How can we incentivize IC failure?

Arkandel

@mietze And similarly it's not even just failure.

What about the person who's all over a plot, has done a lot of the ground work, has participated in scenes about it both while PrPs were still running and through 'regular' RP... and when the final scene is scheduled they don't get to join in? Either because there are too many participants or something as mundane as RL schedules getting in the way.

It's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointment. That's the equivalent of watching your favorite show until the last episode, but you can't watch that. All you can do is read a review about it afterwards.

mietze

Yeah. I think that's why I am not sure one can "incentivize" failure per se. (Also, if we're talking about coded stuff like rewards for purposefully bombing rolls, I think there's also an element of that's great for that person involved, but what about the other people in the scene/on the team who didn't denotate their roll and were striving to accomplish the objective, who now don't get to do so AND also don't get the reward since they didn't choose to fail oocly? It gets complicated real fast. Especially if the bomber doesn't want their PC perceived ICly as a saboteur, I'm not so sure they should get to have all those benefits for choosing to be an ooc one.)

I think if we want to IC failure to be the story driving tool that it has so much potential to be, that is far less about policy and code and almost everything to do with culture both player side and staff side.

Ganymede

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

It's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointment.

I concur with this. I don't mean to suggest that players should just deal with failure as it comes because it is an inevitability. (This is in accord with my adherence to the Path of Emo.) I mean to say that I think it is a good idea to promote the concept of choice, and that the available systems, particularly the Chronicles of Darkness, does a good job in not only providing choice, but also a little sugar to make the pill easier to swallow, e.g., the Sanctity of Merits rule. Having that sugar I think substantially improves the chances that players will not be as soured long-term in failures, especially if they had a bit of a hand in it.

That said, and ultimately, whether IC failures cut like a knife or not largely depends on the game's culture.

reimesu

I have a weird dice quirk, for most of my life: if I have a char that regularly manages to hit something in combat, it does no damage. There was a TT gaming group I was in, back in the age of dinosaurs, where my OOC nickname was Glass Jaw <nickname redacted> because invariably, my character was the first one knocked out. I learned to bring a book because it was generally a long combat session that I wasn't part of.

When I can? I try to turn it into something fun and funny because I know it's going to happen. It is my Dice Karma. But it's still usually disappointing.

Hella

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

However swiss cheese model approaches can absolutely apply. For example while still building a game ask some questions:

Which in-game rewards (positions, XP, etc) will the game offer? How are they going to be distributed and why?

How do we engage players in structured plot (PrPs, staff-ran scenes)?

How do we match reward to risk?

How do we handle character death?

And so on.

I think this would be really great in a thread on its own, on questions to ask/answer for folks interested in guidance on setting up their own games.

faraday

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Which in-game rewards (positions, XP, etc) will the game offer? How are they going to be distributed and why?
How do we engage players in structured plot (PrPs, staff-ran scenes)?
How do we match reward to risk?
How do we handle character death?

So for an example of what I mean about apples vs oranges, here's how it is in the games I run:

Story is the only reward. There are no limited/special positions; XP is automatic and flat; there is no "cool kids" faction that gets all the story; etc. Staff-run plots are frequent and open to all. PRPs are encouraged, just don't break the game. Since there are no OOC rewards and no unconsented death, the risk/reward balance is not a thing.

You could do all of this in a WoD game too. Or a Star Wars one. Or literally any setting. Put all the PCs on the same "team" (all Gangrels, all Rouge Squadron, etc.) against some antagonist and structure your PC positions and central plotline to maximize opportunity to participate. Leave the special top tier positions to NPCs and keep PCs on a more or less level field.

I'm not saying this is the only way to run a game, or even the best way. I'm just trying to point out that many of these problems that seem insurmountable are actually facets of the game's design. Change the design, and they will be minimized or even eliminated.

I don't think you can make a game where all/most of the players want to fail. But you can build a game that embraces that tendency instead of trying to fight it.

