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It seems to me that there's at least 2 lines of argument against a fail forward model, which I'm categorizing as "the argument from naturalism" and "the argument from gameplay." I'm frankly less attached to the argument from naturalism, at best I think it can serve to make the game state more...

One dreads the conversation turning toward "immersion" or "realism" but I've argued before that forward facing causality of action declaration->resolution is an underlying prerequisite off players looking for that experience.

I suppose a mechanical consideration of this that does deserve more attention is that not having fail forward style contingent fiction works best when you have competent and powerful PCs with high agency abilities. If the only play the PC's have is a roll to unlock a door and a roll to break it...

I don't think this is quite right; the question at stake isn't the actual play or recitation of those situations in full. It's perfectly possible and one imagines quite common that you get "alright, you buy 6 days of rations and a waterskin, there aren't any arcane focuses for sale in this town"...

That's just causality all over again though. The situation, ideally, should be interesting enough that there doesn't need to be fiction contingent on the roll to pick the lock, so much as picking a lock being an emergent thing that occurs in an already interesting state. I think the focus on...

That is actually an interesting line for playtesting. I wonder if you couldn't break those triggers up over several rolls and move the ones closest to complications back into the GM's hands, and if that wouldn't have a significant effect on player sentiment. Well, I suppose that's essentially...

For sure. I'm saying here that a player who's looking to find the correct sequence of 3 decisions that gets them out scott free isn't going to be bothered if they get it wrong on decision 2 and get caught, but they are going to be very upset if the resolution process doesn't fundamentally allow...

There's a framing problem here though; it's not a question of "scenes" at all to the player enjoying the exploration element here. If the goal is a sense of a consistent, fictional setting, then null results or low tension moments provide validation that high tension situations are as "real."...

That's... Just exactly the problem again, and also seems incredibly prone to negotiation, a thing I think is an unalloyed bad, but opinions clearly vary. I'm proposing instead that after the introduction of an obstacle players be given a knowable amount of mechanical space before their actions...

Right, we should be able to do better than "this isn't a problem" and "this is the solution to problem" as our only points of discussion. Take 10/Take 20 is a perfect example, or you could turn knowledge/investigation/perception into defenses that hidden stuff/information is rolled against...

I'm a big proponent of Take 10/20, definitely the most maligned mechanic from the era. They cleared up most of the issues of the big D20, while still leaving it open to roll when it was actually tense, and provided a clear way to determine the maximum effect that was possible. But yes...

Technically yes, but the story in that game fits in a postage stamp and is well beside the point. From a gameplay perspective, you are missing literally nothing.

It's great! MT has a higher drive toward "escape velocity" than StS. It gives you ample opportunities to exceed the obvious design tolerances, lots of doubling and potential infinites, and unlike StS it intentionally scales such that you're required to use those tricks. That being said, it is...

I'm coming from a 3e table, primarily. Dice were for fighting and for cases you're forced to use a skill you aren't good at. Nearly everything else came down to creative spell use or invoking a system that output a specific result. There was a lot of leveraging the carry/drag numbers and we were...

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.

I can't help but think PF2 really didn't understand the value of defaulting mechanics like Take 10, I suspect largely as a result of writing generic scaling difficulties into skill resolution. There's nothing wrong with riskless mechanics, but it's obviously bad to make them time consuming to...

Intent is expressed through action declaration; the process outputs a climb speed, which a player uses to change the situation somehow. The roll can only tell you about the results of a fixed process, the interaction of that process and the situation determines if intent is realized. The mistake...

This is the most effective summary of the divide I've read, on both points. Tying complication to mechanical interaction, instead of originating outside of interaction is the baseline point of incompatibility, and the point about competence is a good articulation of how I've always felt engaging...

I'm deeply skeptical of every attempt I've seen to marry gamist and narrativist mechanics. Narrativism seems to thrive when the act of resolution is fundamental uncertain; you're rolling dice because you want system input on how something should be. Gamist concerns are much better served when...

I don't think negotiation and iterated gambling are enough to hang a game (in the strong sense) on. You can do risk management well, but only if you settle it in a web of other supporting systems that provide a lot of agency to manipulate outcomes. There's more than "having the appearance of a...