D&D 5E (2014) Consequences of Failure

[Guest 6801328]

I don't think you are going to win many of us over by essentially saying, just don't include 100gp contests in your game.

You're right. If that's what I was saying, I wouldn't expect to win anybody over.

Just as an example. PC got passed out drunk at the bar. They wanted to carry him up the stairs to his room. First attempt the party member failed horribly, very funny narration. Then he talked the stronger party member into helping, also a fail. Finally he talked a bunch of people from the bar into helping. They also horribly failed. The poor pc and all the things that happened to him due to their attempts was fun and memorable. I wouldn't equate any of the narrative flourish that was given there with a real tangible consequence of failure and yet there we were, with a memorable moment that didn't rely on a meaningful consequence of failure.

So why roll dice? If he's not actually going to take HP loss from being dropped, just let the other players narrate all this. I would have more fun doing it that way.

YMMV, of course.

And let me insert my increasingly redundant but apparently necessary caveat: I am in no way saying the game should/must/is intended to be played this way. I'm exploring how the game can be played this way, and what the implications are.

 

[FrogReaver]

You're right. If that's what I was saying, I wouldn't expect to win anybody over.

That is the advice you are giving. You are saying: "Don't include a chance based contest to win 100gp in the game unless there is some risk that you will experience on a failure." The rest of us are looking at that and going.... his game can't even handle a simple contest for 100gp... WOW!

I get that your question is why even include this scene when there are likely more fun things to actually play and roll dice over. And if you do include it why not just make it be auto success and let the player win and give him 100 gp. It's because the gameworld needs definition and at least a façade of versimulitude. Part of that is having the players play out some of the relatively inconsequential things they do - which puts in perspective the consequential things - which ultimately enhances fun.

So why roll dice? If he's not actually going to take HP loss from being dropped, just let the other players narrate all this. I would have more fun doing it that way.

YMMV, of course.

Because rolling the dice in this example produced more fun even though there wasn't a meaningful consequence of failure.

And let me insert my increasingly redundant but apparently necessary caveat: I am in no way saying the game should/must/is supposed to be played this way. I'm exploring how the game can be played this way, and what the implications are.

I know. I'm just mostly pointing out the negative implications while you are mostly pointing out the positive ones.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t think every challenge needs to have high stakes to be entertaining and memorable. If I might tweak the contest at the faire example to more closely match something that happened in actual play:

I recently ran the Adventurers League scenario, The Pudding Faire as a one-shot between campaigns for a group I’m normally a player in, to buy our DM some breathing room to prepare for the next campaign. In this scenario, the PCs are at a faire. There are many events, games, contests, and the like at this faire, many of which have entry fees and prizes. One in particular that the players enjoyed was the Yondalla’s Luck game. Participants can sign up to attempt to run the gamut around the great pudding tent, where a feast is being held throughout the day. Contestants have to jump from table to table and make a full lap around the tent, while avoiding food thrown by other contestants. Anyone who makes the full lap around the tent without falling off the tables has their time recorded on a chalk board, and the person with the best time at the end of the day is crowned the Pudding King and gets the first piece of the Great Pudding, which is ceremonially cut and served at the end of the day to conclude the festivities.

There is no entry fee to play this game, but you only get one try. The reward is a meaningless title and the privilege of being the first to eat a Pudding everyone will get to eat. Not to mention, the actual crowning was a scripted event, the players had no real chance of winning. The stakes could not be lower. But everyone wanted to try, because the premise was delightful. One player commented on how cool he thought the mechanic was (it was literally just a series of Acrobatics checks, and the other players could make improvised ranged attack rolls against you to give you disadvantage on your check if they hit.) But it was an entertaining and memorable story nonetheless.

Sometimes the consequence of failure really is just that you can’t try again. You’re only allowed one try at Yondalla’s luck. Nothing bad happens if you fail, and the prize for succeeding is mostly just having your success acknowledged. I would argue that the consequences are still meaningful. You fail your attack roll and the person running the gamut will have a better chance of beating your time. You fail your acrobatics check and your run is over. That’s consequence enough to make a fun story.

