A Question Of Agency?

[Lanefan]

That's not what "fail-forward" is about, nor is "success-plus-complication" synonymous with "fail-forward," but this misconception has been explained to you ad nauseum by now. I'm not sure why this requires 10+ posters regularly correcting you on this through 10+ posts each on the matter in 50+ threads where this has come up. It's like if someone tells you that their name is "Jack," and you keep calling them "Bob." After what point are you being rude by continuing to call them "Bob" after they (and others) correct you that their name is "Jack"?

Success-plus-complication:

Player: "I try to leap the gap between buildings in hopes my pursuers can't follow" <roll shows s-with-c result>
GM: "Hmmm - you almost make it but fall a bit short: instead of landing on the building's roof you're dangling from its eaves. Your pursuers do not attempt the leap"

Fail-forward:

Player: "I try to leap the gap between buildings in hopes my pursuers can't follow" <roll shows fail result, GM opts for f-f>
GM: "Hmmm - you almost make it but fall a bit short: instead of landing on the building's roof you're dangling from its eaves. Your pursuers do not attempt the leap"

Please tell me how in the eyes of either the player or the PC this looks any different at all.

The point is that critical fumbles do not necessarily flow from the fiction or more about humor/humiliation. Some GMs try to be "fair" by rolling from a critical fumble table, but this may result in a consequence that is detached or disassociated from the preceding fiction.

I use a fumble table and yes, sometimes I have to tweak the results to suit the situation (e.g. if the result shows "damage to friend" and there's no allies within reach/range it's always changed to "damage to self" - it even says this on the table). No big deal.

It's fair if it's not your cup of tea, but I don't think that it's fair to say that PbtA is particularly concerned with a "hurry-up style of play," but, rather, it's emphasis is on a fiction-first style of play. It's more interested in what's the next state of the fiction. It's not interested in each and every granular swing of the sword. It's interested in how a scene plays out more on a more holistic and fluid level. It's interested in character choice in the fiction, i.e., "what do you do?", rather than the questions of skilled play in a tactical skirmish game. I don't think it's in a rush, but I think it is interested in maintaining forward momentum and pacing. PbtA can go tortoise: slow and steady, but constantly forwards.

OK. It certainly comes across as being in something of a rush, in that it's painted as eschewing the minutae (which can sometimes be the most interesting parts of the game, and-or can sometimes lead in or point to different directions play can go) in favour of jumping ahead.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Please tell me how in the eyes of either the player or the PC this looks any different at all.

You’ve described success with complication but you’re labeling it as both that and fail forward. But they are distinct things.

@Thomas Shey posted a pretty succinct description of fail forward just a few posts ago. You should check that out.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There are many levels of decisions. The GM may use illusionism on micro level decisions to help the players get where they wanted on the macro level. And the definition of illusionsim is not particularly clear; there was a long discussion earlier about the lying informant scenario and under what conditions it would have been illusionsim. I found that rather pointless.

To me, this is like say you can walk across the street but you could also drive to the airport, fly to a different city, then jump a train back, and take a cab from the station to the address across the street -- there's absolutely no need to use Illusionism if you're following along what the players want to do! Can you? Sure, I guess, but why are you Forcing your preferred outcomes just to go to where the players want to go? This line of argument makes no sense to me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Success-plus-complication:

Player: "I try to leap the gap between buildings in hopes my pursuers can't follow" <roll shows s-with-c result>
GM: "Hmmm - you almost make it but fall a bit short: instead of landing on the building's roof you're dangling from its eaves. Your pursuers do not attempt the leap"

Good!

Fail-forward:


Player: "I try to leap the gap between buildings in hopes my pursuers can't follow" <roll shows fail result, GM opts for f-f>
GM: "Hmmm - you almost make it but fall a bit short: instead of landing on the building's roof you're dangling from its eaves. Your pursuers do not attempt the leap"

Please tell me how in the eyes of either the player or the PC this looks any different at all.

It doesn't, but it's also not a failure. A failure would be to deny the intent of the action -- you balk at the edge and one of the guards grabs your arm -- THAT's failure. The forward part is that you're not fully nicked yet, and you still have things to do. Even if you are nicked, they don't kill you, you get tossed in the clink, and play continues. This is what fail forward means -- not that you get what you want but that the failure doesn't create a hard stop in the game.

 

[Lanefan]

What an odd conception of RPGing! I view the protagonism it affords as encouraging the heroic, where such is defined not only by skill with sword and spell (or whatever genre-appropriate stand ins) but by temerity, risk, and racing headlong into challenge, not "turtling." Of course, some of the aspects of Gygaxian skilled play do encourage the kind of non heroic gameplay you suggest.

How - if one is trying to inhabit one's character's mind and think as it thinks - is having a functional sense of self-preservation the least bit odd?

I mean hell, I'm a gonzo enough player to often send my PCs into risks that no sane person would take - and, sadly, my way-higher-than-all-our-other-players death count shows it. I prefer a high-risk high-reward type of game.

That said, I don't generally play to be heroic, and almost never play characters whose overall goal is to become a hero. Even as a kid I got bored with the hero always winning; this is why I found Game of Thrones to be so wonderful: other than Sansa and arguably Jon Snow there really are no heroes. Even the in-theory-good people end up doing evil things at some point.

Any heroism my characters might achieve is in most cases purely a side effect.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

How - if one is trying to inhabit one's character's mind and think as it thinks - is having a functional sense of self-preservation the least bit odd?

Not all players default to actor stance, and not all games encourage actor stance as the default mode of play.

 

[Lanefan]

Is there some reason there can’t be hills to the north?

