this is often used in systems where what a D&D-only player would call a "well designed session" does not exist. There may be no detailed map down to the 5' square level, with every secret door labelled and every trap with a well-known CR and method of deactivation, monster and NPC detailed out in full stat blocks, and powers and spells carefully chosen, and placed on aforementioned map. Rules engines like FATE and Cortex+ take as a base posit that some of the content of the adventure will be built out of these complication bits. In a more improvisational adventure, you can't design out bottlenecks before play - instead, you use rules systems that disperse bottlenecks as they develop. And we are talkign about bottlenecks to *action*, not necessarily to a prescripted goal.
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You have missed the several times over where we have mentioned that it isn't really a predestined end we are aiming at in general. You're resurrecting a boogeyman. The *players* have a goal.
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Nobody is assuming that a particular encounter should happen.
This is absolutely spot on.
Of course plenty of RPGers may not care for the sorts of game you describe. That's why "fail forward", like any other RPGing technique, is not the be-all-and-end-all for everyone.
But for those who want to play a game where the players have strongly-held and defined goals, and in which there is a high degree of narrative momentum in relation to those goals - the *action* that you refer to - then "fail forward" is a very useful and important technique.
So because I didn't succeed at climbing... the DM now gets to create consequences which, while they may follow from the fiction can be unrelated to the fact that I failed at a climbing check... Looking at this from the perspective of a player... I want my consequences to flow organically from what I did or did not accomplish with my rolls. Why? Because that's the character I built... either I'm a great climber and this is one of those rare mishaps everyone suffers at some point... or I'm not that good at climbing and I knew that when I tried this, either way my character messed up climbing. What my character isn't known for are his fumbling fingers
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it does feel kinda railroady since I am inventing what I want to happen on the fly... How do I guarantee that I not push towards the outcome I want and/or what I find fun, interesting, etc?
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In the climbing example, what if a player would have preferred falling into the crevice below and taking his chances with whatever denizen was down there
But anything not defined prior is up for grabs in the fiction...correct?
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as the DM you've taken the liberty to create a narrative (whatever that narrative may be) that may not gel with the image I have of my character based on a roll that had nothing to do with the consequences you narrated.
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So you tell the players what the fail forward consequences will be before every check? pemerton said he depended on the trust of his players and I can understand that but this seems kind of clunky... Also, if so... how does this gel with the "on the fly decision making" that characterizes fail forward? which was referenced earlier in the discussion?
Of course the GM is narrating consequences that s/he thinks are fun and interesting! What else would s/he do - narrate consequences that s/he thinks are frustrating and boring?
Upthread, I noted that GM skill is important here. In Gygaxian play, some GMs are known for building interesting dungeons and others for building dungeons that suck. Likewise in scene-framing, "fail forward" play - a good GM is able to build trust that s/he will narrate interesting and engaging consequences. Of course, these games also tend to use lots of devices for players to send signals to the GM as to what is interesting to them, which the GM is then expected to have regard to in narrating consequences. This is part of what I was gesturing at when, upthread, I mentioned that the consequences are not just spun from whole cloth.
As to whether or not the consequences of failure are spelled out, and perhaps negotiated, before each check - as I also mentioned upthread, with reference to both the rules and GMing advice for BW, this is an issue of table practice, GM/player rappor, the vibe of the moment, etc. But even in your example - if the player would have preferred his/her PC to fall down the ravine, then nothing is stopping an action declaration to that effect: "I jump down the ravine after my divining rod, hoping to catch it like Gandalf does Glamdring in the opening sequences of The Two Towers film."
the Mt. Pudding example doesn't really dispel my concerns over the idea as a player or as a DM. That example posits that the intent of retrieving the pudding is something that is not really changing.
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For my enjoyment, it is better to be able to be able to raise the question: what happens if I don't get the pudding/fight the BBEG? What possible actions are capable of potentially changing my intent, to use Manbearcat's verbiage? What would make Bob not want the Pudding, or make the Pudding forever unavailable to Bob, and how would Bob react?
I like these questions because they produce interesting gameplay scenarios about character motivations - what do I want, what am I willing to do to get it, what happens if I can't get it - and leave the ultimate arc of the narrative in question
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If the scene can lead in only one real direction (toward the pudding, toward the BBEG), that's a bottleneck
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to me, it's an interesting decision when your character has to question their goals, often more interesting than a character who just has hurdles in place of achieving their goals.
Do you lose anything in that failure? Do you have to re-evaluate anything? What happens as a consequence of that failure, and it is markedly different from what would happen had you had a success? Do you have to try again?
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If the goal of Mt. Pudding is just to get pudding, the setbacks you suffer on the way there aren't meaningful.
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If the goal of Mt. Pudding is to find the pudding with the divining rod, the setback of missing your divining rod is meaningful, but it's not clear what that failure means - are you unable to put the pudding to use? Is someone going to punish you for missing the divining rod? Do your enemies now have the divining rod and can use it to find the Other Pudding?
If the goal of Mt. Pudding is to get the coin hidden there, then any result that still provides me an option of getting the coin doesn't feel like a very meaningful failure to me. If what is happening is still INPUT("I want the coin")->STUFF HAPPENS->OUTPUT("I get the coin."), in broad strokes, the STUFF that HAPPENS doesn't affect the end result much (though it could flavor the getting there - maybe it's miserable and barely eked out, maybe its easy and it's triumphant, but no matter how miserable it gets it'll always be possible).
