Classic Dungeons and Dragons games, and some modern hardcore ones, may end in ‘total party kills’ or ‘wipes.’ Sometimes this is because the characters choose to take on something they really weren’t prepared for or even capable of defeating; sometimes it’s bad planning and sometimes the best possible plan fails because of a couple bad dice rolls.Aside from the gravitas and potential hilarity of these events, not to mention elevating the perceived threat of whatever did the party in, what’s the next step? Start with a new cast of level one characters? There’s a certain appeal to starting over, trying new concepts and tactics. However, I happen to be one of those kinds of players who get rather invested in their characters; their death by arbitrary dice outcomes is an emotional cost that’s anxiety inducing.
I wonder sometimes if this is how George R. R. Martin ended up writing his infamously character-lethal novels; he couldn’t find anyone willing to roleplay tabletop with him again after arbitrarily murdering off everyone’s characters?
It also depends on the conflict system: D&D rolls dice twice per melee attack or offensive spell casting; one could just miss outright, one could hit but then roll very low for damage; or miss a saving throw against a spell. Characters often have enough hit points to survive several attacks. This all combines to make conflicts decided over several rounds of exchanges so the averages tend to even out: you might have missed this turn, but critically hit next turn, and so on.
Other game systems are more abstract in their conflict handling; In a Powered by the Apocalypse game, for example, an entire conflict could be resolved in a single roll, and in PBtA, you either completely fail 45% of the time, succeed ‘at cost’ 27% of the time (you win but get hurt), and perfectly succeed the other 27% of the time (before you take into any modifiers). That’s potentially a lot riding on one roll.
Of course, character death is the extreme example of bad dice luck. Negotiations, investigations, crafting and other ‘systems’ that are determined by dice rolls (or card draws or whatever your resolution mechanics are) can fail at dramatic moments and derail stories and even end campaigns abruptly if not handled well.
Some games already take failure into account, mechanically speaking:
Burning Wheel games, for example, track success and failure on every stat and skill roll. When you reach a certain number of ‘tests’ against your current skill or stat rank, it goes up by one instantly and automatically and your progress of tracking tests starts over again. In Mouse Guard, you need failed tests as well as successful ones to advance.
In the Dragon Ball Z rpg, by R. Talsorian games, characters have an overall Power Level (something characters actually talk and brag about in the fiction, and is also a stat in the RPG mechanics). Comparing this stat to your opponent’s determines how much experience points you gain just for encountering them. Win or lose. This incentivizes challenging characters more powerful than yourself to grow stronger. An excellent example of game mechanics modeling story/world themes.
Aside from the mechanical aspects, most modern Game Master’s guides and ‘how to roleplay’ essays address -to a greater or lesser extent- not letting dice rolls derail a good game or story. However I feel this is often unclear, and information provided a little too late. Mechanics that enforce design goals is more direct, and sometimes a more subtle way to guide a game.
It’s worth also pointing out that succeeding all the time gets boring; the anime One-Punch Man being a wonderful exception; but Saitama’s end solution to his problems is the punchline (pun intended) to the comedy; it’s what leads up to that point that’s the story. Let’s stick a pin in that for later, because it gives me ideas...
So. How do we structure play, mechanics and stories that make failure not only tolerable, but even desirable in some cases?
Failure can be tied to growth, like in Burning Wheel games. BW emphasizes characters challenging themselves (and the failure that comes with that) to get better at things. The point of a Burning Wheel game isn’t always character growth: growth is just the natural outcome of testing one’s abilities. In a game where character death is quite the possibility, however, striving to grow means walking a tight line of challenging your character’s abilities but not going so far as to die from it.
Some games make character death much harder to achieve; in 7thSea 2nd Edition when your character takes their fourth Dramatic Wound they become ‘helpless’ for the rest of the scene. To kill a helpless character requires a special effort on the part of the villain, one that can be easily interrupted by another character. Also, in the genre of 7thSea, proper Villains are often too busy in their schemes to bother with the effort to kill a hero (unless that hero has time and again foiled the Villains plans and royally pissed them off). The fiction of the genre influencing how the game mechanics work, and the mechanics support the genre of the fiction.
A clever GM can make failure lead down alternative and interesting paths when the characters fail to do something. Can’t pick the locks to the dungeon you’re trapped in? Introduce a lazy, corruptible or sympathetic guard to the scene and let the players make another different approach. Let there be an earthquake that damages the structural integrity of their prison. Unfortunately this can lead to too many Deus Ex Machina moments, and really make the characters (and players) feel disempowered.
