Firearm crutches for fantasy RPGs

This post is immediately inspired by a Twitter conversation, but of course its parent inspiration is the Combat Wheelchair created by Sara (mustangsart).

Firearms in Fantasy

Pathfinder, which I play weekly, has long had rules for firearms and an entire class dedicated to them, the Gunslinger. I've always been a bit chary of them for a couple of reasons. One is simply that fantasy with firearms drifts into a different space from fantasy without, mostly due to source material. The other is my personal, non-expert discomfort with things like "targeting touch AC" (meaning firearms bypass armour and shields) and the very rapid reloading that 6-second combat rounds and fights that generally finish within 5 rounds require.

I'm not really interested in delving into the exact realistic chances of these things, especially given a fantasy world. But for the record:

In the first case, I find it immersion-harming that a small lead pellet fired by alchemy from a tube has a rules mechanic of simply punching through armour (or perhaps inflicting damage through sheer force?), but an arrow fired by a Strength 24 orc sniper's composite bow or from a gastrophetes doesn't. This is before we get into oddities like "this Diminutive sprite the size of your thumb has a pistol that will shoot right through the frost giant's tank-like plate mail, but the frost giant's tree-sized spear can be deflected by the sprite's thimble breastplate."

In the second case, obviously it varies a lot with guns, but by my understanding you'd be doing well to fire a flintlock weapon three times a minute.

The topic of making crutches that doubled as firearms came up in the thread, and got me thinking of magic, and actually - while I'm not enamoured of actual "magical firearms" in a general fantasy setting, incorporating minor magical elements into a mechanical & alchemical firearm actually works pretty well for me. I'm a fan of thinking about how the fairly widespread availability of trivial magic might affect society!

The concept we're looking at is sturdy, adventurer-friendly crutches with a built-in firearm. So how might this work?

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells: for the worried waiter

Your irregular extract from that invaluable compilation of the overlooked arcane.

For those who cater to the tastes of others, the fickleness - nay, the mendacity! - of the customer is an eternal poltergeist: bursting forth unpredictably, often in the midst of what was otherwise a pleasant conversation; impossible to pinpoint, and extremely difficult to prove; unwelcome, noisy, frustratingly stubborn once roused; and of course, liable to begin hurling crockery at one's head. The chief distinction is that the application of a simple Persuivant's poltergeist parlay can compel such spirits to honestly set forth their complaints and how they might be remedied. For customers, alas, the host has no such convenient method.

A particular burden for many establishments, be they public house or the marble halls of an elven palace, comes in the form of over-demanding diners. No sooner is their bespoken dish set before them than they are overcome with dissatisfaction, envy, curmudgeonliness or base self-importance. Scorning the cook's sweated labours over a hot stove, the delicate ministrations of the pâtissier, the hours that may go into preparation of the dish specifically ordered by the customer, they instantly demand a change.

The dish is inadequately cooked, they proclaim. The sauce is too thick; the vegetables too cold; they did not expect fish in the Seafood Supreme. In the most flagrant cases, they resort even to the bare-faced "No, I ordered the venison". Deaf are they to the evidence, thrice-confirmed, of the waiter's little notebook, or even their more shamefaced relatives across the table.

The genesis of the following spell was undoubtedly in such a case. Nothing more can be ascertained; indeed, mages of the culinary inclination generally refuse even to discuss its existence, fearing rightly that publicity might only make customers more suspicious. I present it, however, to the discreet and discerning scholarly eye of the subscribers of this little publication.

Waiter’s Weal

School transmuation; Level bard 1, lackey 1; Servitude 1

CASTING

Casting Time 1 minute
Components S, M (a drop of saliva)

EFFECT

Rangetouch
Target one touched serving of food
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

This spell proves its value in restaurants and great houses, where diners insist that they actually ordered the veal flechettes. You invoke a meal that might have been, gradually transforming the chosen meal into another of the same or lesser cost. The meal must be one that could have been prepared by the chef with the ingredients available.

As part of the spell, you can choose the arrangement of the dish (though highly complex arrangements require a Craft [cuisine] check) as well as determining its temperature and freshness. Common condiments of negligible cost can be applied. The form of the dish’s container changes to suit the chosen meal.

It’s generally considered polite to go around the corner before casting this spell, giving the patrons at least the illusion of having been pandered to.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells: for the humanoid-about-town

Your irregular extract from that invaluable compilation of the overlooked arcane.

Fionnuala Magwhite, a promising scholar, suffered the triple misfortunes of a large family, a position firmly in the middle tier of the country aristocracy, and a timid demeanour.

As a result, her studies and travels were constantly hampered by the obligation to attend tedious social events, and the determination of inebriated half-uncles, maiden aunts, waggish tradesmen, wagon drivers, acolytes of Ghreld the Librarian, evangelical clerics of Lord Sol, and adventurers who thoroughly overrated their personal attractiveness (and indeed, personal hygiene) to engage her in conversation.

Frustrated by this, she turned to magecraft, studying the intricacies of illusion and experimenting at length until she devised a spell to defend her from aural inconvenience. Magwhite's bore baffle has become an invaluable gambit in the back pocket of those who can't face small talk.

Magwhite’s Bore Baffle

School illusion [phantasm]; Level socialite 0, wizard 0

CASTING

Casting Time 1 full-round action
Components V ("No, please, go ahead, I'm sure we're all ears")

EFFECT

Range 15’ radius
Target creatures of your choice in range
Duration 10 min./level
Saving Throw Will disbelieves; Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

You cloak yourself in a comforting illusion, giving those who observe the impression that you are listening attentively to their words and making appropriate responses. A successful Will saving throw allows them to perceive the situation normally (for example, that you are in fact completing a crossword while loudly humming the latest lute hits). If a creature fails their saving throw, conversation is not considered interaction for the purpose of granting an additional saving throw.

Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells

A while ago I began compiling a list of, uh, alternative spells for Pathfinder, so basically for D&D.

Having been prompted by Big Jack Brass' recent tweets, I hereby present an extract from that inexplicably-unpublished manuscript, "Inglenook's Lesser-Used Spells"

• Flares
• Speak to Dead
• Burning Hams
• Disguise Elf
• Ear-Piercing Cream
• Enlarge Parson
• Really Obscure Poison
• Cockling Skull
• Reign of Frogs
• Enter Poe Singh-Han's Big Bees

(yes, I actually have rules for these, but I don't feel like editing them for the blog at 1am and I might try to make them into something publishable)

Skills as described vs. skills as used

So I was visiting Dan and Arthur over the holidays, and we had many conversations about roleplaying, of course. One of them eventually pottered around to musing on skill interpretation. Or, to be a little uncharitable, skill misinterpretation.

Here, as usual, "skill" means an aspect of an RPG's mechanics which determine your competence in a specific field of activity. In some cases things we would normally consider to be Attributes or Statistics or something work in a way similar enough that we can also consider them here. White Wolf's dots, for example, are basically the same whether they're in an Attribute or a... whatever you call the other things, I forget.

Let's take as read for this article that a skill has four components: a Name, an optional Fluff, a Description, and an Application. The Name is literally the name of the skill ("Ignite Fish"). The Fluff is a bit of flavour text which some games include. The Description is the section of the rules which explains what the skill is, and may give specific mechanical subsystems, special uses, examples and so on; descriptions may be very mechanical or largely narrative.

Finally, the Application is simply the way a given set of players actually uses the skill in their games. This does not necessarily correspond to any of the above.

Musings on Monomonsters

I recently read through The Derelict, a one-shot scenario for Call of Cthulhu released for Free RPG Day (I bought my copy the normal way, though). This post will contain massive spoilers for that scenario, so be aware; proceed with caution.

Some of you may remember my post about Monster Balance in Call of Cthulhu, which is also relevant here.

The Derelict

So, the scenario features a group of Investigators who rapidly find themselves trapped on an iceberg with two wrecked ships.

After finding signs that the crew of the other ship were massacred in a way that doesn't look like either humans or polar bears, they eventually realise they're being hunted by an inhuman monster.

The villain of the piece is a "sciapod". This is basically an Ice Yuan-Ti, for those of you with a D&D background. Okay, it's a huge ice merman covered in chitinous armour, which is invisible (with one specific exception), carries a bow that conjures steel-hard ice harpoons, and likes to eat humans.

The rest of the scenario will likely consist of the Investigators cautiously making their way around the ships finding some more horrific scenes, and potentially a couple of mildly useful items. They will almost certainly be picked off one by one, though a couple might escape to dubious safety on the ice waters.

Going Solo

Prompted by my reading and my reservations about the scenario, what I actually want to talk about today is the use of single entities as antagonists. Specifically, I want to consider some of the drawbacks and difficulties presented by this situation.

In many ways, I think you can sum this up simply as having all your eggs in one basket.

The eggs take a variety of forms: psychological threat, mechanical threat, persistence of the problem, capability of the antagonist, and so on. Regardless, packing them into one bundle tends to give you a blunter and more fragile tool to work with.

Coming back to my previous article, the Monomonster is going to be a Beast, Hunter or Final Horror because as a lone operator it can't really be anything else. In theory it could have a dual role as a Gatekeeper or Messenger as part of a larger storyline.

One Man Army

The most prominent of the issues is physical confrontation, so that's where I'm going to start. For this section I'm focusing on scenarios where the monster* presents a direct physical threat to the survival of the PCs. This may not actually be its primary danger, or its preferred way of interaction, but in a direct confrontation the monster is a serious threat.

