Back in the old days, kids in schools got the grades they deserved and if they failed- they could only blame themselves. Somehow that viewpoint got changed, and anything but the student was to blame- eveyone was equal and everyone deserved an 'A'. That switch started around the time I entered public schools in the 60s and is in full flower today.
And one of the results of that change are rpg posts like the this.
One has to wonder at a person who would take a major life lesson (i.e. deciding that all you need to be a hero is luck) from a hollywood movie. But it fits, after all what other reason could it be when any person is just as good as anyone else. They all deserved the 'A' of being a hero, they just were foiled by evil luck.
And the solution offered is simple minded as those used in modern schools. Give the kid an 'A' because he tried as best he could. Or as Tom W suggests- Give them Luck mechanically- so that they always have it with no 'luck' required.
I have a simpler solution, if you're losing 75 characters over a 2 year campaign- maybe someone should learn the play the game better. Maybe, just maybe characters should earn the right of being a Hero instead of having it given to them.
Or maybe you should change rule systems to something easier, despite the fact that even the so-called 'deadly' games (including Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and Dark Heresy) are rather easy to survive if that is the desired group goal.
The last thing one should do is add a Fate mechanic. You may as well not even play the game, just get together and hand out the loot and the XP. Leaves more time for pizza and achieves the same end result.
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I don't understand losing 75 characters over 2 years. That's a huge turnover, even in a group of 6 players! Sounds a bit like the GM and the players were playing a different sort of game and the players weren't very good.
Fate points (or similar) can be used to good affect but need to be limited and still have repercussions.
Very early in our pre-1980s D&D games, we had a death rate approaching that although I don't know if we hit 75.
However 50 of the deaths were from one player. Many of them due to picking fights with other players. Some characters lasted mere minutes after generation. He eventually learned how to play, and play quite well. He very few characters in all the years that followed (I can remember one).
Outside that one exceptional example, most other deaths were from player vs. player conflicts.
And outside those, the rest fit the style of the campaign.
So yeah, that's an amazing turnover and I would expect a major disconnect on someone's part as the only possible cause.
Every once in a while I see a post where you're criticizing a very valid game design option as something inherently wrong with society.
*Takes a seat on his therapist couch* "Are there some unresolved issues here?"
Anyhow, nuff joking around. To explain my credentials on this a little I'll have to explain that for 10 years of my gaming life I've had 2 GM's who run games so restrictive and lethal that even the most innovative and ingenious players have a very very very hard time operating outside the most cautious of playstyles. As the voice of experience, I can tell you this is never ever desirable in a game, it's akin to the same group showing up to a poker game every week to have one player clean house every time.
That's the thing about TTRPG's, you can't always regulate a difficulty curve because each GM is different, and each game is different. In a game where firearms are as lethal as they are in real life a bad roll can mean the difference between a fleshwound and losing a character during a pivotal juncture for the group, and in long combat's it's not always possible to just write up a new one and bring him in right away, so it becomes a reasonably valid option to include a fate system that could potentially keep that character in the game instead of the player having to sit out while his friends have all the fun.
Having said that, I'm not a big advocate of paying xp for trump cards. In designing Hardkore we found a fate system was necessary, but we tied it to other mechanics to provide incentives to role-play according to the results of a social roll and the like. The option was considered to spend xp on the fate points, but I never liked that, it seemed like a cop out and a crutch so even in games where there was that option, I wouldn't use it in favor of earning the points through actual play.
I don't have a problem per-se with "Fate Points" since I like WHFRP--having a currency other than hit points still doesn't make that game especially survivable if you don't play carefully.
Clearly handing out FPs like candy will make the PCs unstoppable engines of story-creation or something and while it's not clear to me that's what's happening here I wouldn't like that either.
From my perspective:
1. Death doesn't always have to be on the line. Sure, it is for some games--but in a lot of systems you're more likely to be rendered unconscious rather than killed and that's okay by me. Furthermore, if the game is such that the scenarios always make the characters mortality the focal point maybe you'd want to play some different guys who aren't going into dangerous territory so often if they're not ready (doesn't even Dark Sun have 1st level dungeons?).
