D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Pedantic]

Failing forward can absolutely be incorporated into D&D, though it's not typically done so.

The only 5e adventure that I've seen explicitly incorporate it is the spelljammer one Light of Xaryxis. Short of a TPK (which is actively discouraged) the group WILL get to the end eventually.

I'm personally not a fan of fail forward/success with cost models. In order to make them gameable, you'd need to specify all possible outcomes of modified success/failure before resolution. You can do this with negotiation, but that both slows down gameplay and limits the scope of play to one action at a time instead of letting players plan lines of play, which is a subtle limitation on player agency that goes unremarked. The usual goals for those systems tend to fall apart if you go all the way and specify all possible results in the text ahead of time, though I'd be curious to see a task resolution system that tried.

That aside though, I'm actually not sure that "fail forward" in D&D can serve the same purpose as it does in systems built around that from the outset. Those games usually require a much greater focus on the player providing their "intent" for a given action, instead of deploying a known machine in the rules. 5e is somewhat amenable to that, in that it doesn't really have a defined skill system, but that's more an accident than a design. Generally, it's taken more to mean "if you want the players to have information, don't make it inaccessible without a successful random roll first" which is probably good advice, but not quite the same thing.

 

[Oofta]

I'm personally not a fan of fail forward/success with cost models. In order to make them gameable, you'd need to specify all possible outcomes of modified success/failure before resolution. You can do this with negotiation, but that both slows down gameplay and limits the scope of play to one action at a time instead of letting players plan lines of play, which is a subtle limitation on player agency that goes unremarked. The usual goals for those systems tend to fall apart if you go all the way and specify all possible results in the text ahead of time, though I'd be curious to see a task resolution system that tried.

That aside though, I'm actually not sure that "fail forward" in D&D can serve the same purpose as it does in systems built around that from the outset. Those games usually require a much greater focus on the player providing their "intent" for a given action, instead of deploying a known machine in the rules. 5e is somewhat amenable to that, in that it doesn't really have a defined skill system, but that's more an accident than a design. Generally, it's taken more to mean "if you want the players to have information, don't make it inaccessible without a successful random roll first" which is probably good advice, but not quite the same thing.

Chapter 8 in the DMG has a section on Success at a Cost. It is very much a part of the game when DMs want to use it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because, and this is something else I've said, rules CAN'T help address it. Bad DM's are bad regardless of the rules. No game rule can cure that. You don't hamstring the myriad of average and good DMs for the few rare bad ones that won't stop anyway.

That there will always be examples of people that will ignore rules or break social contracts doesn't mean that those things are not helpful to boatloads of other people.

Rules absolutely can help people improve as GMs.

So you've answered my question (thanks for that!) but, sadly, it's the answer I kind of expected but didn't want to see: I can't ever truly ambush or even surprise the PCs - they always get a warning.

But, I'd guess the PCs can take steps to ambush their NPC foes and, if lucky, drop those foes before they even knew trouble was upon them. So how is that fair, in terms of in-fiction consistency?

I'd say it's fair in that the person who controls the NPCs is aware of everything in the game and at the table, and so has a distinct advantage over the players of the PCs. So to balance that out a bit, you don't spring gotchas on the players. It doesn't mean you can't surprise them. Have an assassin waiting for them, but let them make a perception check first... or cue the danger in some way. Let the players be active participants instead of passively having things happen to them.

Because you have a choice of what happens in the fiction. You can choose the circumstances of the events.

What happens on a failure, other than just not succeeding, is an issue I think is incompatible.

It's not. I've incorporated that into D&D when I run it. If I can't think of what would be bad on a failed roll, then I don't call for a roll.

To lean on the door example, if there's pressure of some sort, then a roll seems in order... whatever's causing the pressure... approaching guards, the watcher in the water, a spiked ceiling lowering... can manifest. If there's no pressure or the passage of time doesn't indicate some drawback of some sort, then I just let them open the door.

It works perfectly fine.

In what I've read of these books, in no way does Fan of the Characters come across as giving them easy wins, or ignoring the rules to do so. The bolded line is really the key one. I was a fan of Walter White as a character in Breaking Bad, but in no way did I want him to just get away with everything he was doing. I was a fan because I saw how he responded to a whole spread of a situations, including terrible ones, especially ones of his own making. Being a fan of them means giving them an exciting / interesting life, one filled with choices and problems to solve and unexpected tragedies and, to be certain, success as warranted and earned. I think equivocating it to Rule of Cool does short shrift to the sentiment as written.

