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

[AnotherGuy]

If in-character prep doesn't and can't improve your root chance of there being no complications, then why bother?

All your prep can do, it seems, is deny the GM access to some specific complications; meaning she has to dream up something else if "complication" comes up on the roll.

What effect does it have to the root chance of hitting 7-9 on the roll? None? Therefore it's pointless - no matter what you do, you still have the same odds, so why bother?

Your argument boils down to why prep when complication is still on the table.

Why drink a potion of fire resistance when the red dragon can still claw, bite, tail slap, lift you and drop you, wing buffet etc?

If you think the GM isn't going to reward you for smart play that's another topic IMO.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton just to share Daggerheart's specific guidance for your note, it calls the "narrating failure as your PC sucking ass" out under the Pitfalls to Avoid: Undermining the Heroes section

I agree with their "it's often better". As opposed to always better. Sometimes the character does fail. But sometimes events conspire against them.

Going back to Aedhros - his failed attempt at kidnapping is on him; the fact that harbour officials, guards etc keep harassing him, is the world oppressing him. The fact that he is spurned by his fellow Elves is a bit of both - at least so far.

 

[pemerton]

If you're in the woods and encounter a bear does it matter if it's not the same bear you would have encountered a couple miles east? Does it matter that if it's a predator that they often travel dozens of miles in a day looking for prey?

Why do bears wander in your world, but cooks never do?

 

[pemerton]

I want to emphasize and pull out this point because it demonstrates exactly my problem with these systems. Here, the players took some actions to prepare and avoid issues, and the response is... Just pick a different consequence. To me, this reads as saying "no matter how effectively the PCs scope the place out and try to avoid potential issues, a roll of 7-9 will always give them a consequence".

Are you ignoring that, in Apocalypse World, acting on the answer to Read a Sitch grants +1 going forward? And likewise, in Dungeon World, for acting on the answer to Discern Realities.

EDIT: The same question can be asked in relation to this post:

If in-character prep doesn't and can't improve your root chance of there being no complications, then why bother?

All your prep can do, it seems, is deny the GM access to some specific complications; meaning she has to dream up something else if "complication" comes up on the roll.

What effect does it have to the root chance of hitting 7-9 on the roll? None? Therefore it's pointless - no matter what you do, you still have the same odds, so why bother?

And this one:

Your stat and things on your sheet are not what people are talking about. It's looking into a window or sending a familiar in to do some scouting or listening at the door. Stats and abilities will always apply no matter how careful you try to be.

 

[pemerton]

Ok, I see "module", I think, "linear adventure", not simply, "event based on prep".

White Plume Mountain is a module. Tomb of Horrors is a module. Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is a module. They all involve maps and keys, and they work on the premise that the players will, via their PCs, explore the map - that is, declare actions for their PCs that prompt the GM to reveal the initially hidden information about what the place looks like and what stuff is inside it - with the goal of getting some stuff that is hidden somewhere in the place (eg the weapons in WPM, the treasure in the tomb in ToH).

The key doesn't just detail architecture and furniture. It also details obstacles and puzzles. Some of these are creatures, but the creatures are generally obstacles to achieving the goal, rather than the goal in is own right. The obstacles/puzzles should be beatable/solvable with effort but not trivial. This is group-relative (obviously), and ToH is particularly notorious in this respect.

The GM's job is to present the stuff in the key and on the map fairly and accurately. This is also group-relative: GMing an old hand is different from GMing a neophyte, which Gygax discusses in his DMG.

For this sort of play, "fail forward" is not an applicable technique.

One interesting question is how far does this sort of play generalise beyond classic dungeon adventures like the ones I've mentioned? I think the answer is "quite a bit". I have seen Traveller scenarios which are intended for this sort of play. And some CoC scenarios are also intended for this sort of play, except rather than using rooms and doors to "shape" the play, they use genre expectations (players will have their PCs go to the library) and GM nudging (by way of NPCs, mysterious letters, etc).

