Many Fail States | Running the Game
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- Failing doesn't mean the end of the adventure. It can be the beginning of cinematic drama!
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"Indy's on a Solo adventure..." I see what you did there.
So you could say he was. . . Indy-pendent?
@@IceCavalier Apparently you didn't get the joke. Perhaps you should Chew on it some more.
This has Han on too long
@@erichtolbert2094 At least a Millennium.
Talon Thorne stop falcon around
Jerry killed it with the video clips! I laughed several times at my own video! :D
Also holy shit I spent so much money on Dragon's Lair. First $.50 game!
Killed it by pushing it into a pit, apparently!
@@mcolville SO much money. What a frustrating "game" that was. Gorgeous and evil. I remember dumping so many tokens into it at Chuck-E-Cheese in the 80s.
Just adored those clips. Illustrates the point perfectly; a game entirely made of pass/fail quick-time events.
Praise Joko! ... I mean, Praise Jerry!
Risen from the deep, Matt arrives to deliver us deep knowledge from his travels to the far realms of existence.
Truly a benevolent patron.
A true river to his people
Now I want to make a Warlock with "The Bearded Idiot" as his patron.
@@josephmort4039 blasphemy
@@josephmort4039 That patron you talk about doesn`t hand out power easily, I heard. That power has to be earned the hard way, I heard. Good luck fool! :D
@@TheAlwaysPrepared Really? Because for four years he's been doing exactly that.
“It’s possible he’s rolling one of those old school d20s numbered 1-10 twice...” this has happened to me... can confirm, had a bad night until I realized that.
I loved that little callback to a certain moment during the Chain when O’D was pranked. Bwahahahaha!
I have had this happen to me once.
How do those even work? Is there no way to roll above a 10? Sorry I'm dumb I never used neither heard or seen one
admiral ackbar the ones I used were numbered 0-9 not 1-10. It basically functions as a d10.
@@93techie But then why not just have a d10?
While DMing my daughters and their friend, they managed a series of 1s and 2s for saves and checks at a critical junction. They didn't die, but the warehouse they were investigating burned down, their possible evidence is lost, and they're on the run. Square one. Now they need to find new leads, be rid of their burned clothing evidence, and pursue the leads they did get. Drama.
It's really wholesome to hear about parents playing dnd with their kids, it sounds cringy but really thinking about it I loved it when my dad played videogames with me, even though he hated it and wanted to watch sports it meant the world to me and vice versa when I played sports and went to games with him. what your doing is creating some real memories and I hope your adventures never end.
That sounds so fun! :D
The current group managed to mess up investigating the red brand in LMOP so bad, that the Red Brand abandoned their hideout at the edge of Phandalin, burning it as they left.
GlassStaff has a different staff now... and is the newly elected mayor of Phandalin... and nobody is admitting to voting for him.
Sounds excellent!
"They might give a good speech, but this is not someone you can convince to abandon his way of life and everything he believes in just because some annoying stranger said something clever".
Look to The Master from Fallout. You can only convince him with both evidence of his failure and a good speech over a long and trap ridden dialogue to convince him to not change, but maybe give up. He's not sane, but maybe reasonable with enough evidence
Alright, but what if that speech was actually the ancient art of Talk no Jutsu?
@@enixxe Then I hope they've spoken to each other before and have established the connection. I mean, I'd like some multiple degrees of success too.
Immunity to politics, interesting background feature
@@enixxe D&D has a way for the players to alter an NPCs mind. It's called magic. There are - in any non comedic RPGs - limits to what you can do by just using mundane Persuasion checks. Unless a player had some deep insight that allows them to address the reasons the NPC wants to do what they want to do, there are just going to be things they can't talk NPCs into no matter what they roll.
So, you might be able to persuade a Red Dragon that the people of the local village are more valuable alive than dead.
You can't persuade that same Red Dragon those villagers have an intrinsic worth as human beings (or Halfling beings or whatever). The. Red. Dragon. Does. Not. Care. About. That.
Re: "Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark".
April 1st is coming. I'm just saying.
Yes
Love it!
This is a great reminder that the game doesn't need to have a loser; it just needs interesting situations. I think for a lot of DMs, there is this sense that they are letting their players off easy by not killing their characters for failing, but really, that is just how the game should be played.
Anyway, very excited to see the next one as I have been playing a lot of 1-on-1 DnD, and I am always down for more tips.
Razbuten... in the wild?? Love your channel btw
Well it is gonna depend on DM. You can have a better experience with one not just trying to make you lose. A lot of people talked about how they had bad experience with DM who would like r4p3 the women characters a lot. For women players and male players
My golden rule for TTRPGs: Everyone should strive to make sure that everyone, including the DM, is having as much fun as possible. You accomplish this with a good session zero, communication and respect.