This is very well said. Being a fan doesn't mean constantly softballing things. Breaking Bad is a good example. I think Stephen King novels are another... he's a fan of his characters. Doesn't mean that awful things don't happen to them, or that they'll always make it through alive and intact.

I personally find it easier to be harder as a GM in PbtA and similar games (Spire and Blades in the Dark come to mind). There's a clear procedure in place, and the structure of play is such that if there are negatives, it's very clear to all involved why. With D&D, things are so loose, that it's much more my decision to be harsh than it is a result of the dice or of play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That there will always be examples of people that will ignore rules or break social contracts doesn't mean that those things are not helpful to boatloads of other people.

Rules absolutely can help people improve as GMs.

My view on this, especially after working with other GMs with my own games, is every person is pretty unique and so having systems that provide more guidelines or rules are going to be good for some people, while others might find such rules constraining. I have definitely met GMs who struggle to run a game that doesn't place some kind of limits on them. GMing is difficult. And with RPGs on top of the difficulty of GMing there is the added strain of dealing with the social dynamics in play (and not every person is comfortable or natural enough when it comes to adapting ambiguous guidelines to a group of players). I think the key here is for there to be a range of games, some that explore greater constraints on the GM, some that are more open. And I also think the key is truth in marketing (whether it is literally a game company marketing or just a fellow gamer trying to persuade someone to play or run a system).

 

[Oofta]

That there will always be examples of people that will ignore rules or break social contracts doesn't mean that those things are not helpful to boatloads of other people.

Rules absolutely can help people improve as GMs.

According to you. Nobody has explained what rules to add to D&D that would make a bad DM better. Suggestions? Guidelines? Things we already have in the DMG just phrased differently? That we get. Actual rules? Not so much.

I'd say it's fair in that the person who controls the NPCs is aware of everything in the game and at the table, and so has a distinct advantage over the players of the PCs. So to balance that out a bit, you don't spring gotchas on the players. It doesn't mean you can't surprise them. Have an assassin waiting for them, but let them make a perception check first... or cue the danger in some way. Let the players be active participants instead of passively having things happen to them.

Because you have a choice of what happens in the fiction. You can choose the circumstances of the events.

In real life, just like in the game, I have no problem with surprises that I can do nothing about. Rocks fall everyone dies is not going to be fun, nor is setting up an encounter to guarantee a TPK because you "don't like talking" to your players. But again, rocks fall everyone dies being a bad idea is already covered by general advice in the DMG.

It's not. I've incorporated that into D&D when I run it. If I can't think of what would be bad on a failed roll, then I don't call for a roll.

To lean on the door example, if there's pressure of some sort, then a roll seems in order... whatever's causing the pressure... approaching guards, the watcher in the water, a spiked ceiling lowering... can manifest. If there's no pressure or the passage of time doesn't indicate some drawback of some sort, then I just let them open the door.

It works perfectly fine.

Sometimes a failure just means you don't achieve a goal. The idea that there must be some consequence to failure other than simply not achieving your goal is something anyone can do. You can do a lot of things. I just don't think it fits with the sort-of-simulation nature of D&D.

This is very well said. Being a fan doesn't mean constantly softballing things. Breaking Bad is a good example. I think Stephen King novels are another... he's a fan of his characters. Doesn't mean that awful things don't happen to them, or that they'll always make it through alive and intact.

I don't focus on characters. I focus on world building, setting up interesting options and possibility. Maybe 5% of my game is strictly character focused, probably less. Yet my players are quite happy with the game. My way is not the only way, but focusing primarily on character development also does not guarantee any better results.

I personally find it easier to be harder as a GM in PbtA and similar games (Spire and Blades in the Dark come to mind). There's a clear procedure in place, and the structure of play is such that if there are negatives, it's very clear to all involved why. With D&D, things are so loose, that it's much more my decision to be harsh than it is a result of the dice or of play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

These things are not necessarily in tension, and frankly shouldn't be in most designs. If you can really on a character wanting to achieve some goals and generally wanting to survive to do it, it's not particularly difficult to put the player's incentives in making the best tactical choices and the characters incentives to act in accord.

