How to Botch sucessfully

Forn Clakes

Forn Clakes

ECR Refugee
When it comes to ST botches I have great difficulty with coming up with anything outside of combat, which I find easy to deal with catastrophes.  Outside of battle however, I seem to have difficulty in describing how the character fucks up, especially with some of the Abilities.  So, my first two queries are, 1) does anyone else have this problem, and 2) does anyone have any examples for me to learn from.


Next, one thing I would like to do is implement is a mechanic with dealing with players who know that they've rolled a botch yet still do the opposite of the disaster anyway.   For example, a character is attempting to sense the direction of where the strange sounds are emanating, so the player makes a Perception + Awareness roll and comes up with 2 botches.  I say a direction that will lead them in the wrong direction yet the player tries to turn it around so the character does the right thing.  


I understand that as ST its within my power to say, hang on, your character wouldn't know that, but maybe I'm too nice, so I ausually allow another roll (albeit at a harder difficulty).  What I plan to implement is the following: If a character botches and the player wishes to supercede the botch by going against the botch, they must spend a Willpower point to negate each botch.  This doesn't turn it into a sucess however, it simply allows them to overide the stupid mistake they have committed by sheer force of will.


So, what do you peeps think, good idea or bad?


~FC.
 
I think it's maybe a little too lenient. Botches are supposed to be dismal failures. And, in a lot of instances, they can help the story even more than a grand success. If you're going to do this, though, I might consider starting at blowing two Willpower for the first botch, and then, as you say, another willpower for each botch. If they want to overcome this horrible mistake, it's going to take a supreme act of will.


The other thing you might want to consider - and this means a bit more work for you - is to make the roll yourself. Particularly for Awareness rolls, where the character wouldn't know his success or failure. You make the roll and then you can describe what is seen. If it's a botch, the player will never know and can only go by what you tell him. This method can obviously be used where a character wouldn't know if his action succeeded or failed by normal means. The player will only get his information from you, so he doesn't know whether it's true or not.


And yes, I think you might be a bit too nice.....


:-)
 
well, I've never really had much of a problem with that.  


When my players botch a roll, going with your example of a PER+awareness roll, I simply tell them what their character sees or hears or whatever... and they act accordingly.  I've never had a player try to do something else (like go in the opposite direction).


I also don't know if I'd let players retry an action if they've botched.  Regular failures I let them retry, although at a higher difficulty.


This, however, seems a bit suspicious.  Are they going in the other direction based on some actual, believable in-character reason? or are they simply doing that because they know that they botched and as such whatever information you give them is quite possibly misleading?


If they're going in another directly because they know they've botched and hope to avoid any negative results of the botch, and not because it's something that their character would do, despite whatever information they've obtained from the (botched) perception attempt... then I'd remind them that their character would react to whatever information they've received and that they wouldn't know about the botch.  If they gave me a good enough reason to explain their actions, then I'd probably let it go.  If they were very obviously doing so as a direct result of the botch and for no in-game reason at all, and didn't give me any reason to think otherwise... and don't change their actions after I remind them... then I would likely force their character to behave according to what they heard/saw/etc.


I wouldn't necessarily say that you're being too lenient, it's your table and as such you can do whatever you want, but you could make it clear that the characters aren't aware of how good or bad the dice results are, and that doing what you described is basically metagaming, not how the character would act, and that if they keep it up, that punishment will follow... whether it be forcing their character to act in another way or docking them xp until they wisen up. (I hate metagaming)


If you decide to give them an attempt to try again, I'd say that what van77 suggested sounds alright, although I'm not sure if I'd do it, but 2 wp for the first botch and a wp for each botch beyond that sounds alright, as it reflects the sheer amount of will that it would take to retry something.  On top of that I'd increase the difficulty of the new roll, I might even increase it even more than if they were simply retrying a roll they had failed without botching.  Rolls like perception + awareness rolls, in a lot of cases, aren't like trying to climb trees... the character isn't going to always be aware of how well they did.  As such the character wont often know that there was something they missed... and as such no real reason to make an another attempt (in-game).  If they botched, I generally take that as the character is convinced they've heard/seen everything there is to hear/see.  