 

[Celebrim]

@Elfcrusher: "So why roll dice? If he's not actually going to take HP loss from being dropped, just let the other players narrate all this. I would have more fun doing it that way."

Because dice inspire creativity and take the story in unexpected directions where you might never have thought to take it on your own.

If I wanted to write a novel, I'd just do that. If I wanted to collaborate with a team to create a screen play, I'd just do that.

But maybe even more to the point, how in the world do you expect me to always know whether there are going to be meaningful consequences of failure to the scene before the scene is complete?


Sometimes the consequences of failure are just that you failed. And there is a meaningful difference in experience between having failure arrive unexpectedly and choosing to fail.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don’t think every challenge needs to have high stakes to be entertaining and memorable. If I might tweak the contest at the faire example to more closely match something that happened in actual play:

I recently ran the Adventurers League scenario, The Pudding Faire as a one-shot between campaigns for a group I’m normally a player in, to buy our DM some breathing room to prepare for the next campaign. In this scenario, the PCs are at a faire. There are many events, games, contests, and the like at this faire, many of which have entry fees and prizes. One in particular that the players enjoyed was the Yondalla’s Luck game. Participants can sign up to attempt to run the gamut around the great pudding tent, where a feast is being held throughout the day. Contestants have to jump from table to table and make a full lap around the tent, while avoiding food thrown by other contestants. Anyone who makes the full lap around the tent without falling off the tables has their time recorded on a chalk board, and the person with the best time at the end of the day is crowned the Pudding King and gets the first piece of the Great Pudding, which is ceremonially cut and served at the end of the day to conclude the festivities.

There is no entry fee to play this game, but you only get one try. The reward is a meaningless title and the privilege of being the first to eat a Pudding everyone will get to eat. Not to mention, the actual crowning was a scripted event, the players had no real chance of winning. The stakes could not be lower. But everyone wanted to try, because the premise was delightful. One player commented on how cool he thought the mechanic was (it was literally just a series of Acrobatics checks, and the other players could make improvised ranged attack rolls against you to give you disadvantage on your check if they hit.) But it was an entertaining and memorable story nonetheless.

Sometimes the consequence of failure really is just that you can’t try again. You’re only allowed one try at Yondalla’s luck. Nothing bad happens if you fail, and the prize for succeeding is mostly just having your success acknowledged. I would argue that the consequences are still meaningful. You fail your attack roll and the person running the gamut will have a better chance of beating your time. You fail your acrobatics check and your run is over. That’s consequence enough to make a fun story.

Great story! I think I have been conflating your and @Elfcrusher's opinions far too much. It seems you actually have some very unique views compared with his.

 

[Charlaquin]

Great story! I think I have been conflating your and @Elfcrusher's opinions far too much. It seems you actually have some very unique views compared with his.

I think in these conversations we often conflate the opinions of all of the people who disagree with us (I’m often guilty of this too). And I think we do ourselves a disservice by doing so. I appreciate that you are coming to recognize my opinion as uniquely my own as opposed to part of a nebulous group opinion shared by the “goal and approach” crowd.

I also think there is much to be learned from those who don’t share our opinions. Part of the reason I like to participate in these debates about Goal and Approach is that they expose me to some of the places where the style doesn’t work for everyone, and to the ways other DMs who use a similar style address those shortcomings. I have incorporated some of those techniques, such as Iserith’s advice not to start narrations with the word “you” into my own style, and I believe my DMing has improved for it.

 

[5ekyu]

I assume the forger did the best job they could. If someone else with knowledge of the document assists, it's the help action and the forger gets advantage.

People make really bad forgeries in real life. I may or may not have tried to forge a parent's signature at one point in my life. Hypothetically, I would have thought it was pretty good but the principal saw right through it even though my buddy double checked it for me.

The PC is not aware of the roll.

While likening a kid forging his signature to a proficient forger doing a fake doc is sketchy, even as a kid I did the signature several times, especially if I had something to go by. If we had other folks in on it they would look at it too.

At a professional level most folks review their work and while it's not always perfect or their best work, often the really bad mistakes are caught by either their own review or other review before release.

And yes, PCs font "know the roll" but they should be able to 9bserve the products and make assessment.

