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Serf posted:seems like a super easy fix to me, which is just called having a conversation about expectations like adults before the game starts or having a basic grasp of how entertaining stories and drama function yea this is the main answer, though. If you genuinely have a group who is just spending their session sparring and ignoring the main story to try to grind exp in a loving tabletop game that's when you as the gm have to go 'ok guys you get that's not how this actually works right? We're not just gonna sit around and spend all night going 'I spar'." I've had a guy in a group who was kiiiinda like that, he was used to MMOs and all and figured he needed to be trying to 'overlevel' for big fights and all that. We fixed that by just saying 'oh, nah that's not how this works, in a tabletop game the whole thing is the GM can balance encounters for the group so you don't need to worry about meeting some arbitrary level' and that was that.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:42
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hyphz posted:Well, if inconsequential failure generates XP, then the player can argue their PC goes off and spars or whatever until they have max XP. Which is awkward to argue against because it’s how people actually do learn in a world where you learn from failure. This is the same, indirectly, if inconsequential actions aren’t rolled. I agree that "long-term experience gain" doesn't seem like a good idea for something to give on a failure as a consolation prize if you're not giving it on success, but on the other hand you're the first one who brought it up as an idea in this conversation so maybe just don't do that and instead do something like what was actually mentioned (giving auto-20 tokens for 1's).
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Feb 14, 2019 16:43
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Mario Rabbids seems like it has the best approach in this regards, at least for combat, but some of it could probably be applied to general skill checks and dungeon progression. While every character has a ranged weapon, they also have dash attacks and localized aoe effects that can add a little extra damage. These won't replace weapon attacks, but they can kill an enemy a whole turn earlier if used and maximized properly. In addition, it has a time li it on each map. You don't fail the mission if you exceed the time limit, but you don't get extra rewards that you may have. Finally, death is undone at the end of a combat, and the character merely has reduced health, which can be recovered in between fights with puzzle challenges. This is to say, time sensitivity is important. The medicine you are transporting will expire, your Intel on a magic items cache was also given to a rival party, you recieved an SOS call from a base currently under siege. Most of these won't render a fail state, but diminished reward. Next, risky moves should be worthwhile. Taking a route through the mountains might shave a week off your travel time, if you can survive the harsh conditions, the king is very passionate about his son, so bringing him into the argument could sway it in your favour or lose the king's aide, or remote detonating the bomb won't give you access to it's valuable core: for that you need to disarm it. Finally, the failure of this risk should be recoverable. You might get frostbite from the mountain, be down a nation's support in the war, but now a rival nation can be talked to. That kind of thing. The more likely the PC is to succeed, the more dire the consequences can be, so for the bomb example, death may be on the table, but one of the PCs is trained in bomb defusal so with the proper tools... I hope this helps.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:45
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hyphz posted:That’s possible, but just progression doesn’t make failure not failure. It’s much better to say “I levelled up by killing the evil sorcerer” then “I levelled up by failing to kill the evil sorcerer so that princess got murdered”.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:48
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Moriatti posted:Mario Rabbids seems like it has the best approach in this regards, at least for combat, but some of it could probably be applied to general skill checks and dungeon progression. Mario Rabbids: the best designed game ever, you heard it here first. (this is actually a very good comparison)
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Feb 14, 2019 16:48
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hyphz posted:It’s much better to say “I levelled up by killing the evil sorcerer” then “I levelled up by failing to kill the evil sorcerer so that princess got murdered”. Why? Go ahead and unroll why you think that.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:51
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also yea of all the examples to use 'I pushed myself to improve after failing to save someone I was supposed to' is literally how most comic books start.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:53
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It is genuinely always a little fascinating when we get a glimpse into the twisted ways hyphz seems to think tabletop games actually work in practice
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Feb 14, 2019 16:53
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sexpig by night posted:Mario Rabbids: the best designed game ever, you heard it here first. It might be one of my favourite video games tbh. But I also like how it pushes the player forward (Ninja Gaiden on the NES also does but that's less applicable and more has to do with level and attack design.)
