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

SableWyvern said:

If the group has been thrown in a pit from which there is no feasible means of escape and they have been left to die, "points of failure" are no longer a concern. It sounds to me like this is describing a campaign end state, not a problem to be overcome.

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That one is pretty extreme, but there are a lot of lesser ones: a group without a lot of outdoor skills loses the trail their map shows (there are numerous ways this can happen, but a pretty common real world one is people leaving a trail to seek shelter from unexpected weather) and can't find it again (again, not an unknown event). At that point, while they theoretically still have options, they aren't set up for most of them to likely work.

It doesn't have to be a case where there's literally no more options, but just where the other options are low enough chance of success to be unlikely. It isn't technically a dead end, but neither will it likely get you anywhere.

SableWyvern said:

Edit to add: I will agree that it is one situation where it's either forward or stop forever, but it must be built on a whole sequence of events and decisions that led to this point. If this ending isn't acceptable, it shouldn't have been allowed in the first place.

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That's kind of the point in avoiding single points of failure. All fail-forward is is a method of doing that systematically.

AlViking said:

Do you disagree that there are some games that have the concept of a move triggering a counter move of similar level? Hard move on player's side triggers a hard move on the GM side of things or similar?

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I don't know what this is supposed to mean. What RPG(s) do you have in mind?

AlViking said:

So you deny that there are games that if a player does X the GM responds with Y?

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Don't all games have rules that manage the back-and-forth of "moves?

Like in D&D, if the player says "I listen at the door", the GM either tells them what their PC hears (if anything), or perhaps calls for a roll and then tells them what their PC hears.

Or if the player says "I walk down the corridor and turn the corner", then the GM responds by saying what the PC sees around the corner; or if the GM's notes indicate that there is some as-yet-unrevealed obstacle, like a concealed pit or a tripwire or whatever, the GM draws on those notes to tell the player what happens to their PC.

If there's something more specific that you've got in mind, are you able to say what that is?

AbdulAlhazred said:

There's no 'beyond the door' that has any unique character which needs to enter the fiction more than something else does.

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Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at upthread, when saying there is no "finish line" that the players are trying to get their PCs to.

Micah Sweet said:

I don't know about that. Trad games like D&D IME tend to be a might fuzzier on things that are mechanically very codified in Narrativist games. And while there are certainly codified rules in other areas in trad games, I feel the design philosophy gives even those areas more wiggle room. Just my thoughts on the matter.

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Of course people can believe what they believe, but beliefs can be more or less well grounded in evidence.

I don't know what these "mechanically codified" things are that you are drawing contrasts in respect of. Just as one example, the mechanical complexity and codification of combat and of magic in D&D is some of the most extreme that I'm familiar with.

Maxperson said:

In the distant past when I designed worlds, there were indeed safer areas and more dangerous areas. And not at all because of level. Rather it was because of civilization. The farther from civilization you go, the more dangerous things get. Armies tend to keep the smart and dangerous things away.

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That's convenient. Of course that has nothing to do with how D&D is set up at all...

We can easily justify anything when we are in 100% control of every single facet of a setting. The fact that you just happen to line up with the level system every single time is, I'm sure, just a coincidence.

clearstream said:

I was thinking Deathmatch Island and Apocalypse Keys.

The former because the Paragon system gets you scene framing and players narrating their successes and failures

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I've not played Deathmatch Island. But I think that Agon would be quite challenging for someone whose only or principal experience is mainstream D&D and some structurally fairly similar games like CoC and ShadowDark. The rules in Agon are complete; but the expectations on players ("Hero players") and GM ("Strife player") are sufficiently different from D&D that I think it would be easy to get tripped up.

I can't comment on Stonetop vs Dungeon World, but I think DW is probably less of a radical departure from D&D than Agon.

Hussar said:

That's convenient. Of course that has nothing to do with how D&D is set up at all...

We can easily justify anything when we are in 100% control of every single facet of a setting. The fact that you just happen to line up with the level system every single time is, I'm sure, just a coincidence.

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It worked for D&D just fine. It can be nerve wracking for the players if they are in an area where things are sometimes or often more powerful than they are, but it was their choice to go there.

