D&D 5E Do you use the Success w/ Complication Module in the DMG or Fail Forward in the Basic PDF

[Charlaquin]

the vast majority of "I try to pick the lock" either the party moves on, they use a side door elsewhere, or they find a key/break it down. It's more difficult but a ton of pointless checks get called just to call something

Again, you seem to me to be describing a lack of meaningful consequence for failure here, not a lack of meaningful consequence for success. Unless I’m misunderstanding you; the example here is pretty vague.

 

[tetrasodium]

Again, you seem to me to be describing a lack of meaningful consequence for failure here, not a lack of meaningful consequence for success. Unless I’m misunderstanding you; the example here is pretty vague.

It's like the consequence for not pulling a push door or notpulling the locked side of a double door, Either way it didn't make any meaningful difference to make you say "Ok I do that intstead"'
Another example might be the ranger/druid declaring they want to start a campfire when taking a long rest. everyone knows the wizard is going to sigh "I ritually cast tiny hut". Nothing's goig to see or not see the fire/lack of fire. It's pure fluff

 

[Fenris-77]

If there were no risks involved then a roll shouldn't have been called for, right? So even in the standard D&D binary adjudication system something should happen if you had to roll, good or bad...

Admittedly, the above has a very story now cast to it I suppose (I'll wave at 4E in passing here), where the notion that rolling just because it's hard isn't the point, but rather rolling because there's a risk. My GMing style tends to assume that a player with lockpicking skill is a professional, and that with unlimited time they can open most things. So I'd want there to a risk involved. YMMV, of course.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's like the consequence for not pulling a push door or notpulling the locked side of a double door, Either way it didn't make any meaningful difference to make you say "Ok I do that intstead"'
Another example might be the ranger/druid declaring they want to start a campfire when taking a long rest. everyone knows the wizard is going to sigh "I ritually cast tiny hut". Nothing's goig to see or not see the fire/lack of fire. It's pure fluff

Ok, but you’re still describing things that lack a meaningful consequence for failure. What about an example that does have a meaningful consequence for failure, but doesn’t have one for success? So far you’ve only made me even more convinced that no such case exists.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ok, but you’re still describing things that lack a meaningful consequence for failure. What about an example that does have a meaningful consequence for failure, but doesn’t have one for success? So far you’ve only made me even more convinced that no such case exists.

I think we disagree on what constitutes "meaningful", you seem to set it somewhere closer to an area I might call "Boring" trivial irrelevant beneath notice uninteresting or whatever. Look at these quotes from the fate core book for some light on the other viewpoint.

Spoiler: when to roll the dice pg187

When to Roll dice
Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game
.This is pretty easy to figure out in regards to success, most of the time—the PCs overcome a significant obstacle, win a conflict, or succeed at a goal, which creates fodder for the next thing.

With failure, however, it’s a little more difficult, because it’s easy to look at failure in strictly negative terms—you fail, you lose, you don’t get what you want. If there’s nothing to build on after that failure, play can grind to a halt in a hurry.
The worst, worst thing you can do is have a failed roll that means nothing happens—no new knowledge, no new course of action to take, and no change in the situation. That is totally boring, and it discourages players from investing in failure—something you absolutely want them to do, given how important compels and the concession mechanic are. Do not do this. If you can’t imagine an interesting outcome from both results, then don’t call for that roll. If failure is the uninteresting option, just give the PCs what they want and call for a roll later, when you can think of an interesting failure. If success is the boring option, then see if you can turn your idea for failure into a compel instead, using that moment as an opportunity to funnel fate points to the players.

Spoiler: notice, pg116

notice
The Notice skill involves just that—noticing things. It’s a counterpart to
Investigate, representing a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out
details at a glance, and other powers of observation. Usually, when you use
Notice, it’s very quick compared to Investigate, so the kinds of details you
get from it are more superficial, but you also don’t have to expend as much
effort to find them.
o Overcome: You don’t really use Notice to overcome obstacles too

often but when you do it’s used in a reactive way: noticing some-
thing in a scene, hearing a faint sound, spotting the concealed gun
in that guy’s waistband.
Note that this isn’t license for GMs to call for Notice rolls left
and right to see how generally observant the players’ characters are;
that’s boring. Instead, call for Notice rolls when succeeding would
result in something interesting happening and failing would result
in something just as interesting.

