Failing Forward

[Aenghus]

What connection to the game world? You have just informed everyone that any part of the world that your character hasn't come into contact with may as well not exist. How on earth can there ever be a connection to such a world? What you are describing isn't a game world at all its a holodeck experience tailored especially for you.

A world, to feel real and meaningful, needs to exist beyond the perspective of a single individual.

Gameworlds are created, artificial, made up. The creators are responsible for making a setting that facilitates the goals of the game being aimed at over everything else. A common goal is worldbuilding as a pursuit in and of itself, which can create complex worlds suitable for exploration centred games. But worldbuilding isn't a goal of every game.

Players seek a variety of different things from games, and sometimes there are tradeoffs. Players who are looking to emphasise the direct pursuit of evolving personal plotlines that are reflected in the gameworld around them may do it at the cost of not exploring a pre-existing setting. Yes, it may make the world feel more like a tragedy, melodrama or soap opera, but this may be appropriate to the goals of a particular game.

A lot of players nowadays have more limited playing time and may need to play "faster" to achieve what they want to achieve in a particular campaign given their time limitations.

 

[pemerton]

A world, to feel real and meaningful, needs to exist beyond the perspective of a single individual.

What's your evidence for this?

Graham Greene is famous for (among other things) evoking the settings of his novels. But in novels like The Quiet American or The Human Factor, he does not indulge in setting for its own sake. It's part of the context for establishing the dramatic situation of the characters.

 

[pemerton]

I'm curious [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] ... why is it when discussing your playstyle it is always best case scenario with a GM who perfectly exemplifies the mentality to avoid a railroad and follow all play advice but when you discuss pre-authored campaigns they must be worse case scenario and run by a terrible DM who railroads his players?

This question comes from left-field.

The examples of GMing in the post you quoted were from real life - my own BW game. It's flattering that you regard them as best-case. From my point of view, they are more like best-effort. They exemplify how I try to run my game.

As for pre-authoring: inherent in pre-authoring is that fictional content and constraints and consequences are established outside the context of play. That's the point of that technique. Various posters upthread (certainly [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], but he is not the only one) have talked about the importance, in this style, of the players learning about the setting eg via knowledge checks, divination spells, scouting, etc. That may or may not amount to railroading, depending on (i) how it is handled by the GM, and (ii) what the players' expectations are about how the game will unfold. But it is mostly different from what I am looking for in RPGing.

Emotional connection is important to us as well. It's just not everything.

Which is, perhaps, a key difference.

Upthread, for instance, you've talked about preferring to use FR because then your players know what you're talking about when you mention a Purple Dragon Knight. That suggests to me that shared enjoyment of a pre-authored fictional setting is part of your game that matters to you. That is something that is not a high priority for the playstyle and the RPGs which have self-consciously promoted "fail forward" as a technique.

Why is it not possible for you to form such a connection with an Ed Greenwood NPC? As far as I can see, they can have siblings that are PCs, be possessed, and so on. Very, very few of them are detailed to the point that all siblings are known.

Maybe I can, maybe I can't. It depends on details that we don't have in this discussion.

Another way of coming at the question is, "Why would I bother?"

I've mentioned upthread that, in my BW game, I use the GH maps and the high-level GH backstory (country/region names, the Suel and Baklun empires, etc). There are two reasons why.

First, they give a handy, easily-shared device for dealing with geography in the game. The middle of the GH map has everything needed for classic fantasy RPGing: desert, sea, forest, cities, towns, wild lands with orc raiders, elven and dwarven kingdoms, etc. The low-level details can be filled in as needed as part of play.

Second, the high-level backstory gives the same sort of easily-shared flavour for bringing classic tropes into play. For instance, when the PCs were fighting orcs in the Bright Desert, the player of the mage PC is able to say "Suel tribesmen are thick as fleas on dogs in this desert - I Circle some up!" The Ancient Suel become a label for a trope, that provides colour to the game.

There are parts of GH that push against this - for instance, the idea that the setting's vikings (Frost, Ice and Snow Barbarians) and martial artist monks (the Scarlet Brotherhood) are descended from the Ancient Suel; and the idea that the Ancient Suel are pale, almost albino. I've always ignored these elements of GH lore, and continue to do so in my BW game.

