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08-05-2015, 06:45 AM | #1 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Handling a 'Succeed at a cost' and 'Succeed with an unrelated benefit' in GURPS?
Greetings, all!
Sometimes I notice neat things in other systems, and here's one of them: instead of a binary succeed/fail and a single-axis 'fail badly/fail a bit/succeed a bit/succeed a lot' outcome handling, a system allows succeeding with a cost. A bit less related, there's the idea of having one's success also produce some side benefit that has no relation to the task at hand whatsoever. Please note that I am not talking about quantitative things like critical success/failure, which are specific subsets of 'fail more/succeed more'. I'm talking specifically about cases where a success has an additional 'perpendicular' event only remotely related to the task that the character was trying to achieve. For example, say the Charismatic Hero is trying to calm down a crows during a zombie invasion, explaining that he can cast a spell that will protect the refugees of the settlement from the walking dead. Possible outcomes would include:
How could GURPS handle the latter two cases? Thanks in advance! |
08-05-2015, 07:05 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Handling a 'Succeed at a cost' and 'Succeed with an unrelated benefit' in GURPS?
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You could require the player claim the bonus before rolling, or give them the option of getting it after they roll (they see they aren't convincing anyone and change tactics mid-speech). An alternative could be to have rolls that only barely fail (MoF 1 or 2) actually succeed after all, but at a cost. I'd probably give the player the option - "They aren't convinced - you can probably manage to get enough of them if you exaggerate, but that's likely to leave some of them deluded enough to try something stupid later." Let the "convince them to calm down and help" roll serve as a Complementary Skill Roll on an attempt to gather information. You might want rules on passive information gathering to have this work. |
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08-05-2015, 07:18 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Handling a 'Succeed at a cost' and 'Succeed with an unrelated benefit' in GURPS?
"Succeed with an unrelated benefit" is a kind of critical success. You get htat by rolling really well. The difference is that instead of the benefit being "in line" with the success, it's orthogonal. When the hero attempts to motivate the villagers and rolls a crit success, you could express that result as "convincing all of them", as in the OP, but you could just as easily express it as "convince most of them and learn about the spells". If such events aren't frequent enough, then you could lower the bar on the MoS requirement from "win by 10" (for a crit) to some lesser number.
"Succeed at a cost" occurs on what the dice say is a failure. To turn that into a success, you need to "buy" a modifier sufficient to move the result back to a success. That is, it's a negative MoS that you need to overcome. That Margin of Failure tells you how big the cost has to be to succeed despite it. You might award that margin to the bad guys, who get to use it for free on one of their rolls. Or you can turn it into a narrative effect, which would require working out a scale of examples for what a +2 change would be, or a +5, or a +10. "Taking a consequence" to succeed means putting some other currency on that chart: you might choose to suffer some FP loss, HP loss, or temporary or even permanent Disadvantages to buy that success. You might rate the CP involved in the feature, and have a discount factor based on how easy it is to repair (rest for the FP, heal for days on the HP, full value for taking a permanent Disad, etc) Another way to look at the mechanic would be to treat it as a sort of negative Deceptive Attack (on any sort of roll). Rather than take a penalty to your roll to get some benefit (reduced defense), the player chooses to claim a bonus on the roll (to ensure success) by taking a penalty elsewhere. This might not be as directly related to the action as in a DA. It also might be a narrative effect, as in the "some villagers get themselves killed" case. The problem with narrative effects is of course stopping the game to debate what happens and whether it's serious enough to buy the success; that is, how many MoS points any invented situation might be worth. Again, you can work out some typical examples, but since the game situations have a lot of variety, you'll have some unavoidable GM-player negotiation. The scope of the effects probably ought also to be related to the scope of the roll. Sometimes die rolls are for small things -- one hit in a combat. Sometimes they're big -- persuade the king to declare war. The consequences likely to be similar in scope. While it might be okay to burn some FP as a desperate defense to get a couple of points on one defense roll, it would might a lot less sense to merely burn a couple of FP to win a heated debate that changes the course of the setting. A bigger stake might be called for. |
08-05-2015, 02:01 PM | #4 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Handling a 'Succeed at a cost' and 'Succeed with an unrelated benefit' in GURPS?
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For the first I personally do that as a "You can take an extra bonus, but there will be drawbacks if you do so" on a Skill Check. The latter I'd handle as a bonus effect to a Critical Success. |
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08-05-2015, 02:38 PM | #5 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Medford, MA
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Re: Handling a 'Succeed at a cost' and 'Succeed with an unrelated benefit' in GURPS?
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That is about where my natural instincts would be. Because I like the way GURPS plays, the things I'd come up with would work to keep the feel of what is currently there as much as possible. The latter, I'd also handle as a critical success. The Former, eh, I'd suppose I'd institute a house rule saying if you fail by 1, you can turn that into a success at some cost...but I decide the cost...and I don't necessarily tell you what it is. That could be fun. I could see doing something like that. But if what you want is a really different feel that isn't an extension of what we have? Then I'd take inspiration for Dragon Age. They are are 3d6 system (but roll high rather than roll low). Of the three die, one is a different color. If you roll doubles in your roll, then you get a number of stunt points equal to what is on your differently colored die and you get to spend those stunt points on fun cool bonus orthogonal things. So if you really want something that feels really different? Instead of rolling 3d6, roll 3d6 (one being your different colored Fate die) and one Fudge die. If you roll doubles those Fate Points come into pay...they represent positive/negative/ambiguous things depending on if the Fudge die was positive/negative/blank. So you could have, on one axis: Crit Fail, Fail, Succeed, Crit Succeed On the other: Positive, Negative, Ambiguous Fate Points That is if you really want something that feels very different that would still integrate into GURPS. |
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