A lone monster of this kind is significantly more powerful than any one PC, in terms of whatever combat-equivalent features in the game. Usually, it is at least as powerful as all of the PCs combined. There's often a straightforward reason for this, which is that if the monster wasn't this powerful, it wouldn't present a credible threat to the party.

*I'm going to say "monster", which should not be taken to assume a D&D perspective on all this.

From a structural perspective, the danger of the situation is twofold. Firstly, the monster might win. Secondly, the monster might lose.

Yes, I am feeling glib today! How did you know?

To put it another way, every combat* encounter between the monster and the PCs takes on an existential nature. If the PCs do somehow manage to defeat the monster, then the scenario is effectively over. The psychological threat is lifted, the mechanical threat ceases to exist, and although the GM may have some narration or investigation to offer in closing, this tends to feel like a wrap-up. The PCs can achieve a sudden victory, but with only a single opponent to confront, it's difficult for them to slowly gain the upper hand or see the odds growing in their favour.

*I'm just going to say "combat"; there might be other forms of confrontation that work in equivalent ways in specific games.

For the GM, this poses a challenge, because if there's any possibility that the PCs might defeat the monster through a series of inspired decisions and lucky rolls, well, there's a possibility that the PCs might win through a series of inspired decisions and lucky rolls. And if that possibility crops up five minutes into the scenario when the PCs first encounter their opponent, that will make for a very short gaming session. In the case of The Derelict, if the PCs somehow manage to kill the sciapod shortly after reaching the wreck, there really isn't anything left except gathering some backstory.

An obvious and common solution to this problem is to ensure that the monster cannot, in fact, be defeated through a series of inspired decisions and lucky rolls. The sciapod (to continue with our example) has 45HP and deducts 5 points from any damage inflicted; the PCs have three firearms with 6 bullets apiece dealing roughly 1d10 damage. Now, hypothetically, this means the PCs could deal 90 damage to it, killing it twice, without even taking extreme successes (extra damage) into account. The chances are astronomical through. If the PCs understood what was up very quickly, were all together with weapons drawn, and managed to launch a surprise attack on the (invisible!) creature before any of them were killed, it might just about work. Or it could continually roll 100s. I'm not going to say never. But it's incredibly unlikely.

If that thousand-to-one chance comes up, though, the scenario may fall flat. It doesn't actually have to happen that early, either. It just needs to happen at a point when the narrative momentum points in another direction.

Hero Al-Jaf and Bugsy Warburton have finally discovered the horrific experiments behind their predicament, and realised they need to ransack the Science Building where Dr. Sinister's notes and equipment may provide them with a faint chance to escape alive. As they prepare to leave the office, they hear the terrifying sound of the Slatcher gnawing at their door. They turn tail as the Slatcher bursts through, firing wildly in a desperate attempt to buy time.

In a stunning display of serendipity, three bullets strike the Slatcher in the sensitive nostril region, overloading its nervous system and destroying its brain. With the hulking creature dead, our heroes have no particular reason to go to the Science Building, and begin to shuffle awkwardly home.

If you have a number of monsters stalking the PCs, this isn't a particular problem. Even if each monster is supposed to be extremely tough, the players will probably understand that they got really lucky and still shouldn't try to confront the remainder outright. But with only one, you have nothing left to play with.

We're All Dead Here

The parallel problem to this is that the monster can win too easily.

Remember, because we have only one monster in this scenario, that monster is overwhelmingly powerful. It is capable of defeating at least several of the PCs - which, given mechanical variation and raw luck, means that it's almost certainly capable of killing all of the PCs at once. Often this is deliberate; the intention is that PCs will either escape the monster, or work out a way to overcome it indirectly using the environment and information they can accumulate, or increase their capabilities (either mechanically or in terms of knowledge and resources) to the point where they can in fact defeat it.

Because the monster is so powerful, any time there's a confrontation with the whole party, there is a risk that the monster will kill them all. While that risk may ultimately be part of the scenario, once again it can feel very unsatisfying if it happens too early, or at a time when the narrative momentum isn't pointing that way.

If it does come down to combat, then, the GM has the difficult job of reining in their beast. They need to calculate fairly precisely just how much damage it should wreak. If they simply follow the mechanical potential of a rampaging monster capable of killing the entire party in a few rounds, there may come an abrupt end to the scenario. Conversely, if they restrain it too far, the psychological threat can be lost; this not only affects the narrative, but can cause further complications because players become tempted to keep fighting. After all, if the creature doesn't attack as ferociously as they expected, this may be their best chance to defeat it!

The psychology of the players, and indeed the player characters, can get convoluted, especially with metagame considerations coming into play. You can of course resort to saying "hey, this monster could easily kill you all, but I'm giving you a chance to get away," but there's a real risk that this will puncture the immersion too far - players may end up feeling that everything is under the GM's sufferance and become dissatisfied.

Basically, then, the difficulty for the GM is knowing when to stop. On top of choosing a narratively and mechanically appropriate amount of havoc for the monster to inflict on the characters, bearing in mind the psychological effect of that havoc and the tropes that will be evoked by it, the GM also needs to have in mind a pretext for stopping that feels satisfying given the nature of the monster.

Scaling

Players can be surprisingly stubborn about backing down. It's not super surprising though. After all, often the whole point of encountering a monster in a game is to fight it.

I think one of the particular difficulties of a monomonster is that it's difficult to give a useful sense of scale. By which I mean: exactly how much of a threat does this thing pose?

Of course, there are some exceptions. If a monster is genuinely meant to be overwhelmingly dangerous beyond anything the PCs could dream of, you can generally find a way to demonstrate that just in description. In that case, the scenario is about staying as far away from it as possible.

When as a GM you have many monsters, you have options. The most straightforward is that you can have some of them attack the PCs (or some NPCs) and show roughly what kind of threat they pose. A Venusian Gnarker might charge a group of guards, only brought down by a relentless barrage of gunfire after smashing several aside. Several Chibblers might spring upon a PC, and when the party can wrestle them off, it shows that four PCs can cope with about four Chibblers without getting too seriously hurt - but the hundreds encroaching on their base will be a problem. They might know that one unarmed cultist is a relatively manageable threat, but that they can't really handle the fifty who are meeting downstairs.

In particular, you can expend some of your monsters to demonstrate the scale of the threat. Was it easy to kill them? Hard? Terrifyingly difficult? Okay, now you know what you're dealing with. And that was just the hatchling...

What scaling is about is informing the players of the situation. You are trying to convey a sense of appropriate threat, bearing in mind the tropes and conventions of the genre, so that the players understand what it means for them to take various courses of action. This is all part of the general GM's role, just as in portraying an NPC you try to show the players what kind of NPC and situation they are dealing with (with reference again to genre tropes).

With a monomonster, you can't easily do this.

You can have the monomonster attack someone else, which can work well, though it depends on how the players interpret the power of that victim. There's also a risk that the PCs think this is a "rescue the NPC!" situation, because they haven't yet worked out what they're dealing with. Finally, some kinds of monster don't work well here because they should really move on to killing the PCs.

Another classic is leaving evidence of the destruction wrought by the creature. This is potentially very potent; in particular, it allows the PCs to study the scene at their leisure and learn a lot about what the creature can do. It can include witness accounts and scenes of carnage. However, it can be difficult for players to grasp what these mean in mechanical terms. Is being able to wipe out a roomful of police officers evidence of appalling power, or just that the police are a bit useless? Are we supposed to be scared about this for practical reasons, or aghast at this tragedy, or is it just the kind of thing that happens? How did those police match up to us, anyway? Of course, this depends on things like system. In D&D, you don't know whether a dead NPC is 1st or 20th level unless you're told. In Call of Cthulhu, people are mostly fairly equal, but skills can make a huge difference.

It is possible to have the monster simply attack, working on the basis that the party will mostly escape. This might work absolutely fine, but it's risky. There's that aforesaid worry about killing everyone, especially if they don't realise they're not supposed to fight back. Or the monster getting killed by a fluke.

You could also end up with more complicated situations. For example, killing off even a single PC early on might leave the game feeling flat for their player (even if you get a replacement, your investment can be diminished). Characters might be sufficiently injured or traumatised that it's actually difficult for them to do very much, especially in a game with injury mechanics. For example, a sprained ankle or fear of darkness could leave a player struggling to contribute. If the game has resource management, such as mana or even ammunition, it's possible for someone to burn through a lot of their resources in this kind of preliminary encounter and have little left for the main scenario.

In addition, while a monomonster can manifest new abilities or increased power over time, it can be very difficult to plausibly do the opposite. Monsters achieving new stages of evolution, greater manifestation onto the material plane, absorbing enough souls to breathe fire? There's precedent for that. Monsters losing the ability to breathe fire, or weakening, except due to protagonist intervention? That just feels like pulling punches. And if you try to repeatedly scale up and down, it will certainly begin to feel arbitrary.

Agency

Somewhat strangely, I think another issue with this kind of scenario can be player agency. Now, it's tricky because there's also a loss of character agency in many of these scenarios, which relates to most of them being horror. But I think the monomonster setup does tend to limit player options as a consequence of the limited range of narrative resolutions.

