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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6781668" data-attributes="member: 42582">A couple of people have mentioned me ( [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]).I haven't read the thread, other than their posts, but here is a post on "fail forward".As I understand it (from designers like Luke Crane, Ron Edwards, Robin Laws and Jonathan Tweet), "fail forward" is a technique for (i) ensuring the game has a story-like progression without (ii) GM railroading.The basic idea is that, when a player fails a roll/check, instead of the GM narrating that no progress is made, the GM narrates an adverse but still dynamic consequence happening. What the adverse consequence is should be made up on the spot, weaving in considerations that have been made relevant by the play of the game to that point, the various signals that the players have sent via the build and play of their PCs, etc.In classic D&D play, there are GMs who are good at designing interesting dungeons, and GMs whose dungeons suck. In "fail forward"-type play, a good GM is one who can narrate failures that keep driving events forward and the fully engage the players (and their PCs) even though the PCs aren't getting what they want.In the first session of my current Burning Wheel game, one of the PCs tried to read the aura on a feather for sale at a bazaar. He was looking for an item to use as part of a fire-proofing enchantment; the peddler was proclaiming the feather to be an angel feather recovered from the Bright Desert. The aura reading check failed. So I narrated that the feather was indeed an angel feather, but was also cursed. The idea of a cursed angel feather I made up on the spot; the story around the curse played an important role in driving events for the next few sessions (eg the peddler received bad news from his home town and took to a ship, which the PCs also sailed on; <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?393493-Maiden-Voyage-(Penumbra-d20-module)" target="_blank">the ship ended up being assaulted and sunk by a ghost ship</a>; the PCs were evicted/rejected by multiple NPCs because of their ill omened character, and the curse on the feather was one aspect of this; etc).In <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?473620-Keep-on-the-Borderlands-shenanigans" target="_blank">the most recent session of this campaign</a>, one of the PCs went into the caves in the hills above the keep on the borderlands, hoping to recover a mace that had been dropped there an enemy dark elf. The PC (and the PC's player) knew that another PC was wanting to recover the mace, and wanted to get the mace as leverage against that other PC.The attempt failed. So I narrated the mace (which had fallen in a stream) being dislodged and falling down through a cleft in the rocks. In the end (and throwing the player of the other PC a bone, as he had had a fairly rough couple of sessions) I had the mace washed up (probably not just by the rush of the mountain stream, but by the activities of spirits) in the stream below the keep, which enabled a third PC, who had promised the second PC to help him recover the mace, to obtain it and hand it over to that second PC. [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has linked "fail forward" to "no myth" or shared worldbuilding. Narrating failures in a "fail forward" way requires there to be a degree of fluidity in backstory, so that new events or agents or motivations can be introduced (eg like curses on a feather, or spirits in the mountain stream) to keep things moving forward. If all of the GM's "secret backstory" is meant to have been determined in advance, and a principle goal of play is for the players to uncover that secret backstory, then "fail forward" probably isn't going to be a useful technique.</blockquote>

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