If Ed Greenwood had got in before Gygax to give me a map with some vikings in the north and a trope-filled area like central GH, I'd happily use it. As it happens, though, I got GH first.

But at least in my experience, when someone talks about playing a game in FR, they are meaning more than just that they use a map and the high-level tropes.

I saw this just yesterday, in a thread on the Old D&D editions board about using other modules with module B10. Some people were advising that certain other modules are a good fit with B10 because they integrate the backstory of B10 with other elements of the "Know World" (Mystara) eg Specularum, Nithia, the Hutakaans etc. That's exactly the sort of prioritising of pre-authred setting that I don't enjoy. But obviously, to those posters, it is quite important.

**************

Here is an extract from my first post in this thread:

As I understand it (from designers like Luke Crane, Ron Edwards, Robin Laws and Jonathan Tweet), "fail forward" is a technique for (i) ensuring the game has a story-like progression without (ii) GM railroading.

The basic idea is that, when a player fails a roll/check, instead of the GM narrating that no progress is made, the GM narrates an adverse but still dynamic consequence happening. What the adverse consequence is should be made up on the spot, weaving in considerations that have been made relevant by the play of the game to that point, the various signals that the players have sent via the build and play of their PCs, etc.

<snip actual play examples>

Neonchameleon has linked "fail forward" to "no myth" or shared worldbuilding. Narrating failures in a "fail forward" way requires there to be a degree of fluidity in backstory, so that new events or agents or motivations can be introduced (eg like curses on a feather, or spirits in the mountain stream) to keep things moving forward. If all of the GM's "secret backstory" is meant to have been determined in advance, and a principle goal of play is for the players to uncover that secret backstory, then "fail forward" probably isn't going to be a useful technique.

If a GM or a group thinks that s/he can achieve story-like progression without railroading and while using GM pre-authored backstory as an important input into action resolution, go for it! Personally I have my doubts: examples that have been given in this thread seem to me to reinforce to the extent that there is a large amount of GM pre-authoring that then informs action resolution by setting constraints and possibilities, the more the game will move away from story-like progression with a high degree of player agency in respect of that story, and towards exploration/discovery.

Not far upthread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said that "those limits you talk about aren't really limiting. If I don't like them I can find a way to leave the world and go somewhere else." That's exploration-oriented play (find a way to . . . go somewhere else). And [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], in discussing player-responsive sandbox design, said that "if the character decides to go in a different direction whether motivation/goal wise, exploration wise, or even theme-wise... either in-game flags or out of game discussion should signal this and that will be factored into the sand box at a later time". It's not clear to me what exactly a later time means, but taken at face value it seems to imply a deferral (to some later time) of character drama to exploration of the sandbox that the GM has already prepared. Conjectured examples of waterholes being fouled independently of action resolution outcomes look the same to me - prioritising exploration over character-driven (and player-driven) drama.

That doesn't seem to me to be painting anyone into any sort of worst-case scenario. It just seems to be noting that there are different approaches to RPGing, which give different priorities to exploration of the setting, vs story-like progression focused on the characters as their players are presenting them right here and now.

 

[Manbearcat]

I agree with both these posts. If you want the focus of the game to be on exploring the setting, then pre-authoring makes sense. So does adjudicating action resolution by reference to secret backstory.

But if the focus of the game is meant to be on the protagonism of the PCs (and their players), establishing and pursuing their dramatic needs, then pre-authored fiction can become a stumbling block - a hassle, as TwoSix puts it. The point of setting, in that sort of play, is to serve as a backdrop and context within which the character's dramas unfold.

What I've tried to convey in my most recent posts is to disabuse the notion of GM bias in systems that have as their GMing centerpiece to "push play towards conflict." Say I'm running Dogs in the Vineyard and one of my player's Dogs has a Trait of "I hate the sins of unfaithfulness and promiscuity most of all" and a Relationship of "My big brother is my hero". The player characters are meting out justice in one town or another. In the course of play, we * discover that the basement of a tannery doubles as a brothel. Well that is bad enough, right? The PC mentioned above finds a familiar, well-worn, ten gallon hat sitting on an end-table in the basement's foyer as he hears sounds from the interior indicating that a working lady is...well, hard at work. Now we've got some real meat on that bone.

