Failing Forward

Manbearcat said:

Over the course of the many decades I've run games, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the game needs:

1) A clear and focused vision/goal/premise (this includes genre)
2) PC build mechanics and a coherent rewards cycle for the players that aligns with their character's interests/motivations
3) Transparent, user-friendly (with respect to intuitiveness, table handling time, and mental overhead) resolution mechanics and a coherent and abundantly clear GMing approach/ethos that perpetuates the robust testing of 2 which in turn yields 1 as the inevitable output of play.

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This is interesting, because for me, now having 5 years of experience with it, Savage Worlds solidly checks all three boxes:

1. "Savage Worlds seeks to provide fast-paced, pulp action adventures, where the protagonists are cast as strong, capable, yet imperfect heroes. While the rules contain very few mechanics that give full narrative control to the players, mechanical choices in player build allow the PCs tight control over over their fictional positioning. The action focuses on heroics that could be categorized as 'real life plus', where heroes are certainly more capable than the average citizen, but still vulnerable."

2. "PCs have total flexibility to build PCs as they see fit through an open-ended, skill-based character design. Character choices, both combat and non-combat, have defined resolution mechanics to ensure PCs can contribute in a broad variety of areas and scene frames. Choosing to follow characters' designed strengths leads to positive feedback/reinforcement of their roles, while the system's focus on maintaining broad cross-area competencies allows everyone opportunity to contribute in nearly all cases."

3. "The fast, easy-to-grasp, largely intuitive resolution mechanics make it easy for players to map external metagame mechanics to in-character decisions. Playing to a character's defined strengths/role almost always leads to satisfying play. In the majority of cases, following the mechanics leads to results that accentuate the 'feel' put forward as the system's best traits. The mechanics are designed to dramatically mitigate encounter design prep, and adjusting encounters on the fly is ridiculously easy while remaining largely transparent to the players."

innerdude said:

is "fail forward" inherently antithetical to process sim?

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I think so - though [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] doesn't agree (maybe we have different dimensions of the technique in mind?).

What I have in mind is that "fail forward" requires adjudicating outcomes of action resolution, and extrapolating the fiction, by reference to dramatic necessity rather than ingame causal logic. Which tends to leave process sim behind.

Relating that to BW and granularity: I think "fail forward" can take process sim as an input, in framing action declarations. (BW does this; Marvel Heroic RP, by contrast, does so much less - eg many Distinctions, or Affiliation dice, don't have a causal logic behind their inclusion in the pool.)

It's when we look at outputs that we see the lack of process sim.

grendel111111 said:

I see your distinction between the two, but for me I like there to be less of a distinction between What the character does and what is authored at the table. As a player I want to "look through" the PC's eyes. I want to decide what to do based on what he or she would do, not based on what would make a "better story".

<snip>

As a player I like to have as similar perspective as my character as is possible.

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Nowhere in the actual play examples I've given is the player deciding what his/her PC does other than by looking through the PC's eyes. In the mace example, the PC last saw the mace in the tower, when it had to be abandoned to the onrushing orcs. Now, 14 years later, the PC returns and wants to look for the mace.

Backstory authorship is primarily in the hands of the GM, not the players, in the examples I've given. (And in the Mt Pudding example also.)

From the players' point of view, though, how does it disrupt immersion to have the GM decide the relevant backstory as part of adjudicating action resolution? How is that not seeing the world through a PC's eyes?

grendel111111 said:

For me the check has a real concrete meaning (I know it doesn't for you). It means they are searching for something. The check determines if they find it or not. but that is where the 2 approaches differ. I explained my preference above, and I see why you like your preference. The reason it grinds against me is because the roll is being modified by characters abilities, to determine something totally unrelated to the character. Why does bill the bumbling idiot trying to search result in a 80% chance that the mace is on the other side to the continent, but if Omar the Observant looks there is 20% chance.
For me that is not a fair use of probability.
I would much rather know the DM was playing "fair", and knew where the mace was, and the search result told me how good my searching was.

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For me the check also has real concrete meaning - the PCs are searching for something, and the check determines if they find it or not.

