Failure in games

[Vairelome]

One little failure led to several events that ended up saving the world multiple times over.  It demonstrates that failure can be the road to success, and that by handing out success and never failing at anything ever you're drastically inhibiting what you can do with your story.  It's incredibly single minded, and you're basically railroading yourself.

Problems often arise on the internet (where people are frequently wrong) when a gamer with a successful career in one type of group meets a gamer from a very different and incompatible group, and at least one of the gamers insist that their own way is "correct" and the other guy is "doing it wrong."  Even beyond the arrogance of the message conveyed, it is typical for "explanations" like "you're immature" or "you're incompetent" to follow along as part of the "you're doing it wrong" argument.

So long as everyone in the other guy's group is having fun, who cares?  They may not be doing things the way you would, but that's not important--if you aren't part of the relevant gaming group, your definition of fun is not relevant to that group's collective definition of fun.

And the specter of "you're doing it wrong" raises its head once again.

[OwleIsohos]

I very much enjoy minor setbacks, unexpected complications, twists and turns that throw a wrench into my character's plans.  I enjoy needing to improvise and keep my wits about me if I'm going to succeed.  It makes the ultimate victory much more fun if I had to go through several setbacks to earn it.

Major setbacks - it depends on how major we're talking about, and how much agency I have as a player.  Anything that's going to have a permanent or particularly long term impact on my character, I'd want to be able to talk over with the GM to ensure that any changes to the character are ones I'll enjoy roleplaying.  Moreover, I feel that most if not all major setbacks should come about because of the actions the players have taken, rather than by GM fiat.  I've seen major setbacks handled well, and they've been some of the most fun gaming experiences I've had.  On the other side of the coin, though, major setbacks that have been handled poorly by GMs have been some of the worst.

One of the things I love about the DFRPG is that the rules give the players creative control over both major and minor setbacks in the form of concessions.  It encourages me to take more risks as a player when I know I can always concede the fight and have a hand in choosing how my character loses a conflict, and it basically eliminates my worries about the results of IC failure.

[JDK002]

And the specter of "you're doing it wrong" raises its head once again.

Not so much "you're doing it wrong" as Turing to say that the road to success doesn't have to be a giant blinking neon arrow that always points in the same direction.

Though I will say that if someone seeing failure or setbacks in any way as total failure, and thus not only expects to never fail but would say it's the GMs fault fr putting them in a situation where failure was even possible?  Them yes they are definitly doing it wrong.

[Taran]

I'm used to life and death combats where you have to work for every inch.  Getting the occasional session where you "kick butt" reinforces that your characters are bad-assed.  I've actually, literally, cried out in both joy and frustration depending on how games have gone -  that's how intense things were.

My longest standing DM would lay things out like this:

Here's the world...these mountains are renown for their danger.  If you go there before you're ready, you'll die.(and he would kill us if we went there and weren't ready...or at least give us a solid beating and send us running with our tails between our legs) Other areas would tend to be safer - like populated areas etc...

Our adventures range from easy to challenging depending on the plot.  As we got higher level (D&D, I'm talking about), we'd seek out harder challenges either because the plot lead us there or because we wanted to explore.  We fully knew the dangers, for the most part.

If we survived an encounter because the DM fudged the dice, we'd consider it a "hollow" victory.  So, in general, I want to be challenged and earn victories. 

Of course, in a game like that, you learn when to run away.  I find in most games the PC's always fight until it's too late.  We could usually see failure looming....usually...

Which brings me to the part where I mentionned "frustrating".

There was a little stint of campaigns that died because the challenges were soo close that the dice rolls killed us.  Total Party Kill.  That's the nature of D&D, though.  These were incredibly frustrating because despite our best efforts the dice decided our doom.  (like I said, if the GM fudged the dice we still wouldn't be happy). 

This is where Concessions would have been perfect.  Everything was life or death and I think if we used some kind of concession rule, the campaigns wouldn't have needed to end.  Having the enemy capture you (despite being at -10) and waking up imprisonned at -5 HP's would have allowed us to refocus and change our goals(get our gear and escape, for example) and come back from the loss.

So yeah...I like to know that everything is on the line...but I think there needs to be some alternatives to "your character is dead roll up a new one". 

As long as that concession doesn't feel like a "get out of jail free" card.  The loss still has to hurt, otherwise I'd rather have the GM just kill off the character.

I like it gritty, I guess.

