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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6787761" data-attributes="member: 177">This is kind of separate from Fail Forward - might call for a separate thread.Fail Forward only really comes into play when you'd be stalled on the failure.  If you can just try again, and trying again is not tedious for the player, there's no need for failing forward.  So, picking a lock is not a great example. We should not simply conflate Fail Forward with Success With Complications.  The former is a policy or mechanic designed to avoid stalling out play.  The latter can help achieve the former, but it also has other uses - the most prominent SWC mechanics I know of are in FATE and Cortex+.  And there, they do help Fail Forward.  But they *also* help create adventure content.  It allows the GM to start the game with only a small amount of preparation, because the act of playing will inject more content as matters progress. As a player, *you* may want complications and difficulty.  Not all players want them.  In addition, even you only want a few complication and difficulties.  The complications, done properly, make things harder, and/or add risk.  If you are broadly incompetent, there's a point where this becomes deadly.No.  As noted above - Fail Forward is called for when the failure is *uninteresting*, and is apt to lead to a stall in play.The, "toward a goal," is common, but not actually a requirement.  Let's state it simply, because after so many pages of highfalutin lingo, we can lose sight of the point - for the player (not the character), playtime is limited, and spending hours of it sitting on your thumbs because you cannot figure out what to do next, or everything you do try brickwalls with flat "No," and, "You can't," is typically frustrating, not fun, and not a good use of player time.  Fail forward is intended to keep activity flowing so that frustration doesn't develop.In improvisational theater, there's a technique often called, "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Yes,_And%22_rule" target="_blank">Yes, and...</a>"  The idea is that improv actors do not reject material their fellows introduce into the scenario.  Fail Forward can be seen as a variation on that theme - "No, but..."  The GM avoids saying only "No," because that doesn't give the player anything to work with.  "No," is flat, uninteresting, and in and of itself adds nothing to the action.  "No," doesn't itself give players any choices or decisions to make.  If the GM says, "No," they can also hand the player something else to interact with.There's actually a good reason for this - most GMs overestimate how many options they make clear to players.  GMs *think* they give plentiful, useful descriptions with lots of material for the players to pick up on, or that other options for action are obvious*.  Fail Forward admits this isn't the case - and makes sure the player has an explicit handle, here and now, on something that can be dealt with in a way that *something* happens, even if it isn't motion directly toward their intended goal.If the momentum is questioned at every point, then it is at risk at every point.  The more points of risk you have, the less important any one of them is.  The more points of risk you have, the more certain it is that momentum will be lost.  How certain do you want  it to be?  Note that momentum for the character and momentum for the player are not equivalent.  Fail Forward is about player momentum and engagement, not character momentum.*GMs also tend to overestimate how much players will venture based on incomplete information.  Players typically like to have some sense that the action the intend is plausible.  There is one thing worse than having plausible actions fail on the die roll - having them shot down before the die roll because the GM and player didn't have a shared understanding of the situation.  Fail Forwards makes sure the GM hands them an element they can understand, here and now....</blockquote>

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