Recent content by pemerton

But . . . but . . . my results table goes to 11!

Why can't the GM say: "If you fail, then <whatever> will happen"? @hawkeyefan gave an example upthread, along the lines of "Sure, you're confident you (the PC) can climb the cliff, but if you (the player) fail the roll, it will take longer than you hope (in the context of a dark ritual being...

I don't know what you intend by "fail forward at a mechanical level". The mechanical level is rolling some dice and identifying a success or failure on the roll. "Fail forward" is about the process and heuristics used to narrate the consequence if, at the mechanical level, the roll fails. I...

If the GM rolls a NPC's to hit die, and it succeeds, that dictates stuff about how my PC behaved: did I dodge? was I taken in by the NPC's feint? etc.

Yes. That's why I referred to a bowdlerised version of "fail forward" that involves "the GM narrating failure in such a way as to keep things 'on the rails'".

Why do you say this? I mean, it's not as if the rulebook fails to tell us what is meant! And it's not what you say here.

Something that fits the fiction. What's your example scenario?

Presumably the GM formed the view that the cook makes sense, or else they wouldn't narrate a cook!

Have you read the rules text (which I posted upthread)? Here is is again: So, as you can see, it is not redundant at all. It complements the principles Make the players' characters' lives not boring by guiding and constraining how that should be done: rather than making their lives not boring...

That's interesting. But not entirely surprising, I guess. There is a tendency for notions from indie RPGs to be picked up as slogans, without much interest in the context in which those notions were coined or the sort of work that they're meant to support. "Fail forward" is similar in this...

Did you read the rules text that I quoted?

I'm not sure what you think is "watered down" about the AW rules that I quoted upthread. It amplifies, and qualifies, the instruction to "make the players' characters' lives not boring", mostly by excluding certain sorts of ways of doing that.

Most of the people who run in a race lose. Nevertheless, they make it to the finish line. In @hawkeyefan's example, the character failed to make the climb in time.

I don't think there are any such people, are there?

The rules is not addressed to you. It's addressed to GMs of Apocalypse World.