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Feb 14, 2019 16:56
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I'm a gross min-maxer and I've been playing a Dungeon World hack (Stonetop) regularly. The combo of XP for failure and XP for plot/character/setting advancement is A++ good. I've never once felt compelled to do dumb poo poo just to get XP, because there's never been a situation where I'm deciding what to do and XP gives me a better outcome than success. You don't get to roll for sparring because there's nothing on the line. If you start our sparring and get into some RP, absolutely. Don't touch dice if there's nothing interesting in the outcome, imho.
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Feb 14, 2019 16:58
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Moriatti posted:It might be one of my favourite video games tbh. it is a pretty great game honestly. I think most fantasy stories need a hyphz character, though. "After the failure of the king of men to destroy The One Ring we must now turn to the humble hobbits, simple and kindhearted, and pray that they can take up the task more stalwart soldiers have failed" "Yea but maybe you guys should have just done better in the volcano."
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Feb 14, 2019 16:59
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sexpig by night posted:also yea of all the examples to use 'I pushed myself to improve after failing to save someone I was supposed to' is literally how most comic books start. Sure, but this is about risk. “I took a risky approach and failed to save someone important. Dammit, I was too cocky and full of myself. I should be more cautious” is a pretty good plot point for a superhero. But it falls down if the player will then be penalised for actually playing to that plot point (by being more cautious) with reduced advancement in future, because the system is still rewarding risk.
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Feb 14, 2019 17:20
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hyphz posted:Sure, but this is about risk. “I took a risky approach and failed to save someone important. Dammit, I was too cocky and full of myself. I should be more cautious” is a pretty good plot point for a superhero. But it falls down if the player will then be penalised for actually playing to that plot point (by being more cautious) with reduced advancement in future, because the system is still rewarding risk. which is why the system doesn't only reward risk. i'm also not sure how this would look in play, like most things you post, because most games are going to start pushing you into situations where you have to make a roll at some point, which brings on the risk. unless your character literally just sits in the base and never leaves or something
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Feb 14, 2019 17:24
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food court bailiff posted:It is genuinely always a little fascinating when we get a glimpse into the twisted ways hyphz seems to think tabletop games actually work in practice is it? most of it seems reducible to 'but what if the player decides to be an obstinate dickhead about this rule?'
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Feb 14, 2019 17:31
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Brother Entropy posted:is it? most of it seems reducible to 'but what if the player decides to be an obstinate dickhead about this rule?' Yeah but it's all through the lens of someone who, for one reason or another, famously can't find other people to play with. It's interesting to see how these beliefs feed back into that, at least when it's not happening every week.
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Feb 14, 2019 17:32
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If you get XP by failing, then players are going to be on the lookout for opportunities to fail, and the attitude most conducive to XP gain will be one of not caring whether your character succeeds or fails at their aims. You can avoid related metagaming by just giving everyone the same character advancement resources no matter what happens and letting the consequences of success and failure play out in-character.
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Feb 14, 2019 17:39
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I liked strike's take where a failure means you advance on the task but have some twist that will hamper you eventually
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Feb 14, 2019 17:45
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hyphz posted:Sure, but this is about risk. “I took a risky approach and failed to save someone important. Dammit, I was too cocky and full of myself. I should be more cautious” is a pretty good plot point for a superhero. But it falls down if the player will then be penalised for actually playing to that plot point (by being more cautious) with reduced advancement in future, because the system is still rewarding risk. Fortunately for you, failing to understand the argument gives you bonus xp
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Feb 14, 2019 17:50
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Twist is even better in that it just changes the situation, so a police chase suddenly ends with your car careening off a cliff and now you have to attempt to bail before it hits the paid below! Yes/no in general is boring, but "instead of" resulting in more and more complications is always a good time.
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Feb 14, 2019 17:50
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IIRC "Twist" doesn't necessarily mean you win but..., but rather that the situation changes in some way such that you can't just try the exact task again. So, there's no "you fail to pick the lock" without an accompanying "...and your lockpick broke" or "...and the guards have arrived" or even "...and it took you several minutes, so you only have one more chance".