[Taran]

Double-post:

To add to what I just said,

I've also had GM's, that after a few sessions, I realized there was NO WAY to die, regardless of what stupidity happened - all in the name of their perfectly crafted story.  I find that, for the most part, completely boring.  For one campaign it got so bad(not just for me, but the group) that I started entertaining myself by seeing what lengths the GM would go to keep my character alive.

[crusher_bob]

Right but the concession is a group decision so it stands to reason that whatever makes sense in the current scene is how the latter part will play out. Even if the guy kills himself he could have a pack of matches from the hotel he is staying at, or an address scrawled on a piece of paper (both these things being declarations in most cases) just because you failed to have him give you information directly does not mean you have failed to find anything out

No, I'm saying that one way of doing 'success' or 'failure' is to make the fiction layer say whatever you want 'after' the dice determine that result.  And as long as you get what you were after, 'success' can be narrated in whatever way you find interesting.

So, as long as the dice give me victory, the fiction layer can give me a victory in whatever narrative that the players find acceptable, and if the dice give me failure, then my failure also happens in a whatever narrative way people find interesting.

Example:
GM, this fight will end up with you captured by the villain.  The stakes are how much you find out about the villains plan.

So:
1: the characters aren't risking death, even if the in fiction layer of the game says that the villain wants to kill them
2: even a victory by the players here will result in their capture.
3. what the PCs get for winning is finding out about the villains plans, but how their winning actually happens in the fiction layers can be described in whatever way people find entertaining.

This allows things like the fictional layer describing narrow margins of escapes and skin of the teeth victories without needing the dice system to promote the 'you die now!" mathematics that that tends to require.

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Example, in the game, any contest you get into with a black court vampire is going to be a big deal.  They can deal large amounts of damage with a lucky hit, so you may need to have a lot of fate points in reserve to deal with them.  So, if we'd expect the characters to want to avoid fighting them, wherever possible, and prefer to do things like burn down the building they are in and stake anything that manages to crawl into the sunlight.

Bur we, the players, might prefer our characters to get into fights with black court vampires, to show how awesome we are.  But that's a pretty (eventually) lethal thing to do if we the fiction layer drives the game.

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So, how can all this be applied within the scope of a DFRPG game?

You can set the stakes of the contest to be something other than the stakes that appear in the fiction layer.

For example
1 the stakes in the fiction layer are 'the city blows up!'
2 none of the players in interested in 'the city blows up!' outcome

So, if we let the fiction layer drive things, we need to arrange things so that the dice don't allow the city to blow up, because no one wants that.  This can lead to the players being able to crush the end villain like a bug, because eve a 10% chance outcome of 'the city blows up!' in that fight is unacceptable to the players.  They want to keep playing in the city, after all.

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But if we set the 'actual' stakes as something other than 'the city blows up!' then we can have a lot more flexibility in how much chance of 'failure' the dice system allows.

For example, at the end of Fool Moon, the fictional layer says the stakes are "Harry dies horribly" if things go wrong.

But instead, if the set the stakes as something like "How much Marcone respects Harry when this is over" then the players can allow for 'failure' because it doesn't end the game.  After all, there's plenty of interesting stories to tell when Marcone doesn't respect Harry.

[edit]
Some edits for spelling, and stuff.

[Vairelome]

Major setbacks - it depends on how major we're talking about, and how much agency I have as a player.

I also agree with the other stuff you said, but I wanted to repeat this for emphasis.  In my experience, one of the major constant concerns that players have is agency.  It's why one of the common complaints about certain GMs is railroading.  On a meta level, what you usually have is a failure to get everyone on the same page, where the players have bought in to the plotline and the direction the GM is trying to nudge the group appears to be interesting and rewarding.

Though I will say that if someone seeing failure or setbacks in any way as total failure, and thus not only expects to never fail but would say it's the GMs fault fr putting them in a situation where failure was even possible?  Them yes they are definitly doing it wrong.

Not your game; not your business.  You are not the target audience for entertainment for games that you aren't in.  What people find fun in a game is a matter of taste.  So long as laws aren't broken and puppies aren't tortured, it is rude and disrespectful to tell another gaming group that they are having fun wrong.

I find in most games the PC's always fight until it's too late.

Isn't this usually a failure of communication, though?  From what I've seen, a lot of players assume that the DM wouldn't put a challenge in front of them if it was unlikely--or worse, impossible--for them to succeed.  So while the DM is thinking, "I was expecting you guys to run for it two rounds ago!" the players may be thinking, "Man, this is an epic fight, it will be awesome when we finally nail this guy!"  Five minutes later, half the party is dead and everybody is unhappy.