Spoiler: drama is better than realism pg178

draMa is Better
tHan reaLisM
in Fate, don’t get too bogged
down trying to maintain abso-
lute consistency in the world
or adhere to a draconian sense
of realism. the game operates
by the rules of drama and fic-
tion; use that to your advan-
tage. there should be very few
moments in the game where
the pcs are free of conflicts or
problems to deal with, even if
it’d be more “realistic” for them
to get a long breather.
When you’re trying to decide
what happens, and the answer
that makes the most sense is
also kind of boring, go with
something that’s more exciting
than sensible! you can always
find a way later on to justify
something that doesn’t make
immediate sense.

Spoiler: Skills & specific measurements pg204

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we find that creating minutiae
like that detracts from the verisimilitude of the game in play. As soon as
you establish a detail like, “Great Physique can dead lift a car for five sec-
onds,” then you’re cutting out a lot of the variability that real life allows.
Adrenaline and other factors allow people to reach beyond their normal
physical limits or fall short of them—you can’t factor every one of those
things in without having it take up a large amount of focus at the table.
It becomes a thing for people to discuss and even argue about, rather than
participating in the scene.
It’s also boring. If you decide that a Fair (+2) Resources can buy anything
that’s 200 gold pieces or less, then you’ve removed a great deal of potential
for tension and drama. Suddenly, every time you have a Resources-based
problem, it’s going to hinge on the question of whether or not the cost is
200 gold pieces, rather than whatever the point of the scene is. It also turns
everything into a simple pass/fail situation, which means you don’t really
have a good reason to roll the skill at all. And again, this is not realistic—
when people spend money, it’s not about the raw dollar amount as much as
it is a question of what someone can presently afford.
Remember, a skill roll is a narrative tool, meant to answer the following
question: “Can I solve X problem using Y means, right now?” When you
get an unexpected result, use your sense of realism and drama to explain and
justify it, using our guidelines above. “Oh, you failed that Resources roll to
bribe the guard? Guess you spent just a bit more at the tavern last night than
you thought... wait, why is your belt pouch gone? And who’s that shady
character walking a little too quickly just past the line of guards? Did he just
wink at you? That bastard... now what do you do?”

If you define meaningful as literally anything at all then yea it's going to be hard to have maningful consequences for success & failure both. If you define meaningful closer to the definition of something of serious import quality of purpose it's a bit higher bar. Those excerpts talk a lot about when to call for a roll or not too so they should help

 

[Charlaquin]

I think we disagree on what constitutes "meaningful", you seem to set it somewhere closer to an area I might call "Boring" trivial irrelevant beneath notice uninteresting or whatever. Look at these quotes from the fate core book for some light on the other viewpoint.

Spoiler: when to roll the dice pg187

When to Roll dice
Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game
.This is pretty easy to figure out in regards to success, most of the time—the PCs overcome a significant obstacle, win a conflict, or succeed at a goal, which creates fodder for the next thing.

With failure, however, it’s a little more difficult, because it’s easy to look at failure in strictly negative terms—you fail, you lose, you don’t get what you want. If there’s nothing to build on after that failure, play can grind to a halt in a hurry.
The worst, worst thing you can do is have a failed roll that means nothing happens—no new knowledge, no new course of action to take, and no change in the situation. That is totally boring, and it discourages players from investing in failure—something you absolutely want them to do, given how important compels and the concession mechanic are. Do not do this. If you can’t imagine an interesting outcome from both results, then don’t call for that roll. If failure is the uninteresting option, just give the PCs what they want and call for a roll later, when you can think of an interesting failure. If success is the boring option, then see if you can turn your idea for failure into a compel instead, using that moment as an opportunity to funnel fate points to the players.

Spoiler: notice, pg116

notice
The Notice skill involves just that—noticing things. It’s a counterpart to
Investigate, representing a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out
details at a glance, and other powers of observation. Usually, when you use
Notice, it’s very quick compared to Investigate, so the kinds of details you
get from it are more superficial, but you also don’t have to expend as much
effort to find them.
o Overcome: You don’t really use Notice to overcome obstacles too

often but when you do it’s used in a reactive way: noticing some-
thing in a scene, hearing a faint sound, spotting the concealed gun
in that guy’s waistband.
Note that this isn’t license for GMs to call for Notice rolls left
and right to see how generally observant the players’ characters are;
that’s boring. Instead, call for Notice rolls when succeeding would
result in something interesting happening and failing would result
in something just as interesting.