This should had been like your second video of the series. Third at the latest. Best dnd advice on the whole of TH-cam
Kostas Moschovas Yep. Your are absolutely correct! I could have used Matt’s info a long time ago.
In this episode, Matt Colville recreates from scratch the Powered By The Apocalypse style of roleplaying game, including
- Ask the players to describe their actions in fiction ("You can't roll dice to avoid playing")
- Judge whether the player has fictional positioning ("When success is not possible")
- If they do, tell them the stakes and ask them to roll ("It's going to take a lot of work, a lot of negotiation, to change that")
- If they fail, make a GM Move, such as
- Take away their stuff ("You see it tumble into the darkness"),
- Reveal unwelcome information ("It's not a root, it's a vine")
- Offer an opportunity, with or without cost ("You notice there's an old, dead root")
- After every move, ask "What do you do?" ("What do you do?")
Powered By The Apocalypse gaming is like D&D, but these best practices are instead encoded as rules in the game.
dangermunkdelta this is the issue with D&D. You can see these glaring holes in its design (granted these holes are intentional). It doesn’t provide you with mechanics to do anything other than binary pass/fail. I’ve never understood the desire people have to hack D&D to do things that it fundamentally does not do. Rules matter, systems matter. If you find a system is fighting you more than it is helping you, go play a system that doesn’t.
Someone should send Matt a copy of Dungeon World and Masks.
@@alexwillis2381 Matt played Dungeon World... th-cam.com/video/jAVsiWKVBoI/w-d-xo.html
Well stated.
@@Vedexent_ thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43568/roleplaying-games/game-structures-addendum-system-matters
Very relevant post to the topic of systems matter. I really do think systems matter a lot - most people are just only exposed to one type of system that basically do all the same things equally well, so they mistakenly think system doesn't matter at all.
10:37
I would add a fifth attitude:
Hostile
Skeptical
Neutral
Open
Friendly
Being open here means being unconvinced yet positively inclined toward adopting a friendly stance. It is that state of mind you find yourself in on your good days: You might greet a stranger warmly just because you feel good but you are not going to go much out of your way for them unless they win you over first. Even so, you are not tepid like Mr Neutral over there. He takes more convincing.
Having open as a seperate attitude only makes sense if you think of being friendly as being already willing to help someone you like and/or trust.
Frightened would also be on, it gives some benefits of friendly but they may report you, attack if they think it's self defense, and avoid giving you exactly what you want if they can.
I think this is too many. Here’s an example of a simple guard encounter with a successful roll moving one level of five.
- A guard threatens you to leave the building.
- I try to convince him to let us stay. “We need to see the medic and cure our dying friend”. (Roll - success)
- He sees your companion’s condition and believes you. He’s still skeptical of your presence.
- I tell him that we are good friends of the establishment. (Roll - success)
- He believes you. He’s still not convinced that you should get to remain in the building.
- “Please let us through. Our situation is dire.” (Hands the guard 10 gold pieces) (Roll - success)
- “I might be able to help you out, but I’m unsure.”
- (Crying) “Please, sir! Do you not have a brother of your own? Or a sister? A friend? We beg you!” (Roll - success)
- “I’ll look the other way. Go ahead, but be quick. Good luck to your friend.”
I’d be more inclined to have LESS steps when moving through them. Hostile -> Neutral -> Helpful. You can still make as much nuance as you like (they can be hostile and still harmless or passive, be neutral and still skeptical or open, helpful and still not your friend or willing to do something risky).
@@nilsjonsson4446 a successful roll and roleplay combination could raise more than 1 level?
Also in that scenario, I think the guard would be skeptical at the beginning. Those five levels are actually in the rules for older editions. Hostile->Unfriendly->Neutral->Friendly->Helpful. You're some weirdos on the doorstep, the guard is unfriendly, but isn't openly attacking.
In most places yes, but guards hostile towards intruders is nothing strange in RPGs. Hostile also doesn’t necessarily mean attacking.
I’m all for nuance, but my point was that 4 steps is too much when moving one step at a time, as suggested in the video. That can be solved in numerous ways, including moving several steps at once.
Man alive! Matt Colville's... alive.
COLVILLE'S ALIVE!
The most relevant statement I’ve heard in a while.. “D&D is not a war game.”
D&D is surely a combat-focused game. But it's not a fighting game. I absolutely agree with matt
True haha oh and by the way buy my war game supplement for 5e
D&D is a monster-fighting game.
Matthew Colville and sometimes, the monsters just happen to be human(oid)! XD
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 Anyone who's read/watched/played the Witcher knows that humans are the real monsters. (also applicable to anyone who has read history/the news)
We start combat with an initiative roll, so maybe we should start negotiations with an insight check. On a good roll, players would learn the NPC's attitude toward them, their values, and what they could hope to achieve by negotiating. On a bad roll, some of that information would be missing or even wrong!
