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

[Micah Sweet]

Er...no?

I am responding to an argument which paints things like "fail forward" as deeply, inherently problematic and wrong--often with the entirely false accusation that it destroys all possible conflict because it (somehow?) makes success guaranteed--by showing what it is for, and how it is a useful tool to have in the toolbox, generically. I have not said that EVERYONE should use it in all cases.

I do, however, think that it is of sufficiently broad and deep utility, and applies so significantly to a common problem that, in my experience, nearly every newbie GM goes through, that it is worth teaching to pretty much every newbie GM. Even if they never use it, even if they believe their campaign process is immune to the underlying problem, simply communicating the knowledge of it draws attention to the underlying problem in an extremely useful way. Even if that newbie GM goes on to have a long and storied GMing career during which they never once use such a tool, simply calling out such a thing engages the brain. It highlights the problem, why it is a problem, and one possible means to address it.

I feel similarly about Let It Ride and a couple other generalized maxims that I've picked up through playing and running Dungeon World. As a good example, the GM Principle, "Think Offscreen Too". I think that's a fantastically important piece of advice for any newbie GM. Most old hands don't need to be taught that lesson, they've learned it themselves through many repetitions of trial and error. Teaching the newbie GM that it's important to consider effects (be they good or bad--dangers or rewards, enemies or allies, consequences of all sorts) that aren't immediately present but which still matter. I imagine most "traditional" GMs here would very much appreciate the "Think Dangerous" Principle, even if they would likely dispute (or want pretty strong limits upon) at least some parts of its description:

Everything in the world is a target. You’re thinking like an evil overlord: no single life is worth anything and there is nothing sacrosanct. Everything can be put in danger, everything can be destroyed. Nothing you create is ever protected. Whenever your eye falls on something you’ve created, think how it can be put in danger, fall apart or crumble. The world changes. Without the characters’ intervention, it changes for the worse.​

But the core of this Principle--don't be precious about the things you create, put the PCs in dangerous situations where it's up to them to get out, the world is full of ways things can go terribly wrong and rather limited on ways things can go well--is something I think most "traditional" GMs would rather that all newbie GMs learn very very early.

I don't agree with that principle as it is worded here. It strongly implies that the world exists for no other purpose than to be the plaything of the PCs (or more charitably that it would fall apart without them). That to me is not a world that in functional practice resembles ours, which is generally what I'm looking for.

 

[Campbell]

To clarify, Fail Forward as put forward by Burning Wheel is not succeeding when you would fail. It's you fail to achieve what you intend to achieve and here's this other thing to deal with. It's consequential failure that keeps the ball rolling, not failure which still progresses your agenda or some GM plot.

It almost allows makes the situation worse for the player characters. It's pretty similar to Apocalypse World's 6- result where the MC makes as hard a move as they like and the moves tell you to expect the worst.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Entirely fair. I would not say that this effect happens all the time. Just that, in at least some cases, the distracting meta-thinking may arise because of differences in system.

Part of it was that the RQ system felt intuitive to us in a way that, honestly, OD&D never did. I think at the end of the day we were never all that thrilled with the degree of ad-hoc decision making the latter did, where while like all RPGs there were some, there was a lot less we needed to pause and decide how to resolve.

Likely, enthusiasm and prior buy-in help immensely here. After all, everyone is new to RPGing the first time they participate. It might be the case, for example, that things within the same over-arching system could cause greater issues--because emotively it feels like it SHOULD be the same, you're fighting mindflayers and rust monsters with fireballs and magic missiles etc., but the systems are different and that leads to cognitive dissonance?

Yeah, I've seen people before who felt new editions of a game with significant differences were more of a struggle than entirely different systems.

So, because I agree I wasn't clear before: This doesn't happen all the time. Nor does it always cause issues when it does happen. I do think, however, that system unfamiliarity (particularly if it's juxtaposed with thematic familiarity, and thus the expectation of familiarity in general) can contribute to feeling pulled away from the fiction and into distracting pure-system issues that have little to do with the felt, visuals-in-the-mind experience of TTRPG play.

