Complications! Serendipity! Action resolution twists

An envelope gets tugged out of your hand by the wind. You kick your desk and slosh coffee everywhere. You bump into a friend in an unexpected place. A bird lands on your shoulder. The pen runs out of ink when you try to sign.

Because of how our own world works, we expect fictional worlds to be full of lots of little chance things which individually happen rarely. Pieces of serendipity. Unwanted side effects. Unexpected interruptions. Unforeseen complications.

Characters in the fictive world of a tabletop game should expect to encounter little surprises here and there. Not all the time; perhaps not as much as they do in the real world, because of the focus on exciting impactful play — but enough for verisimilitude.

Twisting outcomes ad hoc

TTRPGs often have rules for very consequential rare outcomes (critical hits, spell mishaps, fumbles, etc). But (especially in rules-light games) it is often down to the referee to come up with any smaller "twists": the complications and bits of serendipity we expect to happen not-too-infrequently when someone attempts to do something.

There are two problems with having the referee add twists to action outcomes on the spur of the moment.

1. The imagination is a resource. Thinking requires time and effort, a referee has a lot of mental overhead, and adding twists to action resolution begins with remembering to actually do it. Even an experienced and confident ref likes to have tools at their disposal to reduce mental effort.
2. If it's not a formal procedure, it can feel arbitrary. If the referee just tells a player "your sword hilt catches in the reins of the knight's horse as it gallops past and is ripped away, pinwheeling across the battlefield" it may feel unfair, even punishing. Why them? Why now? Why misfortune instead of fortune? This naturally leads to the ref only adding complications in low-risk environments, which is less interesting.

So here's an approach you can bolt on to any game to add more twists.

 

A procedure for twists

I was reading some older blog posts about (1) spark tables (Bastionland), (2) GM intrusions in Numenera (Alexandrian), and (3) the habit of rolling for complications (Necropraxis), and they got me thinking. We can put together some simple tools for adding twists.

The design goal is to create a procedure that is

• quick, simple, and useful to a referee,
• neither too game-specific nor too vague,
• open-ended and flexible. 

We just need a few dice tables and a basic rule for rolling on them. 

Here's the simple procedure I came up with:

1️⃣ The referee (or designer) should decide on the mechanical trigger for adding a twist to an action outcome. This will be system-dependent, e.g., "when the margin of success or failure is 10 or more", or "when a 01-03 or 98-00 is rolled on percentage dice", "when rolling with (dis)advantage", or "when anyone spends a luck point".

2️⃣ Ideally it's something that players and referee alike can notice, so that it gets remembered, and eventually comes to be expected.

3️⃣ Now if this trigger applies during action resolution, the referee rolls 1d10 twice and consults the following dice tables, picking whichever of the two outcomes is more plausible for the context. Reroll if absolutely necessary.

(If there's no appropriate trigger for your system, you might roll 1d12 before each action adjudication and give a positive twist on a 12 or a negative twist on a 1. Or if you want lots of serendipity/misfortune and fewer dice rolls, just extend the following dice tables to 1d20 size and roll a pair of d20s for every action adjudication, one for a positive twist and one for a negative twist, ignoring results higher than 10.)

 

Dice table #1: Combat-specific twists

In a fight, one side's boon is the other's bane. The table entries refer to a "combatant" who should either be the character acting, or the opponent they are focusing on, as appropriate for the trigger. (This should work even for games without symmetrical combat mechanics, with a reasonable choice of trigger.)

1. Exposed. Combatant is drawn out of position, surrounded, or put on bad footing.
2. Toppled. Combatant is knocked down.
3. Lost grip. Combatant drops their weapon, gets it stuck in something, or loses their grip.
4. Disoriented. Combatant is blinded, dazed, scared, or demoralised by a combat event.
5. Jostled. Combatant is trampled, grabbed, or knocked aside.
6. Extra injury. Combatant suffers an additional incidental wound.
7. Ally harmed. Combatant accidentally causes harm to (or disrupts) one of their allies.
8. Armour broken. Combatant's shield or a piece of body armour breaks, is removed, or is rendered useless.
9. Weapon breaks. Combatant's weapon is made useless: a blade breaks, string snaps, gun jams, etc.
10. Impeded. Combatant is tangled or otherwise hampered by terrain or their own armour.

 

Next we'll look at random tables for general actions. We can't expect there to be a zero-sum symmetry like there is in combat, so we'll need separate misfortune and benefit tables. Choose the appropriate one for the trigger.

(Depending on the trigger, negative twists might still occur for successful actions and positive twists for failures. I think this is a good thing.)