The difference seems to be in the range of permitted explanations for why they don't find it - which in your approach includes that the GM decided it's not there even if the check is successful. (Is that "fair" or not? Opinions may differ.)

Here is a Paul Czege quote perhaps relevant to "fairness":



I doubt my games are as intense as Czege's, but the basic principle is the same: I am not a neutral arbiter. My job is to confront the PC (and thereby the player) with adversity. When the player succeeds at a check, the PC overcomes the adversity - there is no GM's secret backstory (like having already decided that the mace is not there) to thwart him/her. When the player fails, the ball is in my court - so of course the mace is in the hands of their enemy, who after all has had 14 leisurely years to loot the tower.

But as I said, this seems to me to be orthogonal to character immersion or seeing the gameworld through the PC's eyes.

grendel111111 said:

How does exploring the DM's world not have "dramatic momentum"?

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Some examples were given by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]. In the particular example, if as a GM I've decided that the mace is not there, then you can have the players devote a lot of table time + resources (eg fate points, treasure finding potions, whatever else) to looking for the mace, get an excellent roll, and still be told they don't find it.

grendel111111 said:

The adding of a jailer is an interesting question. I have no problem with the DM adding a jailer to what is happening, it is interesting and keeps the game moving forward. I don't see a point in adding a jailer only if you roll low on an ability or skill check. If it is interesting to add a jailer then add a jailer.

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The jailer is interesting only if the narrative context makes it so. In this example, it is the PC being trapped that makes the arrival of the jailer interesting. (I think that what I have just said is pretty consistent with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s reply on the same point.)

pemerton said:

I think so - though [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] doesn't agree (maybe we have different dimensions of the technique in mind?).

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The disagreement is very subtle due to precisely what you reference. We have different dimensions of the technique and its place in play priorities and overall play aesthetic in mind.

For instance, I entirely agree with the below:

pemerton said:

What I have in mind is that "fail forward" requires adjudicating outcomes of action resolution, and extrapolating the fiction, by reference to dramatic necessity rather than ingame causal logic. Which tends to leave process sim behind.

Relating that to BW and granularity: I think "fail forward" can take process sim as an input, in framing action declarations. (BW does this; Marvel Heroic RP, by contrast, does so much less - eg many Distinctions, or Affiliation dice, don't have a causal logic behind their inclusion in the pool.)

It's when we look at outputs that we see the lack of process sim.

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The play priorities of "fail forward" (and Narrativist play in general) do prioritize dramatic need and premise/theme as paramount. However, this doesn't render inevitable a play aesthetic of disjointed causal logic underpinning the world the PCs occupy (as some have contested in our past conversations of Schrodinger's Gorge, warlords and mommies kissing boo boos away, and here with Bob, his defying crevice-related danger, and his loss of his pudding divining rod). It is entirely logical for a failed navigation check to cause you to be unable to escape pursuit due to an encounter with a nigh-impassable gorge or to cause you to miss a crevice and nearly fall to your death (losing precious gear in the death defying effort instead). Rather than discovering nothing, it is entirely possible to discover something terribly regrettable when seeking out something precious (black arrows instead of a nickel-silver mace).

The agenda of process sim is all about the aesthetic of OODA Loop inhabitation (which is really the only thing that matters for process sim...it is a means to the end of that aesthetic) for immersion and agency. If, while playing a PC in your Burning Wheel game or your 4e game, I found out a horrible reality about my brother while seeking something precious relevant to him, or weather's turn for the worse dashed the fragile hopes of parley...I certainly would have neither my immersion nor agency budged by those prospects. Those things are entirely plausible outcomes of my intentions. Life worth living is about taking a series of "Geronimos" off cliffs (certainly the adventurer's life!) where reality oft intervenes in unexpected ways to dash hopes on rocks.

Now if you have internalized an RPG model whereby content generation in the shared imaginary space can solely be a process of discrete checks of extremely fine granularity and extremely narrow constraints (find handhold/foothold > climb 10 feet/fail to climb/fall > roll on a table if failed roll is odd to see if foothold fails > roll on another table to determine consequences of failed handhold > if gear then roll vs your inventory > make gear saving throw to retain or lose specified gear)...then you're going to have an issue with the aesthetic that "fail forward" engenders.

