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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8135268" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Why not? Just give them the DC. Then they are making informed decisions. And for the record, it’s okay to not give them the DC. It’s perfectly valid. But it leaves the players with less agency than if they did have the DC.Until something in the fiction happens to make it so. Not just the GM deciding “it’d make sense for this sage that they convinced to work for them to betray them now” because the GM can just as easily decide “this sage they convinced to work for them still remains totally loyal to then because he knows what the alternative would be”. You point to logic...and yes you may perhaps be able to justify the GM’s whim in the fiction. But that doesn't mean it’s not the GM’s whim. Now, if the PCs treat the NPC sage poorly, or something similar happens,  then sure, the door to betrayal is open. But to resort to “well, unbeknownst to the PCs the necromancer reached out to the sage and promised him power if he betrays the PCs” is absolutely sidestepping any kind of player agency. And again, it’s fine to do that if it’s the preferred mode of play....but you can’t say that there’s a high degree of player agency going on. Sure, I get that, and largely agree. However, my preference doesn’t make it a universality. Others may not like letting a game stall out like that. Well, I think it’s best when there is clear degrees involved. But I’d also say that there are certain systems or genres where the fail forward approach makes sense. Pretty sure the main one I can think of is the Gumshoe system used for Trail of Cthulhu and some other games. Given the investigative nature of the game, it makes sense to have a means to proceed with the investigation even if the players don’t succeed at every step. This isn’t turning a failure into a success, as you describe it. It’s more about imposing consequences of the failure that manifest in another way. So if the players fail to find the clue, it’s not that they never find it, it’s that it takes them far too long and by the time they get to the library (where the clue pointed them) the professor has been killed. Had they succeeded in their attempt, they’d have arrived in time to possibly save him. My experience with these games is minimal, so I’m sure others can offer more and correct any inaccuracies on my part, but that’s a kind of quick sketch of that kind of play. It simply doesn’t. Just like when you watch a movie, and a flashback happens, you’re able to process it. You fold what you’ve learned from the flashback into the ongoing fiction, and proceed with this new understanding. It doesn’t do what you’re afraid it does. So a roll may be binary....you hit or you miss. But if you look at the entire action, very few will be so simply A or B. Don’t separate attack and damage rolls....look at them as the entire action. Most actions have plenty of room for degrees of success. You jump and don’t fall into the chasm.....but you don’t make it all the way to the other side, and now you’re scrambling to climb up onto the ledge. Etc etc.</blockquote>

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