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

[Micah Sweet]

What if...

You couldn't tell they were making it up?

You could tell they were making it up, but did so in a way that made the game compelling and fun?

What if.... someone played in your game, and said afterwards that you were a poor GM because everything was preprogrammed or rolled randomly and therefore it felt like their choices didn't matter. Would you consider that to be a valid complaint?

I would never run a game where the player's choices were determine by anything other than the player, so I don't see how that complaint would have merit.

 

[Lanefan]

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?

IMO, no, if entry is to be made via picking the lock - a task at which you've just failed and thus the lock is not picked.

A bad failure might be that you fail to pick the lock AND are noticed or something else goes adrift, situationally dependent. But if the tolls check fails then the lock is not picked, regardless of whatever else might happen.

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.

Well, depending on what other abilities the character has beyond lock-picking I might be quietly wondering why he's taking the difficult route of picking a lock when he could try an easier route through, say, an open window. But, for all I know the player-as-character might be thinking ahead: by picking the lock now he's also clearing an easier fast-exit path should such be needed later.

The one where I could see narrating a very noisy entry is if the character tried going in through the hole in the roof, blew it badly, and part of the roof crashes into the house with him. That would be, I would think, a fairly obvious risk when climbing in through a roof already known to be under repair.

 

[Faolyn]

mostly it would be - because that's the particular game being played.

Why should the Rogue being undetected while breaking into the house depend on his lockpicking roll? Yet most of us will have no issue lumping those 2 outcomes under a single lockpicking check.

In many games of this sort, there's not two separate checks here. There's a Burglary check, or a Dexterity check, or something like that.

In other games, the GM might say that your quietness, as determined by your Stealth check, lasts until it's plausible that it would stop being in-play--such as when you stop sneaking around because you've picked the lock and have entered into the next area.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They didn't hear or see the PCs, obviously.

Because I prefer games where the player's choices don't affect the world beyond what their PC can do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, no! Someone used an older name for a technique! The HORROR!

You think wanting terms to accurate reflect what they mean is funny?

 

[AlViking]

It's not a duct tape patch; it's a mechanic which many games use to great ability.


Perhaps shockingly, the term fail forward can be used to mean both "partial success" and "partial failure".


The only difference between this and fail forward is that you're not saying "you failed to do this, but something else happened." Instead, you're saying "you failed to do this" and waiting for the players to figure out what else to do.

Yep. Because the players drive the the campaign, not me.

It does come to a halt--the PCs can't progress here. They have to find something else to do instead.

They failed to achieve some particular goal. As long as the characters survive they can continue adventuring. You can't always get what you want, that doesn't mean you should give up trying. Meanwhile if I were in a game where no matter what I attempted I always succeeded at the action attempt, even if there is a complication, I would not enjoy the game as much. If I try something and it doesn't work I'm okay with the lack of forward momentum as long as I can regain it by doing something else. When I come up with that alternative, that different approach it's rewarding.

I don't want the game to take away the reward of an earned success.

 

[Faolyn]

If the cook example is bad, why wasn't used as an official example of the technique?

Official example where? There's no single source of this technique, and like most gaming mechanics, it's evolved over time.

And if you're supposed to be really good for the technique to not feel clumsy, shouldn't that information be available in the games that demand its use?

It often is. I previously posted the example from Daggerheart.

However, you are confusing the ability to write game mechanics with the ability to write technical manuals that are useful for everyone. I found the rulebook for AW to be highly unuseful because of the way it was written, but the rulebook for Monster of the Week and Masks to be far more useful, or at least have far more examples. And Daggerheart to be even more useful.

And probably not coincidentally, I feel the same way about D&D books--the earlier the edition, the more uselessly Gygaxian the writing style is.

I've played several games that use this stuff, and every time it felt clumsy and artificial to me. Do Narrativist games simply require a higher minimum level of GM to be good? If so, folks should just put that out there.

They require the GM and players both to be willing to learn new gaming techniques and not rely on old ones.

 

[Faolyn]

I would never run a game where the player's choices were determine by anything other than the player, so I don't see how that complaint would have merit.

That's... entirely not the point here.

 

[AlViking]

Sure, ok, here: think of it as like a Handle Animal roll with Aided Advantage, and the ability to idk drop a Hit Dice analogue to pay a cost to make the failure slightly less bad. Does that help?

I figured the framing of the fiction in actual play set up/adjudication/scene evolution was the important bit here since that seemed to be what people were getting hung up on with their absurd white room examples, but I guess not.

I wasn't commenting on the jargon to pick on you, it's just that it assumes all posters understand what you're talking about. As a software developer one of my strengths has always been that I can relate ideas and concepts to non-technical people in a way that they understand and vice versa. Part of that is using language and terms that the target audience understands. Because this is a D&D subforum, I assume that everyone here has at least a basic understanding of the game and therefore it makes sense to assume the audience you're speaking to knows D&D and don't assume understanding of anything else.

In any case it was just intended as free advice. It was likely worth what you paid for it.

As far as the example, I'm not sure where the fail forward is coming into play. It sounds like they just plain old failed and now have to deal with the consequences. It happens sometimes.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

The difference is clear as day, and has nothing to do with how the cook was created or placed there:

In a trad game, in order to meet the cook at all the character would have had to succeed on the pick-locks attempt. Otherwise the character wouldn't be in the kitchen, because the door is still locked and he's still outside it, and thus doesn't meet any cooks.

In a fail-forward game, in order to meet the cook the character has to fail on the pick-locks attempt; the GM overrules that roll by narrating the character gets through the door and into the kitchen anyway, whereupon he meets a cook.

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.

If one is using success with complications, there's not many viable options for complications in a kitchen at night. An unexpected cook is one, startling a cat or other pet is another, tripping over or bumping into some noisy pots and pans is another, but after that the list gets pretty short.

What makes the second example implausible to me is that on a failed pick-locks roll the character shouldn't be meeting anyone in the kitchen, because the dice have dictated he can't get there.