D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[pemerton]

Maybe they thought of that as a Pemerton phrase, not a Forge phrase.

What are you trying to contribute here? If you want to know what @AlViking meant when referring to The Forge, you can ask that poster.

 

[FrogReaver]

Given that most moves/abilities in 5e D&D pertain to combat, and that combat in 5e D&D departs heavily from forward-facing causality, I think the post is mistaken.

The issue isn’t with forward-facing causality it’s with the idea of a simultaneous 6 seconds being able to be handled sequentially.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Let me restate my point, then:

The 2024 rules tell players to declare actions for their PCs having regard to the social desirability of going along with the GM's adventure. (There is even a heading about "social contract".)

I think that is an interesting thing.

I note that there is no such rule or advice in Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World.

So what? I consider myself a fairly traditionally-minded GM, but I don't play or own D&D 5.5 and disagree with its stated design philosophies.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why should I care what some random website says? I'm talking about an actual thing invented by actual game designers and incorporated into their actual games.

You dismiss The Forge, but I think more RPGs came out of that set of discussions and discussants than have come out of the page that you linked to.

None of which really appeal to me. Does the fact that it influenced the creation of other games mean I have to follow its lead on RPG discussion and terms?

 

[Faolyn]

Because the example had no predefined time pressure. The example was "Because the character failed their climb check, something bad happened like their friend being dead at the top." The friend's death was contingent upon and depended upon the failed climb check. If the character had stayed at the bottom of the cliff and had instead played a friendly game of canasta, the friend would still be alive because the character did not fail a climb check.

The climb check success or failure in no ways causes the death of the friend unless it's being used as a meta-game club to retroactively apply a cost to a check.

IIRC, the original idea for this is that you had to climb the cliff to save the friend.

If the friend is just waiting at the top of the cliff, then no, failure wouldn't result in their death.

 

[Micah Sweet]

...are you being serious?

I received a response that took me seriously, and I meant it seriously, so I'm going with "yes".

 

[Micah Sweet]

Almost any abstraction can do this to some extent, depending on other system features.

Yes, but the rules don't have to explicitly encourage it. That's a design choice.

 

[Faolyn]

An example of fail forward from Failing Forward – RPG Concepts for failing to pick a lock.

"Failing forward is the idea that you still get to unlock the door on a failed roll, but it comes at a cost. So you get into the house, but you startle a cook who screams. Now your plan of sneaking around the house slowly and avoiding all the guards is shot. You’re in the house, so you better use your opportunity, but this is going to be more of a smash and grab than a cat burglary."

Did the cook exist before the failure? No. It's a quantum cook that only comes into existence because the roll failed. I would not like that kind of game. In the style of game I want to play the cook was there whether or not picking the lock was successful.

There are different approaches, fail forward is just one I do not care for even if it works for other games and players.

You're taking that passage a bit out of context.

There's a house that the PC is sneaking into. You, as the GM, have an idea of who or what should be in that house, even if you didn't establish a list of inhabitants beforehand. So if the PC fails and startles someone, it's someone who you would consider a logical resident of that house. It's not that a cook materializes out of nowhere; it's that you have decided that sure, it's logical that this house has a cook.

It's no different than if the PC goes into a bar and wants to know if there's a barmaid. Did you actually figure out every single employee of that location? Maybe, but probably not. If you hadn't, would you say "there's no barmaid here" or would you say "sure" and grab a random name generator? Does that count as a quantum barmaid to you, simply because you hadn't established ahead of time?

To me, the ability to say "sure, there's a barmaid" or "you startle a cook" is the type of improvisational thinking that GMs are supposed to do when players do things that the GM didn't expect.

 

[pemerton]

The issue isn’t with forward-facing causality it’s with the idea of a simultaneous 6 seconds being able to be handled sequentially.

Which mucks up forward-facing causality: things which occur now (on A's turn) have effects in the past (ie from the start of B's turn).

 

[Eric V]

I think that would be pretty unrealistic. Everyone knows that pseudo-mediaeval prison guards never drink to excess!

True. My bad.