly be captured.
It would be great to have a dedicated space of tabletop and RPG in the show, I really like this kind of videos.
I really like the art in this episode.
My ongoing D&D campaign with friends had a situation like this. We ran into a mummy lord in a crypt at low levels during a small quest and had the choice of running, or attempting to incapacitate it. I, the Monk, managed to shove it down a well since the mummy lord rolled very low on the save, and we later found out the well is a straight drop to the underdark and the mummy lord survived the fall, and the mummy lord was a previous lord of netheril and had somehow been unsealed and awakened from his tomb. It was very bad news despite the personal victory of surviving against a mummy lord at such low levels, and our entire campaign has changed due to that one moment. Our entire party has been tasked by several gods, deities, liches, and other very powerful people and creatures to prevent the mummy lord from enacting his plan. Our personal victory became an issue that we only have a limited amount of time to finish before the mummy lord succeeds on his plans and kills many, many people in the process of bringing his kingdom back.
Had a situation that counts as both a win and a loss in my books just last Sunday. We'd called it quits on our previous session just as a planar incursion happened - a bunch of random things of varying strengths - weird tentacle-headed chimera, a couple of displacer beasts, one of Eberron (or was it Ravnica?)'s unique monsters, a pair of nothics, and finally an Illithid introducing itself as the Explorer. However, because of our previous encounter and because of our warlock, he's No-moustache-man.
I proceeded to spend the entire session baiting this illithid, taunting it with intelligence and wisdom save spells, and generally mouthing off to it in character, playing hard to get and staying just out of range.. First time provoked a Telekinesis spell...which had me a little worried because I'm only saving against that on a natural 20. (My bard has 3 respectable stats, 2 decent ones...and the one that telikinesis requires to resist. He drags me over to about 10 feet away from him, but he's out of movement.
Next turn was my mistake. As an eladrin, I have a modified version of misty step, which teleports me 30 feet away. I teleported away, then cast Tasha's hideous laughter. (Knew it wasn't going to work, it was just more bait at this point, since the guy had run out of reinforcements and had 5 other people busy disrupting his planar portal or coming to chop him up.) What I should have done was readied my action to cast dimension door if he got within X feet. But I didn't. The illithid, a beefed up version of the arcanist type, uses telekinesis again to drag me back to him, and proceeds to use one of the modified abilities, and tries to eat my brain. (Normally this action takes a whole turn aside from movement, but the DM is tweaking monsters because 6 man parties have a lot more action economy to fight against.)
It succeeded. The only reason my character isn't dead (short of being reincarnated as a female mountain dwarf, since the DM rolled that d100 for the sake of interest) is because the DM is merciful when he sees a joke available, and decided that the headband of intellect (which sets intelligence to 19) is keeping me from having no mind. At least, that's one option - he let me use inspiration (the DM granted kind, not the bardic kind) to survive with 1hp, and is giving that as a possible in world explanation for my survival (to the player who offered to transfer inspiration over to me to do that, thank you again!)
So win: I kept a pretty powerful boss monster from noticing the battle happening around him until we managed to collapse his planar portal (with the force of a small nuclear bomb). Lose: my characters brain was atomized with the rest of his stomach contents.
This is all advice good storytellers teach others, and I so love the systems that have these tricks built in.
In addition, Remember - if someone comes to you with an idea the "yes, but" is your best answer!
I had this d and d session where I had to stop a group of bad guys, so I throw an explosive at them, but it collapses the floor, I kill the targets but also innocents, now I am marked as a terrorist in this campaign.
In Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG systems, they use a six result scenario and it's built right into the custom dice, which have symbols for success, failure, advantage, and disadvantage using a dice pool system. Thus, in aggregate, you can end up with a success+advantage, success, success+disadvantage, failure+advantage, failure, and failture+disadvantage and the players are encouraged to come up with their advantages.
I really enjoy this system because it encourages players to join in on the storytelling interpretation of dice. There's also a triumph and despair result possible on two dice, which are exactly what they sound like.
Shadowrun has multiple states, like mentioned here. In Shadowrun there are "Success", "Fail", "Glitch", and "Critical Glitch". You can succeed. IE: You pick the lock. You can succeed and still glitch. IE: You pick the lock but set off the alarm. A neutral outcome. IE: You failed to pick the lock. And finally, A critical glitch. IE: You fail to pick the lock and set off the alarm.
The Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight has it in their basic mechanics where you can succeed with threat or fail with advantage. Because the dice cancel out each other but only with certain symbols. Success-Failure, Advantage-Threat. Success and Failure controls the actual check, like if you jump a chasm. Advantage and Threat control other effects. Succeed the jump with threat and you make it but sprain your ankle. Fail the jump with advantage and you fail the jump but catch the cliff wall on the way down. So this mechanic has already been really well explored with the game. It's a shame that so few people ignore the game and its system. The system with no setting is the Genesys system.
Something I have liked to do, particularly to try and break players of the "I can just take 10 and succeed" mentality, is to use "No, but..." as a way to give the players additional rewards. This is often in the form of information they might be able to use at some future point in the story, but it could also be some minor rewards for adding much needed comedic relief to a game. EG: By falling into the moat while attempting to scale an outside wall, the player learns there is a passageway the party could use as an alternative entrance/exit point.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
it's hard to overtake my
satisfation
I love the art on this episode
Not finished with the video yet, but the contemporary rpg “Wolf of Dew” is basically based around intentionally failing forward and succeeding backwards which I think is really interesting.
this video was awesome! 10/10
Zoe makes the best assistant when it comes to playing out examples.
That's why I like systems where different mechanisms are used to calculate success and fumble. Shadowrun for example determines positive outcomes by number of 5s and 6s, You'd roll and negative by 1s.
Yay more tabletop game episodes!!!
During a D&D session yesterday we beat this giant robot wyvern. It was great
I'm amazed he used Vampire as an example of a botched roll (which most TTRPGs have) and not for it's gradual success system. In VtM, you roll several d10s, and each who meets or exceeds the target number is a success. 1 success is marginal (you didn't accomplish the whole task, but didn't fail), 3 successes are a win (you did accomplish what you wanted), and more successes add to your win with more effects (5 successes might mean you did it so well that you finished what you had to do before anyone ever noticing you).
As a Narrator (GM), I really like this mechanic, since it gives you more degrees of succes than just did it or didn't.
Another mechanic I really like is the Cypher System (for Numenera and others), in which the GM never adds things to the story beyond describing the situation at hand for the players and handling the consequences for their actions. However, the GM can make an intrusion (like on a successful attack, saying "actually, you hit it, but your sword broke and didn't do any damage") by giving the affected player 2xp (1xp for her and the other for the player to chose somebody else to give it). Then the player might pay 1 of her own XP ro reject the intrusion and return the 2xp awarded (i.e. "ha! It broke down buf his armor too, and since it was part of his body, it also counts as the damage of the attack").
The interesting part of this mechanic is that the GM only gets to interfere in the story through intrusions, which means giving more XP to the player who then can use them to reject future intrusions (or making her character stronger). But any roll on 1 means, instead of a botch or a critical fumble, that the GM gets one free intrusion. This is, the GM is allowed to say that anything bad happens without giving the player the XP for it. This also means that the player might use 1 of her own XP to reject the 1 and roll again.
Doom and Destiny, an indie RPG Maker game on Steam/was on the Xbox 360's indie store place back when that was a thing took this in an interesting way. The premise is 4 guys being drawn into a fantasy world, and having to eventually confront a man named Destiny, who had challenged Death to a game of DnD, with him as the dungeon master.
Of course, the 4 guys's own dungeon master, who'd been drawn into the world before them, told Death, when Destiny claimed he could not be beaten at the game, and thus would never die, that winning at DnD is something players do the moment they enjoyed it, and Death did enjoy the game.
A fun, simple little game if you ever want to check it out sometime.
I remember running an impromptu one shot with a few friends and the two things everyone remembers is that they accidentally burned the million dollars they were supposed to find and one of them ending up in jail and died trying to escape lol
Thank you guys for this video. It is a great way to think about things, and, also, a great way to look at a sort of snap shot of history of game mechanics development. Different systems put greater or less importance on critical/exceptional successes/failures. One rule as a GM, though, should be: The Dreaded No and.. should not, generally, be lethal (Unless...the PCs are doing something completely insane, like jumping in wingsuits over a building, during a hurricane, planning to use the hurricane winds to break them so they can land on a 20 foot flat section of the roof..)(
DM: So your grand adventure begins, what is your first action?
P: I roll to immediately win.
DM: Very Well..(?)...Here is the legendary 100 sided dice, you must roll a 69 to succeed.
P: K * *Immediately throws dice and lands on 69* *
DM: ...Nice... Well... Who's up for some Smash Bros?
DM/GM: "no, you did not convince your black dragon cousin to lend you a ride, BUT you got your 14th and final draconic sorcerer level by killing a random rat annoying your cousin! now you earn... DRAGON WINGS!?!? huh... cool"
the character was a black Dragonborn fighter 6/sorcerer 14