consider ur failures

david hughes u fuckin rascal

 sorry about the dearth of material ive just been living laughing loving getting hatecrimed on public transit etc

have a notes-app-greyhound-bus poast

we all know about degrees of success etc. 

this is degrees of failure; obviously this has been done before but the stuff i've read and played has largely been like

 failure + bad shit → failure → failure w a small success on the side

which is fine but not super inspiring, doesn't really speak to the ways that we actually experience failure, and isn't really a tool for a GM to use so much as a guideline to follow. 

Hast Thou Considered Your Failures?

she sure hast. mainly my failure to figure out who the fuck painted this

D6  resolution roll, succeed on a 5-6, skill + fictional positioning gives you extra dice to roll and keep the one you choose

1 its a failure bc the thing is way crazier than expected; situation/setting* specific, no retry

2 is failure bc ur out of ur skill range; people will notice, no retry

3 is failure bc of mistakes; people will notice, u gotta take a meaningfully different approach next time

4 is failure bc of bad luck; people will excuse it and 4 becomes a success on your next attempt

5 is only a failure if you're somehow debilitated

few examples

hiding from the ocular ape

1: he's got fucking x-ray vision

2: skill issue, this ape has got you beat

3: your perfect ass is sticking out of the shrubbery; no more shrub hiding for you honeybun

lockpicking

1: it's fucking trapped! and cursed! and alive!

2: you've been bested by a door which is kinda rough'

3: snapped off a lockpick and now the shit is jammed

dancing in the court of lilac

1: you did not realize that lilac-dancing entails wearing shoes full of drugged needles

2: you literally can't keep up with these fuckers, it's feeling less like a dance and more like a footrace

3: you step on all three of your partners feet and they're not gonna let you dance with your own anymore, hope you've been practicing handstands

*Setting Specific Failures

something cool about having a failure-due-to-escalation option is that it opens an avenue into making situation/setting specific escalation tables. a few easy imaginings:

an animistic game in which a roll of 1 is a failure due to the spirit of the action/object of the action manifesting to

1. riddle
2. eat you
3. ask for your hand in marriage
4. give you a gift
5. ask for a favor
6. pass on a message

game in an insanely crowded megapolis; 1 is failure due to someone getting in your way to 

1. try and fail to do the same thing
2. try to sell you something
3. confuse you for someone else 
4. freak the fuck out and attack you
5. hit on you
6. try to convert you to something

game in incredibly shitty life support suits where a 1 is a failure due to a suit malfunction that 

1.  prevents you from accomplishing that action or others using the same body part 
2. prevents you from accomplishing that action and puts you on a 1d6 round timer before disaster
3. both

(arm joints lock up preventing you from swinging your boarding axe and using that arm in general, cam feed glitches out and prevents you from aiming your speargun, flinch from pain and fail to lift the rubble as a component superheats and starts melting its way into you in 2 rounds, insane nerve pain as your haptics go haywire and if you don't fix them in 1 round you're gonna pass out from pain whenever anyone touches your bare skin, iron lung stops breathing for you, you can't fucking run and now you're going to pass out in 3 rounds, pacemaker goes fucking crazy and your heart is beating so fast you can't read or focus and you'll have a heart attack in 5 rounds).

dying earth game where a 1 is a failure due to the object of your action actually being some horrifically wonderful machine from antiquity that is

1. organic
2. mechanical

in nature and has a true function of

1. pacification
2. reproduction
3. preserving ancient life
4. transportation across the earth/beneath the seas/through the sky/between the stars
5. production of drugs/arms/food/
6. monument to the accomplishment of some ancient ruler/prophet/hero/villain

till next time! hugs and kisses and eyes full of needles from me and Dave McKean