I was talking with @Shivaekul about games and the concept of skill checks in CRPGs came up. as I was typing up a response I ended up getting really derailed into processing my own feelings about skill checks, so I thought I’d put my skill check feelings into a separate post instead:

first of all I think The Reason that I want to roleplay is that I want to feel empowered. I’m extremely disempowered in the real world, so I want to experience empowerment as vividly as possible through roleplay instead. because of that, I want to relate to my character as much as I can, and I want their story to feel as real to me as it can

the best way that I’ve found to create a character that I strongly relate to - feeling what they feel and wanting what they want - is to base them heavily on a few facets of myself, but change the details enough that they’re still comfortably separate from my real-life issues

but the problem is: because in a lot of ways that character kind of is me (probably much more than for the average roleplayer) I really don’t want there to be any possibility of them permanently failing, dying, being disempowered, etc. I’m only interested in a story about them succeeding and being empowered because roleplaying is all about wish fulfillment for me. anything else would just end up hurting me in a very vulnerable spot, if that makes sense

but at the same time, I wouldn’t be interested in a story where things are easy for me as a player. I think what I want is to take my character’s challenges into my own hands, and play skill-based gameplay, with the ability to quicksave/quickload until I get my ideal outcome. that way it feels like I’ve really “earned” their success, but there was never a chance of permanent failure - just a series of challenges to overcome

with all of that said, the two things that I don’t like about skill checks are:

• the outcome is out of my hands. I’m not really in control of whether my character succeeds or not, and I don’t like the distance between me and my character that that creates

• one of the two possible outcomes is failure, and I don’t like the uncertainty that that failure might end up disempowering my character, or might otherwise have a hurtfully bad outcome (this is why I obsess over stat points: because I worry that one wrong point will result in something hurtful happening to my character)

so - as weird as this probably sounds - I actually feel safest roleplaying in action games. especially ones with quicksave

@kasdeya I think your feelings about why you want to play RPGs and how they make you feel are really valid.

But it also sounds like your biggest issue is with permanent consequences and failure, and in many cases a "failed" skill check is more of a setback that you adapt around, rather than a *failure*. That one strategy may not have succeeded, but you and your party are capable and can get out of it! :)

CRPGs are not a great example of this, because there are definitely "failing" skill checks, but in general I try to think about it as my attempt not working, not that I failed. Like, nothing is guaranteed, so I think of skillchecks as being the things outside our control, like maybe there is an awkward piece of gravel you slip on, or the person you are trying to convince just isn't listening. Like, it isn't a personal failing, or even the wrong choice to try, it just doesn't work.

Like, you do have some control over choices, you might choose the thing your character is more skilled at first. So something with an 80% chance of success over something else (say with a 50% chance of success). So even if your roll goes poorly, it was still the right choice. So your character still did the right thing, you still did the right thing, it just didn't work. But you and your character and your party are still able to overcome it, just because it didn't work the way you originally hoped, doesn't mean you can't still end in success.

It sounds like some of your reaction may be to the consequences that have been attached to the skill checks, not necessarily the skill checks themselves. I think CRPGs can be very bad about that, especially if you are someone which seeks peaceful or creative options (like I'm pretty sure you are), if you fail the check then the way you have to resolve it is via combat, so I'm not saying you have to like that. But I think with the right GM you might have different reaction to the same mechanics, since you do have more options on how to respond when your first choice doesn't succeed.

(I think I'm being helpful: I want you to be less hurt by games; please let me know if I'm causing pain instead.)

@Shivaekul the way that you think of skill checks is really interesting. I definitely really like FATE’s advice on doing skill checks, which is:

• failure and success should both drive the story forward somehow
• failure can’t just be “it doesn’t work” - you need to provide a specific reason for why the attempt failed, which can’t just be “you made a mistake” or “you’re not skilled enough”. for example, the door you tried to kick open is much more heavily reinforced than it looks at first glance

and I really like this because it makes it so that failure is often something that you can work around, and it’s much less likely to be framed in a way that makes the character look incompetent or weak or helpless (in fact it’s explicitly baked into the game by default that all FATE characters are competent)

even with these two bits of advice though, I still think it’s possible for failure to lead to a partial success down the road that feels a lot worse, or doesn’t feel like a success at all. (“the team was spotted trying to enter the building so they’ve started killing hostages”) but I guess that just comes down to the GM. I have a suspicion that the vast majority of GMs would have a style that I wouldn’t like at all - since a lot of GMing advice I see online seems to emphasize escalating danger and uncertainty and using (what I would consider) emotionally manipulative plot hooks. in fact even FATE gives some advice along these lines

I guess a lot of what {my discomfort with playing a TTRPG} comes down to is that I would be putting myself in a very vulnerable position and trusting someone else to {not just do their best not to hurt me, but also to understand me so deeply that they could avoid a potential minefield of ways that I could be hurt}

but I think you might be right about skill checks. to me they feel like an imperfect solution, and kind of a game design shortcut (instead of having a minigame to simulate something like hacking, you just use a random number generator) but I definitely think that most of my discomfort with them comes from worrying about what the fail-state might be. and if I knew that all failures were guaranteed to not have any lasting consequences that would hurt me, that might really change how I felt about the whole system

(I think I’m being helpful: I want you to be less hurt by games; please let me know if I’m causing pain instead.)

aww - thank you! I really really appreciate that you want to help. you seem like a really altruistic person in general and I really value that

I definitely think that talking about things like TTRPGs tends to make me feel hurt and bitter, but I think that not talking about those things would probably be worse - because I wouldn’t have any chance of processing what I’m feeling and why. I would basically just be repressing my feelings. so I do think it probably helps for me to talk about this with you

I’m not sure exactly what I need in order to feel better about things like TTRPGs, or even exactly why I feel so upset about them in the first place. I know that the topic makes me feel misunderstood, invalidated, ignored, and left out. it’s that bitter feeling that I get from existing in a world that doesn’t care about accommodating someone like me, doesn’t understand me or my needs, and invalidates me when I express them. but I’m not sure exactly how those feelings connect to stuff like {me not liking RPGs or TTRPGs}. I don’t really know. I think what I probably want is to feel understood, validated, and like someone cares about how I feel

but I really have no idea if any of that’s true. I have a really hard time with emotional introspection: the whole process is so difficult and draining to me and it’s so hard to tell if I’ve actually found any kind of insight at all or if I’m just wrong