That is my job. That is no more my bias than it is a first grade teacher's bias to include handwriting and reading in their "course work." The system directs me to do this precisely, tells me why, and shows me how.

The more proficient I become at it, the better the table results.

* all of us; prepping a town involves nothing more than some key people and something wrong - typically an outbreak of sin, a gang, corruption, or maybe supernatural evil - which plug into PC build flags and the general theme of the game.

 

[pemerton]

What I've tried to convey in my most recent posts is to disabuse the notion of GM bias in systems that have as their GMing centerpiece to "push play towards conflict."

<snip>

That is my job. That is no more my bias than it is a first grade teacher's bias to include handwriting and reading in their "course work." The system directs me to do this precisely, tells me why, and shows me how.

Also relevant to this is my quote not too far upthread from the BW rulebook.

This is why I am a bit puzzled by the "Misty Lake" example being put forward by [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - where is this Misty Lake coming from as an element in the GM's narration of failed checks?

 

[Aenghus]

What I've tried to convey in my most recent posts is to disabuse the notion of GM bias in systems that have as their GMing centerpiece to "push play towards conflict." Say I'm running Dogs in the Vineyard and one of my player's Dogs has a Trait of "I hate the sins of unfaithfulness and promiscuity most of all" and a Relationship of "My big brother is my hero". The player characters are meting out justice in one town or another. In the course of play, we * discover that the basement of a tannery doubles as a brothel. Well that is bad enough, right? The PC mentioned above finds a familiar, well-worn, ten gallon hat sitting on an end-table in the basement's foyer as he hears sounds from the interior indicating that a working lady is...well, hard at work. Now we've got some real meat on that bone.

That is my job. That is no more my bias than it is a first grade teacher's bias to include handwriting and reading in their "course work." The system directs me to do this precisely, tells me why, and shows me how.

The more proficient I become at it, the better the table results.

* all of us; prepping a town involves nothing more than some key people and something wrong - typically an outbreak of sin, a gang, corruption, or maybe supernatural evil - which plug into PC build flags and the general theme of the game.

However, running a particular game well, following all the guidelines, still doesn't guarantee that all the players will like the result. Clear communication and acquiring prior well-informed buy-in massively improves the chances of a good game for all but can't guarantee it. Still, tastes are subjective and players can end up deciding they don't actually like a particular game, maybe due to features inherent in the game, maybe due to stuff they happen to associate with the game.

Campaigns often experience some player churn at the very start as people figure out whether they like the actual game or not. Sometimes it's stuff external to the game, such as personality clashes or real life personal drama.

I do think a game being run should be run on it's own merits and played to it's strengths, not its weaknesses. A game about intense personal drama should up the dramatude for all it's worth. A game about daring exploration in a persistent world should have lots of fascinating and dangerous locales to explore, possibly with traces of previous intrepid explorers and tales of their exploits.

I do think it's worth trying to run a system as it's designers intended it to be run at least a few times to establish a baseline for expectations from that system, before attempting to fix or houserule it. This can be easier said than done, a bunch of RPGs don't explain their expected style of play very well, and in a lot of cases play style has been learned by osmosis, from the interpretations of previous referees, rather than what's actually laid down in the rulebooks.

 

[Manbearcat]

However, running a particular game well, following all the guidelines, still doesn't guarantee that all the players will like the result. Clear communication and acquiring prior well-informed buy-in massively improves the chances of a good game for all but can't guarantee it. Still, tastes are subjective and players can end up deciding they don't actually like a particular game, maybe due to features inherent in the game, maybe due to stuff they happen to associate with the game.

Campaigns often experience some player churn at the very start as people figure out whether they like the actual game or not. Sometimes it's stuff external to the game, such as personality clashes or real life personal drama.

+1

I do think a game being run should be run on it's own merits and played to it's strengths, not its weaknesses. A game about intense personal drama should up the dramatude for all it's worth. A game about daring exploration in a persistent world should have lots of fascinating and dangerous locales to explore, possibly with traces of previous intrepid explorers and tales of their exploits.

I do think it's worth trying to run a system as it's designers intended it to be run at least a few times to establish a baseline for expectations from that system, before attempting to fix or houserule it.

+2

This can be easier said than done, a bunch of RPGs don't explain their expected style of play very well...