Let me ask this another way...

A battle master is in combat with a foe. The battlemaster rolls a natural 19 and missed (narrated however you do that thing.)
If that player then decided "oh crap, this is not gonna work. I need ax20" and changes tactics - is that forbidden or considered inappropriate at your table? Do you tell that player "The PC is not aware of the roll."
If that same player rolled a natural 2, treats it like " just a bad effort" and keeps swinging, do you tell them "The PC is not aware of the roll."

Obviously, whether or not the forgery us good enough to get past a given guard or inspector is uncertain, but to me it seems that whether or not its even close to a decent forgery would be known to a proficient forger, even if not a kid skipping school.

 

[Guest 6801328]

That is the advice you are giving. You are saying: "Don't include a chance based contest to win 100gp in the game unless there is some risk that you will experience on a failure." The rest of us are looking at that and going.... his game can't even handle a simple contest for 100gp... WOW!

Don't be silly. Of course my game can handle a "simple contest for 100g". It just wouldn't include BOTH of the following features at the same time:
- Zero risk to the player
- Outcome determined by random dice roll

But there are lots of ways to incorporate such a scene without exactly those parameters.

I get that your question is why even include this scene when there are likely more fun things to actually play and roll dice over. And if you do include it why not just make it be auto success and let the player win and give him 100 gp. It's because the gameworld needs definition and at least a façade of versimulitude. Part of that is having the players play out some of the relatively inconsequential things they do - which puts in perspective the consequential things - which ultimately enhances fun.

So far so good.

Because rolling the dice in this example produced more fun even though there wasn't a meaningful consequence of failure.

And that's the point where our opinions diverge. It's as simple as that.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I don’t think every challenge needs to have high stakes to be entertaining and memorable. If I might tweak the contest at the faire example to more closely match something that happened in actual play:

I recently ran the Adventurers League scenario, The Pudding Faire as a one-shot between campaigns for a group I’m normally a player in, to buy our DM some breathing room to prepare for the next campaign. In this scenario, the PCs are at a faire. There are many events, games, contests, and the like at this faire, many of which have entry fees and prizes. One in particular that the players enjoyed was the Yondalla’s Luck game. Participants can sign up to attempt to run the gamut around the great pudding tent, where a feast is being held throughout the day. Contestants have to jump from table to table and make a full lap around the tent, while avoiding food thrown by other contestants. Anyone who makes the full lap around the tent without falling off the tables has their time recorded on a chalk board, and the person with the best time at the end of the day is crowned the Pudding King and gets the first piece of the Great Pudding, which is ceremonially cut and served at the end of the day to conclude the festivities.

There is no entry fee to play this game, but you only get one try. The reward is a meaningless title and the privilege of being the first to eat a Pudding everyone will get to eat. Not to mention, the actual crowning was a scripted event, the players had no real chance of winning. The stakes could not be lower. But everyone wanted to try, because the premise was delightful. One player commented on how cool he thought the mechanic was (it was literally just a series of Acrobatics checks, and the other players could make improvised ranged attack rolls against you to give you disadvantage on your check if they hit.) But it was an entertaining and memorable story nonetheless.

Sometimes the consequence of failure really is just that you can’t try again. You’re only allowed one try at Yondalla’s luck. Nothing bad happens if you fail, and the prize for succeeding is mostly just having your success acknowledged. I would argue that the consequences are still meaningful. You fail your attack roll and the person running the gamut will have a better chance of beating your time. You fail your acrobatics check and your run is over. That’s consequence enough to make a fun story.

Yeah, that's a good counter-example.

 

[FrogReaver]

Don't be silly. Of course my game can handle a "simple contest for 100g". It just wouldn't include BOTH of the following features at the same time:

• Zero risk to the player
• Outcome determined by random dice roll

But there are lots of ways to incorporate such a scene without exactly those parameters.



So far so good.



And that's the point where our opinions diverge. It's as simple as that.

That moment when you realize someone wants to enhance the fun of a game, but that fun is a subjective and personal experience...

Good luck finding ways to enhance your game's fun. If that's your goal I don't think I can help you. I apparently have a different notion of what fun is.