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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8134867" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I don’t know if I’d say all consequences need to be disclosed ahead of time. I think that in most cases, a sense of the risk inherent in an action that’s to be attempted and some sense of the odds, too.For example, in my 5E game, I almost always share the DCs for any kind of action roll. Keeping those unknown just leaves the door open for fudging and illusionism or even just the possibility of those things. And for what? To obscure the chance of success?I think you have to honor the dice results. If a player achieves a success, a GM adjusting things so that the success does not stand is undermining player agency.There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for it than a GM deciding “no, that’s not how I wanted things to go...I’ll just go ahead and change that.”And honestly, if the GM can’t think of other ways to challenge the PCs than by undoing a success, then the GM has a lot to learn.Seriously, let the PCs have their success and come up with some other thing to challenge them.I don’t personally follow that mentality. I have no problem allowing PCs to fail. However, the mindset for the fail forward approach you’re critiquing here is that there are times when failure will bring the game to a halt, and so therefore, fail forward is about finding alternative ways to apply consequences than simply declaring a failure and then watch as everyone stares at each other for a half hour.The intention is to keep the game moving in instances where it may otherwise slow or stop. And I know that you personally don’t mind when a game slows to a crawl, but there are plenty of us who do.Well, hall of fame baseball players hit less than 4 times out of 10. Also, the frequency of rolls in D&D means that my D&D players miss more often than my BitD players. And we also tend to be harsher in failure narration in D&D as opposed to Blades.Roll a 1 on a roll in D&D and my group will mock and laugh and explain how the character falls on his face or similar, and we don’t even use fumbles. By comparison, Blades specifically tells the GM to not make the PCs look foolish on a failure. It’s not so much that they blundered as it is that they’re trying something that’s very difficult. And this is not even addressing that a success with complication isn’t really a failure. You succeed at what you attempt, it just doesn't go perfectly. I don’t know if this will help, but maybe don’t think of the game as trying to simulate criminals committing crimes and instead think of the game as trying to simulate a crime story. Because if you read some crime fiction or watch crime movies, things begin in media res all the time. Relevant details and plans are revealed in flashback....all the time. The criminals have the items they wind up needing....all the time.All that stuff is baked into crime fiction.</blockquote>

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