Failing Forward

[Maxperson]

No, the brother was possessed, that he had been evil before the possession was only determined by the fail forward (and the finding of the black arrows).
If the arrows hadn't been found then the brother being just possessed, or possessed and evil before that happened, or any thing else is up for grabs.

From pemerton post 596.

If the check had succeeded, the PCs would have found the mace they were looking for.

The backstory about the brother would still have been up for grabs: you can't establish an ingame fact about the brother via a successful Scavenging check. It would require a successful Balrog-wise or Great Masters-wise or Brothers-wise check, or something along those lines.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?473785-Failing-Forward/page60#ixzz3xYP5Fwel

Gotcha.

 

[grendel111111]

Are you able to articulate the nature of the advantage?

The main difference I can see is that if the GM knows (and knows because s/he decides in advance, rather than allowing the decision to be shaped by player-side checks and resource expenditure) then the GM can control the plot.

It isn't about plot control. My games very rarely have a "plot" but are more "setting" that can be explored with many factions, events and "happenings" The players choose what they do within the world, not the DM. But there are some truths that the players may not know and have not been articulated yet.
I have run games where there has been a "plot" the players were unaware of. My "next" game was like that. The characters were in a bubble world that had been created to protect the last of "humanity" from a demon incursion that had destroyed the world, but so much time had passed no one had any knowledge of what happened in the old times, or why boats never came to the ports because they had fallen into disrepair from generations of not being used.
The game for the players was not just telling the story of the characters, there was real mystery to solve. Why did things not behave the way they expected them to? Why did the time mage lock them in? Why is the bubble collapsing? Is there a way to the outside world? How could they restore the outside world

Now clearly this is not the style of game for everyone and I got the buy in that this was the kind of game I would be running. I thought it would be a fun interlude for 2-3 sessions, and it ended up running for 6 months. The game was really engaging for the players that I had at the table, because that extra layer of players solving a mystery as well as telling the characters stories. Other players may not have got it at all.

What mechanical system are you talking about here? What you say is not true for "fail forward" systems, where a check deals with intent as well as task.

If the GM is going to introduce complications that muck up the plans of, or thwart the desires of, players who make successful checks, then (from the player's point of view) what is the point of devoting resources to making successful checks?

I think this is a key difference between the styles of games. Are the checks about what the characters want or what the players want. For me discovering the characters brother was always evil is good for the characters (now they have more info to fight the demon) but bad for the player (my characters brother is lost). I would tend to see it as a good thing and so the discovery would happen on a strong success, or more likely spread over many smaller successes.

Fail forward games work because they are built to account for it in the way the skill systems work, bringing it into something like 5e involves adapting the skill system to be closer to how Fail forward focused games see skills. But that doesn't mean that there aren't thing in fail forward games that other games won't benefit from (which is what I am looking for)

For me complications don't come from failed skill checks, complications happen to everyone, your skills/abilities/powers are how you deal with the complications when they happen.

 

[BryonD]

I agree that it's important to have a "semi-breathing" world, where there are NPCs, organizations, nations, etc. that have agendas and will be taking actions in the background whether the PCs adapt to them or not. What shouldn't happen (at least in my opinion), is there shouldn't be some final encounter, some end game or plot development that WILL INEVITABLY HAPPEN, no matter what.

My GM-ing took a dramatic leap forward when my focus became about engaging the PCs with what was interesting to the players. To that end, scene frames, situations and NPC motivations have to remain adaptable and fluid. It was about shifting gears and changing directions based on what you see at the table.



I think I understand why you're getting hung up on this point, but the trick to remember is, as a GM you're not authoring "in the moment" all the time. There are absolutely moments where your pre-authored fiction can and should hold true. Sometimes the mace isn't there, and it doesn't matter what the PCs do, or say, or roll on the dice, they ain't gettin' that mace in Location X.

BUT --- and this is the big "but" --- as a GM, you should always be asking yourself, "Is that REALLY the case? Does the game get any better (or worse) if I decide right now, in the moment, that in fact the mace is there? And that the PCs will find it?"

If that's the case, don't even make them roll for it. There's no roll to be made. Assuming the PCs declare that they make any kind of reasonable search of the area to find the mace, they find it. This is classic "Say yes or roll the dice." Well, we just said yes --- the mace is there. Now what happens?

Or if they do roll for it, decide right then and there that they will find SOMETHING, even if the check result says "failure." This is the idea behind "fail forward." Sometimes, the PC's success is guaranteed, but I still make them roll the check to see how long it takes, the degree of success (which can lead to more interesting findings), and whether anything in the scene around them reacts to it.

