Naming PbtA-style levels of success

#1

In PbtA style games, I’ve often disliked referring to 6- as “Failures”. The word doesn’t really evoke the “things don’t go the way you planned” idea of always moving the story forward. Perhaps it’s splitting hairs, but “Failure” doesn’t invite the player to interact with the new situation and look for new opportunities, and is an unfair judgement of the character’s efforts/skill.

In the future, I’m planning on using the word “Mishap” rather than “Failure” for a 6-.

However, I’m still looking for names for 10+ and 7-9, and was hoping to source it from you folks. I’m ok with “Success” for 10+, but I’m open to better words. The one that currently irks me is “Partial Success”. Yes, it is very accurate, but it’s a bit of a mouthful. I just can’t seem to come up with a word that feels appropriate. Any ideas?

2 Likes
#2

The ones I’ve internalised are hit for anything 7+, strong hit for 10+, weak hit for 7-9, and miss for 6-.

I’m not sure if I’ve picked these up from AW or some other PbtA game but they’re the ones that jump to my mind when I think about the rolls.

To me, they’re fairly neutral in a way that for example “failure” isn’t, as I read them as referring to the move rather than the fiction.

7 Likes
#3

I think the root of the roll in PbtA relates more to narrative direction that success/failure, which is why labelling a 6- as “failure” sounds wrong. At least to my understanding, a character rolling 6- may very well still accomplish what they set out to do but not accomplish in a way that actually aids them (I believe the common example is picking a lock, on a 6-, you might still unlock the door, but not fast enough to evade the guards barrelling down on you).

Perhaps the results should be relabelled as
10-12 : PC driven
7-9 : cooperative driven
6- : GM driven

A “success” is a result in which the narrative progresses according to the player character, a “failure” is a result in which the narrative progresses according to the GM, and a “mix” result is (grossly) a result in which the narrative is driven by a compromise between the player character and GM.

This of course prescribes a genial antagonism between the GM and their players which definitely wouldn’t work for every game so consider this my hat toss into the ring over an authoritative answer.

5 Likes
#4

“Twist” seems like a good way to frame a 6-. Maybe a 7-9 is more of a “swerve” or a “catch”.

3 Likes
#5

I’ve seen this a lot in Gauntlet spaces, but I’m pretty sure it’s a play-culture thing, and not in (most) game texts. Like, lots of Gauntlet games have the GM asking the player to describe their successes, but there’s nothing in the game text of (e.g.) Apocalypse World or Dungeon World or Monster of the Week that tells you to do that. Most of the examples in the books show the GM describing what happens on a 10+.

And anyhow… it doesn’t apply to plenty of move structures. Like, a Discern Realities/Read a Sitch move doesn’t give the player narrative authority on a 10+. Neither does a Parley/Seduce or Manipulate move.

I’m generally a fan of the original AW terms of “strong hit” (10+), “weak hit” (7-9), and “miss” (6-), because (like @Anders says) they’re neutral and don’t imply much judgement about how things should play out in the fiction. I think that they were intentionally chosen as “gamey” terms for that reason.

With that said, I don’t think there’s much value in those terms from a move-writing perspective. They’re unnecessary jargon, IMO. I’ve taken to always writing the die results instead of “hit” or “miss.” E.g. “…roll +DEX; on a 7+, deal your damage; on a 10+, also pick 2; on a 7-9, also pick 1; on a 6-, mark XP and expect the worst.”

I can’t remember where I read this recently, but I seem to recall @MagpieMark talking about (or someone talking about him talking about) a classification, somethink like “6- is a setback” and “7-9 is a development” or something like that.

8 Likes
#6

Like I said, the names I provided frontload a specific game feel which is not universally applicable to every PbtA game. But I do feel the need to clarify, I provided the label PC Driven, not Player Driven. Rolling 10-12 can be a situation in which the player gets carte blanche to say what happens, but my labeling is about how the narrative conforms to the characters’s intent, the GM’s intent, or a a compromise of both, not a hard mechanical definition of who controls the narrative.

5 Likes
#7

World of Dungeons uses the terms miss, partial success and full success, but like Jeremy I prefer to just give the number ranges as well in moves. It’s terse and immediately clear, and avoids the terminology subliminally influencing the readers expectations of what sort of result would be appropriate.