2. There are plenty of games that are not super-deadly. Flyingmice's Star Cluster games are highly survivable although you can get taken out of a fight pretty quickly. They don't have "fate points" but do have "one-auto-success-per-play session."
I liked how that played out in practice (I used my perfect-zero to strategic effect and liked doing it).
Final thought: Luck can certainly stop a guy from being a hero (bad luck)--but it sure doesn't /make/ anyone a hero.
-Marco
It's all about disclosure. Everyone should know the score. If the game is gonna be deadly, the GM should let the players know and they should be fine with that, and if they aren't discuss it.
No fairy dust, fate points, or monty hauls needed. Just be able to agree on the type of game you will enjoy playing.
@Helmsman: I think what we are bleeds over into our fantasies and our gaming. No matter how much some may deny it.
@mrcochacon: I have not experience with WHFRP, but I do Dark Heresy which uses what is at least a similar mechanic- to no useful end IMO.
@James V: Agreed.
Sometimes I end up scratching my head. I read posts, blogs, and rants about this issue, and it seems so evident to me that there's a disconnect between the GM and the players. Maybe it's just that people who have a complaint tend to speak up the most, but it makes me feel like I'm in the minority of groups with people who actually have these types of discussions.
It may not have started that way, as we're all friends and can sometimes be too trusting, but I have managed to drag them into being better participants in the games I run, because now they know more about what my games are about, and can tailor their play to it.
A game or system that requires luck for survival suggests one of two things -- either the player's choices don't matter or the challenges are too hard for the players or their characters.
The first case is caused by a system that emphasizes what Lee Valentine has called "whimsy". That is, the results of anything that the characters in the game do is so random that almost anything can happen on any roll. These are the systems where, for example, there is always a 5% chance of a critical hit or a catastrophic fumble no matter how careful the players play and how skilled their characters do. Think back to the Murphy's Rules about the number of people who would decapitate themselves in a large scale battle fought using a system with high odds of fumbles. In such a system, it's only a matter of time (and a run of outlying rolls) before a good character is killed by bad rolls or a bad character does something spectacular.
The second case is caused by GMs and players setting the player characters up against opponents as powerful as the PCs in a fair fight. Logically, if you are fighting someone who is as powerful as you are in a fair fight, your odds of winning will be around 50%. Even decent luck won't keep a character alive through many combat encounters where they have a 50% chance of losing.
This is why, in the real world, armies and law enforcement don't look for fair and even fights (quite the opposite, they look for advantages to maximize their odds of winning) and why in games like D&D 3.5, a challenge of equal level to the party is designed to only use 25% of the party's resources to defeat (with defeat being almost assured).
Characters can survive encounter after encounter with such odds without relying on luck to survive. That doesn't mean that the characters will never run into an even opponent nor that they might not make bad choices and take on too many challenges while at less than full ability and suffer the consequences but it does mean that those even encounters will be rare and memorable and that taking on more opponents in a weakened states is a risky tactic not to be used casually or routinely.
If you play a system where the challenges are reasonable (or the players and their characters have a reasonable opportunity to choose their challenges) and the player choices matter, you shouldn't need luck or fate.
When my group plays Fudge, we give out a Fudge point per game (which can be used to modify rolls, reduce wound severity, etc.) and limit players to using two Fudge points per game but, in practice, the players rarely used Fudge points and when we do, it's often for things that have little to do with combat. For example, a player might use a Fudge point on a roll to impress an NPC or to get a love interest's attention. If you are playing a system that produces results that match the player's expectations and the GM provides challenges that match the player's expectations, then you don't need them. You'll get results that satisfy without them.
So why do so many games and groups go wrong? Because emulating movies and TV shows have convinced people that to be exciting and tense, every encounter or challenge must be like a 50% challenge (or even worse) because that's what exciting and tense challenges look like in movies and TV shows, where the hero always just barely wins a hard-fought fight and the bombs are always disarmed with just seconds left on the timer.
