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

[Micah Sweet]

1) Sure, a series of them...like in combat. Of course, even then, players can decide to retreat; I can't decide to not fall.

2) Any game involving dice will have randomness, sure...but to take a player out of the game based on one roll is something even board games don't do anymore.

3) Sort of my point; if the only "high stakes" is my character dying (on one random roll, no less), then there's not much point in investing much in the game. Hence, everything is low-stakes because...who cares?

I think you're over-simplifying the discussion for rhetorical effect. In any case, if this stuff bothers you so much, perhaps we should play different games at different tables?

 

[Micah Sweet]

There have been improvements IMO on some major save-or-die affects over the course of the years.
We have 3 death saves when one reaches below 0, we have several levels of exhaustion, petrification and level drain have been reworked, there is a cost of concentration to maintain certain save-or-suck powers, saving throws every round to shake a condition etc.
Yes, they have taken things too far (but that is not the point I'm making).

The idea that a single climb check kills a character feels to me as it goes against the ethos of 5e. It is a bit of a nonsense example.
If there was indeed a highly dangerous cliff face that needed to be scaled, I would imagine most of us would run it like a skill challenge or with several check points. There would be multiple levels of failure needed or attempts to save oneself with various stakes/loss conditions at different points.

• damage of a boot (decreasing movement)
• lingering injury (per DMG)
• exhaustion levels
• loss of hit points from limited fall
• winded (loss of Hit Dice)
• equipment destruction (rope tear etc)
• equipment loss (weapon, money pouch, backpack loosened and fell)
• temporary madness (fear grips you)
• condition imposed (unconscious, entangled via rope while falling etc)

Death would definitely be possible, but that would mean a horrible series of bad luck and maybe mixed with some poor-decision making. Russian Roulette with dice yields too small a return.

EDIT: Even @Lanefan, who posted that he tries to emulate GoT at the table in another thread, would have to admit that a one-off failed climb check in no way reflects the types of main character death occurring in Westeros.

Agreed. I never said single point of failure equals death, nor that I'm not open to different methods of adjudicating the scenario. I simply stated that death by falling when climbing to a potentially fatal height is on the table.

 

[Faolyn]

And yet those low level PCs survive in this 'most dangerous' part of the city. Either the city just ain't that dangerous (for PCs at least) or there's something protecting them, plot armor? I mean, sure, you can be careful, but in a world full of super powerful high level magical beasts, danger is not something you can constantly avoid!

By not being stupid, mostly. And because my players don't have "murder ALL the creatures!" as their primary impulse. It's amazing what can be survived by players who want to negotiate and befriend rather than kill.

Anyway, I can't account for every single game in the world. I've probably played in 50 or 100 campaigns. I can DEFINITELY tell you how they normally work, and I have yet to be surprised by the conventions of one of this type of game. If you do certain things, you won't generally end up on the equivalent of the 9th dungeon level with your level 2 PC. That's just basically how it is. This is what I call 'gamability' of the setting/play.

Welp, I've now shown you it can be done differently.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm not sure how to read any of that as an argument in favor of a fail forward model. Either you're introducing yet more points of failure if those perceptions rolls are subject to the same risks, or you're proposing a play pattern where the correct approach is to first anticipate all fiction the DM might establish in response to your proposal and then carefully employ "safe" techniques that don't risk an unknown consequence until the complication becomes known preemptively, or it is no longer possible for a complication to be introduced on failure. That mostly just seems like negotiating complications ahead of time with extra steps.

Setting that all aside, the question of entirely unknowable complications (the silent, imperceptible guards) is, I think, best answered with increased PC capability to reduce the number of such situations that can occur. We've got arcane eye, druids turning into mice, that classic mirror under the door trick, and so on. I just don't think entirely secret situations happen that often, and that you can make system level design choices about what's available to the PCs to make them even less so. As you build out more system detail, the situations where it is appropriate to render a complication in the moment become rarer and rarer.

Well, you were saying that fail-forward didn't make sense because it kept players from doing things like listening at doors. My point is, they still can. And I don't see how this "proposes a play pattern...is to first anticipate all the fiction the DM might establish" any more than trad gaming does. I'm pretty sure lots of DMs had "silent guards" and similar things, either to mix it up, because it was logical (the PCs are breaking in when the guards are off-duty and asleep), or to actively thwart players who rely on the same actions all the time. The idea that the players have to walk slowly down a dungeon passageway, tapping every stone with an 11-foot pole and opening chests from a distance and from behind, does come from D&D, after all.

But let's say, in a fail forward game, the PCs listen at the door and detects the guards. They decide to be really stealthy while picking the lock. I don't own DW, so I'll use a wiki and the SRD for the info. A Thief has the "Tricks of the Trade" move which lets them pick locks. The GM can give them a -1 penalty, maybe even -2, I dunno, on the roll because they're trying to be stealthy when the guards are right there. On a 6 or lower, the GM gets to make a hard move and the player marks 1 XP. Whatever the GM's move is, the goal isn't to stymie the players; it's to keep them moving. This likely means that the guards are alerted, but there's other options as well.

If the PCs listen at the door, detect the guards, and decide to find another way through, no rolls are needed, just like no rolls would be needed in D&D. The game is still moving.

