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Here’s what @Maxperson said: I then offered my solution to this “problem”. The solution I offered works for me and my players. It seems to me that I’m being told it doesn’t work. Similar how? I think this is something that’s being expressed, but I’m just not grasping it. Why will...

Just travel? No… the characters likely ate and slept and talked and did all manner of things along the way. That we skip it doesn’t mean they “didn’t happen”. This is why I point out that this is a standard element of RPGs that everyone does to some extent. No one is RPGing in real time. So...

It all just depends on what’s been established. There is no need to allow anything that could have resulted in an outcome that’s contrary to what we’ve seen. What I advocated for was allowing a player to have had his character do something that’s perfectly likely to have happened during a...

No… I think anyone describing them as “two very different things” is exaggerating. No, a player asking if his character can search for herbs “during” the journey and a player asking after the journey has “ended” aren’t something I’d call “two very different things”. They seem quite similar...

I wouldn’t call them coincidences. If you don’t climb a cliff fast enough, and an ally is therefore killed because you were not there to help… that’s a consequence, not a coincidence. Yes, of course. As long as you can see how focusing on every moment and every bit of tedium would bother...

I think you’ve misunderstood the intention my post. I’m not trying to change your mind nor am I really making a guess about why or how often you call for rolls. I was trying to explain to you why you continue to get pushback. It’s because of the way you’re wording your criticism.

In this case, it’s not about fail forward. It’s about a GM designing a dungeon or a scenario where there is one path forward to resolution, and if the PCs somehow miss that one path, then the scenario cannot be resolved. I think that’s poor design. Whether it’s an individual secret door that...

I think because you aren’t refuting the idea of only rolling when something interesting will happen. I expect that’s not a rule you play by. You likely call for rolls with some other criteria… like “only roll when the outcome is in doubt”, maybe. If that’s the rule about rolling dice, then...

On behalf of all of reality… thank you!

Well, no, they’re really not that different. Because in neither case did anyone actually go into a forest and collect herbs. In both cases, you have a player declaring that they’d like their character to find herbs.

I don’t know, it depends on the game, I suppose. I was imagining 5e D&D… in which case I’d likely just have the player make a skill check to see what they found during the trip. Time’s mutable in an RPG. Things like that are an easy fix. The kind I imagine most of us have done in a more...

My bad… I left out the word “don’t” in the last sentence there. Changed the meaning from what I intended pretty drastically! I’ve edited the original comment accordingly. I think you’ve misread what he meant.

No, it works fine and your previous comment was mostly uninformed nonsense.

Player: Hey… can I have gathered herbs while we were traveling from Luskan to Neverwinter? GM: Sure, you’d have had plenty of time, let’s roll to see how it went. Problem solved.

My Stonetop campaign went for over two years. Biweekly sessions, so probably wound up at 65ish sessions. Great game.

Yes yes you’re extrapolating. And in the many years since the place was built, with the many subsequent inhabitants that you’ve decided have lived there, you can have them do anything at all. So yeah… choosing to have a chokepoint like that is poor design, no matter what fiction you use to...

That’s all fine. My point is not that anyone has to like this approach… it was that your characterization of it was inaccurate. There’s no reason that a fail forward approach must include things that don’t make sense. EDITED TO ADD: the key word “don’t” in the final sentence!

Sure… but then that’s not because of the single point of failure issue we’re talking about. Yes, that’s one way to handle it. As I said, a lot of times, we’d play the modules individually, so that likely wouldn’t have happened. That was in our earliest days though. It’s one thing to fail...

I think, in the sandboxes I’ve seen, there is clearly consideration for things like level and danger. I don’t think that means that there are never exceptions… there may in fact be a super dangerous creature not far from the starting town, or there may be a hostile, powerful NPC among the staff...

I had it happen to me, too… plenty of times. Mostly years ago when all the play I was taking part in would be called “trad”. I think it’s far more likely or common in location based scenarios. The classic example is the secret door that’s missed which prevents the group from actually...