But if you want your characters to be victorious nearly 100% of the time against challenges that they only have a 50% chance of winning, you've got three choices. You can do what happens in movies and TV shows, which is that a writer uses authorial fiat to make their characters win because they want them to, or you can give the players a mechanic that lets them ignore the losses so that 50% odds aren't really 50% odds, or the GM can fudge the rolls and results to keep the player characters from dying without overtly acknowledging that they are doing so. The first is the "narrative control" advocated by some game designers. The second is the fate mechanic approach. The third is basically the GM fooling the players so that what is described as a 50% challenge and should be by the rules really isn't.
All of these approaches ultimately do the same thing. They all make sure that a 50% challenge (or even a 5% challenge) really isn't. They all rely on the players pretending that the 50% challenges is a 50% challenge when it really isn't.
"Sometimes failure is the right answer, and true heroes make their own luck."
http://vaultsofnagoh.blogspot.com/2009/05/luck-does-not-hero-make.html
Lots of good comments here, and a nice entry on your blog there Chris.
John hits on a part that I skipped over: if a fate mechanic is needed to keep the characters alive (and keeping them alive is the desired goal), why not just design the game so that it didn't kill characters all the time in the first place? It's like buying a moped instead of a racing bike and then strapping a rocket to it.
There is something that can feel decidedly unheroic about entering a battle you can't lose. I'm not suggesting that every encounter be easy to win but that a game where ever encounter carries a 50% chance of losing is not sustainable and that the 50% battles (or even 5% "go out in a blaze of glory" battles) be exceptional and something that players enter into with an understanding of the real odds. Nobody is a hero doing something heroic every hour of the day. No firefighter could survive entering building after building with only a 50% chance of survival. No soldier could survive battle after battle with a 50% chance of survival. No mountain climber could climb mountain after mountain with only a 50% chance of survival. Captain Sullenberger doesn't land a fully loaded passenger jet into the Hudson River daily. Heroism normaly happens as defining moments that are exceptional if not defining and unique, not routine.
And I suppose I should add that the heroes of Flight 93 as well as other heroes that died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center and Pentagon (including not only rescue workers who climbed up 80 floors in full gear but also security staff and office workers who refused to leave others behind) clearly illustrated that one does not need to survive nor even succeed to be a hero. Being a hero is about acting to do the right thing when normal people, acting out of fear, despair, or self-interest would either turn and run or give up.
::sigh::
There's a big difference between students in school and players in a game.
There's a big difference between a hero in real life and a hero in fiction or a game.
The difference? The purpose of the game isn't to prepare you for life. The purpose of the game isn't to save someone's life or sacrifice your own.
The purpose of the game is to have fun.
If having fun is supported by a game mechanic that twists in-game fate (and it may not be for you, but it clearly is for some), then that game mechanic is potentially a good one.
@szilard: People are people, be they playing a game or fighting for their lives.
If they're lazy and fixed on self (i.e. success without work or risk) in one area, they will tend to take it to others.
And frankly, I don't care how much fun they are claiming to have while displaying such sad personality traits.
Gleichman, you wrote: "John hits on a part that I skipped over: if a fate mechanic is needed to keep the characters alive (and keeping them alive is the desired goal), why not just design the game so that it didn't kill characters all the time in the first place?"
One response is that players can burn those point for whatever they (or their characters) hold to be important. Sometimes, this will not be to keep the character alive, though most of the time that is a fairly high priority.
In one game I'm running now people have a bunch of tokens they can use to reroll rolls. Whenever that is done the relevant trait also increases by one. So "Mercenary 16", fail, choose to use a point, "Mercenary 17" and reroll. It gives organic character development, essentially. (Sometimes there are other consequences, too. Anyone rerolling a magery roll will be marked, hence corrupting mages gradually if they push their magic.)
I'm sure there are other ways of making general fate/luck points useful.