Hope that makes sense.

innerdude said:

This is interesting, because for me, now having 5 years of experience with it, Savage Worlds solidly checks all three boxes:

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One of my best pals adores the system and uses it exclusively for post-apoc and zombie horror, so I hear nothing but good things about it! I've never run it, but my familiarity with it puts me in no position to dispute either you or him!

pemerton said:

The jailer is interesting only if the narrative context makes it so. In this example, it is the PC being trapped that makes the arrival of the jailer interesting. (I think that what I have just said is pretty consistent with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s reply on the same point.)

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Narrative context really doesn't make it interesting, either. What makes it interesting or not are the subjective interpretations of the DM and the players. Your narrative context might make it interesting for you and 2 players, but not for the other 3 players at the table. A different narrative context might make it interested for one of those first 2 players, 2 of the second three, but not everyone else.

How the narrative is constructed also is important, since the players are aware of how you get to where you get and can be influenced by the method. For myself, if that guard shows up because I failed a check, I'm going to be bothered by that and I'm not going to find it interesting. However, if the guard shows up because I made a loud noise, I will find it interesting, because that makes sense.

Maxperson said:

How the narrative is constructed also is important, since the players are aware of how you get to where you get and can be influenced by the method. For myself, if that guard shows up because I failed a check, I'm going to be bothered by that and I'm not going to find it interesting. However, if the guard shows up because I made a loud noise, I will find it interesting, because that makes sense.

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I suggest reading @Nagol 's example again. The player failed the check, the character therefore failed to climb and during the attempt made a noise which attracted the dungeon denizen. All perfectly reasonable if you ask me. The check isn't actually a thing in the fictional world, as you know, so the failed check can't be something that causes a dungeon denizen to turn up. It turns up because the DM narrated that particular complication which reasonably followed in the fiction.

Manbearcat said:

One of my best pals adores the system and uses it exclusively for post-apoc and zombie horror, so I hear nothing but good things about it! I've never run it, but my familiarity with it puts me in no position to dispute either you or him!

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I brought it up because I found your criteria for a coherent system feedback loop interesting, and I wanted to see how my current system of choice held up against it. In looking at it, my high level of satisfaction with Savage Worlds as rule system seems to tie directly to what you posited. Savage naturally seems to "feed into" the premise it presents. Mechanical resolution naturally drives character positioning toward that premise. For both players and GM it's also intuitive and fast to adjudicate, and makes it very easy to build encounters.

And this has been a new experience relative to my "RPG Life" prior. By the time I finished up my last Pathfinder campaign in 2011, I was ready to move on to something else. I've never really liked Vancian casting to begin with, and the overall character building and encounter balancing aspects as a GM were just burdensome. I just finally realized that the RPG experience I really wanted wasn't going to come from D&D. Oh sure, it was an adequate substitute most of the time, and I could certainly work around a lot of it, but it wasn't every going to be really what I wanted.

Based on your criteria, the problem that 3.x and Pathfinder have (I can't really comment on 5e, having never played it) is that they're not attempting to emulate a genre, or provide a specific "experience" with mechanics that support a particular style, they're simply trying to replicate "D&D as its own genre." There's no real thought to whether "D&D as genre" is ITSELF coherent or particularly workable, but that's ultimately beside the point as far as the rules are concerned. (4e is the obvious outlier, because it had a very specific, codified, and structured "play experience" that its mechanics were specifically designed to implement.)

When I picked up Fantasy Craft shortly after my Pathfinder campaign ended, the difference in feel and texture in its gameplay compared to 3.x was obviously and vastly more coherent. Why? Because despite using the d20 chassis, Fantasy Craft wasn't trying to "be D&D," it was simply trying to be a great fantasy RPG that happened to bear some reasonable semblance to its genetic predecessors. Honestly I'm still a bit baffled why FC didn't become more popular among the "I don't really like 3.x, but don't want to move to 4e" crowd.

But back to the topic of fail forward:

@pemerton I discussed in a thread a few months ago comparing 4e's and Savage Worlds' approaches to character fictional positioning. One of the commonalities was that both 4e and Savage Worlds assume broad levels of character competency. And I think this adds a strong supporting dimension for a system that wants to support "fail forward."

