How can we incentivize IC failure?

Ganymede

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

To use factors from that short list above, if my character and yours are both trying to become the new Sheriff but I only have two hours a week to log on and you are on every night, your PC simply has a better chance of making it.

In this situation, I think staff would need to decide whether the new Sheriff needs to be on for only two hours a week. Whether a character is put into a place of IC power is a little different than failing a roll.

What I'd ask though is whether we can - or should - systematize so that even when I don't get to play the Sheriff the impact from 'losing' is mitigated.

I find this example difficult to work with because whether a player's character gets a particular role on a game or in a setting, if it is of some importance to the game or setting, should be determined not from a roll but from the player.

I would be the first to say that, given my limited time to play, I do not expect and should not expect to be given a position of IC importance. That's just a recipe for eventual burnout. I do not think there ought to be some sort of compensation for what is a purely personal issue.

I thought we were talking about game systems which incentivize failure in resolving conflict.

Lotherio

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

What I'd ask though is whether we can - or should - systematize so that even when I don't get to play the Sheriff the impact from 'losing' is mitigated. Is it EXP to reflect learning from the experience? Is it a consolation rank/plot inclusion staff throws my way to keep me moving? An OOC requirement from the new Sheriff's player to find a way to let my PC tag along?

I think aside from trying to affect the culture to embrace failure as a positive to storytelling, a boon to character development, and/or a contribution to the meta of the Mu/game, the system side comes with the caveat of what makes failure incentives fair, does it come down to staff only monitored failure, and who much more work goes to the staff. I only ask the later because to me its a cause of you can lead the horse to water (but you can't make the horse drink).

Ideally, system-wise, in my mind: Failure is noted/tracked and some form of points are denoted. PC can change in for little things like dice rerolls, dice bonuses, XP, leads/info, etc. I'd lean towards automated, some conflict type roll (roll thing vs thing, however one specifies the context), someone loses and they get their karma chit or whatever its called.

The concern/con of this is that if its just baked into the system, what prevents it from being abused; ie Bill & Ted RP playing darts, they roll their dart skill vs each other each round. Piling up karma chits, then go fight Fred and cash in their chits to put the whooping on Fred.

The other potential goods, enforcing winner to give some RP time to loser, giving some shiny to loser, still needs tracking. Still needs coding or back end hand tracking on spread sheet or something too.

For me ideally though, a chit system where the loser can save/use them for different things is idea even with the risk that Bill & Ted can cheat the system (which could probably be monitored and Staff can be like, why are they rolling dart vs each other 20 times?).

Arkandel

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

I thought we were talking about game systems which incentivize failure in resolving conflict.

In this context I mean 'systems' in a broader sense than the game mechanics. While those can play into it as well, anything from coded features or automation, rules and policies regarding IC position acquisitions, PrP scheduling, etc can all be part of it. Anything that can mitigate the OOC consequences of 'defeat'.

Mind you though, I am not saying they necessarily should be mitigated, and definitely not in every scenario or game. If someone wants to run a hardcore PvP perma-death MU* that's perfectly valid.

kk

@arkandel

The biggest thing to mitigate defeat on a mush I think would be. Such as a player losing a title of importance another character.

-Staff running running plotline and including defeated characters in plot.

-Players continuing to welcome and rp with characters who been defeated (cannot be regulated or commanded, only suggested)

-The player who is defeated being positive, non-pouty and continuing to seek rp. As the rejected feeling of being defeated can sometimes lead mushers to be their own worse enemies.

-Leaders delegating plot and rp to non-leaders

-Creating more titles or sub commanders under commanders
to make more room for characters to have titles/jobs etc on the game.

-Having plot and adventure that is specifically designed for people who are lesser importance to do. Oh, we cannot risk our leaders on this dangerous mission, any no leaders want to volunteer and step up?

-Having leaders who rp with non leaders, including people who might be their ic competition.

RightMeow

Hi!

I have played (do play?) characters that are 'good' and 'bad' depending on the view. I play characters that I don't mind losing for the story and sometimes the impact on my play. Also, I don't think I'm the protagonist. My 'good' char very clearly could be turned (or has been -insert evil laugh-) in the right situation and I'm totally open to it.

How I see 'IC failure'. It's not the failure, it's the reaction to the failure. If you fail at something you tried for, that does kind of suck. If everyone is cool with it, you get cool with it. Develop a story. Move forwards. HOWEVER - if you are told by the people around you how bad you suck IC all the time because you failed that thing. That's going to hit on an OOC level because the negativity is going to be constant.

