NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6801680" data-attributes="member: 42582">No. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] introduced the example with the pudding and the rod. In his (and others') discussion of that example it has been clear that losing the rod creates a choice: go on without it but have a less certain means of finding the pudding; or try to recover the rod from the ravine into which it has fallen.The mace example is mine. It is from an episode of actual play. I have described it several times upthread, including in a very recent post, so I won't reiterate it. But the mace is not needed to kill any monster.This is not how the scene-framing style of play generally associated with paradigmatic "fail forward" techniques works. The players don't follow the GM's cookies. Rather, the players - via the build and play of their PCs - set "cookies" for the GM. Eg the mace became relevant in my BW game because one of the players added backstory and a goal to his PC."Fail forward" is a technique that is generally an alternative to "exploring a world". The GM authors backstory in response to adjudicating checks, not as an input into that adjudication.This makes me feel that you are not really following the discussion of how "fail forward" techniques work. If everything the PCs do is aimed at getting the pudding, it does not follow that they will find it. Because they may fail. (As the PCs in my BW game initially failed to find the mace.)If the PCs decide to pursue something else, that is there prerogative. (The 5 PCs in my BW game each have 3 Beliefs, although some of those beliefs overlap in content so that is not literally 15 possible goals in play, but its certainly more than 1.) But that is up to the players, not the GM. If the PCs pursue something else, then the GM has to adjudicate those new action resolutions. (That is actually how the mace became relevant in my BW game - as I've explained, that "alternative option" was introduced by the players, not by the GM.)Through a combination of note-taking and memory. Writing everything in advance doesn't per se increase its depth, nor ensure consistency.I've got plenty of actual play threads, some of which I've linked to upthread. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?340383-PCs-kill-Ometh-leading-to-open-season-on-the-Raven-Queen-s-name" target="_blank">Here's another</a>. They illustrate how the technique works.If the check succeeds, then the goal/intention that motivated the check has been achieved. If the new challenge/complication invalidates or reverses that particular achievement, I regard that as rendering the players' resource expenditure pointless.Why not?</blockquote>

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