Dice table #2: General action twists (misfortune)

1. Incidental damage. Whatever the character is working on or with (a rope, lock, computer, tool, weapon, etc) is damaged.
2. Extra time. The action takes longer than expected (the character may choose to abandon the task early when this becomes clear).
3. Costly. The action will take more resources than expected (the character may choose to abandon the task instead when this becomes clear).
4. Loud or unimpressive. A mistake or coincidence causes the action to get everyone's attention. This may be laughable, socially objectionable, distracting, or dangerous.
5. Minor injury. The character suffers some small harm in the course of attempting the action.
6. Crudely done. The action is performed clumsily or its effect is crude and sloppy, in a way likely to have later repercussions.
7. Unwanted side effect. Attempting the action also causes a problem, likely related to the method used and the circumstances.
8. Hidden step. Attempting the action reveals a new challenge which must be overcome before the action can actually be completed. *
9. One shot. Attempting the action reveals circumstances which mean the task can't be tried again following this attempt. *
10. Tougher than it seems. Attempting the action reveals something about the situation which makes the task harder than anticipated. Adjust it for others and for future attempts. *

* Note the last three entries may necessitate changing the details of the world. This approach might not work for everyone.

Dice table #3: General action twists (benefit) 

1. Skill increase. The character performing the action learns something along the way. This may be as diegetic or game-mechanical as you please.
2. Mastery. The character can do this specific action again (in this same context) without any chance of failure.
3. Positive side-effect. Performing the action also causes an unexpected helpful outcome.
4. Good return. The action takes fewer resources than expected to accomplish, and/or yields more of some measurable outcome than it normally would.
5. Quick. The action takes half the time it normally would.
6. Quiet. The action is accomplished stealthily and subtly, or there's a distraction elsewhere that takes attention away from it.
7. Impressive. The character performs the action in a way that's inspirational, smooth, culturally appropriate, or garners public approval.
8. Stacking. The way this action changes the world makes it easier for allies or harder for foes to accomplish some related thing(s). *
9. Discovery. The character performing the action finds something (information or an object) when they attempt it. *
10. Easier than it seems. Attempting the action reveals something that makes the task easier than anticipated. Adjust it for others and for future attempts. *

* Again, the last three entries may require changing the details of the world. You'll need alternatives if you don't like that.

The benefits of table-based twists

There are three main benefits to this approach.

1. SALIENCE. The simple procedure means easy referee decisions. It reminds the ref of various outcomes that should be possible. And it's a quick way of selecting between side effects.
2. PLAUSIBILITY. The tables are fairly general. Rolling twice and picking the more plausible twist is easier than having to think of a particularly suitable possibility, but is quick and flexible.
3. PERMISSIVENESS. When a game system doesn't overtly empower the referee to intervene in small ways, adding a defined procedure feels less arbitrary. The one I've written up is neutral with regard to the player characters; in games where characters are more skilled than their opponents, it may even be a small advantage.

You no longer need as many specific rules for monsters, traps, etc, because it all works inside the established fiction of the world. Now if a monster is described as having a hard shell, whenever "Weapon breaks" is one of the rolled options you'll instinctively pick that one without thinking too hard about it.

Alternatively, you can hang stuff off the procedure to extend it.

• A cursed sword might always favour the "Ally harmed" twist when rolled as an option, and doubles the effect when it happens.
• A sticky jelly monster always permits "Lost grip" as a third option to choose between, so that more and more swords end up stuck inside it.

The procedure can be completely player-facing if you want. In story-telling games you could even make the choice of twist a collaborative decision.

You could also use the twist procedure to simplify rules-heavy games, turning their specialised action outcomes into simple table entries and then discarding their complex action resolution mechanics.

Finally, you could build your own tables to come up with task-specific results. If your game is mainly about tracking, you probably want a tracking-specific table of twists.

A potential drawback: Combat asymmetry

This will give you different ratios of good and bad side-effects depending on the number of combatants involved. If a dozen characters fight one giant, or fifteen minions fight one player character, there's a risk of the solo combatant being buffeted by constant 'bad luck' due to the sheer number of rolls the other side is making.

Ultimately this comes down to choice of trigger. Some possible adjustments: Only accept the first two twists that get rolled each round (for combat systems with initiative). Only take the biggest margin of success from each side (for combat systems where everything happens at once). Identify one-vs-many situations and change the trigger to benefit the one. Give boss monsters the power to ignore the first negative twist they would suffer each round.

And of course you can codify rule zero. The referee should simply reject a twist if none of the possibilities rolled seem suitable for the situation. That way a mob of gnomes can't keep knocking the giant over, making her drop her club, etc.

Finally

I should note that this procedure is untested, but I hope to give it a go at the table in the future. I'd love to hear if you have thoughts or feedback. Leave a comment or let me know on Bluesky or Mastodon!

 

The art in this post is by Gordy Higgins. Used with permission.