Spoiler: drama is better than realism pg178

draMa is Better
tHan reaLisM
in Fate, don’t get too bogged
down trying to maintain abso-
lute consistency in the world
or adhere to a draconian sense
of realism. the game operates
by the rules of drama and fic-
tion; use that to your advan-
tage. there should be very few
moments in the game where
the pcs are free of conflicts or
problems to deal with, even if
it’d be more “realistic” for them
to get a long breather.
When you’re trying to decide
what happens, and the answer
that makes the most sense is
also kind of boring, go with
something that’s more exciting
than sensible! you can always
find a way later on to justify
something that doesn’t make
immediate sense.

Spoiler: drama is better than realism pg178

Spoiler: Skills & specific measurements pg204

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we find that creating minutiae
like that detracts from the verisimilitude of the game in play. As soon as
you establish a detail like, “Great Physique can dead lift a car for five sec-
onds,” then you’re cutting out a lot of the variability that real life allows.
Adrenaline and other factors allow people to reach beyond their normal
physical limits or fall short of them—you can’t factor every one of those
things in without having it take up a large amount of focus at the table.
It becomes a thing for people to discuss and even argue about, rather than
participating in the scene.
It’s also boring. If you decide that a Fair (+2) Resources can buy anything
that’s 200 gold pieces or less, then you’ve removed a great deal of potential
for tension and drama. Suddenly, every time you have a Resources-based
problem, it’s going to hinge on the question of whether or not the cost is
200 gold pieces, rather than whatever the point of the scene is. It also turns
everything into a simple pass/fail situation, which means you don’t really
have a good reason to roll the skill at all. And again, this is not realistic—
when people spend money, it’s not about the raw dollar amount as much as
it is a question of what someone can presently afford.
Remember, a skill roll is a narrative tool, meant to answer the following
question: “Can I solve X problem using Y means, right now?” When you
get an unexpected result, use your sense of realism and drama to explain and
justify it, using our guidelines above. “Oh, you failed that Resources roll to
bribe the guard? Guess you spent just a bit more at the tavern last night than
you thought... wait, why is your belt pouch gone? And who’s that shady
character walking a little too quickly just past the line of guards? Did he just
wink at you? That bastard... now what do you do?”

If you define meaningful as literally anything at all then yea it's going to be hard to have maningful consequences for success & failure both. If you define meaningful closer to the definition of something of serious import quality of purpose it's a bit higher bar. Those excerpts talk a lot about when to call for a roll or not too so they should help

I guess you could frame it that way. I don’t base it on how interesting I think the outcome will be though, but on whether or not it will have an actual impact on the characters. Failing to start a fire when the wizard knows Tiny Hut, failing to pull a door instead of push when there’s nothing stopping you from immediately going on to pull it, failing to pick a lock when time isn’t a meaningful cost, none of these things have costs or consequences that matter to the characters or the story. On the other hand, if there are wandering monsters that might come upon you as you try unsuccessfully to pick the lock for several minutes, if the door magically seals itself when you push it instead of pulling, if the wizard doesn’t have Tiny Hut, these are situations where failure does have a meaningful consequence.

I’m open to the possibility of a task that has a consequence for success and doesn’t have one for failure being a case where a roll might be warranted, but I can’t imagine a scenario where that would be the case and you haven’t been able to give me an example of one where it is.

 

[loverdrive]

I think we disagree on what constitutes "meaningful", you seem to set it somewhere closer to an area I might call "Boring" trivial irrelevant beneath notice uninteresting or whatever. Look at these quotes from the fate core book for some light on the other viewpoint.

Spoiler: when to roll the dice pg187

When to Roll dice
Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game
.This is pretty easy to figure out in regards to success, most of the time—the PCs overcome a significant obstacle, win a conflict, or succeed at a goal, which creates fodder for the next thing.

