Overview

I was thinking on this after discussing it with some people who don’t want to play certain games like Genesys or even Powered by the Apocalypse. Why? I can only guess at it. However, I also wanted to think on how to allowing people to continue playing with their standard binary pass-fail results, but enable those who want to negotiate or barter their rolls so they can do cool stuff narratively.

Binary Pass-Fail

This is my take on it, but binary pass-fail is simply, you pass or you fail. When you roll a check, regardless of how many dice you roll or what kinds you roll, the easiest idea is simply a coin flip. You either meet or beat the target number and you pass or you fail. You do or you don’t. That’s it. Does this seem pretty limiting? For ease of use and simplicity, it’s great. However, let’s take a look at this.

Take note, I would reward a player describing what they’re doing, even if they don’t know or have no idea what they would do, as long as they work with the GM.

Your player is engaged with a mystery investigation and they’re searching through a suspect’s house looking for something. That player then describes they’re looking here, and there; behind picture frames, and attempting to move the rug under the coffee table. Maybe a roll for the coffee table, but if that is successful, then they go through all of that, and then they look at the GM and the GM says, “Roll investigation”. That player chucks the dice, rolls a 2, and then you as the GM say, “You fail to find anything”.

Now, maybe there is not anything there and player just wasted all their time. Maybe the suspect has hid the evidence in a place the player didn’t describe. Either way, these also both violate things called The ICI Doctrine by Chris MacDowall. The first assumption, they wasted their time. With the ICI Doctrine, the GM should’ve stopped the player and say, there’s nothing of interest here. The next thing the GM could’ve done was wait until after all of that work and say, “You find nothing” because they spent all the time searching. BUT, we’re here to discuss that die roll.

What can we do to help that?

If the GM knows that there is something in the suspect’s house, then what I am proposing is a “fail-forward” using a binary result. If the PC fails their check, then the GM and/or the Player can barter for a success, but at a great cost, or barter for a failure, but with a benefit. This opens up at least +2 more axis of results.

This may run the risk of being abused, but most mature, realistic gamers would be good enough to know when to not to abuse this. It could also add extra time to each turn if someone is just constantly eeking out little bonuses and such, but then you’re also getting that in other games like FATE or PbtA already.

However, I do think that this could help those who MUST make a roll in certain situations that want that success, but at a cost, or realize they failed, but get a boon to the game.

TL;DR

• Instead of pass-fail rolls, allow bartering for success at a great cost or fail for a boon in the story or setting up an advantage for someone else.