Flow & The Null Result | Designing The Game 

I wasn't much for their debut album, but Flow and the Null Result found their sound with this track

"All ideas are original ... just some of them have been thought of before." - man, it's the little nuggets of general wisdom like this that pepper these videos that really make me smile :)

A lot of this conversation reminds me of when I used to play mafia and werewolf back in the old days. Back then you could get eliminated on the very first night and there was nothing that you could do about it. It was a substantially Unfun experience. That’s why when games like secret Hitler and one-night ultimate werewolf took out that mechanic, it felt like such a natural and positive progression of the genre. If you can succeed in taking out the bummer of doing nothing on your turn, then I think you’ll see similar positive progression in the TRPG hobby.

I love the idea of a game built around "no null results". an embarrassing anecdote from running a 5e game: party exploring an old ruin comes across a door that won't open. barbarian tries to open it, fails the roll. tries again, fails the roll. enters rage! fails the roll. taking responsibility for the justified frustration, I retconned that the rage busted the door down. the lesson is, never roll dice unless both outcomes are fun and you don't know which you like better

The idea that its more a bad vs good is so much more exciting, an actual gamble... a dangerous coinflip. If in gambling you did not stand to lose something, there fear and elation would not be so potent. I think my joy playing as Skaven in 9th edition really appealed to me because the bad that would happen was almost as common as a crazy success, and thus far more unexpected and fun!

I really like this idea of no “nothing happens” turns! As a DM teaching the game to new players, “nothing happens” turns are a part of DND that requires the most coaching and DM-craft to keep the narrative of the combat encounter going.

God, watching Colville work this stuff through while personally learning to play Ironforged and running things like Into the Odd and Cairn, it's fascinating to watch how many of these EXACT problems are being solved in the indie community with GREAT effect, and wondering what he's reading for influences here...

Dang! I really like how focused this video is! Really useful and specific!

Stars/Worlds Without Number attempted to solve this problem with "shock" damage. Whenever you make an attack, the assumption is that even if you don't land a blow to your enemy, you are still wearing them down, and they therefore still take damage.

After years of buying product and dreaming about running the game and just not being able to assemble a group for it, I *finally* got four of my friends together to play Genesys. It's my favorite TTRPG of all time and it's weird and different and hard to wrap your head around at first coming from 5E/PF2, but it's so so good once you realize the system's potential. One thing that I find fascinating following MCDM's journey in making their own game is how often their design direction lines up with Genesys. As I was watching this video, I noted *three times* where Matt was talking about a particular revelation their team had and what problems they wanted to address and I thought, "Wait, Genesys fixes that problem in a similar way!" Like, Matt talking about how he doesn't like spell slots -- trying to manage the slots of different levels, preparing spells into specific slots, running out slots and being unable to do cool magic, etc. Instead, he just wants to be able to always cast magic and do cool shit, except it costs a resource -- "Strain". This is almost *exactly* how Genesys magic works. You suffer strain, a mental HP of sorts, every time you cast magic, but there are plenty of ways to lose strain as well. Managing that resource is all you care about and it's not difficult or tedious. Or how Matt was talking about how often the flow of the game is disrupted by players needing to garner information from each other about their characters, "what's your AC?". Matt says he just wants a simple system where you make the check, you see if it succeeded or failed, you narrate the fiction and you move on. Know what that sounds like? Genesys combat. You don't need to know anything about another player's or monster's stats -- you just look at *your* skill, assemble a dice pool, roll it, and narrate the fiction. Boom, done. Fast, fluid combat that keeps the action focused on what *your* character is doing. And finally, Matt talks about the unsatisfactory nature of the "null result". This too is something that Genesys addresses. By having not only the Success/Failure axis but the Advantage/Threat access, you virtually guarantee that no skill check ever ends with nothing changing. Last night one of my players rolled truly horrendously on two different attacks, failing to hit both times. However, neither of those attacks resulted in nothing changing -- with the first attack he used some advantage generated to take a guarded stance and give him a defense buff until the end of the round. The second time he used a *ton* of advantage to say he knocked the opponent's weapon out of his hand. Both results were exciting and dramatic *despite* a failure to hit. Anyway, I guess this is just a long rant of me stanning Genesys, but I just felt like it was really interesting how often MCDM's design goals are lining up with that game that I've loved for years and most people haven't heard of. I mean, they were even considering "weird dice" with different symbols and stuff at one point. "All ideas are original, some have just already been thought of". Indeed! All this to say -- I cannot wait to try this game out for myself. Super excited by what MCDM is doing.