Also, because it's probably a good idea to foster more positivity than I have previously: I appreciate your charitable reading of what I said. Thank you.

Well, it was one of those cases where I thought it was entirely possible you were right in some cases, but just wanted to note at least in one particularly radical case with our group it didn't work out that way.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. Having a single point of failure suggests more direct storytelling than happens in my game anyway.

Though it can do that, that's not the only place SPoF comes in; if you set up a situation (and by "set up" I can just mean deciding once its been triggered by player choices how its layed out) so there's a place where a single failed skill check or the like will produce catastrophic results that may not be recoverable from, I think it behooves the GM to think about whether that's actually the most accurate way to represent what they were doing; even with a very simulationist approach, usually there ought to be more than one chance to bail out of most situations, but it can be easy to fall into the trap of only thinking of one and as such, setting it up so there's only one.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What counts as dull varies rather a lot from one player or GM and another. And that mindset of which you are so fond can be applied as broadly or narrowly as desired. Your preference on this is not as universal as you imply.

Sure, what might be worth skipping in this way may vary.

But my point that doing so won't harm the consistency or continuity of a game still stands.

 

[Gilladian]

Right, I'm not really super critical of trad play. @Gilladian ran a couple of 5e campaigns for us that I would call 'pretty trad', though certainly in the spirit of 'putting the characters at the center of things' and giving the players stuff we asked for. I've commented on them a bit critically before, but they were both good games, and I think she'll back me up in saying they were a lot like the sorts of game you are describing. I'll give them plenty of credit in one sense, we didn't do a ton of low stakes play in her games. It was classic 'you do the journey from here to there' kind of stuff, so maybe not hard focused every minute on a knife edge, but we were always pushing. I'm OK with it. I just think I generally find the stuff that's more consistently high stakes has more 'juice'. She also played in a DW game with @Manbearcat that I wasn't in, but I'm going to expect her to say it was fairly pushed Narrativist play, right? Maybe she can articulate the difference better than I can.

My home games (we reverted to 3.5e because I have all the toys and like the way we play it…) are definitely player-influenced, in a heavy way. If they get bored or go off on a plot tangent, off we go. But my world is mine, and I don’t reshape it “for the story”. And yeah, I’m currently in a DW game run by Manbearcat with another player, over discord. It is theoretically set in the FR, but we have allowed our choices to make it our own. Last week we essentially destroyed Gauntlegrym. We ended the game on the top of Mt Hotenow, at the burial site of the ancient kings, asking their spirits to come to our aid, as we have a host of rabid duergar on our tails, and the Netherese hunting for us just behind them… I prefer more narrativist, player-driven plots when I play, and more straightforward trad games when I dm. I’m a control- freak, in a loose way, I guess!

 

[Faolyn]

Can the door not be opened any other way than by picking the lock? Forcefully-applied boots? Repeated use of an axe or hammer? Removal of hinges? Knock spell? Shrink spell? Warp Wood spell (if the door has any wood to it)? Someone goes gaseous or shapeshifts into something really small or even Dimension Doors then goes through and opens it from the other side?

That depends on the GM.

Also the edition. Two of the above spells don't exist in 5e, for example. It's also possible that the casters didn't prepare the "right" spell, which is entirely unfair of the GM to think, because the character only has so many spell slots and they can't prepare everything they might need.

Simply concluding the players are cut off from part of the adventure because they can't pick a lock seems like very stilted inside-the-box thinking. And even the lowest-level parties have access to the non-magical possibilities noted above, plus others.

If lots of other groups can't or won't think outside the box now and then, that ain't my problem.

Except that's not a fail state!!! Getting through the door is a - no, it's the - defined success state for this roll, and thus by RAW needs a 'success' result in order to occur in any way. A fail result of any kind means they do not get through.

