Ironsworn fixes Wushu, 7th Sea, etc

  Several years back, I used to play a lot of a rules-light RPG called Wushu. And two years ago, not long before the pandemic started, I was for a few months running the 2nd edition of the 7th Sea RPG. While I liked both of these games, I noticed that they had a flaw in common. (And I feel like I've played a few other indy RPG titles that had a similar flaw as well, back in the before-times when we'd get together for one-shots in Ballard every week.) 

This flaw (which I'll describe below) used to bug the crap out of me when it would manifest, but, I'm happy to say, there's a solution for it in Ironsworn, that can be relatively-easily ported over to other systems. 

The flaw in question is at times hidden, because it comes wrapped in a strength. Wushu and 7th Sea Second Ed use very light and flexible rules, with a single robust action-resolution mechanic, rather than the more fiddly mechanics and individualized monster stats of more traditional RPGs.  For the most part, that's great. Their systems are so elegant and flexible that you don't have different die-rolls for different types of actions. You're not really forced to narrate your actions in narrow ways. If we're playing a scene where the party needs to get 10 successful rolls to defeat this group of mooks and/or complete our scene goals of saving the magistrate, I get to contribute a roll toward that group goal regardless of whether I describe my action as killing a bunch of mooks, or as something more abstract and outside-the-box, such as swinging from a chandelier to escape the mooks, then rushing across the room and untying the magistrate. Not much of a problem, right? It sounds like it's all up-side. I get to narrate whatever sounds fun to me, and still chip in to the goal. On paper, that sounds great. Derring-do and narrative freedom for everyone!

Problem #1: The problem that gets entangled with it is that it's fairly common to have someone in the group who is either not goal-oriented, or not good at paying attention to how close we are to accomplishing the goal, or just not feel very inspired in this specific scene tonight. It's come up again and again with different groups. Someone will narrate their action as something that doesn't really move us closer to the goal. For example, maybe they are so focused on swinging on that chandelier that it's all they narrate for the turn or action. I swing across the room, but don't think to untie the magistrate or narrate any sort of attack against the mooks or even mention how swinging at least gets me out of their way. If this happens early in the scene, it's no big deal, but if this just happens to be the last roll we need to complete the scene goal of X successes, it's anticlimactic and a little weird. You do a totally unrelated thing, and suddenly the fight is over. There's potentially a huge disconnect between the narrative fiction and the scene progress.

Now systems like this often have some built-in advice on how to avoid this. Pay attention at the table, craft your actions and narrations to respect how close the goal is to completion, and try to avoid stating definitively how many henchmen you're fighting in the first place. All of which is good advice, but they only work if all of the following conditions are met: 

a) everyone's paying attention and no one's getting distracted between their turns, and 

b) everyone playing understands the mechanics and probabilities of the system well enough to know if this turn's roll is statistically likely to complete the goals of the scene, and

c) the dice cooperate by not giving you super rare results when you were banking on an average roll.

If any one of assumptions a, b, or c is wrong, then the flaw described above will rear-up and overturn your applecart.

Here's how Ironsworn fixes it: 

Ironsworn doesn't automatically end the fight when you've accomplished X successful rolls. Ending the fight is instead its own special Move, with the fate of the entire battle riding on it. In order to qualify to make that Move, the party has to have gotten X number of successful rolls first. 

This means goofy actions that don't really advance the narrative goal can't accidentally roll well and end the scene, at most they can unlock the ability to have someone else's next aggressive action end it.  So instead of counting down to "we win", you're counting down to "our next roll determines if we win or lose the whole thing". 

It's basically moving the goal-posts, and I feel it's surprising how well it works for being such a tiny shift. Instead of needing "10 successes to end the fight", you need "10 successes, and then one last successful roll, to end the fight." That single extra roll means you can't accidentally blunder into a win, you have to intentionally make it. This awareness will color your narration when the moment comes, and empower the person after you take some crazy big risk and narrate in an appropriately epic fashion.