No null results sounds very familiar coming from playing and writing Powered by the Apocalypse games. In those, if your roll misses, the GM gets to make one of their moves, which usually advances the narrative or makes the players' lives more complicated. Excited to see how this works in your game, Matt :)

PbtA games, like Dungeon World, use this mechanic for great effect. In Dungeon World, you can have very dynamic and strategic encounters which are a lot of fun to play (and to run). In that game, it is extremely important, that the result of the action (e.g. success) is known immediately to not brake the flow of the game. Of course, Dungeon World is not tactical game, so as it is, it wouldn't work with what MCDM is trying to do, but I hope that they have done research of the subject, because I would imagine it being inspirational, as in DW enemies only act when PC's let them (e.g. by failing in a attack roll).

Hmm. This video is giving me some of my own ideas. I can easily imagine a system that works something like you described - Roll well enough and you get to do a thing, poorly enough and your opponent does a thing instead - But suppose, along the theme of getting rid of the "null result", if you meet in the middle and no one has the upper hand... You Bind. Clash. Whatever you want to call it - The characters in combat lock blades, or fight against each other's spells, or what have you, and the result is that BOTH of them become more vulnerable, in general? Their defense is lowered, making it easier for others to do more damage to them - And the first one of them that succeeds against the other will do more damage, too. In a one-on-one, this could keep stacking into a tense and frenetic gamble, with both fighting for an edge until one dies in a single stroke. There could be risk and reward, if you have the option to pull back from a clash to reset your vulnerability. And depending on the tactical situation, your friends would have an easier time helping you with the enemy you're fighting - Or other enemies could swarm you while you're caugh up defending against the first. No idea if this would be fun or not, but the idea popped into my head.

Matt's philosophy seems similar to PBTA. It'd be funny if at the end of the design process MCDM just accidentally created a powered by the apocalypse game with a focus on tactical combat. (I am here for it though either way).

Matt is a river unto his people!! Two videos so quickly!?!

The enemy getting to do something when you fail is basically PbtA's approach, and it is superior to D&D's pass/fail mechanic. Looking forward to seeing MCDM's version!

I love the sound of bbeg and hero both on one hit. Each goes back and forth, by some luck massively failing their rolls, resulting in the attack chance getting thrown between them until FINALLY someone smashes through, defeating the other in great triumph

My friends play in a Powered by the Apocalypse system where there's 3 results: Success, Mixed Success (which can be exchanged for complete success at a cost), and Failure. Ive always loved how mixed success offered the players a choice of "my thing still works but something bad happens", but this video got me thinking about the failure option, and it gave me an idea I want to try next time I run. What if the players could choose to exchange a failure for "Complete success at a LASTING cost." Now THAT makes me excited. Thanks for the food for thought!

I love this idea of 'strain'

I recently reduced my group size from 5 players to 3, because the chance that someone could wait a long time for their turn and then do nothing was so much higher with more players. This is a fantastic concept and I hope it play-tests as well as it sounds!!

that "no null result" is why I love the FF Genesys system - because your rolls can generate success or failure AND advantages or threats (ie positive or negative things happen, regardless of whether your intended action succeeded or not), you get a matrix of possibilities, rather than a binary pass/fail. when i switched from D&D it made everything faster, more engaging, and really let the players get their hands on the story: "okay i missed my shot... but my advantage is I hit the door panel and the door shuts behind the guards, cutting off their backup for a moment" or "yes, i made the leap across the chasm! but those threats mean i drop my torch as i regain my balance". even if you royally screw up, THE STORY MOVES FORWARD.

The null result is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and trying to think of ways you could do it better. I’m so glad these are the kinds of things being thought about here, it gives me so much hope for this future game!

The enemy gets to do something? I think I know how that's called... PBTA! 😂

The idea of "how hard is this spell to cast?" brings my mind to some very neat places, where spells are living, writhing arcane things that one harnesses for their own gain, but are not always under their control...

For those who haven’t seen them, the Patreon posts about this development go into far greater detail regarding the process and ideas. As both a GM and someone designing their own game, they were inspiring and enlightening.

Into The Odd and its many derivatives (notably Cairn) don't use attack rolls. You only roll for damage. Combat is fast, furious, and decisive. Initiative and surprise are very important. Players spend a reasonable time trying to avoid combat, or plan their ambushes to stack bonuses.

I think games like Into the Odd and Mausritter highlight this really well

You’ve nailed one of my pet leaves in 5e. Not checking things like AC, but other interruptions in game flow, like reactions, particularly things like Counterspell, Silvery Barbs. Now, reactions like this make a lot of sense, but they kill game flow. Looking forward to seeing your solution to this.