This is where crusher_bob's dice layer vs. fictional layer could be very useful.  The DM can be clear up front that a particular result necessary to the plot will happen, but that good or bad plans and dice rolls can affect several surrounding circumstances that are themselves interesting and worthwhile--the stakes still have to be worth putting in effort.  I think it might be a hard sell, since most groups are very much used to the fictional layer and the dice layer being enmeshed with each other, but the concept sounds intriguing to me.

[crusher_bob]

It also allows you to play for different stakes that those that the fictional layer seems to provide.

Consider a game where the PCs are the knights of the cross.  The game is the events of Death Masks and the stakes are Harry's soul.

So it's possible to play the game, have the events in the fictional layer exactly as they happen in the book, and the only 'variable' part be when happens after Nicodemus throws the coin out the car window.  The outcome at the climatic moment of the adventure rests on the actions taken by an NPC, when none of the PCs are even on screen.  But it's still possible for it to be emotionally satisfying becuse that's what the players have been struggling the whole adventure to determine.  And all the narration with sword fights and plagues and trains and holy relics and stuff, while not entirely unimportant, only described the actual stakes of the adventure in the most roundabout way.

[Lavecki121]

I dont see why you would play it that way but I do understand what you mean. If it works for you I guess, and it does make sense, though I dont think it works as well in this system. I can see doing this in other systems for sure and may very well adopt it but I dont think that fate works with this IMO

[Mr. Death]

Thing is there's a huge difference between failure and Failure. For the most part, yes, Failure--the bad guys win, you die, the world ends, etc.--is going to be a remote possibility. But failures--getting your ass kicked, failing to stop a murder, losing the macguffin to the villains temporarily--should happen reasonably often. Or at the very, very least, the PCs shouldn't be able to win everything right off the bat.

If they must win every fight, then they should start off against goons who can't tell them anything useful. There has to be some reason for them to put in effort rather than just coasting along.

[Wordmaker]

Bingo. Much as I believe everyone's entitled to enjoy their games their own way, I honestly can't see any fun in breezing through the game, confident that unless the GM made a mistake in creating a challenge, I would overcome it without any real work on my part.

[Mrmdubois]

Creating an optimized character can only be considered the beginning of earning your happy ending, because no matter how powerful you are if you don't use it right you're toast.

[noclue]

I'm down for failure. In our recent FATE Core game (Think Steampunk Three Musketeers) out two PCs brought back the Tzarina of a nearby empire to seal a treaty in marriage. Problem: turns out she's an automaton and the Cardinal wants the wedding called off, which will plunge us into war. We square off in an argument against against an NPC that's a social monster, and both of us get schooled. Morgan's automaton soldier is able to use a free invoke to prevent being taken out, and concedes with a mild and a moderate consequence. I stay in the fight, taking a Moderate and then get taken out completely. It was glorious!

[Vairelome]

I'm down for failure. In our recent FATE Core game (Think Steampunk Three Musketeers) out two PCs brought back the Tzarina of a nearby empire to seal a treaty in marriage. Problem: turns out she's an automaton and the Cardinal wants the wedding called off, which will plunge us into war. We square off in an argument against against an NPC that's a social monster, and both of us get schooled. Morgan's automaton soldier is able to use a free invoke to prevent being taken out, and concedes with a mild and a moderate consequence. I stay in the fight, taking a Moderate and then get taken out completely. It was glorious!

I'm glad your group had fun.  Are you trying to make a more general case that people often enjoy failure?  I certainly do not; one of my most recent games had frequent failures that snowballed into catastrophe, and it ranks as one of the least enjoyable games I've been involved with--I seriously considered walking out of the game three different times.  In another game from some years back, I was running a PC that ended up with legendarily unlucky dice, and despite being a reasonably optimized melee combatant, was an epic failure at combat largely due to dice--his very first action in his first combat involved rolling a 1 on a d20 four times in a row--and this trend continued through his existence as a PC.  It wasn't fun.

One of the reasons I game is the feeling of achievement that comes from successfully overcoming obstacles.  The games I've been involved with have usually had reasonably significant fictional stakes attached to conflicts, such that failing on any non-trivial level had unpleasant consequences.  I think this is broadly typical across most games played to the point that a story where "the PCs failed, and it was awesome!" is part of a tiny minority of all awesome gaming experiences.  Anecdotes such as the above don't disprove the trend; they merely point out an exception.

[noclue]

I'm glad your group had fun.  Are you trying to make a more general case that people often enjoy failure?

Nope.

One of the reasons I game is the feeling of achievement that comes from successfully overcoming obstacles.

Trust me, I'm going to get my due from the Cardinal soon!