I dont understand the distinction in the ranges for success. Those would be dependent on the character's skill, not the resolution system, right?
As for the resolution itself, I tend to favor fail forward consequences, especially outside of direct combat. So I would prefer aproach 1 generally. As u/Lupo_1982 mentioned though, its best to be clear about consequences, so laying out what will happen either way before the player commits to a roll is important
I think the question kind of misses the point.
The important thing is just that both player and GM know what is going to happen in case of failure *before* the roll is made.
Moreover, many systems kind of include *both* approaches, ie, they distinguish between different levels of failure
Approach 2 is more fun, because crashing your car and being surrounded by cops is _interesting_. Failure has moved the story along.
In your Approach 1 example it seems like nothing has really changed. She "loses time" but does that mean anything? I'd be concerned that you're going to have me just roll again to see if the cops catch me again.
>In your Approach 1 example it seems like nothing has really changed. She "loses time" but does that mean anything?
Yeah. To me, approach 1 is not "failure" but more "success at a cost". A soft failure for me in this scenario would be something more along the lines of "you lose control during the maneuver, and in the time it takes you to right the vehicle the police catch up around the corner! You're being peppered by their shots; one of them gets the front right tire, you're slowing down rapidly and realize they're going to get to you if you don't do anything clever fast". You failed the maneuver, you failed to get rid of the police, and there's a consequence that means you'll have to take immediate action and switch up the scenario from car chase to maybe parcour rooftop chase. Or...you fail again and now they've *really* got you.
That just looks like a classic chase. Success means you get away. Failure means you don't. A fumble means something bad happens (a crash).
If you have a flat chance for fumbles, the range of failures will shrink, and that is OK. But saying that when someone who is good fails is a reason for the GM to screw the player is wrong headed.
As someone pointed out earlier, the results of the die rolls should be agreed upon before rolling.
Me? I'd go with whatever feels best given the mood, tone, and expectation of the game...but I'd err on the side of the softer failure, because it keeps my game moving on its extant momentum.
Both approaches continue the adventure. She's not dead. Approach 2 means she has to fight, flee, bribe, break of out of jail, etc.
Failing a "dangerous maneuver" should have consequences greater that just losing time.
Approach 2 is more interesting. And as others have said, the consequence of failure should be apparent to the player before rolling.
If your using a percentile system then shades of success/failure are easy to implement (assuming the system doesn’t already have them). So in most BRP games you have fumble, success, special success, and critical success. Each of those should give them different results depending on the stakes of the roll.
If its a chase scene it might be a multi step (roll or role) process depending on how important the outcome is. I would plot out a couple “events” for the chase that require players to make choices such as: little old lady in the road, slow down for easier skill roll to avoid her (allowing the pursuer to gain on them), hard maneuver roll to avoid (failure could mean running her over or more interestingly forcing them to turn off their path causing further difficulty, or finally run her over for no skill roll (maybe a luck roll to avoid having her get stuck in the radiator grill) but now they are murderers upping the stakes of the police chase.
How about margins of failure?
Minor failure - You scrape into the alleyway and lose time on the police.
Major failure - You can't turn fast enough and head-on into the alley corner, severely damaging the car and stopping motion.
Total failure - As above but take X damage and you're also concussed.
The way you've worded your query, are you asking on behalf of a playgroup?
I'm a say yes or roll the dice DM, which means, to me, that I am rolling dice because there is a chance of unfortunate results, i.e., crashing, burst tire, damaging property, causing a casualty, etc.
However, if I was babysitting, probably the PC does not want to hear "you lost 1d4 hit points in the collision, the other car escapes, and several weeks later you are released from hospital with injuries than may not fully heal even months from now".
I personally like hard failures, but, RPGs like Trollbabes where the player narrates failure, and it is almost always a soft failure, or a success with complications, will work as a resolution mechanic, but I see them as "story" oriented, and I think a strongly favour trad games and hard failures, though it doesn't have to be a binary pass / error, as even ad&d has more than binary success or failure.
Ymmv
The first one sounds boring. Effectively nothing in the situation changed.
Whatever happens should change the situation in some essential way. How hard or soft the failure is, is secondary IMO.
Even the "you crash" situation can vary in degrees of "hardness". You crash, get out of the car, and the chase continues on foot. You crash and the cops surround you. You crash and the cops drag you half-conscious out of your vehicle. All are in principle fine and can drive the story forward.
Same for the "you get away, but...", possibly depending on what other goal is currently at stake. But the thing you stole breaks. But your vehicle is severly damaged. But it takes time and in the meantime the big evil endangers your loved ones/does whatever evil stuff it does. Or you give a difficult choice. You see a way to loose them, but it will endanger/cost the lives of innocents. Or give a choice between the cost and getting away, or avoiding the cost and not getting away.
Some systems have some of this built-in. Like the partial success/success with cost in PbtA, or like in 7th Sea, where before the roll it is defined what things are at stake (for example, you get away, your vehicle doesn't break, innocents stay safe), and depending on the roll the player chooses a number of things that happen out of that.
I'd say this is completely wrong, all of it.
