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

[Maxperson]

But not if that roll is made by the player?

Seriously? You cut out the part about players rolling for stats and then ask that question?!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. Lockpicking quickly so that you are not hunched over a lock suspiciously for long is a key part of the skill. Doing so without leaving obvious damage to the lock indicating it's been compromised is part of the skill. Doing so quietly so as not to draw attention during the attempt is part of the skill.

Are all those things in the skill description of the rulebook you're using?

 

[AlViking]

Because this doesn't move the game along or provide an interesting consequence. It's merely punitive. Or worse, if the thief had checked for traps and rolled well--yes, there are traps the thief might not be able to see, but you're making one up here on the spot for no reason other than to "fail backwards."

(The last one is, IMO, pretty dumb. You're assuming that part of the thief's door-checking routine doesn't involve checking to see if the door is opened. If you did that to me, I'd start narrating every time I inhale, just in case you decided I was holding my breath. I'd make a little recording and have it play on a loop.)


Lockpicks are very thin and fragile; having them break often is fairly logical, unless they're made of, like, mithril.


Fail forward takes this into effect. Here's something I found on an old reddit post, with the idea that the PC is chasing a mysterious assassin:


Note that none of these involve the PC automatically catching the assassin. What they all do is make the adventure continue to move.

When it comes to picking the lock, if there's no consequences for failure other than "nothing happens"--there's no deadline they have to beat, no monsters or guards that might find them if they take too long, nobody relying on them, nothing to learn from the lock itself, a failure simply means "nothing happens"--then why have them roll at all? Why not just say that the thief picks the lock? Having them roll, whether it's a failure or a success, is just a waste of time.

If the characters absolutely must get through the door, why is it locked in the first place? Why not just leave it unlocked or give them a key beforehand?

Giving the characters options to keep the game moving should always be a priority, it's just a question of how that happens. I also don't see why every action must move the game forward. Sometimes you try something and it doesn't work. That's life. If it's the only possible option for moving the story forward and it's gated behind a check, that's poor planning and design on the GM's part.

Your examples of the assassin to me don't represent what some people call fail forward.

Spoiler: Reddit post you quoted because quotes inside quotes

a. You lunge at the assassin, ripping off his cloak. He shrugs it off and makes good his escape, but now you have an article of his clothing and possibly a clue to his identity. (The player gets a new challenge/storyline)

b. The assassin turns around and throws a dagger at you. It is poisoned. Someone will need to identify the poison in order to cure it- a possible clue (A new challenge and the player gets more than she bargained for)

c. You lose track of the assassin in a dark alleyway. Suddenly, he lunges at you out of the shadows (The player gets put at a disadvantage, but gets another chance at her goal)

d. You grab the assassin and wound them. He struggles with you, quickly escaping your grasp. he scurries up a wall and looks down at you, bleeding. You get the sense he is memorizing your face. (The player/party now has a new antagonist, the nameless assassin is now a character.)

These all are new options presented to the players that they can pursue if they choose. Even the "the assassin lunges out of the darkness" because the choice is on the player as to whether they want to bravely run away.

That's why there's usually multiple things that can happen in a fail forward, not just "noise."

In the scenario as described, the action was to pick a lock. What else could happen other than the lockpicking making noise? If there was an alarm trap on the lock it would have gone off whether the check was successful or not. If the door makes noise when opened, it's going to make noise when opened no matter how the lock is dealt with.

I don't see any issue with the character trying to do something and nothing happening as a result other than what they attempted did not work. It happens now and then in my game when, for example they're trying to open a heavy door. They attempt an athletics check but they aren't strong enough. So a few things could happen here. If there's no time pressure they don't open it but it feels like it budged just a little bit, give me another check to see how long it takes to push it open, perhaps with everyone pushing. They could search the area, perhaps I placed a hidden lever. They could try to find another way around, knock politely or just give up on finding the treasure hidden behind the door. What doesn't happen is the game does not come to a screeching halt.

