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I see a distinction between arguing a rule in a rules discussion, and hanging my hat on that rule in my game. People shouldn't assume that I necessarily run my game the way I argue here unless I say so.

The claim comes from a side that is okay with rolls or other mechanics dictating to them how their character acts or thinks about something, even if they know their character well enough to know that would never happen or at least wouldn't happen that way. I couldn't play that way, but they...

No. That is wrong. If I establish through play that my character is a certain way, I can in fact faithfully stick to it or faithfully betray it for reasons of personality/backstory, etc. I need no mechanic or reward system in order to do that. The key is that the character of the character...

Back in the mid 1980s that mass manufacturing worked out in my favor. I got in trouble once and my mother who was notoriously permissive actually got mad enough at me to lock the TV and my videogame system in her bedroom and padlock the door. The first day she was at work during my grounded...

It may surprise you, but I agree with all of that. Home brew just isn't particularly applicable to a rules discussion. Unless you're saying something like, "Yes I know the rules say X, but how I do it is Y, because that makes more sense to me." In a rules discussion if you skip the first...

Passive perception is still a stealth check, it's just not rolled. In both passive and active situations, perception still controls the situation in 5e. I don't have the 5.5e PHB, but I recall not liking the stealth mechanics for the new half-edition. I like about half of the changes, but not...

Rounds were 1 minute back then, so probably it takes longer. I agree. I'd just make it longer and if you want to rush it, you get disadvantage or some other penalty.

I think it's a false agenda. The characters' lives can't be boring if you are playing the game, even if there are boring bits in it. The only real concern with regard to boring is with the players, and I think we all have the agenda of not making the players' lives boring when it comes to...

I mean, this whole "not make the characters' lives boring" is a Red Herring. Even if the characters are bored out of their minds here and there shopping or traveling, they still adventure, find loot, become pirates, talk to dragons, walk other planes of existence, and more. Their lives quite...

It takes less than 6 seconds. RAW says you can attempt to open a lock on your turn during combat. Success and it opens. There is no penalty, increased loudness for speed or anything else. It's a normal lockpick attempt in your 6 or less seconds. That means that outside of combat, it also...

Breaking a belief is as much a faithful portrayal of the PC as keeping it is. People are people. We have beliefs. Some of them we keep. Others we keep and then break, sometimes forever and sometimes only briefly. The system you describe is asking for the player to faithfully portray their...

I had this discussion with @pemerton. Stealth isn't what dictates much of anything. Perception is. You literally cannot fail a stealth check, since a 1 does not auto fail and all stealth checks successfully set a DC for perception checks against you. You roll a 2 -1 and you get a total of...

Except that I do have an agenda of not making the characters'(and players') lives boring, which can be done in conjunction with fidelity to the prepared setting.

Being interrupted is not failing to be able to open the lock via the lockpicking skill. It's failing due to being interrupted which is different. If you want to add that into your personal game, that's fine, but it's not part of 5e RAW. If it made sense, I would probably like it. ;) As it...

So what. All you guys are showing is that the structure of the argument is logically sound, not that the argument is sound. DMs don't have an agenda of making things boring for the players.

All of which are incredibly unlikely. So unlikely to happen at the exact time the party gets there in a traditional game, as to not occur unless the DM has remembered the farrier and determined somehow that one of those things happened. You're still thinking like a narrative DM where very...

"If you don't have an agenda as GM that includes making the character lives' not boring you should not use fail forward." This seems like sophistry to me. Who has an agenda that includes making the characters lives boring? No DM that I've ever heard of. It implies that using fail forward is...

Why would I do that? I'm not running a narrative game. I'm not going to start inventing plots and such on the spot just because someone asked for the farrier. It wouldn't make sense for their to be no farrier. If there was some reason for the farrier to be absent, then I wouldn't have...

Maybe. There's no reason to assume that there are more servants involved with this. In a castle, sure, there are lots of servants and the cooks(plural) wouldn't be involved in serving most of the time. In a private residence, the cook is probably also the server.

Right. The DM would have to homebrew in one being louder than the other. It's not RAW that it is. If you feel the need to make a failed attempt louder for some reason(and I see no reason why it should be), then you can do so. It matters if you want the world to feel like it exists...