You keep saying "line up with the level system" as if that's something that happens in this kind of sandbox. It doesn't. You can walk yourself into an area at 3rd level and wander into a beholder. Zap, zap, zap, TPK.

In the kind of sandbox I am referring to, the players have to be cautious when wandering away from town. It gets very dangerous out there. The world does not line up to the D&D level system.

Thomas Shey said:

That one is pretty extreme, but there are a lot of lesser ones: a group without a lot of outdoor skills loses the trail their map shows (there are numerous ways this can happen, but a pretty common real world one is people leaving a trail to seek shelter from unexpected weather) and can't find it again (again, not an unknown event). At that point, while they theoretically still have options, they aren't set up for most of them to likely work.

It doesn't have to be a case where there's literally no more options, but just where the other options are low enough chance of success to be unlikely. It isn't technically a dead end, but neither will it likely get you anywhere.

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If I'm playing a game where wilderness exploration is taken that seriously and the characters don't have the necessary skills to survive but go wandering around anyway, then this is perfectly reasonable outcome. The players, knowing this, won't go wandering off into the wilderness without the necessary skills and resources to handle the chance that they become lost at some point.

Again, if they do end up in such a situation, it will have been a long sequences of specific decisions and outcomes leading to what sounds like a campaign end-state.

There is a big difference in feel and mood between a game where the players know that if they don't take wilderness dangers seriously they might get lost and die, and one where they know that they can take any degree of risk and fail forward their way to some kind of successful outcome anyway. Neither is inherently better than the other; my point is simply that they're not equivalent and you can't just offer fail forward as a solution without recognising that you're changing the nature of the game.

Thomas Shey said:

That's kind of the point in avoiding single points of failure. All fail-forward is is a method of doing that systematically.

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I'm not saying fail forward can't be useful or it should never be used. I'm opposed to two things:

First, the assertion that it's a key tool that all GMs should learn and use, as if there are problems that can occur in any game that can only be fixed with fail forward (or that fail forward is always the best solution for them).

Second, the idea that if a game is being run without a fail forward mechanic, suddenly inserting the mechanic to get around an unexpected problem (as if to create the illusion that it was the mechanic and not GM fiat that just occurred) is somehow a better solution than just admitting a mistake was made and fixing that mistake with open communication.

EzekielRaiden said:

Party has been captured by bad guys. They've been left in a cell to rot. They must escape from the cell in order to accomplish any other goals (obviously, purely by the fiction). No one in the party is especially good at picking locks. Guards, if they are present, know not to let the PCs out, but more likely they're just being abandoned here with no guards at all because who cares, the PCs can starve. Digging out would take months, and the party has rations for at most a few days.

That's verisimilitudinous, perfectly in keeping with the rational motivations of some bad people, and contains a single point of failure. No story required.

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When this happened to Conan (in The Hour of the Dragon, from memory) a secret admirer - Zenobia - helped him escape.

Another time (in The Scarlet Citadel an old enemy came in to the cell to gloat, which gave Conan the opportunity to escape.

These are things that can happen in our RPGing too. In Burning Wheel, the relevant mechanic is the Circles test.

pemerton said:

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. What RPG(s) do you have in mind?

Don't all games have rules that manage the back-and-forth of "moves?

Like in D&D, if the player says "I listen at the door", the GM either tells them what their PC hears (if anything), or perhaps calls for a roll and then tells them what their PC hears.

Or if the player says "I walk down the corridor and turn the corner", then the GM responds by saying what the PC sees around the corner; or if the GM's notes indicate that there is some as-yet-unrevealed obstacle, like a concealed pit or a tripwire or whatever, the GM draws on those notes to tell the player what happens to their PC.

If there's something more specific that you've got in mind, are you able to say what that is?

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Plenty of people have talked about "the players do a [hard or soft] move so as GM I respond with a [hard or soft based on what the players did] move".

That's different from how I run my game. If a character fails to open a lock, nothing happens because they failed to open the lock, although there may be consequences because of something else happening. Frequently it just means they can't open the door and they need to try something else.