Stakes: The Importance of Failure as a Possibility

We are continuing with our series on what makes encounters interesting here at Tabletop RGP Encounters. Today we are tackling the subjects of stakes and tension. They are quite interrelated and actually should be a huge part of your generally campaign and adventure design. We however are going to show how to use them to make your encounters more awesome.

Stakes are interesting because while you can address them at the encounter level you also need to address them beyond the encounter level. We know we said before we weren't going to talk about adventures, but we kind of have to to address the adventure elements in order to figure out how they impact individual encounters. Adventures aren't very interesting if there isn't a reason to do them. Go kill the orcs because they are orcs just isn't compelling (for most players). A threat or purpose has to be established for many groups, which gives the players their purpose for doing the adventure, for getting to the end of the dungeon. This is absolutely an important part creating the stakes in your individual encounters. However, there are ways you can change the stakes depending on the individual encounter.

In their essence stakes are what will losing cost you? What happens if the players fail? For many GMs, especially as we start out, the failure means one of two things. In a skill challenge or social encounter we often assume the players will succeed and then freeze up when they don't. We realize our campaign or adventure has come to a screeching halt because they missed the clue or the roll. In combat often our only stake is total loss, the PCs are dead. The stakes for all of these instances are essentially campaign over. There are definitely times where these are the appropriate stakes, but changing the stakes can shift the focus of the encounters making them much more interesting (and also allow us to ramp up the difficulty a bit, more on that later).

Before we begin talking about how to use stakes in a game, we need to address the plethora of different ways to deal with failure and a bit about the famous "fail forward" idea, of which there are quite a few interpretations. To do this we need to dive a bit into the mechanics of a roll, particularly why we have players roll, and then why it's important to design adventures and encounters with the possibility of failure. Dice (or whatever resolution items are used in a particular game) are used in an RPG to resolve an action in which success is in question. You roll to hit the enemy, because you are uncertain whether your blow will land. You roll persuasion because your argument has a potential to not convince the NPC. You essentially roll to answer a question about the narrative. In fact you should be able to put what you roll for into a question. Will the fighter hit the orc? Can the bard convince the duke to help us? While most GMs know their game's different thresholds for success (Easy, Medium, Hard) we often forget the two other states. It works or it is impossible. We don't make players roll to walk across a normal flat room because there is little chance for failure and failure is not important. On the flip side no matter how intimidating you are you can't scare a book into giving you information (though we're sure it's happened in some game...). In both of these cases there is no need to call for a roll. As the GM you should know how they resolve.

Okay so we roll when we are uncertain, so what? Well this has a lot of unseen and often forgotten implications. The first is in a well designed adventure (or encounter) success never hinges on being able to make a single die roll. Setting up that situation leads to one of three usual outcomes. Either every player rolls until one player gets a success, the GM let's them roll over and over until they succeed, or they all fail and the GM is stuck, sweating out trying to figure out how to move the game forward. Consider the players coming to a locked door, which is the only way to move forward through the adventure. So now our question is will the players get through the door? Notice this poses a big problem, because if we leave the stakes as is, then failure means the adventure is over (which also means game over for the night, which we don't want). So then we probably will get into let's let everyone roll over and over until we get a success. That is boring. If that door is the only way to proceed then whether or not the adventurers get through the door should not be the question the die roll answers. The players will get through the door. If you are going to make the players roll to get through the door their needs to be some sort of stakes, some possibility of failure. The stakes could be starting combat. Now our question could be will the players open the door quietly or have to break it to alert the guards? The stakes of the roll are now their cover is blown if they fail. Another stake could be resource loss. We could make the question will the players be able to unlock the door or will they have to find the key somewhere else in the complex? Now if they don't pick the lock they need to search for a key, meaning spending more resources to get through that door. A third way to deal with stakes is they could be under time pressure. Our question now is how long will they have to hold off their assailants until the open the door? You could have the players battling hordes of monsters while one of the PCs is trying to break down or unlock the door. In each of those cases failure means something. If there is simply a locked door between the players and the next room then, there shouldn't be a roll to begin with.