The easiest ways to break that symbiosis have a lot less to do with mechanical weight than with design direction. You need to restrict actions to a forward looking causal timescale, ensure decision and resolution map closely in time, and make sure PC abilities are diegetic and mostly intentional.

As long as the making between any given player and PC decision is strong enough, on the same timescale, and you've aligned their incentives, there is no tension there. Calculating chess moves is playing the character.

Well... It's not like I would reject this as absurd or anything. OTOH it's very limiting in terms of anything but fairly superficial characterization. Just think about the various opinions and attitudes of the posters here. They represent a complex mix of personality factors arising out of temperament, experience, etc. All modulated by the tone and history of our interactions.

Now, obviously RPGs tend to deal in existential matters and thus facts and exigence may be a bigger factor. Yet every military commander ever could tell you that the most important stuff is not practical, nor open to conscious control, but is instead intangible and very hard to qualify or quantify.

To capture that you need to go beyond 'chess'.

 

[Faolyn]

OK; that's fine for D&D. My question was around games where a hard move must be preceded by a soft move; at what point if ever does that soft move's statue of limitations run out, or put another way is there any limit on how long can pass between the soft move and the hard move?

Hard moves don't have to be preceded by soft moves, and soft moves don't have to lead into hard moves.

Soft moves are moves without immediate consequences. "You enter a room with statues and a fountain in it. What do you do?" or "As you sneak into the room, you spot the guards, but they're busy playing cards and don't seem to have noticed you." The PCs can then do something and the things you talked about--the statues, the fountains, the guards--aren't going to immediately affect them. They can ignore the statues or examine them; they can try to sneak past the guards or wait there until the guards leave.

Hard moves have an immediate consequence, especially one that puts the PC in harm's way. "You touch the statue and it springs to life, swinging its fists at you and knocking you back a few feet! Take 2-harm from its stony blow!" or "You sneak into the room and you spot the guards. They seem to be playing cards and don't seem to have noticed you--but then your slight movement seems to have caught the eyes of one of them, and he looks up and sees you!" The PCs can then try to fight or flee, or even try to talk the statue or guards down, but they can't ignore them.

The game Root has good examples of how any particular GM move could be either hard or soft. For one of them, "Make them an offer to get their way," the example soft move is for the mayor to say "I'm going to need a scapegoat; go plant this evidence on the captain of the guard. Then I can help you," while the hard move is for the mayor to say "I'm going to need a scapegoat and it's going to have to be you; nobody else will work for this. Go cause some problems and make sure that you're seen doing it. Then I can help you." In this case, there isn't an instant consequence for the players after the hard move is used, but if they want to get their way, then there will be danger aimed directly at them. With the soft move, the players will be slightly inconvenienced, since they have to do a thing before they get what they want, but they will be in very minimal danger--it would be easy for them to sneak into the captain's house when they're away, plant the evidence, and sneak away, nobody the wiser. With the hard move, no matter what they do, they have to be in harm's way and very likely will get hurt in the process.

I should have clarified: No Roll Without Reason only applies to players. The GM asking you to roll, even without explanation, counts as a valid reason. (I get my players to roll all the time without saying why; sometimes to avoid giving the player info the character wouldn't know unless the roll succeeds, other times to disguise meaningful rolls e.g. I might get three players to roll but really only need a roll from one of them) But a player can't roll without a reason or rationale. Saying "I roll perception" without saying what it is you're trying to perceive or (in some cases) what steps you're taking in order to best look/listen/whatever ain't gonna fly.

I'm not sure that the GM asking you to roll all the time is a valid reason. Or rather, it's an unnecessary reason. As a GM, I have never found that obfuscating the purpose of the rolls makes the game any more interesting than flat-out telling the PCs what to roll. And as a player, I have found such things to be frustrating and annoying rather than something that raises the tension. Maybe it works better if you have forever GMs and the other players never learn your tricks, but since nearly everyone at my table takes their turn GMing, we all know these tricks and rarely fall for them.

And rolling where "no change" is one of the possible outcomes is not a problem, provided at least one other possible outcome has (potential) significance.

Here we disagree. Rolling where "no change" is one of the outcomes means that there's a good chance that time--both the time spent dealing with the obstacle and the time spent making the obstacle--was wasted. We only get to play for about two hours each week; I don't want to waste it on rolls that don't mean anything.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hard moves don't have to be preceded by soft moves, and soft moves don't have to lead into hard moves.