With failure, however, it’s a little more difficult, because it’s easy to look at failure in strictly negative terms—you fail, you lose, you don’t get what you want. If there’s nothing to build on after that failure, play can grind to a halt in a hurry.
The worst, worst thing you can do is have a failed roll that means nothing happens—no new knowledge, no new course of action to take, and no change in the situation. That is totally boring, and it discourages players from investing in failure—something you absolutely want them to do, given how important compels and the concession mechanic are. Do not do this. If you can’t imagine an interesting outcome from both results, then don’t call for that roll. If failure is the uninteresting option, just give the PCs what they want and call for a roll later, when you can think of an interesting failure. If success is the boring option, then see if you can turn your idea for failure into a compel instead, using that moment as an opportunity to funnel fate points to the players.

Spoiler: notice, pg116

notice
The Notice skill involves just that—noticing things. It’s a counterpart to
Investigate, representing a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out
details at a glance, and other powers of observation. Usually, when you use
Notice, it’s very quick compared to Investigate, so the kinds of details you
get from it are more superficial, but you also don’t have to expend as much
effort to find them.
o Overcome: You don’t really use Notice to overcome obstacles too

often but when you do it’s used in a reactive way: noticing some-
thing in a scene, hearing a faint sound, spotting the concealed gun
in that guy’s waistband.
Note that this isn’t license for GMs to call for Notice rolls left
and right to see how generally observant the players’ characters are;
that’s boring. Instead, call for Notice rolls when succeeding would
result in something interesting happening and failing would result
in something just as interesting.

Spoiler: drama is better than realism pg178

draMa is Better
tHan reaLisM
in Fate, don’t get too bogged
down trying to maintain abso-
lute consistency in the world
or adhere to a draconian sense
of realism. the game operates
by the rules of drama and fic-
tion; use that to your advan-
tage. there should be very few
moments in the game where
the pcs are free of conflicts or
problems to deal with, even if
it’d be more “realistic” for them
to get a long breather.
When you’re trying to decide
what happens, and the answer
that makes the most sense is
also kind of boring, go with
something that’s more exciting
than sensible! you can always
find a way later on to justify
something that doesn’t make
immediate sense.

Spoiler: Skills & specific measurements pg204

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we find that creating minutiae
like that detracts from the verisimilitude of the game in play. As soon as
you establish a detail like, “Great Physique can dead lift a car for five sec-
onds,” then you’re cutting out a lot of the variability that real life allows.
Adrenaline and other factors allow people to reach beyond their normal
physical limits or fall short of them—you can’t factor every one of those
things in without having it take up a large amount of focus at the table.
It becomes a thing for people to discuss and even argue about, rather than
participating in the scene.
It’s also boring. If you decide that a Fair (+2) Resources can buy anything
that’s 200 gold pieces or less, then you’ve removed a great deal of potential
for tension and drama. Suddenly, every time you have a Resources-based
problem, it’s going to hinge on the question of whether or not the cost is
200 gold pieces, rather than whatever the point of the scene is. It also turns
everything into a simple pass/fail situation, which means you don’t really
have a good reason to roll the skill at all. And again, this is not realistic—
when people spend money, it’s not about the raw dollar amount as much as
it is a question of what someone can presently afford.
Remember, a skill roll is a narrative tool, meant to answer the following
question: “Can I solve X problem using Y means, right now?” When you
get an unexpected result, use your sense of realism and drama to explain and
justify it, using our guidelines above. “Oh, you failed that Resources roll to
bribe the guard? Guess you spent just a bit more at the tavern last night than
you thought... wait, why is your belt pouch gone? And who’s that shady
character walking a little too quickly just past the line of guards? Did he just
wink at you? That bastard... now what do you do?”

If you define meaningful as literally anything at all then yea it's going to be hard to have maningful consequences for success & failure both. If you define meaningful closer to the definition of something of serious import quality of purpose it's a bit higher bar. Those excerpts talk a lot about when to call for a roll or not too so they should help

While I agree, I must point out that this is a very Fate thing, which doesn't apply particularly well to D&D. It's not like it has compels or any other way to make players to be fine with outright failure in a situation where they could succeeded, after all.

 

[Lanefan]

I understand that that’s the logic behind the “your first try roll represents your best attempt” approach. That’s exactly why I don’t like it though. It desynchronizes the player experience from the character’s experience. It’s what all the anti-4e crowd used to call a “dissociated mechanic”

Yeah, but I can see my dice and it bothers me that what they say isn’t consistent with the fiction.

Much farther down you refer to something as not being a gameplay benefit; that and the above quote would seem to suggest you're coming at this from a game-first or small-g gamist perspective rather than an in-character-first perspective. This alone would explain probably 95%+ of our disagreements.