Dice are fickle lovers. In WoD a high ranking garou should not lose to a cub. It wouldn't happen in most story telling, but it happens in a game because dice. Then that high ranking garou has some very awkward RP that is usually far from pleasant or loses rank for something that didn't make sense to happen and did not forward a story at all. Other than a cub gets to mouth off and say they beat an elder. Cool story brah. It's all it is for them, but for the other player/char it's a huge hit. I think storyteller's need to look at that weight as well.

Also, games are not static. If you are running a game (admin) you can alter rules/etc. There are four people bidding for Sheriff but there can only be one? Fine. Then make it a house rule that the Sheriff position will rotate every X amount of time unless run uncontested. It gives them time to plot and the other time to figure out how to keep it.

There are a million different story elements that can come good and bad from success or failure. The problem (in my opinion) is the reaction of the rest of the game to a person's loss.

Just my two cents.

Ghost

Just running my brain-meats here. Churning.

I think the issue with MU is that everything is so stretched out.

Lots of time waiting for/arranging scenes
Waiting sometimes 30-60 minutes in between poses
It's hard to feel relevant in massive scenes with other roleplayers, waiting for 30-60 minutes to take an action that may or may not be relevant
Responses from staff can take days

So with that in mind I think that IC failure would be much easier for the MU community if the pace was a bit faster. Think of it this way.

1 massive scene with 30-60 in between poses to -attempt- to do something relevant (and then failing) feels like a complete waste of time, but what if it was 10 minutes in between poses and you got 4-5 other attempts to pass a roll or do something relevant?
Limited availability of "important" characters creates a "Waiting in line" feeling (like the horrid "trying to get a Jedi slot" from back in the day), but what if a weekly cycle happened and all you had to do is get on the waiting list and wait for your turn?
Failing a roll only to see another player (more or less popular, it doesn't matter) do the SPECIAL THING in the scene is disheartening, but what if scenes were faster paced and designed so that each character had a skill/job in mind that was their special sauce?

I honestly feel (reflectively) that aversion to "IC failure" was a little bit of people just not wanting the negativity of "not being successful", sure, but I also think that the absolute time sink of the hobby and wanting to feel something in terms of return on investment was a huge part of it. A lot of players failed and it was "WELP, ya failed, so sorry, have a good night" and including some sort of element in failure that led to other RP opportunities always seemed to resonate well with the players I knew.

Macha

I think the problem some players run into, is that they're more than willing to be 'part of the team' like you do in TT, but then they end up in scenes with players who.. aren't. It makes it hard to do anything impactful when someone else is always going in, guns blazing.

faraday

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

I prefer for every character to have a chance to be central as well. I just mean that such is not generally the case, not that it shouldn't be. I don't know how to make it the case and am content often with not being central personally.

It requires you to design the game to support that. Admittedly, not every game does, but it can and has been done. Perhaps a topic for another thread.

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

But overall an issue we may want to debate separately here is that not all players are 'equal' when it comes to their ability to impact the plot. It's not necessarily a limitation imposed by their character's nature or stats either; there is a multitude of factors that allow some to take central stage more than others.

Yeah, I guess I see a fundamental difference between:

I can't take center stage because my PC isn't in the Cool Faction/Job/etc.
I can't take center stage because of my own lack of RP time / personality / etc.

The former is staff-directed; the latter is more a player problem. That's not to say staff can't help, it's just not staff's responsibility to deal with unsolicited IMHO.

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

What I'd ask though is whether we can - or should - systematize so that even when I don't get to play the Sheriff the impact from 'losing' is mitigated.

I think that's solving the wrong problem. Why is "not being the sheriff" seen as losing in the first place? It shouldn't be that way. Instead of having a contest for who can be the one and only sheriff, make the sheriff a NPC and let the PCs be multiple deputies.

Competing for top dog "I am super special" positions is just never going to end well, no matter what kind of structures/incentives you put into place.

Ghost

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

I think the problem some players run into, is that they're more than willing to be 'part of the team' like you do in TT, but then they end up in scenes with players who.. aren't. It makes it hard to do anything impactful when someone else is always going in, guns blazing.

Can confirm. I know I've had that feeling before, personally.

Like a TT player I'd try to stay in my lane and not try to Hog the scene, but then someone(s) would just bowl over that goodwill, try to do everything, and try to Hog all the attention/xp. Left me feeling like my fairness and trying to be conscientious of others was being taken advantage of. I know it made me passive aggressive more than once.

Macha

@ghost this.

Ganymede

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

Like a TT player I'd try to stay in my lane and not try to Hog the scene, but then someone(s) would just bowl over that goodwill, try to do everything, and try to Hog all the attention/xp. Left me feeling like my fairness and trying to be conscientious of others was being taken advantage of. I know it made me passive aggressive more than once.

