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

[Campbell]

Kind of amazing how an example designed to make fail forward look ridiculous makes it look ridiculous. A much more artful version of the scene frame that happens on failure would be the cook coming in from a different room, looking around because of the noise the PC was making picking the lock. That way it actually follows from the established fiction and is reflective of the action the character has taken.

 

[AlViking]

Kind of amazing how an example designed to make fail forward look ridiculous makes it look ridiculous. A much more artful version of the scene frame that happens on failure would be the cook coming in from a different room, looking around because of the noise the PC was making picking the lock. That way it actually follows from the established fiction.

How is that significantly different? It's not like you typically use a hammer and chisel to open a lock. Well, you might if you failed your check to open the lock but that's not what's being discussed.

 

[CreamCloud0]

So, if you roll a cook on a random table, does it suddenly become less implausible?

The criticism that was made against « fail forward » was that a character picked the lock, and when a failure was rolled, the GM « created » a cook in the kitchen that noticed the break in attempt, with the character having to deal with the cook before they alerted the house.

I fail to see how that is meaningfully different from a trad game, where the character picked the lock, then the DM rolled on a random table and then the GM « created » the cook because that is what was rolled on the random table.

If anything, the second example seems more implausible: in the first, the GM is constrained by what is realistic, while in the second, they are constrained by the table, even if « table of things included in a random person’s home » includes things that wouldn’t reasonably be found in a kitchen.

the difference is that in the trad example the cook's existence does not hinge on a failed roll, they exist in the house regardless, and the GM has rolled for their location and determined them to be in the kitchen far enough before the players even decide to enter through the kitchen door that the success or failure of the lockpicking roll has zero impact on if they'll encounter them or not, if the players instead decide to climb the trellis and enter through the 2nd floor balcony there is a 0% chance they'll encounter the cook there instead because the tables have determined them to be in the kitchen independent of player choices.

 

[Maxperson]

One response then has been proposed by @Maxperson, which is that the table is used only because the fiction contains the right conditions. That seems to mirror @pemerton's careful and repeated explanation that the consequences of fail forward (such as a chef) can and ought to be prefigured in the fiction.

Yes. What I will do is something like the following.

The players decide to break into the wizard Alchaeus's tower. Alchaeus has two servants who live with him. His apprentice who also doubles as his personal servant, and his chef. While the players are discussing their plan to break in, I'll figure out the chances that one of those three will be awake around 2am, which is when the group will be getting to the tower.

As I mentioned upthread, the odds of someone 1) being awake during the middle of the night, 2) that person being in the kitchen where the rogue is picking the lock to get into the tower, and 3) happening to be there during the 1 round to few minutes it will take to pick the lock and open the door, are very low. Even though they are probably lower than this, I'd probably assign it a 5% chance that someone will be awake and if I roll a 1 on the d20, someone is.

If a 1 is rolled, I'll then figure out who is most likely to be awake and why. The most likely person to be awake would be Alchaeus himself, up late studying or working on a project of some sort. The second most likely would be the apprentice set to some task that is taking foreeeeeever and needs to be done before Alchaeus wakes up in the morning. The least likely would be the cook who probably has to wake up early to make breakfast for everyone and it needs to be done when the other awake and come downstairs. She would need her sleep during the night.

The roll on the impromptu table happens and wonder of wonders, it turns out to be the cook! Now, why is she awake? Having to go to the bathroom is most likely, followed by insomnia, followed by some obscure other reason. After assigning percentages to those three things, I'd roll to see which pops up.

If she is just going to the bathroom, she won't be in the kitchen and will likely be using her chamber pot upstairs somewhere. If it's insomnia, then there's a chance she will be lying awake in bed, sitting in her room doing something or other, or maybe go down to the kitchen for a snack. If it's an obscure reason I'd likely just try to think of some reason she couldn't sleep over it, like maybe a loved one recently passed and she can't sleep due to grief or maybe she has some sort of injury and pain is keeping her awake. Since there are a lot of obscure reasons it could be and I don't have time to come up with a bunch to put on a table, I'd just choose one if that result came up.

Also note that if Alchaeus or the apprentice had been rolled, there would be a few other things on their table, including obscure reasons. It wouldn't just be the one thing I mentioned above. Those are just the most likely reasons for them, but since I didn't roll them in this example, I didn't go any further with them.

At no point, though, would any of that be predicated on the outcome of the roll to pick the lock of the kitchen door.

Another response, also by @Maxperson (and apologies if I'm misreading) is that tables may also be situation establishing (part of setting up the fiction). I need to reflect on how that stands in relation to the general worry.

Sure. A random encounter affects and establishes part of the fiction depending on what is encountered and where.

I also sometimes use Central Casting Dungeons to roll up a random dungeon, castle or whatever if I don't have a clear vision for it. It's a really good resource if you also make sure that the rolls don't come up with something that doesn't make sense.

Sometimes those random rolls fit together in such a way as to supply a vision for the rest of the dungeon. If a lot of rolls dealing with war and combat related things come up, perhaps it will inspire a vision of a ruined castle of a warlord or a ruined temple to a war god and then I'll be creative in that direction.

The point is that these tables are used to establish fictional situations. Those are also non-exhaustive examples of where tables can be used for that purpose.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Or perhaps as a servant, they must wake up super early to get the stoves going and start to prepare breakfast? Depending on the location... and one that has a dedicated cook sounds to me like a manor or a castle or a place of affluence (as does breaking in). As such, there are likely servants active at all kinds of hours.