@thanuir: The idea that Fate points can be used for other things isn't a response to the core point- it's an agreement with it. Whatever the use of Fate points, they are in the end used for those things the character did not, or could not do in the normal play of the game.
If such things are desired- just design the game (or create adventures) so that's the normal outcome.
I think in the end that the reason designers don't do this- is that they have a rather weak rejection of the what is in effect designing a game that makes success automatic. They still go ahead with it- but hope that most people (perhaps including themselves) won't notice if they semi-hide the cheat behind Fate mechanics instead of making it plain in the everyday rules.
You guys suprise me - here you are saying you all are experienced gamers, but if you were you would remeber ye old Death/20 poison from 2nd edition AD&D.
Once I played a paladin in a Planescape campaign all the way yo to around 15th level. Everybody loved that paladin, the personality, the foibles, the expereinces. And once he failed a perception check and opened a door with some dust of choking on it, and failed his save. So he died. THe DM wanted to fudge the results to keep him alive, but I wouldnt have any of that, whats the point if the DM is just going to change things to keep you alive? I hate games were the DM pulls punches just becasue the dice dont go the way the DM expected them to. Ironically (and very suprisingly to me) all the other players loved that paladin so much they all quit the campaign after that because he had become so central to the story.
When I DM's my first Shadowrun campaign, there were countless times that a given affronted enemy woudl normally want to send an assassin, and a thousand ways the players could meet q quick death. Now i MYSELF had to pull punches to keep them alive. Sometimes it just makes sens that the bad guys are going to have the appriach covered by snipers. I hated having to dumb down encounters to keep the players alive.
If you havnt been killing your players that I can guarantee you one of two things: 1 you dont play your campaign realistically, or 2 you pulled punches to keep your players alive occasionally. If you are fine with that, great, but for me, neither one of these choices is acceptable. For our second Shadowrun campaign we incorporated a Fate system to put the occasional pulled punch back in the hands of the players all the way from character creation. Thus the GM had one responsibilty: to play the encounter and story logically, to allow theplayers to make any choices they want, and the play out the results of those choices logically. evemn if it means sending out hired assassins to kill the characters. (note: if you hire an assassin, you are going to hire one who is BETTER than the target, not a scrub). The result was more fun, more emotional intensity in the adventures, more tension, more fright, becasue the players knew that no punch would be pulled. THe supply of fate points they had might keep them alive from a single ambush but it in no way would let them walk their way to completion of a mission.
Heres were you guys dont seem to get it - Fate points as I am suggesting as an option are the following: 1.still a limited resource 2. a small enough number they will never carry the day, but they might give the players another round to realize they are in over their head.
Tom W
Oh one thing: you guys seem to be suprised at losing 70+ characters over two years. Clearly you have not played AD&D Dark Sun, and if you did and survived easily, then your DM was as guilty as all the others in cheating on your behalf.
Tom W
Gleichman;
With fate points, the player can decide when to use the points and what is not worth it. I can't think of many alternative mechanics that create this dynamic. (One alternative is: In order to reroll you must first roll on the Chart of Possible Doom.)
That said, part of the benefit is that I can throw deadly risks at the player characters and they have a good chance of surviving. I don't need to worry about the characters, the players and the rules do it for me.
That said, if they do run out of points or get in situation where they are not helpful, too bad. One character was almost dragged to Hell already by vengeful shades of those he had slain, but the other mages figured out a way to save him. I was impressed; I considered that character pretty much gone at that point.
@Tom W: Ah yes, raising the shadow of realism.
After all, the dozen or so soldiers who were seriously outnumbered across a multiple month campaign climaxing what is called one of the most intense urban battles in US history at Qala-i-Janghi suffered horrifying losses...
...oh wait. None of them died, and they only had some minor injuries throughout.
They did lose one CIA spook along the way.
Where's the death rate approaching your campaign's 'realistic' deaths?
Oh yeah- that level of deaths happened to the losers, i.e. what your gaming group is.