To reiterate, play of Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World is not like this.

 

[The Firebird]

"Fail forward" as a technique - the avoidance of narration of "nothing happens" - is not designed for puzzle-solving or exploratory play, where the players try and overcome obstacles presented by the GM in order to achieve some goal which lies beyond those obstacles. If that is the sort of RPGing you want, you therefore won't use "fail forward".

I agree and this is a conclusion we reached a couple pages ago as well. I'll say the same thing I did then--if the main conclusion we take is that people who dislike narrative mechanics do so for well-founded reasons rather than reflexive conservatism, then that is a win to me.

Are you ignoring that, in Apocalypse World, acting on the answer to Read a Sitch grants +1 going forward? And likewise, in Dungeon World, for acting on the answer to Discern Realities.

I think this helps. But it doesn't resolve the issue for me because it is so abstract and coarse. The specifics of the plan aren't that relevant when many different plans lead to the same +1.

 

[pemerton]

Lets use that example of the party trying to break into a kitchen (forget the rest of the backstory, as I have not been following every single post). Spying through the kitchen window they spot a cat that's watching them intently. The cat is the only other living creature in the kitchen.
The GM calls for a lockpicking roll and the result lands in the Success with Complication category and so narrates that the rogue successfully unlocks the door, but the sound of the lockpicking made the cat bolt abruptly out of the kitchen knocking over a teaspoon into the sink and causing some commotion.
Maybe someone who saw the cat bolt out of the kitchen goes to investigate but the PCs have some moments to prep as they hear the footsteps of the approaching person. i .e. (they can close the door without entering the kitchen and wait for the person to leave hopefully, they can hide in the pantry or they can prepare an ambush etc)

What essentially I'm doing above is introducing fiction (the existence of a cat) beforehand which fiction may allow for Fail Forward to generate more content (the approaching person).
I believe that may be acceptable to a more Trad-style player?

How do you envisage this being different from soft move => hard move?

 

[Maxperson]

So, basically only one very specific game mechanics is acceptable and all other variations are simply wrong because they're different. As I say, conservatism is frustrating, lol

For literally at least the dozenth time, nobody is saying that other variations are wrong.

How do you know the detailed nighttime behaviors of random cooks? This is a detail you invented.

Sure. LOTS of cook are up at midnight to 2am sitting around the kitchen after cooking dinner and before getting up at 4am to get ready to make breakfast. They're doing that constantly.

 

[Maxperson]

This goes to @Campbell's point. Someone who doesn't like "fail forward" gives an example of clumsy GMing - narrating the cook in the kitchen with no foreshadowing/soft move/other rationale, and when it makes little sense due to it being the middle of the night - and this is supposed to show that "fail forward" can't work!

As I've posted, this is like me "proving" that dungeon crawling can't be interesting or fun by adducing a bad, boring dungeon I wrote when I was 12.

I didn't make up the example, and I get that it's a bad one since the cook would almost surely not be in the kitchen, but it's the one that was brought up and is being discussed.

 

[Maxperson]

Unrelated or "unconnected* only on the premise that the point of the roll is not to find out whether or not the attempted action goes well or poorly. If the point of the roll is to find out whether or not the attempted actions goes well or poorly, than the attempted action leading to an unhappy encounter is related. As that is a way of the attempt going poorly.

This is true. It really depends on the system. In default D&D, the skill is Open Locks, not Open Locks and Avoid Bad Stuff. The roll is only to see if you open the lock or not, so everything else is unconnected.

"Fail forward" as a technique - the avoidance of narration of "nothing happens" - is not designed for puzzle-solving or exploratory play, where the players try and overcome obstacles presented by the GM in order to achieve some goal which lies beyond those obstacles. If that is the sort of RPGing you want, you therefore won't use "fail forward".

Something always happens, even it's just a failure to accomplish your goal. More accurately it's "avoid narrating something uninteresting to the players."