How can we incentivize IC failure?

[Kassien]

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

the alternative is to leave it to constant bartering.

I think this describes the situation all to often.

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

Do their part to limit the "you failed, that sucks, seeya tomorrow" results

I see too many staffers get burned out in the middle of a good story. It leaves the this exact feeling to players. People need to see the story through. It's a tough thing with MUs.

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

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."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the consent bartering @Ghost was describing. @faraday and @Ghost are describing it perfectly.

Personally I think it all comes down to, like most relationships in life, good communication. Be open, be honest, be patient. Seeing both sides never hurts, but after all we're all here to have fun.
I would also like to say, and I struggle with this at times, players also have to step back and learn not to take it as personal. It is a tough thing.

[Ghost]

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

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!"

OMG I've used this exact analogy too. It's spot on.

Laser Tag > "Guns in the yard" because at least that little laser tag vest would make the ruling.

[Devrex]

@ghost This is exactly why I favor dice but also encourage that it's okay for people to step up OOCly to say "Hey can we negotiate a little here."

Not about whether your gun hits me, but "Ok that was definitely a hit, you're badass, but I don't want to lose my character, can I take it in the knee and can we work out some reason why your character has to leave rather than double tapping?" I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to do.

Or as @Tirit noted: "Ok happy to go to prison but you're not going to leave me there with zero RP right?"

The presence of dice don't demand that we throw the negotiation baby out with the consent bathwater. The absence of dice, sadly, tends to send babies and baths and everything in between straight into the fire. I've seen some awesome pure cooperative storytelling, but it was the result of a very large group of RL friends playing together and getting very excited about selling one another...not something I would expect to occur, organically, in a million years, on most games.

[Arkandel]

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

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.

I think this is an unfortunate side-effect of accounting for assholes.

Consent is basically cooperation with asshole-insurance built in.

Which of course has side-effects of his own.

[faraday]

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

I think this is an unfortunate side-effect of accounting for assholes.

Sure, it gives you some a-hole insurance, but not everyone who can't reach a compromise is a jerk.

Yesterday my son wanted to go to the pool and my daughter wanted to stay home. Neither is right or wrong. Neither is being a jerk. In your example from earlier, nobody's a jerk for wanting the one-and-only sheriff position. There are just times when compromise doesn't work.

I still believe MUSHes are better off when staff tries to avoid these zero-sum scenarios, but sometimes they arise despite your best efforts. Heck, even on BSGU I had players pissed over A getting the "killing blow" on Cylon147 instead of B, whether L should've been able to sneak into M's barracks room to prank them, why X got a medal and Y didn't, etc.

But this is just basic human nature in action. It's perfectly natural for B to want the glory of the kill, M to not want to be made a fool of, and Y to want a medal. The majority of players approach MUs as wish-fulfillment fantasy, whether we like it or not. Personally I don't find that a problem, and prefer to focus on the poor sportsmanship aspect. I.e., I don't care if you want a medal, let's find a way to get you one. But you don't get to act like a jerk just because X got a medal and you didn't.

[Warma Sheen]

To be very direct to the question, I don't think games should incentivize failure. I think that just leads to more problems rather than helping the game's situation. A couple of things have been mentioned on that already.

A more useful tool would be to manage the expectations of failure. A lot of that comes with being very clear and comprehensive when establishing your game's theme. Is this the place where everyone is the hero? Is this where you come for wish fulfillment? Is this the place where you come to tell the stories you want about your character? There's nothing wrong with those at all, if that's what you like. But I think @Ganymede suggested that you should pick a system that supports that. If the experience you came for is to always win, then why have a system at all? Tell the story without including chance or stats. Some systems aren't meant for everyone to win everything. Some systems are pretty brutal at allowing success. If you're running the above type of game, that probably shouldn't be the system you use. Or modify your system so that it fits what you need. You can run WoD, but lower all the diffs so that rolling becomes next to pointless and allows everyone to win.

But if you want a game that includes failure, make sure you establish that in the theme. There are so many people that show up to games with their own idea about what the game should be or what MU*ing should be and so disappointment and frustration are inevitable. If you believe that failure makes stories more dynamic and interesting and surprising, then failure is incentivized by the roller coaster of stories you get to tell and be a part of. You can use dice systems that include botches and dramatic twists and situations and everyone on your game should understand that that is the type of game they are signing up for by playing there.

The other problem is that many games ignore all the aspects of a story besides the character. Besides being boring, one dimensional stories have the problem of: if you something happens to the one and only aspect of this that you enjoy, you no longer have any avenues of fun. But stories managing just the setting are ripe for the telling and they are often completely ignored. Character are often handed buildings and land and there's no responsibility to maintain it or involve it or be involved in the surroundings in any way. Positions of importance are mentioned a lot, but I have to believe that the creative types that play and run these games have to be able to come up with enough positions of importance that everyone who wants one can find one. These games often involve power and status and none of that is done in a vacuum. In WoD games, with which I'm most familiar, there are vast swathes of story that are usually level completely ignored. Territories, economies, properties, resource management, items and equipment, etc. So much stuff is just left on the cutting room floor that players feel like their fun is over because they don't get one thing they want when there's hundreds of other things to achieve (in theory) but players rarely get the opportunity to involve themselves with them in meaningful ways.

Lastly: practice, practice, practice.

Like anything, being good at something takes practice. And if you have little to no practice at something, it is very easy to suck at it. And since many of the games I've played have little to no failure at all at any time, it is no wonder that the very few times that players encounter failure they FREAK out about it. If the practical culture of a game is that no one ever fails and then you manage to do so, it is very easy to feel like crap about it, especially when everyone else is succeeding so greatly and living their best life. More failures all around help everyone cope with the fact that not everything is perfection. That's not to say that you should make people fail. Just don't make everything such a cakewalk and let the dice do what they do.

What I've heard too much is 'I don't want X to happen to my character because of bad dice rolls'. Then why are you using dice? Dice randomize the outcomes within stories. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. If you don't want that, don't use dice. What some people really want is to overcome challenges and beat the odds so that they can look and feel impressive - but without any of the risk.

The incentive in failure is the dramatic turn of the failure, the excitement of that story. If you have to incentivize it, something with your game and/or players is already off. The only way to fix that is by cultivating the culture you'd like to see on your game of embracing both the ups and the downs.

[kk]

I almost want to trail of onto a different topic about Wish Fulfillment that Faraday brought up, because that is pretty true!

But maybe I should make a new thread for that, ponders!