Arkandel

@faraday It goes well beyond the scope of this thread, but I think a fundamental mistake many game-runners make is that despite of the amount of work and thought they put into all sorts of (quite important) things - the code, the setting and its history, the wiki, etc - they spend relatively little time considering basic questions.

"Set this WoD game in New York or a little town in Maine?" Weeks' worth of fierce debates.
"What are the implications of making feature characters playable?" Eh, I'm sure it'll be okay.

Ghost

This is one of those moments where I wish I could have started the thread so that my reply will be at the top and easily found (and ensured that it is read). This may be a little long-winded, but please bear with me, here.... (because I know I've dropped this before on MSB and I will -always - feel that this is relevant).

Almost 2 decades into the hobby, reflectively, I think I've come to realize two MAJOR quandaries with the MU hobby in general that are responsible for probably most of the highs and lows of the hobby. The first (which is irrelevant to the topic, but I'll dip) is "Is it cybersex between players or is it in-character romance?" The second, however, I think is a KEY concept that is responsible for so much frustration, bullshit, and confusion in these games that it may very well be a tangle of computer cables that may never be fixed:

"Is it a GAME or a Cooperative Writing Hobby?"

Here's why this applies to the question of "How do we incentivize IC failure" and potentially why the hobby may never, ever, ever be able to communally incentivizing IC failure a reality, and here are important things I think that everyone needs to understand.

If it's a GAME, then RPG players are going to bring both their GOOD HABITS and BAD HABITS

The online tabletop RPG community has the same issues: Pervy/rapey players, powergamers always wanting things their way, people min-maxing their stats to try to win everything they'll roll, and a TON of other bad habits when it comes to sharing the table, trying to control win/fail results, and being cooperative with others. HOWEVER, many of these games are attractive to RPG players (like me!) because often they use existing RPG settings and systems as a front-end (World of Darkness, Star Wars, Superheroes, etc), so a lot of people who might search on Roll20 for a tabletop RPG might find themselves finding MU as a hobby.

Why this is important to understand

Tabletop RPGs deal in rewards similar to what Arx does: Coded money, inventory, experience points, dots on the sheet, stats
With those rewards you are codifying a sort of "failure mitigation" that opens up other in-character opportunities with the dice to "back up" your character decisions
RPG-focused players CAN and WILL approach the MU hobby from a "systems" approach, often seeking to leverage the SYSTEM to determine what their character can or cannot do.
Tenure, experience, and time spent often resonate with RPG-minded players as somewhat entitling them to bigger gains, situations where threats beneath their character's tenure are less difficult for them, and newer players and characters should reasonably not be equal to their level or opportunities

For better or for worse, the RPG-minded player hits a wall with other MU players when it's realized that a large number of people DO NOT WANT DICE TO RESOLVE SUCCESS. Dice are the great equalizer; a number that determines pass or fail whether you like it or not, and it only works if everyone agrees to let the mighty gods of RNG decide their fate

If it's a CREATIVE WRITING HOBBY, then the motivations for PASS/FAIL are entirely different than RPG motivations

(In this example) "It's not a GAME right? It's a STORY." Therefore the concept of pass/fail isn't based on whether or not you've put in the time, stats, experience, or have the +3 broadsword. It's about whether or not people are having fun and enjoying the story, right?

Why this is important to understand

Without RNGesus to determine pass/fail, then the discussion about "who gets to win in a conflict" ultimately falls into other danger zones: Who can come up with the best idea at the time, who would be the most upset if they fail, what the GM/scenerunner had planned from the get-go (which is why railroading is so common in MUs in my opinion), or even who is the GM's favorite (which I think explains the extreme amount of cliqueish behavior and sucking up to staff that happens).
Creative writing together is a GREAT IDEA! But if people are approaching it AS THAT, then why is there so much arbitration over who wins and loses? Obviously, people either aren't being as cooperative as they'd like to think or perhaps the cooperation factor is just some mantra that people don't believe in as much as they'd like to think
People who want to just write-out the results as what they feel is "most fun" need to understand that there will never be a week that goes by where someone realizes that "someone else's idea of what was more fun took priority over someone else's".
Unless you have a very specific group of roleplayers who have bonded together to ensure that the results will always be fair and fun within the group...you're going to find that people break off into groups and problems arise when they peek outside of those little groups to mingle with others they don't have such an understanding with.

