Failing Forward

[The Crimson Binome]

I've seen this type of mechanic referred to as the "yes, then" method. I find it to be a good improvisational skill for a host or gm to have as part of their toolbox but I haven't actually made mechanics that heavily relied on it.

It's similar, but distinct. "Yes, then" or "Yes, and" are primarily concerned with player ideas, and Fail Forward is primarily concerned with action resolution.

The former exists because you want players to feel creative in what they want to do, even if they have to invent new aspects of the world in order to do so. "Yes, there is a haberdasher in town, and it's currently on fire - better hop to it!"

The latter exists so you don't paint yourself into a corner, in situations where creativity isn't sufficient. "You can't find any secret passages in the cave, even though you have strong reason to believe that there is one, but you do see a big burly warrior who you might be able to interrogate."

Both ideas exist to encourage creativity and prevent railroading, and both require compromising the integrity of the story in order to do so, but they vary in the degree to which players can shape the outcome. Some people might be okay with the latter, in extreme circumstances to prevent everything grinding to a halt, even if the former is too distasteful to consider.

 

[Janx]

Nope, sorry to disappoint you.

Rescuing the kid and his mother were optional. It only even came up because one player decided to go snooping on his own.

The idea that FF is only useful in a Railroad is total crap.

Indeed. For one thing, who is to say that FF means that the door that was failed to be found or opened, actually gets found and opened.

As one of my examples, the party fails to find the door, goes home, and finds the BBEG there, destroying home.

Consider what way is North, when you are standing at the North Pole. What way is Forward, when you are standing at the North Pole. As it turns out, every direction is forward and South at the same time, yet any heading you take clearly leads you someplace different.

Thus, FF could be said to be used when the scene is stuck and no movement is happening. The party is at the North Pole. They can't seem to get going on their own. So turn that failure into a consequence and make something happen that gets them moving again.

In some ways, the Consequence is a means of resolving a Deus Ex Machina moment so it doesn't feel like "and then the GM solved the problem for us anyway" Instead, the player "paid" for their way out of the scene. Given that a player rolling 15+ all night is just coasting through the same content, it's not like he's earning his success either. It's just dice rolls, not quality of player.

Bear in mind, I also consider a GM putting a super-powerful monster in the encounter a form of rail roading by exclusion. If the party can't beat it in combat (and they know it), I as a GM have railroaded them out of fighting their way past it. Any time I hear a player tell how they beat a big dragon at 1st level, I smell bullcrap. The GM let them win. There is no way a high level monster can't win, unless the GM makes the monster make mistakes on purpose.

The result of my mindset is, that none of this crap matters. You are not testing your skill as a person or player. We are here to have fun, maybe think a little, solve a problem or too. Nobody is actually winning or losing.

 

[Janx]

It's similar, but distinct. "Yes, then" or "Yes, and" are primarily concerned with player ideas, and Fail Forward is primarily concerned with action resolution.

The former exists because you want players to feel creative in what they want to do, even if they have to invent new aspects of the world in order to do so. "Yes, there is a haberdasher in town, and it's currently on fire - better hop to it!"

The latter exists so you don't paint yourself into a corner, in situations where creativity isn't sufficient. "You can't find any secret passages in the cave, even though you have strong reason to believe that there is one, but you do see a big burly warrior who you might be able to interrogate."

Both ideas exist to encourage creativity and prevent railroading, and both require compromising the integrity of the story in order to do so, but they vary in the degree to which players can shape the outcome. Some people might be okay with the latter, in extreme circumstances to prevent everything grinding to a halt, even if the former is too distasteful to consider.

Nice explanations.

I would say, that you're only compromising the integrity of the story or game material if you have a rigid definition of that story/game material in the first place.

If as a GM, I have every shop and NPC defined on paper, then I suppose we have compromised the integrity if the town has no haberdashers (due to oversight, deliberately or random generator fluke) and I then change it so the shop on the corner is a hat shop.

This should only a problem if it is somehow a violation of my honor as a GM to change things during the game.

Who gives a rat's arse if I change something on my paper that you as player's can't see anyway?

Given that for another GM, he didn't write anything down, and is just making things up as they go, which means there's no stated content to be contradicting, because until he said it, nobody knew if that corner existed, let alone had a shop on it.