Let me try that again in less portentous language. As I've said, there's a significant risk of the narrative falling flat because the monster, or the party, are killed off at an unsatisfying time. The power of the monster tends not to leave a lot of leeway for error, which tends to mean limited scope for players to test ideas, explore and take risks. This can either result from player caution (including playing strongly into trope on the assumption that this is the only way to meaningfully engage with the scenario), or from GMing that steers into Quantum Ogres and railroading territory.

Let's take the sciapod as our example.

Freedom of Movement

The scenario obliges them to land on the iceberg. It then mandates that their boat is disabled, and the radio destroyed. This immediately removes two choices: the players cannot decide to have the characters call for help, including further information, nor can they decide to try and escape. This is a story about being hunted by a monster on a shipwreck, not about being chased by a monster across the Arctic and beyond. Fair enough, unless you're running a total sandbox you do need to decide what sort of thing you're trying to do in a scenario, especially in genres where GMs are expected to devote effort to building up backstory and providing realistic details, which require planning and research.

Informed Decisions

The players may wish to gather information about what is going on. This is a sensible choice and also in-genre; protagonists faced with an unusual situation do generally try to puzzle it out, and in horror genres this often overrides caution. The players aren't prevented from information-gathering, which is good. However, the majority of the information is generic atmosphere-inducing detail, demonstrating the power of the sciapod and the danger they face: the crew thought up several logical ways to protect themselves against something, all of which failed.

It's interesting to learn what happened here, but it doesn't actually help. Notably, they can't find anything that explains what the sciapod is, its weaknesses (spoiler: none) or how it behaves, any of which would increase their ability to make effective decisions. A very notable omission is any clue to the secret means of seeing through its invisibility, which is very much out of left field.

I suspect this is unusual. Stories of this kind often involve the protagonists observing the monster's behaviour (or the clues it leaves behind) and slowly learning of its quirks and vulnerabilities, eventually equipping them to escape or defeat it. This helps them make informed decisions, offering agency. On the flipside, there is a risk that the scenario becomes a series of scripted reveals, with the players needing to progress though a whole clue chain before they are allowed into the endgame. Again, this is a bigger risk with a monomonster, because a monomonster is a bigger threat allowing less margin for error. With multiple monsters, they can gradually gain the knowledge to take on increasingly powerful monsters, or test out leaps of deduction and survive being wrong.

Other possibilities are significantly curtailed by that invisibility. It deprives them of information about what's happening, including the ability for characters to observe the creature and interact with it. It's technically possible to overcome the invisibility, but the solution is bizarre and isn't spelled out anywhere, which means the players don't really have the option to work towards discovering it.* The invisibility is an unusual trait for a monomonster, though. Shapeshifting and similar abilities can produce some related issues, but typically you can at least see the monster when it's attacking you.

Technically you could try and work it out by experimentation, but it would be insanely dangerous, and I'm still not sure players would work it out. It's also very hard for the GM to help out without just telling them the answer.

Judging the Odds

The sciapod's superhuman strength and toughness, and ability to kill at long range while being totally invisible, make fighting it largely pointless. My impression of the scenario was that by info-gathering, players would mostly judge that the monster is far too powerful to confront. It's made clear that a large number of hardy sailors taking sensible precautions, including some decent improvised weaponry, were unable to stop it.

While that doesn't stop the players trying, I think that is a reduction in effective agency. Within the context of horror, signs that an enemy is overwhelmingly powerful in a fight is typically a flag that you are not expected to fight it. Players may not mind their characters dying, but if you're confident the attempt will be fatal, it turns the choice to fight from "part of your range of interactive options" to a specific narrative decision or a last resort.

The players' choices seem very limited here, because there seems very little they can meaningfully do either about the sciapod, or about their own survival.

They can't call for help. There's nowhere to run to, and they can't actually see what they're running from. They can't really hide and it wouldn't achieve anything. They can try to fight back, or just defend themselves, but the scenario makes a concerted effort to show them how ineffective it would be against this inhumanly powerful and resilient creature (which is, let's remember, able to kill them with one shot at long range while remaining totally invisible). They can't observe the creature's behaviour and exploit that, because it's mostly invisible and doesn't seem to have any behaviours other than killing, and also trying to watch it is insanely dangerous.

Why is this about monomonsters again?

Okay, so I'm using one creature from one scenario as an example. They're not all the same.

Basically, a monster story tends to have one of two satisfactory narrative structures. In the first, the characters begin by fleeing and hiding, gradually gain knowledge or resources that improve their odds, and finally defeat the monsters in a series of climactic encounters. In the second, the characters begin by hiding and fleeing, gradually gain knowledge or achieve small victories that improve their situation, and finally find a way to make their escape. In both cases, what essentially happens is that over time, the monster's relative threat decreases until it is less than the characters' growing ability to achieve their goals.

In an interactive roleplaying game, things tend go to in unexpected directions at best. There's no special reason for a confrontation with a single monster to escalate nicely to a dramatic finale. This is especially true as players do not usually have perfect knowledge of the relative capabilities of their characters and the monster, or the odds in play, and are not necessarily aiming to construct a satisfying narrative. You wind up with situations where the players are expected to encounter the monster early, to identify that it is a threat and that they cannot defeat it, but for them to also somehow survive the early encounters, despite the fact that the monster is motivated to kill them, and capable of killing them.

Achieving this balance is particularly difficult with a monomonster because the GM cannot easily use convenient variation in the number of opponents, or their maturity or armament, or their apparent intelligence, to vary threat levels. Instead, they have to control the monomonster's behaviour to ensure it does not kill the players in the early encounters. Because it is controlled in this way, the significance of the players' choices is reduced, and thus their agency. In addition, as I mentioned in scaling, if the GM tries to vary the threat posed between encounters (and in particular, specific abilities) the players will struggle to make informed choices.

With multiple monsters, the GM can open with a Chibbler Larvae encounter to demonstrate the threat. It doesn't need scripting: they can design the Larvae to be moderately threatening and leave the players to respond as they wish, with confidence that the characters will survive and emerge with some understanding of the threat. When the characters encounter apparently more intelligent Chibblers, or find signs that a huge Chibboth has passed nearby, their players can make informed guesses as to the consequences of their next actions (run, fight, hide?). The GM can also scale threat up and down: once they've avoided a Chibboth, they can find a couple of Chibblers in the next corridor.

Except, I'm missing something. Quite often when monomonsters are used, helplessness is the point.

We're All Doomed

The story structures I mentioned above are either defeating or escaping the monster. I suppose third and further structures include the monster gradually picking everyone off, typically except for one surviving female character and possibly a cute pet. You can potentially view this as a Final Horror incarnation of the monomonster, from my Call of Cthulhu typology.

Some of those are effectively lone protagonist stories with a supporting cast, which you can view as working the same way as my two above, but being less appropriate for group play. Others are all about the characters' helplessness, which is fine if you enjoy that sort of thing, but rarely leaves much room for player agency.

I would tend to view these as being more suitable for a game specifically designed to produce a particular narrative - a storygame, in other words. I don't think they're a great match for more traditional roleplaying, because when characters don't have much agency, the GM needs to work very hard to give players agency to set short term goals they can achieve. These may be in-game goals like discoveries, acts of heroism and so on, or player goals relating to bringing about particular scenes or narrative elements they feel invested in. These are necessary because more traditional goals like "defeat the monster" or even "survive" aren't really within reach.

Players need to be thoroughly on board for this sort of thing, because if you find yourself in a monster scenario and try everything you can think of to defeat or escape the monster, only to learn that neither was physically possible, it will be massively frustrating. Essentially, it leaves you playing the wrong game. You want to be playing with the grain of a game: doing the kinds of things that are meaningful within the paradigm you have adopted.

If the monster is unstoppable, you want to be setting and achieving goals like "I stay alive as long as physically possible", "I radio HQ with as much information as we can get our hands on so they can stop this spreading", and "I make one hell of a last stand".

Of course, it's also quite possible for this kind of narrative to be a natural outcome of a monster story where the characters just get themselves killed, through bad luck or bad planning.

On the plus side, this is probably the genre best suited to a monomonster - it actually works quite well. The monster seizes a single victim at a time, and then stops to consume them, torture them, meld with them and assume their identity, and so on. The others can flee while it ignores them. In some ways this is actually better than with multiple monsters. Since you aren't worried about PC deaths if you're using this structure, there are relatively few problems. The main ones are ensuring players are on board with this, and that they don't get too bored if they're eliminated ten minutes into a six hour session.

The Great Escape

So you're faced with a terrifying monster, and just want to escape.

This one comes down very much to the other parameters of the story, because those determine how difficult escape is, and indeed what "escape" means. Are you trapped in a submarine? On a base in the desert? In a forest? In a city?

Monomonsters, being incredibly powerful, are a natural fit for the escape plan. However, they do also have some obvious drawbacks, the main one being that escaping from one thing is generally an awful lot simpler than escaping from many things.

Very broadly speaking, if the characters can determine where the monomonster is, they can sensibly proceed by getting as far in the other direction as possible. Similarly, it's well worth making Herculean efforts to lure the beast away, conceal their trail, block its passage or trap it even temporarily. It may even be reasonable for one character to sacrifice themselves so that the others can escape pretty much unhindered.