Now so far we’ve looked into mechanics and characters, but not considered the player in all of this. FUN is had by the players, not necessarily the characters, and defining what’s fun for the players directs us to how to make character failure interesting and entertaining. There’s a strong reliance on the social contract here, with players trusting GM’s to try and make the game entertaining and the GM trusting the players to participate fairly with each other and respect the GM’s role in the game. After all, GM’s are players too, and deserve to have fun at the table as well.
Here’s where having a clear scope of genre and play established between the GM and players is so important. Sure your players characters may have goals, but what are the players definitions and limits on having ‘fun’? What’s fun for one player may be torture for another and knowing that distinction is critical.
Ask yourself: when the character’s metaphorical (and maybe literal) back is against the wall due to circumstances and bad dice luck, what’s the players ideal way out of the situation? Then go with that.
Let us introduce some example player archetypes: the role-player, the storyteller, and the tactician. There are plenty more variants and alternatives to these but for the purposes of demonstration let’s start with these three:
The “Roleplayer” is deep into playing their character and will likely get more out of pushing their characters boundaries than clever tactical decisions or min-maxing their character’s design. When a roleplayer’s character fails at their initial attempt at something, they’re probably going to be more happy to roleplay their way out of the situation than any other method. They will make decisions in character and accept the consequences because “they were acting in character”.
The “Storyteller” player is into what’s best for the drama: With character goals and motivations and natures in mind, they’ll pursue what both tells the best story and advances that narrative, rather than rely on dice or mechanisms.
I’ll give a personal example here. At the climax of a long campaign, my character met their nemesis for a final confrontation. The fate of the kingdom and the fragile treaty holding four cultures together was in the balance.
Now, I have rather terrible dice luck; I prefer to roleplay/storytell, and i didn’t want to trust dice to decide the outcome of this crucial moment. I asked the GM for a sidebar and we talked about how we both wanted the scene to play out. What would satisfy us both. With that in agreement we went back to the table and together told of their epic final duel and how James Covington saved the day and redefined the covenant of Avalon forever after. Not one die was rolled.
Best damn conclusion to a campaign, ever. We still talk about the outcome and the ramifications of how it ended to this day.
The “Tactician” will enjoy gaming the system for the best possible outcome. Their knowledge of the game world, combined with their understanding of the game system will be their way out of the situation. They probably have a greater grasp of the mechanics of the situation than any other player; it’s their preferred playground.
Now these are all generalizations, but they’re useful starting points for conversation between everyone at the table.
This is where we bring Saitama back into the conversation. For those not familiar with the anime/manga One Punch Man, it’s a spoof of the superhero genre where the titular hero can defeat anything with one punch: Underworld demons, city-stomping kaiju, extinction-event sale asteroids, and even rainy days. Each with a single punch. What he can’t do is qualify as an actual superhero, or even hold down a regular job. If One-Punch Man were a role playing game Saitama wouldn’t even have a combat stat or skill: just a trait: “Can defeat anything with one punch.” And it’s his get-out-of-trouble card as well: When all else fails, punch the problem. Perhaps the point is to see how long a situation can go (and how absurd it can become) before Saitama resorts to punching something.
This gives us a framework: For each character define their absolute go-to problem solver. It can be a skill, talent, quirk, whatever. It doesn’t even have to be something intrinsic to the hero and certainly doesn’t have to be something under their direct control: weird and extreme luck; a face and personality that turns the head of even the vilest and most sadistic member of the opposite sex; they will fall head over heals in love or infiltration with the hero (a la Tenchi Muyo and other ‘harem’ anime). Whatever it is, it has to be something the player enjoys. The character may not understand it, or hate when it happens, but in all cases and circumstances, the player must be enthusiastically onboard with it.
I think this process can either be done proactively (“I can always punch my way out of problems”), or on the fly as game is played, or some combination of the two. The important thing in all cases is the earnest conversation about expectations, goals and comfort levels. Don’t force a player who’s not a great in-character talker to roleplay his character fast-talking out of a situation if the player isn’t into it. Don’t expect the roleplayer to know the best combination of dice and character details necessary to game their way out of a tactical nightmare.
In descending order of importance it should be: player FUN, fidelity of character and world next, and implementing mechanical systems last. Another way to look at it is this: Mechanics exist to support and formulate the world and character concepts; world and characters exist to support and enable player fun. Different players have different definitions and limits to fun. So not all characters, world and game mechanics will 'work' for all players. Communication of expectations and deciding what mechanics support those expectations is the framework we want to utilize.
What do you think?