 

[JeffB]

Haven't read through the 9 pages of arguing, but wanted to say I *LOVE* it.

I do find a system with mechanics that encourage it ,like Dungeon World, helps alot. As does the player group. Certain player styles I can see it being a real problem. Luckily it's not an issue for me or my group.

 

[Jacob Marley]

[MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] wins the prize! Fail Forward is nothing new. People just didn't always have a clever term for it. Every competent GM uses fail forward in some way at some time. If you think that you don't then you likely are thinking of the term in a narrow and loaded manner.

The usefulness of naming and defining a concept like Fail Forward is that you can communicate more effectively about it. New GM's don't have to learn about these things through trial and error, and game designers can consider how they fit into systems involving task resolution and dramatic tension.

Jargon is only valuable if all participants in the conversation are aware of its meaning; jargon is a barrier to communication for those unaware of its meaning. I think most new GMs would be unaware of its meaning. Using the phrase "Fail Forward" with new GMs is more likely to hinder communication than aid it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This should only a problem if it is somehow a violation of my honor as a GM to change things during the game.

Who gives a rat's arse if I change something on my paper that you as player's can't see anyway?

Given that for another GM, he didn't write anything down, and is just making things up as they go, which means there's no stated content to be contradicting, because until he said it, nobody knew if that corner existed, let alone had a shop on it.

At least if you're playing a traditional RPG - D&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc - one of the highest responsibilities of the GM is to be fair. That means being a neutral arbiter of conflicts, but it also means not changing the world based on GM knowledge that the NPCs don't have.

Just as it isn't fair to block a player - "You want there to be a haberdasher, which means you must be up to something, so no there isn't a haberdasher," - it's equally not fair to intentionally contrive the world to enable the player - "You want there to be a haberdasher, which means you have something awesome in mind, so there's totally a haberdasher there for you." Those are both demonstrating bias, and it doesn't really matter whether it's working for or against the player, because either way is a violation of the GM's duty.

As a player, I might want there to be a haberdasher, but I don't want it to exist only because I want it to be there. That's inauthentic, and it's pandering, and I don't see any point in playing that game. Of course, the GM could lie and change the reality to block or enable my idea anyway (and it would be super easy, if nothing is written down), but that's why it's so important that the player can trust the GM to play fairly. Without trust, the whole game falls apart.

 

[Janx]

At least if you're playing a traditional RPG - D&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc - one of the highest responsibilities of the GM is to be fair. That means being a neutral arbiter of conflicts, but it also means not changing the world based on GM knowledge that the NPCs don't have.

Just as it isn't fair to block a player - "You want there to be a haberdasher, which means you must be up to something, so no there isn't a haberdasher," - it's equally not fair to intentionally contrive the world to enable the player - "You want there to be a haberdasher, which means you have something awesome in mind, so there's totally a haberdasher there for you." Those are both demonstrating bias, and it doesn't really matter whether it's working for or against the player, because either way is a violation of the GM's duty.

As a player, I might want there to be a haberdasher, but I don't want there to be a haberdasher only because I want it to be there. That's inauthentic, and it's pandering, and I don't see any point in playing that game. Of course, the GM could lie and change the reality to block or enable my idea anyway (and it would be super easy, if nothing it written down), but that's why it's so important that the player can trust the GM to play fairly. Without trust, the whole game falls apart.

I won't say that trust is a given, but if you lack trust in your GM, you have a problem larger than the scope of FF, rail roading, etc. You'd basically have a GM you can't/shouldn't play with.

Therefore, let's bound the discussion to a GM you like and trust. He's trying to be fair and you trust him to do his job within the style he runs his game.

In your hat shop example. You've given a "no the GM shouldn't let there be a hat shop" and a "yes he should let there be a hat shop" reason.

That's pretty much a road block. The GM needs to answer the question of "is there a hat shop" or not, so in the presence of two conflicting arguments of relatively equal merit, he still has to make a decision for which those reasons don't resolve it for him one way or the other.