Alas (with that last bullet point), surprise surprise, the majority of MU players I know always say stick to people you know as much as possible. Sure, this can be to avoid really strange, dangerous, bizarre, and downright scary players, but I think it's mostly to avoid the issues I found commonly with players I didn't know: Misunderstandings turning into flame wars on MSB, accusations, people getting upset, etc....

WHAT I THINK ALL MU GAMES ABSOLUTELY NEED TO DO TO UNDERSTAND PASS/FAIL AND PLAY WELL TOGETHER

Don't mix. If you're making an "online tabletop RPG with WoD dice and systems (with accompanying writing)", then explicitly say so, cling to RNG as the deciding factor on pass/fail results, and make it a part of the +agree statement that going into the game they're prepared for this.
Don't mix. if you're making a "cooperative creative writing game", you should explicitly state so and do away with codifying extensive dice systems into your games (which will only confuse the RPG players), and instead incentivize cooperation over pass/fail results. Create the game, environment, and social structure as a showcase of writing and stories, sharing written works, and remove the game concept from the MU altogether.

I guess in short: I don't think the "my story" types and the "RPG gamer" types mix together very well, at least in a long-term gaming environment. There's always some "my story" person who doesn't give a shit about dice and experience points getting trounced by some absolute dice-whore who doesn't care about "their story". ("I don't care if you think this moment is a character-defining moment where you stood up to a bully. I have 34 combat dice and turned you into grape jelly in one roll!") Likewise, there's always people (like me) who thought that their character sheet and experience meant something getting shutdown by GM-caveats and players acting like they have dots on their character sheet that they clearly didn't spend, which was always frustrating ("Hey, I actually have 10 dice in being manipulative. Your sheet has a dice pool of 4 because you spent all your points in other things. Why do I have to CONVINCE you OOCly that it's okay to manipulate your character?")

I think the MU community as a whole tries to accommodate far too many playstyles to ensure the maximum number of people will log in to play, and then these games hope and pray that people will find a way to get along and play cooperatively. I think that this is a long-term mistake and it would have been better setting rules and guidelines about HOW the game is played and ensuring that people who aren't playing in the spirit of the game (regardless of how many friends they have, who they know on staff, or what kind of accusation they threaten to make on gaming forums) are politely removed to keep things safe and fun for copacetic players.

(And yes, I suppose it COULD be BOTH a GAME and a WRITING HOBBY, but not everyone has the same definition of WHAT THAT MEANS, and with that comes ultimately the constant problem of incentivizing IC failure and dealing with people who become problematic around the topic. So ultimately my logical brain goes to "if this is an "IF/THEN/ELSE" scenario all you can do is start creative definitions, your expectations, and focus on the PLAYERS YOU WANT rather than EVERYONE.)

Ganymede

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

"Is it a GAME or a Cooperative Writing Hobby?"

My consistently-presented third option: "Or is it an improv acting activity?".

Lotherio

I agree with a lot of what @Ghost is getting at. Its the age old diametrically opposed viewpoints. Roll vs Role, MUD vs MU^others. Various levels of intermixing that doesn't always work out as noted.

It also begs the argument, folks that roll hard dice and abide by the systems interpretation (ie playing Pendragon and failing my virtue then proceeded to critically succeed on my vice roll) ... and then role play the results would feel offended if someone said they weren't creatively telling a story and inversely, if fols are in a game that assumes some success level for easy to moderate rolls based on how many points they put in a stat or how they described it but expresses a level of failure and they sometimes like to roll to see if they fail and/or how bad they fail might feel offended if you say they're not using some form of game system or rules.

In the end it comes down to be clear how much of each MU is, but the needle on that guage is mostly jiggling back and forth between yellow caution and red danger such that we don't really know and as @Ghost mentioned, there is some kowtowing to appease a broader player base on most places.

