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

[AlViking]

One critique of your preference would be that if a player wanted to stealthily pick a lock, find the map in the house and get out without being seen that could easily be 4+ skill checks. An initial stealth check on entering. A lockpick check. An investigation check. A stealth check on the exit. I know from a probabilistic perspective that you've just plummeted the characters chances for full success. I'm also sure we could think of other checks to throw in there. I doubt you keep adding checks in actual play because of the probability for failure issue. Which means that you simply choose to elide certain checks, meaning anything you elided is no longer a possible failure state in the fiction. In some sense, picking cost after a single failed check is more fair and leaves more of the possibilities on the time from how you operate in practice vs conceptually.

Depends on how they approach the obstacles, but aren't most adventure scenarios a series of obstacles?

No single failure should mean complete failure, but if you fail often enough then yes the characters may not achieve their goal. It's why I don't make world-ending scenarios or have one linear path the characters must follow. Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men go awry.

 

[TwoSix]

And it actually does! Because the DM put the work in outside the playspace at the table.


I think it's silly to assert that in a game where everyone makes up everything that being reminded the GM is making stuff up would ever be an issue. Obviously something else is going on here. It's about how that stuff is being made up.

Right. It matters to people that it's not being made up at the moment. I don't why that's the issue, but it is THE issue.

 

[Yaarel]

What you seem to be ignoring, and I don't know why, is that fail forward does not have to open the lock. Short of a specific RPG making a rule where it does always have to open the lock like the one mentioned upthread, fail forward could be guards walking around the corner, or someone from across the street shouting down from a window, "You there! What are you doing?!" or any number of other things that get the story moving and don't involve successfully unlocking the lock.

That different set of challenges you mention could be considered fail forward, depending on what they are.

An adventure normally intends for players to achieve certain objectives, even if in a nonlinear, sandboxy, way.

So, while "fail forward" "does not have to open the lock", the "forward" part of the term implies guiding players toward an objective, even if by means of a different path.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A skilled thief encountering less wanderers feels entirely verisimilitudinous to me.

Their skill at lock-picking? That's the skill in question here.

 

[AlViking]

What you seem to be ignoring, and I don't know why, is that fail forward does not have to open the lock. Short of a specific RPG making a rule where it does always have to open the lock like the one mentioned upthread, fail forward could be guards walking around the corner, or someone from across the street shouting down from a window, "You there! What are you doing?!" or any number of other things that get the story moving and don't involve successfully unlocking the lock.

That different set of challenges you mention could be considered fail forward, depending on what they are.

I think the game continues whether or not a particular check is successful. There doesn't need to be any complication that was not already established, if the guard circle the building is going to show up in a minute then they're going to show up in a minute (or if there's x% chance they show up any given moment). It has nothing to do with the check being successful or not.

 

[Maxperson]

An adventure normally intends for players to achieve certain objectives, even if in a nonlinear, sandboxy, way.

So, while "fail forward" "does not have to open the lock", the "forward" part of the term implies guiding players toward an objective, even if by means of a different path.

If that's the case and it's not just something that moves the story forward, then it's very much a railroad technique. The DM is pushing the players down a specific path, even if it's one they want to be on.

 

[FrogReaver]

Depends on how they approach the obstacles, but aren't most adventure scenarios a series of obstacles?

I've no idea the relevance of this point.

No single failure should mean complete failure,

If you mean there should always be multiple avenues to your goals, I don't agree. I think it's often preferable, but sometimes the fiction is such that there might only be one way. Maybe it's bad form and a social contract violation to run a scenario where that might the case, but it's easy to imagine fiction where that is the case. Generally players just have to pick a new goal when that occurs.

but if you fail often enough then yes the characters may not achieve their goal. It's why I don't make world-ending scenarios or have one linear path the characters must follow. Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men go awry.

The characters goal was to obtain the map unseen. Don't any of the failures here mean that goal wasn't achieved?

 

[Micah Sweet]

To me, they both reduce to "success, no conflict; failure, conflict". The framing you put around them could possibly be of interest for determining next steps, but is generally just for color.

The framing is very important to me, because it determines what is actually in the world at this moment, not just the results.

 

[FrogReaver]

Right. It matters to people that it's not being made up at the moment. I don't why that's the issue, but it is THE issue.

This whole thread has listed various reasons for that...

 

[Maxperson]

Is this a potential loophole in your approach?
Player: "I try to stay unnoticed when entering the house"
GM: "Ok, how?"
Player: "By picking the lock rather than breaking down the crude bamboo door"
GM: "Fine, roll me a thief tools check".
Would a valid interpretation of a failure here be that the PC enters the house, but is noticed in the process? Mind you, I do not ask what your initial gut reaction. It is more like if there are circumstances where you could see yourself narrating a noisy entry. For instance if the act of entering the house itself isn't particularly challenging (there are windows, back doors, and a gaping hole in the roof under repair), so the only thing really interesting is how the house is entered.

If there's nothing particularly challenging about entering the house, there really shouldn't be a roll. The DM should just narrate the entrance and play should go from there.