But the GM isn't going to be creating "'safe' techniques" because that's not how you play a fail-forward game.

 

[TwoSix]

A textbook example of Big Fallacy sewing division. We can't let them divide us!

I'm shocked that citing the authority of academic sources wasn't able to solve a division in what "appeal to authority" means.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm shocked that citing the authority of academic sources wasn't able to solve a division in what "appeal to authority" means.

I realized the irony about halfway through, but just like in d&d retreat is never a good option

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, you were saying that fail-forward didn't make sense because it kept players from doing things like listening at doors. My point is, they still can. And I don't see how this "proposes a play pattern...is to first anticipate all the fiction the DM might establish" any more than trad gaming does. I'm pretty sure lots of DMs had "silent guards" and similar things, either to mix it up, because it was logical (the PCs are breaking in when the guards are off-duty and asleep), or to actively thwart players who rely on the same actions all the time. The idea that the players have to walk slowly down a dungeon passageway, tapping every stone with an 11-foot pole and opening chests from a distance and from behind, does come from D&D, after all.

But let's say, in a fail forward game, the PCs listen at the door and detects the guards. They decide to be really stealthy while picking the lock. I don't own DW, so I'll use a wiki and the SRD for the info. A Thief has the "Tricks of the Trade" move which lets them pick locks. The GM can give them a -1 penalty, maybe even -2, I dunno, on the roll because they're trying to be stealthy when the guards are right there. On a 6 or lower, the GM gets to make a hard move and the player marks 1 XP. Whatever the GM's move is, the goal isn't to stymie the players; it's to keep them moving. This likely means that the guards are alerted, but there's other options as well.

If the PCs listen at the door, detect the guards, and decide to find another way through, no rolls are needed, just like no rolls would be needed in D&D. The game is still moving.

But the GM isn't going to be creating "'safe' techniques" because that's not how you play a fail-forward game.

Shouldn’t there be some kind of roll to detect the guards? Or is that not how DW works?

 

[Pedantic]

Well, you were saying that fail-forward didn't make sense because it kept players from doing things like listening at doors. My point is, they still can. And I don't see how this "proposes a play pattern...is to first anticipate all the fiction the DM might establish" any more than trad gaming does. I'm pretty sure lots of DMs had "silent guards" and similar things, either to mix it up, because it was logical (the PCs are breaking in when the guards are off-duty and asleep), or to actively thwart players who rely on the same actions all the time. The idea that the players have to walk slowly down a dungeon passageway, tapping every stone with an 11-foot pole and opening chests from a distance and from behind, does come from D&D, after all.

Right, I don't really think that's a bad thing, so much as the earseeker was a stupid escalation that led to weird results. Fundamentally, I want players to come up with procedures to resolve problems as safely as possible. My ideal state as a GM is reluctantly acknowledging the player has successfully hedged all their bets and my villain does die in a rockslide and can't do anything about it.

But let's say, in a fail forward game, the PCs listen at the door and detects the guards. They decide to be really stealthy while picking the lock. I don't own DW, so I'll use a wiki and the SRD for the info. A Thief has the "Tricks of the Trade" move which lets them pick locks. The GM can give them a -1 penalty, maybe even -2, I dunno, on the roll because they're trying to be stealthy when the guards are right there. On a 6 or lower, the GM gets to make a hard move and the player marks 1 XP. Whatever the GM's move is, the goal isn't to stymie the players; it's to keep them moving. This likely means that the guards are alerted, but there's other options as well.

If the PCs listen at the door, detect the guards, and decide to find another way through, no rolls are needed, just like no rolls would be needed in D&D. The game is still moving.

But the GM isn't going to be creating "'safe' techniques" because that's not how you play a fail-forward game.

Right, I'm not confused about how the GM would apply these techniques, I'm talking about the resulting game loop. Fail forward mostly seems to serve to undermine the gameplay value of player decision making, by cutting off both the value of good and bad decisions. Keeping the game moving is, for me, a lower priority than letting players make impactful decisions that lead to them getting the outcome they want or not, and my point is that the two things are in tension.

 

[TwoSix]

Shouldn’t there be some kind of roll to detect the guards? Or is that not how DW works?

I mentioned this way back earlier in the thread, but my personal opinion is that "detection" and "perception" abilities work against the strong framing of conflict the GM could use to push the narrative.

The general use of a perception ability in D&D-likes is to gate the GM's narration of the local environment behind a skill check or roll. Which means the existence of that ability already presupposes some kind of map-and-key/prepped environment play.

 

[TwoSix]

Right, I'm not confused about how the GM would apply these techniques, I'm talking about the resulting game loop. Fail forward mostly seems to serve to undermine the gameplay value of player decision making, by cutting off both the value of good and bad decisions. Keeping the game moving is, for me, a lower priority than letting players make impactful decisions that lead to them getting the outcome they want or not, and my point is that the two things are in tension.

I would agree. I mean, the entire point of a fail-forward game with focus on narrative generation is that there is no defined fail state. There might be an unpleasant ending wherein the PCs fail to accomplish their goals, to be sure; that's different from the focus of play being an environmental "puzzle box" that can be solved if the pieces are manipulated correctly. (Basically, running the game like an even more open-ended BG3.)