Succeeding at Failing

Immersion and Participation in Games

It was 40 years ago (or so). I’m running a game of 1st Edition AD&D and the characters have just encountered a barbed devil (I think it was a barbed devil, anyway… it was a while ago). It had a cause fear ability and one of the players had to make a saving throw to resist it. He rolled a success but then looked at me and said, “I kinda feel like I should have failed that. I feel like my character (he probably said “my guy” because we often said that as teens) should be really scared and should run.”

I remember that moment so clearly because that was the first time I’d heard a player express a desire like that. Call it true roleplaying. Call it suboptimal play. Call it story-first. Call it player agency. There are lots of names for it now. Whatever you call it, this was the first time I encountered it.

It was love at first sight—it gave me an early glimpse into the deeper workings of roleplaying games, and why we play them.

Wanting to Fail

It’s not just decisions and die rolls that dictate success or failure. It’s desire.

Sometimes a player will believe that the story should take a turn that would not be the best for their character. This is similar to what we discussed last time {LINK}, where a game allows a character to succeed or fail based on the player’s idea rather than the character’s mechanics. But it’s different in important ways.

Regardless of whether it’s all in the hands of the player or all in the hands of the stats and die rolls, game situations can arise where the player doesn’t actually want to succeed. Where character failure is actually player success.

In my game, Invisible Sun, there is a character arc option called Fall From Grace wherein the character experiences that very familiar moment of failing spectacularly at something significant. Or they make a foolish or selfish decision. The character doesn’t choose the arc, but the player does. The character wants to succeed, but the player wants to make that failure a part of the character’s story. Most of the time, this is so the character can take on a redemption arc and come back from the failure wiser and perhaps even stronger than before. It’s a story we’re all so familiar with in fiction that it’s practically a cliche, but one that you rarely see in RPGs.

And the reason you rarely see it is most RPGs are designed with player success entwined with character success. In other words, the PC wants to recover the lost idol in the dungeon, and so the player’s feeling of success or failure rests on whether the character gets the idol or not. And since it’s a game, and games are supposed to be fun, most of the time the character gets the idol. Because it’s not fun to fail, right?

Right?

Except… Rocky loses to Apollo Creed. Daredevil doesn’t save Elektra. Boba Fett gets away with frozen Han Solo. The Avengers don’t stop Thanos’ snap. Peter Parker doesn’t save Uncle Ben. Protagonists fail all the time. We don’t cheer the failure, but we love the stories, and the failure makes the character deeper, more identifiable, and sometimes just simply better.

Now, a game could just leave this up to the GM. But that’s actually terrible. Even if it’s in the service of a good story, the GM may very well end up looking like a right bastard. The GM deciding when characters/players fail can too often just look like the GM being unfair. 

Sometimes it’s just too difficult to pull people away from the idea that RPGs are the “GM versus the players.” Unless the game offers a solution.

Creating the Story Versus Experiencing the Story

And finally—finally—we get to what I think is very likely the most important mechanical decision a designer faces when creating a new game. Not which dice to use, or what to name the stats. It’s this: do the players experience the story or do they help create it?

In one approach, very likely the oldest approach in RPGs, the GM creates a setting and puts some events in motion. Bandits have stolen the sacred idol from the village shrine and the villagers want someone to go down into the dungeon where they’ve taken it and get it back. The PCs take on the task and from there the game system provides mechanics for getting there, exploring the dungeon, fighting the bandits (and whatever else is down there), and recovering the idol. The GM might have prepared some twists and surprises, or maybe they let the dice do that, rolling for random encounters and events, morale for the bandits, and so on. The players, meanwhile, hopefully are immersed in the action as it unfolds, make some meaningful decisions on what they as their characters do, and experience the thrill of their victory if they succeed. We’ll call this the immersion approach.

In the other approach, the GM (possibly with input from the players) creates a setting. The players create characters and their backstories and motivations drive the action right out of the gate. The players work with the GM to one degree or another so that the story fits their character concept and their outlook for the game. We’ll call this the participation approach.

Immersion

The immersion approach is the way most people learn to play and define what an RPG is. The GM creates a quest/story/mission/situation/obstacle and the players control their characters as they attempt to complete the mission or overcome the challenge. The GM role and the players’ role are strictly defined and don’t overlap.

The GM says, “Such and such is happening, what do you do?” In fact, this could be just as easily called the “What do you do?” approach. Some players might play a role and embody their character when deciding what to do, while others might simply play their character as a sort of surrogate with their character reacting to the situation the way the player would. There are as many ways to do this and describe this as there are games. The terms used differ, but the important distinction is this: the players experience the story that unfolds, they don’t create it.

The GM may have created an unfolding story that the players can choose to participate in, or they might just have some adventure seeds or locations to explore. In some ways, video games have taken this approach and have run with it. In fact, it’s quite difficult to imagine how one would make a roleplaying video game that didn’t use this approach.

One way to think about the immersion approach is that for each player it’s like watching a movie where the camera is zoomed in very close to their character. They see what the character sees, and interact with what the character can interact with. It’s very personal.

Participation

Call it a storygame, collaborative storytelling, or anything you wish, but the participation approach recognizes that the players have agency and want to have an input into the story.

