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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6660521" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Okay, now to actually address this. I had had a huge long discussion of exactly how Dungeon World uses fail-forward, but...it might be a waste of time. LONG story short: DW is specifically built around having most rolls include both success and danger. Except for a roll that has at least a +3 modifier (which requires a maxed stat, or an unusual confluence of bonuses), "partial success" is the dominant result, which means the player gets some of what they want but not everything (which sets the stage for future rolls or future direct dangers), or the player gets exactly what they want but must accept a potential pitfall. This imposes an important dynamic on play, and the way that DMs are encouraged to handle results compounds that.The real meat of the issue is: if dice are hitting the table, "action" is happening. "Action" doesn't have to be constantly rising tension though--it just means that there's something happening which pushes forward the situation. When there's an unequivocal success, the players more-or-less "get what they want"--though that often also comes with the opportunity to seek greater rewards by taking an extra risk. When something only partially succeeds, the players get what they want (sometimes "more or less"), but usually have a new problem to deal with, too--either one that's already asking for action, or one that can fester into real danger unless action is taken. When something "fails," especially a "skill" thing rather than a "combat" thing, that means some serious complication arises. But that complication doesn't have to be 100% bad. Maybe it means that the information they want is there, but there's a thorny issue along with it (one example from a doc I read, "oh yeah, the footman you know would DEFINITELY know where the documents you need are...but he's waiting hand and foot on the Duchess, who HATES you"), or in searching for the info, you stumble into some of the bad guys' henchmen trying to cover their tracks. It's still a "loss" in some sense, you still have a hardship to deal with, but the hardship is never "nothing happens."A roll that results in *zero* change to the fiction, the characters' goals, or the state of the playing field simply *should not happen* in Dungeon World. Some rolls like Discern Realities (a beefed-up 'search') or Spout Lore (essentially 'knowledge,' usually with some kind of focus) can be difficult to give consequences to, but both of the examples I mentioned are suggestions people have made for doing so.In a certain sense, this is akin to some of the stuff about whether "death" is an interesting challenge, that we had on here a while back. For some, the threat of "nothing" (e.g. you don't get to play) is a major motivator. But Dungeon World generally doesn't go for that. Instead it says that the players shouldn't need motivation outside of the fiction; the fiction alone should be enough to drive things forward, and any time they "fail," that fail should be a matter of "closing a door, opening a window or two." E.g., the house is never off-limits, but it can get harder to break into.Dungeon World is my touchstone for how to do all of this--so I was sorta trying to present a way to fit (or kludge, as the case may be) the 2d6 system, with its elegance and simplicity, into the Skill Challenge format simply because I'm familiar with it. In all likelihood, it probably IS better to just set your own ranges. Unfortunately, with the way 4e rolls scale, they'll need to be relative to the die or DC, rather than absolute values like DW would do, but we'll just have to live with that.The two obvious "relative" strategies are already known to you. The most obvious is the "+/- 5 increment" rule--beat by 5 or more, you get something extra special. Fail by 5 or less, and you get a partial success. Etc. The other is the one I mentioned, which is relative to the die rather than the target number, where most D&D games already implement critical success and many give critical failure as well, but adding additional shades. You can also combine the two. Perhaps 1/2/3 and 18/19/20 are all "special success," with critical success/fail being especially good/bad, while if you are within +/- 1 of the check value, you get a partial success that complicates the situation.</blockquote>

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