Failing Forward

[BryonD]

Then, I suspect that you were given a hard time because it really isn't specific to 4e (for reasons I noted, among others), and thus calling out as a 4e thing is illogical and not even-handed. Coupled with your stated dislike, it would likely have come across as unreasonable edition warring.

OK, We disagree.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You are "winning" a battle that is not being fought. All I'm saying is that *IS* an example of what I claimed and was told I was wrong for claiming.

And what's being pointed out is that there are two ways to read your claim. Either you've completely misunderstood 4e or you detest the way D&D has done things back to the days of Gygax and Arneson. (Or there's option C - that you are making a strawman).

I expose PCs to things they can't beat with swords or absorb with sufficient HP all the time. Lots of fun is had.

Indeed. This is true in 4E as well. The point is that you wouldn't expect them to fight such things. (And that pushes are far, far more common in 4e than in other editions).

 

[BryonD]

And what's being pointed out is that there are two ways to read your claim. Either you've completely misunderstood 4e or you detest the way D&D has done things back to the days of Gygax and Arneson. (Or there's option C - that you are making a strawman).

Or option D, which has been discussed and ignored forever.
I get accused of "edition warring" and baited with false arguments which can only be rebutted by rehashing edition wars.

You are missing the point. This was true for a lot of people throughout the 4E era and claims that opposition was simply ignorance and "hate" didn't go well for the proponents.

So be it.

Indeed. This is true in 4E as well. The point is that you wouldn't expect them to fight such things. (And that pushes are far, far more common in 4e than in other editions).

You said "You were putting the cart before horse. You wouldn't send first level PCs to 200 foot cliff land any more than you'd send them to the Demonweb Pits or to the lairs of elder dragons."

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?473785-Failing-Forward/page56#ixzz3xKZMYd30
Now you are saying that you WOULD send them there.

I honestly believe you WOULD. But it isn't my fault you said otherwise. The mechanics of 4E are built to favor the pure balance side and, IMO, in your obsessive tunnel vision to defend the 4E mechanical construct you vastly misrepresented yourself. But you are the one who did that.

 

[Imaro]

I'm getting a little confused by this side tangent... is the claim that scaling DC's have always been in D&D (which are not the same thing as EL or CR)?? Because that seems to be what @BryonD is talking about... I might be mis-remembering and I certainly haven't played every edition of D&D but for the ones I have played (outside of 4th) I don't remember this being the case...

Now advice along the lines of matching challenge to your PC's (which could vary vastly depending upon the skill level of players, rules used, etc ) was definitely a thing but a system set up with hard and fast numbers for actual scaling of non-combat challenges is not something I remember. But @Umbran and @Neonchameleon I admit I could be mistaken... were these present in other editions? And if so why was pg. 42 lauded as so innovative and great by 4e fans if that type of system has always been a part of D&D?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Or option D, which has been discussed and ignored forever.
I get accused of "edition warring" and baited with false arguments which can only be rebutted by rehashing edition wars.

Let me recap the course of events.

You decided to explicitly threadjack this thread. You decided to make this thread that had nothing to do with editions into an attack on an edition. You turned this thread into an edition war and are shocked, shocked that you get accused of edition warring. Not only could you not let something go within the thread (something I've been guilty of), you couldn't even leave another thread alone but instead had to embroil it in the edition wars.

You then not only decided to drag in a gratuitous slam on an edition, you made it a slam based on your own misunderstandings. Compounding dragging the edition war in with dragging standard anti-4e misrepresentations in.

If you genuinely don't want to be accused of edition warring forget you have ever heard of 4e. It's obvious you don't like it - and don't want to let other people do so.

You are missing the point. This was true for a lot of people throughout the 4E era and claims that opposition was simply ignorance and "hate" didn't go well for the proponents.

You were using your edition warring threadjack to present a standard edition warrior's PRATT. And it was based on ignorance.

You said "You were putting the cart before horse. You wouldn't send first level PCs to 200 foot cliff land any more than you'd send them to the Demonweb Pits or to the lairs of elder dragons."

Now you are saying that you WOULD send them there.

No. I'm saying that "I'd expose the PCs to things they couldn't beat with swords". I wouldn't send them to 200ft cliff land. But I would have them deal with active things they wouldn't kill.

With a 200ft cliff and 1st level PCs you have two basic possibilities - falling (instagib territory) and not (little damage). And you might lose stuff as a side effect. This is not terribly interesting - the cliff can barely be interacted with at all.