Or they live there. A feature of many manors that employed a maid or cook would be a maid’s room just off the kitchen. They might be in a position to hear someone breaking in.

 

[Enrahim]

This has always just looked like incomplete design to me. Surely you could just list the time it takes to perform the action and what failure/success look like? Damaging the door and/or leaving traces are modifiers, making it easier or harder to achieve, and acting silently is clearly a general modifier to most actions, possibly paired with another skill check.

All of these parameters are just things you could write down in your lockpicking skill, making them known to players who can then decide how to apply them, which risks are worth taking at which times and so on.

This would require enumerating actions? In that case that is completely counter to the TTRPG medium. We are then quickly into boardgame / structured story game territory.

The skill typically rolled to pick a lock in D&D5 ed is thieves tools. This skill is potentially used for a wide range of other actions and activities - some of which might be very noisy by nature. Using the hammer to break the window for instance. What would I write down as parameter to my thieves tools skill? Silently +2DC do not make any sense for breaking a window, but it might make sense for picking the lock.

Also of course it is possible to design a system that require negotiate exactly how a success outcome will look like ahead of time, and try to come up with a huge list of possible custom modifiers. However I think this smells very much of clunky design that have been attempted quite a few times in early RPG history, but not really catching on as most people find it far too tedious.

 

[The Firebird]

How is that significantly different? It's not like you typically use a hammer and chisel to open a lock. Well, you might if you failed your check to open the lock but that's not what's being discussed.

I think @Campbell is referring to a case where the player fails the check and fail forward is adjudicated as successfully opening the lock but making noise that attracts someone. This seems better to me because it is dependent on the player's actions.

But it isn't perfect imo because the existence of the cook is still predicated on failure. In this case, if the players succeeded and then entered the adjacent rooms, they would not find a cook.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, that's fair. I was mostly trying to create an example that was distinct from the "save my friend about to be sacrificed" thing, that would still demonstrate a similar experience of "wait so all that hard work I did was for nothing the entire time???" feeling that, even if it wouldn't be felt by everyone, would still be a pretty likely stumbling block for at least someone in most gaming groups.

Other possible examples:

• Questing to get resources to save the kingdom from an invasion, but the actual amount of time until the invasion arrives is variable and could be far less than would ever be enough to complete the original quest, making the effort look pointless and unnecessarily punitive
• Trying to get the cure (or curse-breaker or exorcism tool or what-have-you) for an ally NPC, only to return home (successful or not) to find out that they've been dead/corrupted/whatever for most of that time
• Competing with a rival or an antagonist in something that has at least a significant (if not absolute) element of skill, e.g. some kind of game of strategy even if it includes some random elements, only to learn that you had to have beaten them within a tiny number of rounds, otherwise whatever you were competing for is lost to you anyway
• Engaging in a negotiation process to acquire something valuable, only to learn that the negotiator you were working with hadn't been informed that the purchase was already completed by someone else on the second day (or w/e)

In my experience, it almost never plays out that way. More likely it will go something like...

(In war council with the Duke)

Duke: The invading army is heading this way. My scouts inform me that the army pushes at times, and rests to forage for supplies at other times. They could be here as soon as 3 days from now, or in as long as a week.

PCs: If you had the garrison from Charcuterie here, there would be no chance of the invading army capturing your castle before the king arrives.

Duke: Yes, but even if you left now and didn't rest, it would still take you 4-5 days to rouse the garrison and return here with it. You could well return to find the castle already under siege and you outside with only a small force and no support.

PCs: The risk is worth it. Your survival and the survival of the townsfolk here are in serious doubt without the garrison, and we will contribute little to help you with a siege. Better to take the chance and possibly make all the difference.

While I have been in a few games over the years where we were blindsided by things we didn't know about and made what we were trying to do a failure, those were much rarer than something along the lines of the above.

More or less, just...things where it's possible to be already a "loser" when you think you're still participating, and thus every choice made after that hard-coded (even if randomly-determined) result was completely pointless and possibly outright harmful.

I mean, the game is about enjoying the roleplaying and even if the result was failure over something we didn't know, we still had fun making the attempt and roleplaying things out. That's far from pointless, let alone actually harmful(which seems like hyperbole to me).

 

[AnotherGuy]

Out of curiosity - @pemerton @hawkeyefan and anyone else who is knowledgeable on this matter re Narrative games.
Does Fail Forward play a roll in combat for Narrative games and what may that look like?
As some Trad players may not like the RE cook on a Fail Forward skill roll, I was wondering if similar things occur within combat where the GM introduces or can introduce fiction within the combat scene?
i.e. Maybe the party is fighting a BBEG and a failed attack may lead to the appearance of the BBEG's minion (obviously with the fiction flowing logically)?

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that there is zero difference here as far as "quantum" is concerned. I think there is a difference in procedure that is worth being aware of:

It's only "quantum" if you move the goalposts and include the DM. The context of this discussion is the PCs entering the kitchen and maybe encountering a chef. Not the DM. So while it may be "quantum" in that until I roll to see if there's an encounter, there might or might not be, this isn't about me.

When the PCs show up to enter the kitchen through the locked door, in your method it's quantum, with the existence of the chef being determined by the success or failure of the lockpicking attempt. In our method, though, the chef's existence or lack thereof has already been determined prior to the PCs making the attempt, so there's nothing quantum about it for them.