D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[DinoInDisguise]

I now have to ask why, if you believe that, everyone isn't playing PbtA games? They handle this "universal issue" very well according to you, so shouldn't everyone be playing them?

No. I think you are misunderstanding my thought.

If a system codified DMs not railroading, it doesnt mean that system does anything better. It just says the quiet part out loud. That was the whole argument, that PbtA games aren't different in that way because most GMs already do a form of this without the structure PbtA games have.

It could be a product of being a relative newcomer, roughly 7 years, to the hobby. But what I'm describing in my posts is really common among DMs I've played with across more than a half dozen systems over my time in the hobby. The idea that failure has consequences has always been a part of the games I've played, and rolls almost always reflect that.

I didn't think this was controversial. I thought it was something everyone did it, because everyone I see does it. This was never about PbtA as a system, or the merits of narrative vs traditional. It was about a DM philosophy of giving players reasons to care no matter the result of a roll.

I'm actually struggling on how to reply to some of the push back I've recieved, because the idea of not doing this is so foreign to me, even though I play mostly traditional games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Who said they are? I was responding to a post that was saying that AW is intended to emulate or yield "cinematic fiction". And I was disagreeing with that claim.

You stepped into that discussion to put forth a particular notion of "cinematic fiction", that - for the reasons given in my post that you just quoted - I disagreed with.

You say this as if it's a bad thing that the rules of a game that is based around shared fiction reliably produce exciting fiction.

Whereas my response is much closer to Eero Tuovinen's:

he fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook.​

For MERP to deliver this, if played by the principles that its rulebook states, the GM has to decide to inject interesting stuff. The upshot becomes GM-driven play. Or else you can drift MERP to be more like BW, which is what I was did (with varying degrees of success) for 19 years.

I'm saying that games that do what you want are not objectively superior to games that do what I want. You just like them more.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know if @robertsconley is being sarcastic or not. But his repeated references to "story arcs" and "stories planned in advance" and the like, as if those are reasonable descriptions of Apocalpyse World or Burning Wheel, are a little frustrating.

The difference between an OD&D hexcrawl and (say) Burning Wheel can't be identified by focusing on whether or not there is a planned story. The differences are in the procedures that govern GM decision-making about (i) when to call for rolls, and (ii) the results of rolls.

Which is something that I have emphasised for years now on these boards.

You may not plan stories in advance, but the impression I get strongly suggests to me that a major goal of play is to create dramatic character arcs, so I wouldn't say he's completely off-base here.

 

[AlViking]

No. I think you are misunderstanding my thought.

If a system codified DMs not railroading, it doesnt mean that system does anything better. It just says the quiet part out loud. That was the whole argument, that PbtA games aren't different in that way because most GMs already do a form of this without the structure PbtA games have.

It could be a product of being a relative newcomer, roughly 7 years, to the hobby. But what I'm describing in my posts is really common among DMs I've played with across more than a half dozen systems over my time in the hobby. The idea that failure has consequences has always been a part of the games I've played, and rolls almost always reflect that.

I didn't think this was controversial. I thought it was something everyone did it, because everyone I see does it. This was never about PbtA as a system, or the merits of narrative vs traditional. It was about a DM philosophy of giving players reasons to care no matter the result of a roll.

I'm actually struggling on how to reply to some of the push back I've recieved, because the idea of not doing this is so foreign to me, even though I play mostly traditional games.

Well, obviously we can't trust you because you're a Russian spy. But it is interesting because I've never had a DM that always had a negative for failure nor have I ever seen it in any stream I've watched.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Are you intending to apply this rule to yourself?

They have been doing so all along. No one has suggested the way you play is wrong for you. They have only criticised your claims that your way is objectively superior.

 

[zakael19]

Well, obviously we can't trust you because you're a Russian spy. But it is interesting because I've never had a DM that always had a negative for failure nor have I ever seen it in any stream I've watched.

I think there's a weird thing that happens in how D&D play interacts with what we are acculturated to expect as "appropriate fiction."

EG: in 5e you fail on a lock pick roll. What's the downside? There's a lot of digital ink spilled on "should the players just be able to try again and again? do we bring back the 'take 10' to represent that? do I make a wandering monster roll? something else?"

However, you fail a Persuasion roll to convince somebody that you really should be here Mr. Guard, and my experience is that people tend to start going "welp, time to roll initiative I guess, haha."

What I've seen in the 5e culture space show up pretty hard over the last few years is an idea that "if there's a failed roll, evolve the situation so that something interesting happens." That's certainly how I ran a lot of my 5e before I had any language for this stuff, because I kept struggling with those questions I had above; and watching the players look at each other with a "well what do we do now" sort of expression on a failed task.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, obviously we can't trust you because you're a Russian spy. But it is interesting because I've never had a DM that always had a negative for failure nor have I ever seen it in any stream I've watched.

I sometimes do, especially on a 1, but it’s generally for comedy. We have quite a humorous game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I now have to ask why, if you believe that, everyone isn't playing PbtA games? They handle this "universal issue" very well according to you, so shouldn't everyone be playing them?

Because it isn't even necessary? I mean, @DinoInDisguise is talking about how the mindset can be applied to any game, and how even a trad game can benefit from it. It's one of the things I incorporated into my trad GMing, and I would say that it's something that's improved my game.

The constant appeals to popularity whenever a game that's not 5e is mentioned as handling something well are just annoying.

