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

[Umbran]

Failure is always an option, failure doesn't mean the game ends because I don't run a linear game.

So, it is important to remember what fail forward was designed to prevent - stalling during a session of play.

There are GMs who say, "the players have to find another way," but haven't actually designed other ways into their scenario, or who say "no" when players suggest alternatives, or who don't realize that players sometimes need an extra nudge to find a way, so the players end up stuck.

If that never happens at your table, then you probably don't need fail forward design.

 

[FrozenNorth]

The table would not include such things or, if it did, such results would be ignored in favor of something that made more sense.

If that is the case, doesn’t the fail-forward GM have exactly the same amount of latitude to decide that the consequence of the failure is something that makes sense?

 

[AlViking]

But you are only considering circumstances in which it DOESN’T make sense. That is the point.

I'm considering the facts as presented by the fiction. Picking a lock does not create a significant amount of noise, someone that is awake and reasonably attentive might hear it, someone in a different room especially if sleeping would not.

If the situation was that a cook was rolled up on a random table, you would make a proactive effort to come up with a reason that it makes sense in context. Why aren’t you doing that in this case?

I don't personally use random tables for that kind of stuff other than potentially to nudge my imagination. But if people do, the existence of a random NPC is not predicated on the skill check.

This is a perfect example of what I mean. I live in a house built in the 1920s. Whenever someone opens the front door, I can clearly hear it even if I am in the kitchen 50’ away.

Are they being careful to be quiet? Would you hear them using their keys to open the lock? Are you awake in your kitchen?

Rather than taking as the assumption that many doors are pretty noticeable when unlocked or opened, you proceed from the assumption that only someone adjacent to the door can hear it. Starting with this assumption, the conclusion is invariably that fail-forward is implausible.



Skills in D&D are fairly broad, so rolling a Lockpicking check is more than simply physically adjusting the tumblers. Here are 3 reasons it might make sense:

• The cook is an elf that is trancing and doesn’t need to sleep. The house is pretty quiet at night, so the unlocking and the opening of the door is noticeable and they come to investigate.
• The rogue unlocks the door but fails to grease the hinges. The door lets out a loud squeak as it is opened.
• The rogue unlocks the door, but fails to notice the small alarm Sigil. The silent alarm notifies the cook in the other room.

If a door being opened is audible enough to be heard it is not the failed check to pick the lock that is being noticed, it is the act of the door being opened. Those are different actions and in my game the response will always be based on the action taken.

 

[TwoSix]

If that is the case, doesn’t the fail-forward GM have exactly the same amount of latitude to decide that the consequence of the failure is something that makes sense?

Yep. I, personally, can't square "I want the setting to feel like it exists" with "Rolling a cook on an encounter table, instead of just narrating a cook, makes the world feel more real." Just doesn't compute for me.

 

[Umbran]

No, but you probably have a little time.

For acute lethal radiation exposure in the real world, typically you have minutes to hours. The victim is typically dead in 3 days, depending on treatment availability.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yep. I, personally, can't square "I want the setting to feel like it exists" with "Rolling a cook on an encounter table, instead of just narrating a cook, makes the world feel more real." Just doesn't compute for me.

To take a page out of the narrativist explanation - could it be because there’s a mechanic producing the cook instead of DM whim?

 

[AlViking]

So, it is important to remember what fail forward was designed to prevent - stalling during a session of play.

There are GMs who say, "the players have to find another way," but haven't actually designed other ways into their scenario, or who say "no" when players suggest alternatives, or who don't realize that players sometimes need an extra nudge to find a way, so the players end up stuck.

If that never happens at your table, then you probably don't need fail forward design.

I understand why people do it, I just prefer having alternative approaches. Even with complete failure of a specific goal I will keep the game moving forward. As someone said above if I think the players are frustrated or feel stuck, I'll be sure to remind them of the alternatives at hand and make sure they know what the options are. But to me fail forward feels like a crutch in many situations and should be a last resort, one I've never had to fall back on. A big difference is that since I don't run linear games, there will be other alternatives to pursue even if they fail to achieve a specific goal.

Sometimes the characters fail to achieve specific goals and the game continues on. I'd rather accept that failure is always an option.