You can as the DM make null results dramatic in games that have them but it is A LOT of creative energy to do so. When I narrate a miss I'll often say something like, "Your sword cuts cleanly through the air, the goblin just barely leaping out of the way at the last second. As you advance toward him, you can see the fear in his eyes." Or if its a powerful boss monster, maybe the boss catches their blade out of the air and all the players go, "OH NO!" Right, you force it to be dramatic but yeah it's work and that effort could be expended by the DM on something more useful. Techniques to make null results dramatic was some of the first advice I'd always provide my friends after they'd become comfortable with the basics of running D&D though. It really goes a long way toward making your game suck less. Developing it out of existence in a new game is clearly a very good idea.

The "no null" effect is very well reflected in which spells in 5e are popular. Some of the most theoretically powerful spells are never used because there is a sizable chance that...nothing happens and you lose a spell slot anyway. Spells like fireball are so damn popular because even if you fail, there is still a big explosion, things are set on fire and only very particular enemies are going to take no damage whatsoever. Youre spot on in saying that every failure should still result in "something" happening.

Loved the original Patreon post and this is an excellent video that gets those ideas across! Getting to see the design process of the Inevitable MCDM rpg is a bit like watching an open theater surgery. Fascinating, messy, and vital

In this video, Matt Colville discovers PbtA principles.

This is such a fun sounding concept. It reminds me a little of "Success, but at a Cost" I've read about in relation to Fate Core. I really, really like the idea of complicating the player's world instead of penalising them for a bad roll.

That's such a cool and sci-fi sounding title. I don't know what it means but I'm excited to find out and feel smarter and more photosynthesis

This is a very interesting game design concept that I feel is really exemplified when you take a pen and paper RPG to a digital tabletop with automation baked in. Recently, I've been running games in FoundryVTT while another friend has been running their game in a more classic style. Although both games have attack rolls made against armor class to determine the result, the automated process of running in FoundryVTT means that with the single click of a button, we can determine the result and the damage of an attack. Turns _fly_ by, meaning that even when someone biffs all their rolls, their turn quickly comes up again. You don't spend 20 minutes waiting for your turn, you spend maybe 2 to 5. The automation allows things to work so well that we once resolved a combat encounter with some players while we all had a completely unrelated conversation about something happening in another room with other players. But in the pen and paper style, there is a ton of exactly what you're talking about: "Did I hit? Does this save? How much damage is that?" It's a huge time sink and there is so much back and forth required to resolve just one thing. Not that I'm saying that pen and paper games should not be made anymore, far from it. But it's _very_ interesting to me to see the result of eliminating that consultation phase from a player's turn. It's not a medium problem so much as it is a design problem that some mediums can minimize.

WHOA. Keep filling my brain with game design philosophy, magic man! This game sounds AWESOME. You're putting words to desires I've never fathomed.

Okay, MCDM, color me intrigued! I think I'm going to like this system/gaming philosophy.

Man this video just got me super excited for y'alls RPG. I wasn't sold on it but the thought process in this video was banging and pleased my brain's design juices.

I'm curious to see how this will be functionally different from "I miss, enemy takes turn". I'm guessing the actions the enemy takes must only be enabled by "missing".

I'm playing in a star wars edge of the empire game, and that system works a lot like this. It has weird dice, with different combinations of success, failure, advantege, or threats, for dice that represent your skill, the difficulty, boosts, and setbacks. You choose how many of each die, tally up the total result and if you have more successes than failures you just do the thing.

Icon has a "no-miss" type thing where all your attacks still do _something_ if you miss, usually a small amount of damage.

Sounds a lot like PbtA a la Dungeon world. That’s great!

Love these videos! Also - Sounds like MCDM discovered how PBTA works and I love it! 🎉

Reminds me a lot of how the Symbaroum system functions in terms of making checks. Absolutely love how well it flows in game.

Love the ideas here - I've played with something similar by making "combat rounds" fluid - they become "the length of time it takes for something dramatic to happen". That turned out to be unworkable, since if you have multiple Character/Opponent pairs, everyone's time gets out of joint. What I eventually came up with was something similar: every "clash" SOMEONE gets in a shot. There is no NULL results. It flattened initiative, since it's not a question of "can I get my death shot in before you can injure me" anymore - since really both attack rolls are being resolved at the same time - so I'm really curious as to the "new initiative system". The "fully contained, reference free roll" is a brilliant idea though. I'll have to think on that one.

Yes, Dungeon Crawl Classics helped introduce me to this. In stead of success or failure, have different successes and different failures depending on the dice roll. Yes, it's more complicated and crunchy, but in my view that's the right kind of crunchy.