D&D kind of originally had this, with the Reaction Check. You rolled 2d6+Modifiers;
2 -- Immediate attack
3-5 -- Hostile, possible attack
6-8 -- Uncertain, monster confused
9-11 -- No attack, monster leaves or considers offers
12 -- Enthusiastic friendship
Modifiers are things like Charisma Modifier, roleplay and the on-going narrative (Moldvay Basic has an example where the players name drop an NPC, and speak the hobgoblins native tongue to get +2).
I think it should be fairly obvious to the player when the other guy realy hates them. I mean the only reason someone do hate them but dont want them to know that is when is is up for something. And then they shouldn't just get an insight check.
Also its kind of the players job to pay attention. So I would always have a player ask for a roll or at least assuming that is odd.
I love this idea
That’s a cool thought
I really like this!
Failing forward and fail states are some of my favorite house mechanics, even if they can be hard to implement.
It's one thing that I like about Pathfinder 2, they have fail states for almost every check hard-coded in, and coach DMs how to make their own.
This is really interesting, would you be so kind to tell me what part of the pathfinder 2 rulesbook this is?. I would very much like to read them.
@@luccagiovani Page 10 of the CRB. Basically, if you beat the DC, that's a success. If you beat it by 10 or more, that's a crit success. Failing by 10 or more is a crit fail. Getting a nat 20 also raises the success by one level (so if you *cannot* beat a DC even with a nat 20, getting a nat 20 might still bump you from a failure to a success.)
Spells, effects, and a lot of skills have different failure states baked in. Like one spell might still slow a target a little bit if the target succeeds the save, while it might immobilize them on a failure, or completely restrain them on a crit fail. It helps show the general mindset that makes it a lot easier to have mixed successes or not-total-failure when players take actions.
Reminds me of having different DCs for skill checks. DC 15 to leap over the pit. DC 12 to miss and grab the ledge. DC 10 to fall into the pit but grasp a rock 10 feet down. DC 5 to plummet 30 feet and take a bunch of damage.
Charles Krause enhanced success on a pit may be making it easier for other players to get over it, such as finding a plank to walk across or having a secure point for a rope to be tied to and climbed across
@@Vedexent_ DC 20 you do a sweet flip!
@@piemaniac9410 You're kind of getting things backwards here.
It's the player's job to declare the action (an intention and an approach). It's the DM's job to adjudicate it (success and consequences).
If the player has stated that their character is taking a run-up and trying to jump the pit, there is no way that action can result in them building a makeshift bridge.
DC 1 to trip and hurt you're knee 10 ft away from the ledge you started on.
What happens if they fail the DC5 check and don't plummet 30 feet?
One of MCs greatest tools of education is turning literally any scenario in adventure films into a DND scenario and breaking it down roll by roll.
YOU ARE ALIVE.
@@Vedexent_ Bless you.
Matt: "This isn't some guy who googled how to summon a demon and it's now lunch and he is the leader of a cult"
Me *Penning my players next starfinder adventure* "or IS HE 😈"
Indeed! Just change it from "summon a demon and it's now lunch and he is the leader of a cult" to "summon a demon and he's now lunch and it is the leader of a cult"" and we find the truth of the matter.
Obviously he never watched Blood Ties. :)
My first thought was to have a bunch of venomous spiders at the bottom of the pit, whose poison has nasty status effect riders. However, there's also treasure down there. Maybe a healing potion. Maybe a potion that could undo ONE instance of the spiders status effects. Are multiple party members effected? Did some fall? Are they split? Who gets the cure? What was that noise from above?
That actually reminds me of one of my favorite mechanics from Call of Cthulhu: Pushed Rolls. Basically in the event of a failed roll, the player can "push" the roll and reroll their result, but the consequences for failing a pushed roll are much higher than what you'd normally get out of a normal attempt. To give a few examples...
A player wants to climb a wall, but fails their athletics check: "You make it several feet up the wall, but you've hit a snag: The only handhold you can see to continue your climb is just out of your reach, You'll have to jump for it."
A player fails a stealth check while trying to hide from a patrolling enemy: "A twig snaps under your shoe and the guard seems like he heard it: If you retreat now, he won't spot you... or if you stay really still maybe he'll just pass you by..."
I like working like this because it puts the decision into the player's hands rather than putting them into a position where there really only seems to be one option to move forward: If a player is just barely hanging onto the ledge, they really can't do anything else but try to pull themselves up... but if they have an option to turn back, that creates the "do i - don't i" conflict in the player that can be just as tense as the character being in immediate danger but only having one way forward.
My favorite DND memory as a DM was when my friends rouge failed he way through infiltrating a orc camp. After about 15 rolls later he was tied up in a pit with a bunch of confused orcs starring at him. The whole party was in hysterics and the story lives on in our friend group to this day.
