Handwaving and falling off the RNG

[Laertes]

In the game I ran last night, one of my players was sneaking around a dilapidated castle whilst the others were talking to the villain over dinner*. The game I'm running is a homebrew which includes an etiquette system with the possibility of Oscar Wilde-like battles of putdowns, which has played well thus far. Because the possibilities of them failing an etiquette roll and fucking up disastrously were both low and would also have radically disrupted the mood of the scene, we weren't making rolls for it - it was simply being handwaved, in the same way as one handwaves a lot of unimportant rolls in a game. This got me thinking.

There are basically two forms of handwave:

"Your chances of failure are sufficiently low *and* the consequences of failure are sufficiently disruptive - don't bother rolling, you succeed."

"Your chances of failure are sufficiently high *and* the chances of success are sufficiently disruptive - don't bother rolling, you fail."

In the first case, we can include such things as your character accidentally dying in an everyday car crash on the way to the heist in a shadowrun game. Yes, it can happen, but it would ruin the fun. In the second case, we can include such things as your character winning the lottery in a call of cthulhu game, then using the funds to buy a media empire and expose the cultists. Yes, it can happen, but it would ruin the fun. I don't feel that I'm alone in saying that a good GM will avoid both of these cases, and a good player will mostly thank them for it.

It later occurred to me that a good way of representing this might be with a disciplined attempt to design the system so that you "fall off the RNG" in either direction at the point where handwaving would happen anyway. That way your system and your world don't contradict, and you lose nothing by handwaving it - rather, your system reinforces the way you GM.

For example, in a superhero game, there is nothing to be gained by having Spiderman lose to a nameless mook. Sure, having that possibility in the game adds an element of danger, but if it actually happens then it turns the game from a superhero game into a comedy of errors. It's not what the players want, it's not what the GM wants. The possibility of failure should come up in the fight with the BBEG, where suddenly it becomes dramatic and tense instead of deflating the mood.

Therefore, we set our RNG so that the lowest point that is still on it is the point at which it is dramatically appropriate to lose, and we set it so that the highest point on it is the point at which it is dramatically appropriate to win. Falling off in either direction then becomes both dramatically appropriate and also what you were doing anyway.

The main difficulty with this is obviously that it requires tremendous designer discipline. It must not be possible to gather a +1 from here and a +1 from there until you're able to fall off the RNG in a way that doesn't seem feasible. The designer needs to heavily restrict the maximum possible bonuses that one can get, starting with the edge cases and designing their way back in to the expected centre cases.

Does this sound like a good idea? Am I missing something?

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*They were in that "you're guests until you try to leave, at which point you become prisoners, so don't try to leave mmmkay?" grey area of hospitality.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't even know why you would bother with a fight with a mook that was not possible to lose to. Further, I don't know how you would ensure that you are 'off the RNG' versus the mook, but 'on the RNG' versus the BBEG.

Unless the Mooks are using smaller (or fewer) dice, it seems there is likely to be an overlap.

This is particularly true if you resolve combat with individual hits. If you roll an attack each round and the mook CAN NEVER HIT, there is no dramatic tension in the fight.

[Wiseman]

But there really shouldn't be any dramatic tension if it's an insignicant mook.

[kzt]

A mook choosing to fight spiderman is like you getting in front of a oncoming D9 bulldozer and challenging it to a fistfight. I don't care how good your punch is, the blade can take it.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

A mook who has a low chance of actually inflicting damage needs to drain resources in other ways. Maybe Spiderman has finite amounts of webbing? If Spiderman feels he's going to run out of webbing before he reaches the BBEG, then he can choose to either risk it, or perhaps chew the furniture in order to conserve ammo. A mook can threaten him with the prospect of being up against a closet troll with all his casts of Entangling Roots spent.

[Laertes]

I don't even know why you would bother with a fight with a mook that was not possible to lose to. Further, I don't know how you would ensure that you are 'off the RNG' versus the mook, but 'on the RNG' versus the BBEG.

Unless the Mooks are using smaller (or fewer) dice, it seems there is likely to be an overlap.

This is particularly true if you resolve combat with individual hits. If you roll an attack each round and the mook CAN NEVER HIT, there is no dramatic tension in the fight.

That's sort of what I'm going for in the first place. By giving the mook fewer dice to begin with, we can have the BBEG still be a mechanically tense encounter while the mook can safely be dustbinned.

But there really shouldn't be any dramatic tension if it's an insignicant mook.

A mook choosing to fight spiderman is like you getting in front of a oncoming D9 bulldozer and challenging it to a fistfight. I don't care how good your punch is, the blade can take it.

Exactly. The idea is that dramatic tension and mechanics should reflect the same thing.

A mook who has a low chance of actually inflicting damage needs to drain resources in other ways. Maybe Spiderman has finite amounts of webbing? If Spiderman feels he's going to run out of webbing before he reaches the BBEG, then he can choose to either risk it, or perhaps chew the furniture in order to conserve ammo. A mook can threaten him with the prospect of being up against a closet troll with all his casts of Entangling Roots spent.

Then I think that's probably better represented as an ability the BBEG has. "An army of mooks which depletes your resources and leaves you vulnerable" is an ability which can activate on Round 1 of the encounter, rather than making you have to roll through fight scenes with the mooks themselves.

It's an interesting point though.

[fectin]

If your system includes mass action or a sufficiently scalable version of Aid Another, you can have individual mooks fall off the RNG, but groups still be a threat. Either is especially effective when combined with an already effective villain.

Heck, you can make it work just fine in 3.x D&D by having some mooks dogpile a character, while a few others wait nearby to stab him.

[CCarter]

The mook example may not lead anywhere useful because a fight is a consequence of a lot of dice rolls. "Falling off the RNG" in a fight would equate to never being able to hit spiderman; long before that happens however, the mook ceases to have a noticeable chance of winning the fight. The idea itself is interesting I guess, but the best place to start would be examining simple one-shot, pass/fail type checks.

I think trying to avoid rolls when the success chance logically goes to 0% or 100% is basically a good one. Trying to make sure they're "dramatically useful" though I don't think is workable. The stakes of a roll - how important it is if it succeeds or fails - isn't inherently connected to its probability of success. A lot of handwaving occurs because the consequence of the roll is unimportant, rather than because the success chance goes off the RNG. The opposite case of "failure is too disruptive" is also about stakes, and adding +1s doesn't seem to work there either: if the shadowrunner get a 4WD and the failure outcome shifts from "dies in car crash on way to shadowrun" to just "lawsuit for squashing smaller cars" do they now need to roll for driving?