This reminds me of a time on BSG:U where we grunts were all on a mission to free some prisoners. We split into teams in order to deal with the situation, with some folks (who were good with guns) looking out for trouble while other folks (who were good with sneaking) went in and tried to do their thing. If I recall correctly, things went horribly wrong, with half the team going down at some point, but we did manage to get the prisoners out, and get back to base. And this was due to the scene-runner creating a situation where everyone could shine, even if some of us failed to do so.

That scene-runner was Faraday.

Faraday's game made it really difficult to do everything. You couldn't fly a fighter and be a ground-pounder. If you were a Marine, you couldn't be a great shooter and also a great auxiliary. So it made it easier (and this is not to take away from how good she was at managing scenes) for any scene-runner to allow everyone to take their place.

Ultimately, aside from player-restrictions, the only way to ensure that everyone is having a good time is to have staff who are competent at doing this. This is not an easy task. But you can also select game mechanics or a system that assist staff in this task. So, in my opinion, your game mechanics or system is critical in the task of ensuring that everyone is having a good time because you cannot control the limitations of your players and are never guaranteed the quality of staff you have.

emurphy

Regarding "failure gives some resource that can be used later" being gamed ("Bill and Ted play twenty rounds of darts"), the first thing that comes to mind is requiring the failure and the later use to be part of the same story. The heroes suffer setbacks in Act 1 and especially Act 2, only to triumph in Act 3. (Hopefully your plot-runner sticks around long enough for there to be an Act 3.) Or at least require them to be roughly on the same level. Or place a cap on them, which should also help guard against hoarding (if you're already at e.g. 5/5 then you may as well go down to 4/5 to get out of a minor jam).

Waiting forever in massive scenes is a good reason to not have massive scenes, or at least not have them all in the same place. Break that fifteen-person group into three five-person groups working on a different part of the problem, then bring them together again for a big after-party where they can share war stories.

As for spotlight hogs, yeah, you need to have some opportunities for a scene where they're not around. The plot-runner can exclude them by OOC fiat (PCs not approved by me are elsewhere and unable to arrive in time), or PCs with the potential to hog the spotlight may voluntarily stick to "you guys need the field experience, I'll be available, call me in as the cavalry in case things go majorly south". Or, as above, just break them up into two or more groups, where the big PCs deal with big things while the little PCs deal with little things.

il-volpe

@ghost said in [How can we incentivize IC failure?](/post

So with that in mind I think that IC failure would be much easier for the MU community if the pace was a bit faster.

You've got it.

I would say it's maybe not so much about pace, but opportunity, which pace is part of.

People generally want to see their PCs do cool things, which usually means succeeding. Most people don't really want to never fail, as the removal of risk takes some fun out of things. But when failure comes with the wondering how long it will be before you get another chance, or knowing that it'll be ages, the desire to meet that RP goal and do the cool thing has more urgency.

I don't think it's actually all that common for GMs to actively fudge things so a favourite gets to succeed. Favourites just get more opportunities, and more often ones catered to their abilities. It can be self-fulfilling; favourite players are more fun for GMs 'cause they take failures well and happily turn them into more RP, but because they're favourites they know that botch won't be the last important thing they get to do for three months and that they've a good chance of success next time. Make it a mighty chore and a long wait for Abelard to get to do a scene where he robs a vending machine and watch him overreact when he fails, even though there's nothing at stake.

I imagine it's much more common to actively fudge to have somebody fail when they've gone after a plot hook meant for somebody else, or have found a solution the GM hadn't considered which would close things prematurely. Sometimes this is necessary, nobody's GM-creativity is always on to make fun-for-all from every and any eventuality. But it's also the favouritism I've heard the most bitter complaints about, and yeah. It's no bloody fun to have been trying for weeks to investigate the ocelot and get nothing, then see the NPCs give everybody important information about the ocelot.

il-volpe

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

But not every character is the center of the over arching storyline.

Some players are fine with that and don't even want to be central. On my current active characters my characters are minions/support characters and etc and that is intentional..

Yeah, this is a thing that ought to maybe be better supported.

It tends to be sort of built-in with character concept -- you make a bridge-crew PC, expect to be central if you show up. Make a bartender, you're supporting cast.

It might be interesting to see what happened if you let people tag their alts -- hero, support, background (antagonist? 'Fifth business'?) and aim to make it so.

TNP

A long, long time ago in the same galaxy we're in now, I played on Crucible City. This was an original M&M 1E game and was probably one of my favorite Mu*s I've ever played on due to the player base and the staff.

The main plot runner was Magik and she had no qualms at all about having us lose if the situation warranted it. I loved losing, actually. It made the eventual success that much more fun and there was always an opportunity to get our revenge. It wasn't always the very next scene she ran; sometimes they were long term plots so could take a while. Good times.

