We learn more from failure...

The problem becomes, how do you define failure?

Imagine:
There's a big monster up front, all ramging around and stuff.
-The party is out of its sight and decides not to engage, just turn around and walk away.
--Is this failure? Is this success?

Imagine:
There's a big monster up front, all rampging around and stuff.
-The party decides to go kill it, because loot and stuff.
--The first attack hits...and the party finds out the monster has DR 10/--. Without obtaining any more information, the party runs away, the monster didn't even notice they were there!
---Is this success? Failure?

Imagine:
There's a big monster up front, all rampging around and stuff.
-The party decides to attack, because BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
--The party fights valiantly, but they're worn down (but not defeated) they decide to book it, leaving the monster alive.
---Is this success? Failure?

----
Beating the objective is an easy binary to establish. Did you kill the fire-breathing T-Rex? Yes? EXP! No? No EXP. Did you find the Holy Grail? Yes? EXP! No? No EXP.

Failure and "learning" are much more difficult gradiants to analyze. What did the party learn from their failure? Was that knowledge helpful to them? The party is likely to say "We learned a lot! It was very helpful!" if they knew such responses entitled them to more EXP. But what if the knowledge wasn't useful? What if it was but the party doesn't apply it? Or doesn't know how to apply it? Or it's usefulness is not apparent yet?

I do keep an eye on how fights go, how many spells/HP/daily ability uses a player has to use in order to beat an enemy and that's what I really use to gauge my XP rewards. I do give some partial XP for trying (usually in terms of 100 EXP per round), but it's minimal. If my players see something scary and just run away, they don't get anything for that.

I definitely learn more by running bad games than when I run great games.

*Deleted by user*

Nevvur said:

There's that old adage about learning more from failure than success. For those DMs who track XP instead of milestones, have you attempted to model this when awarding XP? If so, what did that look like at your table?

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Because when your character is dead they can gain levels all that much faster?

Who says this old adage is right to begin with - old does not make right.

Nevvur said:

There's that old adage about learning more from failure than success. For those DMs who track XP instead of milestones, have you attempted to model this when awarding XP? If so, what did that look like at your table?

Click to expand...

If the party fails in a D&D game, then they're most likely all dead, and incapable of further learning.

@ no one in particular

I might rephrase the supposition as we can learn something from most types of failures, potentially but not necessarily more than we would if we succeeded, but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

In discussion with my buddy, we examined using degrees of success and failure on ability checks to modify XP awards for obstacles that would normally award them, but it presented more problems than the alleged 'realism' was worth. That's the sort of stuff I was hoping to examine, if anyone else even tried.

Respectfully, any comments not oriented in that direction are of limited use to me. Not trying to guide the conversation, really, but you'll forgive me if I don't address those posts directly.

Nevvur said:

@ no one in particular

I might rephrase the supposition as we can learn something from most types of failures, potentially but not necessarily more than we would if we succeeded, but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

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I think you're probably right with somewhat wordier, but more precise statement.

Nevvur said:

In discussion with my buddy, we examined using degrees of success and failure on ability checks to modify XP awards for obstacles that would normally award them, but it presented more problems than the alleged 'realism' was worth. That's the sort of stuff I was hoping to examine, if anyone else even tried.

Click to expand...

I've seen a couple of less-mainstream games that tried to quantify participation by granting XP based on damage dealt and received, with the idea being that more powerful enemies would give and take more damage in order to defeat. As you might suspect, they tend to not work out well, as fights devolved into players going out of their way to take damage in lieu of finishing anyone off (as per Final Fantasy II).

Any system can be gamed, and rewarding failure just encourages players to fail.

There are practical difficulties in implementing such a system in a game like D&D. How do you guard against players deliberately seeking out overly-difficult, but not potentially fatal, tasks in order to farm failures? How do you deal with the opposite issue, of a party that does everything right, and stalls in XP progression as a result?