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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6784626" data-attributes="member: 29398">Of course.  But as I said in my post just above this one the action should stop at the point where she loses the rod, not once she's got to the top without it; because it's at the time of loss where she has to make a choice: to go back down and try to recover the rod (climb check required), or continue on up (climb check required*) and if she makes it then try to find the pudding without the rod to help (search check required, I suppose).* - unless she loses the rod when she's already at the top of the mountain, but that to me is granting success where a failure was rolled.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 - a climb check to get there; a search check to find the pudding if its location isn't immediately obvious, and then probably another climb check to get back down.  A failure on any of these rolls can be either an end point (you fall and die, all the pudding is gone, etc,) or a decision point (partway up you lose your divining rod, what do you do now?).  And note specifically there I ask "what do you do now?", as what happens next is up to the player; not me.It's not a one-or-the-other situation here.  Failures happen in pre-scripted adventures too; the question is how to deal with them, and how to present and narrate different forms of failure that can potentially keep things moving and-or provide more options and choices for the PCs.  And as [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] says, outright failure *should* always be a possible (but certainly not the only possible) outcome from a roll of "fail".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. (in fact, that's the only thing it tells me!)  If the DM narrates this failure as you reach the top but lose the divining rod in the process, that's not a failure narration at all; instead she's narrated some sort of succeed-backward and in fact given you more than the roll warranted.It doesn't matter whose flippin' goal it is - the DM's, the players', or the characters' - it's still a goal and there realistically will (or should) still be times when said goal turns out via dice rolls to be unattainable for whatever reason.  A short-term goal might be to find the pudding at the top of Mt Pudding; a longer-term goal might be to slay the kidnappers, rescue the sleeping Prince and spoon a bit of this magical pudding into his mouth to wake him up.  This goal might have been dreamed up by the DM, or by the players, or simply come about as an outgrowth of the run of play...but sometimes things just don't work out right.  Maybe nobody can climb Mt Pudding and Princey-boy has to wait until someone gains the power of flight and can bypass the hazardous bits; meanwhile the PCs go off and do enough adventuring that their wizard can cast 3rd-level spells.  Maybe nobody can find where the Prince has been hidden once the pudding has been obtained.  And so on.Lan-"the individual sessions might be short but the overall game is endless; so no matter how many times you fail there's always time to try again"-efan</blockquote>

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