For example, let's say the creature is basically mortal, just incredibly tough - it can't pass through solid matter. If there is a way for the characters to separate themselves from the creature with a nigh-impermeable barrier, it's well worth doing even if it's extremely difficult, because achieving it will solve most of their problems. If there are two parts of a space station, and they can sever them using a complex series of explosions jury-rigged from food supplies, they are safe from the monster. While a perfectly good solution, the players may end up focusing on this to the exclusion of whole swathes of a much more complex scenario.

Of course, this isn't always a bad thing. It may be very effective for the players to feel that they're making good progress in their escape at times, and other times have the psychological pressure of knowing the monster is near. The GM may well be able to come up with ways for the monster to eventually resume the chase, hopefully without leaving the players dissatisfied.

The advantage of multiple monsters here is that the players know they do not only have to content with one enemy. This means concocting (potentially) cheap shots is not worthwhile; they should pursue more general escape plans. They can't be as confident in their safety simply because they know where one monster is, or even because they trap one. In addition, the monsters can (deliberately or accidentally) herd them via their own movements, or else force them to take risks to avoid being driven in the wrong direction. The players have to consider pincer movements, or the risks of fleeing one enemy at high speed only to run headlong into another.

Plus, if the numbers of the monsters are uncertain, it may never be clear when they are actually safe.

A second advantage here is the possibility of tiered success. For example, the players could make definite progress by cutting themselves off from part of a monstrous horde, then gradually see more and more of their pursuers drop away as their plans succeed. Or they could make the difficult decision to leave a holdout where supplies are running low, pass through a densely-populated region to make quicker progress, and then try to shake off pursuit. They might accumulate pursuers as they make mistakes, and have to shake them off. They might even be able to turn some of the monsters against each other, or otherwise have the monsters' sheer numbers become a disadvantage - "surely that bridge won't bear the weight of four such gigantic beasts?"

The Nature of the Beast

The personality of a monomonster is an important facet of the puzzle. Because it's the main (or only) challenge in the scenario, its nature will shape the kinds of encounters the characters tend to face.

Murderous

A fairly basic monster is simply murderous: it has an instinctive drive to kill. This can make it both simple and difficult to deal with. When it notices the PCs, it attempts to kill them in a fairly direct way. Since our monomonster is also very powerful, this tends to mean it will kill every PC in sight unless they manage to escape it.

The difficulty here, then, is making the murderbot clever enough to present a practical challenge, but not clever or fast enough that the PCs cannot escape it. It probably shouldn't just fall into pits because the PCs stand on the other side, but it shouldn't be able to unerringly hunt them down. If the murderbot is both overwhelmingly powerful and inescapable, there probably won't be much to the scenario once they first meet - it will chase them down and kill them all efficiently.

Useful options here include weaknesses and incapabilities. If the murderbot can only come out in the darkness (a fairly common trope), the PCs have some limited opportunities to move about, gather and use resources, and make preparations in relative safety before their next encounter. Similarly, if the murderbot is too large to fit through vents, the PCs may be able to escape from a confrontation, while keeping them highly restricted: they can't afford to spend long in one room, and they're limited in terms of where they can safely go at all.

Not all Murderous monsters are instinctive or even stupid - you can use a ruthless assassin, for example, and The Predator is probably a decent example - but the impulse to kill is typically stronger than any other motivation.

Hungry

In some ways, the Hungry beast is even more simple, but it's also potentially more complicated. That's because it actually has two motivations: kill things, and eat them. These can interact in interesting ways.

When a Hungry beast detects the PCs, it will tend to try and kill them. However, if it does kill someone, its desire to eat will often trump its desire to kill. This gives the PCs an opening to escape, counterattack, or attempt a cunning ploy. Whereas the murderbot would simply move onto the next victim in an efficient flurry of death-dealing, quickly killing the whole party, the Hungry beast has no reason to do so until it's sated its hunger.

Hungry beasts can be cautious, like many real-life predators who are wary of prey's defences and the simple risk of their food getting away through their carelessness. Others are so driven by appetite that they have no such qualms, and fling themselves ravenously on any potential food. Either behaviour can give PCs opportunities to trick, distract or otherwise control them. Similarly, many Hungry beasts aren't exclusively PCvores, so the players may come up with ideas to use food stores, wildlife or even NPCs as distractions and as bait.

Sadistic

In my limited experience, monomonsters often seem to be treated as Sadistic. I think that's because this is the most convenient for GMing purposes: just as the GM is playing a game with the players, the Sadist is playing a game with the PCs. The GM is trying to create a sense of threat, and the Sadist enjoys scaring the PCs. The GM doesn't want to end the scenario too early because it's fun; the Sadist doesn't want to kill the PCs too early because it's fun.

Sadists tend to have at least a moderate level of intelligence because it's sort of hard to be sadistic otherwise. They deliberately make things more challenging for themselves, allowing victims to escape and avoiding the use of their full capabilities. While a monomonster can wipe out the whole party at once, the Sadist simply doesn't want to.

To a large extent, this works well. The Sadist has a perfect excuse for being irrational, inefficient and frankly slipshod about killing off the PCs, even though it's perfectly capable of doing so. However, you can reach a point where this begins to fray under pressure. If the PCs begin to demonstrate that they can in fact take on the Sadist, it should begin to make more of an effort and fewer allowances. Unless the Sadist's goal is quite specifically to play a complicated and genuinely dangerous death game with the PCs, its behaviour should change in response to their capabilities.

For example, a Sadist who resents the intrusion of puny mortals into its lair, and is now sadistically terrifying them before devouring them, might logically stop to think after a mortal successfully hurts it, and move on to simply devouring them. A Sadist that relishes the sense of power over helpless fleeing victims would lose that satisfaction if the victims turn out to have a very sensible plan to destroy it, and abandon the game (it's basically a bully, after all).

One of the difficulties I had with The Derelict was that it's ambiguous about the nature of the sciapod. It's described as wanting to kill everyone, but also as eating human flesh; however, it doesn't seem to behave as though driven primarily by hunger, but if it wants to kill everyone it can do so almost effortlessly. The designers perhaps intended it to be sadistic, but this kind of thing needs to be clear to the GM. I also feel slightly that making a single powerful and sadistic enemy is perhaps a bit overdone.

Humanlike

A clever monomonster, sentient enough to act like a human, can have very complex motivations and conflicting goals. For example: the Slaughter Spirit wishes to kill you all because it thirsts for death, and will actually try harder if the situation is challenging out, of pride in its power and a wish to show contempt. On the other hand, it resents having been summoned by a wizard to guard this place, and sometimes the wish to sabotage its master's goals overcomes that bloodlust. It also hates wizards in particular, so magic-using PCs will earn particular ire and frenzied efforts to kill them. But it's also afraid of wizards. It is bored after centuries of guarding, and doesn't really want this brief excitement to be over. And so on.

This is potentially very good from the GMing side - it gives you a lot to work with. However, it can also be hard to put across this amount of detail to the players. This can make it hard for them to usefully interact with all your nuances, and the ability to interact sensibly is pretty vital in the survival-type scenarios that tend to feature monomonsters.

Erratic

I suppose a final type of monomonster is simply Erratic. While it does have goals and motivations, it doesn't pursue them single-mindedly. This can explain why a monster doesn't relentlessly attack, pursue or even pay attention to the PCs.

An Erratic monster might be stupid, animalistic, mad, malfunctioning, struggling against a controlling force, or just alien. In some ways this can be useful to a GM: they can change the monster's behaviour as necessary to ensure the scenario doesn't end with an unsatisfactory splat.

The downside here is that as I said, learning how the monster behaves and how to interact with it is one of the few things players can actually do in most of these scenarios. After all, monomonsters are overwhelmingly powerful. "Winning" the scenario normally boils down to either tricking the monster to death, evading it long enough to escape, or learning enough about it to defeat it. Either option really calls for the players to work out how the monster ticks; otherwise it is liable to feel like GM fiat.

Stunlocks and the Action Economy

I've been talking with a fairly Call of Cthulhu mindset, but let's take a step back here. Some games have more of a tactical combat approach.

The classic problem with monomonters here is extremely well-known: it's basically one of actions.

The PCs are typically a group of 3-6 characters who each get to do one(ish) thing on their turn. The monster is typicallly a single entity that can do one thing on its turn. Although the monster's individual actions are typically more powerful and can often affect multiple PCs, it's still easy to end up with the PCs running circles around it due to their ability to do multiple things at once.

As a basic example, while the monster is fighting one PC (100% of its actions) the other 3-5 PCs can act freely. They may choose to contribute to the combat, but they might also be healing, preparing equipment, executing a complex plan to trap the monster, performing a powerful ritual, summoning help, running away, bombarding the monster with hindering effects, and so on. Generally there are multiple PC actions available to counter the efforts of the monster, while the monster has one set of actions available to counter the efforts of the PCs.

The archetypal problem is the Stunlock. An effect reduces a target's actions or even prevents actions. If PCs are able to create such an effect, they can use it against a monomonster to deny 100% of its actions for the turn. While they are totally unopposed, the PCs either unleash a flurry of powerful abilities, or carry out a difficult plan. In some cases, PCs can repeatedly inflict these effects to keep the monomonster Stunlocked and make the encounter flat and boring.

The issue here is that abilities in a tactical combat game tend to be weighed on the assumption of multiple opponents. Stunning powers are not inherently overpowered, but can become situationally overwhelming (I've discussed this sort of thing in my many posts on soft attacks). Against a single powerful opponent, any impairing effect is generally hugely valuable. Alternatively, designers react by making the monomonster highly resistant to such effects, to the point that many abilities are largely useless. A common result is the Save or Suck - depending on the your roll, your soft attack either bounces off harmlessly, or is devastatingly effective.