I think you're missing the point here, or looking at it too narrowly. The point is, part of the adventure is gatekeeped (gatekept?) behind a die roll. It could be a door, but it could be anything else. A wall that the party fails to climb, a chasm they can't cross, a puzzle they can't solve, anything like that. Failure here stops the players from progressing and ends up being a boring waste of time.

If the party can't get through the door, then what has happened? Have they expended resources? Is it likely that they'll be found out or their quarry has escaped in the time they took? If the only thing that happens is that the players have wasted their time, then the entire encounter was a waste of time. Nothing was accomplished and nothing interesting happened on the failure, other than the party can't continue.

 

[Eric V]

To clarify, Fail Forward as put forward by Burning Wheel is not succeeding when you would fail. It's you fail to achieve what you intend to achieve and here's this other thing to deal with. It's consequential failure that keeps the ball rolling, not failure which still progresses your agenda or some GM plot.

It almost allows makes the situation worse for the player characters. It's pretty similar to Apocalypse World's 6- result where the MC makes as hard a move as they like and the moves tell you to expect the worst.

13th Age has a similar "Fail Forward" philosophy:
"...outside of battle, true failure tends to slow action down rather than move the action along. A more constructive way to interpret failure is as a near-success or event that happens to carry unwanted consequences or side effects. The character probably still fails to achieve the desired goal, but that’s because something interesting happens on the way to the goal rather than because nothing happens. Alternatively, the character succeeds at what they set out to accomplish, but discovers that success has complications!"

They go on to give examples of failing a climbing check doesn't necessarily mean falling to your death; maybe it means you disturbed the rocks enough to awaken a werebear who was trying to hibernate. Failing the Gather Information check doesn't mean you don't get anything, but that the target has become aware of your inquiries and has laid a trap. That kind of thing.

 

[Faolyn]

That's just causality all over again though. The situation, ideally, should be interesting enough that there doesn't need to be fiction contingent on the roll to pick the lock, so much as picking a lock being an emergent thing that occurs in an already interesting state.

I think the focus on rolling dice is part of the problem. I don't think an action declaration that results in dice being rolled requires special treatment. It's all just actions being fed into a situation all the way down.

I agree. The idea that you can't get past by this one particular way should be used sparingly at best, but there should always be ways to pass through that are interesting and let the game move on.

 

[AlViking]

That depends on the GM.

Also the edition. Two of the above spells don't exist in 5e, for example. It's also possible that the casters didn't prepare the "right" spell, which is entirely unfair of the GM to think, because the character only has so many spell slots and they can't prepare everything they might need.


I think you're missing the point here, or looking at it too narrowly. The point is, part of the adventure is gatekeeped (gatekept?) behind a die roll. It could be a door, but it could be anything else. A wall that the party fails to climb, a chasm they can't cross, a puzzle they can't solve, anything like that. Failure here stops the players from progressing and ends up being a boring waste of time.

If the party can't get through the door, then what has happened? Have they expended resources? Is it likely that they'll be found out or their quarry has escaped in the time they took? If the only thing that happens is that the players have wasted their time, then the entire encounter was a waste of time. Nothing was accomplished and nothing interesting happened on the failure, other than the party can't continue.

In my game one of the characters suggested using "dwarven lockpick" aka his hammer when the rogue rolled a 1 and jammed the lock*, they ended up having the druid shapeshift into a regular spider and crawl under the door. Even if they hadn't done that the adventure still wouldn't have been over, there was a more dangerous route to be taken. I don't see not succeeding at everything you try (even if it is success at a cost) as something I want in my games.

I will agree the adventure should never end because of a single roll. That doesn't mean fail forward is the only option. On the other hand? Failing to get as much loot as possible does not stop the adventure, it just means they missed out on some loot.

*My house rule is that if the attempt misses the target by more than 10 the lock jams. Once the the rogue has reliable talent they'll never jam a lock.