Many gamers (including yourself) vastly overrate the chance of death. And vastly over-do how often men actually face serious battle. Such highly unrealistic views result in highly unrealistic results.
As to why my games don't match your death rates- my foes are more realistic than yours, my players more skilled, or so combination. It's that simple.
@thanuir: Yes, being lazy and not having to worry about things is another reason for the use of Fate Points.
And if the GM can be lazy on this matter- so can the players. And no doubt they are.
@Gleichman
I'm not sure where you get the idea that success needs to have certain kinds of costs in order to be valid. It is extremely close-minded. If I have a limited resource and spend that in order to achieve success, why is that any less valid than achieving success on a lucky roll of the dice?
Your argument is lacking. As far as I can tell, it is based on nothing but your preconceptions and prejudices.
@szilard: I have seen players attempt to get through our games on 'luck', those were the ones that die.
Given that case, I don't consider success by luck to be an achievement worth crowing about. But it is better than depending upon a fate system to achive it for you. At least you subjected yourself to risk.
Further, I don't consider most Fate Mechanics to be limited resources- for it they were, they were fail to achieve the goal set by Tom W.
In other words- 'limited' means you have to run out, i.e. you don't have enough to do the job. And characters would still die.
This is even more reason to skip the lie Fate Mechanics offer, and design/pick a game who's core mechanics produce the desired outcome.
There is a difference between attempting to get through a game on pure luck and succeeding because of it. If you don't know that, then you have never rolled a die.
What about the guy who succeeds only because the gunshots fail to hit him? That's luck. It is luck even if the gunshots only had a 1 in 20 chance to hit.
Why?
Well, what if it hit on that 1 in 20 chance? That would be bad luck, right? He took a reasonable chance and lost.
Succeeding because you bet on a near-sure thing and won is still due in part to luck.
Fate mechanics that depend on some sort of point system are clearly limited unless they give you unlimited points.
By your logic, people's wealth in the real world wouldn't be limited if they don't run out of it. I always keep some money in savings. That doesn't mean my wealth isn't limited.
you are just redefining terms to suit your predetermined position/purposes.
Glechman;
I would not say lazy, but rather focused elsewhere.
You carefully sidestepped the more interesting parts of my comment. Would you like telling me why or responding to them?
@szilard: Really you should think about what you're saying a bit more.
You say Fate is a limited resource because you have limited points. Do the math on that please.
If I have one fate point, I avoid one case of a 1 in 20 and am then downed by the next 1 in 20 and the Fate mechanic didn't save my character. However that's it's entire purpose.
Thus the mechanic must provide enough points to do so- and thus it in practical effect unlimited.
Often by simply causing the player (and even the GM) to play better when he's nearly out.
If this is not the dymanic of its effect- it's not doing what is claimed for them.
@thanuir: I commented on what I thought the more interesting of your points were. The rest was just you saying you like Fate Mechanics as far as I can tell.
I will take this time to note that the one time you say you were impressed with your players is when they dealt with something after they were out of Fate Points.
Taking away the mechanic may give you a chance to be impressed with them more often.
I specified how fate points, in this particular system, create a dynamic that is non-trivial to achieve without them. I think this is distinctly separate from saying why I like fate mechanics.
The fiction that laid the basis for that impressive bit was inspired and made possible by fate points, so I really don't see how removing them would help. If I were to remove them then I'd have to create some other other extended resolution mechanic and I would lose the organic character development that currently works due to the fate points.
@thanuir: The 'fiction' could easily and more quickly be had without Fate Points. All it takes is for a difficult condition to arise in the game (which is the very thing Fate Points are suppose to remove by the way).
Beyond that we're not going to agree, and this specific article is already three weeks old or so. Don't you have better things to do?
Usually people enjoy having a conversation on their blog, but okay, whatever.
I think at this point, you're be better served by going to one of the rpg forums. Blogs aren't good for long term repetitive exchanges and you've seem to have said about all you can say on the subject.
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