That said, I do have some thought on a part of what was brought up. This could be in a breakout thread; 'incentivizing systems for the more story telling focused group'. But this thread is still incentivizing failure, so here goes ...

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Don't mix. if you're making a "cooperative creative writing game", you should explicitly state so and do away with codifying extensive dice systems into your games (which will only confuse the RPG players), and instead incentivize cooperation over pass/fail results. Create the game, environment, and social structure as a showcase of writing and stories, sharing written works, and remove the game concept from the MU altogether.

Now there is lot of systems out there that steer away from RNG and dice towards a storytelling system of fairness in who wins and loses, and even plays towards the wrestling stuff @Ghost has brought up in the past (every takes a fall every now and again so others get some spotlight and the understanding is when you fall you do it to help the winner look good in their moment, honor system sort of stuff). Amber diceless had players bid on stats to see who was best/etc. and its assumed the person great in one attribute is always great but circumtances can change that. Other systems have come along to introduce good karma/bad karma and mutual pools of luck (players take a loss but gain a few successes to use for their big win, or win they win the GM gets a few successes to increase story challenges and adversaries). @Ganymede brought up CoD brought parts of this into the system with taking the beatdown for XP or some boon for later.

I've brought up this idea before but it was shut down, taking a loss for a win later in a static system of character representation not unlike comic places. Like strong char has lift 75 tons as their strong, they can fail a few times for whatever reason that builds up whoever is taking the win - kryptonite got them, the winner was stronger in that moment, they had the higher ground, the other one had belief in themself more than the char had in themself and clearly defeated them through this sheer will of strength. They take the good loss but later in the story when their friend is trapped under the 85 ton building, they have the karma pool to exceed their limit to save their friend.

It was pointed out folks would game the system for losses to only use them in the most crucial moments. However, I still believe somewhere is a medium middle ground where this could work in a MU.

That was a lot of rambling, not sure I went anywhere but there are systems for story-oriented folks just I haven't seen any make the transition to MU and maybe cause folks still hold onto wanting the game aspect (sometimes to let dice determine if they win or lose)?

faraday

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

"Is it a GAME or a Cooperative Writing Hobby?"

I love most of what you wrote, but I would challenge one part of your thesis: the use of the word "or" there.

If you look at how MUSHers behave across the board, I think you'll find that what makes MUSHes unique from other hobbies is that they exist at an intersection between gaming, cooperative writing, and (to @Ganymede's point) improv acting. MUSHes contain elements from all of these to varying degrees.

That is what causes challenges, for sure, but it's also what makes MUSHes cool IMHO.

For instance, even in a 100% consent-driven game, I still find value in codified chargen in order to create a common frame of reference for what your character is capable of. Even in a "cooperate first" mindset game, I still find value in having some set of conflict resolution other than old-school GM judging.

The BSG games (mine and others) I think show a sort of environment where players with different preferences can peacefully co-exist most of the time. In a more adversarial environment, I can certainly see where clashing expectations would be a bigger problem.

Lotherio

@faraday said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

The BSG games (mine and others) I think show a sort of environment where players with different preferences can peacefully co-exist most of the time. In a more adversarial environment, I can certainly see where clashing expectations would be a bigger problem.

First, completely agree, its a bit of all combined somewhere in the middle and not always clearly defined to what extent of each any given Mu* might be. I do like the improv acting as another part of the spectrum/gauge, and that needle fluctuates too (is it completely improv seeing what actors come up with giving a situation, or is there more system to it such as cues from the audience, the director, other actors that can modify this situations - or in a dice game like pendragon, when I'm about to behead the leader of the revolt on my land do I roll to see if my character is more Forgiving or more Vengeful - and it comes down to how much am I the player deciding vs how much am I taking cue from the system).

@faraday said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

The BSG games (mine and others) I think show a sort of environment where players with different preferences can peacefully co-exist most of the time. In a more adversarial environment, I can certainly see where clashing expectations would be a bigger problem.