So let's talk about what the "fail forward" idea is. It, like most catchy buzz phrases, is based on good ideas but then spread ending up with lots of different interpretations some based on the literal words of the phrase. Essentially to fail forward originally meant that even when the PCs fail, you allow the narrative to move forward at a cost as opposed to making it the end of the adventure. The underlying philosophy of don't halt the narrative is great, along with the idea that failure is a viable option. The problem with fail forward is when the interpretation uses the buzz words rather than the intended meaning. In order to fail forward the PCs have to fail. If they miss the roll they failed and they need to find another way to approach the problem, which is the cost. It might cost them money, time, items, or any other thing you can imagine. When it's used to allow players to find a way forward even after failure it is a useful idea. However there is some advice out there that basically amounts to if the players fail, let them succeed anyway and take something from them. If you're going to roll the players need to be able to fail, if you won't let them fail on a bad roll don't roll, if you realized after they rolled that you don't want them to fail fudge the roll, but don't create plot armor to keep them from failing. If you do that it takes away their agency, if they can't fail because you will protect them then why do any of their choices matter in the first place?

Don't get us wrong. It's not that we want the characters to fail nor is it the idea that failure is more interesting (another article, another time). We are by no means advocating adversarial GMing. We are absolutely our players biggest fans. We want to see them succeed, we want to see them be awesome and do amazingly cool things. But in order for them to feel heroic they also need the possibility of failure. It's not heroic if they don't have any consequences. 

Even if you look at Powered by the Apocalypse games, (Dungeon World, Apocalypse World, Urban Shadows to name a few) which have a codified idea of success with a cost (which is a super cool part of the design), characters can still fail. Characters can mess up. They can fail. It is better to design encounters where they can fail and it doesn't bring the narrative to a screeching halt, then to make up some crazy way that they actually succeeded but it hurt them. If you want to add success at a cost in the same way that PbtA does to your game (assuming your not already playing that), it's not hard and you can do that. But it shouldn't take away the possibility of failure. The failure has some sort of consequence that will affect the players in the next encounter or later in the narrative. (One major exception to this might be confrontation with your ultimate bad guy and/or his minions and plot, towards the end of the story. If they beat your PCs then it may bring the story to a screeching halt.) To sum up the last three paragraphs make failure an option in your adventures (and encounters) and set the stakes so that they will not stop the story. 

So what kinds of stakes can we use that won't halt the narrative? Well we can create setbacks that effect will effect the game moving forward and then match them appropriately with whatever the stakes of the encounter are. Bellow is a list of different possible setback:

Advantage for the Enemy: If your PCs are fighting against a particular enemy or faction, the enemy gets something. This could mean acquiring land, artifacts, reputation, or political power depending on whats appropriate.
Disadvantaged Position: Whatever the PCs were trying to do has become harder, meaning soon they may have no chance of success at all.
Losing a Something or Someone: The PCs messed up and now things have gotten bad. A village or city was lost. A important NPC died.
Negative Reputation: Somebody or some group doesn't like the PCs very much. This could look like the PCs now have a harder time working with and convincing certain people. It maybe people of a certain faction are outright hostile.
Resource Loss: The PCs are put into a position where they will lose more spell slots/HP/charges/money/magic items or whatever other resources your game has. This can look like having to take an alternate but longer route, having a longer time in between being able to rest, or having more frequent or more difficult encounters.

So now we basically match these to whatever fits the way they encounter plays out. Let's look at our previous social encounter from the choices with impact article. We said the PCs are meeting with the Duke to ask for aid against a gathering orc armies. Now there are a couple of ways you can make failure an option in this encounter. We need to start by asking ourselves 'is convincing the Duke essential to our adventure?', essential meaning the adventurers can not continue without it. If the answer is no things get pretty simple. The stakes of messing up the encounter are not getting the Duke's help, which will cause the setback of a disadvantaged position. If they goof up the encounter then they get a disadvantaged position, which in this case is not getting the benefit that the army would convey (if you were planning a large battle, it could mean those troops are missing, if they were going to provide a distraction for the adventurers to sneak in. That was easy and why it's always good to make sure there are other options.