Things that can't be fought on the other hand that are sentient can frequently be negotiated with, tricked, hidden from, or even allied with. Which means they can produce much more interesting situations and taking swords off the table encourages the more interesting situations.

I honestly believe you WOULD. But it isn't my fault you said otherwise.

It is however your fault that you equate "things they can't beat with swords" to 200ft cliffs and thereby create a strawman.

The mechanics of 4E are built to favor the pure balance side

You're confusing mechanics with guidance. The mechanics of e.g. jump checks is almost exactly the same as that of 3.X. The world is objective and there is nothing saying the GM must follow the encounter balancing rules. Merely that that's where things normally work the best.

and, IMO, in your obsessive tunnel vision to defend the 4E mechanical construct you vastly misrepresented yourself. But you are the one who did that.

You have demonstrably vastly misrepresented me, and demonstrated that if there is tunnel vision about 4e on this thread it isn't mine.

But this long after the launch of 4e refuting the same old misrepresentations gets tiresome.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm getting a little confused by this side tangent... is the claim that scaling DC's have always been in D&D (which are not the same thing as EL or CR)?? Because that seems to be what @BryonD is talking about... I might be mis-remembering and I certainly haven't played every edition of D&D but for the ones I have played (outside of 4th) I don't remember this being the case...

Now advice along the lines of matching challenge to your PC's (which could vary vastly depending upon the skill level of players, rules used, etc ) was definitely a thing but a system set up with hard and fast numbers for actual scaling of non-combat challenges is not something I remember. But @Umbran and @Neonchameleon I admit I could be mistaken... were these present in other editions? And if so why was pg. 42 lauded as so innovative and great by 4e fans if that type of system has always been a part of D&D?

There are nowhere near as many hardcoded DCs in 4e as there are in 3.X - but that's because 3.X is at the extreme end of the scale (second only to GURPS IME). There are however a fair number of them. It's the same DC to jump the same hole, no matter what level the PCs are.

What skill challenges and page 42 both are is a useful Improv tool. When the PCs come up with something off the wall that you hadn't previously predicted page 42 will give you a number that will feel about right so you can get back to the business of running the game. I don't want to have to work out how hot this mix of saltpeter and oil actually burns or to have a trivial 1d6/round damage. I want a number that feels that it fits with the rest of the world and then to get back to running the game.

And when the PCs come up with a Patented PC Plan (of the sort that normally ends in fire and screaming) a skill challente will let you handle the mechanics of the entire plan using "Three strikes and you're out" as a rule of thumb, the PCs trying to hold their off the wall plan together, and the whole thing playing at a decent pace and with enough difficulty that they will have to work to succeed but probably can do so if they haven't overreached. Skill Challenges used on the fly are an excellent improv tool. (Skill challenges written down in a module are generally the equivalent of trying to fit someone else's improv dialogue into your improv).

 

[Imaro]

There are nowhere near as many hardcoded DCs in 4e as there are in 3.X - but that's because 3.X is at the extreme end of the scale (second only to GURPS IME). There are however a fair number of them. It's the same DC to jump the same hole, no matter what level the PCs are.

What skill challenges and page 42 both are is a useful Improv tool. When the PCs come up with something off the wall that you hadn't previously predicted page 42 will give you a number that will feel about right so you can get back to the business of running the game. I don't want to have to work out how hot this mix of saltpeter and oil actually burns or to have a trivial 1d6/round damage. I want a number that feels that it fits with the rest of the world and then to get back to running the game.

And when the PCs come up with a Patented PC Plan (of the sort that normally ends in fire and screaming) a skill challente will let you handle the mechanics of the entire plan using "Three strikes and you're out" as a rule of thumb, the PCs trying to hold their off the wall plan together, and the whole thing playing at a decent pace and with enough difficulty that they will have to work to succeed but probably can do so if they haven't overreached. Skill Challenges used on the fly are an excellent improv tool. (Skill challenges written down in a module are generally the equivalent of trying to fit someone else's improv dialogue into your improv).

You didn't answer my question... I didn't ask what pg. 42 or what SC's were (which by RAW use scaling DC's and were very much not presented as just improv tools but as a framework to run extended/complicated social and exploration encounters, irregardless of whether one was improvising or not). I asked if every edition (not just 3.x) of D&D uses scaling DC's (Which also encompasses SC's) which seemed to be what you were stating earlier in the thread. If not then 4e is different in it's approach.

