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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7055195" data-attributes="member: 42582">No.From the OP:It is precisely because I knew what was at stake that a DC was set. If nothing was at stake (ie if it was some bit of colour or auxiliary action that didn't bear upon some central concern of the PC and (thereby) the player) then I would simply "say 'yes'" so that the action could move on.No, it's not. But it's not "say 'yes' or roll the dice", either.I stated some of the reasons for not just "saying 'yes'" when something is actually at stake in my earlier reply upthread. It's primarily to do with pacing, tone, and the experience of the tension/drama/stakes of the game.No. I view GM narration of failure by way of fiat as railroading. As per this re-quote of the OP:In some more recent posts I've been elaborating on this idea and its consequences - eg "no failure by GM fiat" entails "no failure offscreen".Which is relevant to thinking about the dynamics of a situation like the assassination of the Marquis; or the fall of the nation when threatened by the tarrasque. If those eventualities would count as "failure" - ie things that are at odds with the commitments/concerns/goals/etc of the players as expressed and realised via their PCs - then bringing them about simply as part of the backstory would, on my account of the matter, be railroading.By "dead end" narration I meant something like "No, there's no vessel"."Dead end" narration of failure is independent of the issue of railroading, in that it could be the result of GM fiat (ie what I have described as railroading) or the response to a failed check by a player. I prefer "fail forward"/"no whiffing" (I use inverted commas mostly because neither is an especially satisfactory term to actually describe the technique; and in addition "fail forward" has become widely identified with "success with a compication", which can often be quite a different thing).The benefit of "fail forward" is that, by narrating the failure so as to frame the PC into a new conflict (eg there's a jar, but it's broken; the familiar is eating up all the blood), the momentum of the action is maintained - because the failure of the action declaration is used as the foundation for further framing. (Whereas "Sorry, there's no vessel" doesn't provide any new framing for the player to respond to.)</blockquote>

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