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Again, both cooks and bears exist in their respective environments and in both cases the process of adjudicating their appearance is the rolling of dice. It feels like to me that a lot of people have so internalized the specific process of D&D that they've given it all these special properties...

Yeah. I just feel like there's this immense kind of mental gymnastics that goes on around "this stuff is ultimately just made up by the GM." Now, there can be a legitimate reason to favor stuff being made up far in advance and then stuck to assiduously. But that argument is a gamist one, to make...

It is even better than this! Why did the random encounter happen? Because the random encounter clock ran out and a check was required. Why did the clock run out? Because the thief spent 5 turns failing to pick the lock on the door!!!!

Ehhhh, I gotta push a bit back on this. The player is describing their character's actions (In DW this is explicitly in character). The GM then decides if something was triggered. If you want to Hunt, you better describe some actual hunting! If there's no hunting to be had, guess what? I mean...

Well, actually... here's a theory for you, they're actually created by failed checks during exploration. The dwarf decides their MUST be a shifting floor around here somewhere, and searches, failing. That's one turn expended, so he tries again, and the GM rolls a random encounter. More of those...

Nobody says you can't ration the random kobolds, but heck the things breed fast! They live 14 days, and 3 new eggs hatch every hour! ;)

I see a huge difference between an ogre which appears in front of you no matter what you do, and a cook who appears in response to a die roll. How is the latter different from any old random encounter?

Of course the GM is deciding that. Fiction doesn't just drop out of the sky onto the table! Or, well, maybe your table is different and Metatron speaks out whenever some new fiction is required. Or maybe you got ChatGPT really well trained. Heck, there's potential there!

Yeah, where I see a problem is when things are decided in a way which subverts player's choices. The old 'quantum ogre' which appears behind the next door, no matter what, that is no good. The cook? Why is it a problem? Don't want to risk running into domestic staff? Don't break into houses...

No, because PbtA is not a system which requires Fail Forward! It is perfectly OK for a 6- to simply be "you failed, AND <bad thing X> just happened to you!" I am just saying that in DW/AW (probably most other PbtAs) IF you have a forward failure, then it has to be pretty explicitly "success +...

I just didn't find, in practice, that all that much really WAS set out ahead of time, or really could be extrapolated from what was set out beforehand. So, it seems like a lot of stuff was already made up on the fly. I see it as a simple question, I can combine a bunch of guestimating and...

Sounds right. Whereas in BW I would expect that the failure would be on the original attempt to pick the lock, and the intent of getting in unseen would fail, you bolt inside to avoid the guards and run smack into Pattycakes. who screams. I'm not versed enough in BW to talk about 'hard' vs...

That's fair. I am much more used to Dungeon World and similar PbtAs where intent is not as explicitly separated from tasks (sometimes not at all). So, FF in Dungeon World would require that the action, and thus the check, produces a result that is effectively successful, no matter what, but...

I'm simply responding to a description of a problem someone had with a certain situation and pointing out that the problem is with the situation, not the technique.

Less fiction, more clarity! 😉 Hmmm, it's hard to analyze that in a general sense, but say looking at a version of the lock picking example, the attempt fails, the GM FFs the character into the house, and makes a soft move by putting a cook into the scene. This one doesn't seem like such a case...

I choose not to argue with @pemerton about his example. I can see the argument against the things he mentioned there being fail forward. Maybe we do use the term a bit differently, or maybe there was more to play than came across. Perhaps a bit of each. Perhaps I am simply wrong and he might...

DW has Discern Realities, which surely any competent player is likely to trigger. They're going to ask at least one question, and it's likely to be "What should I be on the lookout for here?" The GM is bound by this, as it is part of the fiction now. A cook puttering in the kitchen is a fine...

This is a soft move in AW/DW parlance, Describe Future Badness (IIRC). There are a bunch of things that could be going on. First, the cook follows from the fiction, it's a situation and scene element that is logically consistent with the existing fiction. Second, the GM might be considering...

I didn't really have a problem with his lightshow either. I might have made it a bit less complicated, but conceptually it's OK.

I think the issue here is the difference between simple task adjudication and Narrativist 'fiction resolution'. Even in AW I'd like to see some generalization. Jane is breaking into the warehouse, of course she can succeed! If the place is entirely unguarded why even roll? Is there a secondary...