Sorry if I'm a bit fuddled.  I've honestly never had any problems with this kind of thing, so I have no experience with it and really wont know how I'd handle it until it happens to me... which I hope never happens.


either way, good luck and I hope you figure out whatever way is best for you and your game.
 
Same here.  I haven't seen players try this--even in D&D.  


If anything, a good botch or fumble have always been part of the fun.


When I was running Palladium and weird ass variants, I borrowed the Fumble Charts from Arms Law and the nice folks at I.C.E. and we had a grand time with them.  In fact, we looked forward to folks screwing up, because it made for some nice moments, and that carried through to the normal actions.  


You screwed up a computer roll, and you could either alert the whole base to your intrusion, or maybe the SYSOP decides to transfer your Grand Cayman's account to his own.  Yes, it was harsh, but it was about committing the moment.  Maybe it was a bit Method, but I was a theater minor, so Stanislavski was a major player at our tables.


The thing is make these moments memorable.  Sometimes humorous, sometimes they lead to great places, and you've got to make those consequences big, memorable, and give them impact.  


Don't skimp on a botch. Make it something memorable, and talk to your players--the ones who won't committ to the moment--and let them know that it kind of breaks to moment when they act on out of character knowledge.  


That, or if they won't do that, make the rolls for them.  Just ask them what their Perception+Awareness is, and make the roll.  I do it fair often, and I trust my players--sometimes it's just easier to give them the goods without them knowing if they succeeded or not.  They operate on the information they get, and do just fine.  They trust me not to just do them dirty without good reason, and they like the plot twists that occur.
 
Me and my group, well, we're pretty crazy- most of our games eventually devolve into a cavalcade of Pythonesque and slapstick comedy, where what's funniest is what happens and damn the rules. Give the players what they want, right?


So generally, critical failures are taken by my players as a chance for real havoc. Once in a D&D session of ours, a series of failures ended up as a hilarious cart-chase through crowded streets, involving fruit stands, Ben Hur parodies and, eventually, flying off the end of an unfinished bridge.


Good times. :D
 
Sometimes I ask my players to roll perception+awareness for no reason. Keeps them on their toes, and means they aren't always suspicious when they fail; they failed a few times before, right?


Of course, doesn't always work. When you have a protagonist reminiscent of G-man, as I currently have, you get really paranoid of every roll, because the results of not seeing him mightn't be immediately obvious.


I wouldn't let my players get away with that without a good reason. It's just bad practice. I don't advocate controlling the game with an iron fist, but some things stand, and botches are among them. You spin the tiller hard port, to avoid collision. The rudder snaps. You sprint across the remaining support rope for the old bridge, dodging a hail of arrows. You get hit and fall (albiet not to your doom, in a game like exalted. Not nearly epic enough). Things were going so well: you had her in the palm of your hand. Then you mentioned your brother, reminding her of her own dead brother, cut down by anathema on the wyld hunt.


Botches=story. Sometimes.
 
Wow, a nice and healthy dose of info there, many thanks   :D


It is the metagaming aspect that a couple of my players do have problems with, but to be fair I think it has resulted from my own leniency.  What I need to do is allow the botches to work in the stories favour.


Cheers all.


So, back to my origional post, can anyone help with any botch examples?


Pretty please   :D


~FC.
 
Linguistics botch--horrible misunderstanding occurs.  The character isn't just unintelligible, but tells someone that their mother's crotch looks like a gorgeous field they'd like to plow.


Occult botch--the demon they're researching is minor when it's not.  The God they're dealing with can't cross water--when in fact, it's a God of Water.  


Acrobatics botch--those are pretty easy, because they involve falling good distances AND looking like an ass.


Craft botch--the thing looks terribly strong and is so brittle that it fails in a spectacular fashion when the character needs it most.  


Sail botch--navigate in the wrong direction and into a storm front.  Put up the sail and watch it shiver and tear, seperating the mast from the ship.  


Performance--boy is that crowd pissed.  Damn.  And the character has no idea why.


Bureacracy--you wanted that bill done, when?  Try back next cycle.  Get fitted for a cell for treason--and the character has no idea what law they broke.


Socialize--So, exactly why is the Governor's daughter following us, and why are his guards looking so pissed off?  Who knew that handing a glass of wine was a marriage proposal?


