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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6790232" data-attributes="member: 42582">Plenty of RPGs allow just this. In BW, opposed-check resolution for combat is a key element of the system.In HeroWars/Quest, the same mechanic is present.And in 4e D&D, a rather similar result can be achieved by using minions, who are either up or down depending on the player's attack roll.I don't know that I fully understand what you are calling "the second type".As I understand it, "fail forward" is a technique which was first explicitly called out by Luke Crane and Ron Edwards, and has more recently been referenced (under that label) by Jonathan Tweet in the 20th anniversary edition of Over the Edge, and in 13th Age. And this technique is one which involves what you call "the disconnect": narrating failure as a failure of intent rather than necessarily a failure of task (to use the intent/task distinction that is an explicit element in Burning Wheel action resolution), the upshot being that failure at a check leaves the PC in a situation in which an unwanted and difficult choice is required. In this way, the action at the table doesn't stop, even though the PC (and the player) has not got what s/he wanted out of the situation.Your "second type" seems to be something closer to GM backstory authorship (or "scenario design"): if the PC fails a check, the GM authors (or perhaps has already authored) some backstory which, if the players learn it, will permit them another way "forward" - though what forward means here I'm not sure. Forward through the GM's story?In games that use "fail forward" techniques, generally there is no such thing as "the scenario". Nor is there generally anything which "must be done to continue". Fail forward as a technique - at least as I understand it from the games and designers that explicitly call it out and use that label - is not about the way in which the GM authors the backstory. It is about how the GM adjudicates action resolution.In these "fail forward"-using RPGs, generally, the whole idea is that the adjudication of action resolution takes the place of authoring backstory in advance ("scenario design"). This is part of the radical anti-railroading agenda of these RPGs. Previously unrevealed backstory is authored by the GM in response to action resolution; secret backstory is not generally used as an input into action resolution.To refer to an actual play example I set out in more detail upthread: it's not the case that, had I done better design of the "PCs retreat across the desert to the ruined tower" scenario, I would have not needed "fail forward" to adjudicate the attempt to find the mace in the tower. (Eg because I would have already decided whether or not it was there to be found.) Rather, the whole point of the resolution of the Scavenging check is to see whether or not the player (and the PC) gets his wish, that the mace is there to be found. When the check fails, then - per the rules of the game - it is my prerogative as GM to introduce some other situation which does not give the PC (and player) his wish. Thus, instead of a mace the PCs find the black arrows. And the mace turns up instead, in the following session, in the hands of the dark elf who has been harassing the PCs.This is a concrete example of how "fail forward" is a device used to manage the introduction of backstory by the GM, and to maintain narrative momentum, as an alternative to "scenario design" or making sure that there are multiple ways to do what "must be done".I don't think anyone has said that it will, have they?But this isn't a thread about how D&D should be designed. It's a thread in the General forum about whether or not people like "fail forward" as a technique, and why.</blockquote>

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