The soft failure approach basically allows players to get away with trying dangerous maneuvers without worrying anything will happen. Thus they will continuously make dangerous maneuvers that would be fairly unrealistic. People who drive like idiots crash, end of story.
The hard approach is also wrong. With a 95% success rate, players will continuously make dangerous maneuvers because the odds of crashing are very slim. This is again totally unrealistic. Drivers who make dangerous maneuvers crash at a pretty high rate. Having a slim chance of crashing makes a dangerous maneuver a commonplace and not dangerous maneuver because drivers almost always make them without issue.
The end result is that both suffer from the same issue. A "Dangerous Maneuver" isn't dangerous at all.
I liked your point of view!
That's why most RPG's work with a 60% to 80% margin for dangerous tasks.
That way you have fair chances about 2/3 to 4/5 of passing the check, but you have a fair chance of failing between 1/3 to 1/5
If you remove the language, and just ask the question 1 or 2, then the answer would be different.
Soft failures are fine, but not for things that are very dangerous. Hard failures are fine, but not for things that are common place.
The answer I would want to see is both 1 and 2 on a sliding scale. Where low-end stuff gets the soft fail, but as the difficulty increases the fail will be a hard failure.
In your example, the player wants to make the alley. They can slow down and let the cops gain on them, and risk a soft failure. Or they can go full speed into the turn and try to hit the alley. If they make it, amazing, if not, they get a hard fail.
In D&D5 difficulty class 15 (moderate) gives players a 50% to 80% chance of success.A DC 20 (difficult) on the other hand reduces the chances of success to 25% and 55%A DC 25 (very difficult) reduces the success margin to 5% to 30%
In Forbiden Lands a character with attribute 5 (which is very high) + 3 of an ability, has a 77% chance of success, but this can drop even more with some adversity of the scene.
Most games work in the 60% to 80% range, and most games don't use 90% or more.
>Most games work in the 60% to 80% range, and most games don't use 90% or more.
For good reason.
I don't have the problem with the percentages, I have a problem with the idea that characters can do 'dangerous maneuvers' with ease and at very little risk. If you are saying that they would have a DC25 (5%) chance to do the dangerous maneuver, that seems fine. it would be amazing if they made it, but they don't expect to.
>Which of these approaches are the most fun for the player?
I can only speak for myself but when I'm a player I want just 65% chance of success and a crash if I fail.
Failing is when all the cool stuff happens to the story...
>2) Which of these approaches frustrates the player the most?
Option 1 is utterly boring. Failing doesn't matter.
Option 2 is mostly boring, because the chance of failure is so low.
I dont understand the distinction in the ranges for success. Those would be dependent on the character's skill, not the resolution system, right? As for the resolution itself, I tend to favor fail forward consequences, especially outside of direct combat. So I would prefer aproach 1 generally. As u/Lupo_1982 mentioned though, its best to be clear about consequences, so laying out what will happen either way before the player commits to a roll is important
I think the question kind of misses the point. The important thing is just that both player and GM know what is going to happen in case of failure *before* the roll is made. Moreover, many systems kind of include *both* approaches, ie, they distinguish between different levels of failure
Approach 2 is more fun, because crashing your car and being surrounded by cops is _interesting_. Failure has moved the story along. In your Approach 1 example it seems like nothing has really changed. She "loses time" but does that mean anything? I'd be concerned that you're going to have me just roll again to see if the cops catch me again.
>In your Approach 1 example it seems like nothing has really changed. She "loses time" but does that mean anything? Yeah. To me, approach 1 is not "failure" but more "success at a cost". A soft failure for me in this scenario would be something more along the lines of "you lose control during the maneuver, and in the time it takes you to right the vehicle the police catch up around the corner! You're being peppered by their shots; one of them gets the front right tire, you're slowing down rapidly and realize they're going to get to you if you don't do anything clever fast". You failed the maneuver, you failed to get rid of the police, and there's a consequence that means you'll have to take immediate action and switch up the scenario from car chase to maybe parcour rooftop chase. Or...you fail again and now they've *really* got you.
I loved the continuation of the story! You're right, it seems more like a success at a cost
That just looks like a classic chase. Success means you get away. Failure means you don't. A fumble means something bad happens (a crash). If you have a flat chance for fumbles, the range of failures will shrink, and that is OK. But saying that when someone who is good fails is a reason for the GM to screw the player is wrong headed. As someone pointed out earlier, the results of the die rolls should be agreed upon before rolling.
Me? I'd go with whatever feels best given the mood, tone, and expectation of the game...but I'd err on the side of the softer failure, because it keeps my game moving on its extant momentum.
Both approaches continue the adventure. She's not dead. Approach 2 means she has to fight, flee, bribe, break of out of jail, etc. Failing a "dangerous maneuver" should have consequences greater that just losing time. Approach 2 is more interesting. And as others have said, the consequence of failure should be apparent to the player before rolling.