Assumed broad competency makes it easier to tell players, "Hmmm, you've suffered a setback here, but other avenues appear to be open here, here, and here." When your characters feel competent to tackle problems across a broader swath of available options, it's easier as a GM to frame those options into the fiction. The problem with the 3.x fighter is that he's qualified to do exactly nothing that doesn't involve swinging a sword. When that's the case, telling the group that it will be easier to influence the local Bandit King to aid you in your cause against the local tyrant instead of simply invading the castle, the fighter's not got much to add.

Burning Wheel, interestingly, seems to take an opposite approach --- your characters are broadly not competent, but are expected to attempt to do things in which they are not competent because they are compelled to by their beliefs and instincts. In this case, I think "fail forward" is a downright necessary component.

And D&D 3.x is mechanically not structured to support either the Savage/4e style "fail forward," or Burning Wheel's.

One final thing ----

It may just be semantics, but I'm wondering if recasting this concept as "action forward" rather than "fail forward" works better. In my mind, "action forward" accounts for the "fail forward" use cases we've already discussed, but also tackles the added dimension of "pre-authoring" versus "mutable fiction."

For example, think of this use case ---- using an entirely process sim resolution system, a party uses their skills to sneak into a fortress, defeat several encounters, and overcome several deadly traps in hunt of Macguffin XYZ. Absolutely no use of fail forward techniques; the party has "succeeded" in every mechanical sense of the word.

Yet due to the GM's pre-authoring stance, the artifact isn't there, has never been there, and in fact has been taken out of the fortress by the BBEG years earlier. Or perhaps the party watches as the BBEG runs away with the artifact, and the party has no potentially successful course of action other than to chase after it once again.

In fact, didn't we just see a major meltdown from [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] group over something similar?

The "action forward" stance would change this --- of course the Macguffin is there, and there would be a valid in-fiction reason that the BBEG recently brought it back.

innerdude said:

One final thing ----

It may just be semantics, but I'm wondering if recasting this concept as "action forward" rather than "fail forward" works better. In my mind, "action forward" accounts for the "fail forward" use cases we've already discussed, but also tackles the added dimension of "pre-authoring" versus "mutable fiction."

For example, think of this use case ---- using an entirely process sim resolution system, a party uses their skills to sneak into a fortress, defeat several encounters, and overcome several deadly traps in hunt of Macguffin XYZ. Absolutely no use of fail forward techniques; the party has "succeeded" in every mechanical sense of the word.

Yet due to the GM's pre-authoring stance, the artifact isn't there, has never been there, and in fact has been taken out of the fortress by the BBEG years earlier. Or perhaps the party watches as the BBEG runs away with the artifact, and the party has no potentially successful course of action other than to chase after it once again.

In fact, didn't we just see a major meltdown from [MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] group over something similar?

The "action forward" stance would change this --- of course the Macguffin is there, and there would be a valid in-fiction reason that the BBEG recently brought it back.

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To my mind, Fail-forward is isolated from pre-authoring or mutable fiction. Quite often, my notes contain quick recommendations for what resources are available in the setting that I can plausibly use as part of a fail-forward.

The situation you describe doesn't sound like it has hit a wall and stopped so much as the current dramatic need has been frustrated and it is time for the group to figure how why or how and what their response is going to be so it probably wouldn't warrant a fail-forward.

If I did feel that need (the next steps/location is completely unknown/ or wrongly believed to be inaccessible to the group), I would probably take the form of additional potential information or more probably something to bring previously provided information back to the players' attention.

iserith said:

I suggest reading @Nagol 's example again. The player failed the check, the character therefore failed to climb and during the attempt made a noise which attracted the dungeon denizen. All perfectly reasonable if you ask me. The check isn't actually a thing in the fictional world, as you know, so the failed check can't be something that causes a dungeon denizen to turn up. It turns up because the DM narrated that particular complication which reasonably followed in the fiction.

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I think he might be saying that for him the outcome doesn't feel like it "reasonably" follows from the established fiction and/or the mechanics he's using to interface with said fiction. The problem I see is that whether something feels reasonable or not is a totally subjective call.