Benefits of Failure

Jared B.

In most game mechanics you move forward, up the hill as it were, whenever you succeed. You kill the monster, you convince the noble, you steal the ring. Thus, you get the XP, the gold, the success. These are all good things in that they encourage more successes, which is typically a good thing in any story or game. 

Lately, I’ve been developing a new way to “move forward” by using failure rather than success.. I’ve read articles on ‘Failing Forward¹’ where the narrative turns a failed die roll into something more. This sounds good, because it gives the player more than just ‘you missed’. My angle is more of a mechanical approach. I don’t necessarily want it to be easier to succeed after a failure, like with ‘Perpetual Comeback Mechanics²’. 

The thought process I was going for was more of ‘1000 ways that don’t work’ guides you to what does. The idea would be that you get xp or the potential to move a particular skill forward, make it better, stronger, etc, with each failure, but not from the successes. In this way, just as in life, you learn more from failure than success. 

I’ll delve a little into the mechanics I am looking to test in gameplay with my homebrew system (going on 9 years of development) to show how this may work. First some context. I plan for my system to be skill-focused rather than combat-focused, i.e you advance from all uses of skills, not just successes in fighting. You will use skills in combat, but you will also use skills in non-combat scenarios. I am also making a classless system, where what skills your character has defines your character more than what class you may have, as they show what you are or are not capable of. So, as you use skills, they will level independent of one another. If you use that skill, it has a higher chance of advancing. If you don’t use it then it just sits there and doesn’t change. 

The structure I am working with right now is: You get 10 check boxes by a skill. If you use the skill and fail to reach the desired number of the skill check, you check a box. Once you fill the boxes, then you do an average skill check. If you succeed on that check then the skill ‘levels up’. The leveling up process is a bit more than that, but that is not what we are discussing in this article.

A non-combat skill example in this “failing to be better” system could be Forging (iron).Most of the skills in my system will have a sub-skill that is a specialty under that skill. In this case the base skill is ‘Forging’ which is working in metals. The sub-skill is ‘Iron’, so specifically working with the iron material type rather than say bronze, brass or silver. 

So, say the player wants to craft an iron dagger. They put together the materials and roll their skill check, target number for 2d6 check is a 8 in this case. They are specialized in Iron, so they add a 1d6 to the roll of 2d6 and take the 2 highest numbers. Rolling, they get 1, 5, 2. They keep the 5 and 2 getting a 7 on the roll. They failed the check. They have spent, in game, time and potentially wasted resources for their effort. But they get to check a box by the skill. This allows them down the road to do an average skill check with that skill; if they succeed, they have then ‘learned from their failures’ and can advance the skill, therefore making success more likely in the future. If they fail the skill check, they didn’t learn from their failures, and they do not improve that skill’s potential.

A combat example would be using the Melee (Blades) skill. Again, the main skill is ‘Melee’, and the sub-skill is ‘Blades’. They swing the sword to hit the enemy, rolling 2d6 base + 1d6 for the subskill keeping the 2 highest. They roll 1, 3, 4. Check of 7, they fail to hit the enemy. They are unable to damage the enemy in that round, but they can add a check to that skill for a potential improvement of the skill. 

Using this system, when they do level up their skills, then they are less likely to get failing rolls, their check boxes fill more slowly and so the skill levels go up slower. It feels like a self-regulating way to keep skill improvement simple without having XP pools for every skill. 

For me it feels like then the players have the results of their failure – wasting time and resources, or not damaging an opponent in combat – but they get a silver lining as they may have less failures in those skills in the future. Successfully learning from their failures, they become better at those skills and learn how not to do things, as it were.

I look forward to the discussion and ya’ll’s thoughts in the comments and the discord discussions! Game on!

References:

¹ Gnome Stew The Gaming Blog “Failing Forward: How to Make Failure Interesting In RPGs” By Chuck Lauer Accessed 6/25/2023 https://gnomestew.com/failing-forward-how-to-make-failure-interesting-in-rpgs/

² Mythcreants “The Three Ways Games Approach Success and Failure” By Dave Lerner Accessed 6/25/2023 https://mythcreants.com/blog/the-three-ways-games-approach-success-and-failure/

About the Author

Jared “Martel” B has been GMing and playing in several TTRPG’s since late 2013. Enjoys the challenge of bringing his players worlds and stories straight from his mind in the moment that it happens. He is one of the Founders of RPGCounterpoint, happy husband to an active historian wife, and father to two puppers and newborn!