Failure Prompts - best thing since sliced bread!

 Why the Failure Prompt table in ‘Burn Bryte’ is so awesome!

 

Now, a little caveat here to the credibility of my assertion. While I have had various miniature games rule sets printed and sold and worked as editor for a miniature game magazine for a few years I am no ‘character’ in the TTRPG world either online or IRL. However, I have been playing TTRPGs since the small original D&D booklet in the 70’s and have happily been playing and GMing a myriad of systems ever since and while I certainly would never claim to have played them all, I have certainly played quite a few.

 

Recently however I have become obsessed, and I do not use the term loosely, with Burn Bryte (designed by James Introcaso, Jim McClure, Darcy Ross and Kat Khul and released exclusively through Roll20 for use on their Virtual Tabletop site). Certainly, the timing helped, being in lock-down/ working from home meant more time for the groups of players to play a variety of systems. But, the arrival of Burn Bryte has been a major light (or should that be orangey, red glow) in a pretty dim 2020.

 

But why? Why has this system kind of taken over my games play, or at least the way I look at the games we play? Firstly, it was designed and built to use the Roll20 mechanics, especially when looking at dice rolls. I am not going to explain the system as there are other articles out there or the official site that does that far better than I could do hope to do. The pertinent matter here is that the rolls use up to 7 of a die size that range from d6 to d12 and often sees the PC rolling 4 or 5 of a certain type. The GM will tell the player the ‘complexity’ of the skill roll and that determines how many of that type of die you roll. It is a pass or fail system with a pass being granted if none of the die rolled shows a multiple of any other number rolled. Basically, you are looking for ‘doubles +’ not adding the die etc.

 

One of the first reasons I got besotted with this system is that it is up to the player to explain the actual skill they are using to roll with (each skill is assigned a die type with the theory being that the higher the number of faces the die type has the less likely you are to roll ‘doubles’ at any complexity level – although my players would probably wish to argue that theory!) which means the players have to get creative with the narrative as to why they are using that skill. A simple I hit them is not always enough in Burn Bryte, you could use your medicine skill or even your presence skill as well as the obvious melee skill. In the former cases the players narrative has to convince the GM to let them use that skill.

 

‘I circle the guard, using my medical skill and knowledge of Kith’uk anatomy to look for that weak point at the chitin/leg joint, when I see it I lunge my power sword into it…’

 

‘Using my presence, I rise to my full 15’ of PeaceCraft awesomeness to tower over the Glean pirate making their fronds shake and their resolve plummet with fear…’

 

This narrative exchange is possible because the combat is going to last a lot fewer rounds than in most other systems where it can take a large amount of rounds to ‘kill’ the opponent as you just fail to beat their armour class again and again. In Burn Bryte you can effectively push your luck to the extreme and keep hacking away up to about 4 or 5 times a round!

 

 Another powerful side effect of this system is you can have a low d4 for melee but still be able to use your other skills to fight with. Conversely while trying to persuade someone using your characters suavity may be hard if you have a d4 assigned to the Suave skill. But, persuading them by idly, but very quickly, stripping your laser pistol and reassembling it with your ranged skill may well work!

 

However, it is the failure prompt table I want to expound the virtues of. This thing is a piece of genius in an already very slick game. I am not saying random event/failures have not been around before by any means, indeed I have used them in a few of my rule sets, but the seamless way it is implemented, and the possible results are what makes it stand out in Burn Bryte. Failure when rolling the skill rolls should be a managed risk/reward in Burn Bryte, it can be easy to pile on a few points of damage onto an opponent, but when a PC fails something will always happen, it is not just ‘oh your sword swipe misses’. Again, narrative is the key here and the result of a fail may be painfully obvious (failure to jump the gap in the buildings is going to hurt!) and in combat the GM can always take what is quaintly called a ‘collapse point’ – pretty innocuous sounding but  this point can be used to really screw the PCs turn up! Or, and the better route fun wise, they can roll on the failure prompt table- which then randomly pops up the prompt into the chat for the GM (and possibly players to interpret).

 

Here is a screen shot of a few rolls from a game:

Glym (A Zivoy in an Ino skin) and his crew were trying to get information on a potential Ino drug dealer and had decided to go into an alleged drug suppliers club acting like they were the new ‘force’ in the area and were looking at acquiring drugs and taking over the afore mentioned dealers territory. He chose streetwise as the skill as he was using his knowledge of dodgy types to try and replicate their manner etc.

 

But they rolled a fail and the failure prompt was they get the wrong kind of attention. I let them carry on with their play acting throwing in that all the beings in the room were checking them out as they seemed to be doing a good job at acting tough. They figured this was the downside of them failing, little did they know.

 

As they were talking to the potential supplier about the actual ino they were trying to trace Llewellyn (a glean) used his perception to try and see if the suppliers body language gave away any tell-tale signs when the ino’s name was mentioned.

 

A fail roll came up with ‘something works differently than you expected’ and his actions actually solicited a lot of info from the supplier (the ino was in debt and they were going to drop some ‘stuff’ off for them later etc etc) BUT somehow he had taken it that the group wanted to buy some NOW and then meet the ino to ‘get rid of their competition’ etc.

 

The group went into slight panic being in a den of iniquity with some heavily armed suppliers lurking in the shadows after seemingly agreeing to buying to some drugs and topping their competition… They ended up spending 12 000 argent on some drugs they certainly didn’t want!

 

But, at least they were happy they had got away with it, or so they thought.

 

Remember the earlier fail, well the ‘wrong attention’ caught up with them in the form of the local police stopping and searching them!

 

With a bit of distraction from the glean and the zivoy managing a Complexity 4 (down to a 3 because of the distraction) roll to deposit the drugs somewhere a pat down would not reveal them (less said about a zivoy trying to secrete a package in an ino body the better one feels) they breathed a sigh of relief and decided it was wise to keep the drugs hidden where they were while they went to ‘meet’ the ino dealer they were after.

 

While trying to hack the door to a ware-house Swish the driftling failed a fairly simple complexity 2 roll and the prompt was ‘something wears out’. I think they presumed this was the slicer kit he was using although I did not say that and they carried on climbing through a window to get in. Glym was then informed he was feeling weird, seeing colours and feeling dizzy etc. They then presumed that actually his connection with his ‘body’ was being affected by the fail. It took then a couple of minutes and Glym hugging Swish and telling them they loved them for the group to figure it was the packaging around the drugs that was wearing out!

 

And, there we have it, I could not have written and/or wangled all that action (which was very funny in game play) into a module without a lot of ‘railroading’ of the group and high DC checks for them to fail. But in Burn Bryte the narrative action basically takes a life of its own!

 

It has been suggested by one of my groups that maybe this approach is not for the faint-hearted GM who likes things set out in a flow chart and not relying on ad libs. Maybe that view has some credibility, but it is a lot easier than it sounds because of the failure prompt table and the fact the players have to get used to adding to the narrative through the whole ‘skill check’ system.

 

So, there in not so much as a nutshell, is WHY I think the Failure Prompt table is so awesome. If you haven’t tried Burn Bryte there is no excuse at the moment when we are all spending more time ‘inside’. I promise you, you will not regret it!