Graduated Success Ideas to Help Develop Narrative in 1E

[JawaMan]

Hey everyone. This is my first post here, and I wanted to share some house rules I came up with for feedback / discussion.

Inspired by the 'Powered by the Apocalypse' and 'Forged in the Dark' system reference designs.

Standard Difficulties in Star Wars D6 1E
5: Very Easy
10: Easy
15: Moderate
20: Difficult
30: Heroic

Star Wars D6 1E comes with a binary result system for most skill checks by default. You either Succeed or Fail at your proposed goal as a Player when you roll a skill check. This duality is not very interesting for a narrative-driven game. Instead, we can come up with simple ideas to codify more interesting narrative devices into the game.

Success At a Cost
The first of these ideas is to add Success At a Cost as a possible result for a skill check. When the result of a check is between the target Difficulty and the Difficulty level under it (inclusive), then the result is a Success with a penalty. This can help improve the drama of any scene by giving players a better chance of success, but at a price.

Example: The smuggler Ryan Biggs is trying to hotwire the control panel of a double blast door while Stormtroopers approach. If he's quick enough, he might be able to get through and avoid pursuit! The target Difficulty for this is Computer Prog/Repair 20 (Difficult). Biggs rolls a 15. This would succeed a Moderate Difficulty, which is the Difficulty under the target for this skill check. Therefore, the result is a Success At a Cost. The shoddy hotwiring caused the control circuit to malfunction! The blast doors start to open, but grinding on their tracks slowly. Biggs can try to squeeze through the gap in the doorway, but he will have to survive a round of fire from the troopers before he can get through.

Notice how this simple result introduces dramatic tension to what normally would have just been a Failure for a Difficult roll. A Failure would just limit the options for Biggs in this scenario, which is a limiting scene for the Player.

This rule also has an extra benefits. It treats Very Easy rolls (Difficulty 5) as rolls that are impossible to Fail. This is something that makes a lot of sense. If some task is Very Easy, the worst that can happen is Success At a Cost.

Example: Biggs crosses the doorway and decides to close the door on the other side quickly, before the troopers capture him! He has to roll Computer Prog/Repair 5 (Very Easy) to repeat the hotwiring steps quickly. He rolls a 2, resulting in a Success At a Cost. In this case, he repeats the hotwiring used to open the door and the doors begin to close slowly, making an even louder forced grinding noise down their tracks this time. One trooper sprints and dives through the gap in the blast doors before it closes! He quickly turns to aim his blaster at Biggs. The other troopers continue their pursuit, but they must get through the blast doors first.

It also treats Heroic rolls (Difficulty 30) as rolls with a much larger chance of Success, but at a price. This allows Players to try options they would not normally consider possible, and plays into Players having meaningful decisions.

Example: Biggs reaches the dry dock under station Kwenn and sees it blaring with activity. Officers and troopers enter and exit the Star Destroyer Malignant hurriedly. Patrol squads of six are making rounds through the docking stations, questioning staff and station personnel. Probe droids zip by, floating up and down the dry dock cranes and hexagonal outer structure, searching carefully...
Biggs decides it'd be a good idea to try and sneak into the Star Destroyer, and posing as an Imperial (assuming he has trooper armor or an officer's uniform) if he gets caught. He needs to roll Sneak 30+ (Heroic). He rolls 22. He is stopped by a patrol, and asked for his TK number. When he can't produce the number, Biggs is captured and taken into the Star Destroyer holding cells for interrogation. He made it in, but not the way he wanted to.

Edit: Note that this narrative device should not apply to combat! Combat should remain fast-paced, and using Success At a Cost for attacks would put a lot of improvisational burden on the GM. Keep combat snappy! If the encounter has some other non-combat actions involved, though, I think it does make sense to apply it but only for non-combat skills.

Critical Failure
The second of these ideas is to add Critical Failure as a possible result of a skill check. When a skill check is determined to be unusually risky, the result of a Failure is amplified, and results in the Player Character suffering damage or loss.

Example: Biggs will try to jump from an airspeeder 250 meters above ground onto another airspeeder that is 2 meters below. This requires a Jump 20 (Difficult) roll. A Failure here would be absolutely critical, resulting in Biggs free-falling until someone tries to rescue him, or falling on an airspeeder that is in a lane 10 meters below, causing him to take a lot of fall damage.

This adds increased stakes to risky situations, which also amplifies the dramatic tension. Will a Player risk the damage from a very dangerous maneuver? Do they feel like they need to use a Force point to get through extreme danger? Good! That is the kind of thrill that makes the game exciting.

Critical Success
The third of these ideas is to add Critical Success as a possible result of a skill check. When a skill check is determined to be controlled (i.e., with a Player at a clear advantage that they have set up for themselves), the result of a Success is amplified, and results in some extra benefit for the Player Character.

Example: Biggs has captured a stormtrooper and hogtied him with syntherope. He interrogates the trooper to get information about Imperial patrol patterns around space station Kwenn. The trooper refuses to answer, his loyalty to the Emperor unwavering. Biggs decides to trick the trooper into thinking he's been abandoned by his squad, and that his only hope now is to talk before Biggs decides to throw him out of the airlock of his freighter. This requires a Con 20 (Difficult) roll. In this case, Biggs has a clear advantage, so his Success would be critical. Biggs would get the patrol information and the trooper would stop being hostile towards Biggs temporarily, hoping to serve the Emperor another day. He might even have some other information to use as a bargaining chip for his life.