To me the whole "Climbing Mount Pudding" example is a classic case of process sim run amok. If it's so dang important for the PCs to make it to the top of Mount Pudding, then scene frame it such that the PCs make it to Mount Pudding, but use the climb checks to represent some other variable other than the success of the climb.

Oh sure, if you change your pre-authored fiction, you're probably going to have to change other stuff in the fiction too, and maybe even do a mild ret-con (though in my experience, even if it's a semi-obvious ret-con to the players, most of the time they don't care and just roll with it). But if changing your pre-authored fiction increases the dramatic tension, pushes narrative momentum, and gives the PCs a chance to really dig in further to their character goals.......isn't that BETTER?

(Obviously the hardcore "simulationists" will disagree, but frankly I don't care. In my experience the only time "simulationism" works in the first place is if the players are heavily invested in their PCs with goals, motivations, and back stories . . . in which case, why would I purposefully use heavy process sim / pre-authoring to stunt their ability to engage with what they want?)

I think this is very good.
I'd tend to call myself a fairly "hardcore simulationist", but to me the joy of the experience when that hardcore simulation baseline crashed into the player's ideas (and luck) with wildly unexpected results.
Maybe that disqualifies me from your definition, but I suspect you know what I'm saying.

I am very very unlikely to decide that "the mace *IS* here. Never say never, because fun is paramount, but the cost of that switch would betray a lot of fun to me, so the reward would have to be spectacular. So let's add a third "very" and keep "never just a fingertip away.

It is possible I might have an obstacle that is mandatory to achieving a goal, but in that case achieving the goal is simply not mandatory to continuing a fun campaign.
And it is also possible that there is an obstacle which is more of a complication, meaning there is no real chance of failure, but it could make things more difficult. This is probably functionally the exact same thing as your alternative to failure, but I just don't frame it that way in my mind. I have had a recent instance in which the characters needed to climb a wall and one was allowed to forego the roll, two rolled for how quickly they could do it and another two rolled to see if they could do it at all. Same ideas can happen at the group level. It just seems quite natural to me.

 

[pemerton]

as a GM you're not authoring "in the moment" all the time. There are absolutely moments where your pre-authored fiction can and should hold true. Sometimes the mace isn't there, and it doesn't matter what the PCs do, or say, or roll on the dice, they ain't gettin' that mace in Location X.

BUT --- and this is the big "but" --- as a GM, you should always be asking yourself, "Is that REALLY the case? Does the game get any better (or worse) if I decide right now, in the moment, that in fact the mace is there? And that the PCs will find it?"

If that's the case, don't even make them roll for it. There's no roll to be made. Assuming the PCs declare that they make any kind of reasonable search of the area to find the mace, they find it. This is classic "Say yes or roll the dice." Well, we just said yes --- the mace is there. Now what happens?

The flip side (in "fail forward" play) is that, if the mace is not there, then the players don't make a check. You just tell them that, after scouring the ruins of the tower, their PCs do not find the mace.

Once the check is framed, and the goal of the check is "find the mace", then if the check succeeds the PCs find the mace. In BW terminology, that's "intent and task" at work.

I'm not so interested in telling the story of how how my character solved the mystery of the haunted castle, as I am of solving the mystery as both a player and a character.
I want there to be mysteries that involve thinking and problem solving to resolve.

It isn't about plot control. My games very rarely have a "plot" but are more "setting" that can be explored with many factions, events and "happenings" The players choose what they do within the world, not the DM. But there are some truths that the players may not know and have not been articulated yet.

I think this is a case where different RPGers think of "plot"/"story" and "railroading" in different terms.

The sort of game you describe strikes me as similar to what the Alexandrian discusses in his posts on the "three clue" rule. To me, those sorts of games are very GM-directed: the GM is establishing all the key scenes/transitions in advance, and the players' choices determine the precise pathway through them. I don't mind this sort of game for a convention-style one-shot, but do not particularly like it for campaign play.

Players hunting down his brother who is possessed.

Players are looking for item - fail forward discover brother has always been evil and invited possession. (for some reason failing at an unrelated skill has turned the brother bad)

My preferred way is that the DM knows that the brother invited the possession, but the players and the characters do not. Over the coarse of the adventure they discover this information slowly, 1 hint at a time, as they come to find more clues. When they track down the brother they may or may not know the truth. They may have not found enough information and think they are trying to "save" the brother, not realising he is beyond saving.

Additionally Discovering the truth about the brother is not a fail, finding out the clues and information is a reward for doing well.

For me discovering the characters brother was always evil is good for the characters (now they have more info to fight the demon) but bad for the player (my characters brother is lost).

Two things.

