IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance

[MisterBoring]

I think the thing that irks me the most about these situations is the specific version of this where:

• The specific consequences for a specific action are warned about both IC to many PCs and OOC through various OOC channels.
• Alternative methods to approach the current danger are offered both IC and OOC through many PCs and OOC channels.
• A single PC comes forward, and even though they are prearmed with the information that action X will have result Y 100% of the time, choose to take action X regardless of the consequences.
• That player immediately throws a shit fit because that’s not what should happen to their PC.

The first example I can think of this happening actually happened on a PBP forum game loosely based on various space faring scifi stuff like Traveller, Warhammer 40K, and Disney’s The Black Hole. The characters discovered a previously undiscovered artificial planet was on a collision course with a hub world, and if left unchecked would have dire consequences. They had roughly a year of in game time to deal with the issue, and several options were presented by staff for the players to do so.

One of these options involved reassembling the control system on the planet and it was noted both via IC play and OOC communication that attempts to reassemble the control system with less than the required number of parts would be terminal for any players directly involved.

A PC, who will be referred to as Sam from here forward, was given all of this information, and through regular adventures with their crew along side some political bargains with other PCs, managed to acquire 3 of the 4 pieces of the device, and though warned both IC and OOC that attempting to reassemble the control device now would be a VERY BAD IDEA INDEED, they chose to go alone to do this. When they opened the request for the scene, the staffer involved in running it sent the player a private message asking for confirmation that they wanted to proceed down this guaranteed suicide mission. Their response was “I just want to get this plot over with.”.

After sneaking past a few patrols of security robots, the character arrived at the core of the planet, reassembled the incomplete device, turned it on, and was promptly vaporized when the planet exploded.

Cue 3 week long tantrum on every board they could get access to after their access was modified because their character died.

[spiriferida]

I would generally agree that people like having control of their failures - they like the points where their character does the wrong thing to be something they specifically initiate. Sidestepping for a moment from DMing into dicerolls, I know a few people who have gotten discouraged enough by a bout of bad rolls to straight up want to slip out of scenes, or avoid high stakes dice scenes for a while. The random element really got to them.

Also I think there is some degree of non-dice times when a player has a fact about their character that is canon to them - maybe that they’re a good manipulator, or a good scientist, or a pickpocket, but in a particular scene the player isn’t able to accomplish their vision of the character, when people aren’t reacting to what they think should happen, where people just can’t recover from the disconnect in time to make it fun for themself. If you want your character to be perceived a certain way but can’t make people see that… it’s going to become frustrating.

[Pyrephox]

@spiriferida I think this can be exacerbated by how unkind other players can be about a bad run of dice. In the typical MU*, chances to do your character’s Big Thing in a ‘meaningful’ way can be very thin on the ground. Getting a bad roll on your Thing can certainly hurt - and even worse when other players have their characters treat yours as a failure, or mock the bad roll OOC.

As I’ve aged, I’ve become more of a fan of both ‘fail forward’ methods with failures described not as a failure of ability, but as a consequence paid for progress, but also of ‘luck/karma’ systems where you can have a limited currency to spend for success when it really MATTERS to your character.

Because yes, it absolutely sucks to have the one chance your PC gets in a year to roll their best ability in a scene where there are actual impacts, and fail miserably. Especially when you know that now everyone’s seen that failure, and not any of the successes that the character would reasonably have had, and all they’re going to remember is ‘Annie said she was a great warrior and totally fumbled out of that fight in the first round’.

[Alveraxus]

I think it depends upon the scenario, but calling out the difference between TTPRG, Video games, etc, versus things like MUSHing or LARPing is key. I look at the latter as collective storytelling, while the former are representational/avatar situations. Lines blur with more immersive games, but when I am playing one of the earlier Final Fantasy games, I am choosing what I think the “best” choice is, not what I think is most in character.

Personally, I am one of those people who likes to think through the worst possible decisions my character can make, and find a way to do that, because I think that leads to better story. It’s part of the whole “play to lift” philosophy, and I approach MUSHing this way, kind of with that “yes, and…” approach.

I think that persistence of characters though in a campaign or a MUSH can discourage, to an extent, the kind of “bad decision” making that might work better in one-off games or LARPs or things like that because we grow attached to our characters (understandably) and also we want to see them continue and succeed. Or just not die. Which is totally reasonable.

The game that we’re developing we think is going to make this a bit easier by putting an “expiration date” on characters by default, so hopefully players will be freer to make dramatic decisions that may have significant consequences (including character death) that lead to cool scenes because going in they know the character won’t be around in a year anyway.