Now let's go back to our question 'is convincing the Duke essential to our adventure?'. If we choose to make the answer yes, then things get a bit more complicated, but are still manageable. So now we know our stakes can't be getting the Duke's help. We've decided the PCs must get his help. Our question now is what is the cost for goofing up the encounter. One way a goofed up encounter could go is that the Duke requires more proof to move forward.  This means taking more time to complete, which will give the enemy more time to prepare. So it seems if this is the case the best setback is Advantage for the Enemy. This means you need to give the enemy something they didn't have before. In this case it seems appropriate either there are more troops at the base or when the PCs finally make it to the encampment there is some sort of surprise waiting for them that they were unable to prepare for. It could also be a losing someone or something. The orcs could raid a small village near the larger city the Duke is in charge of, the village where the PCs started their adventuring together, the village they came to the Duke to protect. It's important to note that in neither case did the narrative stop, it changed and gave the players setback because of failure.

Moving on to the skill challenge mode it's really much the same. You look at the challenge and decide what setback is appropriate with whatever happens. The biggest place where skill encounters struggle with stakes has to do with the fact that players are rolling skill checks when it's not actually an encounter. If your players know there is a secret room in the chapel and there is no one there to stop them, it's not an encounter. Don't make them roll, tell them they find it. If you want to make it an encounter add stakes that allow for failure to mean something. Have a NPC hidden in the back of the chapel that they know can't make it much longer. They have 10 turns until the NPC is dead, now each of those failed rolls means something. You could also have guards coming to get them. Again now each roll means something. If you leave your skill challenge to be a generic they can take as many turns as they want then the dice rolling is a formality. If an essential (remember this means key to continuing the adventure) clue is needed to move the narrative forward then they shouldn't roll. You can switch this though, so that some clues are optional or that a success means they get a more concrete clue. Let's say the PCs must know that a murder they are investigating took place with a bludgeoning tool. This is an essential clue and the only way to link the weapon with the villain. You have them make a perception/medical/spot hidden check. If they fail they still figure out it's bludgeoning. They need that information. If they succeed they notice a small detail specific to the weapon the murder used. These types of clues make what happened much clearer or make their case more believable to whoever they are proving it to (failing means a disadvantage position). Now there are stakes that won't stop the game or the narrative, but still have a setback.

Finally we will get to the combat mode. There are a variety of interesting ways to change the stakes in a combat encounter, but it still goes back to our list of setbacks for failing the encounter (or a portion of it). Probably the easiest way to do this is to start with your dungeon or location, look for a setback, then figure out how to make that an active part of the combat. So let's say we are in a goblin cave. Now goblin encounters are not always very interesting, because if the stakes are simply one side dies and the other wins, well your PCs can probably handle goblins. So we look at our list of setbacks we see resource loss stands out to us as one of the options. Now we need to figure out a way to make sure the PC's endure resource loss if they fail. Two ways to incur more resource loss are to have more encounters or more challenging encounters. So we can imagine the goblins having two paths towards the "treasure room". One is short and leads directly there (maybe 2 encounters) The second is a much longer path populated by many more goblins (maybe 4 to 5). Let's make a room that leads to both of those paths, but is rigged with a defense mechanism to prevent any intruders from making it down the short path. We will say they have dammed up a river, which when released floods the room and pushes a boulder in front of the door. However the lever to do so is at the top of the damn, but the goblins typically spend most of their time at the bottom or mid level of the damn. Now this encounter has gotten much more interesting then 4 goblins in a room. It still is that encounter, but there is a higher stake. If they don't stop those goblins from opening the dam they will have a harder time getting through the cave.

Back to the thing we said about how we can use stakes to make encounters a bit more difficult? Well the great thing about changing the stakes of an encounter is that if you do it right, the whole adventure is still winnable even if a couple encounters fail. This means that you can actually ratchet up the difficulty of any encounter that failure doesn't mean adventure ending. Our goblin encounter could be quite difficult if we wanted it to (Putting goblins in unseen areas, adding more goblins, or making them closer to where the lever is), because failing won't mean the death of the characters, only a setback. This also isn't an endorsement of making every encounter much more difficult, just that you have more options in playing with difficulty in this kind of encounter.

Remember this another tool in your kit for encounter building. Don't try and force all encounters to have a variety of stakes, but use it when you can enhance your encounter. Do you have any stories of using stakes to make your encounters interesting? Did we miss anything in our list of setbacks or anywhere else? Let us know in the comments.

As always if you have encounters you want to share on this site go to our share page for guild lines and email you encounters to tabletoprpgencounters@gmail.com.