Where have you been?! I've been jonesing for a "running the game" video! Finally, THANK YOU!
watch his twitch streams. seriously interesting, plus there's modular synths
As a new DM I struggle with alternatives in the heat of the moment. Thinking this way has opened a whole new world to me. Not every roll is pass/fail. I love that. Extremely helpful video for me!
Other important bit: Sometimes remove problems on failure. It REALLY sets players on edge.
Like for his ~9:00 example, if the player fails the stealth roll and the guard just starts walking away. Maybe you were just removing the guard because he was spooked or had to use the privy. But the players sometimes panic, which introduces tension even though you removed a problem.
One related thing I've learned mostly from playing Blades in the Dark is that if you can't reasonably give the PCs another chance (Indy's consequences in the scene were decent enough but they all amounted to just second chances to accomplish the same goal of reaching the far side of the pit), the next best thing is often to have their failure create enough upheaval to the scenario that their objectives or options change. Like, if they fail to pick a lock maybe a guard rounds the corner and spots them. Sure, now they are (or are at least very close to) spotted and have the whole security team converging on their location, but this also presents new options. Maybe they can flash back and say they bribed this guard to help them. Maybe they kill the guard and they can take his keys. Maybe now that stealth has failed the Leech is just gonna take a demolition charge and blow the door off its hinges. Even if they can't think of any way to proceed, at least now they're in danger, and if you play it well enough they might feel relieved just to get out alive and uncaptured. Or maybe someone can somehow pin the blame on a rival faction and put their enemies at odds. Any of those options is going to be a hell of a lot more fun than staring at a locked door twiddling their thumbs because picking the lock was their only way forward.
I recently ran a game of Blades in the Dark for my friday DnD group. As their DM, I'm always looking for ways to make things interesting and in Blades they use a mechanic called Clocks. These are used to count down the time until something happens. For example, they roll to open a door quietly while a guard is around the corner. They fail the roll. You tell the players you're starting a 4 tick clock for the guard discovers them. Now, every check they make can either take a tick off the clock or add onto it.
Another instance I've found multiple fail states useful is navigating an unfamiliar city. Will the PCs find the location they're looking for? Yes, eventually. But if they fail to recall from memory where to go (survival check), they'll have to look for street signs (investigation check). If they can't locate appropriate street signs or make sense of them, they'll have to ask some locals for directions (persuasion check). Each failed check means they arrive at their destination later and later, meaning less time to do other things, or perhaps more times for the secret evil cult to fortify their position.
I love the choice of Dragon's Lair for the animation of binary live/die. Classic
I’m so excited for the 1-on-1 video coming up. I’ve done a little of that with my husband but it was soooo hard. It doesn’t help that we’re both fairly new to DnD and that he doesn’t feel like he can be creative. I know he’s got it in him, but that mental block - oof.
Oh my goodness.... The concept of this video is stupidly simple, but my world is turned completely upside down! This introduces a whole new layer of depth to my DMing and I think it'll profoundly enhance my players' experience! Thanks once again Matt!
One of my homebrew rule of social combat is to place a d4 on the table and explain that 4 is a positive body language and 1 being angry or dismissive and change it depends on character reactions towards the Npc. This helps players have a understanding of the npc around them. Your right how many players keep asking questions until they tell them something and it kill to much time at the table.
I am constantly mining and remining these videos for help. The most recent bit of advice that proved useful was his recommendation to “put your bad guy in front of the party when they are still to weak to do anything about it”. Did that last session with very dramatic results. This video promises to be worth researching multiple times as well
i actually learned this from a game makers toolkit video!
he was talking about devs letting players play past their mistakes, that there should be a failure spectrum, where failing something doesnt immediately doom you but just sets you back/makes it harder to achieve the thing next time
GMT is a great place to learn about game design, which greatly applies to TTRPGs
As someone with a really low charisma score in real life, I struggle to be persuasive in the ways my characters tend to be, and that can be frustrating.
Something that could be helpful is stating the points your character would use rather than trying to actually perform the dialogue yourself (reminding the group your character is much more persuasive than yourself)
What's cool about D&D is that it can actually help improve your charisma in real life. Being a strong barbarian character won't make you stronger, but practicing social encounters in a role play setting can make you better at socializing.
If you’re like me, closemouthed and shy, a helpful exercise can be writing out things you wish your character would have said, things you imagine they might say at some point, and phrases they would typically use in many situations, and then practice saying them out loud. Not mainly as a way to memorize the words, but to become more comfortable speaking at all. I’ve been so taciturn, I one day realized just making sounds come out through my throat and mouth, across the tongue and past my lips, had become a real obstacle. (This method does include the bonus of getting to know the character a little better; and to write hypothetical dialogue, while a very different practice from improvising, does in time aid the improvisation by sneaking into your natural vocabulary, becoming a foundation of words and phrases to play with.)