I'd just like to say also, especially concerning @Faraday's BSG and the way stats are presented. The in between places of must Mu*s, I think they are better suited in more universal systems. FS3 on the surface is easy to understand, attributes and skills; WoD on the surface looks easy to roll those things to determine various outcomes; Open D6 is similar. This is good for MU in a not related to the topic sort of way, its when system becomes more complex does the question of how much are we following the rules system vs the spirit of creating story and groups having different levels and not getting along comes up. On the backend or under the hood, FS3 has a easy yet complex combat system. Attack/defend isn't too hard but the realistic side of a few modifiers and determination of hit location and for how much damage and what location, how much splash damage, does shrapnel hit people in a vehicle when its shelled, does someone pass out from some damage or are they strong enough to keep standing, can other rally them, etc. Its straightforward but a lot of steps to try to remember and its why the coded combat resolution through an interface/HUD is great and helps folks only focus on the sheet.

In a universal system, folks are left to play in their way when the see the sheet. Me and my friend could 'brawl' and decide we do best of 5 rounds and the loser is knocked out, we just roll strength or we roll the melee skill (or, more universal and part of the system, if someone has melee the roll that as the roll includes strength, and if not, they just roll strength). Beavis and Bill might like the 10 charts of does it hit, what part of body, is it covered in armor, does some of the armor absorb or outright block the damage, does it depend on type (piercing goes through leather easy but not so much through metal), is it more likely to hurt when it hits (5.56 ball rounds bounce around and are designed to put you down so your friends and medic pause a little to help you out while firing incendiary rounds at peole is going to slice and dice), etc.

That level is where the gauge moves when universal systems come into play for me, the mix of is it more straight system or are folks playing in favor of a story or more just improv acting to see what the characters are going to do/how they'll respond etc. But just a little spiel for I like more universal systems.

faraday

@lotherio said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

On the backend or under the hood, FS3 has a easy yet complex combat system.

FS3 combat is a good example of why I don't think the question of game and story has to be either/or. It exists not because of a "game first" mentality, but just because it's nigh-impossible to do a wholly cooperative combat scene with a dozen players in a tolerable timeframe. It's a tool of convenience, nothing more. Rolls can be similar - two players could just RP a sparring match, or they could throw in a few rolls to add some chance and/or guidance for how things go. You can do both.

Ganymede

@faraday said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

FS3 combat is a good example of why I don't think the question of game and story has to be either/or. It exists not because of a "game first" mentality, but just because it's nigh-impossible to do a wholly cooperative combat scene with a dozen players in a tolerable timeframe. It's a tool of convenience, nothing more. Rolls can be similar - two players could just RP a sparring match, or they could throw in a few rolls to add some chance and/or guidance for how things go. You can do both.

FS3 combat is also a good way for my PCs to get their crotches destroyed.

Yes, there are stories behind that.

Anyhow, I've nothing further to add at this point. I adore FS3 combat.

Ghost

See...I'm not so convinced that "consent" is across the board a 100% good thing. YES, consent is 100% important when it comes to activity that could lead to abusive or sexually abusive roleplay. 100% full stop.

But somehow it's (consent) been blended into meaning things like:

I have to give my consent for RP to go ways contrary to what I want
I have to give my consent to fail at something I want my character to succeed in
You have to have my consent for you to make decisions for your character that impact my character

I feel like at some point in time the concept of consent and "failure" were blurred into something...disruptive. I've personally been threatened OOCly or harassed for making character decisions that impacted other players without their consent. Shit, I got banned from Serenity for it. A number of players sort of latch to other players and then "consent" becomes a vehicle to control other players, their IC decisions, etc.

So when it comes to incentivizing IC failure I feel like the most immediate thing you can do to actually incentivize IC failure is to codify it into the game rules that A CHARACTER FAILING AT SOMETHING IS NOT A CONSENT ISSUE.