Larceny--Your boy gets rooked, hard.  


Endurance--ow.  Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.


Resistance--See above.  Only in capitals.


Survival--You know, these little cacti aren't all that bad tasting...and these little worms inside taste a lot like...burning.  Mouth burning.  Stomach burning.  Bowels opening.  Legs folding.  Everything getting dark.  I smell bitter almonds...


Medicine--So, the character has other Followers, right?  Because someone is going to have to really scrub to get that stain out of the tent...
 
In one of my DB campaigns, one of the players decided that they were going to try and get the help of a major road god by composing an epic poem in his honor, hoping that it would favorably dispose him towards her. So I had her roll Intelligence + Linguistics to actually compose the thing and make it sufficiently good.


She botched, of course.


Not only did she write an insultingly bad poem, but she was convinced that she had written a masterpiece.  Being a secretive sorceress, she didn't actually share the poem with the rest of the brotherhood before she read it in its entirety in a ceremony meant to honor this road god. This ended up changing the entire course of the story - where before I had decided he would probably be willing to help the brotherhood (as they were furthering his own agendas for the area they were in), he got horribly offended by having such an awful poem attached to his name, and actively interfered with their activities in revenge, demanding that more veneration days from the local Immaculates and a new temple featuring some kind of First Age piece of art as its centerpiece. Since they wanted his help very badly, they went off to find an appropriate artwork... something they would have never, ever, ever done otherwise.


So yeah, botches = story, if you can swing them correctly.
 
Solfi--If you screw up your Survival roll, and think that peach pits make a fine tea substitute...
 
... which raises the question; if you have the Lore-capacity for knowing that it's a poison; but that knowledge overlaps with the Survival skill for gathering edibles; which do you roll? Or do you get one for each?


... oh, and "peach pits"? I thought we were discussing some cyanide-derivative?
 
Lore covers book knowledge.


Survival covers practical knowledge.


I can know from a book what poison sumac looks like--it's right there as an illustration and painted all nice and you can parrot back an answer on the subject when asked--and still miss it in the wild.  You can know that a king snake is a black constrictor that preys on other snakes, and still make the mistake of thinking that a small water mocassin is the King, baby.  


Lore can cover all sorts of useful tidbits of what is good to eat, and where you can find materials to build fires and the like.  Survival covers actually recognizing and locating these things, for real, not in theory.


Back to the cynanide question: Lots of sources of cyanide in nature.  Not just bitter almonds, though they are a nice source.  And that we even have domesticated versions of almonds at all, bred for their declining toxticity shows exactly how tenacious and smart our forebears were--becasue the process of taming the almond wasn't easy, or a short process either.


In ancient times, bitter almond extract was used as a toxin.  And quite a few folks are still poisoned every year from eating the stuff--which is still used in European and even Chinese cooking in small doses.  Peach pits contain cynanide--though in much smaller doses than in bitter almonds, though it can give you some nasty side effects, and when you're looking to conserve water and energy, even mildly toxifying yourself isn't a real good idea.


Yes, holly berries won't kill you outright if you eat a few, but they just aren't a good idea if you're looking at a month long trek through the woods.  Especially if you're not sure about your water sources, or how else you're going to eat.  Which is why I included the mythical cynanide bearing cacti, because it makes a good illustration of a great Survival botch...
 
Many real cacti contain alkaloids that will make you vomit horribly and/or hallucinate to varying degrees. No cyanide necessary.


-S
 
Wow, a nice and healthy dose of info there, many thanks   :D
It is the metagaming aspect that a couple of my players do have problems with, but to be fair I think it has resulted from my own leniency.  What I need to do is allow the botches to work in the stories favour.
Click to expand...
 If it turns out a player stubbornly won't take a botch in the spirit which it is rolled, and still tries to circumvent it, warn him that he's not playing in character--against character, in fact, and that he'll have to accept the consequences if he continues.


 What are the consequences, you say. Well, you do award bonus XP for good roleplaying, right? Need I say more?
 
Botches are, as far as my gaming group goes, comedy gold.  In our first session, the Dawn in the group botched a Stealth roll while sneaking around inside a house - he put his foot through an ottoman and woke the guards.