If the GM decides there are hills to the north, is he making them appear out of thin air?

If that decision is made on the spot, yes; and IMO this is more or less just as bad.

Had the hills to the north been pre-established and had the players been told of their existence during session 0's setting outline (e.g. by being shown a rough map of the area their PCs were in; as unless the PCs are being dropped in from another world they'd in theory already know this stuff) then in-play decisions can be based off that:

"The map shows there's hills a couple of miles north but the shortest distance to any solid ground appear to be southeast; and there might be an 'island' not far to our west where we could hole up for the night. Which way we wanna go, guys?" (all this of course ignoring questions as to how and why these poor sods got here in the first place)

Do you allow survival checks or the like when PCs are in the wilderness? Can they find shelter or water or food sources by making a wilderness or nature skill check? Are they conjuring these things out of thin air? Does the GM need to have this level of detail determined ahead of time?

Specific detail, no. Terrain type, climate, etc. in order to establish what might be available (and therefore the odds of finding anything), yes.

I agree with you that (a) is possible. Conversely, I think it’s just as likely that dividing actions up into multiple micro-actions would be frustrating for many. It seems this is just a manner of preference.

But (b) I’m not so sure about. I’m sure we can come up with examples where there are eight rolls with an associated turn, and so there are many possible combinations of outcomes. But I think in most cases, a system that has success, failure, and then some kind of partial success or success with consequence is going to give you the same spread of outcomes.

This might largely depend on the creativity and imagination of the GM. Let's say there's a set-up as noted above where someone is leaping from building to building with three discrete goals: cover the distance, land safely, and be quiet about it. If each of those is treated separately as a binary pass-fail that gives a total of 8 possible outcomes: S-S-S, S-S-F, S-F-S, S-F-F, F-S-S, F-S-F, F-F-S, and F-F-F.

Is the average GM likely to consider or even think of all 8 when adjudicating a blanket roll for the jump? I know I wouldn't.

 

[Lanefan]

Not all players default to actor stance, and not all games encourage actor stance as the default mode of play.

Fine, but IMO anything that calls itself a role-playing game should and does default to this, in that the main conceit and foundation of the whole thing is that you're playing the role of a character - which is exactly analagous to playing the role of a character when on a stage, only without a pre-written script.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If that decision is made on the spot, yes; and IMO this is more or less just as bad.

Had the hills to the north been pre-established and had the players been told of their existence during session 0's setting outline (e.g. by being shown a rough map of the area their PCs were in; as unless the PCs are being dropped in from another world they'd in theory already know this stuff) then in-play decisions can be based off that:

"The map shows there's hills a couple of miles north but the shortest distance to any solid ground appear to be southeast; and there might be an 'island' not far to our west where we could hole up for the night. Which way we wanna go, guys?" (all this of course ignoring questions as to how and why these poor sods got here in the first place)

Specific detail, no. Terrain type, climate, etc. in order to establish what might be available (and therefore the odds of finding anything), yes.

This might largely depend on the creativity and imagination of the GM. Let's say there's a set-up as noted above where someone is leaping from building to building with three discrete goals: cover the distance, land safely, and be quiet about it. If each of those is treated separately as a binary pass-fail that gives a total of 8 possible outcomes: S-S-S, S-S-F, S-F-S, S-F-F, F-S-S, F-S-F, F-F-S, and F-F-F.

Is the average GM likely to consider or even think of all 8 when adjudicating a blanket roll for the jump? I know I wouldn't.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. If I'm starting a game where there's a swamp and hills to the north, I'm going to ask why we're here -- we could have picked the space station instead of this dingy world of boring swamps and hills!

Snark aside, your complaint is that the players didn't get a choice where to start, but this is true in your version as well, just in your version the start is much more detailed and the action starts with putting the question to the players what they want to do with the detail or with an opening plot hook to kickstart the action. Starting in the swamp is a microcosm of this, not a different thing -- the scale is much reduced and the action more immediate. Both actually decided before play where play will happen -- in one the players listen to an exposition dump and then choose, in the other they cede the choice of where to start to the GM but gain the ability to be the ones generating the exposition in return.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If that decision is made on the spot, yes; and IMO this is more or less just as bad.

Why is it bad?

Had the hills to the north been pre-established and had the players been told of their existence during session 0's setting outline (e.g. by being shown a rough map of the area their PCs were in; as unless the PCs are being dropped in from another world they'd in theory already know this stuff) then in-play decisions can be based off that:

Actually I don’t think anything in this example requires that the GM has determined these things ahead of play.

Specific detail, no. Terrain type, climate, etc. in order to establish what might be available (and therefore the odds of finding anything), yes.

So an oasis in the desert? Would that be a result that a player could craft from thin air by making a roll? Or would it have to be on the GM’s map already?

And what if the GM has “Oasis” on his list of Random Desert Encounters? Is that okay?

This might largely depend on the creativity and imagination of the GM. Let's say there's a set-up as noted above where someone is leaping from building to building with three discrete goals: cover the distance, land safely, and be quiet about it. If each of those is treated separately as a binary pass-fail that gives a total of 8 possible outcomes: S-S-S, S-S-F, S-F-S, S-F-F, F-S-S, F-S-F, F-F-S, and F-F-F.

Is the average GM likely to consider or even think of all 8 when adjudicating a blanket roll for the jump? I know I wouldn't.

I don’t think most of those matter, really. I don’t think the rolls are being made simultaneously, right? So a F on the first roll pretty much means it’s F on landing safely and quietly, right?

Any of the mixed results you’ve offered above that may actually apply can be summed up by success with complication.

There’s simply no need for multiple rolls.