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

[Yaarel]

Your theory roughly matches the idea of noetic satisfaction proposed some years back as a core agenda of simulationism. Examples were given of self-identified simulationists displaying noetic satisfaction when they observed accuracy to historical references. For me, Eero Tuovinen's more general take improved on that with

Simulationist play attempts to experience a subject matter in a way that results in elevated appreciation and understanding. The Shared Imagined Space is utilized for intensely detailed perspectives that sometimes surpass the means of traditional, non-interactive mediums.​

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So where the noetic satisfaction idea (at least in its earlier form) appeared limited to accuracy to real world, Tuovinen's take opened it up to any subject. He avoids any distracting psychological or neurological theorizing: it's enough to elevate appreciation and understanding... including of subjects found only in fiction.

With Tuovinen's ideas in mind, I think in terms of neo-sim. That means both that design innovations by the avant-garde are available for simulationist purposes, and some limiting assumptions about simulationism are abandoned (or counted misapprehensions.)

This description makes it sound like simulationism and mythological accuracy are the same thing.

But I normally associate it with narrativism, and narrativism with narrative immersion.

 

[pemerton]

Yea, I had read that article a few years back, but I totally forgot about how coherent and encompassing it is.

I'm confused - I thought we were supposed to hate all analysis that deploys Forge categories.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This description makes it sound like simulationism and mythological accuracy are the same thing.

But I normally associate it with narrativism, and narrativism with narrative immersion.

I've found GNS's desire to lump world simulation and genre emulation together wrongheaded from day one. They don't really serve the same purpose except in the most cursory view at all.

 

[FrogReaver]

Then I'm back to not knowing what RPG you have in mind as using "weird entanglement".

The screaming cook doesn't exhibit "weird entanglement". Setting aside many of the aspects that have been discussed (eg the plausibility of the cook being present, whether the hard move follows deftly from a soft move, etc), the basic structure is straightforward: the player fails their roll, and as a result the GM frames them into an unwanted encounter.

IMO this is precisely where the entanglement lies.

It’s important to note the steps taken to get here.
1. We define character skills as qualities inherent to the character himself.
1b. The implication here is that there is no possible skill inherent to the character himself such that he has a better chance to not encounter cooks while lockpicking as encountering cooks is clearly external to the character. I’m not sure how to state it precisely but this same thing applies to more than just encountering cooks.

If one doesn’t share premise 1 then that mix of internal and external modeling is still occurring but it won’t be viewed as an issue. The issue is that such entanglement undermines premise 1, such that if you want premise 1 in your game you should not use methods that undermine it.

 

[AlViking]

OK. So if the break-in is in the middle of the night when the house is quiet, why would the GM use a cook as the complication? As opposed to, say, a watchman?

Three things here:

(1) Why are you saying the GM is ignoring the failure? You say that the player is cognisant that the failure will have a consequence. You go on to describe the GM giving effect to the failure. So how is it being ignored?

(2) Why does the player have the option not to open the door? Or to put it another way: if the roll is not to go through the door but simply to unlock the door, then why is the GM not brining home failure at this point. You are separating roll from consequence here in a manner that makes no sense to me.

(3) Why does the GM want the character to get into the house? You seem to be describing a railroad game. In Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World, the GM should be following the principles of those games, not the sorts of principles that govern something like a D&D adventure path.

So in these 3 ways your example to me shows a misunderstanding of "fail forward" as a technique.

And here your misunderstandings compound. Your complication doesn't follow from the fiction - why is the cook in the kitchen in the middle of the night? Your consequence is not connected to the resolution, as you have brought it home based on opening the door, not based on the failed test.

This just makes no sense to me, full stop. What is the specific set of actions? Suppose that, in a bog-standard dungeon crawl, a PC is crossing a river on a fraying rope, and the relevant roll (Use Rope, Climbing, rope-tensile strength roll, whatever the game in question calls for) fails. And so the GM narrates the PC falling into the river. Does that count as the players being forced into a specific set of actions?