To my mind, any terminology for this is problematic. For example while I like the hit/miss terms better than succeed/fail, the term weak hit is a bit too close to ‘partial success’ to my mind and implies getting a watered down outcome. That’s only one possible type of result on a 7-9 though, as it’s a form of compromise. A 7-9 result shouldn’t necessarily be a lower grade of success than a 10+ though, it could be every bit as good, but come with some additional cost or complication.

I just had a look at Dungeon World, and I can’t actually find any explicit terminology defined for the types of outcome. It might be in there somewhere, but the section on Making Moves on page 18 onwards does a pretty good job of dodging explicit terminology completely. I think that’s really smart.

4 Likes
#8

Point taken, and fair enough!

I would still say that it falls apart for a significant number of move structures, particularly the Read a Sitch style moves. On those, it’d be, like “7-9 >> player driven” and “10+ >> even more player driven.”

2 Likes
#9

one thing i’ve been thinking about lately, is some rolls may be not success/failure oriented

examples
10+ = environmental effect/response, 7-9=mixture, 6- = personal effect/response
10+ = reputation effect/response, 7-9=mixture, moral equalibrium effect/response
10+ = magical effect/response, 7-9=career or family effect, 6- = mundane effect response
10+ = immediate/narrow effect, 7-9=soon or multiple effects, 6- = long term/many effects

1 Like
#10

I go with
the results are

  • expected
  • close
  • unexpected
9 Likes
#11

Like I said, the names I provided frontload a specific game feel which is not universally applicable to every PbtA game. But I do feel the need to clarify, I provided the label PC Driven, not Player Driven. Rolling 10-12 can be a situation in which the player gets carte blanche to say what happens, but my labeling is about how the narrative conforms to the characters’s intent, the GM’s intent, or a a compromise of both , not a hard mechanical definition of who controls the narrative.

I don’t think that’s possible to do for all moves for all games. Some moves aren’t about what the PC is trying to do, sometimes moves are reversed where a lower result is better, and sometimes a 10+ is just like a 7-9 only you get to pick more options.

1 Like
#12

Oh, that’s good. Nice, clean way to think about the philosophy of moves, and it’s honestly really widely-applicable.

5 Likes
#13

I think it really depends on the game. The original AW text uses “strong hit, weak hit, miss”, or similar terms, but Vincent has been quite clear that the whole point of designing the game the way he has is so that these aren’t prescriptive rules. Some moves will change or invert these expectations - many moves in AW, for example, have very positive outcomes on a 6-, the harm move flips it entirely upside down, and so forth. So, what do the moves in your game do?

I find that, in practice, most people I talk to about PbtA games end up talking about “a 10+ result”, “a 7-9 result”, and “a 6 or less”. Those are the outcome types, in other words. Accurate and clear.

  • “What did you get?”
  • “I rolled a 7-9 on that move.”
4 Likes
#14

I typically refer to the numbers. Some games invert the results (e.g. when you’re rolling Heat moves in Cartel, you want to roll low.)

That said, rolling the dice in PbtA mean that there are three possible outcomes:

You get what you want.
You get what you want, but…
You get something other than what you wanted.

In PbtA, rolling the dice always moves the story forward in some dramatic fashion: You always get something.

1 Like
#15

Haladir,

While I think that’s true for a LOT of PbtA moves, I think that’s a limiting view. Why not make a move where you always get what you want, but the question is who decides what else happens? Or a move where every outcome is bad, and it’s just a question of how bad (“When you drink from the poisoned well…”)?

If you look at the original - Apocalypse World - you’ll find examples of moves like these in quite a few places. And I think other designers shouldn’t shy away from trying such things, as well. There’s lots of room for innovation there. Moves don’t always have to be about “getting what you want”, with the alternative being “getting something other than what you wanted” (except in the loose sense that, of course, if you know what the outcomes are before you roll, you’ll “want” one and not want another, but that’s true for most any randomizer).

3 Likes
#16

Paul: I see your point, and I agree with you.

I was simplifying. This is the explanation I typically use when explaining the core PbtA mechanic to someone whose only TTRPG experiences are with systems with a “pass/fail” dice mechanic (e.g. D&D).

I think the “Get what you want / Get what you want BUT… / Get something other than what you wanted” pretty much sums up basic and playbook moves for most PbtA games most of the time.

Special moves and custom moves will break the baseline… but that’s why you establish a set of baseline expectations.

3 Likes