Game Theory – Finding Fun in Failure

I don’t roll well on a regular basis. It is an RPG truth that failure breeds frustration, and from frustration an evening of good times quickly sours.

That being said, I still roll better than some folks at my table. One in particular has notorious luck at multiple games, leading us to (with kind joking) to use their name as synonymous with minimal damage due to a historically HORRIBLE roll of a total of 10 on 8d6 …

Over the years I’ve come across some different means to make a failure suck less, even with the bitter sting as success continues to elude the dice roller. Some I’ve put into practice, others still wait for an opportunity at the table. Here’s a list of some.

Fail Forward

This is the one you hear most often but it is far from easy to always be putting into practice. I admire it for ensuring that the game continues on rather than the stalemate of progress coming to a dead stop with a failure or spamming the roll until somebody succeeds.

• Succeed at a cost: Forged in the Dark games are but one where this is baked into the system. Now the question is at what cost – is it a single blow from a foe, a broken piece of equipment, is it something that the DM and Player will barter over while the rest of the table waits for resolution? If possible, invite ideas from the table at large – they have wonderful ideas untouched by the hidden knowledge of the DM. Consider what the worst thing could be (Brindlewood Bay does just this as a PC is about to do something risky) that doesn’t shut down the flow of action.
• Consequence Marker: I had a PC fail what should have been a simple athletics roll in crossing a rickety bridge. Plummeting to their doom was an option but it was such a punk way for them to go and if I wasn’t willing to drop them to their doom, what other resource could I tap? Hit Points didn’t seem like the right kind of resource to drain (and for a higher level character less of a stick) so I handed them a red poker chip and told them I’d call on it soon enough. As the last of the party was crossing the bridge, there was an ambush and I called in the chip and applied a penalty to their AC as “when you almost tumbled, something in your armour must have gotten tangled up, your AC is -2 for this encounter” (disadvantage to attacks or advantage for attackers just seemed too harsh). It was a “something bad is going to happen from this but I haven’t figured it out yet” and it could have easily enough been the player or others at the table to suggest when to call on that chip.

Tokens for Extra Dice / Rerolls

Lots of systems have these, be they Inspiration (D&D), Bennies (Savage Worlds), Gambits (Scum & Villainy), Devil’s Luck (Pirate Borg), and so on. A couple of things to keep in mind include –

• How often do they refresh? (start of session, every level / milestone, after a die roll of X, when doing cool things, when called for by the DM or Player, etc.)
  The quicker the refresh, the more often they get spent.
• When do they expire?
  If they disappear at the end of the session, expect there to be a slew of those tokens to be spent in the final 20 minutes. They might expire one at a time at the end of each encounter, encouraging spending if there is only one left. If they never expire, all too often they get hoarded like those potions that never get consumed … Never know when you’ll need it!
• What can they be used to modify?
  A reroll is far different from rolling at advantage. Maybe the token can be spent towards an effect like damage or to prevent a critical against the PC. In the Eberron setting of D&D, tokens can be spent to activate certain abilities.
• How many can you have at once?
  Is it only one maximum or up to a set number? Is it a number that will change with character growth? Related – can more than one be spent on a single action / outcome? Just how much do you want this to bend the luck?

Some common examples …

• Gain a Token after a Critical Failure: I like this one, as it makes a possible fumble something positive even after the fail.
• Gain a Token after a Critical Success: This I don’t like as you already have that success going for you. As a variant, the succeeding Player gets to declare another player to get the Token, perhaps story wise as they set up that other Player for success. Modiphious 2d20 kind of do this with building a momentum pool built from successes that can be used by any player. Watching your buddy roll their 3rd critical success has a different flavour if they hand you a special Token.
• Gain for “Cool Stuff”: This is a hard one. I’ve tried this as a reward after an encounter and at the end of session where other players get to nominate someone to receive it for something cool. In the moment, it’s been much harder for me to call one move cooler over another as some players just aren’t that practiced at describing the “cool stuff” that they are trying to do.
• Gain for Invoking a Flaw: Lots of systems have a flaw mechanic. Some delegate it to the DM to decide when to invoke a flaw, others allow a player to do so. Some even have it baked in that when a flaw is invoked, gain a reward of some sort such as extra experience or a special Token.
• Gain for Successfully Completing an Encounter / Lost After Taking A Rest: Extremely specific, based upon a mechanic from D&D 4E. Done to encourage Players to keep going in a reward vs. risk setting.
• Gain for Missing a Roll: For something as common as missing, the reward should be less powerful than a Reroll or Advantage but one time Bonus is about right.

What to spend a Token on (some systems include more than one of these at a time) …

• Roll at Advantage: Roll an extra die, take the better result. Generally works out to be a 20% better result than rolling once. At some tables, that could even be spent on effect dice like damage (i.e. rolling 3d6 instead of 2d6 and taking the best 2 out of 3 dice for a total).
• Impose a Disadvantage: Roll an extra die for an Enemy and take the worst result.
• Reroll: Better than rolling at Advantage / Disadvantage as you get to see the result before spending. No as good if the second die result is lower than the original.
• Maximize the Result: Guarantee that damage isn’t going to be a weak sauce 1 or 2.
• Make a Regular Hit into a Critical Hit: For systems that just double the damage dice rolled, this usually (but not always) gives better damage. For systems with extremely punishing critical hit tables (looking at you Warhammer FRPG), this can be unbalancing.
• Negate a Critical Hit: Useful to prevent a punishing hit against the PC.
• Add a Bonus To Your Total: I know of a system that you can spend for a +1 to the d20 roll. I know another that it’s an extra d6 to the d20 roll (I use the latter, maximum of 3 tokens banked or spent at a time). At my table, we ruled that these bonus dice could be used towards any dice, not just for d20 rolls. This has resulted in a fighter who failed to hit anything for most of the encounter finally connecting and rolling 1d8+3d6 for damage – it was an epic outcome, very pulpy.
• Reduce an Effect Against You: Similar to Bonus Dice added to your roll, this one is to reduce the effect against you, say by a d6 per token.
• Perform an Extra Action: Depending on the Action Economy of the System, this can be pretty powerful, but if the Refresh / Gain economy is relatively slow, there is something to be said for getting a bit more action in there and bring the encounter to an conclusion sooner.
• Increase Die Code: This one uses more of the in between dice like a d14, d16, d24, d30 (as found in Dungeon Crawl Classics et. al.). Spend 1 Token and raise that d20 to a d24 or change your damage die from a d8 to a d10 and another to boost it to 1d12. Sure, it raises the height of the roll and the average outcome but there still remains the possibility of rolling a 1 or 2 on that higher die.

Just a few I’ve encountered in systems, blog posts, and the like. A few of these I wouldn’t mind trying in a game of Settlers of Catan, like if I’m in last place and I’ve been hit by the Robber a couple of times, it would be nice to have more flexibility on my roll like rolling 3d6 and choosing the best 2d6 combo to compensate for the loss.