And in your cook example, can't the PCs - murder the cook? bribe the cook? befriend the cook? kidnap the cook? charm the cook? trick the cook? etc etc.

I don't really follow this either. You seem to be describing a railroading GM who is bad at railroading: who wants to push things towards some particular event (dealing with a ward guarding a map) but who clumsily defeats their own railroading by introducing a cook encounter that gets in the way. I don't know what any of this has to do with "fail forward".

One more time ... it was not my example. As I've said multiple times now, different people use fail forward differently. I'm sorry if you can't accept that other people on the internet (different blogs, other posters on this forum) use it differently than you do or even the way it was originally intended to be used.

You don't own the phrase. I've seen examples of it being used as the example described almost every time I've come across the phrase in other places. I wouldn't want to use it the way you use it either but that's because I view the role of GM differently than you do. It's not my problem if you can't accept that many people who use the tactic use it are doing it differently.

 

[AlViking]

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

If the cook being there or not was a random encounter and not based on the failure of a check I wouldn't have a problem with it. Intent and how an element was added into the game matters to me.

 

[FrogReaver]

I didn't see the original example, but I assumed the party wasn't being stupid and trying to pick a lock in broad daylight or when people would be likely to be walking around after dark. My bad for not realizing the PCs were morons.

Obviously the PCs smelled the food and couldn’t resist trying to steal it.

 

[FrogReaver]

This description makes it sound like simulationism and mythological accuracy are the same thing.

But I normally associate it with narrativism, and narrativism with narrative immersion.

Could it be there’s more than one way to be immersed. Call it simulationist immersion and narrativist immersion. I think it’s fairly clear different things immerse each of us, but there do seem to be some oft repeated themes.

 

[Maxperson]

Obviously the PCs smelled the food and couldn’t resist trying to steal it.

I mean, if it's not in the middle of the night, the something bad happening is still unrelated to the roll, because it doesn't matter if it's a success or failure. Someone is probably going to see them and react.

 

[AlViking]

That's fair. I'm not advocating for rules change just exploring in what situation a Fail Forward could work.

The issue I see is that there are so many different interpretations and most of my searches just resulted in more arguments about what the term even means. One blog I found with a useful take on it was at Fail Forward which talked about finding a secret door, and the check fails. Instead of just ending there the party has an option to continue searching and if they do, they eventually find the secret door but it takes all day. At the game table it's resolved quickly, but in-world taking all day could be a significant penalty. I'm okay with this (and occasionally do something similar) because the cost of failure is directly tied to the declared action and in-world fiction. They also talk about how this could be handled completely different in a narrative story telling game of Vampire, and in that case there's a game mechanic penalty only sort-of related to the player declaration (although it makes more sense than a lot of examples I've seen). Of course I like it because it happens to match up to my preferences.

The point with this is that there are some things that are not naturally compatible with the general approach of D&D. You can, of course, hammer D&D into something else if you want and it works for you and your group but if you want to stick to a more standard game the cost should be something that is the direct result of the declared action that failed. It's also preference and maybe someone who uses it for D&D could give actual detailed examples of how it happens in a D&D or other similar game.

In my game if someone fails to pick a lock but doesn't totally blow it in my game they can still open the lock eventually but like the search example above it will take extra time. During the extra time it takes a guard may come by or not. Maybe I have the guards on a timer because it takes 5 minutes to do a circuit of the grounds, or it's just a 5% chance every minute. Maybe there are no guards but there's a 5% chance every 20 minutes of someone noticing. For me the difference is that I would be simulating some in world fiction, that there are guards for the building or regular patrols in the neighborhood, perhaps just nosy neighbors that look out once in a blue moon. There's also no "standard" timer, it depends on neighborhood, time of day, nature of what the characters are trying to do.

But to me there are just some incompatible assumptions on what it means to GM different games. I'm not a storyteller when I DM, I build the world and decide reactions to what the characters do but the results are based on in-world fiction, not what will move the game forward. Moving the game forward is the player's job, I just provide the setting.