Failure Padding is based upon the concept of “degree of failure” – not a new concept to many of you, but folks whose only RPG exposures come in the forms of D&D, Pathfinder, and other similar games might not have this term in their current notebooks o’ gaming lexicon. “Degree of Failure” is a way of measuring the distance between your failed dice roll and the difficulty target number you actually wanted to roll. This is usually handled simply by subtracting the number you rolled (dice result, successes, hits, what-have-you) from the number you needed in order to succeed. Thus if you needed eight successes to get the result you wanted, but you only got five when your dice hit the table, then your Degree of Failure would be three (8 – 5 = 3). Or if you needed a roll of sixteen but only scored a nine after all modifiers, then your Degree of Failure would be seven (16 – 9 = 7).

Using this degree of failure, you can very easily eyeball “how bad” your failure actually was. Some RPG systems already have rules in place for determining grades of failure, but that’s okay, because Failure Padding isn’t as concerned about grading that failure as it is about transforming that failure into hard-earned success. In other words, Failure Padding is about re-imagining your failed dice rolls as very price-heavy victories, “padded up” with collateral damage.

Let’s say you roll eight successes, but you needed eleven in order to shoot the terrorist who is currently using your girlfriend as a hostage human shield. That’s three degrees of failure, which would likely have resulted in the terrorist getting away, with your girlfriend in tow. Instead, the GM lets you “spend” those three degrees of failure to buy other consequences related to the situation, each raising your original roll up to the required level to succeed. So in this case, you buy off those three needed successes, and you and the GM work out that you shot him but the bullet went through your girlfriend’s shoulder, he got a shot off at you which went straight through your thigh, and as your girlfriend is running away another terrorist grabs you and throws a bag over your head. Your initial goal was accomplished, but now the situation remains interesting and the story evolves.

Using this mechanic, the GM offers to “sell” you extra successes in exchange for you agreeing to additional consequences of your success. Each degree of failure is one such consequence acquired. In games with greater number scales, the degree of failure should probably be based on a range of numbers. Say, every two points missed in a D20 test is one degree of failure, or every ten points missed is one degree of failure on a D100 test.

Here are some various ideas of things that can go wrong for you – consequences you can take in order to pad up the failure:

• You take additional damage in the strained effort to succeed.
• Some piece of important equipment takes damage, or is rendered temporarily useless or inaccessible – armor degrades, greaves seize up, electronics malfunction, zippers get jammed, etc.
• Your situation is made narratively worse somehow – enemy reinforcements arrive, the bridge collapses, your vehicle’s airbag unexpectedly deploys, etc
• Some threat level is increased, if your game system keeps track of that kind of thing.

Hope it works out for you!

…and yes, I have a Gamestorm 2012 post coming very soon.

Heavy Metal Bands,
Using Blossoms are Falling:
Duel of Verse – Throw horns!

So far, my quest has been well-fought but hard-won. I’ve lost a few circumstantial allies on occasion, including a poor scavenger who got caught in the crossfire when those no-good Talon Merc goons jumped me, but thankfully, word is getting out: Shrike’s gunning for the bad guys, and the bad guys be scared. Just last night I donned my favorite leather jacket², pumped myself up on Buffout and MedX, and took out an entire clutch of nasty Raiders using only a Louisville Slugger I had affectionately named Pablo. I barely had time to catch my breath as I led my assault, needing to take them out with as much celerity as possible so as to maximize the effectiveness of my chemically-skyrocketed battle prowess. I charged through their compound – one insultingly forged out of the ruins of an old elementary school – and wiped their filthy souls from the planet with minimal injury. Then I slept off my wounds in their own beds, dragged their bodies into a central heap, peed on their dead leader’s corpse, and set them all ablaze with their own flamethrower before leaving the next morning.

I fucking hate Raiders.

What’s next for Shrike? Word is there’s some “family” of villains terrorizing the poor nearby settlement of Arefu. An easy-on-the-eyes dame named Lucy ain’t seen or heard from her folks up there in quite some time. As the new sheriff of these parts, I reckon it’s ’bout time I let these cheeky bastards know who’s now in charge ’round here. Time to go give this family a taste of the Baseball Bat o’ Justice. Pablo’s a close talker, a real social type.

This past Monday night saw another session of my weekly Savage Worlds game. I’ve become a bit slack with this game, owing in no small part to the increasing difficulty of me running games on Monday nights. This campaign’s days are acknowledgedly numbered, but thankfully this most recent session really got my blood pumping again. I eagerly await the ending few sessions of the series, in part because gaming on Mondays is takings its toll on me, but mostly because I really want to know what happens next. The beauty of running this game largely from the seat of my pants is that when it gets me, it really gets me, and I’m as eager to know the future as the players are. I’ll wait a few more sessions before I post things in detail, though.

I’ll end this post with a little idea: Iron Kingdoms, done with Warhammer FRP 3rd Edition. I think it would rock.