 

[Umbran]

Now advice along the lines of matching challenge to your PC's (which could vary vastly depending upon the skill level of players, rules used, etc ) was definitely a thing but a system set up with hard and fast numbers for actual scaling of non-combat challenges is not something I remember.

The line of discussion I was engaged in was based, specifically on:

Within this 4e context, it is reasonable for 1st level PCs to fight goblins on the edge of a 20' cliff - though the GM should be factoring this into his/her overall intentions around the deadliness of the encounter - but it is probably not reasonable for the PCs to fight goblins on the edge of a 200' cliff, where any fall will almost certainly be deadly for a 1st level PC.

Repetition of the word "fight" makes it seem like a combat encounter thing to me.

But, if you want to talk about the approach to on-combat stuff....

Now, certainly, past editions didn't have hard and fast numbers for scaling of non-combat challenges - but that's a bit misleading, because "challenges" were not a thing until 3e. Non-combat skills, as we think of them today, didn't exist in 1e. Design philosophy of how to present a given type of challenge was not consistent - sometimes there'd be a saving throw, sometimes an ability check, sometimes a mechanic created specifically for that obstacle. Without a hard-and-fast mechanical design, you can't give solid guidelines on the use of mechanics, now can you? There were *overall* fewer recommendations on what to put in front of your players. Some will call that a feature, others call it a lack of understanding of good design principles present in the time.

So, saying "their approach was different" based on presence or absence of specific mechanics is not telling. The real question is, did earlier games scale challenges to the level of the PCs, whatever the specific mechanical implementation might be? Say you scaled down or removed the combat elements of an early published adventure designed for 15th level characters - could a 1st level character get through? I think the general answer is no, they couldn't. The lock that the 15th level thief as intended to pick couldn't be managed by a 1st level thief. The poison trap intended for a high-level character would impose a major negative modifier on the saving throw, and would have impacts such that it would stop low level character in their tracks, and so on. Whether or not the books explicitly gave you guidelines, the *intent* that things should get tougher as you went up in levels was clearly present.

 

[pemerton]

is the claim that scaling DC's have always been in D&D

This was discussed at great length in the Why does 5e SUCK? thread, which you posted in.

AD&D has very few DCs - you could treat location/detection checks in that way if you want, and loyalty/reaction checks - but they are mostly level-independent. Thief skill and saving throw chances of success increase with level. The closest thing I can think of to 4e-style level scaling is the use of magic item and DEX bonuses to give the drow in the D-series ACs that are actually a challenge to high-level PCs. (The fact that the drow items auto-disintegrate is an additional marker that their game function is not to be magic item treasure, but rather to make the ACs of the enemies meaningful.)

3E has DCs, but the scaling rules for skill DCs are based on in-fiction descriptors ("very well made lock", "steep cliff with overhangs", etc) rather than correlated with level. Save DCs are more obviously level-correlated.

4e gives tables that explicitly correlate DCs to levels, which - as was discussed at length in that thread - some GMs find makes life easier when it comes to adventure and encounter design in a system where PC capabilities scale extensively. (The trigger for the whole discussion was the comment by one poster that the lack of such advice or tables in 5e is a reason why it "sucks", as that lack makes it harder for the GM to assign DCs in a manner that will generate desired success rates - the more profitable outcome of that post was some discussion of the way in which "bounded accuracy" works and the extent to which it succeeds in making the issue a non-issue.)

Some posters in the thread asserted that level-scaling in 4e means that the DC for the very same ingame phenomenon may vary based on level, but I have never actually heard of a 4e GM running the game that way, and nothing in the rulebooks suggests that the game is intended to be run that way.

Here is a re-post of post 1261 in that thread:

I'm thrilled that you have come around.
Again, back when 4E was in print you, and Hussar, and many other highly PRAISED this innovation of mathematically purity and were highly critical of me and others for promoting the approach you have described here.

You described in detail how it was the duty of the DM to always make sure that the SAME WALL was harder to climb if and when the party came back later, the lock would always be better, etc, etc. You made it clear that this applied to anything and everything.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] can speak for himself, but as far as I'm concerned this is absolute nonsense. Of course you have no quotes, because I never said it.