Yup, very much so. Alternatively,

1) they go to some length in attempts to do so, yet what comes out of play bears frustratingly little resemblance to expectations due to problematic aspects of design

2) people bring their own hard-earned cognitive biases into their readings of a well-put together TTRPG and they deem it ill-conceived due to various widgets or play procedures not fitting their mental framework

...and in a lot of cases play style has been learned by osmosis, from the interpretations of previous referees, rather than what's actually laid down in the rulebooks.

And a final alternative due to this being so embedded into TTRPGing culture. The designers expect learned GM bias to bleed over into the reading and running of a system. They expect GMs to perceive system deficiencies and accordingly to paste over them with their own ideas. Therefore, they design around that premise and explicitly give them carte blanche to do so!

 

[Manbearcat]

Also relevant to this is my quote not too far upthread from the BW rulebook.

Very relevant. Perhaps even very, very (or maybe even very, very, very) relevant.

This is why I am a bit puzzled by the "Misty Lake" example being put forward by [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - where is this Misty Lake coming from as an element in the GM's narration of failed checks?

In a brief look at the exchange, it appears to be a go at showing various systems and techniques being vulnerable to GM bias. Again, however, the difference between GM bias and system bias is glaringly obvious when the whole of it is evaluated through the prism of precise and transparent directives (such as your BW Gold quote).

Is low resolution/malleable setting and the technique of fail forward vulnerable to GM bias (and the attendant application of force) if a system's design and its intent is opaque, waffling, dissonant, or outright silent on key issues relevant to "what this game is about" and what "running it as intended should look/feel like?"

Well, of course!

But (a) not all (or even most) TTRPGs have Calvinball embedded in their core (which is THE "vulnerable to lead-participant bias" facet of any game) and (b) some go to great (both in quantity and quality) lengths to remove it!

Finally, not all participants are apathetic about or complicit in their own railroading (via GM bias and system neutrality or outright support). But if you take apathetic/willing players and put them in a game with a GM bent on force and a system that is conducive to it (by its opacity, dissonance, silence on key issues, or explicit support of GM force)...well, the introduction of that noise proves nothing about the inherent vulnerability of the signal of fail forward and no/low myth setting to GM bias.

 

[Maxperson]

As for pre-authoring: inherent in pre-authoring is that fictional content and constraints and consequences are established outside the context of play. That's the point of that technique. Various posters upthread (certainly [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], but he is not the only one) have talked about the importance, in this style, of the players learning about the setting eg via knowledge checks, divination spells, scouting, etc. That may or may not amount to railroading, depending on (i) how it is handled by the GM, and (ii) what the players' expectations are about how the game will unfold. But it is mostly different from what I am looking for in RPGing.

There is no "may amount railroading" in the style at all. Period. Railroading only comes from bad DMs that railroad, and that's just as likely in your style as mine.

Upthread, for instance, you've talked about preferring to use FR because then your players know what you're talking about when you mention a Purple Dragon Knight. That suggests to me that shared enjoyment of a pre-authored fictional setting is part of your game that matters to you. That is something that is not a high priority for the playstyle and the RPGs which have self-consciously promoted "fail forward" as a technique.

Fail forward works as well in my style of gaming as it does in yours. I said pre-authoring adds depth, and it does. Depth is impossible without pre-authoring. Your style also relies on pre-authoring to provide depth. It's just that the players and DM pre-author things as the game progresses, rather than than both prior to game play and as the game progresses, as my style does. Fail forward has nothing to do with depth or pre-authoring.

Maybe I can, maybe I can't. It depends on details that we don't have in this discussion.

Another way of coming at the question is, "Why would I bother?"

And the answer is as obvious as the answer to, "Will the sun rise?" Since the answer is the same as when the question is applied to your style and NPCs, I'm surprised that you even asked the question.

I've mentioned upthread that, in my BW game, I use the GH maps and the high-level GH backstory (country/region names, the Suel and Baklun empires, etc). There are two reasons why.

First, they give a handy, easily-shared device for dealing with geography in the game. The middle of the GH map has everything needed for classic fantasy RPGing: desert, sea, forest, cities, towns, wild lands with orc raiders, elven and dwarven kingdoms, etc. The low-level details can be filled in as needed as part of play.