A lot of this I don't think I fully follow. But there seem to be some assumptions that don't quite make sense to me.
First, on goals and failure: in 4e, the odds of failing a given check are typically between 10% and 50% (depending on details of difficulty, build, etc). And a given session has many checks. In BW, I feel from play experience that the odds of failure are generally higher than this (though the maths of dice pools, and the extreme variability in PC builds, makes it harder to calculate typical odds of failure). And again, a given session involves many checks.
If each check raises a serious prospect of failure, and each failure raises a serious prospect of changing goals, I don't see that dramatic arcs are going to arise. Dramatic arcs, especially in adventure fiction, tend to be generated by failures that are incurred while resolutely sticking to a goal. For my own RPGing, major dramatic arcs tend to unfold over many sessions - perhaps a year or two of play. Having the goal of attaining the pudding on Mt Pudding be abandoned because of a single failed Climb check doesn't strike me as very conducive to the sort of play I'm interested in.
Second, on goals and success: there is no guarantee that the PC will attain the pudding on Mt Pudding. "Fail forward" is a guarantee of *action* that is oriented towards or arises out of the dramatic themes and framing. It is not a guarantee that any paticular goal will be achieved. I posted some actual play examples upthread: the PCs in my BW game, instead of escaping the orcs unscathed and getting to explore the pyramid the orcs were heading towards, had to regroup to a tower in the Abor-Alz so that there injured party members (following a scathing by the orcs) could rest and recuperate.
Third, on INPUT > STUFF HAPPENS > OUTPUT: doesn't that describe every episode of RPG play ever? Maybe you are assuming that there is no connection between the OUTPUT and the STUFF THAT HAPPENS? But why would you assume that?
Fourth, on meaningful failure: losing the diving rod is meaningful. It makes it harder to get the pudding. If, at the end of the campaign, the PC nevertheless got the pudding then we might say, in retrospect, that losing the diving rod didn't matter. Just as, at the end of LotR, we can see (as can Frodo himself) that losing the mithril coat didn't matter. But that doesn't mean that, at the moment of loss, it's not meaningful. After all, how do we know there won't be another troll with a spear, just as there was in Moria?
The reason, in [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s example, for narrating a loss of the divining rod rather than a fall into the chasm is because, at the table Manbearcat is inviting us to imagine, being dead at the bottom of the ravine is likely to bring an end to the arc that no one would really enjoy, whereas losing the rod is a failure - the PC no longer has the apparatus for easily obtaining the pudding, even should s/he make it to the summit - which pushes into new interesting play.
As for the questions you ask - the fate of the diving rod, the actions of enemies, etc - they are for play to determine. The loss of the rod creates new (and dramatically salient) fiction to be incorporated into new narrations, not unlike the example of the mace from my BW game, that I've mentioned upthread.
The goal is to climb the mountain. Scathed or not is merely a degree of success or a degree of failure depending which way the dice go.
You're rolling checks for tasks, not intent. You state your intent, sure: "I'm going to climb Mt Pudding and get me some yummy pudding!" - but then you roll for the tasks involved
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I guess what it comes down to for me is that fail-forward for me still has to be a fail. If the goal which you rolled the check for was to climb the mountain and you rolled a fail, that tells me that no matter what else has happened you are not now at the top of the mountain.
The goal is to climb the mountain and
get the pudding. Losing the divining rod is an impediment to this goal, just as falling down the ravine would be. It is a failure.
If you focus
only on task and not intent, then you may not see it as a failure. But in "fail forward" games, intent is as important as task. I've already mentioned the BW rules and advice on this several times upthread.
the action should stop at the point where she loses the rod, not once she's got to the top without it
If the player-as-character chooses to continue the climb this would prompt another check to see if she makes it the rest of the way up; and if she instead chooses to climb back down and try to recover the rod you're into a different check, and so on.
The action does stop when the rod is lost, in the sense that that is the narrated consequence for the failed check, and now the player has to declare a new action for his/her PC. Maybe s/he dives into the ravine after the rod (or tries to climb down in search of it). Maybe s/he keeps going to the top without it.
In the latter case, the GM may well not call for a roll, if there is no sense of any more interesting consequences resulting from the climb, and the real action is in trying to recover the pudding without the rod. That would be an instance of "say yes or roll the dice", which is another technique fairly common in scene-framing, "fail forward"-type play.
I've given the one way that I can see that the rod could be a part of the climb check. A pack that isn't secured well or damaged is something else entirely. It could break and the rod is lost due to bad luck, and it could even happen as a result of the failed climb check, but there would still be the failed climb check to contend with.
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I understand what you are saying, but I don't agree with it. A failure to climb is a failure to climb in some way and nothing else.
I have a fumble rule for skills. A 1 is a fumble and something has gone wrong beyond a simple fail. When a 1 is rolled, a second 20 is called for and if it is a 1, then things are even worse. It continues until no 1's are rolled. 20's get treated the same way. It's very possible for all kinds of interesting and applicable things to happen outside the normal success/failure dynamic of skill checks.
To me, this implies that a rod can be lost
when a character falls due to a failed climb, but a rod can't be lost without the character also falling, because there is (in D&D) no separate mechanic for determining whether or not gear is lost on a climb.
In any event, reiterating that, for you, the only stakes to a Climb roll are "Do I climb or do I fall" is a clear reiteration that you don't like "fail forward"-type techniques. Key to "fail forward" is that the stakes are governed by intent as well as by task.