It's just a different preference. I, as GM don't move the story forward, the players do.

 

[Faolyn]

That you are picking one instead of generating the result fully via a mechanic (like a table) is the quantum-like state (honestly describing this as quantum like probably harms the explanatory power more than helps but it’s a fairly common description so what can one do?)

One, picking the lock in a fail forward game is generating the result fully using a mechanic.

Two, a random table is the most quantum-like state imaginable, because unless it's the most heavily-curated table imaginable, it will contain results that are make far less sense than anything the GM is likely to come up with on the fly.

EDIT: I hit send too soon.

In an ideal, maybe ‘platonic’ traditional game the result is going to be either 1) prefilled random table driven or 2) extrapolated directly from established and preauthored facts.

So basically a video game with a large but limited tree of options.

For 2) there is an implicit plausibility test such that extremely implausible scenarios are filtered out and in the case more than 1 remains they are weighted appropriately and rolled for. But this part is mostly beside the overall point.

So something made up to fit the circumstances is inherently less plausible than something rolled on a table?

The recurring issue is in how you are picking the particular result. (Which isn’t an issue in itself, but it does have pros and cons for different player experiences.)

By what makes sense.

Or--and this is a wacky idea--saying, "Player, you managed to pick the lock but screwed up badly somehow in the process. What happens?

Get the players to tell you what their player did. If you don't mind them narrating their successes, why can't they narrate their failures?

 

[The Firebird]

It seems well within the trad approach for the DM to roll a random encounter because of the rogue’s lock picking failure. So how is the cook being the result of a random encounter roll any less « created out of thin air » than in the fail forward example?

We weren't talking about that case. But let's examine it...it looks something like "bad lock pick => time spent => random encounter roll => cook".

Here, there is some connective tissue between the bad lock pick and the cook appearing--the bad check meant we spent a lot of time and triggered a roll. This is different than the DM directly deciding...the fail forward method is more "bad lock pick => cook". There is no layer mediating the two in the same way.

A second difference is where the random encounter comes from. In a fixed world game, the estate will have a list of inhabitants and their locations. If the cook is encountered as a wanderer, then they wouldn't be encountered elsewhere. The cook existed already, the roll just determines where they are encountered. This is different than the roll determining their existence.

 

[AlViking]

Daggerheart defines it like this

FAILING FORWARD​

In Daggerheart, every time you roll the dice, the scene changes in some way. There is no such thing as a roll where “nothing happens,” because the fiction constantly evolves based on the successes and failures of the characters.​

​

And it's clear from the rest of the text, examples, actual plays, that failure can mean you don't open the lock. The designer's purpose seems similar to that of 5e i.e. "consequences resolution". What I wonder is if others take fail forward to properly include not opening the lock (as an option), just so long as there are consequences?

I agree that probably the biggest issue I have is that the attempted action still succeeded when it should have failed according to the rules of the game. But can the consequence of failure be that they have to find an alternative? To me that is still a consequence and frequently the most likely one.

 

[Enrahim]

I worry whenever "challenge" gets used this way. There's nothing challenging about a die roll; you don't demonstrate more or less skill by rolling a 5 or a 15. The challenge is the problem (getting the heirloom off the mantle or whatever) and all of the rolls and action declarations are tools to do that thing.

The challenge is in structuring your choice of tools to get what you want and avoid negative consequences. If you can't do that, then it isn't a challenge at all, it's just a prompt to determine what comes next.

I believe it was @Maxperson that introduced this use of challenge. When I replied to his concerns, I thought it made sense to adapt the language he seemed to want to use to discuss these matters.

If you want to adapt a different parlance, that doesn't affect the underlying issue here: it is ambiguous what toolset we should use as it is unclear what problem we seek to resolve? Is it whether the door opens, or is it if the thief enters unnoticed?

