Posts Tagged by failure
| June 1, 2012 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
If you want to be a great GM you must risk your current game being a failure over and over again. You need to take risks in order to get rewards. Rewards do not come to the people who do the safe and sure thing. People who do the safe and sure thing get mediocrity at best. Do you want to run a mediocre game? If you answered yes, stop reading this blog. In fact, stop reading any form of GMing advice whatsoever. If you…
| March 13, 2012 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
In many legal systems (particularly Anglo-American ones), a jury’s job is to answer questions of fact, while a judge’s job is to answer questions of law. This distinction is important, especially when a case is vague, convoluted, or has conflicting testimony and evidence. The lawyers build their cases (and tear down each other’s), and the jury uses the evidence to determine the facts of the case. (If you’ve had some experience with the legal system, you already know this. Oh, and my apologies for your…
| September 15, 2011 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Two students train at a martial arts school. One fights only students at or below his level, and has an excellent win-loss record. The other fights only students above his level, and has a terrible win-loss record. Which one is learning faster? – Overheard at a martial arts seminar When was the last time you got out of your safe zone and tried something new? Were you any good at it? Did you learn from your mistakes pretty quickly, and get better? Or did you…
| September 8, 2009 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
In a recent game that a friend ran we were railroaded as players. The game was a science fiction setting using Savage Worlds, and I and the one other player were both playing PCs who had arranged passage on a small starship. While the ship was docked at a space station the PCs were in private living quarters minding their own business. Panicked pounding on the door to the quarters followed by the captain of the starship entering and bleeding from a gunshot wound started…
| January 21, 2009 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
The gnome NPC just rolled a 1. Tracking down the source of the rumors led to a paranoid gnome minstrel named Barty who just couldn’t stop telling tales about the true (and imagined) indiscretions of the daughters of the finest families in town. Barty was causing other problems, too, which is why the PCs felt that had to intervene. Of course the problem was a particularly sticky one: How do you make a gnome shut up? This was strictly a roleplaying encounter, so even if…
| September 15, 2008 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Failure’s an important element in many adventures. We looked at some cases where failure seemed to derail the plot and looked at ways to keep the game running. Let’s step back a moment and look at failure from a bigger perspective. Planning for Failure In Heather’s article, Influence vs. Scripting: the Fine Line of Free Will, she argues that absolutes are plot holes in disguise. In the glossary, she emphasizes that “An absolute is generally a sign that you haven’t thought something through enough, or…
| September 9, 2008 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Von Bek has an excellent question about making character failure interesting. Hi all, One thing I sometimes struggle with is player failure, I’ve come up with a few simple failures, like taking more time, or breaking something, but wondered if there were others I might have missed out on. I know of GUMSHOE, I believe a system that treats failure differently? But are there other systems out, or things that work in all games, especially for investigative adventures when failure isn’t really an option but…