This sort of thing alters the relative effectiveness of different characters depending on the types of powers they can bring to bear. If a monomonster can be stunlocked, characters with potent soft attacks are devastating. If it can't, those characters who aren't designed for massive damage or tanking can feel very underpowered against them.

Games may try to address this by giving special rules for monomonsters. For example, recent editions of D&D allow designated powerful monsters to take additional actions during the turn - perhaps one reaction for each PC present, or a secondary attack that happens at a different point in the initiative order. I've also seen auras used as part of this strategy, with PCs potentially affected each round by some harmful or penalising effect.

Big Sack of HP

A related issue is that where games use a hit point-type system, monomonsters have a different sort of power curve from fewer weaker opponents.

Let's say we have two combat encounters: one against ten ogres with 1n HP, and one against a giant with 10n HP. Let's say these are equally challenging in some game-mechanical sense.

In the first case, the ogres can make up to ten attacks each round. If the PCs can inflict 1n HP to an ogre, the number of attacks drops by 1/survivingogres. There is an interesting tradeoff of attack types: a fireball might inflict substantial damage to five ogres but kill none of them, for example. The PCs must decide whether it's worth spending a turn injuring several ogres so that they'll be easier to kill in future, or whether it's better to cast a single-target spell that will probably kill one ogre and reduce the incoming attacks. The fireball also tends towards averages (some ogres will probably be damaged) while a single-target spell might miss completely.

With classic D&D mechanics, the giant works very differently. It makes one attack per round. Okay, it might make five, or it might make a single multi-target attack... let's just say it makes Y attacks. It continues to make Y attacks until the PCs inflict 10n damage to it, at which point it makes no attacks because it's dead. The PCs do not have tactical decisions about concentration of fire, because they cannot split fire. They can choose to use their most powerful attacks, or they can be less effective for no reason - it's a simple calculation.

Yes, they could do things other than make damage-dealing attacks, but I'm only concerned with damage here.

Not only is the combat less interesting in that sense, but the PCs also have less control of the situation.

In the ogre example, the PCs can choose to whittle down numbers as soon as possible, or use tactics (like area attacks) that kill the ogres faster overall but allow more incoming attacks in the short term. They can also do things like try to distract, bottleneck or otherwise impair the ogres' ability to bring all their numbers to bear. It's within the PCs' (and players') ability to try and shift the odds in their favour, rather than simply attacking whatever's closest.

In the giant example, the PCs can't use these tactics. They can't choose to focus on reducing the number of incoming attacks right now versus winning the combat efficiently. They can't necessarily choose to eliminate the threat to the squishy wizard first - it might be possible to distract the giant from attacking the wizard, but perhaps its attacks affect the whole party. They can't divert some proportion of the giant's HP and an associated slice of its attack effectiveness away from the combat for a time.

Even in Call of Cthulhu, which has a very basic system designed to model plausible events believably, there's an extent to which combat becomes a resource management exercise, which makes direct confrontation with a monster very tricky, because it often does come down to "can the party's 5 actions a round attached to vulnerable bags of hit points overcome the monster's 1-2 actions a round attached to a much less vulnerable bag of hit points."

Games do try to address these things. I've seen 4E D&D solo monsters built with several "forms", so the monster changes its behaviour and power based on injuries. Some game systems do allow specific injuries, which can reduce the power of the monomonster's attacks in a vaguely similar way to killing off some of a monster group. GMs can also use straight-up roleplaying to have monsters become wary, frightened or carelessly enraged by injuries.

I've Been Saving That

The last point I think I want to make about monomonsters is that they create an extremely strong incentive for the use of one-shot nova abilities, because killing or hampering 100% of your foes is generally the best outcome you could hope for.

I think this may be more of a problem in games which make less of an attempt to offer tactical combat, simply because these games are more likely to include flavourful abilities that can be devastatingly effective but are extremely limited in their use. This may be a deliberate decision (just once in a while, or even just once, the character can take someone down hard), or simply an unplanned organic result of the interaction of abilities, or careless writing.

The main contenders here are, I think, of two kinds. There are danger-balanced abilities, which are extremely powerful but balanced by a very high risk, so that it's foolish to use them often. There are also limited use abilities, which you just cannot use often.

The easiest example of a danger-balanced ability is psychic powers in Warhammer 40,000. It is (okay, in theory) extremely dangerous to use psychic powers, especially if you do so at full power, and so it's best to save them for extreme situations. However, they can be devastatingly powerful. So, if you can invoke a psychic power to pretty much guarantee defeating one target, but it's very dangerous, it is well worth doing so against a powerful monomonster.

The classic limited use ability is actually equipment. A lot of games allow you to occasionally pick up very powerful single-use items. Those such as vortex grenades, arrows of X slaying, scrolls of celestial annihilation or blade oil of banishment may give you a very strong chance of destroying one target outright or at least inflicting massive damage. Another category is single-use buffs and debuffs: you can become invulnerable for ten minutes, or reduce one target's strength to that of a quail, or turn the whole party into frost giants, or trap a target in temporal stasis while you pile up vast quantities of explosives.

There can also be abilities or effects that aren't intended to be near-flawless kills, but can be used that way because of the way they're designed. If players routinely try to pull these off GMs tend to either houserule or find ways around it, but it's often when faced with a desperate situation that the player first tries to pull it off. For example, there are several powers in various White Wolf games that are vastly more powerful than the designers seem to have intended. A GM will not necessarily have a comprehensive strategy for implementing these in a balanced way, especially if the PC first comes up with the idea during a boss fight.

Unfortunately, if you have a much-foreshadowed climactic encounter with the elder dragon Droom, what usually doesn't happen is the party valiantly battling it for several rounds, both sides escalating their attacks dramatically until a final strike with the Arrow of Dragon Slaying brings down Droom. Players are usually pretty canny, and it's obvious that the sensible thing to do is open up with your most powerful attacks in the hope of ending the combat as efficiently as possible. So what you actually get is the much-foreshadowed climactic encounter with the elder dragon Droom in which the hunter looses off the Arrow of Dragon Slaying the very second Droom swoops into view, killing him instantly. Droom ends up being all talk and no action; the band of nameless goblins they encountered in the forest played a bigger part in the story and came far closer to defeating the heroes.

There's nothing wrong with using these items like this, and it can feel narratively satisfying - the natural point for the powerful item to be pulled out just as it's most needed. Similarly, a hero calling on their most dangerous powers at the moment of greatest peril is very fitting. However, there's also a danger of such items or abilities transforming a climactic and dramatic occasion into a damp splat. It's particularly important to bear this kind of thing in mind if such one-shot abilities crop up moderately often, since you can end up with players routinely storing them up to win easy victories over powerful monomonsters, while what should be lesser battles against multiple opponents are relatively difficult. That's not bad playing - it's very sensible, tactical playing - but it can still become unsatisfying for everyone.

Ths isn't a big problem, it's just something a GM needs to be aware of. It's potentially better to throw out battles with several potent enemies, or one quite powerful enemy with some moderately powerful allies, so that these abilities can turn the battle around without ending them in the first round.

---

As usual, a load of rambling with not much in the way of conclusions, just some things to think about. I don't say GMs should avoid using monomonsters or anything like that, it's just that there are quite a few aspects of their interaction with mechanics, narrative and (in particular) the actions of the PCs which it's worth thinking about when planning and running a scenario.

On failure, its outcomes and its implications: derailing

Abstract

There are basically three topics in this miniseries. Thread one is about (mechanical, die-rolling) failure per se and how it feels to me as a player. Thread two is about failures, interestingness and the Fail Forward/Roll Dice or Say Yes sort of concept. Thread three, today's topic, is about the interaction between failure, narrative and the coherence (in the non-Forge-jargon sense) of the play experience.

Failure, Narrative and Coherence

So, what am I wittering about today?

There's two interrelated ideas here. I'd like to begin by talking about how various types of failure affect the coherence of a game, and the table atmosphere. Then I'll discuss the relation between spontaneity/improvisation and narrative coherence. Finally, I'd like to tie these back into the main topic of the miniseries, by talking specifically about the way mechanically-mandated spontaneity affects coherence.

On failure, its outcomes and its implications: consequences

Abstract

There are basically three topics in this miniseries. Thread one is about (mechanical, die-rolling) failure per se and how it feels to me as a player. Thread two, today's topic, is about failures, interestingness and the Fail Forward/Roll Dice or Say Yes sort of concept. Thread three is about the interaction between failure, narrative and the coherence (in the non-Forge-jargon sense) of the play experience.

Failing Forward

One of the arguments that came up in our conversation was more or less this:

"Fail forward" systems (like Dungeon World), which insist on providing "interesting consequences" for failure, just create an unnecessary burden on players and GMs to improvise "consequences" for things that really don't need them, or which already have consequences that arise organically from the failure.

This touches broadly on both Fail Forward and Roll Dice or Say Yes. Both of these proposals work roughly on the basis that die rolls (or whatever resolution mechanic) should be used when you're indifferent to the outcome or when both outcomes are equally desirable. This idea is built into things like Dungeon World's dice mechanic, but also links to a lesser extent to Numenera and its GM Interventions. The principle seems sound, but in application is gets trickier.