Second, the high-level backstory gives the same sort of easily-shared flavour for bringing classic tropes into play. For instance, when the PCs were fighting orcs in the Bright Desert, the player of the mage PC is able to say "Suel tribesmen are thick as fleas on dogs in this desert - I Circle some up!" The Ancient Suel become a label for a trope, that provides colour to the game.

There are parts of GH that push against this - for instance, the idea that the setting's vikings (Frost, Ice and Snow Barbarians) and martial artist monks (the Scarlet Brotherhood) are descended from the Ancient Suel; and the idea that the Ancient Suel are pale, almost albino. I've always ignored these elements of GH lore, and continue to do so in my BW game.

So you do use pre-authored material, and for the same reasons. I also ignore or change things I dislike about the pre-authored settings I use.

If Ed Greenwood had got in before Gygax to give me a map with some vikings in the north and a trope-filled area like central GH, I'd happily use it. As it happens, though, I got GH first.

But at least in my experience, when someone talks about playing a game in FR, they are meaning more than just that they use a map and the high-level tropes.

FR is whatever you make of it, like GH. How I use it has no bearing on how you use it and vise versa.

I saw this just yesterday, in a thread on the Old D&D editions board about using other modules with module B10. Some people were advising that certain other modules are a good fit with B10 because they integrate the backstory of B10 with other elements of the "Know World" (Mystara) eg Specularum, Nithia, the Hutakaans etc. That's exactly the sort of prioritising of pre-authred setting that I don't enjoy. But obviously, to those posters, it is quite important.

Sure, but I can easily throw B10 into GH, FR, Planescape, or any number of other settings and ignore those connections. Juse because some people use a tool in a certain manner, does not mean that you have to avoid the tool or use it in the same manner. Given your response above about GH, it seems that you don't have a problem with pre-authorship, but rather the level of pre-authorship.

If a GM or a group thinks that s/he can achieve story-like progression without railroading and while using GM pre-authored backstory as an important input into action resolution, go for it! Personally I have my doubts: examples that have been given in this thread seem to me to reinforce to the extent that there is a large amount of GM pre-authoring that then informs action resolution by setting constraints and possibilities, the more the game will move away from story-like progression with a high degree of player agency in respect of that story, and towards exploration/discovery.

And this is just as insulting now as it was then. It implies that my style contains railroading inherently and a DM has to go out of his way to avoid it, rather than the reality which is that like your style, railroading simply does not exist unless the DM puts it there.

The very few pre-authored constraints are no different than constraints the game places on character creation and upon game play. If you have a PC whose only possession is a longsword, are you going to allow him to use a mace that doesn't exist when fighting skeletons? If yes, why? If no, big bad railroading limitation based on pre-authoring!!!!! Except not. Limitations have inherent connections to railroading. Railroading goes beyond limitations and require DM desire in order for it to exist.

Not far upthread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said that "those limits you talk about aren't really limiting. If I don't like them I can find a way to leave the world and go somewhere else." That's exploration-oriented play (find a way to . . . go somewhere else).

Every setting limitation that exists in a pre-authored setting can also come up as a limitation in your style of game play. They just don't exist in advance. A limitation is a limitation, so I don't see why a limitation that comes up in game play is better than one that is pre-authored. Sheadunne's answer may have been self-centered as put forth, but at least it was honest. He's into your style because he just doesn't care about anyone or anything else beyond his character and what affects his character right then. There isn't a claim that a limitation is bad if pre-authored, but the same limitation is good if authored in the moment, even though that authored in the moment limitation becomes a pre-authored limitation the instant the moment is over.

 

[Maxperson]

Also relevant to this is my quote not too far upthread from the BW rulebook.

This is why I am a bit puzzled by the "Misty Lake" example being put forward by [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - where is this Misty Lake coming from as an element in the GM's narration of failed checks?

What we're trying to say is that DM bias (railroading) is just as likely in your style as ours. The DM could have decided that the familiar 10 gallon hat was there due to unbiased reasons, or he could have put it there because at the beginning he had the idea that the brother would turn out to be a fallen hero and this was just his way of sticking it into the story.

There is nothing about your style of play that leads it to be less railroad prone than my style. Both styles inherently assume no railroading, and both styles can be the victim of a railroading DM. It's exceedingly easy to railroad with both styles. If anything, I would argue that it's easier to railroad with your style due to there not being an pre-authored content to contradict the DM.