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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6789452" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not really sure of the point is of all this parsing of goals, sub-goals, overall failures, sub-failures, etc.In the example being discussed, the player's action declaration for his her PCs is that s/he climbs the mountain, motivated by the desire to get the pudding at the top, and carrying his/her trusty divining rod for the purpose of finding the pudding once the mountain has been summited.If the PC gets to the top but in no condition to easily find the pudding (due to loss of the rod, or some damage to her senses, or because pudding thieves have got their first and taken the pudding), then things are not unfolding for the PC as the player (both in the real world, and in character) desired them to. I think this is the fundamental point that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has been reiterating.That is the sort of failure that is salient in games that emphasise "fail forward" as a technique. That there another sense in which the PC succeeded ("You lost your rod, and you're half-blind and freezing, but at least you're at the top!") is really neither here-nor-there.If, for whatever reason (eg a desire to correlate action resolution methods with ingame causal processes, as evinced by [MENTION=6803870]grendel111111[/MENTION] in discussing the lock-picking and rain example), a group does not want the GM's narration of failure to focus on these sorts of goal/motivation-oriented consequences, and instead wants stakes to be set rather tightly simply in virtue of the skill or ability made, perhaps even as part of the skill definition (see eg the traditional D&D thief abilities), then that's fine for them.But that doesn't mean that there is no sense of failure, goal, etc which is not readily identifiable and serviceable for use in "fail forward"-style games. The player (and his/her PC) wanted the PC to be in situation X. The check failed. So the GM narrates the PC into situation Y instead. That's failure, a failure of the PC (and player) to get what was wanted. The fact that situations X and Y share some elements in common doesn't change that.(In classic D&D player situations X and Y share some elements in common too: the thief might have fallen down the ravine, but s/he won't have dropped his/her stuff.)</blockquote>

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