I am not convinced this is true. At least, it is no more or less true of pre-authoring than improvisational authoring.
To remind folks, I was using "character-driven" in the literary sense - being about the internal and emotional conflicts of the character (this contrasted wit plot-driven - being focused on the physical actions, or player-driven, in which it is mostly about what the player wants to do.
Fail-forward, however, is primarily about pacing of game actions, not about setting the themes of play for a session. It seems to me that if you are using fail forward to *change* the emotional themes under consideration, you're stepping rather beyond what the technique was really intended to do. I am not sure why you aren't at least pushing this to the scene-framing level.
When I think "fail forward", I think foremost of Burning Wheel. In 13th Age and his new intro to the 20th anniversary edition of Over the Edge, Tweet attributes the self-conscious terminology and exposition of "fail forward" to Luke Crane (BW) and Ron Edwards. I don't know Sorcerer very well, which is probably why for me it is Luke Crane and BW that is foremost in my mind on "fail forward".
The way that Luke Crane explains "fail forward" in the BW rules is that, in narrating failure, the GM should focus on
intent rather than
task. That is to say, the player (and PC) intent for the declared action is not realised, and something undesired arises instead. Whether or not this is due to a failed
task then becomes a secondary consideration - the GM is encouraged to narrate as seems likely to drive the game forward, given what has come before and given the dramatic orientation of the PC (which, in BW, is partly expressed through Beliefs and Instincts as PC build elements).
This is why I think there is a non-accidental connection between "fail forward" as a technique and character-driven story. The GM, in focusing on
intent to narrate failure, is focusing on what the character wanted, and why s/he didn't get it. And does so in a way that engaged with the dramatic orientation of that PC, so as to continue to provoke action declarations which will be resolved and generate unfolding consequences using the same methodology.
What I mean by that is that an equally riveting story will happen whether you pre-author or not.
This can be true. Some railroads can be good stories. But for me, in RPGing, the riveting quality of the story is not all that matters. Authorship - including how authorship and influence over authorship is distributed among players and GM - also matters to me.
I decide outcome based on players declared actions (success, failure, unsure). To decide this I know the NPC's temperament, what they want from life, etc. Sometimes that means what the players want to do is impossible (I try to persuade the king to commit suicide, I look for a mace (that isn't there)).
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If the player says their character goes into his bedroom to get look for his lost keys, then that is what he is doing. He is trying to discover if his keys are in his room. I lost my keys the other day (my flatmate had borrowed them to get something from the car and put them in the kitchen instead of my room where I thought I had left them) I searched the hell out of my room. I did not find my keys (I did find $1000 that had fallen behind my bed though). They was a successful search, I established that the keys were not there.
Real life, though, isn't primarily about trying to influence the content of a shared fiction.
Whereas, for me at least, that's what playing an RPG involves. So the action declaration "I look for the . . ." isn't (primarily) about seeking information or evidence of some already-given truth. It's about participating in the shared creation of a fiction about a character looking for such-and-such.
If something is
really impossible, then (in my preferred approach) no action declaration takes place. I just tell the player that it's not possible for his/her PC to do that thing.
Isn't this unavoidable? It's just a question of where the scale & granularity falls... as you yourself said in an earlier post... there are no Dark Elves in the dessert, thus any skill check to search for a Dark Elf in the dessert will fail regardless of resources or rolls.
In that context I was talking about my narrations of failure.
A player can have his/her PC hope to meet a Dark Elf in the desert, though. In BW that is via the Circles mechanic; in 4e it would most likely be a Streetwise check. There are rules for setting the DC, and the unlikeliness of the location is part of those rules. But it can be done: the PCs in my game were rescued from the ocean because the player of the elven princess made a successful Circles check to meet an elven sea-captain (in the fiction, the sea-captain new that the princess was missing, and was searching for her at sea).
I am curious about something... could a PC search for that mace anywhere in your campaign world and if the check was successful find it? If so... I can see why some would feel this style has a greater chance for incoherent outcomes... if not then you have already decided certain failures are pre-authored.
As with Circles, Scavenging has DCs associated with it. In my session on Sunday the mage PC used his Second Sight to look for magic items in the chambers of an (allegedly) evil priest. We discussed the situation a bit, and then I set a DC (including setting the stakes - because using Second Sight makes it harder for the character to operate on the mundane physical plane, I made it clear that a failed check would mean that the priest was able to get the drop on the PC and knock him out with a blow from behind). The roll was made, and succeeded, and the character found a magic item (that I had to make up on the spot, given I had given this no prior thought).
If they go to city x then there will be thing happening in the city independent of the characters that they can choose to or not to get involved with. But if you have a thief in the party you will make sure the thieves guild is a big part of the city. If they are a cleric of a church then either their church will be in the city or a rival church. The characters interests will be more fully fleshed out in these area. Their family member might be in danger, or need help. Just because this doesn't happen in the way that you want it to doesn't mean that characters interests aren't being taken into account.
As you describe this, this sounds like fairly orthodox scene-framing: the GM frames the PC into some sort of conflict or challenge where the stakes of the situation are something in which the player (and the PC, as built/played by the player) are emotionally/thematically invested.