Runescryer

I agree that nothing can really be done about failure due to 'influence'. If things like that are happening, that game has serious problems and likely isn't going to be terribly popular. So, that's sort of self-regulating.

As for general IC failure, I think the aversion here is due to the consequences of failure: injury, social stigma, possibly death.

However, I think there are ways to 'soften the blow', so to speak. In games that use an XP system, XP can be gained despite losing. Reputations can be increased by taking a hit and coming back from it, later. It's possible even to do a 'reverse Matt Mercer' by giving players that loose the option of determining how they loose. This lets players give themselves an 'out' to avoid major consequences while still being defeated.

faraday

There are a lot of good ideas here, but I think maybe folks are missing the core of the issue:

This is a game, and for many, failure just isn't fun.

On BSGU for example, there were no special IC positions, no death without consent, multiple open public combat scenes each week, a flat XP system - in short, no meaningful IC or OOC consequences from failing.

And yet, the overwhelming majority of players still didn't want to fail because that's not the experience they're here for.

Of course you could probably bribe them hard enough or force them - but why? Who cares? If I'm there to play the Big Damn Hero, maybe just... let me?

Now personally I think failing sometimes can be fun. It creates drama. It gives you more interesting things to RP about. But not everybody sees it that way and that's OK by me.

Tangentially - I don't think folks have talked a lot about the OOC stigma of failure. My char on BSP was always screwing up. It's been over a decade so I don't remember specific comments, but I definitely recall getting a disapproving vibe off players sometimes. Like I was somehow stupid just because my character was doing stupid things. That can make it hard to embrace failure even when you have a positive mindset about it.

hobos

Interesting and realistic story has always been enough incentive for me to fail, but I wouldn't want to fail at something that I have designed my character to be really good at, especially if there wasn't much opportunity to do that thing. I like to fail about things that I have designed my character to be bad at, because then there is the story of getting better at that thing or learning to cope with the deficiency, or other realistic outcomes like total failure regarding that thing.

"Wanting to shine" in this case is just... wanting to play the character you wrote.

Thinking about this, maybe... when it comes to running stories for people, it's important to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of their characters. Times to win are fun, but so are times to realistically fail. Maybe one character has a terrible trauma in their past when it comes to mushrooms, but they're also a rifle expert. They're blasting zombie heads like crazy until the Mutated Mushroom Lord emerges from the abandoned gas station, and then they get the chance to freeze up and fail. In this situation, failing is just as much "shining" as winning, because the player is getting to play the Traumatized Rifle Expert that they initially intended to write.

Maybe part of the problem is just people who are intentionally writing Mary Sues without any realistic weaknesses to balance their strengths. You could force a solution for that by a mechanized system that doesn't let you pick some skills if you've picked others, but I think it's more of a cultural problem. We all need to be better at warmly accepting the failure of a character as part of a story, and not something to resent the player about. That doesn't mean that there can't be consequences involved in-game... if a character screws up badly, they're going to have to suffer the results of that, and all of this is part of the story and a suitable ending or possible redemption arc. But there shouldn't be any OOC stigma towards the players of failures -- the story should be respected and appreciated as a realistic story.

Ganymede

@faraday

Your last paragraph illustrates what I think is an important social force on these games: success is always expected.

I’m not sure how to address it mechanically. This is a matter of who you can attract to your game. BSG:U had a lot of great players who were unafraid of failing, but did not set out to do so. And those are the kind of players you can build a game around.

The desire to have a great character and to be a good player are two separate things, and I would encourage game designers to seek and prioritize the latter.

il-volpe

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

Interesting and realistic story has always been enough incentive for me to fail, but I wouldn't want to fail at something that I have designed my character to be really good at, especially if there wasn't much opportunity to do that thing.

"Wanting to shine" in this case is just... wanting to play the character you wrote.

This.

I've been accused of "just wanting to win" when what I wanted was to roll. I wrote a character with weak spots all over, and had GM fiat say he failed at one of the few things he was written and statted to be good at. To the benefit of another pc mine was declared to have behaved as if he'd botched rolling a seven-die pool six or eight times in a row.

When dice do this it's a drag (and I very much encourage people playing/running dice-pool systems to use the auto-success option) and can definitely lead to "Oh fuck this, I'm not having much fun anyway and now I've had this precious rare chance to do what my PC is good at and failed, this game isn't worth RPing the also-not-fun aftermath," departures. When it's not dice but a GM's call, of course it will inspire resentment. If you really really must do it, for pity's sake, say, "Sorry, it really is for the good of the game, thank you for taking one for the team, I'll spotlight you soon to make up for it." And do it.