Perhaps more to the point, and despite narrative games' insistence to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with "nothing happens" being the narrated result of an attempted action that fails.

There's nothing wrong with it, objectively. But for many people, it sounds boring as hell.

I don't mind a marginal success roll getting a complication tacked on, but the odds of failure are often already low enough there's no reason whatsoever to make outright failure even less common.

I would have a problem with that in a game unless there was a clear process in place. If you just ad hoc said "you only succeeded by 1, so I'm gonna say that you make the jump, but you drop your shield" or something similar, I'd be annoyed. That kind of thing should be discussed and disclosed up front, not in the midst of play.

The cynical side of me suggests another reason that fail-forward has become popular, but I seem to recall others getting red-texted for mentioning it in the past.

Despite your implication here, it's not about being soft on the PCs or that the players are snowflakes or whatever other nonsense you're dancing around. It's about there actually being consequences to the roll. If there are no consequences for failing to pick a lock, let's say, then it sounds to me like there's plenty of time and no other concerns that matter... so I'd just say you eventually open the lock.

If we're going to roll, it's because something is at stake. There's a time consideration or some other pressure that means something will happen one way or the other when the roll is made.

Agreed as to what you say in the literal sense, however in a lot of countries (including the one I'm in) "conservative" carries almost overwhelming political baggage and thus isn't often a term friends apply to friends.

Well, considering the context of the thread and the fact that this was already addressed in the OP, combined with the fact that political talk is not allowed here... I think it's crystal clear what I mean.

And to try and compare what I said to be political after you just passive-aggressively toed the line on political comments is just bad form.

I have no problem with fail-forward as a concept. A Blades in the Dark heist would not be the same, mad rush into ever more precarious and desperate situations, without it.

I do have a problem when it is presented as the only way failure should be handled, regardless what game or style you're aiming for.

In general, I think the people advocating hardest for fail forward have experienced situations where there is an expectation that the game can't progress until the players find a way to move forwards. Fail forward is an obvious solution to this, but allowing (and encouraging) the characters to go sideways or backwards is also a valid solution to the problem.

I think it's just an option that should be more widely discussed and practiced. The amount of times back in my early days of GMing that this would have helped me are pretty astounding.

It's not about it being the only thing that can happen. It's about it being an option at the GM's disposal. Some GMs are aware of it, but because it's not really highlighted in many trad games, and often vocally and aggressively demonized by many folks, it's not as widespread as it could be.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I agree for the most part but there are times when a failure is just not moving forward. If someone is searching a room a check may fail and they don't find a secret compartment. It's not that the roll was pointless, it's that as GM I thought it was possible but not guaranteed that they would find the compartment. There wasn't any negative consequence other than a potential loss of treasure or a missed clue that would have helped them solve the mystery.

The roll was pointless if they can just retry, because at that point success is guaranteed. That's why I spent half of my response to Thomas Shey talking about gambling for progress. And how if it's just a matter of rerolling until you win, just skip the rolls and move on because the outcome is predetermined. This is why traditional games, largely, require very similar responses to rolls, by the DM, as PbtA games enforce structurally. Because having no response, likely, causes the outcome to be predetermined.

This is also my response to Lanefan here;

Why should I just give success when the fiction (or the rules) dictates success isn't guaranteed?

But he clarifies;

No retries in my game unless you do something differently. Even then, "nothing happens" is a common result of a failure.

So he's largely doing as I was intending. By limiting retries he gives the roll some weight. There is a real meaning to a failure assuming success had a real meaning to begin with.

Now obviously, if the required change is cosmetic and meaningless, the roll can still be retried ad nauseam, and the initial problem still exists. But if the change required to retry costs something, then not allowing retries is sufficient to give the roll meaning. The roll changes the status quo.

This is why rolling on a chance of success, without consequence, is a problem. And why PbtA-style reactions to failures are needed in traditional games, albeit in a slightly different form. Because the outcome becomes predetermined if you don't.

So you have to add cost to the failure of a roll, or you simply are prompting pointless rolls. The FrozenNorth post I cited demonstrates what happens when a roll has no meaningful consequence. The roll can be repeated until the players get the desired outcome, and that's a waste of time because success is guaranteed.

I hope that helps clarify what I meant. I think the response applies to Lanefan too, which is why I used his post as an example.

TLDR: Not allowing retries can often be sufficient to solve the problem I am alluding to in my posts.

EDIT: Hawkeye did a better job explaining my position than I did. Hmph!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes you did tell me what I should do

I suggested you give it a try, yes. I didn't say you would "like my way if only you weren't too conservative to give it a try".

If I overreacted I apologize but there seems to be a theme of "the new way is always better and if you don't accept that it's because you're stuck in the past" attitude on this forum. I asked what you thought was useful. I was curious what you found that could be applied to games like D&D because I'm interested in why people keep making certain claims. I can be interested in other approaches even if I don't think it would apply to me. I do the things the way I do because it works for me but I am always looking for ways to improve. But some things that are an improvement for others would not be an improvement for me or my players. We each have to find our own groove.

On a side note, my player's ages range from teenager to retirement age. I don't think age of participants makes as much a difference as some people claim.

Listen... I get it if you don't like when people offer advice that you don't think is relevant to the topic. But given the topic of this thread, I just don't see the issue here. What are you expecting in this discussion? I mean, it's not like I'm barreling into every D&D thread and talking about narrativist games non-stop. I'm talking about it in one thread where the topic is about the conservatism of D&D.