On Failure, Death, and Danger

So I've begun pondering mechanics. There's a lot of things I want to deal with, but one in general is "how easy is it to die?"

One of the hardest parts of tabletop is the balance of success vs. failure. Let's take the classic opening  of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" as an example. Indy gets through a few traps, looses a few NPC's, tries to grab the golden head but doesn't put (at all) enough sand on there, and barely escapes a giant boulder. Sadly, he looses the head to his hated rival and Frenchman, Belloq.

Reviewing the scene, Indy fails...a lot. He steps on traps, almost dies way too many times on a tenured salary, and ends up loosing the MacGuffin he's out there to get in the first place. He should be a goner. However, since we know the movie is not titled  "Dr. Marcus Brody and the Incredible Amount of Clean-up, International Apologies and Work Finding a Substitute when a Professor Dies Mid-Semester Raiding Cultural Landmarks", we also know that Indy's not in any actual peril. Oh, it looks it, but we know. Plot Armor.

Of course, in a game, this is something of a challenge. What if Indy rolled badly and got shot by poisonous darts? What if he botches his athletics roll and has to choose between "smushed" and "trapped behind 800 pound boulder--roll to not starve"?? Sure, Harrison could roll up another character, but that's time wasted that could be used to play a game--a few minutes for some games, a full night for others...

In short, death is a terrible fail state for a game. If it's ok for Hollywood Blockbusters to wink and nod at the "ooo, the star could die at any moment!", then I'm ok with it too. So we do what Hollywood does--you only die if it makes a good story. In short, we're giving the power of life and death of a character over to said player.

Now, don't get me wrong--just because you can't die doesn't mean you can't fail.

Basically, the mechanics are doing "anti-Awesome points". FATE, WFRP, White Wolf's Willpower (to a degree) all have some kind of usable resource that says "this is how many times you can be awesome/cheat death/etc/" The mechanics I have right now say "you can always be awesome, no matter what the dice say--but that doesn't mean you'll win."

Hence, the Danger Pool.

Danger Pool will be a number from 0 ("no danger here!") to...however deep it needs to go. Every Scene will have a Pool with a starting number ("how much danger are we in now??") and a Loss Level. If the Pool hits that Loss number, than you've lost the scene--the bad guys get away, or Belloq grabs the idol, or...

If you fail a roll, you can always buy up successes by throwing points into the Danger Pool. If you roll really well, you can drop the Danger Pool. Or you can drop it by giving yourself consequences--equipment fails or gets dropped, you take a punishing wound, or in the worst case die dramatically (the not-quite titled "Noooooo!!!" rule). But you always need to keep sharp, because the Danger Pool will always increase as time passes--take too long fighting those goons and it doesn't matter how good you look doing it--the bad guy still wins.

Be deciding the victory and failure states of a scene, we set specific goals and drive the players (and characters) to do what they need to do, and give them a way to win die rolls and look as awesome as they want but still giving them the option to fail.

For me, this is a different way to look at games, and simulation in general. It's motivating me. Let me know what you think.