Tilts are one of the most essential parts of gaming, period. Every sports game I can think of has one in some way, shape, or form, and almost all indie RPGs do as well. So what's a tilt? Well, to be honest, it's a rule that allows for human interference. It's like "tilting" the foosball table when the ball gets stuck (or in general, if you're being aggressive), giving someone a penalty shot for being injured due to someone else's action, or giving a punt as a last ditch effort to delay the inevitable. It breaks into the "normal" rules of the game and allows for exceptions and outright defiance of fate. It's the human element that we all need and crave when we enter a game. We have to know that, should fate screw us over, we have recourse to what we all think of as "fair".
RPGs are a special type of game: they're entirely relational. Most aren't a competition, and even the ones that are are still much more relational than other types of games and require a degree of cooperation and camaraderie that's unique. In fact, if you asked me what I thought the point and purpose of an RPG was, I'd tell you that it was to have fun creating a good story. Since it's an intensely relational activity, it follows that the tilt of an RPG needs to be more relational, more human, and much more frequently invoked than in a sports game.
I'm going to give some examples of tilts from RPGs: The Burning Wheel Family, Misspent Youth, and Dungeon World.
The Burning Wheel family is filled with three types of tilts: fate, persona, and deeds points, all of which allow for the player to muck with the dice to a varying degree so the dice pool doesn't feel unfair. The BWFGs link getting these points to role-playing and driving the story, so your ability to tell the dice to screw off is directly related to your ability to play the game. It's an awesome cycle that will always be very near and dear to my cold, black, hate-filled GM heart.
Misspent Youth's tilts are the character traits themselves: if you're going to lose a conflict you can sell out a youthful trait and make it darker and worse so you can win. This completely shakes the game up and allows the story to go in a different direction. By fighting fate you make yourself just a little bit more like the darkness that you're fighting, which is incredibly appropriate to the game.
Dungeon World (and the rest of the World games) are a bit of a trick question. No, there is no real tilt like how there is in the first two games...wait... no... there is no tilt. At all. There is no fate defying stuff in Dungeon World (or the other games, if I understand correctly), and that game is incredibly fun, so much so that, whenever I get to reviewing it, it'll get a full recommendation from me! Wait, but I said... crap.
So what do I do? Dungeon World falls outside my model, doesn't it? It doesn't have a tilt and is fun. How the heck does that work? I guess I've got a few options. I could try and make Dungeon World fit my little philosophical system, start hating on Dungeon World, ignore it, throw out the system I've devised for y'all to read, or just admit that nothing's perfect. That maybe it doesn't really matter, long as you have fun with the product.
And ultimately that's what I guess I should take away from writing this little article: no system of thought about RPGs, religion, life, or anything's fool-proof, so you just gotta admit that you can't see the whole thing and move on. Tilts are part of RPGs, to be sure, and some of my favorite games have them. And some of my least favorite games do not. That doesn't mean that only good RPGs have tilts. Again, see the World games. So go out there, find a game you like, and have fun with it! You hopefully learned something from my aggressive rambling and it'll help you find a game that you like. Find it and have fun.
...but that doesn't mean I won't judge you if you like F.A.T.A.L. A lot. Like, really a lot. Seriously, if you like F.A.T.A.L. there's something wrong with you.
Another potshot at my own article: tilts are not ubiquitous amongst indie games. They happen more often than in mainstream games, yes, but they're hardly at saturation level.
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