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Feb 14, 2019 17:51
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FactsAreUseless posted:If you wanted to make an RPG that encouraged players to take risks mechanically, what would you do? I'm thinking of something gambling-ish, but obviously you want to be able to weight it in favor of the players. Maybe a trick-taking game? Something that involves clear and easy-to-understand escalating risk and reward, and that can be resolved fairly quickly. Spellbound Kingdoms has a kind of universal safety net in that, so long as certain stats are sufficiently high enough, the in-game reality will adjust itself to prevent them from dying. This is a known fact within the world, and is also something that major antagonists will also have going for them. It's an interesting challenge to overcome, and also a buffer that will protect them against dumb mistakes and encourage risky stunts that would get them one-shot in other games. It's not much of a gambling mechanic, though, unless you're going up against someone capable of lowering your stats and removing this invincibility. On the other hand, those sorts of opponents are usually the ones you're trying to weaken, too. Tenra Bansho Zero encourages you to dip into your reserve of wound boxes when you're dealt damage. Checking off higher-level wound boxes will leave marks, cause you to start bleeding out, or put you at risk of real, permanent death (like SK your PC can't die unless certain conditions are met), but you get bonus dice to add to any rolls when you check those wound boxes. Technoir has an interesting mechanic where all the PCs start with Push dice they can add to rolls, but when they use those Push dice, they get moved into the GM's pool. The GM can then start adding those Push dice to their rolls against PCs, which passes the Push dice back to the PC again. It's an interesting form of risk/reward, because the PCs control how fast the risk escalates for them.
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Feb 14, 2019 18:03
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Brother Entropy posted:is it? most of it seems reducible to 'but what if the player decides to be an obstinate dickhead about this rule?' This is valuable from a design perspective because some player somewhere in the world is going to shove their head up their rear end. It’s not as valuable from a GMing perspective because you know what to do if it happens at your table.
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Feb 14, 2019 18:34
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The school of game design where you leave big holes in your rules and just expect the GM to police anyone who tries to walk through them isn't actually good. There's a huge spectrum between, I don't know, making an untrained sleight of hand check to juggle every six seconds and playing as though permanent rewards for transient failures didn't exist in the game rules at all. If you get XP for loving up you're always going to be on the lookout for opportunities to gently caress up, and if you have to finesse things so that they're not distractingly obvious to the GM then that's what you do.
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Feb 14, 2019 18:38
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I think more important than rules in that regard, (though rules are exceedingly important for consistency) is to explain what kind of game those rules are supposed to let you play. Shadowrun can have all the scatter tables and wind variance rules to simulate a firefight that it wants, but if it never tells me, or the players, that fighting is generally a fail condition, then I'm going to show up to your corporate espionage game with a troll who has a rocket launcher for an arm and a window in his power armor showing off the hammer and sickle on his chest.
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Feb 14, 2019 18:43
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Ferrinus posted:If you get XP for loving up you're always going to be on the lookout for opportunities to gently caress up, and if you have to finesse things so that they're not distractingly obvious to the GM then that's what you do. Playing a game with an attitude like this sounds incredibly tedious
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Feb 14, 2019 18:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Aw, we were counting on you to be the armorer for our urban guerrilla commune. My one weakness! Damnit!
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Feb 14, 2019 18:55
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Plutonis posted:I liked strike's take where a failure means you advance on the task but have some twist that will hamper you eventually
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Feb 14, 2019 18:57
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food court bailiff posted:Yeah but it's all through the lens of someone who, for one reason or another, famously can't find other people to play with. It's interesting to see how these beliefs feed back into that, at least when it's not happening every week. Eh, it’s just like Drawing in FF8. Plenty of tactical gamers I know would be taking ridiculously hard trick shots whenever they had a spare action in combat in order to fail and rack up XP. The fact that failure isn’t the only thing rewarded doesn’t change the fact that the player knows they’d be rewarded for the risks too. If the reward for success is better, risk aversion is unchanged.