First, discovering that the brother was always evil is terrible for the character. He was hoping to save his brother from possession, but now learns that his brother is beyond redemption. Imagine learning that a loved one was in fact a vicious killer. That is not a good thing for anyone!

Second, it is by no means guaranteed that the brother was always evil. There is evidence for this: the black arrows. And the PCs currently believe this. But the campaign is not over, and so new revelations (triggered by new checks) are possible. (These would most likely result from successes for the brother PC, or from failures for the assassin/sorcerer PC who hates the brother - her former master, who treated her abominably - and who intends to flay him and send him to hell.)

Think about the various revelations around Gollum/Sméagol in LotR, and the ways in which he appears first as a villain, then as a victim, and then as a villain again. The real-time generation of that sort of story is (part of) what scene-framied/"fail forward" play is aimed at.

When the target is continually shifting to always be in your cross hairs, it's just not as challenging.
It's like you are shooting 5 arrows at the wall and then the DM goes up and draws circles around the arrows and says "Well done you hit every target".

I don't see how this relates to any of the play examples being given by the "fail forward" RPGers in this thread.

In the case of my BW game, if - in the end - the balrog kills all the PCs, then they will never learn whether or not the brother was evil, or capable of redemption.

As was being discussed a long way upthread, the "fail" in "fail forward" refers to failure. It's not a euphemism for getting what you want.

 

[grendel111111]

The flip side (in "fail forward" play) is that, if the mace is not there, then the players don't make a check. You just tell them that, after scouring the ruins of the tower, their PCs do not find the mace.

Once the check is framed, and the goal of the check is "find the mace", then if the check succeeds the PCs find the mace. In BW terminology, that's "intent and task" at work.

That isn't a flip side. If the mace isn't there and I am not using "fail forward" I still don't get them to players to roll a search roll. This is an example of a bunch of other techniques being attributed to
to fail forward. They are 2 different things. Even in blue box Basic D and D 30+ years ago we were doing this. "We search for secret door", "You search long enough to assure your self there are no secret doors" No dice roll needed.
If the DM has decided that the mace is not there no roll anyway. The key for me is that the presence or not of the mace is not dependent on the skill of the searcher.

I think this is a case where different RPGers think of "plot"/"story" and "railroading" in different terms.

The sort of game you describe strikes me as similar to what the Alexandrian discusses in his posts on the "three clue" rule. To me, those sorts of games are very GM-directed: the GM is establishing all the key scenes/transitions in advance, and the players' choices determine the precise pathway through them. I don't mind this sort of game for a convention-style one-shot, but do not particularly like it for campaign play.

Yes I agree it is a different view of several terms. But for me there is no path of scenes for them to go through. (I don't even arrange my games by "scenes"). It more that lots of things are happening and they choose what they are interested in following.
Ironicly I feel hte same about fail forward. I don't mind it so much in one off or very short champaines, but dislike it for long term play.

Two things.

First, discovering that the brother was always evil is terrible for the character. He was hoping to save his brother from possession, but now learns that his brother is beyond redemption. Imagine learning that a loved one was in fact a vicious killer. That is not a good thing for anyone!

Second, it is by no means guaranteed that the brother was always evil. There is evidence for this: the black arrows. And the PCs currently believe this. But the campaign is not over, and so new revelations (triggered by new checks) are possible. (These would most likely result from successes for the brother PC, or from failures for the assassin/sorcerer PC who hates the brother - her former master, who treated her abominably - and who intends to flay him and send him to hell.)

Think about the various revelations around Gollum/Sméagol in LotR, and the ways in which he appears first as a villain, then as a victim, and then as a villain again. The real-time generation of that sort of story is (part of) what scene-framied/"fail forward" play is aimed at.

For me more information is always a good thing even if it is bad news. In your game I would most likely want to fail most of my checks to see the story develop more.


I do see how it works and why it appeals to you. I just prefer that it ends up with a "thruth" that has been consistant and there from the start.

I don't see how this relates to any of the play examples being given by the "fail forward" RPGers in this thread.

In the case of my BW game, if - in the end - the balrog kills all the PCs, then they will never learn whether or not the brother was evil, or capable of redemption.

As was being discussed a long way upthread, the "fail" in "fail forward" refers to failure. It's not a euphemism for getting what you want.

(this was the original bit)
When the target is continually shifting to always be in your cross hairs, it's just not as challenging.
It's like you are shooting 5 arrows at the wall and then the DM goes up and draws circles around the arrows and says "Well done you hit every target".


What I was trying to explain is that if there is no objective truth that you are solving then you are not really solving anything.

