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="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6820245" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Below is the evolution of my approach and posting in this conversation.  2 and 4 are relevant to the quoted text above.1)  Bring up a cogent, system-neutral, extremely vanilla example (Bob, his divining rod, and the ascent of mount pudding to find locate said pudding) of the technique of Fail Forward.  I did this in order to facilitate precisely the angle of conversation that you're referring to.Despite my caveats as to the nature and useful limits of this example, several posters invariably attempted to dig deeper or extrapolate more than was there (sometimes assuming load-bearing elements of system) which extended the example beyond its useful limits.Consequently...2)  I posted multiple TLDR examples (with abridged portions and abridged commentary) of my own games in which usage of Fail Forward  is mandated and embedded within the system.  I then broke down the system from which those examples stemmed in order to relate the "whys" and "hows".Given the extrapolating and digging deeper ithat took place in 1 above, it seemed like folks wanted such things.  Unfortunately, those didn't get much traction.3)  As no myth, or abstract/malleable setting/backstory was inevitably being invoked as part and parcel of the deployment of Fail Forward, rejoinders then abounded about the benefits of pre-authorship, heavy prep, and exploratory play that had granular meta-setting at its core.As the benefits had been thoroughly canvassed, I posted the benefits of no myth, or abstract/malleable setting/backstory.  This included my thoughts on the inherent (but not inevitable and certainly not inevitably actualized) temptations (due to emotional/physical investment) that come with heavy-prep or granular meta-setting.Conversation ensued from there about whether those temptations (and the likelihood of them being actualized) were just as inherent to low-prep, abstract/malleable setting/backstory, therefore rendering them "not a thing" inherent to one approach versus another.Somewhere in the course of that conversation, I broke down the inherent dangers inherent to low-prep, abstract/malleable setting/backstory.4)  Finally, we get to the contention that GM bias is the core component of the deployment of GM force.  There is a deep undercurrent of "system doesn't matter" which pervades the thinking of certain segments of TTRPG culture (especially with players who were bred on AD&D 2e primarily if not exclusively) due to White Wolf's Golden Rule and AD&D's "rule 0".  I don't agree with this premise and I think there is some conflation, confusion, or outright lack of understanding of the heavy role that system has to play (eg - "system bias") in this equation generally, but also specifically in games that work to constrain a GM's latitude, focus a GM's agenda, and minimize their overhead.My next several posts speak to "system bias" vs "GM bias" (which invariably brings me back to specific system agendas, principles, and play procedures as I did in 2 above).</blockquote>

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