This entire series should be a part of a Dm corpus of works, a canon. Pass it down from generation to generation to be built upon
Id also consider the fail with cost approach. Ive been playing mouseguard a lot. When characters fail you either complicate the stituation, or let them succeed but they take conditions. I dont know how well it translate into dnd though
He does talk about this in-video
The entire video is about exactly this
this sounds extremely similar to something called "Narrative-Based Failure" in the Cogent System.
The example they give is someone attempting to climb a wall to sneak into a castle.
They failed the Grapple Check to climb it, but they still made it to the top.
Only, when they got there, there was a guard waiting for them.
Huzzah!
Great video! Lots of good stuff here for DMs to implement in their games to create a better a experience. A note on the "Negotiating with the BBEG" part of the vid :
Fallout 2 was a videogame that had an end boss that you could negotiate with and convince the error of their ways, but to do it you had to acquire hard to reach information/evidence to present to them and have high stats (roll well) when persuading him.
So while yes, 90% of the time I agree with you in that regard (and 100% with the general principle that not everything can be done with a dice roll and not everything is possible), sometimes, if the players work with the game and shift their focus from "We must stop the bad guy" to "We must make the bad guy see the light", if they put in the work and they truly seem invested in that approach, then giving the opportunity to do the seemingly impossible, to make it within reach, not guaranteed, but just possible where previously it wasn't, can be pretty great.
But yeah, if your players walk into the Death Cultist Pit and there and then decide to try and convince these guys that "Demons are, like, bad news man", well, that probably shouldn't work. :)
But I understand what you're going for. Obviously there's an exception to everything, but this was just something cool I saw in a videogame that I thought was relevant (if just for the sake of being cool) and wanted to share.
"some TH-cam videos by a bearded idiot..." You're amazing Matt.
I rewatch your videos often and every time I learn something new and get better as a DM. Thanks
Nice Matt. Thanks for putting to words something I want to do more consistently. Your videos are helping me and my players have more fun. Thanks so much.
I feel I did this unintentionally last sess and Im glad Im refreshing myself. Players both cast out thier counterspells, one failed, other succeeded in a story event I planned that I wanted to gove opportunity to upset. NPC who was set to die then was just gravely injured. The NPC still died but he had to detach his leg to get free quickly, which theyre going to use to try and resurrect him
I started running solo games for my dnd group and it is some of the best advice I've gotten. Thanks Matt!
As a new GM, I find myself wanting the players to role play more during combat, so I bake more goals and side threads into combat so they have the opportunity to win other ways. But I realized today, the players often need more incentive to do something other than attack, because it is their PC that takes damage or could die if they they don’t chose an attack action.
11:53 I think for this bit it’s good to remember Inglorious Bastards - you can’t negotiate with a villain like Hitler, a mad man who is in too deep, but you can negotiate with the likes of Hans Landa
Yes! New Matt Colville video! Always look forward to these
OH THANK THE SAINTS!!! An new Running the Game Vid. Amen!
That mental image you've given me of 'bad guys waiting for their turn' made me laugh
Matt encouraged me to run a single player session and we already made the character, now im just waiting for that next video!
This is good advice. As you said, failing forward is nice but kind of vague. Multiple fail states lead to plenty of opportunities for the DM to up the tension while giving the PCs plenty of chances to succeed. I typically take the multiple fail states approach to social encounters and it works great. Awful rolls are still basically failures and amazing rolls are a full success but there is a lot of gray area in between. The NPC may be swayed but the party may still need to sway them with coin, more information, etc.
It is really an important concept to grasp and also adds to the idea of many ways to solve a conflict, not just rolling once and that's the whole thing.
P.S. missed more Matt videos as much as I love the boardgames' ones. But I feel much more motivated to a new session after this 1 on 1 videos
Regarding those last points, I think convincing a big bad evil guy should sometimes be an option, but not in the "I roll 3 consecutive persuasion rolls" kind of way. If an evil highpriest is at the point of confrontation it's probably already too late. A fanatic of a god of destruction or undeath is one of the kind of guys that are probably not prone to falling into doubt about their mission, especially when they are on the cusp of reaching their goal. However, if there is a way to cast doubt about the mission before a final confrontation, if the villain is 3 dimensional enough to have other things that they care about then I think rewarding the players for discovering it and engaging with it to a point where they can make a case could be really amazing.
And of course this doesn't work with every type of villain, I'm talking about the reluctant kind of villain, like someone that went mad over their lost lover so they are moving heaven and earth to get them back no matter the cost. If the motivation of the villain is something that can be engaged with or argued with for some characters there might be a way to turn them away - of course that is the point where they realize they are too far gone in a way and dramatically selfdestruct to stop what they set into motion or whatever sort of twist you want to throw in there. A good example of this kind of villain is the master in Fallout 1. His goal is in his mind a noble one, and when the player shows him that his plan does not work in the sense he wants it to he falls apart. The player could've just stopped him with force but finding out beforehand what the villain's goal is and why he can't achieve it gives them the option to talk him down. Super dramatic, super rewarding for the player.