Of course, what we don’t know is how many people won’t even want to start on a game where every character has a 6-12 month shelf life before refreshing, but we’re willing to roll the dice and see if our idea is compelling enough. Hopefully it’ll be interesting to see either way!

[Coin]

The most important thing here is degrees. Every medium has it. Movies/Television/Novels and other classically structured storytelling (like comic books, whatever) have less fluidity in how much agency to give the audience – the story is told and we experience it without much say. Some types – mostly those that attempt to give some leeway via Choose Your Own Adventure-style interactivity or, more recently (relatively), social media-centered storytelling where the audience can interact with characters (pioneered by such darlings as lonelygirl15) – are more interactive.

For video games, you start to get into a bit more hands-on from the audience because the player is actually in charge of a character. Sometimes the video game allows you to make many choices, decide what kind of person the character is, be evil or good (Fallout, Skyrim) or give you throughlines you can explore and combine (Mass Effect) but which are still written out; and still others are basically a story that you play through and the only real thing you decide is which sideplots to take part in and your actions in combat, but the story won’t change (Last of Us, God of War).

MUing is similar, when it comes to the way people run the game. Some games are very laisse-faire: you make a character and react to the world and have relationships and take part in the action, yay. Other games are more focused on the stories and moving characters forward. Other games have actual stories they want to tell with those characters you’re choosing to play (roster games are big on this) and you have less (not ‘none’, but ‘less’) of a choice over what you’ll be involved in storywise (especially in character-specific plots) and it’s important to communicate even more with the STs and staff to make sure everyone is having a good time.

My point, though, is that (though it may not be everyone’s cup of tea) MUing is perhaps the most nuanced of all of these because it can run the broadest gamut between ‘do whatever’ and ‘look, this is the plot’.

There is probably a lot of comparison to be made with storytellers with railroad and stuff, but the important thing I think is for the game and staff and STs to be open and forthcoming about their expectations (the same as players should be) and everyone to find a comfortable way of telling stories together.

[Gashlycrumb]

@spiriferida said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

If you want your character to be perceived a certain way but can’t make people see that… it’s going to become frustrating.

Yeah. And there are levels of reasonableness for this response. There’s Darke, who wanted other PCs to have a complex and unlikely response to his - to be intimidated by him yet long for his approval and/or sexual attention (no homo) - and was constantly in a snit that it wasn’t happening. And then there’s that time I was playing the chief of police and one PC cop was just horribly off the rails and would say a snotty one-liner or two and walk out on the reprimands, but staff would not allow me to ICly fire him. I’m sure most games where there’s a chain-of-command have regular exercises in that one.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Pyrephox said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

@spiriferida I think this can be exacerbated by how unkind other players can be about a bad run of dice. In the typical MU*, chances to do your character’s Big Thing in a ‘meaningful’ way can be very thin on the ground. Getting a bad roll on your Thing can certainly hurt - and even worse when other players have their characters treat yours as a failure, or mock the bad roll OOC.

I don’t mind the OOC lulz when my PC face-plants, but not only does a tabletop generally offer more frequent chances, players don’t generally refuse to invite you on the next adventure because of bad rolls.

It’s silly, but I find it weirdly frustrating that MUs don’t have any equivalent to the superstitious dice-switching that happens at every tabletop. They really all need easter-egg code:

+cursedice
Player curses their dice, and [feeds them to a rabid rhinoceros/hurls them into an abyss/etcetc long silly list].

and player’s dice change to another colour-set 'til they do it again.

[Pavel]

@Gashlycrumb said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

players don’t generally refuse to invite you on the next adventure because of bad rolls.

This one really, really annoys me. Combine that with people trying to “optimise,” and you get my biggest pet peeves in MUing. If I wanted to play “optimally,” I’d do it by myself. Like sex.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Pavel Yeah. It’s baffling to me that the two behaviors often go together, because a lot of the time when other PCs don’t wanna team up with yours ‘cause you are a fuck-up, they actually saw the roll where the fuck-up occurred and know that you botched with ten dice at difficulty six and odds were against you failing, much less botching. Yet this is OOC knowlege they’re determined to treat as such. The OOC knowledge that they will probably never roll appearance or science and can get away with playing a teevee-handsome meteorologist with appearance 1 and sciences 0, that is somethin’ to act on. I consider this cheating.