In your BW game if the balrog kills them then they not only don't find out if he was evil or redeamable but he never was either evil or redeamable. The "clues" to find that out were meaningless. They didn't lead to any actual truth of the situation (And I understand that is why more information isn't always good in your games), but is in mine. We really are playing different games with very different goals we are trying to achieve.

 

[pemerton]

That isn't a flip side. If the mace isn't there and I am not using "fail forward" I still don't get them to players to roll a search roll. This is an example of a bunch of other techniques being attributed to
to fail forward. They are 2 different things. Even in blue box Basic D and D 30+ years ago we were doing this. "We search for secret door", "You search long enough to assure your self there are no secret doors" No dice roll needed.

There is a well-known approach to search checks where the GM rolls the dice behind the screen whether or not there is something to find, so that the players don't know whether a failure to find something indicates that there is nothing there to be found, or that there is something there to be found but they missed it.

The most recent time I read discussion of this technique was yesterday, on a current "fudging" thread on the ENworld 5e board.

I can't remember if Moldvay advocates this technique in his Basic rules. I'm pretty sure that it is recommended in GMing advice from that era, though.

Not using that technique is an application of the techniques that are typical of RPGing that uses "fail forward" - it travels with "say yes or roll the dice", "let it ride", etc.

In your game I would most likely want to fail most of my checks to see the story develop more.

I don't follow. If you succeed you find the mace, and can enchant it. That is also the story developing. Just differently.

I do see how it works and why it appeals to you. I just prefer that it ends up with a "thruth" that has been consistant and there from the start.

What I was trying to explain is that if there is no objective truth that you are solving then you are not really solving anything.

In your BW game if the balrog kills them then they not only don't find out if he was evil or redeamable but he never was either evil or redeamable. The "clues" to find that out were meaningless. They didn't lead to any actual truth of the situation

I don't agree with this.

Was Frodo courteous at the dining table? The LotR books don't tell us (as best I recall), but they contain information from which this can be extrapolated.

Or, more significantly, was Faramir a good husband to Eowyn and father to their children? The books don't tell us this either, but we can extrapolate this also. Different readers might reasonably form somewhat different views, based on different readings of what has been written, but it doesn't follow that these views are arbitrary, or that the information from which they are extrapolated is "meaningless".

Not everything in a fictional work needs to be written down in concrete terms in order to be a tenable object of reasoned conjecture.

 

[grendel111111]

There is a well-known approach to search checks where the GM rolls the dice behind the screen whether or not there is something to find, so that the players don't know whether a failure to find something indicates that there is nothing there to be found, or that there is something there to be found but they missed it.

The most recent time I read discussion of this technique was yesterday, on a current "fudging" thread on the ENworld 5e board.

I can't remember if Moldvay advocates this technique in his Basic rules. I'm pretty sure that it is recommended in GMing advice from that era, though.

Not using that technique is an application of the techniques that are typical of RPGing that uses "fail forward" - it travels with "say yes or roll the dice", "let it ride", etc.

You are assuming an either or option. The choice of only the extremes. Yes they often travel together but they are not joined to the point that using one means you must use them all. Just like "fail forward" is a group of techniques and if you use some of it you don't have to use all of it.

Personally, I use a lot from fail forward (as you see it).
Varient levels of success.
Don't roll if you know the answer already.
Letting the roll ride.
Never letting the game stall.
Alternative outcomes than pass or fail.
Even success at a cost works if the outcomes match the skill being checked.
etc.

So there is a very small fraction of fail forward (matching unrelated outcomes to the roll being made) that I am not comfortable with. For some reason disliking this one thing means people assume that I hide all my rolls, act like a jerk to my players and go on power trips when I DM (even though the thing that bothers me, bothers me most when I am a player not a DM).
Not everyone who does not 100% embrace FF style of play is a bad player, they just have different preferences.

 

[Balesir]

The thing I have a problem with is the single roll that is tied to the characters stats or skills and decides if the mace is there in the first place.

OK, so it's a sort of "rule of contagion" thing?

Pass is mace is found.
fail is mace is not found and mace is not there.

Well, no - as both [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I have said, fail = mace is not found. Whether it is there or not remains ambiguous, which is a very good thing for story (and pretty neutral for "game" or "simulation", as far as I can see).

I honestly prefer is the mace there (yes or no). search roll informs how long it takes to determine this.

So success or failure is decided before the dice are ever rolled? Isn't that what has been argued against for X pages?

Actually I prefer the DM to know "when I am a player". The focus on "telling a story" for me needs to be balanced with playing a game.
I'm not so interested in telling the story of how how my character solved the mystery of the haunted castle, as I am of solving the mystery as both a player and a character.
I want there to be mysteries that involve thinking and problem solving to resolve.