In a complicated game like D&D I would imagine this very hard to pull off and it would require a certain set of conditions regarding the type of villain and the type of story you're building, but I would love to do something similar someday.
Very much in agreement with all of this.
I don't run tabletop - yet - but I do run a LARP system or two. And have played a great many of both. Getting across the concept of fail states or failing forward or whatever you want to call it has been the biggest struggle I've faced. The idea that anything other than total success can be fun seems to be anathema to some people. And that's...disheartening. Triumph without sacrifice, highs without lows...it doesn't have anywhere near the same impact.
As a slight aside though, the one thing I find really interesting here is the difference we have with PCs attempting to persuade NPCs. Possibly its because I come from a community that also LARPs, but I have the opposite problem: my lot don't want to use dice rolls at all. They want to hard skill it. Which has it's own problems. No-one is saying only the CHr 18 bard should do the talking, but if someone has genned said bard because they want to play someone charismatic but the fighter who dump statted CHR to min-max his combat stats keeps insisting on doing all the RP and not rolling then...
So I had a fun experience with my players and trying to negotiate with the main villain. She was literally a goddess of suffering and fear. They tried to talk to her and nothing. They eventually found a way to literally replace a god with another person and turn her human. Only then did they get to talk her down from her nature and she became a (reluctant) ally to the party. I absolutely agree with not being able to succeed at everything in a brute force sort of way. It encourages players to actually really think about how they want to tackle a challenge instead of just trying to talk their way out of it. For the sake of the story and the gameplay, it can also absolutely be necessary to just say "no, you can't do that" so long as you let your players know what their limits are. If you can let them know before they even start the campaign, that's bonus points.
My buddies dad did the die thing to us during our first ever one-shot with his group. We were maybe 12 years old, and his dad and his buddies played since AD&D 2e.
End boss in one of my current games can be negotiated with, not going to give up on his ultimate goals but he will give ground and even agree to certain limitations to avoid direct conflict with the now level 18 party.
EXACTLY, D&D is cinematic not competitive, it can be both but it is always cinematic.
That is why it lends itself to replays, why people look at other people's sessions and why there are even markets for it.
Why Lodoss became an anime etc. IT'S INTERACTIVE BUT ITS MEANT TO BE ENTERTAINMENT AT ITS PUREST FORM, that is storytelling.
This....is.....brilliant I am a new DM and NEVER thought about that. Thank you!
Now I want to run a game where the "Bad Guy" is just some guy who recently Googled "How to Summon a Demon Lord"
Awesome video. Love the idea of fails leading to further drama. They don't lose, just make the game more interesting
I've found myself doing this kind of thing just to avoid killing PCs unceremoniously, and I've definitely felt the "why are we even doing this if they can't fail" feeling. But people keep coming back, so the success with complications must be fun. Thanks for the reframe!
I'm so happy I found this channel. 💓thank you so much for these videos
Thanks Matt, love your content, find so much of it useful, but this in particular really resonates as one of the most useful pieces of advice yet.
I've been playing Blades in the Dark, which has 3 states. Success, success with complication, and failure. Its definitely sharpened my narrative and dramatic chops.
Reminds me of when the party's bard bungled a routine recon mission with a couple of bad rolls. As he faced a few dozen crossbow wielding guards he said "Wait! I can explain. I was sent by the king..." He rolled well on persuasion check so the guards chose to beat him unconscious and capture him rather than ventilate him. In some situations a success is only the lessening of an otherwise deadly situation.
So I've watched almost all of your running the game videos and your otherwise dm related videos and I can honestly say none of them have struck me with such inspiration as this one well worth the wait. I feel like this is something I've always known but never thought to use I actually caught myself saying. I can do that?...wait I can do that!
Conversation hints is what I use passive insight for - if you roll insight, you're asking me a question, which will be answered with a variable degree of accuracy. If you have good passive insight your conversation hint will change from "he looks angry" to "his face got angrier when he heard your accent" - a clue that while this npc is more hostile, it's something you can solve with words and here's a hint
I dont know why, but Matt's voice is what I hear when someone describes a narrator. The same way Morgan Freeman's does.
I love how FATE builds this into the system. The section on skill rolls outright says that a normal failure means succeeding at a minor cost and a critical failure means you ask the player whether they succeed at a major cost or fail.
Also, I'm so happy to see a new video at all. It's been a while, but it was worth the wait.
Thank you thank you,, I've missed these.
Once again, an absolutely amazing instructional video. And once again, I'll probably never remember to do this. :( I wish I could download your videos directly to my brain.