If I had my way, MUs would work like this:

DICE determine pass/fail results, and the only things that must be consented to are capture, torture, sexual situations, and unthematic player-killings (unthematic meaning: you can't just PK because your character has a +400 combat wang, but if your character is caught betraying the king a PK is warranted)
Social dice ARE acceptable to allow for deception, lies, and IC manipulations, and failure to roleplay the results and/or metagame around social failures would be punishable by suspension (up to being removed from the game)
Failure to roleplay or accept IC failure (up to and including no-selling failure results as things like "I'm not going to roleplay it to look as if I failed because that would make my character look bad") would be considered VERY bad form, because it incentivizes other players not to accept RP failures (thus, no one ever wins and no one ever loses without some kind of OOC manipulation/bartering, which is where we are today).
Anything else, where it's free-form and without dice results, is between two consenting players, but refusing to RP with other players who do not wish to consent to "free form roleplay" to avoid potential failure is considered bad form, and those people may not be a good choice for the game.

Ultimately, what I'm saying, is that I feel the only way you can incentivize IC failure is to mandate it.

From my Vampire LARP days there's this concept I like to call "Stock Exchange Dice Bartering", which became a bad habit in my tabletop games. Basically, players would AVOID putting XP/Dice/etc into specific skills, and when it came time for a pass/fail result they'd all holler at the GM at the same time with ideas. The GM would then pick the best idea they heard, run with it, dice weren't rolled, and the results were roleplayed. This led to a REALLY bad tabletop RPG habit with some of my players where they'd do things like this:

"If I as a player can Google instructions on how to build a bomb, then why should I put points into demolitions on my character sheet?"
"If I can come up with a convincing lie OOC for my character to tell, then why should I have to roll? I have 2 social dice and 34 combat dice, but anyone can lie, right?"
"Even though my character failed to detect the hidden vampire in the shadows, I'm randomly going to decide to rearrange the furniture mid-scene to try to move a desk on top of where the vampire is...because feng shui reasons".

Diceless/freeform systems mean that you are constantly going to have players playing around with "ghost dice" and using these OOC-leveraged explanations as to why they should and should not fail (up to and including a simple "well I didn't consent to failure and that's not fun for me, so no one gets to win" Because that's really the issue with incentivizing IC failure and players that refuse to play with scenes or other players in situations where a win for the other player means a loss for another player.

Story is about conflict.
Conflict means something has to succeed.
Something succeeding means something else fails.
And if the stories are about characters, and characters have conflict, then in many cases for a character to win another character has to lose
And players who refuse for their characters to fail (I don't consent!) are ultimately deciding that other players are not allowed to have wins if it means their character isn't going to, as well.

So, again, I can't stress enough that where the line is drawn on how much of a "GAME" it is determines where the whistle is blow, the goals are scored, and where the rules apply. If it's a game, it needs rules, it needs referees, and it needs to determine pass/fail results. The byproduct of this is "success", "failure", "cheating", and "poor sportsmanship", and when you look at it from that perspective...most of us have been used to these concepts since childhood and have a whole lifetime of understanding those concepts. BUT if you leave it to "negotiation" then all you will ever do is negotiate, and while you're busy negotiating with people who don't play fair you will be critically impacting players who DO play fair.

Ghost

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Social dice ARE acceptable to allow for deception, lies, and IC manipulations, and failure to roleplay the results and/or metagame around social failures would be punishable by suspension (up to being removed from the game)

Note:

I -get- that (some) players don't think it's fun to act on incorrect information, their characters being manipulated, or to be moved down a path of making bad decisions because their character was lied to. Some players also think making those bad IC decisions because they failed a manipulation roll is fun!

But the alternative of "oocly lying or withholding information" (which I've been forced to partake in) never ends well, which is...

I have to OOCly tell everyone what my sneaky player is up to, giving them the playbook to blocking everything I'm trying to do ICly to MAKE MY CHARACTER FAIL SO THAT THEY CAN CATCH THEM IN THE ACT...which fucking sucks because those players rarely see how unfair that is
Everyone gangs up and OOCly shares that information so that everyone -but- the sneaky character wins
Everything is boring and scripted and pre-prepared
Intrigue isn't a thing. Ever.
You get accused of one of the many go-to Hog Pit key words like "unsafe", "OOCly manipulative", "liar", "sociopath", "omg just like Spider", etc.

