Failing Up

A few days after posting it I realized that my last substantial post was far more of a vent against D&D then I originally intended for it to be. From now on I'm going to do my best to focus on the things in gaming that I like or just find interesting. I'd rather not turn this into a rant against things I don't care for. So now that we've got that out of the way...

Why does the notion of failure in RPGs engender such a negative reaction? It's a response that doesn't even require any thought. Do you like bad things to happen to your character? Unless you've thought about the topic you will probably say no. I think the reasons are rooted in a few things. First of all I wonder how often we treat our characters as our Mary Sues. How often do we make avatars and not characters? How many times have I been guilty of playing in campaigns where I just followed the most obvious course of action to further the plot instead of trying to explore facets of my character? That is an entirely different topic for another time, but one worth mentioning for the purpose of this discussion.

Secondly, we want to be badass in ways that we just aren't in real life. I can't find fault in this either. I've been known to try and incorporate wuxia (before I even knew the term) into my combat descriptions. This usually occurred in systems that didn't support the notion and I ended up incurring tons of negative modifiers for my efforts. But I wanted to be cool.

People don't like downers. But there are exceptions to this. In action/adventure failure can be fun. Look at Harrison Ford's two most popular characters; Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Their roads to victory are paved with stones of failure. How much more awesome is Empire with Han being duped by Lando in being sold out to the Empire, being tortured, and frozen in carbonite? If that were an RPG Han's player probably would have been pissed.

In a much more dramatic take, what would we remember of Romeo and Juliet if they both hadn't rolled that critical failure in the end and killed themselves? What about Oedipus Rex? That story is full of tragic drama. The first failure belongs to the parents. They try to avert a prophecy, but they fail. Oedipus unknowingly fails, kills his dad, gets with his mom. It's a family full of failure. Both of these stories have no reason to be told if they don't end in abject tragedy and failure. This tone may be far more excessive than people are willing to play out at their table. My question is "why?"

RPGs are a structured method of communal storytelling. It's through our characters that we impact the direction of these stories. I believe that when we try to protect our characters and when we, as players, are working towards lollipops and candy canes as the end of these stories we are hamstringing the potential of many of these stories. We place priority on our character over the story. I'd like to start accepting more dramatic and appropriate failure, not just failure for failure's sake.

I'm about to tell a gaming story. Our current campaign is D&D. In this game I'm playing a warlock that sold his soul to the world's version of Satan. It wasn't one of those deals where now he belongs to the Void Lord for all time. The Void Lord got what he needed from the soul and created a Dark Age, my character got some power and we went our separate ways. My character realized that he screwed up and begins the work to undo the deal he made. As a bitter and hateful Arrodehn (my character) sets out to reestablish the order that the Void Lord had undone using my character's soul, he is approached by Etaj. Etaj is the closest thing to absolute omnipotence in this world. He's not quite there, but close. He gives Arrodehn a legendary sword that was only ever wielded by very few in history.

Despite the fact that Arrodehn has directed all of his hate towards the Void Lord, he is still harboring this poisonous emotion and that alone makes him evil. Etaj, realizing the potential Arrodehn has to do good things, decided to aid him despite this. Arrodehn struggled with the weight of the conflict of good and evil, too stubborn to give in to good. He didn't want to change because that's what everyone around him was pressuring him to do. At one point he returned the sword. It was a very poignant scene and a very pivotal one as well. From the outside this looked like failure. The other characters had assumed that he had just given up entirely with his struggle, that he would just stay dark. He hadn't. He had chosen a third option.

The sword had come with assumptions and baggage. That sword had become a crutch for his hatred. He turned to knowledge and discovery over the approach of direct violence. In looking back, though, I think there was failure in that decision. He failed at achieving his maximum potential as a paragon for good. Is he good now as opposed to evil before? Absolutely. But he's still horribly flawed and that, to me, is far more interesting than if he had just accepted a "righteous" path. There's depth in his character where there wouldn't have been before because he failed. This was a player decision to fail though. One I made purposefully. What about smaller failures? What can they do to add to the overall fun of a game?

In Burning Wheel before you test your skill you declare the task and your intent, the action you're about to take and what you hope comes of it. It's something that, on it's surface, illicits a "duh", but a few pages later it becomes clear why this becomes important to the game's philosophy. The player makes a two-part presentation. The first part is the action he wants his character to take. The second part is the player's control over the outcome of a successful role. At this point the GM starts playing Let's Make A Deal. He'll challenge the player with terms of failure. If the player cannot accept the terms that the GM has provided then no role is made. The fact that testing your skills is the method to increasing them makes this risk one often worth taking.

One of the core conceits of Burning Wheel is that the story goes somewhere if the dice are rolled. Period. Failing a skill test will not result in the players waiting for a few more minutes to try again (in fact there are rules to prevent just that). When you fail the dynamic of the scene, maybe even the story, changes.

Admittedly, I've only played the game twice and both of those were a demo scenario. I don't know how this works out practically, but I love the idea of a player willing to accept and even offer up ideas for failure for the sake of making the story more interesting. Do I want control over my character? Yes. But I want the story I'm taking part in to be a roller-coaster ride of awesome and I don't think that failure and an awesome narrative are mutually exclusive.

My Podcasting Debut

I did some bumper music as a joke for the podcast Fear the Boot. In the latest episode, 196, it was used to humorous effect. So there, my podcast cherry has been popped.

Linky:
http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/1602