Matt- I appreciate the extra effort you took to include many different kill animations from Dragon's Lair
yes, still-checks are should be so much more than simply: "you can do that" or "you cannot do that."
You fail _and_ something bad happens _but_ there's hope.
Here's a technique you can steal if you're a player who wants to be better at negotiating; use the SPIKES technique. Setting. Perception. Invitation. Knowledge. Emotions. Strategy.
Try to put your negotiation in the Setting that motivates a given NPC the best; In sight of still operating siege engines, for example. Ask the NPC for their Perspective on the situation; Are they hopeful or pessimistic? Then Invite the NPC to ask you, the PC, what the NPC would like to know about the situation that the NPC is in and what their ambitions are; What do they want to walk away with after this negotiation is concluded? Then provide them the Knowledge that they need to make the decision you want them to make. Recognize and empathize with the Emotions that they are volunteering. Then lay out a strategy for how to address what the NPC wants, in the way that you want them to do it.
In my last session, my lizardfolk monk was confronted with a situation in which the temporary ally of the party, a dictator of a small city, was assassinated. So, my character stepped up with another character, a siege engineer and we hailed the militia leader of the city. We had no interest in governing this city, so we knew that this militia leader would do a power grab and a coupe would put the family of the dictator in danger. So I knew we had to move fast and hard.
On top of a tank that our siege engineer had just finished making and a wyvern that nobody realized was actually on our side flying overhead, my lizardfolk monk hailed the militia leader, announced that the dictator was dead and that it was time the militia leader sat down for negotiations. The militia leader shouted back, "I don't think that will be neccesary". At which point, my siege engineer fired an adamantine cannon ball through a building that we happened to know was no longer occupied, while my lizardfolk monk began to have a very aggressive discussion in draconic with the wyvern (about the weather, but it wasn't like the militia leader could tell). Which seemed to convince the militia leader that, given that we still had the dictator's guards under our control, a tank and a wyvern, we were worth negotiating with.
Then I applied SPIKES. The long and short of it was; I elicited from the militia leader that the only reason why the city hadn't been attacked yet was because it was so riddled with crime, so our idea to make the city more lawful would make the city also more attractive to people who think that they could then control the city. I countered that, regardless, the citizens could still be sold into slavery and with most of the ruling gangs eliminated, the enemy could just walk in and enslave people. So, the only choice forward was to crack down and unite the city. We would transition power to the militia leader and the only thing we asked in return was to unite against a common enemy that was threatening the city anyway. Whether or not they actually stand with us is not actually nearly as important as them not blocking any of our efforts.
I got a really big high out of that session. My DM thought the party would be satisfied with getting out alive, rather than masters of the city, but here we are!
I like to add some type of negative effect placed on the PC after failing an objective multiple times in multiple ways. For instance, in the pit scenario you shared, I may have them be frightened for one hour or make a CON save to avoid being frightened. Maybe they'll take damage from a series of failed rolls. The list can go on. That makes the party feel like their actions do matter and Pete won't just let them keep rolling dice until they eventually get there.
Like the progress at a cost concept. This really is very helpful!
This is one way to play role playing games, the type new generations seems to like, it's fine. At the end of the day d&d is somewhere between a real game and make believe, the gauge will differ from group to group.
Myself, I have no interest in a game like that. I dont show up to games to see what the GM cooks up. If there is a pit, as a player I will try to find some way to get over it without the risk of dice rolling, If I cant I will roll and accept the consequences (doesn't have to be death), having the gm search for excuses wil kill my interest pretty quickly.
Hi Matt!,
Just wanted to hi, your an inspiration and have helped to motivate myself into dming my current 3 month thus far campain of curse of straud. Everyones haveing a blast which is much more than what i had hoped, and we still have lots of fuel. Just gotta say your one cool dude.
I wasn't sure/ couldn't believe this was a new video at first. Huzzah!
Regarding rolling, I don't like pass/fail, I prefer range of outcome. Also, don't tell the players how they did, show through action.
DM: Two guards walk down the hallway toward you. What do you do?
Player: I hide behind the statue.
DM: Roll a stealth.
Rolls an 11.
DM: As you hide behind the statue, the two guards walk by. The first guard stops and turns his head in your direction. The second guard asks "what's wrong?" "I thought I saw something."
The first guard walks toward the statue you are hiding behind. After a long moment, the second guard says, "It's a statue". The first guard nods in agreement, and they continue on down the hall.
What I like about this is it builds tension, but it also gives time for the player to decide to change their action. Perhaps the player says, "I attack the first guard." Then it could be a surprise attack for the player.
This makes the player feel the uncertainty the character would in this situation.
I wish I had gotten this kind of advice ~25 years ago when I first started to DM. Great video.
You can negotiate with people in all sorts of situations. Law enforcement has people trained in this field for this exact reason.