I think there are several points to consider here, including:

• Why are we rolling dice?
• What is the resolution mechanic resolving?
• What is a consequence?
• What is "interesting"?

As a quick aside, let me say that I don't think Fail Forward is an inherently flawed idea, although I will be suggesting a lot of problems with it. I think it emerges from some genuine problems (like hitting a dead end or constant whiffing) and is a sensible means to address certain situations in games (more on this far below). I try to apply it in Call of Cthulhu, for example, to avoid discouraging players and keep investigations moving. However, I think generalising it to a standard rule risks creating a new set of problems. Like all tools it is best applied with care.

The reason I will begin by focusing very heavily on the "keep things interesting" usage of Fail Forward is that this seems to be the motivation behind the systems that build it into their mechanics. I say this simply because mechanically-mandated consequences don't really seem to do anything to address potential dead ends.

Dice are fun

As Dan pointed out, one of the assumptions that these philosophies seem to make is that rolling dice is a value-neutral activity, and that's not really the case for a lot of people. Picking up the dice and rolling them is fun. It is a moment of tension, an opportunity for glory or for dramatic failure or for opening up a new possibility space within the game reality, and you don't know which or what will happen.

This is simply not comparable to making a decision about what will happen. If you decide it's cooler that Gnurk the Barbarian snatches the goblet from the altar at the last second before the ceiling crashes down before rolling under a closing door, that's nice, and it may well be the best way to handle a particular situation (especially if it keeps a campaign going) - but it simply doesn't have the rush of satisfaction that comes from the dice and your character's mechanically-assigned skills pulling together to create that result. A successful die roll feels like an achievement; the possibility of failure lends it the tension that gives it punch, and makes whatever steps you took to contribute to that success feel like work well done.

Resolutions

The second point is one I've touched on before. There are many different types of situations that a mechanic may be resolving.

• Do I spot the clue that allows us to keep the investigation progressing smoothly?
• Do I spot the warning sign of an imminent ambush?
• Do I correctly draw the magic circle to protect me from the demon I'm summoning?
• Do I unlock the door?
• Do I shoot the ork?
• Do I convince the guard that I'm allowed in here?
• How fast do I complete the race?
• How long does it take me to do the jigsaw?
• Do I find a secret door?

Some of these situations open up new possibility spaces: the situation was A, but it is now A+B. For example, opening the lock or finding the clue creates new opportunities to do things.

Some of these situations irreversibly bifurcate the possibility space: the situation was A, but transitions to either B or C. Either you convince the guard, or you alert the guard.

Some of these situations modify your circumstances: the situation transitions from A to B anyway, but you are more or less prepared for it (you might call these B1 and B2). The imminent ambush is a good example; you will be attacked, but are you caught off guard or ready to defend yourselves?

Some of these give you information about the game world. You might discover that there is a secret door, or that there is no secret door you can find. Often, these also open up new possibility spaces.

Some of these situations establish other things about the situation. Running very fast might impress NPCs, or create rivalries, or win you a prize. Doing the jigsaw slowly might consume valuable time, or prevent you from helping allies, or you might not finish it before B happens.

Some of them have long-term consequences which it makes no sense to try and determine now. Your magic circle might bind the demon for a hundred years, or as little as a single night. You might have persuaded the NPC to join your side, or they might be planning to betray you next week. You may have memorised the crucial spell to banish Yog-Sothoth, or not. You will find out when the time comes.

And some of them are more complex. If I shoot the ork, it may die. Or it may be injured and decide to take cover. Or it may be injured and attack ferociously to get revenge. The orc being injured may leave it vulnerable to an ally's attacks. It might scare the ork's boss, who decides the fight's going badly and retreats. It might hearten a scared ally. If I miss, the orc might decide I'm easy prey. Or it might decide I can be safely ignored. Or another character may take the orc down with a spectacular headshot. This kind of situation leaves the consequences of failure very much open.

What kind of consequence anyway?

In games in general, and perhaps in whiffy* games in particular, it can seem as though the possibility is: "something cool happens, or something cool doesn't happen". It seems superficially obvious that in such a case you'd want the cool thing to happen all the time, because it's cool. Except brains don't always work like that.

* i.e. games where it's common that you just fail at things, and often that your opponent also fails at things, so several rounds may go by without anything particular happening.

If my character is shooting a gun at an NPC, then in a diceless system I would typically choose for my character to hit rather than miss*. From a purely rational perspective it doesn't make sense for me to prefer a dice-based system in which I have a chance of hitting to a diceless system in which I can select the most appropriate outcome, any more than it would make sense for me to prefer a job where every month I have a 50% chance of not getting paid.

* assuming that it was genre- and character-appropriate, since a thing being cool is often a function of those, even when it's failure. In some cases, my character emptying a revolver at point-blank range without landing a shot is appropriate and cool.

Similarly, if I'm trying to open a safe, climb a tree or hypnotise a bear, I feel like I would generally like to succeed rather than fail.

This line of reasoning ties into the Fail Forward situation, where games compel players and GMs to add "interesting" outcomes to failure, so instead of deciding between an "interesting" outcome and a "boring" one, you're deciding between two interesting outcomes.

This relies, crucially, on an assumption that not-succeeding at something is boring. I'll return to this below.

In theory this solves "the problem" (whatever exactly that is).* In practice it solves some problems for some people (for some others the problem never existed in the first place). And I think this solvedness relies heavily on interpreting reality as consisting only of a subset of the situations I listed above.

*Establishing what The Problem is, and to what extent it exists, and for whom, is frankly beyond the scope of this blog. It's something to do with making things interesting, at least.

It seems to me (both from reading and from listening to Actual Play) that the Fail Forward model tends strongly to interpret situations as forks in the road. Reality is in state A, you attempt to do X, and reality shifts either to state B or state C depending on your success. Either it thinks most situations are like this, or, possibly, it thinks they should be like this in a game narrative.

I think this is a genuine weakness in the approach, which is partly tied into its tendency to assume a conflict resolution model rather than a task resolution model. This is particularly pronounced when we bear in mind that games involve multiple players, of which more later.

And I think this is a weakness because that's demonstrably false. If I search for a secret door, and there is no door, the most natural consequence is that nothing happens. If I try to pick a lock and cannot, the most natural consequence is that nothing happens. If I try to win a race and don't do better than everyone else, the most natural consequence which is simply that somebody else wins. If I try to shoot an orc and miss, the most natural consequence is that my shot goes astray with no further effect. If I try to build a bridge and fail, it might collapse any time in the next decade.

It's not that none of these things can have more complicated consequences; of course they can. However, I think Fail Forward systems tend in these situations to push GMs to improvise immediate consequences which don't always have much to do with the actions of the character, or which at least rely on specific interpretations of how things happen which don't necessarily match what the player intended.

The "natural consequences" offer several possible advantages. The possibility of trying an alternate path from the same state, so you aren't tied completely to whatever you first tried, and can indulge in exploratory gameplay to sound out options and approaches. The opportunity for another player or character to step up with a new idea or ability, which can be especially valuable for newer or less confident players. A potentially important element of predictability that allows planning.

The following example is combat-themed, but it's worth noting that our inspiration here, Dungeon World, doesn't use full-on conflict resolution for most combats, but models them at the level of a single exchange of blows. Typically, the consequence is simply a matter of whether you cause damage and whether you take damage.

If this inconsistency on my part annoys you, feel free to mentally substitute "I sever the chains of the snarling dire boar!" for "I chop the Orc's head off!".

Do I really want an Awesome Fork?

The assumption of Fail Forward in its starkest manifestation is that when I say "I chop the Orc's head off!" I want my assertion to irrevocably set the game down one of two paths: one in which I chop the Orc's head off and it is awesome, and one in which my failure to chop the Orc's head off creates an exciting and dynamic scene.

And let's say for a moment that this is true, that I explicitly want our next forty-eight seconds of gaming time to consist of either the DM saying "Grignr's axe bites into the Orc's neck, severing its head from its body and spattering the walls in its oozing, grey-black blood!" or "Grignr's axe swings wildly, severing one of the supporting beams of the overhead scaffolding, causing piles of mouldy orc-dung to cascade onto the battlefield."

The thing is, both of these outcomes are time consuming (especially because they don't flow as easily in speech as they do in writing), and both of them centralise me specifically.

Similarly, in a non-combat situation: if I attempt to lockpick a door, the DM might say "the tumblers clatter into place, and the door swings open, exposing the Duke's secret devil-worshipping chamber!" or "distracted by the clicking of the lock, you fail to notice the watch-panther padding along the corridor, and it springs towards you with a roar!"

Player creativity is not a finite resource,* but time and things-that-need-doing are. If we are fighting an orc, and I chop its head off, I have denied you the opportunity to deal with the orc by some other method. If my failure to chop the orc's head off causes us all to be buried in orc dung, I have denied you the opportunity to enact any plans you might have concocted that relied on our not being buried in orc dung. Or simply the satisfaction of killing the orc yourself. If my failure to pick the lock doesn't simply waste a few minutes but lands the party in a fight against a panther while creating noise that attracts other guards, the fallback plans laid for this stealth mission are worthless, and if you thought your plan was better you may feel justifiably annoyed with me.

I don't entirely agree with this! I'll touch on it later.

