Risk In RPGs

[robin_d_laws]

I am less interested in categorical distinctions between RPG game designs than I am in those that describe what actually happens during play. This is part because, as a designer, I’m more interested in providing tools that work than in adhering to an aesthetically or theoretically coherent framework. It also goes to the old saw about the rules not

Comments

[caesarsalad77]

I found part of the fun in Feng Shui was forcing the characters to take risks no matter what. Minor railroading, perhaps, but sometimes you need to put them in a dangerous situation before they'll do dangerous things.

Scenario I used: Characters are on a small plane. Bad guy and mooks cackle about their evil plan, then take the only parachutes on board and jump out after sabotaging the plane's controls. I made it clear that the only way to survive was to jump out, catch up with the bad guys and fight in free fall to get the chutes away before that sudden, nasty stop at the bottom.

[serpentstar]

In live roleplay, this issue has been addressed, with risk-seeking becoming a standard part of play in the more progressive games (in which company, immodestly, I include Hyborian Tales

[semerkhet]

This is exactly the sort of subtle design touch that has drawn me to try Burning Wheel. It makes explicit so many of the little social contract things that we were taking for granted before; issues we were not consciously thinking about and therefore unintentionally having conflict over.

[chadu]

Robin, this is awesome.

Thank you!

CU

[maverick_weirdo]

Your question reminds me of the scene in Mighty Ducks where they had a goalie that was afraid of being hit by the puck, so they strapped him to the goal (with full gear on) and started pelting him with pucks, to show that the protective gear really worked.

Once I was doing a test run of a 1-shot game, where I was a 10th level character, it wasn't till the end game that I realized that I was playing him like a 1st level character, trying to avoid any damage, choosing the safest options, etc.

Playing risk-averse is a learned behavior, one way to un-train it is to temporarily reduce the consequences of failure until the new behavior becomes a habit.

[lead_sponge]

D&D is unique in that it seems really hard to die. Keep in mind I haven't played much of it, but I try to get my character killed. I charge recklessly into combat and try to die. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get killed by the system. To be honest, I doubt that was a purposeful design with D&D 3.0, but as long as you have the cleric, you are golden in any typical situation. So... I act like a 10th level character all the time. :P

[janewilliams20]

HeroQuest, combined with Mike Holmes remarks on Failure being Fun. That's what you need. Any maybe not even HQ

[notoriousbkc]

Robin has a great bit about this in the new QuestWorlds/HeroQuest 2.0 manuscript.

Basically it goes like this:

If you can't think of anything interesting to do is a PCs action *fails* then use an Automatic Success, even if you have to resort to a Fake Contest (where you roll the dice, but the Narrator doesn't care what his result is, the PC is going to succeed). Now at first blush this might seem to be "The PCs are never at risk of dying, etc." But that's not the case... if a PC dying (or whatever) leads to an interesting (read 'entertaining') situation then a genuine contest (with it's inherent chance of failure) is called for.

This concept, to me, was forehead-smackingly cool.

:)