[Pavel]

@Gashlycrumb In WoD terms, my Academics skill is probably a 2 or a 3 - Probably a 2 with specialties in History, English Language, and Psychology even though it’s a science. And I’d say my Intelligence score would be about a 2 or 3.

So I’d be rolling 5d10 and for a difficulty 6 check I’d fail/botch almost 20% of the time. One in five times I try, I’d fail.

Sure, reality and a game system don’t match up - I sure spent far more points in social skills than I ever use - but the overall point is that in reality, people fail at stuff they’re supposed to be good at all the time. That’s life.

[Faraday]

@Pavel said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

So I’d be rolling 5d10 and for a difficulty 6 check I’d fail/botch almost 20% of the time. One in five times I try, I’d fail…in reality, people fail at stuff they’re supposed to be good at all the time. That’s life.

It really depends on how you look at it. Imagine people getting into car crashes 20% of the time they went for a drive, or surgeons screwing up 20% of their surgeries.

But on the flip side, a baseball player with an 80% batting average would be the GOAT.

The truth is that skills and skill rolls are never going to mirror reality perfectly. They’re just a necessary abstraction to make the game work.

A soldier might get dozens of skill rolls in a fight scene, but an archaeologist might only get one roll to solve a key puzzle. It’s really imbalanced. Even in a system like FS3 that’s heavily slanted towards success (plus has luck points), it can be very unsatisfying.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Pavel Just so. And certainly in life you suffer from first-impressions problems if you fail at the wrong moment. But in life if I attend one lecture to assess you and you flub it badly, I (probably) don’t know if you rolled five dice (and are thus likely to succeed 80% of the time and are capable of spectacular successes) or if you rolled two and are gonna fail a lot and can never do all that great.

[Pavel]

@Faraday Shh, don’t bring logic into my example that had math in it.

You’re right, of course, but I was using it more as a metaphorical device than an actual metric of my personal likelihood of failure - I am amazing, after all.

Fundamentally I think people who want to optimise or actually exclude people based on their sheet or their dice, generally, don’t get the point of MUing. Sure, we call them RPGs, but they’re more Role Playing Game-likes. There’s no losing.

Sure, a character dies, or a scene doesn’t go your way, or the DM’s a dick, they all suck but the goal of the game is to tell a story. Did you do that? Then you didn’t lose.

ETA: And a story without failure is fucking boring. It might be horrible at the time, but it’s often the failures that make a game more interesting and more memorable than the successes.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Pavel Oh, I just mean that it’s inconsistant of people to want to optimise but also exclude people on the basis of the IC experience of seeing them fuck up badly, even when that experience included OOC information that shows they won’t fuck up badly very often.

[Pavel]

@Gashlycrumb Eh, it’s not that inconsistent. “This person doesn’t meet our expectations.” It’s just social elitism with a dice box and a character sheet.

[Faraday]

It’s interesting to see the various experiences. I’ve never seen folks deliberately exclude someone for sucking at dice rolls. What I do see is the player with the crappy rolls getting bent out of shape that their character isn’t what they envisioned, or people ICly responding to a given flub by being skeptical of that character’s abilities, and then the player getting bent out of shape about that because their character is supposed to be the expert, dang it.

[Ashkuri]

@Faraday said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

I’ve never seen folks deliberately exclude someone for sucking at dice rolls. What I do see is the player with the crappy rolls getting bent out of shape that their character isn’t what they envisioned

Same. I have never once in 25 years seen someone excluded for rolling poorly. I haven’t even heard of it happening. I don’t believe this is a phenomenon that happens broadly.

I have seen people excluded for being a vibe-killing pain in the ass about their own bad rolls. Most of those people were enough of a pain in the ass to believe their subsequent exclusion was about their rolls and not their attitude.

[MisterBoring]

I’ve also never seen anyone get ostracized for bad luck, but I have seen plenty of people ostracized for less than optimal character builds, which just makes me barf.

[Roz]

I’ve seen people get excluded based on their stats, and also people given a hard time for bad rolls (IC and OOC). I don’t THINK I’ve seen the combo of someone with good stats being excluded just for bad roll luck.

I can tell you that Arx has a rule about not being crappy OOC about bad rolls and that it definitely didn’t come about from nobody being crappy, lol.

[Third Eye]

@Roz said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

I can tell you that Arx has a rule about not being crappy OOC about bad rolls and that it definitely didn’t come about from nobody being crappy, lol.

My own experience on Arx was that this was as much because of people vibe-killing about their own rolls as the behavior of anyone toward them, though this may just be the scenes I was in. I was DEFINITELY happy that rule was there to get cited, for all that.