And those are consequences which do at least tie in logically to the events underway, whereas a hurried GM can easily end up suggesting what seems like a random event. "As Grignr rushes the orc, a rusting chandelier detaches from the ceiling and plummets towards them both!" "You are unable to convince the old man to tell you anything, and you suddenly realise your pocket has been picked!" "Your attempt to forge a letter of credit is interrupted by ninjas!"

In contrast, if we were resolving this in a system without Fail Forward, both failed rolls would typically result in nothing particular happening - and this leaves things open for someone else to try.

Organic outcomes are interesting

To put it another way, in a traditional RPG system, failure actually does have interesting consequences, but a lot of the time the interesting consequence is "another player has a go at resolving the situation, often trying a very different approach."

You can make a strong case that traditional systems actually produce the Fail Forward effect in a far more natural and organic way than systems that mandate consequences, but this is only apparent in retrospect looking at the way multiple players' actions and successes interact.

For my money, Fail Forward games place rather too much emphasis on consequences of failure rather than on the consequences of player action. If the PCs are going to wind up getting thrown in gaol after an altercation with an aristocrat, I'd far rather it happened because Brenda the Barbarian started a fight after Billy the Bard failed to resolve the encounter diplomatically than because the DM decided that "you get thrown in gaol" was an interesting consequence of Billy's failed Diplomacy roll.

Generally speaking, with something as simple and inherently task-resolutiony as an attack roll, I'd probably rank my preferences as "I hit", "I miss" and "I miss and something interestingly bad happens as a consequence". It gets trickier when you think about social rolls or rolls to interpret information, but even there I would prefer "I fail and a reasonable consequence ensues" to "something interestingly bad happens with no particular connection to your actions".

Dead ends

At this point I should perhaps come back to the dead end idea I mentioned at the start, because most of this post has been about keeping things interesting. I think this is the main point where Fail Forward genuinely helps out.

It's quite possible to hit a point in a game where players simply don't know how to make the game continue. This is a common complaint of investigative games, where players either run out of leads, haven't managed to put the pieces together, or blew some rolls and locked themselves out of information. However, it can also happen with certain physical challenges or "puzzle" situations, including things like geopolitical shenanigans.

You can very easily hit a dead end. Your only way out is apparently through the locked cell door, and you can't pick it. Your only lead is this neighbour you just insulted. You've tried every configuration of this weird science device but you botched your roll to make it teleport you home. The group sits scratching their heads and looking at the GM, who is wondering why they paid no attention to half of the clues that were laid out, abandoned their door-removing equipment before entering the complex, and both shot the teleport operator and set fire to the manual. Or maybe things just didn't quite go as expected. Or the scenario is not as robust as you hoped. Or it's just been a really long day.

In these cases, Fail Forward is one perfectly good way for the GM to recover momentum. Here, it's not about adding interest to a failed roll per se, but using that circumstance as an GMing opportunity to throw in a clue or hook, or just to shake up a situation where the players were stuck and frustrated.

Just being stuck is not necessarily enough. Sometimes you may want time to sit, talk and mull things over and aren't really worried about whether you're "progressing the scenario". But often you are.

So you fail to pick the lock, which the GM rules means you're still fumbling when the door opens and slams you in the face; the guards sigh, threaten the rest of the party, and one of them drags lockpicker off to the infirmary, where they'll have a new chance to escape, overhear some news, or palm vital equipment.

You get an earful from the neighbour, and after he slams the door, a couple of local kids pop round the corner to sympathise, ask for a fag and hint that they know something - because that guy's always loud and they've overheard some of his other complaining. If he doesn't like you, you must be alright.

Your bumbling attempts at operating the device instead trigger a completely different function, and now a coolant maintenance bot is being despatched to the teleporter. Maybe it's intelligent enough to talk to, or has a telecomms function so you can call for help, or a company datalink that'll give you access to that manual you destroyed.

Content is not the same as interest

So, that "not-succeeding is boring" business. I think when Fail Forward starts to fall apart is where it assumes that "explicit consequences" are always more interesting than "no consequences" and should be mechanically mandated, and I think that's often not the case. Quite frequently, "that thing you were trying to do just doesn't happen" actually ends up being a more interesting outcome than "your attempt to do that thing has dire consequences", and for many people it is certainly more satisfying and even interesting than "that thing you were trying to do just doesn't happen and, for reasons that are game-mechanically connected but have no in-character logic, this other bad thing happens." The "consequences for all!" mindset basically seems to tie into an assumption that more stuff is better.

This is simply not true. Too much stuff clutters up a game. To take a simple example, I have played board games where every single turn involved doing several things: you always rolled a die for movement, you always moved, you always drew a card based on the square you landed on and a consequence ensued.

And generally these games were so boring they should have been wood-eating beetles.

In the case of an RPG, the problem is that you are generally trying to Do Something, and that it is surprisingly easy for complications and consequences to clog up the works. One of the advantages of failure-means-whiffing systems is that they tend to also be simply and relatively fast. If a bad roll means nothing happens, you can simply move on to the next character.

If you need to wait for the GM to think up and then narrate a consequence, and make sure you understand its implications, and then the next player to act has to reconsider their intentions in the light of a potential major change to the situation, this can really slow down play. It can also lead to layers of Things To Deal With piling up on the game, and making it increasingly difficult to follow, or to decide what to do. Constant consequences can act like a Cat's Crade, making each move seem to only tangle the characters, story and even players more deeply in a web and paralysing the game, or making it seem like a stream of consciousness.

And that's what I'll be discussing next.

On failure, its outcomes and its implications: psychology

I feel like it's been ages since I was able to put together anything substantial for this blog. To be fair, nothing I write now is ever likely to compare to the insane (in relative terms) popularity of my post about animal companions...

And also to be fair, it's been a very busy few months and I'm ill. But still. I do enjoy writing for this blog and feeling like someone appreciated it.

This is going to be a miniseries about failure in RPGs, or at least in some RPGs. I fear it may be a bit dry and very rambly. Still, I present it for your delectation, or at least to keep you mildly diverted on the bus.

So a while ago I wrote some responses to a Walking Eye episode about Numenera. Very little of that is relevant right now, so let me pull out the bit which, randomly, sparked this week's post-game conversation. It is is in fact talking about Dungeon World, for some reason.

Distinguishing D&D Alignments (again)

So following my previous post on the matter, a rather different way of thinking about alignment occurred to me.

Warfare in D&D

The Daearn Line

A team of giant eagles fly overhead, masked by an Improved Invisibility spell. Each carries a veteran elven warrior, also invisible.

At a command, the flyers drop their riders, who plummet to earth at enormous speed, halted seconds before impact by a single-use feather fall effect. Landing at a strategic point between enemy units, each elf places a Daern’s Instant Fortress and speaks the command word, springs inside and closes the door. In mere seconds, a formidable strongpoint has appeared in the midst of the enemy. As yet, the elves are still invisible.

Playing with 5e sorcerers

So I just wrote a (probably ill-advised) thing about changes to the warlock class aimed at making it less dependent on one trick. I've muttered before about some concerns I have with the sorcerer class, and I thought, why not look at that too?

First off, a quick disclaimer: I've only played a multiclass sorcerer, and I'm not in a position to comment usefully on balance. I'm not aiming to address any perceived class balance issues. As with the warlock, what I'm interested in here is flavour: how to make the sorcerer feel more distinctively sorcerery by riffing on its high notes.

Travelogues: other little bits

There's a few bits of thoughts about travelogues that I wanted to get down, but don't really fit in. These just relate to the kinds of things that characters might contend with when travelling, which don't necessarily get much attention in mechanics designed for a more adventuring style of play, but which might offer some opportunities for interest.

This depends to some extent on the nature of the journey. Is the travelogue genuinely through actual wilderness, with never another human in sight bar perhaps a hunter or hermit? Or is it, more plausibly, through a succession of towns, villages and farming communities, with breaks of perhaps a few weeks across entirely unsettled regions? If the latter, are they unsettled because they're utterly inimical to life (in which case, a bad choice for travel), because they're full of monsters (a different kind of challenge), because they're actually occupied by wandering communities like hunter-gatherers or roving herdspeople, or because they're reserved for use by powerful nobles (in which case gamekeepers and soldiers are to be expected)?

All the following is just bits of ideas I've had.

Travelogues: trouble on the road

Random encounters from wandering monsters are the classic hazard, but more mundane problems are the mainstay of travelogues.

What I'd like to do is have a probability system for testing for different categories of hazard, adjusted to account for the players' decisions about how to approach the journey. For example, if they're hustling they should be more likely to rush into unsafe terrain and slower to notice creeping hazards, like strange gases or sunstroke. If they take time to examine and maintain their carts and tack, they should be less likely to suffer malfunctions.

Basically I think I'd like to have a "how do you spend your time and energy?" decision. You can travel at absolutely full speed, which makes all kinds of problems more likely to arise: walking into danger, exhaustion, injury, spoilage, accidents and so on. You can take excellent care of your mounts and gear, but travel slowly and use up both food (in travel time) and resources (for maintenance). So you're deciding what your priorities are.

Travel pace

I think (based on my mate's requirements) what I'll suggest is that each day has six 4-hour blocks, and you can choose how many to spend travelling. Those you don't, you can use for downtime activities. Travelling for more than 8 hours beyond this counts as Forced March, no matter in which order you do things!

Travel speeds, and their bonuses and penalties, are otherwise as in the DMG.

Okay, I've pretty much run out of subsystems now, so I need an actual main system... curses.