Dude, I just want MORE of these videos! As a TTRPG game designer, I can't get enough of these.

i have been reading all the patreon posts as they come out but its great to hear Matt put it into dramatic perspective! Looking forward to more of these videos!

Great presentation Matt! You got me excited for your content again.

Dude, this sounds SUPER FUN! I'm enjoying Game Dev with Uncle Matt. I'm excited to see what's next.

I audibly giggled at hearing, "But what if... your enemy gets to do something?" Such a brilliantly Matt Colville solution to the missing issue

Building a rules-lite RPG of my own these videos are invaluable I love your energy and inisght as always. The main thing is just seeing how much fun you actually have crafting and playtesting all the ideas!

This reminds me a lot of the Mechanics vs Settings video you put out, specifically regarding how there could be boons and set backs. The idea that a resolution could be made without checking AC's or saves, etc... and continue combat without the slog, while potentially increasing the drama/tension. Super cool.

Loving these, can't wait for the next one!

These videos are so interesting and insightful, thank you Matt and the entire MCDM crew! As someone currently designing his own d20 system (but it's soccer matches in place of combat) these kind of thoughts are really inspiring and thought provoking

A lot of the design philosophies you're discussing here remind me strongly of how combat in Dark Heresy work. It makes me appreciate those games I've played more in retrospect and I think that's quite valuable. Thanks Matt!

I'm liking everything I'm hearing in this video. Can already tell I will love this series

I've been toying with the idea of building a die pool for actions and then splitting those dice into how effective it is vs how likely it is to be effective. Impact and Contact. I really like it. Makes a lot of push your luck fun choices.

This is awesome. It's so much more intuitive. I'm on the edge of my seat for any new videos about this system

These looks into the design of this game is so intriguing!

Love Matts passion, sooo looking forward to more.

so fucking excited for everything coming from MCDM! Y'all have me on the edge of my seat!

Loving these insights onto the design process :)

Love the idea! And I've been loving it for some time without knowing that's what was making it appealing. A house rule I implemented in a D&D-like system was natural 1s meant the opponent gets a reaction (there are no other reactions in the game), and my players have really enjoyed killing someone in their own turn. And my current favorite system makes it so that on a combat round, both contestants roll a combat skill, and whoever wins hits the other, though I might have to work on the draw (null result). Can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

It is really cool see Matt so excited and passionate about this. THIS is what the TTRPG community wants from its creators. If Matt has fun, we have fun! So excited for this series and this game! Keep having fun Matt!!

Now there's some really intriguing out-of-the-box thinking here, and logical thinking where design goals drives the 'design' - awesome hints and I think I'm going to end up buying this game when it emerges.

It's fascinating to watch Matt run through these design ideas because my friends and I were super into homebrewing and combining systems back in the day (cyberpunk 2020 mixed with Call of Cthullhu is fantastic btw) and we had all of these same discussions, or discussions very similar.

Hallelujah! I appreciate that you are not "designing" a new fantasy rpg that is just a derivative D&D with different chrome go-fasters attached. I am enjoying watching the process and witnessing the innovations. Rock on!

Exciting video. I look forward to Monsters, Characters, Dungeons, and More!

Really appreciate what you make & share.

Oooo I'm intrigued! Can't wait for the next video!

What you said about flow and needing to ask for more info rang very true to me... I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my friends. We're currently playing Pathfinder and since we're older and now spread out around the country we play on a VTT (Foundry). We all agreed: the game would probably be too complicated and heavy to play in person - no way we'd be playing. But on a VTT that automates a lot of the work for you, there's a lot less interruption of the flow. You don't ask what their defense is or have to remember all the random +1s... So I wonder how VTTs are effecting game design nowadays. In our case, the "flow" of the game has been reasonable with all the automation. It might not feel as fun live, which is just something I find surprising to hear myself say as an olde school RP-er. Do you ever specifically consider the effect of VTTs as you design your games?

I like this effectiveness versus hit ou miss thing! And also the roll against your own abilities.

This mindset and way of thinking about The Game Itself has me super excited for what MCDM is gonna cook up. S&F and K&W were both huge hits at my table. Y'all have some incredible minds at the helm over there.

i really like Into The Odd and games in that vein for this reason. no to-hit rolls, just roll damage.

This talk of the Null Result reminds me of the Failing Forward video Matt released on the Matt Colville channel way back when. I believe his example was something along the lines of "You fail to jump over the chasm BUT you grap onto a vine that's attached to the floor by a thread and you are now hanging on for dear life." You didn't fall to your doom and couldn't save yourself; you instead failed to make the jump and are not in an even riskier situation. Likewise, you didn't fail your attack roll and did nothing, you failed to effectively attack and so your enemy got to attack back. Curious to see how this no null result affects spellcasting and ranged attacks. Tangentially related but Betrayal in the House on the Hill by WotC also has this melee attack mechanic where you attack and if you roll lower than your enemy, you get damaged.