The player experience is constantly going to be desynchronized from the character experience, no matter what you do. Even before seeing the roll result, for example, you-the-player picked up a die and rolled it; but (almost certainly) your character didn't. It's a very short jump from there to having the fiction reflect the roll result whatever that result may be, particularly if one doesn't necessarily see the PCs as always being perfect.

I don’t think that’s true at all. Generally people who use progress with a setback do so to keep the game moving forward, not to mitigate risk.

This is another thing: starting with 4e and ramping up further of late there seems to be a massive amount of focus - far too much, IMO - on "keeping the game moving forward". I see nothing at all wrong with the characters - and thus the players - being stumped by something and left with no obvious way forward; it only seems logical that this sort of thing would likely happen fairly often to the characters. And if it means the players (either in-character or out) have to stop and scratch their heads for a while, then so be it.

In the game I play in we hit one of these points in last night's session: a door we just couldn't figure out how to open. Several in-game hours (and a couple of at-virtual-table hours) and a whole bunch of creative ideas and resource-burning later we figured a way through it; but now we're weaker and have found the opposition on the other side...

When I referred to difficulty mitigation I didn't mean in-character risk, I meant at-table frustration.

I figured you’d disagree. But, no, a given task isn’t necessarily always the same difficulty. It depends on your approach. Picking a lock is a poor example here because it’s actually an approach to the goal of opening a locked door - as opposed to, say, breaking it down, which might have a different DC and different consequences for failure. Or using the key, or the knock spell, which might not require a roll at all. Or using the wrong key, or like shouting at it to open or something, which also wouldn’t require a roll at all, though for a different reason.

You're seeing the task from one degree further back than I am and thus - I think - equating task wth goal. To me the goal is to get through the door, the task is to pick its lock. Fail. Then the goal is still to get through the door but the task now becomes to break it down. Etc. Checks resolve tasks, not goals; and thus each task can have a different DC (or equivalent) even if all those tasks are in pursuit of the same goal.

That’s not true at all. Some failures just lead to the status quo being maintained,

And there is nothing - nothing! - wrong or bad about this. You're rolling in hopes of achieving the meaningful consequence(s) tied to success.

Right, this is another reason I don’t like the “your first try roll represents your best attempt” approach. It means failure often just halts the game’s momentum, rather than contributing anything interesting to the gameplay.

See above.

I find the simplicity of pass/fail rolls* quite elegant. There are times when degrees of success/failure at different thresholds can be useful, but I find them pretty scarce.

*note that pass/fail isn’t necessarily binary, because a failure sometimes means no progress and sometimes means progress with a setback, and always means some kind of cost must be paid or consequence must occur.

That’s not a gameplay benefit. I understand that (for you) it’s more believable, I just don’t find that a compelling reason to use the technique when it creates ludinarrative dissonance and often causes failure to bring gameplay to a halt, and does nothing positive for gameplay in exchange.

I'm not concerned about bringing gameplay to a halt, because the gameplay doesn't halt. The progess of the story might stop, but that's very different; the gameplay continues as the players/PCs either look for find another way through, or go and do something else, or try to think of a solution, or whatever.

Yep. I suspect you’ll find a lot of 3e mechanics we agree we dislike, but come at from opposite directions. This is why I generally think agreeing on problems doesn’t really matter much if you don’t agree on solutions to them.

With you and I this probably ties in to (EDIT) different expectations of (/EDIT) pace of play and-or degrees of patience. I don't usually care if something takes them all night to solve; as the campaign's real-world duration is completely open-ended, there'll always be next session to get to what wasn't got to tonight.

 

[Lanefan]

If you insist on conceptualizing it that way, you could view my approach as giving a +infinity bonus for having infinite time and no risk or pressure at all.

Got it. Comes back to making things easier/more difficult, I suppose: I tend to go the "more difficult" route, meaning the DC (or equivalent) is set on the assumption of reasonably good conditions, with adverse conditions causing penalties.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, but that’s a lack of meaningful consequence for failure. Can you give an example where failure does have a meaningful consequence but success doesn’t?

Try this: picking a lock on a door. Success means you open a false door with only wall behind it thus no progress. Failure means you set off a trap or alarm or cause some other Bad Thing to happen.