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Feb 14, 2019 18:57
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hyphz posted:Eh, it’s just like Drawing in FF8. Plenty of tactical gamers I know would be taking ridiculously hard trick shots whenever they had a spare action in combat in order to fail and rack up XP. i mean, that's just how you get rewarded with tons of hard moves. this doesn't mean you gotta kill PCs, but you should rather thank the players for giving you the opportunity to make their lives way more interesting. also i've still never seen anyone behave with this bizarre obsession with risk aversion. the whole point of an rpg is to let you take risks and do things you don't in real life
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Feb 14, 2019 19:01
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It's not because you don't have infinite time like you do in a game you are playing by yourself. Grinding cannot be a thing when time constraints are unless your GM is a total complete pushover.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:06
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Halloween Jack posted:And you have a chance to learn that Skill! That's on an unskilled crit though. It IS a good incentive for doing unskilled rolls though.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:07
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Do people really play with groups where they don't constantly gently caress themselves over with incredibly dumb and risky plans to get rich quick or similar stuff? Andrast fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 14, 2019 |
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Feb 14, 2019 19:08
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Andrast posted:Playing a game with an attitude like this sounds incredibly tedious Incredibly, and yet, that is what paying people permanent character upgrade points in exchange for their loving up engenders. Like, are people supposed to respond to XP incentives or not? If not, what are the incentives there for? An instructive example here is (I think the first edition of) Seventh Sea. Each session, you'd get some points which you could spend to enhance your dice rolls. But, at the end of each session, unspent points would become XP for use on upgrading your character. So, you could either succeed, or fail and have more XP. What do you think people tended to choose?
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Feb 14, 2019 19:09
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This reminds me of my brother when he was a lot younger, sitting at the table with a character sheet and an open monster manual, grinding his low level guy, by himself, against Taanarii and demons like it accomplishes anything.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:09
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Andrast posted:Do people really play with groups where they don't constantly gently caress themselves over with incredibly dumb an risky plans to get rich quick or similar stuff? every group i've ever played with has constantly been about taking risks and pulling off flashy poo poo, even when there's no actual reward for it. in my Masks game, our Transformed had found their way the control room of a villain's submarine, and when they asked about weapons systems i told them, somewhat jokingly, that one button had been taped over with a label that simply read "CRABS" with no explanation. they immediately pressed the button.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:11
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Ferrinus posted:An instructive example here is (I think the first edition of) Seventh Sea. Each session, you'd get some points which you could spend to enhance your dice rolls. But, at the end of each session, unspent points would become XP for use on upgrading your character. So, you could either succeed, or fail and have more XP. What do you think people tended to choose?
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Feb 14, 2019 19:11
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Ferrinus posted:An instructive example here is (I think the first edition of) Seventh Sea. Each session, you'd get some points which you could spend to enhance your dice rolls. But, at the end of each session, unspent points would become XP for use on upgrading your character. So, you could either succeed, or fail and have more XP. What do you think people tended to choose? this is what we call "bad design"
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Feb 14, 2019 19:12
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Andrast posted:Do people really play with groups where they don't constantly gently caress themselves over with incredibly dumb an risky plans to get rich quick or similar stuff? However, she's the only one who's like this in my group. Everyone else will try things and take stupid risks and so on. But she's the only one who can't handle failing or losing in a game at all. The system doesn't matter, because the problem is her. Any game is going to have failure. It's something you have to just accept. And yeah there are systems that have ways to mitigate consequences or whatever, but ultimately it's something you have to accept. Yeah botching a roll sucks, but it's part of playing the game.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:13
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Halloween Jack posted:The specific technical issue here is not an incentive to gently caress up, but a temporary benefit (that might not work) versus a definite measurable one. Even if spending an awesome point or whatever they were called gave you a guaranteed success on the roll in question, or even a guaranteed win in the scene in question, it's still a transient and subjective benefit versus a concrete and permanent one.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:15
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I have personally, multiple times, used 'the group will get EXP rewards for loving this up' as a way to signal to players that I, the GM, am not going to permanently screw them over if they do the stupid thing and (predictably) don't succeed. I've always had more resistance getting players to do what their character isn't aimed at than at getting them to play cautiously. So having explicit 'you are supposed to take some risks and sometimes gently caress up, and everyone will benefit' systems and signals has been really valuable. Risk-averse players absolutely exist and exp-for-failure has helped encourage them in my experience. E: ferrinus, while I think that's sometimes a useful comparison, literally everything in an RPG is transient and subjective. EXP is not more real than saving an NPC's life.
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Feb 14, 2019 19:17
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