Ok, but even pretty much all “conventional” game state-of-the-art advice embraces a fail-forward mentality. Daggerheart is probably the purest distillation of the “game as collaborate cinematic experience” and bakes it right in. As long as I’ve been playing 5e, “I roll and nothing happens” has been the most boring thing - I just didn’t know there was alternatives until pretty recently. If I was starting over again now, I’d just add stakes to every roll: “on a success, you get your aim - on a failure X.”
D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
- Thread starter Reynard
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Ok, but even pretty much all “conventional” game state-of-the-art advice embraces a fail-forward mentality. Daggerheart is probably the purest distillation of the “game as collaborate cinematic experience” and bakes it right in. As long as I’ve been playing 5e, “I roll and nothing happens” has been the most boring thing - I just didn’t know there was alternatives until pretty recently. If I was starting over again now, I’d just add stakes to every roll: “on a success, you get your aim - on a failure X.”
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
True. I can think of several OSR games that have more mechanical process than what is being suggested.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I think you're missing that to some people "This roll does nothing and is boring" is still superior to "If I make this roll something bad will probably happen." As long as you don't get that, you're really, really not going to understand some players.
Its not impossible to do "fail forward" in a way that doesn't do that; it usually involves success still being the common case and failure being slightly mitigated in a movement oriented way, so its perceived as pushing up failure, rather than down success. I've mentioned Chill 3e a few times because that's how it approached it (you could argue the game had no true failure; even fumbles gave you something during information gathering, they were just a distinctly mixed blessing).
Thomas Shey
Legend
Like a lot of what goes on in the OSR, what they put priority on varies considerably; its why I try and be fairly specific when I criticize some elements of it. The "rules and mechanics just get into the way of skilled play" part is hardly all of the OSR.
robertsconley
Hero
You’re taking the word narrative too literally. Yes, every campaign results in a sequence of events connected through time, so a narrative can always be constructed after the fact.
However, some play styles aim to create a specific kind of narrative. In those games, the players and the referee (if there is one) enter play with a shared idea of the kind of story they want to tell, and they choose a system and style that supports that outcome.
Other play styles don’t work that way. The narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign, without being shaped by the out-of-game expectations of the players or referee. The story is discovered through play, not authored in advance.
It’s the difference between running The One Ring to deliberately evoke a Tolkien-style story about Middle-earth versus using The One Ring to explore Middle-earth freely, where the players feel like they have visited that world, even if the resulting story looks nothing like the structure of a Tolkien novel.
There's many more styles of gaming than "beer & pretzels" and narrativist. Personally I have different styles for different groups that I DM for. Some are more on the casual side others get very emotionally involved in the game and their characters which still has nothing to do with collaborative play.
If some people aren't "ready" for PbtA perhaps it's because they don't want to play PbtA. You have your preferences and that's fine, but you're coming off as arrogant and belitlling.
Sure, there’s some players who don’t really want to play a RPG either - they just want to tell stories and throw a d20 as a dice of fate once in a while. But I think most players accept that “I get what I’m trying to achieve, or something complicating happens” as a form of play. People seem to freaking love dramatic twists off a dice roll after all.
I think it’s actually the “partial success” and not the “I fail and things get worse” that gets the most resistance, not to mention is the easiest to execute poorly as a GM in a way that undermines the roll.
Pedantic
Legend
That's been a big change in my experience; I started with an understanding that dice are the failure state. Good play involves minimizing their impact on getting to the outcome you want. It's been quite an adjustment dealing with players who actively like gambling.
Thomas Shey
Legend
First off, I'm not sure there are as many of those as you're implying. I think a pretty fair number are looking for "I get what I want to achieve or I have to find another way." The automatic assumption that failure will translate into additional problems is not something I think that many people are wanting.
But the issue with PbtA is that even when you do get what you want, it often means that something complicating happens. In practice, to many people that means you've made bad results more likely and just thrown them a bone.
Again, if you don't understand why that's an issue for many people, to be blunt I think you're part of the group I was talking about that just doesn't get it.
I largely agree, but the chances involved also matter here. Outside of your area of specialties in the two PbtA games I own, "failure" and "success with consequences" are the biggest part of the probability space.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Well, there's also the issue that unless you're playing over in a hardcore "everything is done with description" system, there are plenty of things you just don't get to do at all without throwing some dice.
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