It is possible that I said that, if the PCs return to the same lock or wall having gained levels then it would be more interesting for the game if the DC was higher, but that change in DC would not be divorced from the fiction - you make the wall harder to climb by narrating bad weather; you make the lock harder to pick by narrating bad lighting; etc. It's obvious that DCs and fiction correlate. (Though there can be looseness of fit - I have a lengthy post not very far upthread discussing this with [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION].)

To relink to a thread I've already linked to upthreadWhat do you think I was doing three years ago when the paragon characters in my game encountered (and defeated) a hobgoblin phalanx? I was changing the fiction so as to support the assignment of DCs in a way that would generate a mechanically, and hence narratively, satisfying experience (the "hence" is the result of the fact that 4e's mechanics are aimed at ensuring dramatically pleasing pacing when used in accordance with the DMG guidelines).

The "level-appropriate" hobgobling being a single soldier at 5th level, and being a phalanx at 15th level, is precisely an instance of the fiction changing as the DCs change.

I've been told on these boards (sometimes by the very same people) as well as in meatspace that the sliding DCs tied to PC level (and the entirety of "the math works") was a revolutionary breakthrough that made 3E a backwards, obsolete system.
But, abracadabra, now its just a matter of perspective.

I'm glad to hear from 4E fans that reverting to 3E style turns out to not be going backwards.

I feel that your tendency to frame every discussion as a contest, or as a point for vindication in respect of some past slight, is not helping clear analysis.

In this particular case, you seem to be confusing two completely different things: fiction whose mechanical specification is only loosely pinned down prior to the PCs encountering it, which then enable the GM to set the DCs at something level-appropriate (drawing upon the system's support for doing so); and fiction which remains constant from the ingame perspective yet changes its mechanical DC. The second thing is the thing that all the 4e posters in this thread are agreed is nonsensical.

Thus, when people talk about "sliding DCs" being something helpful, they are talking about things from the point of view of GMing, just as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] did some hundreds of posts upthread when he triggered this discussion about DCs.

The point is that if I, as a GM, want to introduce an element into the shared fiction that will be a challenge for the PCs my players are playing (and hence a challenge for my players), it is useful for the system (i) to tell me what to set the DC at, and (ii) to be robust and reliable enough that what the system tells me is probably true.

4e satisfies (i) in the ways I've described in this post: it has a DC-by-level chart, a list of monsters and traps/hazards arranged by level, etc. It mostly satisfies (ii), although there are some break points (eg the Sage of Ages, which gets a +6 to all knowledge skills, definitely pushes the system limits - as I've learned from experience).

This is what is meant by the maths works. It has nothing at all to do with the very same lock, in the very same circumstances, having a different DC depending on the level the PCs happen to be. It has nothing to do with whether or not the ingame "reality" is mutable in the face of the PCs.

Of course, if you think of the ingame "reality" as already being authored prior to any particular player turning up to the table with any particular PC, then you might think that the only way to implement level-appropriate DCs is to make the reality mutable. But that is not the only way to approach the GMing task - which takes us back to [MENTION=29013]bert1000[/MENTION]'s sand-box/scene-framing contrast.

I'm sure there are some 3E/PF GMs out there somewhere who have run scene-framing 3E/PF, though I don't think the system is very well suited to it in part because it mostly lacks (i), and where it does have (i) - eg the CR system - it tends to rather weak on (ii).

Burning Wheel uses scene-framing although it lacks (i) also (and hence (ii) doesn't even come into play), but BW has many other mechanical devices to support scene-framing play within the context of "objective" DCs that 3E, and prior versions of D&D, lack.

You (BryonD) to the best of my knowledge do not make actual play posts, and so my sense of how you run your game is primarily conjecture based on more general comments you make about techniques, systems etc. I nevertheless believe that my sense of how you run your game is relatively accurate. I think you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the introduction of elements into the shared fiction (eg relatively little contribution of such material from the players, either via PC-build or via action resolution) and that you use a relatively high degree of GM control over the general direction of the game (eg in general my sense is that it is you, not the players, who decides who the "BBEG" will be - and this is fairly closely linked to the issue of content-introduction). I also think that you use a fair bit of GM control over action resolution, especially outside combat, in order to keep the game moving.

I would summarise the above as the sort of play emphasised and encouraged by the 2nd ed AD&D core rulebooks.

It is completely undisputed that 4e is not a system aimed at that sort of play - it encourages greater player authority over both content-introduction, over PC goals and (via transparent mecanics) over the outcome of action resolution. It favours scene-framing over "plot arcs". It works best when the fiction with which the players are not directly engaged, via their PCs, is treated in a rather loose way without being mechanically pinned down (as [MENTION=20998]tyrlaan[/MENTION] described not far upthread). In some posts from early 2011 I described this a "just in time" GMing. (You were quoted in these posts, so may have read them already.)