There can be mysteries, thinking and problem solving without any of the players (including the GM) knowing the "absolute truth". For proof of this in general, vide science...

What I take from this is that you want someone to have made a firm decision and not told you what it was. How you can even know that this has happened, let alone have it make any difference to you, is rather a mystery to me, and it's one that I don't think any amount of rational problem solving is going to unravel...

When the target is continually shifting to always be in your cross hairs, it's just not as challenging.
It's like you are shooting 5 arrows at the wall and then the DM goes up and draws circles around the arrows and says "Well done you hit every target".

Again, you have completely mischaracterised what has been described. The character hits only when the die roll succeeds - as in pretty much any style of play I have seen.

I will try and explain this by using an example.

OK

Players hunting down his brother who is possessed.

Players are looking for item - fail forward discover brother has always been evil and invited possession. (for some reason failing at an unrelated skill has turned the brother bad)

Well, no. They have one piece of evidence. Now, they might jump to conclusions based on that one piece - which might make a good story - but if the players are serious about playing the game instead of pure storytelling they should realise that one piece of suggestive evidence does not a conviction secure.

The rational approach at this point would be to think what other evidence of the brother's pre-possession disposition there might be, and go look for it. Both scientific enquiry and modern detective work might be good inspirations, here.

My preferred way is that the DM knows that the brother invited the possession, but the players and the characters do not. Over the coarse of the adventure they discover this information slowly, 1 hint at a time, as they come to find more clues. When they track down the brother they may or may not know the truth. They may have not found enough information and think they are trying to "save" the brother, not realising he is beyond saving.

What stops "discovery by play" doing the same thing? The characters seek out more evidence, other clues, and accumulate it roll-by-roll. Ambiguity is whittled away until a firm body of evidence exists one way or the other. Even beating the demon and "saving" the brother will produce evidence - one way or the other. Only the characters either dying or giving up is likely to leave the ambiguity unresolved, in the end.

So, what benefit was gained by having someone decide what the plot was ("save the innocent brother" or "salvage what we could despite the black sheep of the family going rogue") in advance? What is gained by having one character out of the brother (who thinks his brother is a possessed innocent) and the sorcerer (who believes that his master is a monster to be killed) being known to be wrong from the outset?

Additionally Discovering the truth about the brother is not a fail, finding out the clues and information is a reward for doing well.

What does that leave as possible results of failure? Doesn't this paint the situation as "success = coming to the conclusions the GM says are correct, failure = coming to any other conclusions"? That would seem to suggest a very one-dimensional world model, don't you think?

 

[Balesir]

What I was trying to explain is that if there is no objective truth that you are solving then you are not really solving anything.

I think this may be a key concept/quote.

In the "find out by playing the game" style, there IS (taken to be) an objective truth.

It's just that nobody knows what it is except by playing the game.

If you were roleplaying omniscient gods, you might find out the "objective truth" by making one roll; 1-3 = the brother was innocent, 4-6 = the brother was evil before he was possessed.

But we are generally roleplaying characters who are closer to "normal folks", and normal folks (such as scientists in the real world) are not able to ask whatever questions they like. They must carefully parse questions to ask of reality such that they can get an answer that might reveal hints at the ultimate "objective truth" behind the mask of the game universe. Really clever questions might come up with a working theory, but just like Newton's wonderful schema in the real world, the theory is always and forever susceptible to being shown to be not quite right...

 

[pemerton]

what benefit was gained by having someone decide what the plot was ("save the innocent brother" or "salvage what we could despite the black sheep of the family going rogue") in advance? What is gained by having one character out of the brother (who thinks his brother is a possessed innocent) and the sorcerer (who believes that his master is a monster to be killed) being known to be wrong from the outset?

<snip>

Doesn't this paint the situation as "success = coming to the conclusions the GM says is correct, failure = coming to any other conclusion"? That would seem to suggest a very one-dimensional world model.

You have honed in on what it is that I dislike about GM pre-authorship: it means that, if the PCs (as played by their players) disagree over something of importance to them, it's already predetermined that one is right and the other wrong.

This can be appropriate for certain sorts of mystery/puzzle-solving games, where the emphasis is on the procedural challenges of learning the truth rather than on the dramatic/evaluative challenges of coming to grips with the truth. But I don't think it makes for very good character-driven drama. (This distinction, in turn, goes back to one that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] drew way upthread between play that focuses on competence and play that focuses on character.)

That, for me, is the railroading aspect of it: the GM has already decided that there is only one appropriate view of the possessed brother, and has determined what that view is. (There is some resemblance here to GM-adjudicated alignment, which I also dislike.)