I love watching these and then going on Patreon to dive deeper into it

No Attack Roll is something Into the Odd (and games based on it like Cairn, Mausritter, Electric Bastionland) does and it has led to one of my favorite combat systems to run ever. So fast and decisive.

This is one of the reasons I've been enjoying Ironsworn lately. So much more narratively focused. Failing doesn't mean doing nothing, it just means something interesting and new happens that you must adapt to. Failing forward, driving the narrative!

Love seeing the influences being picked up. A yeah, preserving narrative momentum is so good.

Powered By the Apocalypse games have this same "no null result" idea (on any move, on a miss, the GM makes a move as hard as they want), but takes it a step further: the GM never gets a turn and never rolls, acting mainly in response to PC misses.

Oh rad! When I was working on some combat tweaks for a game just like a month ago, I stumbled upon a similar solution to the "misses are boring" problem. (In my case, the solution -- a "miss" means the enemy gets an action -- came from a complementary problem: the game is about teams of characters fighting enormous monsters together, so how do I balance the action economy so that groups don't overwhelm single targets? The monsters needed more actions, and something needed to happen when player turns were bad, so now instead of comparing attacks to defense, the monster just gets a response whenever it's hit, with failed attacks provoking scarier responses. It spreads out the monster's "turn" across the rest of the round, which gives the fight better pacing, and means that players can just decide their turn order amongst themselves as well.)

One of my favourite rules from Paranoia: Red Clearance is when using a negative skill you consider anything that isn't a Success on the dice a Failure. It is great with the smallest modification of _not_ having those Fails cancel out a Success specifically for the reason of avoiding a Null Result. Now instead of 3 fails, you get to do the thing but have to explain 4 failures worth in how this situation escalates or alters and when it clicked that I could spend Fails as the GM to have NPCs act? I immediately got giddy for the game I'm currently working on :D

THE NULL! a class idea you've been floating around im most excited by (also all the other classes)

This kind of sounds like a combination of Vaesen (using a Year Zero Engine variant) and the combat of many games that use Powered by the Apocalypse as their core rules. Interesting.

That first part about spell-casting reminds me of Shadowrun, which I really like!

the bit about "nothing happens" when you miss is why i started describing every attack as a hit in d&d, not like every attack does damage, but every attack connects, it may glance off the armor, or be parried by a shield or sword, but cinematically something is happening, you're in the battle, you're not swinging at air

THANKS!! just thank you!

That's essentially the main PbtA mechanic--which I love!

It's an interesting idea! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Fascinating!

Man, I am super excited that you're fixing ttrpgs! Can't wait to see more of this series!

Sounds like contested rolls-I like it! I like the idea of not having to look for information about the game from outside of the roll and the moment you’re in. The dice should say what you want them to say-not adding a bunch of modifiers, but having dice just be dice. Did my die beat your die? I get the good result. Did your die beat my die? You get the good result.

People forget how unintuitive attack+damage rolls actually are. It's like, "why do I have to make TWO rolls for ONE attack??" Many 5e rookies I've run for have regularly forgotten to make attack rolls, just rolling damage when their turn starts

I like the idea that the non-null let's your opponent do something being slightly shifted to, you failed you now decide what sort of opening you leave for your opponent. So agility becomes hampered and the opponent can use one of its abilities that utilizes that stat. Coupled with ways to reduce the options situationally for players could be really dramatic

This is BEEEG BRAIN, I gotta take some notes.

I like the way that many TTRPGs now have players be the only ones that roll, and the success of the monster is based on your failed roll. Many powered by the apocalypse systems use this mechanic.

Its interesting listening to you lot organically discovering Dungeon World : D Can't wait for the proper debut!

It seems like the more straight forward option would be for the defender to also be rolling dice. Then they're the ones to track their own defense with their defensive dice. Both parties roll simultaneously, count their successes (adding them would be cumbersome), and then you can have all sorts of results based on how many successes each side got. There'd always be a chance of an extreme failure (defender has way more successes than attacker) causing something like a riposte or counterattack. Then player growth could be measured by what sorts of dice and how many they roll for each activity. Abilities could impact which results on those dice were considered successful, and the interactions would always be dramatic, even when they result in a null-style standoff.

One of the main reasons I'm GMing less is because my health doesn't allow me to spin as many plates as before. This pause-play-pause might well have a great impact on that so I'm looking forward to keeping the flow going. (also why I lean to more narrative systems)