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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6788049" data-attributes="member: 27160">Warning - long and rambling post trying to address far too much since I last caught up...I understand this concern, but these days I tend to look at it a slightly different way.Why might someone fail to pick a lock? The potential reasons are legion. They include failures of equipment, environmental factors, tiredness, lack of experience (a difficulty arises, for example, which they have never encountered before and have no plan for) or manual dexterity (simple klutzing), lack of time, don't happen to have the right tool, the lock is actually jammed and can't even be opened with a key, a disguise or illusion has misled them about the nature of the lock - the list goes on. Some of these reasons can be avoided with expertise and experience; with some the situation can be recovered with sufficient skill and experience - but with some it's just not a lack of skill that causes the failure.In a typical roleplaying game system, all of these myriad possibilities are represented, if they are represented at all, by the roll of the dice. Particularly in a system like d20, all that a level of skill is doing - even quite a significant level of skill - is swaying the odds. A skill of 6 indicates that 30% of the time a circumstance that would cause an unskilled lockpicker to fail to pick the lock has either been avoided or the situation has been rescued by the skilled practitioner. That leaves 70% of the time when the outcome is essentially as it would have been for someone with no skill.If the odd circumstances that either cause failure or accompany success are not incorporated in that die roll, where are they? What represents the guard coming round at the wrong moment? The slickness caused by rain causing the risk that the lockpick will slip out of your fingers? The probe snapping as it is used to turn over the tumbler? Picking interesting ones seems to me like a good alternative to havung a myriad rather dodgy tables.I think there may be two quite distinct cases being confused, here - and I am not sure which is being raised any more than Mr. Banana seems to.Case 1: the goal - gaining the pudding, or whatever - is the character's current Dramatic Need, which is to say their reason for adventuring, their motivation for risking anything at this "hero" lark.Case 2: the goal is a step that is the current easiest way to achieve progress towards the character's Dramatic Need, but is not the Need itself or essential to it. [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] seems to identify this, with this bit:But I think the aim of Failing Forward is (for me, at least) misidentified, here.If it's case 2 (just a step in the Story of Bob), then utter failure is not really a problem. There may still be some excitement in doing some stake escalation before ultimate success or failure is decided, which I think FF can handle just fine, but failure itself isn't really a big deal as long as another route to the Dramatic Need is clear to the player. I think [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] hit the nail, here. For there to be a story there must be an alternate way to the Dramatic Need available. The role of FF in this case is to provide that alternate if none otherwise exists.Taking the example of the pudding; my initial conception of it was as follows:- If Bob successfully climbs the mountain with the divining rod, finding the pudding will be automatic. The failure means that success in the plan originally envisaged is no longer possible. Either going back down to retreive the rod (requiring another roll to climb) or continuing without the rod (and needing a roll to find the pudding) would be open as ways forward - but failure in either might mean final failure. These rolls might very well be harder than the original climb (due to time pressure, closing darkness, weather worsening or whatever). The tension is escalated and excitement in play increased, but ultimate failure is still possible.If getting the pudding were the ONLY way for Bob's motivational need/reason for adventuring to be fulfilled, however, then I think the function of FF becomes quite different. In this case (case 1), the function of Fail Forward is to make sure that there are alternatives visible to the player(s).Now, maybe this has been taken care of beforehand. Maybe getting the dragon slaying sword is essential to slaying the dragon that threatens your family and all you love, but you fail to get it after learning that it was forged by the Dwarven smith Kalakul who was supposed to have retired to the Halls of Dvalinn on the Demiplane of Plothooktwo... But adding in the alternative before the initial option is failed can take away some of the tension from Option 1.Depending crucially on the character's motivation, there may also be other obvious options. If the character's aim is actually to keep their loved ones safe, then maybe rescuing them before the dragon strikes is an obvious next step*. What I definitely want to avoid, however, is for the players to be casting around desperately for some half-arsed scheme, based on insufficient information, that they hope the GM will let them get away with out of sheer pity because they are, frankly, out of ideas.*: You might say that some of the best parts of a story come when a character changes their dramatic need. Indeed, the case of switching from trying to kill the dragon to trying to rescue loved ones may look a bit like a case of this. My thoughts on this are twofold: (1) generally such plot twists are not really a change of motivation at all, simply that a means to achieve the real motivation was previously mistaken for the dramatic need itself, and (2) even in the extremely rare cases where there is a genuine change of dramatic need, it occurs no more than once in a story - and it is the crux of the tale if it happens at all. Mostly, though, it's (1); you may be trying to slay the dragon or get the pudding, but that's really just a means to the end of your ultimate goal. If you really do fail at your ultimate goal, it's generally Game Over (apart from a possible heroic death, possibly leading to a new story - cf. Darth Vader, although even there Anakin succeeded in saving his children, so maybe didn't ultimately fail at all?)Which reminds me - creating a new villain out of a failure strikes me as a great way to Fail Forward!</blockquote>

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