Right, let's have a stab at this.

The basic idea is much like the random encounter roll, except without monsters. There will be several rolls made each day (or whatever period), with various modifiers, to determine whether anything unusual happens.

I'm probably going to change that because I think it's too faffy on reflection, but let's take a look anywway.

Event Rolls

There are five categories of random events: Travel, Health, Gear, Animal and (of course) Encounter.

Each roll is a 2d10. All rolls are modified by party Morale.

Travel rolls gain a +5 bonus if anyone successfully Planned.

Gear rolls gain a +5 bonus if anyone successfully did Maintenance.

Animal rolls gain a +5 bonus if anyone successfully did Animal Care.

Characters roll Health individually, modified by their Health.

I'm not going to work up actual tables here because I suspect this model is just too faffy. Essentially, it would be low rolls resulting in serious problems, and high rolls resulting in either nothing or some small benefit (such as faster progress).

Composite Rolls

In this somewhat simpler model, there's just one roll to determine whether the notable event of the day is good, bad or indifferent. A secondary roll determines the type of event (such as Travel, Health etc.) and its effects are then calculated.

Roll 2d10 (modified by Morale) for the day's events to determine whether things go well or badly. Then use the highest of the two dice to determine the type of event that occurs. The DM is responsible for deciding exactly what has happened and (where appropriate) framing it as a challenge for the PCs.

If the group is forced marching, they suffer an additional -5 penalty on the roll.

Events allow rolls to avoid their effects. Activities performed in downtime and current status modify these rolls.

• 4 or less: Calamity! Something has gone seriously wrong. The party will make little or no progress today, and may suffer lasting effects.
• 5-7: Problems. Something significant goes wrong, and requires considerable effort to deal with.
• 8-10: Minor setback. The party will lose a little time, energy or patience.
• 11-15: Steady progress. There are no particular problems today.
• 16-17: Good going. The party makes better progress than expected.
• 18+: A stroke of luck!

Use the highest of the two dice faces (the Type Die) to determine the type of event from the chart below. For example, if you roll 4+7=11, the Type Die is a 7. If an event isn't appropriate (for example, the party has no animals with them) use the other face. If that also isn't appropriate, it's a Travel event.

Most events allow an Avoidance Roll to ignore the effects - only one character may make this roll, and in most cases the DM determines which. If the Avoidance Roll is successful, the DM narrates the issue that arises, but the party manage to overcome it without any significant difficulty: they pick a safe path through the marsh, fend off illness, notice the damaged reins in time to avoid an accident, and so on. If not, the party must deal with the issue in-game.

One further point: for some events to be meaningful, we need to assume that waving hands and chanting isn't a solution to everything. This is because with very little else happening, clerics can cheerfully cast cure spells all day. D&D's hit points are a handwavy mixture of stamina, resolve and physical injury. The simplest thing is to assume that, while clerics can easily heal battle wounds or virulent diseases, they can't do much about low-level illness or the time wasted when someone gets hurt. Maybe the gods just don't consider it serious enough? Injuries and illnesses still take time and exhaust the afflicted.

1. Animal event. Something happens involving one of the party's mounts, pets or pack animals. The event can be avoided with a successful Animal Handling roll (DC 20 - Type Die), with advantage if the party did Animal Care last night.
2. Health event. The party member with the lowest current Health is unwell or injured. The event can be avoided with a successful Constitution save (DC 20 - Type Die), with advantage if the character received Healthcare last night. If the unHealthiest party member is already afflicted by a Health event, choose the next unHealthiest.
3. Hostile encounter. The party encounters active antagonists, ranging from petty thieves to bandits to vicious monsters depending on the scope of the event roll. This is handled like any other encounter and there is no avoidance roll.
4. Gear event. There is a problem with some aspect of the party's gear (or, on an excellent roll, their equipment helps them progress faster than expected). This can be avoided with a successful Perception roll (DC 20 - Type Die) with advantage if the party did Maintenance last night.
5. Travel event. The broadest category! An issue arises with the weather, roads, navigation, terrain, natural hazards, other travellers, local residents, the authorities, or perhaps the party simply find something interesting to investigate along the way. The DM should choose an appropriate avoidance roll, typically Survival or a social skill (DC 20 - Type Die).
6. Health event
7. Animal event
8. Gear event.
9. Travel event.
10. Travel event.

A Hostile result isn't necessarily a combat. The party might choose to lay low while a raiding horde passes by, or plan a way to pass through a spider-filled forest without alerting the creatures. The difficulty of the challenge should reflect the event roll result - a Problem shouldn't be bypassed with a roll and no real loss of time.

But how does all that work?

Okay, how's this supposed to work? Here are some suggestions.

Animals

• 4 - A mount is badly hurt - it trips and injures a leg, sinks into a bog, is poisoned by a roadside plant, develops infected sores from poorly-fitted tack, or is attacked by an animal in the night. The party might choose to abandon the creature and keep going (redistributing possession as necessary), or stop travelling for the day while they rescue, tend and reassure it.
• 5 - A loud noise, strange animal or other surprise sends the pack mules racing off into the forest. The party will need to hurry to round them up, once they get their own mounts under control... and there are plenty of places for a mule to disappear.
• 8 - A horse is unusually irritable and badly-behaved after weeks of travel. The party are slowed down as they struggle to keep it moving as they want. An Animal Handling roll won't deal with this problem, because that's what the AH avoidance roll represented - they've had their chance.
• 11 - The horses feed from a cluster of strange herbs, and spend the rest of the day twitching and whinnying, but it has no serious consequences.
• 16 - As the party rests, a grazing animal wanders aside and reveals a hunter's track, which proves to be a useful shortcut through a difficult area.
• 18 - a ranger's companion bounds aside from the path, leading them to a suspicious patch of fresh-dug earth. A few minutes' digging reveals a small iron-bound chest containing silver pieces and a magic scroll.

Travel

• 4 - The route through the hills proves a mistake when the weather worsens, leaving the party slipping on wet scree and struggling against violent gusts. A pack of supplies is lost when a party member nearly falls from a narrow ledge. (Mechanically that's probably going to be food, but it could include some party gear as well. The DM might allow an attempt to find and recover it, but that should be a long and difficult task)
• 5 - The party enter a farmstead to ask for news and buy supplies. Instead, they find a secluded religious order who are angered by the intrusion, and by something about the party. The zealots order them off their land, and all the farms across this valley belong to the same unwelcoming group. It may not be possible to travel through this valley at all.
• 8 - after a shortcut through a thicket, the party are constantly plagued by insects, due to the lingering scent of certain leaves. Their progress will be slowed and patience frayed unless they find a way to escape the flies.
• 8 - a large band of bandit-hunting soldiers orders the party to halt for interrogation (Persuade or Bluff avoidance roll to quickly convince them to move on). A lengthy search and questioning delays the party and potentially inflicts some minor damage.
• 11 - unstable stepping-stones plunge someone into a stream, but thankfully nothing is lost.
• 11 - the party are forced to detour when they find a landslip has wiped out the cliffside path they hoped to take, but manage to make up lost time.
• 16 - A break in the trees on a hilltop offers the party a splendid vista of the landscape ahead, helping them plan the rest of their journey. They gain the benefits of journey planning for the next 1d3 days without spending downtime.
• 18 - The party encounters a band of wandering traders who are glad of some company. The traders can provide skilled Maintenance and give them advice about the route ahead. The party have a friendly contact in the next settlement they visit.

Health

• 4 - the party member is afflicted by food poisoning, and completely helpless. Even with magical healing, they will be too weak and exhausted to travel or pursue downtime activities. They can only engage in absolute necessities (i.e. they can still do combat if necessary). They cannot act in downtime until they make a successful Con save (DC 12-days elapsed).
• 5 - the party member wrenches a knee on unstable ground, and can only move slowly. The party's progress is reduced today.
• 8 - a fever affects the character's senses, so they see and hear illusory threats, and act erratically. The party must decide how to respond.
• 11 - a slight headache from the biting wind makes minimal difference to the journey.
• 16 - whether fresh or exhausted, the character feels unusually clear-headed and focused. Their attentiveness helps the party avoid difficult ground and push rapidly on with their journey.
• 18 - food the party gathered proves to be especially refreshing, and after the meal they all feel in good humour. The party's Morale increases by 1.

Gear

• 4 - A broken wheel leaves a cart useless. The party must choose whether to make long, difficult repairs (a challenge planned by the DM) or abandon the cart where it lies. If they have a spare wheel, they must hoist the cart (a dangerous job) and try to fit the new one.
• 5 - Vermin have found their way into a pack, chewing the bag and eating supplies. The party loses 1d4 daysworth of food.
• 8 - Cooking gear is damaged by poor packing. Unless the party has spares, someone must burn a downtime slot to fix the gear or rig up alternative cooking options.
• 11 - A poorly-fitted sadly leaves someone saddle-sore, but otherwise fine.
• 16 - The expensive telescope someone insisted on bringing allows you to spot a broken bridge up ahead, and the brigands apparently lurking nearby. You can take a different route and make good progress, or you could attempt to confront the bandits.
• 18 - you have exactly the obscure item you need to earn the gratitude of a passing wizard, who offers you a warm welcome at her well-hidden tower. The party can rest and feast well tonight, and has the chance to obtain some minor magical supplies.

That seems more or less workable to me?