Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7694957" data-attributes="member: 42582">First, you are actually wrong about the fiction - the waterhole in question is at the foot of the Abor-Alz. It is not related (except by a degree of geographic proximity) to the tower.Second, how do you know with such authority what was at stake? I don't recall you being at the table! That they would make it to the tower was not at stake - that was taken for granted in the action resolution (in technical terms, that is "say yes or roll the dice" - the rolling of the dice was to determine survival en route). What was at stake was safely navigating across the desert. Which they failed to do, because the waterhole they travelled to was fouled by a dark elf.I'm pretty sure the system is Apocalypse World.The reason that I suggest that the adverse attention of a powerful being is success with complications is because the PC (and player) achieve the immediate desired change in the situation - the enemies disperse in fear of the effigies - but find themselves in a new, difficult situation - namely, being subject to the attention of a powerful being. (I took it to be implicit that the being is not of no significance, power etc in relation to the PC - if that was so then there would be no complication.)But ultimately it is  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s play example. He has posted in this thread and will no doubt chime in if he thinks he has anything worthwhile to add!I didn't say it was a bright line. Not every X that is different from a Y is differentiated from Y by a bright line (red and purple are a trivial example of this).But the absence of a bright line doesn't mean that there is no difference.In the case of polluted water vs a nemesis guarding the waterhole, I know, as GM, that one is a failure (but not a complete failure - I didn't use that adjective) and the other a success with complications, because I know broadly what capabilities the PCs have for dealing with polluted water (very little) and what capabilities they have for negotiating with a nemesis (a good deal).In narrating the waterhole as fouled, therefore, I am imposing a cost that they cannot overcome - roll for Forte tax - that would not be the case if the nemesis was present. Negotiating with the latter might consume some metagame resources, but those are able to be replenished on a (broadly) session-by-session basis, and so the cost of that consumption, if it were to occur, would be very modest at the table, and non-existent in the fiction (the characters are no worse off for their players being slightly depleted in metagame resources for however much of the session remains after playing out the negotiations).More generally, in the scenario as it played out the players (and PCs) did not get what they wanted - they didn't get safely across the desert, and had to suffer some Forte tax as a result. Whereas had they met their nemesis at the waterhole, then they would probably have succeeded, one way or another (via negotiation or stealth) in resolving the complication, and would have got what they wanted - making their way safely across the desert. That is one way of making clear the difference between failure and success with a complication in this particular instance.Yet another option potentially on the table, had I not "said yes" to finding the tower, would have been to narrate - in response to the failed Orienteering - a dust storm and the PCs arrival at the pyramid in the middle of the desert, which they had heard rumours of. That would have been neither "success with complications" nor "failure but near-success" but "complete failure" - but nevertheless "dfail forward". But for various reasons - mostly around pacing, and the relationship between passage of ingame time and passage of at-table time - I had decided to "say yes" to finding the tower.They are not synonyms. At best, they both describe species of a genus - the genus being "fail forward".In the absence of a bright line, telling one from another may well be a matter of opinion. That's true for a lot of things that are, nevertheless, different. It doesn't mean that there are no differences, or that discerning them is (i) arbitrary, or (ii) unimportant.Managing the narration of consequences, and choosing between various options of complete failure, less-than-total failure, and success with complications, is an important part of the GM's job in a "fail forward" game. Just lumping them altogether obscures the sorts of considerations that a GM needs to have regard to. (For instance, suppose in the example of the mace that, instead of narrating that the mace is not in the tower but there are black arrows, I had narrated that the PCs find a cleft in the bottom floor of the tower, and can see a glimpse of nickel-silver at its bottom: that "success with a complication" would have completely different implications for pacing, for tone, for the focus of play, for relationships among the PCs and between them and key NPCs.)The fact that you do lump them together makes me (again) wonder how much experience you have playing or GMing using these techniques.</blockquote>

Verification