Framed like this I hope I represent Maxperson correctly by saying that his position appeared to be that the question if the door opens shouldn't require any mechanical resolution due to lacking the property of being "chalkenging". I merely pointed out that even if we take the underlying premise for this argument (not challenging->no need for roll), we still have not resolved the question if the thief is noticed, as that presumably would be filling Maxperson's criteria for being considered "Challenging".

 

[The Firebird]

So games that are primarily improvised are... not virtuous?

Not in the Aristotelian sense. This is different from me saying they are morally wrong.

But yeah, if I played a game with a DM who improvised everything, after I would say something like "X was a poor GM. You could tell they were making it all up on the fly and it felt like my choices didn't matter".

You're hung up on the cook.

In lock picking, fail forward means, you get in, but there's a complication of some sort. Such as:

• you lose or break your tools
• you startle someone who is in the room and they make a noise, alerting others
• you cause an inordinate amount of noise doing so, alerting others
• you leave evidence behind that can be tracked to you
• you hurt yourself in the process
• someone sees you and doesn't immediately scream, but they can ID you later on

Pick one. There doesn't have to be a quantum anything; three of those results require nothing but the PC.

I'm focusing on the cook example because that's what we're discussing. Don't read that as saying that's the only thing that I think can happen.

And I already said there are better ways to do the cook. @Campbell explained one, and I said it was better and discussed why I still found issues with it.

 

[Maxperson]

The point of "make it some other complication" isn't trying to sell you on it. It's to address the faulty way the technique is being described. Acting like any of this is trying to sell anyone on anything in this thread is missing the point from my perspective.

Who was trying to sell someone? Not me. Not @Umbran that I could tell.

A discussion was happening about the differences between fail forward and rolling on a table. Then a comment was made that people were losing sight of things because we are focusing on the cook scenario, but could be any complication. That statement ignored that the traditional DMs don't want to use the technique, so other complications than the cook aren't really relevant. Which is all I said and meant.

The cook is just representative of concept of fail forward, like the quantum ogre is used for illusionism debates, and trolls are used for metagaming debates.

No sales. No misrepresentation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But it wasn't in response to the actual attempt to break in. It was in response to needing to know who was in the house and where.

Again, you probably don't see the distinction. Others do.

In older editions of D&D, attempting to pick a lock would absolutely involve a random encounter roll. As would searching a room or X amount of time spent moving about a dangerous area like a dungeon.

Also, I've always looked at random encounter tables as a list of people/creatures that can be encountered in the given area. The roll doesn't conjure them into existence... they were always there... it just means that they're now right here, where the PCs are.

Daggerheart defines it like this

FAILING FORWARD​

In Daggerheart, every time you roll the dice, the scene changes in some way. There is no such thing as a roll where “nothing happens,” because the fiction constantly evolves based on the successes and failures of the characters.​

​

And it's clear from the rest of the text, examples, actual plays, that failure can mean you don't open the lock. The designer's purpose seems similar to that of 5e i.e. "consequences resolution". What I wonder is if others take fail forward to properly include not opening the lock (as an option), just so long as there are consequences?

Yes. It's not at all required that the actual attempt succeeds when there was a failed roll... it's more that something unwanted or otherwise negative happens which creates a new situation. It's not about "the narrative" or "the story" moving forward. It's about the circumstances... the situation... moving forward.

So instead of opening the door and finding the cook, instead the thief is noticed by the neighbor across the street. Or the neighbor's dog begins to bark nearby, having smelled the intruders.

Any number of things. It really is just about not saying "nothing happens".

Seriously? You cut out the part about players rolling for stats and then ask that question?!

Because a player rolling for stats has nothing to do with my point?

You're saying that because you as GM don't want total control over a setting, you enjoy when a creature's presence is indicated by a die roll.

But that's what the lockpick attempt is doing. We're just having it do double-duty, so to speak. It's a die roll that tells you of the presence of the cook.

Are all those things in the skill description of the rulebook you're using?

I'm surprised to hear a fiction first fan such as you ask that. I mean... it's obvious without looking at any rulebook, isn't it?