The story might unfold based on the mechanics or it might arise mainly out of player goals. It can have a GM-instigated story, but the players will have input as well.

The GM might still ask “What do you do?” but players are more rewarded based on if they create a good story, and less rewarded based on if their character succeeds instead of fails. (Although there can be elements of both.) A player might make a sub-optimal choice because it fits their character’s story. Players don’t get immersed (feel that escapist thrill of being someone else, in a different situation), but they do feel empowered and creative.

The players feel less like a character in a book or a movie, and more like the team in the writing room. To contrast it with the immersion approach “close-in camera” analogy, the participation approach is all about the wide shots and the panoramic view. The player sees the bigger picture, and it’s much more than just what their character can see and interact with.

Mechanical Differences in the Approaches

Metaphorically speaking, in the immersion approach, the characters are standing in the street and the story is a speeding car coming right for them. They can react in any way they wish, but the story is extraneous to them. It is happening to them. But in the participation approach, that same story racing down the street is, at least in part, driven by the players. The story is just as interesting and exciting, but it’s not extraneous to the players because they’re helping to steer. It’s still happening to the characters, but not the players.

These two approaches don’t rely on what the GM does. The GM can run the game however they wish—carefully crafted story, character-focused events, all randomly generated locations and obstacles, etc.—in either style. The difference is what is expected of the players.

Mechanically, this means that games focused on the immersion approach don’t have to do anything special. Immersion is, in a way, the default.

In a participation-approach game, the game needs to provide tools for player input. This can come in many different forms, and runs the gamut from just moments of player agency to full-on cooperative creation. For example, a game might provide cards that a player can play that insert something into a session that changes things slightly—a helpful NPC, an oasis in the desert, or a little bit of bad luck for the villain. Another game might start out with the GM and players working together to build the world. Participatory gameplay is something that can be added into a game in either big or small doses, depending on the game.

Regardless of the participation options, the point is that the world, the NPCs, and the events of the campaign might not be the purview of just the GM. To keep it from turning into a free-for-all, the game’s mechanics need to provide procedures for how this works.

For example, right now I’m working on The Magnus Archives Roleplaying Game. If you’ve ever listened to that podcast, you know that it’s made up of the statements provided by people who have had a paranormal experience. The core story of the game is that the players take the information in the given statement and investigate the occurrence, probably leading to all manner of terrifying situations. While the GM can provide the statement, there is also an option for everyone at the table to help create the statement. In an abstract way, the players play out (and thus create) the characters and the events of the statement very briefly. The game provides detailed procedures for how to do this in a fun but directed way. Once a statement is created, the GM then takes it and prepares for the investigation on the part of the real PCs (either right then, or in the next session if they like having lots of prep time).

As another—very different—example, the Cypher System introduces the concept of Player Intrusions. For a small mechanical cost, a player can interject a bit into the narrative, essentially taking a moment to say, “Oh hey, the bartender in that joint is an old friend of mine,” or “That swordsman is using a technique I’m very familiar with defending against.”

You can see from the Player Intrusion example that sometimes these things affect the narrative and sometimes only the mechanics. And sometimes both. A narrative effect adds in a bit of flavor and often an event or character, while something purely mechanical just allows an extra bonus, a reroll, or something similar, as though changing the tides of fate. The result, however, is that even things that only affect the mechanics affect the flow of the story, sometimes in major ways.

Plenty of other games add in such things, from hero points to bennies to karma points. Regardless, the players are granted the role of storyteller or worldbuilder and not just a character, even if only briefly.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantages of each approach are right there in the names. Some players love immersion and the escapist fun it provides. Immersion is probably why they play roleplaying games in the first place.

Players that love immersion, however, might find participation approach games unsatisfying. They can’t sink into the story because it loses the veneer of verisimilitude. It doesn’t feel “real.” Conan talks to the bartender after a victory, he doesn’t name the bartender. The bartender is a person in the world with a name and the moment anyone suggests otherwise, the illusion of reality crumbles.

These same players may feel victories are less satisfying if they believe there was never any danger, like a screenwriter not really feeling afraid of the horrors on screen for a film they helped write. They want to feel like they are truly up against something, and thus victory has meaning. Kind of like “beating” a video game.

Plus, participation in creating a story can be tiring. Some people don’t want to have to work hard creatively while playing a game for fun. When the GM asks, “What do you do?” they can answer that question reflexively, because they’re immersed in the situation. But if the GM asks, “What’s the bartender’s name?” Not only does that break them out of their immersion and their character, they don’t want to have to have to come up with a good name that fits the setting.

Participation players relish the idea of having a bit more say in the flow of the game, and feel more invested in the world if they helped craft it. The feeling of “I’m really there, in this exciting situation,” isn’t as important to them as “My friends and I get to work together to tell an amazing story.”

These players tend to get bored in a game without the ability to participate. (Often, they also run games as GMs themselves). Likewise, they may be more interested in the story than the game itself. It’s not that they want control because they don’t want anything bad to happen to their character. Remember the story about the player who wanted to fail his saving throw? That’s who these players are. While immersive players want to feel like they are a character in a book, participatory players want the story they’re in to feel right.

Really, though, it’s just a matter of preference. Fans of both approaches may love both because of the mechanics, the story, or the experience. Their love just manifests in different ways.