Soft moves are moves without immediate consequences. "You enter a room with statues and a fountain in it. What do you do?" or "As you sneak into the room, you spot the guards, but they're busy playing cards and don't seem to have noticed you." The PCs can then do something and the things you talked about--the statues, the fountains, the guards--aren't going to immediately affect them. They can ignore the statues or examine them; they can try to sneak past the guards or wait there until the guards leave.

Hard moves have an immediate consequence, especially one that puts the PC in harm's way. "You touch the statue and it springs to life, swinging its fists at you and knocking you back a few feet! Take 2-harm from its stony blow!" or "You sneak into the room and you spot the guards. They seem to be playing cards and don't seem to have noticed you--but then your slight movement seems to have caught the eyes of one of them, and he looks up and sees you!" The PCs can then try to fight or flee, or even try to talk the statue or guards down, but they can't ignore them.

The game Root has good examples of how any particular GM move could be either hard or soft. For one of them, "Make them an offer to get their way," the example soft move is for the mayor to say "I'm going to need a scapegoat; go plant this evidence on the captain of the guard. Then I can help you," while the hard move is for the mayor to say "I'm going to need a scapegoat and it's going to have to be you; nobody else will work for this. Go cause some problems and make sure that you're seen doing it. Then I can help you." In this case, there isn't an instant consequence for the players after the hard move is used, but if they want to get their way, then there will be danger aimed directly at them. With the soft move, the players will be slightly inconvenienced, since they have to do a thing before they get what they want, but they will be in very minimal danger--it would be easy for them to sneak into the captain's house when they're away, plant the evidence, and sneak away, nobody the wiser. With the hard move, no matter what they do, they have to be in harm's way and very likely will get hurt in the process.


I'm not sure that the GM asking you to roll all the time is a valid reason. Or rather, it's an unnecessary reason. As a GM, I have never found that obfuscating the purpose of the rolls makes the game any more interesting than flat-out telling the PCs what to roll. And as a player, I have found such things to be frustrating and annoying rather than something that raises the tension. Maybe it works better if you have forever GMs and the other players never learn your tricks, but since nearly everyone at my table takes their turn GMing, we all know these tricks and rarely fall for them.


Here we disagree. Rolling where "no change" is one of the outcomes means that there's a good chance that time--both the time spent dealing with the obstacle and the time spent making the obstacle--was wasted. We only get to play for about two hours each week; I don't want to waste it on rolls that don't mean anything.

How do you explain missing on an attack roll then? Was  that wasted time? The game state hasn't changed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which is a terrible rule, as it fails to account for the many (many!) situations where success has meaningful consequences but failure merely maintains the status quo.

It also, somewhat oddly, supports rolls where failure has meaningful consequences but success maintains the status quo. An example might be someone (perhaps incompetently!) guarding a potentially-sneaky captive: roll perception, success means nothing changes, failure means consequences as the captive got away.

Nobody has yet answered my questions from well upthread about whether those consequences have to be immediate or can be "saved up" for some future time when they are not expected.

This has always been an issue, where players rely on meta-mechanics rather than in-fiction actions (and their own descrpitions of such) in order to get things done.

That said, it seems like a bit of an over-reaction to go and design an entirely new game system in order to push back when all it needs is a great big note in both the PH and DMG saying "No Roll Without Reason" and going on to explain as a hard rule that if the player doesn't explain what the character is doing and how, there's no roll given. 5e kinda waves at this idea but still could be more hard-and-fast with it.

Needless to say I don't find tacking some notes in chapter 8 of the DMG to be a solution that is anything comparable to PbtA. There are fundamental limitations and assumptions in 5e which makes it very hard to achieve anything like what DW does without major changes to the game.

Nor does status quo ever work. How many Perception checks does that PC have to make before it's proven he's watchful enough to prevent any escape under prevailing circumstances? DW has a simple answer, one. The situation could change, that would be a GM move!

 

[Enrahim2]

How do you explain missing on an attack roll then? Was  that wasted time? The game state hasn't changed.

But the game state has changed - it is the next participant's turn. If it had still been your turn, and you could attack again, then the gamestate hadn't changed. A full round of misses however would in most situations been quite wasted time, hence good to try to at least make the probability of that happening quite low.