Not pinning down the mechanics of the fiction until the players engage with it via their PCs has nothing in common with your posited "the DC changes to level with no corresponding change in fiction, however. What it does mean is a departure from a certain sort of approach to world-building that you would probably not enjoy making.

Those last few paragraphs actually make some points about GMing techniques and mechanical support for them that are relevant to thinking about how "fail forward"-style games work, and how they differ from games in which the fiction, and its mechanical expression, is all pre-authored by the GM.

advice along the lines of matching challenge to your PC's (which could vary vastly depending upon the skill level of players, rules used, etc ) was definitely a thing but a system set up with hard and fast numbers for actual scaling of non-combat challenges is not something I remember.

See above for the discussion of out-of-combat. Within combat scaling of opponents was mostly in terms of hit points able to be taken, hit points of damage delivered, and magical effects that could be inflicted. As the D-series shows, though, Gygax was aware that scaling ACs was an important tool that could raise some tricky issues. (3E didn't really solve this problem for NPCs, who are notorious for dropping too much magical loot because it is necessary to get there numbers into some sort of balance, but doesn't disintegrate like Gygax's drow loot. For non-NPCs it invented the "natural armour class" bonus, something completely spurious in my view and ungrounded in any robust fictional sense - eg what does it mean to say that a great red dragon has "natural armour" granting a bonus more than twice as good as is provided by the very best magical plate armour?)

I think story should be left as story and skills left as skills. Mixing them causes disconnects for a lot of people.

I don't think I understand this point. "Story" in an RPG is primarily a series of events resulting from the resolution of players' action declarations for their PCs. And those action declarations are resolved via checks.

The reason for tying these results to skill checks is that the player, by investing resources in the skill check (PC build, bonuses at the time, etc), can increase the chances of getting what s/he (and his/her PC) wants and avoiding what is not wanted.

I find that players will invest those resources anyway, because they want to be good at those skills and increase their chances of success at what the skills really do.

In my experience, if investing resources in succeeding at checks has little or no effect on the direction of the "story" - ie does not tend to increase the likelihood of the player (and his/her PC) getting what s/he wants, then the players get frustrated.

This has certainly been my experience in campaigns and gaming groups where heavy GM control, typically taking the form of imposing a pre-written plot, is the norm. In D&D a particular form that this takes is building PCs who very heavily emphasise combat capability, because even the most railroad-y D&D GMs tend to use the combat resolution rules, which means that building combat capable PCs is one way building PCs who will be able to shape the campaign (admittedly in a rather limited sort of way ie by killing things) via deployment of the action resolution mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

I've never seen a description of process-sim RPGs that didn't make me think "This person actually wants the sort of play lampooned in Order of the Stick" where the entire physics and social model for the world is thin enough to slip into a hardback book.

I think that's a little harsh. I've GMed a lot of Rolemaster, and have more than passing experience with RQ and its cousins (Stormbringer etc) and Classic Traveller.

These systems have their challenges, as I'm the first to admit, but also their elegant beauty. (Especially RQ.) They're not intended to be OOtS-style lampoons, and I think at their best are not. (I've seen many argue for OOtS-lampoon-style 3E, especially when it comes to hit points, but the classic process-sim games avoid many of the mechanical elements, especially D&D-style level-based scaling, that underpin the OOtS's jokes.)

I've been playing PBTA games recently (far simpler than Burning Wheel) - and Fail Forward is so baked into those rules it doesn't need calling out at all.

BW is in many respects quite baroque, although - like 4e - its core engine is quite simple.

I think Dan Davenport got BW right in the tagline to his RPG.net review of it:

If you've ever wanted to combine the powerful emotions and epic grandeur of Lord of the Rings with the brutally detailed combat of RuneQuest, then boy, do I have the game for you!​

He closes the review with a similar remark:

If you want Tolkien-style fantasy with hyper-detailed combat that emulates the implied brutality at Helm’s Deep while leaving room for individual heroes to survive and excel, you really can’t do better.​

I'd add that I also think it's not bad for swords-and-sorcery. It can model practically every ripple of your barbarian's might thews, while preserving the aggressive protagonism that is at the heart of REH's Conan stories.