Had the Night Caste botch a Stealth roll once - imagine that.  He happened to be doing recon at the moment, watching the movements of a heavy undead strike force commanded by an hard-ass necromancer.  He stepped on a twig and, before he could stop himself, yelled, "Mother... fuck!" a la John Cusak in Grosse Point Blank.  Also: the guards on watch botched their Awareness rolls.


The best one we've had was when I sent them demon-hunting on this one-shot quest.  The monster, known affectionately as The Terrible Japanese Cat-Demon Living In My Bowels, got in each player's face and gave them an earful of its horrible shriek - the vehicle for its Scourge Charm.  He made the Dawn forget how to use his sword, covered the pretty Abyssal's face with indelible shit-stains, and turned on the Zenith.  Which is when it BOTCHED the Willpower roll or whatever to Scourge him... and since it was down to 2 health levels, the curse backfired on it, and its fur caught on fire, and it died.  My friend playing the Zenith goes, (between laughs) "The Unconquered Sun smiles upon me!"


If there's ever a botch inflicted by the Eclipse power, though, that shit won't be funny.
 
Still--Perfectly correct.  I made the mistake of trying to go for the comedy with the bitter almonds bit, and Lesser God of Line Editing latched onto it.  


At times, Solfi's ability is a liability.  Though, I may use it later on to good effect...
 
Jakk, that was pretty awesome man, cheers.   :lol:


Mr. Osul, nice story, had something similar happen to a Night Caste in a story I ran.  Thing was, the player would always make terrible rolls whenever he played that certain character.


Still.....once again, nice hat, truly a work of genius.


~FC.
 
botches eh?


I've had three really memorable botches in my group.


The first botch was interesting. Two the of players in my group, one male the other female, deciding that their in game characters would atcually be interested in marrying each other, and after several sessions of good RPing, got themselves hitched.


So, in one of our earlier sessions, they PC's had discovered an artifact they had no idea of what it did. Then, the two wake up to two abyssals demanding said artifact from them. The male eclipse (who's always said he sleeps with his sword under the pillow) uses his uber lightning surprise attack combo to decapitate one of the abyssals. The second abyssal uses a spell to escape that same round. Then, the female PC, seeing her husband butt naked covered in gore, ask me if she could make a temperance check, to avoid being turned on by this. I said sure, not thinking much about it, as she was a  temperance 5 character. She botches.


So, while the rest of the group is fighting the invading zombies, those two were going at it, and when disturbed, the female twilight cast Death of Obsidian Butterflies so she could finish her business.


The second botch, was when the PC's were exploring the bowels of Autochthon to locate his heart to wake him up. The PC's were walking along a thin trail on the side of a gigantic canynon, when they realized they were far above the city.


I asked for stealth+dex rolls. Naturally, the night caste with the sickest pool is the one to roll a *triple* botch.


So he fell off the path to a certain death.


Then, the 5000yr old android automata with the group, who'd been made by powerful 1st age solar, previously discovered in the last story (was made as an ambassador to the autochthonians while the solar deliberative still had contact with autochthon) has to save the night Caste, and in the process alerts the City below to the PC's... Who send their alchemical exalts to catch the PC's, who don't resist.


The PC's then go on to convice the Alchemicals the local Tripartate that they are new Exalts made by autochthon. They actually rolled and RPed it well enough that I let them pass.


The third memorable botch was similar to the first one.  They two in game married characters were RPing out their reactions to modern mattresses, and it was just how they were RPing it, that I demanded temperance checks on the spot to avoid going at it right there in front of the rest of the group. They were both around temperance 4 or 5.


The female twilight failed, and the male eclipse botched. My ruling was, "Well Jake, your character Haro, starts having his way with Astarte, and she likes it."


Since the two had been busy in autochthon for the last 6 months and regularily told me how their PC's were *not* going at it.... I had the twilight make a roll to see if she got pregnant, and she did.
 
Ok, the first one was pretty funny. But the third one... does one really need to *roll* one's Temperance to avoid doing naughty things in front of one's friends? Seems a bit excessive to me. Funny ruling of what failing versus botching entailed in that one though...   :)
 
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-S
 
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