Why not use skill check results to determine Critical Success/Failure, like with Success At a Cost?
The Star Wars D6 skill check system is not made to accommodate these kinds of results mechanically because of the huge numerical variability in results for skill checks. This is a side-effect of what's normally referred to as the "buckets of dice" problem.

A character with 6D in a skill can roll between [6,36], while having 2D in a skill gives you a limited range of [2,12]. Without some mathematical normalization of these ranges, it's hard to simplify which results should or shouldn't count as critical Successes and Failures. Therefore, it's much simpler to just determine Critical Success or Failure by just interpreting the narrative.

Which options that don't require mathematical transformation can we consider?

Option A: Count 6s in Skill Check Roll (inspired by Forged in the Dark)
If we use a rule like rolling 2 6s results in a Critical Success, then we can start seeing problems when Player Characters get to high skill codes. Their odds of getting a Critical Success goes up significantly as skills improve (20% at 6D, or 1/5 chance). This probability is too high, and only gets higher with progression. Because of this, I don't think it's a good system to adopt.

Option B: Rolling Much Lower or Much Greater than Target Difficulty
If we tie Critical Failure and Critical Success to numeric results, you'll find that many rolls will not even have the option of Critical Success or Critical Failure. For example, If the target Difficulty for a roll is Very Easy (Difficulty 5), then you can't really roll a lot lower than the target. This limits where you can use the idea of Critical Failure. I'd rather leave Critical Failure as an option that is possible even in simple situations. For example, putting your hand in the mouth of a Rancor should be pretty easy (believe it or not, it wants your hand there ), but extremely risky. A Failure in this situation should be a Critical Failure (i.e., causes the player to suffer damage or loss).

Option C: Turning Success and Failure intro Critical Success or Failure when a Force Point is Used
This has the same issue as the previous option, which is that this limits when something can be considered Critical to extremely specific situations. The narrative freedom suffers a lot using this idea.

Therefore, I suggest using risk as the tool to determine when Successes and Failures are Critical. If something is very low-risk, turn Success into Critical Success. If something is high-risk, turn Failure into Critical Failure. It's simple, and should fit your narrative!

I'd love to hear thoughts. I know this is a very long post, but I think it could be useful for those who are thinking about becoming a GM or trying to come up with new narrative devices for their games.
_________________
"Utinni!"
―A common Jawa expression

[raithyn]

I think this is a perfectly workable solution. I'm going to argue against it but only because I think you can strength your rules by addressing these points, not because you shouldn't pursue it.

It's a little clunky in that it's partially keyed to numerical values (DN / TN) and partially keyed to GM fiat (determining what counts as Risky or Controlled). Especially with the last point, it feels like there's really no change in what the players see, which is one of the worst ways to write a *player-facing* rule since they can never be 100% sure if it's being followed (if they're getting the benefit they should).

Honestly, I find backporting the Wild Die to be an easier implementation for staged successes. A success with a WD1 has a complication/cost. A failure with a WD1 is a critical failure. A success with a WD6 that nets at least one extra die roll versus what's required for the DN is a critical success. This only keys to a single mechanic and still rewards but doesn't overweighting large die codes.

[JawaMan]

[garhkal]

[JawaMan]

[jtanzer]

TLDR; Make failure interesting and impactful and encourage alternate approaches before adding additional action resolution mechanics.

I don't think you need to introduce house rules in order to have an interesting narrative. If you set things up properly, then you won't need things like Success at a Cost, i.e. failing forward. The act of failure will, in and of itself, propel the narrative forward. The only time you should use fail forward is when you have insufficient vectors of resolution to the current scenario, in which case you should instead be reworking the scenario to ensure that there are multiple vectors of resolution.

To use an example, the party needs to enter a locked room to complete a task. The room or task don't matter, however the door does need to be detailed enough that you can resolve any course of action. Is the door made of wood or metal? Can it be broken down? How is powered? How is it locked? If the door is hydraulically powered (as most doors in Star Wars seem to be) is there an emergency pressure release that can be released? (On this point I would note that if there is - which for a safety perspective there should be - it would be accessible from both sides of the door.) Can the lock be physically bypassed? What happens when they fail? Instead of the party simply failing to pick/bypass the lock, instead consider have the act of failure set off some kind of alert or response. If nothing will happen when they fail, instead consider narrating repeated attempts as "you fail to pick/bypass the lock" without having them roll again. Encourage the party to change their approach, rather than having them fail forward. Failing forward will simply tell them that there's no real consequence for failure, which makes failure boring.

I have linked a bunch of resources below that you should find useful. I would highly recommend studying and applying the techniques mentioned before having to add rules that don't really add much value in return.

Sauce:
So you want to be a Gamemaster
Quick GM Tips
Advanced Gamemastery
Dissasscociated Mechanics
Roleplaying Games vs Storytelling Games
The Art of Rulings
The Art of Rulings Part 6: Fictional Celromancy
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The best villians are the ones the PCs create.

[Whill]

[JawaMan]

[jtanzer]

[raithyn]