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More thoughts later, but DH expects that the characters are “protagonist-heroes in a story.”

Right, I think this sort of thing only really matters if your focus is on maintaining a specific narrative thread. There's also lots of ways to gracefully give the players a couple of immediate potential nudges forward on a failure that aren't quite "you immediately get something" but more "hey...

@pemerton just to share Daggerheart's specific guidance for your note, it calls the "narrating failure as your PC sucking ass" out under the Pitfalls to Avoid: Undermining the Heroes section: (it does also note that hey, maybe you're doing a comedic tone and the character tripping over their...

No jokes, ONLY RAGE. at the machine So I've posted a few of the bits of advice Daggerheart has to handle situations like this, and I'm using it because the game is more or less designed to be a bridge from folks used to playing 5e in a story-forward CR style to a more intentionally designed...

I just hope we dont get a bunch of "I tried DH and it was cool, but mostly just 5e so we decided to go back to the game that has our bespoke subclass my one player really wants" and then when asked the table didn't take advantage of any of the really cool design they've put in here. Likewise...

I swear to god we talked about how a simple “pass/fail” lock pick isn’t a worthy example for “fail forward” techniques absent stakes, and I know for sure @hawkeyefan has belabored that point to death. If you want to keep grabbing a bad example and furthering it for digital ink, that’s on you...

SCHRODINGER’S D&D COOK! How did this white room example get so contrived

I’m reliably told that adversary rosters with interesting encounters off a randomized chance to appear are not quantum and make a dungeon feel “lived in.”

I agree, assuming we're talking about a binary d20 sort of game. I don't think "partial success" or "success with complications" or whatever you want to call it works well there. If you want to do "fail forward" in a system like that you just do a good job establishing the stakes up front for a...

Naw, I'm not offended (we're talking about TTRPGs on the internet and you're not telling me I suck at running the game I've been devoted to for years, unlike the stuff poor @pemerton has been getting) it just seemed to be getting a little absurd. If anything, I'm exhausted...from dealing with...

Ok dude, whatever. You asked for some examples beyond others of how Fail Forward might work. I wasn't posting them for you to go "I hate that, screw off" but "here's how games can incorporate it since you asked." It's exhausting having posters like you go "well @pemerton 's examples suck...

Or I love that it says "hey, just have them burn a stress and ask them why" as a core GM move.

No, the game says on a player rolling a 6-, I get to make a move as hard and direct as I want. In this case I looked at my prep for the dungeon, considered the fight they'd had just down the stairs and conversation between Marshall and the rest of the party, and decided that the most fictionally...

If you look at the other post @pemerton replied to in that comment, and the phrasing of yours, he was reacting to the idea of pre-written adventures.

No, it has that elsewhere like all good games of this sort. I just didn’t want to quote the entire set of GM stuff and make a huge post!

That’s one way to look at it I guess. Let’s look at Daggerheart again: Keep the Story Moving Forward “Every time a player makes an action roll, the story should move forward, success or failure. On a failure, the GM says how the world responds and keeps the story moving. This is often referred...

… ye-es, that’s what we’ve largely been saying. If you fail on a roll, consequences happen and the scene evolves. The forward bit is that the scene is always moving forward. Again, the mechanics seemed to be less important then showing how the fiction starts -> the player tries a roll and...

Sure, ok, here: think of it as like a Handle Animal roll with Aided Advantage, and the ability to idk drop a Hit Dice analogue to pay a cost to make the failure slightly less bad. Does that help? I figured the framing of the fiction in actual play set up/adjudication/scene evolution was the...

I think running DH like classic story-forward 5e is ignoring most of the GM best practices, moves, and principles. Upside: you’ll still have a solid core. Downside: you’re missing out on what’s possible.

Here's two examples from play of the sort of "Fail Forward" that I've previously defined (the scene changes on a roll), and that @clearstream cited from Daggerheart's rules text: - (Stonetop, PBTA) The party is exploring an old barrow. There's sconces on the walls of rusted old iron, that...