Great video as always. Miss you Matt, hope you're healthy and safe.
Apply your own principals. Don't just say it is impossible, apply multiple success states. Tell them the bbeg has decided not to kill them for now. Make them have a plan. Make them go on a quest to show the bbeg that he can and should be redeemed.
Or maybe turn it around, let the bbeg offer them a place in his army, see how far they will commit to the non violent solution.
A great topic, and one that doesn't get as much thought as it should.
Failing forward is a Hallmark of the Fantasy Flight games Star Wars system which is great
When it comes to social skills, I think this comes up a lot. I respect the hell out of the argument that you shouldn't just roll some dice to dispense with a social encounter, but there's danger in that, I think. For a lot of GMs, I worry it becomes an unconscious gate. You must, yourself, come up with a rational and persuasive argument that would, legitimately, persuade the guard. But then you've only earned the ability to roll the dice and have a variable chance of whether to succeed. This quite rightly annoys a lot of players who are not that socially adept or comfortable but have a fantasy of BEING the suave, sophisticated bard. GMs also don't do this with other skills. We don't demand the Barbarian bench press a small weight before allowing them the opportunity to make a strength check, and generally when the players come up with a brilliant plan, we don't make them make an intelligence check and, if they fail, artificially screw up the preparations. In fact, we usually (and should) reward the players for being smart with bonuses.
One thing I've found that helps a surprising amount is to roll the dice, THEN play out the encounter. Shockingly, this relaxes a lot of people. It often gives them a great opportunity to deliberately screw up their argument to match a bad roll (We're the good guys! We totally murdered that necromancer dude!) and it makes sure the GM doesn't unconscious gate even the possibility to making a roll behind being able to perform at the same level as your epic DnD character.
Skill checks DO have a badguy’s turn-the wandering monster/random encounters table!
Also, I love the Dragon’s Lair interjections. XD
You're basically describing what writers refer to as "try-fail cycles". Those are narrative beats that describe failed attempts from the hero that move toward (or away from) but don't achieve success or which achieve partial or flawed success and require further attempts. When people feel frustrated by books or movies with "Mary Sue" heroes who are too perfect and succeed at everything without trying, it's because there aren't enough try-fail cycles. Multiple fail states lets you build try-fail cycles into the stories you're writing together.
Man I'm so happy this got posted, I've missed my Colville Content ™️ lately
Come up with a plan so stupid that it would break verisimilitude. That describes every moment of my group.
Really useful advice since I always struggled to imagine mundane challenges like locked doors or chasms interesting because I viewed them as binary but once you try to find ways to allow failing forward, perhaps with some lasting consequences like: your sword gets damaged in the process or you suffer exhaustion, take damage etc. makes those challenges fun and interesting.
Great video definitely worth the wait!
Also: “You can’t roll dice to avoid playing” 11:00
It’s a hardline approach to tell players they have to make compelling arguments to convince NPCs or be charismatic. Some players aren’t charismatic but they shouldn’t be disqualified from playing a bard with a high charisma score. You wouldn’t ask the player running a barbarian to have good real life fighting skills in order to perform in game. I don’t know what the answer to this dilemma is because I want to be a good storyteller but sometimes I just take someone’s high dice roll and say your character gives a convincing argument and maybe indicate what talking points they use
You are a river to your people... and we're thirsty!
This is so much like an Apocalypse Engine thinking and I love it.
This is great advice, but I think that a good GM also needs to know when to employ this and when to NOT employ this. Sometimes a fail just needs to be a fail.
True. There’s a point at which you start wondering “can I even really fail this or are they just gonna keep having me roll until I succeed?”
Such a fast start, you already have your mouth open on the first frame of the video!
Matt I'm curious, have you played or seen Genesys? its narrative dice are pretty fun for determining failure or success states
I think that's the FFG system? I love it! I loved it from their Warhammer RPG.
I almost could have talked about it in this video to show how combat doesn't have to be "roll and miss, next."
@@mcolville I've been listening to a podcast of a group playing the Masks RPG and it has partial success/failure mechanics which I think achieves a similar end, sepecially when it's weilded by a DM willing to use it. The idea of a spectrum of failure and success states as determined by a check will always be more satisfying than a binary pass/fail.
@Matt Roberts Update, it's all moved to imprint Edge Studios. So, no R.I.P.
Rhett Rebstock I’ve been tweaking 3.5 (starting to suspect it’ll end up beyond recognition), and I wasn’t familiar with narrative dice until I saw these comments, so I checked it out, and it helped me fill out some blanks I had on a modifier-d6 intended to replace/modify the auto-success/fail-mechanic. I’ll probably be stealing more from the narrative system as I keep tweaking. I’m glad you chose to comment.
Matt, and mostly Jerry, I'm 00:02 into this video and I just want to say that the lighting is 10:10!
I needed to hear this. Thank you sir