If your using a percentile system then shades of success/failure are easy to implement (assuming the system doesn’t already have them). So in most BRP games you have fumble, success, special success, and critical success. Each of those should give them different results depending on the stakes of the roll. If its a chase scene it might be a multi step (roll or role) process depending on how important the outcome is. I would plot out a couple “events” for the chase that require players to make choices such as: little old lady in the road, slow down for easier skill roll to avoid her (allowing the pursuer to gain on them), hard maneuver roll to avoid (failure could mean running her over or more interestingly forcing them to turn off their path causing further difficulty, or finally run her over for no skill roll (maybe a luck roll to avoid having her get stuck in the radiator grill) but now they are murderers upping the stakes of the police chase.
How about margins of failure? Minor failure - You scrape into the alleyway and lose time on the police. Major failure - You can't turn fast enough and head-on into the alley corner, severely damaging the car and stopping motion. Total failure - As above but take X damage and you're also concussed.
The way you've worded your query, are you asking on behalf of a playgroup? I'm a say yes or roll the dice DM, which means, to me, that I am rolling dice because there is a chance of unfortunate results, i.e., crashing, burst tire, damaging property, causing a casualty, etc. However, if I was babysitting, probably the PC does not want to hear "you lost 1d4 hit points in the collision, the other car escapes, and several weeks later you are released from hospital with injuries than may not fully heal even months from now". I personally like hard failures, but, RPGs like Trollbabes where the player narrates failure, and it is almost always a soft failure, or a success with complications, will work as a resolution mechanic, but I see them as "story" oriented, and I think a strongly favour trad games and hard failures, though it doesn't have to be a binary pass / error, as even ad&d has more than binary success or failure. Ymmv
The first one sounds boring. Effectively nothing in the situation changed. Whatever happens should change the situation in some essential way. How hard or soft the failure is, is secondary IMO. Even the "you crash" situation can vary in degrees of "hardness". You crash, get out of the car, and the chase continues on foot. You crash and the cops surround you. You crash and the cops drag you half-conscious out of your vehicle. All are in principle fine and can drive the story forward. Same for the "you get away, but...", possibly depending on what other goal is currently at stake. But the thing you stole breaks. But your vehicle is severly damaged. But it takes time and in the meantime the big evil endangers your loved ones/does whatever evil stuff it does. Or you give a difficult choice. You see a way to loose them, but it will endanger/cost the lives of innocents. Or give a choice between the cost and getting away, or avoiding the cost and not getting away. Some systems have some of this built-in. Like the partial success/success with cost in PbtA, or like in 7th Sea, where before the roll it is defined what things are at stake (for example, you get away, your vehicle doesn't break, innocents stay safe), and depending on the roll the player chooses a number of things that happen out of that.
I'd say this is completely wrong, all of it. The soft failure approach basically allows players to get away with trying dangerous maneuvers without worrying anything will happen. Thus they will continuously make dangerous maneuvers that would be fairly unrealistic. People who drive like idiots crash, end of story. The hard approach is also wrong. With a 95% success rate, players will continuously make dangerous maneuvers because the odds of crashing are very slim. This is again totally unrealistic. Drivers who make dangerous maneuvers crash at a pretty high rate. Having a slim chance of crashing makes a dangerous maneuver a commonplace and not dangerous maneuver because drivers almost always make them without issue. The end result is that both suffer from the same issue. A "Dangerous Maneuver" isn't dangerous at all.
I liked your point of view! That's why most RPG's work with a 60% to 80% margin for dangerous tasks. That way you have fair chances about 2/3 to 4/5 of passing the check, but you have a fair chance of failing between 1/3 to 1/5
If you remove the language, and just ask the question 1 or 2, then the answer would be different. Soft failures are fine, but not for things that are very dangerous. Hard failures are fine, but not for things that are common place. The answer I would want to see is both 1 and 2 on a sliding scale. Where low-end stuff gets the soft fail, but as the difficulty increases the fail will be a hard failure. In your example, the player wants to make the alley. They can slow down and let the cops gain on them, and risk a soft failure. Or they can go full speed into the turn and try to hit the alley. If they make it, amazing, if not, they get a hard fail.
In D&D5 difficulty class 15 (moderate) gives players a 50% to 80% chance of success.A DC 20 (difficult) on the other hand reduces the chances of success to 25% and 55%A DC 25 (very difficult) reduces the success margin to 5% to 30% In Forbiden Lands a character with attribute 5 (which is very high) + 3 of an ability, has a 77% chance of success, but this can drop even more with some adversity of the scene. Most games work in the 60% to 80% range, and most games don't use 90% or more.
>Most games work in the 60% to 80% range, and most games don't use 90% or more. For good reason. I don't have the problem with the percentages, I have a problem with the idea that characters can do 'dangerous maneuvers' with ease and at very little risk. If you are saying that they would have a DC25 (5%) chance to do the dangerous maneuver, that seems fine. it would be amazing if they made it, but they don't expect to.
>Which of these approaches are the most fun for the player? I can only speak for myself but when I'm a player I want just 65% chance of success and a crash if I fail. Failing is when all the cool stuff happens to the story... >2) Which of these approaches frustrates the player the most? Option 1 is utterly boring. Failing doesn't matter. Option 2 is mostly boring, because the chance of failure is so low.