Footnotes

¹ PS: thanks for the bitchin’ coat and hat, Luke. RIP
² Tunnel Snakes rule! *shove*

At the beginning of every session I run, as a form of recap-and-reward, I go around the gaming table and ask each player to tell everyone about One Cool Thing they remember from the last session. Each time a player recounts a moment of the game that centered around one of the player characters,that character’s player gets a Bonus Point of some sort. I picture it kinda like the “Previously on…” montage at the beginning of most serial TV shows. It’s a way to reward awesome moments of game play while recharging the memories of the players, reconnecting them to the events of the previous session, and allowing that player-driven recount to kick-start the current session.

Bonus Points are nothing new: in-game mechanical rewards for being Awesome. Some games have similar points already in place, but many surprisingly don’t. What I do is set up a universal Bonus Point system, which can be applied to just about any game. Below are some examples of how I apply these Bonus Points in the games I’m currently running.

Shadowrun: Bonus Points in Shadowrun work as additional points of Edge, giving the character a few more uses of that oh-so-valuable attribute.

Savage Worlds: In Savage Worlds games, I implement Bonus Points as “super Bennies.” When used, a Bonus Point allows the player to re-roll the test dice, but instead of keeping the better of the two, the new results are added to the old results. Yes, all dice Ace as normal.

Burning Wheel: With Burning Wheel, the Bonus Points are obviously tied into Artha. If a player is called out only once during the One Cool Thing recounts, then they earn a Fate point. If they are called out twice or more, they earn a Persona. If there are four or more players and all of them unanimously agree on a single awesome memory of that player from the last game, then they earn a Deeds point.

D&D 4th Edition: A Bonus Point can be spent at any time to do any one of the following:

1. Gain another Healing Surge
2. Function as another Action Point
3. Re-use an already-used Per-Encounter power

Regardless of system, there’s a catch to Bonus Points: they must be used before the end of the session! Don’t try to horder them up, as they vanish if left unspent.

Whenever the GM crafts a scene, he should have a purpose for that scene: meet this NPC, learn about the missing children, steal the Ambivalent Chalice of Hagrablogg, learn the lost fifth technique of mastery. When he decides on that scene purpose, he should craft a set of important “plot items” relevant to that purpose. He can do this in advance, of course, to better prepare. For example, if the PCs need to learn about the missing children, he could set the following plot items:

1. There has been a rash of missing children in the town.
2. The children were all males of Vandrikan blood, born in the dead of summer.
3. They are all connected to a midwife named Taegi Lews.
4. They were taken to an old mill in a part of the woods that no one visits anymore.
5. They were kidnapped by Borgel Grouse, who intends to have them possessed by the Night-Children of the Wood.
6. The Night-Children have no intention of being controlled, and will kill Borgel and run free if he completes the ritual.

Now, instead of just having the PCs run loose and free through this old village looking under loose stones and chasing red herrings for hours, he can set a Plot Crawl score for the game. This allows the players some sort of free-form exploration, while still ensuring that the plot doesn’t get snagged by accident. There could be a single number for each plot item, or he could vary it between different items on the list.

For example, let’s say the party has come to this village in the early evening and is tempted into getting a room at the inn for the night. The GM has set the first item’s Plot Crawl at 3. The players negotiate for room prices (1 skill-based challenge) and mingle with the locals to gather some local info (2 separate role-playing challenges). After the third such challenge, the GM inserts the plot in the form of a local mother rushing into the common room looking for her missing son. Plot Item #1 has now been introduced.

Now, the players react to this. Ideally they’d begin to investigate, talking to the woman, calming her, getting more info from the locals, investigating, etc. The GM has set the next plot item at a Crawl of 7, so after seven more challenges and/or conflicts, the next plot item is somehow introduced into the game.

And thus the rest of the plot flows, provided the Players bite the hook and follow suit. This method of plot progression may at first seem forced and a bit “railroad-y” at first look, but in truth it allows a game to progress far more organically. Instead of basing the advancement of the plot on predefined encounters, and waiting for the players to bite the scripted hooks you’ve laid out for them, you can just bring the plot to them, inserting the required elements at the right time in order to ensure the pacing that is right for your games. I imagine this would work very well at convention games, too.

So let’s get this all started with…

Line!

This mechanic encourages players to seek the input of other players during “big moments” in the game. Each player is given an amount of “Line Coins” which they keep in front of them at the game table. During moments of game play in which the player is uncertain about what their character should say or do, they can instead say “Line!” in the fashion of a stage actor who has forgotten his lines. The other players can then choose to submit what they think is the most awesome thing that character could do or say at that moment in the game. The acting player picks the best one, and awards the Coin to the player who submitted it. These coins can then have some special in-game effect, be it geared towards advancement, in-game empowerment, narrative enhancement, or another aspect of player boon.