 

[Enrahim]

I think this depends on the table/DM outlook on the situation. From my standpoint, the only assumed thing there is number 1. Opening the lock. The other stuff is variable and would be something declared by the player that I would factor into the attempt.

This means that if the player says that his rogue is trying to unlock the door, he's not rushing, trying to stay silent or avoid damaging the door(though short of setting of a trap I don't see how this happens).

If the player is like wants the rogue to open the door quickly, because guards are coming, the roll will likely be at disadvantage from the rush. Failure would be a failure of numbers 1 and 2.

If the player wanted to stay quiet while opening the lock, he'd tell me that and I'd add a significant amount of time to how long it takes to open the lock. Success would be success at both. Failure would be a failure to open the door, but would not be a failure to stay quiet unless the player rolled a 1. The player sacrificed time to stay quiet and I wouldn't take that away without a critical fail.

What you describe would only really apply to DMs who don't build those considerations into the roll.

The whole point of a big set of modifiers is to avoid negotiation. I've talked before about how DCs should be "derived" instead of set. You get the DC out of the situation; the lock is off X quality, the thief has professional tools, they're spending the normal time and making no special provisions for noise or stealth; that should procedurally output a DC the layer can then interact with.

Ideally, that should all be written down, so that once a player has gathered information about the situation, barring anything hidden they didn't get, they can do the derivation themselves, and go in to the action declaration knowing the odds. Success is clear; the lock is open, failure it isn't. In a stress free scenario, we can start applying Take 10/20 rules and possibly just noting the extra time taken. Frankly, I'd prefer players be spending resources in system scenarios to avoid rolling when possible altogether, probably some rogue ability to gain significant bonuses to the roll to overwhelm the RNG to keep pace with similar effects like knock and silence.

The "game" bit is in how players apply that broad palette of actions to get their desired results. The unbounded play, where that goal will change over time and be ones will be set when it succeeds or fails is where the role-playing comes in.

This is the problem with these proposals: It requires a sort of negotiation ahead of the roll. To take an extremely simple example: What do we do if the player forget to declare explicitly if they are going to try to be quiet? Some options:
1: This is a gotcha moment, where the GM are free to run whatever consequence they can think of for the noises done while picking the lock. This will quickly lead to the player going trough every possible modifier as a checklist before any roll, severely stalling play.
2: GM try to deduce what the player might be wanting from context; and applies modifiers according to what they think would be "logical" for the player to want. As we here are talking tradeoffs this essentially boils down to the GM making important decisions on the PCs behalf, which is generally frowned upon.
3: The GM ask explicitly. This is the alternative I framed as "negotiating". I assumed this solution in my previous post, as that is the one that to me seem less problematic from a Player-GM relationship perspective. It stalls about as much as the first alternative, but without the unpleasantness of the gotcha moments during the "learning" period.

After some practice the "negotiation" might go quite quickly, but it still will likely be a quite prominent part of playing a system heavily leaning into the proposed concept. I do not say that it is impossible, and some players certainly like these kinds of games. But I think it is important to recognize the trade-off that is turning many away from this approach.

 

[Umbran]

I'm considering the facts as presented by the fiction. Picking a lock does not create a significant amount of noise, someone that is awake and reasonably attentive might hear it, someone in a different room especially if sleeping would not.

So media would tell us.

But then, media tells us that if someone is using a silencer, a gunshot won't wake someone in the next room, or sleeping next to the target...

There was a time when lockpicking became a bit of a hobby, you could buy kits, and boxes covered in locks to practice on. I didn't pick up the hobby, but fromsitting near friends who did... Picking a lock seemed to sound roughly like someone futzing around with a key in the lock.

 

[Maxperson]

Yep. I, personally, can't square "I want the setting to feel like it exists" with "Rolling a cook on an encounter table, instead of just narrating a cook, makes the world feel more real." Just doesn't compute for me.

It computes for us, because we don't control much of the real world, very often including who might be behind a door we are going to open. That lack of control in generating a likely individual to be behind or not be behind the door makes it feel more real.

Granted it may not be that way for you, but it gives many of us that feeling. You also see it in debates over rolling stats vs. point buy/array. Rolling feels more realistic for a lot of people because of that lack of control.