thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-18, PeterBB wrote:
This is an awesome discussion.
Rafael, you said that you don't understand how both "success" and "failure" could always be interesting. This is a pretty crucial sticking point, and probably the basis of a lot of the confusion.
There are a lot of different ways you can do this.
To take one example: In the "burning" games (Burning Wheel, Burning Empires, Mouse Guard), you only fail a task if it's interesting for you to do so. If it's not interesting, then you succeed, but with some sort of cost or twist. Maybe your character is exhausted by the effort, or makes enough noise to attract an enemy, or whatever. The rules give you a lot of interesting options.
In Vincent's game "Dogs in the Vineyard", the interesting question is not about success or failure at all. Your character can almost always succeed, especially if the group is working together. The interesting question is whether he's willing to go to the lengths required to get what he wants. Is he willing to pull a gun on his brother to keep him from doing something stupid?
There's a game called Houses of the Blooded where the dice just determine narrative authority. If you succeed, then you get to narrate how you succeed or fail (it's up to you!). If you fail, then the GM gets to narrate how you succeed or fail, and he's bound to make life difficult for your character. If failing (or succeeding!) is boring, then neither player need pick it. They will just narrate other things to make the story go the way they want it to.
In short, there are lots of clever ways to do it, and lots of clever people who have been making it work. If none of these appeal to you, there is almost certainly another game that will. (Myself, I'm looking forward to Vincent's next game, Apocalypse World. It looks awesome.)
