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

[Lanefan]

You’re picking a concept of game-running apart by relying on an absurdist and constructed example.

We’ve said many times that people who actually run games this way would simply not set up the fiction so the scene hits a locked door in a vacuum. That’s already boring to start, before we get to failure.

They can set up the fiction any way they like but unless my character's an idiot he's going to do what he can to manipulate that fiction to his advantage by trying to pre-emptively remove any potential complications before they can arise; ideally to the point where yes, the locked door itself is the only complication remaining.

Unless, of course, these games expect us to play our characters as idiots; I earnestly hope that's not the case.

 

[Faolyn]

Because people like different things, and you're not going to always be able to satisfy everyone's fun simultaneously.

There's a difference between not always being able to satisfy someone and doing things that you actively know are frustrating to the players.

 

[Faolyn]

Because in any game someone, sometime, has to lose; and losing generally doesn't make people happy.

This isn't about losing. It's about nothing happening.

The difference between RPGs and other games is that with an RPG you can lose and yet still keep playing, where with many other games losing means the game is over for you if not for everyone.

-----

A thought occurs to me. In the card game Bridge, while everyone gets to participate in the bidding process of each hand, one player out of four then has to sit out the actual playing of the hand. Depending how the deals go and the cards lie, it might be the same player sitting out most often or it might be somewhat evenly spread. And that one player, while sitting out a hand, might get frustrated as all hell at the way partner is playing the hand but can't do a thing about it.

Does this make Bridge a bad game? That it remains highly popular after 100-odd years would suggest the answer is firmly no.

I wouldn't know. I've never played it.

But whatever it is, it's not a game that is built on imagination. You don't take on a role while looking at your hand. The table isn't a magical land.

 

[Lanefan]

Not true. Cooperative games exist. TTRPGs are largely held to be an excellent example of those. In fact, pretty much every TTRPG rule book I’ve read over the last decade has said it’s not a game where you have winners and losers.

And yet within a TTRPG you still have wins and losses as a part of the flow of play; only the rulebooks mostly skip over that bit.

The most obvious example of a TTRPG loss condition is the death of your character. Obviously, there's loads of others which might vary depending on the specific game you're playing.

To be a game (as opposed to something else) there has to be some competition involved somewhere. Sure the players might co-operate, but they're still competing against whatever obstacles the GM (or each other, in a GM-less game) has set up for them. And any competition can only resolve as a win, a loss, or a tie.

 

[Pedantic]

The problem is “OSR” and “traditional” are way too similar to each other to be 2 of the 3 categories; it’s roughly equivalent to categorizing mammals as “big cats”, “small cats” and “everything else”.

Deeply unclear what "traditional" means there, and I'm worried it's probably 5e. It's very clear my high player agency rules heavy stuff isn't welcome in the OSR, but 5e first players seem to glaze over when you try to present them with a fully developed skill system, so I think I might be out in the cold.

 

[AlViking]

Just as an aside, I once got locked out of my place as the wind blew the front door shut and it auto-locked. As it happened the only option was to call for a locksmith (my sister who had the spare was out of town).

The dude literally took 30 seconds to unlock the door. I dunno if that is standard but boy was that easy money.

From what I've read, it can take a locksmith anywhere from under a minute up to 20 minutes which is why I chose the length of time I did. Apparently locks can just be stubborn sometimes.

I borrowed an idea from @pemerton's game whereby 1 of the 2 PCs had their boot damaged by a Fail Forward check (think it was Perception) a few hours after having left the city. Unable to mend the boot, the PCs had the option of returning to the city or hoping to meet a cobbler or tradesman along the way. The damage boot was affecting their movement speed negatively. They decided to stay course and not return. That evening they joined an encampment of a group of travellers etc on the way to the city.
At the encampment the other PC managed to successfully find and buy a pair of boots off one of the revelers.

I'm trying to imagine A) why you would have a perception check to avoid stepping on something and B) what you could step on something that would do just enough damage to harm a boot but not your foot. I'm sorry, but to me that sounds like just another disconnected penalty that had nothing to do with the check. I mean, fail a check and fall into a covered pit makes sense (even if I can't remember I used that particular trope), but at least it makes sense.

I think either you or @FrogReaver mentioned something about D&D being about overcoming obstacles. Well on that, I appreciate that Fail Forward provides a mechanic to generate those obstacles.
But even more so I like that it affords me the authority in the creation of those obstacles without having obstacles generated via DM decides without a mechanical trigger.

EDIT: Lastly, I like that the mechanic can work in such a way to encourage the DM to being more creative with the obstacles. And a by-product of that being a greater engagement by the players, IMO.

And just to reiterate, I view this as a tool for my table not standard play for every roll.

The obstacles present themselves in the fiction, I don't want to create them as punishment for failure. Failing is bad enough I don't want to pile on top. Meanwhile I think failing sometimes is more realistic and then having logical repercussions that make sense for the scenario if there are any. Sometimes failing a climb check just means you take a bit of falling damage, sometimes it means the guy you were chasing gets a bit further ahead, sometimes it means you may alert nearby guards. But I'm not going to add guards that would not have been there if you had succeeded just to add an obstacle.

As always I'm glad it works for you and your group, just not the style of game I want to play.

 

[AlViking]

Sure, but by and large this sort of play is being done as a short lark, in games designed for it as the premise (see: Blades), or by players that have largely been pushed out of many spaces because they’re objectionable in many ways.

Edit: The excellent book A Theory of Fun talks quite a bit about how games start as teaching tools, and we can build games that do more then just cheap entertainment and power fantasy stuff. I think that applies to TTRPG play as well.

Shouldn't teaching also include how to deal with failure?

 

[AlViking]

They can set up the fiction any way they like but unless my character's an idiot he's going to do what he can to manipulate that fiction to his advantage by trying to pre-emptively remove any potential complications before they can arise; ideally to the point where yes, the locked door itself is the only complication remaining.

Unless, of course, these games expect us to play our characters as idiots; I earnestly hope that's not the case.

Many players have the idiot thing down pat without the rules telling them to do so.

 

[Eric V]

You know it's ok for you to like 4e without feeling the need to defend it's D&D-ness. No one is arguing it's a bad game in anything beyond the "for me" sense.

LOL. There's no "need to defend it's D&D-ness;" it just IS D&D.

Established facts need no defense.

 

[AlViking]

LOL. There's no "need to defend it's D&D-ness;" it just IS D&D.

Established facts need no defense.

Why do you care if 4e didn't feel like D&D to them? It was certainly a pretty radical departure of design from what came before and after.