If the GM has truly mapped the entire town, he can simply defer to the map. It's not his decision at all, other than the choice he made earlier during the map making process to put one in there or not. But then, that might have been an oversight, as he made a mistake and didn't think of hat shops as a possibility. So now we're second guessing his prior decision making skills, which might have been a random town generator that simply lacked the option for a hat shop, in which case, no town in his world has a hat shop, despite it being a reasonable possibility.

I would say this, from what I can tell online, [MENTION=2]Piratecat[/MENTION] is a famously excellent GM who improvises a lot. Thus the quote "You want there to be a haberdasher, which means you have something awesome in mind, so there's totally a haberdasher there for you." would not be a violation of his duty, because it is exactly what his players should expect from him to make his game excellent (for those who enjoy his style of game).*

Thus, a value judgement of "saying Yes to enable awesome is Wrong" as per your examples can be invalidated as being subjective, based on the kind of GM/game style being run.

I do think that "being fair" is generally valued across all players, so the argument for saying "no" with the intention to always block the players is generally a bad thing because it violates the fairness (and thus Trust) guideline.

So what's GM to do?

I suspect the guidance for a GM to the question of "Is there a haberdasher nearby" is to answer Maybe, or Yes in most cases.

Yes is for GMs who favor an Improv style where there rule in improv is to say "yes, and..."

The Maybe response is to systematize the answer. Either let the map decide, if you assert the map was fairly generated (allowed for the possibility of reasonable town contents like hat shops), or to roll a dice (50:50 chance for yes/no). and go with that. You'd be removing the GM as a human from the equation within reason for purposes of deciding the answer.

*I have never met or played with PirateCat, nor do I wish to put words in his mouth, but I have seen enough of his posts to know he seems to have an improvisational style and he is well regarded on EN World for his GMing skills, among other abilities. Hopefully my mention of him will drag him over here from the GumShoe thread to lend his wisdom to the discussion.

 

[Reinhart]

Jargon is only valuable if all participants in the conversation are aware of its meaning; jargon is a barrier to communication for those unaware of its meaning. I think most new GMs would be unaware of its meaning. Using the phrase "Fail Forward" with new GMs is more likely to hinder communication than aid it.

You'll get no disagreement from me on that point. The fact that the term Fail Forward is taken from business actually makes it all the more unfriendly for people to learn about it. Trying to google it will just bring up a combination of business management articles and occasionally rants from gamers about rail-roading. That's why I was joking earlier about how rather than teach people what Fail Forward really means, it's almost easier to just reinvent the concept under a new name.

 

[Manbearcat]

Fail Forward's presence in those player agency games doesn't exclude it from usage as a railroading tool. It could certainly facilitate keeping PCs on a particular, GM-envisioned path through particular conflicts in the plot.

Well, my point was that (a) its intent as a technique, (b) its proper execution by a proficient GM, and (c) its intersection with the rest of the machinery (overall table agenda, GMing principles, and resolution mechanics which also serve a low-prep, high-improv, "play to find out what happens" experience) of systems that typically leverage/incorporate work to create a gaming environment that is adversarial to metaplot and railroading.

Does it render either of them outright impossible? I'm not sure anything short the Jedi Mind Trick can 100 % protect against the prospects of railroading and/or turning players into metaplot/metasetting tourists. Especially so if the players are looking for passive consumption of a metaplot/metasetting (and therefore participants in their own railroaded experience!).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In your hat shop example. You've given a "no the GM shouldn't let there be a hat shop" and a "yes he should let there be a hat shop" reason.

That's pretty much a road block. The GM needs to answer the question of "is there a hat shop" or not, so in the presence of two conflicting arguments of relatively equal merit, he still has to make a decision for which those reasons don't resolve it for him one way or the other.

Generally speaking, no, I would not give a reason to support either side. I don't know the world nearly as well as the GM does, so I wouldn't be able to offer any insight more complex than that large cities tend to have a wide variety of shops. The GM is on their own to make that decision, based on everything they know about the world they've created.

I suspect the guidance for a GM to the question of "Is there a haberdasher nearby" is to answer Maybe, or Yes in most cases.

Unless it's a fairly large settlement, I would expect the answer to be No more often than it is Yes, but dice are always welcome where the GM hasn't determined everything in advance. It probably wouldn't be a 50/50 split, but if the GM estimates that there's a 20% chance of it being there, then I'm certainly in no place to argue with that.