I mean...FFS fiction is FILLED with amazing characters who are impossible to write in MUs without outright constantly OOCly lying to other players who refuse to consent to failure. Characters like Gaius Baltar from BSG or Crowley from Supernatural or Margaery Tyrell from Game of Thrones, all of whom weren't technically abusive or rapey in ways that most games would accept, but because of the issue in this topic are near-impossible to play unless you receive notarized consent in triplicate that the other player is okay with being lied to...but then they're most likely to act 100% of the time as if they don't trust your character.

Kassien

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Ultimately, what I'm saying, is that I feel the only way you can incentivize IC failure is to mandate it.

Do you have to mandate it?

I personally feel that it should be emphasized it to every player joining the game. That just by playing you will encounter some sort of negative outcome. I don't think that every situation should have to be consented to, within limits. By joining the game that is a blanket consent.

Maybe this is considered mandating now that I think about it more. So I'm willing to consider you're right on this.

I think a lot of it comes down to working with players. And there comes a point that if it is clear that abuse (by staff or other players) is not the issue than there is a few ways to deal.

Weigh the options of loosing a player vs. enforcing negative impact. This widely varies. Hard to regulate.
Telling someone 'too bad' that x thing happened to you let's roll with it because there is good things that come from it. Since I am dealing in the Shadowrun universe, I will use the example of a player going to prison. Why can't that prison time be RPed and stories told in prison? Out of that maybe they meet a new contact who is damn good fixer and now their buddies. I'll also throw out there that for my particular game I plan on allowing players who have lose their characters (especially those who have been active for a long time) to earn a prime level character on their next character builld.
There is always a "suck it up buttercup" attitude. Some players may appreciate this others may not. This is a lot like point number 1.
Being honest and just suggesting this particular game might not be for them. We're all playing these various games to have fun, that includes the developers, staff, and players.

Ghost

@tirit said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Do you have to mandate it?

I think there's ways to mandate it without being Alpha about it, but the alternative is to leave it to constant bartering. Not that players are children, but I think leaving it up to constant bartering is kind of like letting a child decide when they're grounded: a few will be noble about it but you'll eventually end up with kids who refuse to ever face responsibility for anything.

Staff could help this along by

Ensuring that failure (mandated) will result in more RP opportunities
Do their part to limit the "you failed, that sucks, seeya tomorrow" results

A good example as to how I've put this into play (and it has worked) is that I will 100% allow a TPK (total party kill) in my RPG sessions, which will create an element of excitement as players know that failure is an option, and then have all of the players wake up in a dungeon and the scenario turns into a jailbreak arc.

So they failed. They all "died". Now they're in a Riddick-style or Guardians of the Galaxy style scifi prison break story. Maybe they become friends with the mutant rat boy that scurries around the jail tunnels and after they escape rat boy becomes a beloved NPC?

Who knows. But if failure is never an option or is fought against you never have the joy of seeing the look on their faces when you introduce something unexpected that was an alternate storyline based on a fail result.

Kassien

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

the alternative is to leave it to constant bartering. Not that players are children, but I think leaving it up to constant bartering is kind of like letting a child decide when they're grounded: a few will be noble about it but you'll eventually end up with kids who refuse to ever face responsibility for anything.

This is an a great way to describe it. ~~strikethrough text~~

faraday

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

See...I'm not so convinced that "consent" is across the board a 100% good thing.

I agree. I played on a few pure-consent games early on in my MUSH days and I hated it. It was like playing cops and robbers with small children "I shot you!" "No you didn't!"

I'm a fan of cooperative games, but cooperation != consent. I think it's fine to encourage players to work out a mutually agreeable solution, but there has to be some kind of fallback for the cases where they don't agree.

Total consent just doesn't cut it, even on just a logical level. "I don't consent to you shooting me!" "Well I don't consent to missing. So there."