Whether the GM comes up with the idea for the scene during the session, in the shower a week before the session, or from reading a module, is (in my view) not a big deal. Actually
framing the scene in the course of play can require some deftness - eg if it comes from nowhere, relative to the preceding fiction, it can look pretty heavy-handed. And if the players are on a roll in respect of X, a GM might want to be careful about suddenly veering the focus of play onto Y.
The big question for me, in the context of this thread, is: once the GM frames the scene, how is its resolution handled? In my experience (play experience, observing other groups playing, experience of reading others' account of their games) plenty of GMs have a pre-authored destination for the scene, at least in a rough-and-ready sense. (Eg the cleric PC will join with his/her fellow brethren in defending the temple against attack, and the defenders will win that fight). If the choices of the player(s), or the roll of the dice, send things in a different direction then things become unstuck.
Related to this: I believe that many GMs hold back from framing scenes that are as "full-blooded" as they might be, precisely because they don't want to run the risk of things unfolding in a way that departs too far from their pre-authored version of how the situation unfolds.
I personally prefer when not everything is so tightly connected to the PC's that it ends up looking like a bad soap opera, with all the co-incidences.
I would like to think that my game is good melodrama!
this risks the game devolving into, "everything is about them". As if every element of the Universe revolves around them and what makes the PCs tick. It is healthy, I think, to be presented with material that isn't chosen entirely based upon the PC's or player's desires.
Elaborating on my response to [MENTION=6803870]grendel111111[/MENTION]: my ambition for my game is to have a multi-person/team-based story that mixes physical adventure with a degree of emotional drama that is comparable to classic Marvel comics. My touchstone for this is Claremont X-Men, but of course compared to me Claremont is a genius.
Another model/inspiration for me is the heroic fantasy film of the sort exemplied by Excalibur, Hero, Crouching Tiger, Tai Chi Master, etc. LotR is also an influence here. REH Conan provides me with tropes, but no so much with drama/conflict/theme.
In these sorts of stories, everything that occurs matters somehow to the protagonists, or speaks to their dramatic situation. I'm sure I don't handle it as deftly in my game as these serious authors do, but I think these works show that a fictional work doesn't have to degenerate into bad soap opera despite the narrated events having a clear focus upon/orbit about certain key protagonists.
What I begin to see as distinctive in what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] are talking about is that it is the players that are expected to provide the Dramatic Needs. Their range of options in this respect is not limited to those placed on the table by the GM; they are bounded only by the Social Contract that surrounds play.
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This, I think, might be the nub of what the mustard-keen "fail forwardites" are expressing. I think it is not a panacea, personally.
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Nevertheless, I cannot but agree that the freedom of (self) expression given by the ability to set the Dramatic Need (and thus substantially determine the theme of the plot) is fundamentally different in play than any of the "provided Dramatic Need" alternatives that form the bulk of "mainstream roleplaying".
I'm not sure what it would be a panacea for! But it's something that I like in my game, and it differs from what you call "mainstream roleplaying".
But the players supplying dramatic need is not all I care about. Related to that is the ability of the players, by declaring actions for their PCs and then being successful in resolution of those actions, to
realise dramatic need. Hence my obsession with "secret backstory", which is essentially a method whereby the GM puts obstacles in the way of dramatic need that the players don't know about, and hence can be thwarted by despite their best efforts at declaring actions for their PCs that will realise their dramatic needs.
True, but it also adds depth to the scene that is not able to be there if everything is authored in the moment. A few limitations are also not a bad thing, especially when those limitations enhance a scene past where it could be without them being there.
This game is all about reasonable limitations adding to the game. You are limited in race choices. You are limited in class choices. You are limited in what abilities you get once you choose a class. All of those limitations enhance the game.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "depth" here, but personally I don't find that secret backstory that prevents success despite the player's declaration of an action and expenditure of resources does add much to the game.
Which brings us back to fail forward - narrating the backstory that led to failure
after the event introduces the fictional depth and context without (in advance) robbing the player of the power to contribute to the shared fiction.
Having a percentage chance to encounter something doesn't take it out of the hands of the players either... unless I forced the PC's to go into the area where this challenge has a chance to appear it was still their choices and actions that lead to the outcome where this roll takes place... correct? And if it's "secret backstory" that's only because the players have failed or chosen not to find out about the area they are currently traversing.
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unless you are forcing the players to take the actions that lead up to them being in the area (for a long enough time) for the chance that this encounter takes place... you're not replacing something the player can influence... you've let them influence themselves all the way into this situation. The only difference is that you'rs depends on one final (pre-set) roll and mine depends on a different roll.
This takes us back to the earlier discussion of what counts as choosing "blind" and relying on dumb luck, as opposed to what counts as
agency in my preferred (relatively strong) sense.
In a classic Gygax-style dungeon crawl, the players should have the capability to uncover the secret backstory. They still don't exercise full agency in my sense, because they don't establish the dramatic need, and they encounter obstacles that have been authored without any regard to dramatic need.
In a more contemporary style of play, I think that in practice most of the secret backstory is not available to the players. And even if it is, in my experience what arises is a playstyle very heavily focused on the players declaring actions for their PC that can give access to the secret backstory, which again pushes the focus of play away from dramatic need and onto exploration of the GM's pre-authored material.
That's not the sort of player agency that I prefer.
