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

[The Firebird]

No, it's about what failure means for play. My players fail to get their full intent all the time. We had a crap ton of 6-s rolled last Monday. What we show is that a) you're not failing because you do something a competent person in that situation wouldn't do for laughs, b) that failure doesnt mean that play slams to a halt necessarily, and c) the fiction still evolves because by god you did something interesting and the world will do something interesting back, because we are playing games to have an interesting conversation.

5e fail-forward may play out differently because of some inherent design differences in d20 task resolution, but it doesn't have to if you frame the rolls. Just go read (or watch, if you must) some fiction where thievery is on the table and you'll see that "oops all locked doors" just doesnt really show up standalone.

Since this has gotten truly absurd, here's a recasting of the whole dang thing. You are allowed to say "I dont like it because failforward sucks" but this is I think way more reasonable to actual play:

Yarin is a thief of some sort. He's approaching the town mansion of the evil merchant Uzvek, needing to retrieve an artifact from somewhere within the house. Because he's a halfway competent thief, he's cased the place during the day and done some other stuff within the game's procedures for gathering info.

We can resolve the following escapade via conflicts to see what happens. For instance, scrambling over the low stone fence doesnt need a roll unless there's an obstacle a competent thief would face (say: magicked guard dogs). So: "as you climb the fence and pull yourself to the top, you can hear the snuffling sound of one of those dogs you saw when you cased the place out...what do you do?"

Or, we can know that the dogs are there and leave them out for now. "Ok, you climb the fence and see the kitchen door in the moonlight. Looks like it's quiet for now. What do you do?"

And if Yarin says that he creeps over to the door ("it's locked, right?"), keeping a wary eyes and ears open for problems we can frame the conflict out to "Yeah, cool so as you get to work with your picks you can hear the ticking of claws and a muttering guard in teh distance. You've got limited time here...what do you do?" And if Yarin says that he's going to try and pick it in a hurry (instead of anything else he could do here), we have a framed conflict (will you win and get in and away from the guard dog, or lose and get discovered and have to deal with something new?).

Or we could frame the conflict around sneaking across the grounds of the mansion (if this was Blades, I might do that instead), and elide the door lock entirely. The conflict is "do you get inside without being noticed."

Because stakes are clear, the player knows within the fiction what the possible complications are. On my door+guard example, on a 7-9 partial I might offer a choice between a cost and a consequence here (maybe something like ok, you get in just as they're rounding the corner, you can either drop your locrkpicks in your haste to get in, or the dog is going to start growling and searching around outside and the guard is going to be alerted).

Nice example. This seems similar to games I've played.

I want to focus on the bolded:

It's not about failing the dice roll, it's about how to deal with the fact that you fail sometimes because we all fail sometimes. Do you get upset or just accept failure, figure out what went wrong and try a different approach?

In any case I'm not going to argue about it I just don't see the issue being failure, it's how you deal with failure. If you never fail we might as well be handing out participation trophies.

A key difference, imo, is that in your example there is no "figure out what went wrong", because the game is not fixed in a way that can be solved. The dog catches your scent just because you rolled a 7-9. Whereas if you had say, 3 rounds until it caught your scent and you can pick the lock in 1 round with a DC 15, 'nothing happens' on a failure is its own interesting result. You've lost a round--do you try again or reassess your strategy? The decision making is about how to solve the encounter.

This is why I think the notion of failure comes across differently--it means two different things. In the fixed world game, failure is opposed to your goal of beating the encounter. In the narrative case, sure your guy failed but it's fun to watch and leads to some interesting consequences, so it isn't a 'fail state' for the player in the same way. Drive your character like a stolen car, right? If they get banged up, broken, pushed to a new low, that's all a win as far as the system is concerned.

 

[zakael19]

When it comes to the classic inspirational literature, my gold standard for climbing urban walls to sneak into somewhere important is REH's Tower of the Elephant. There are guards, and lions, and other guardian creatures.

Given the pace at which REH wrote, he must have been making most of this up simply as he went along! It's a good model of the sort of things a GM might aspire to dream up when GMing in a 'fail forward" style.

I just recently re-read the first three books of the Nightrunner Series, every dang roguish moment either happens as narration (he carefully pried the window open and listened for a bit), or has stakes and a conflict and escalation.

 

[zakael19]

A key difference, imo, is that in your example there is no "figure out what went wrong", because the game is not fixed in a way that can be solved. The dog catches your scent just because you rolled a 7-9. Whereas if you had say, 3 rounds until it caught your scent and you can pick the lock in 1 round with a DC 15, 'nothing happens' on a failure is its own interesting result. You've lost a round--do you try again or reassess your strategy? The decision making is about how to solve the encounter.

Well, yes. I'm not talking about playing OSR or anything in its realm where "the solving of problems via player skill" is a significant question/priority. If that's what you want, you don't want fail forward play - I'm pretty we've said that a billion times.

That doesnt change that the constructed example was terrible, and that "failure" and "win/loss" is still always on the table in "Fail Forward" play.

When I was playing His Majesty the Worm last night, simple pass/fail task resolution was important because the game is intended to test player skill and lateral problem solving. Story or narrative isn't even a thing.

 

[Maxperson]

And we're saying that there is absolutely no difference between one completely arbitrary die roll resulting in an encounter and another completely arbitrary die roll resulting in an encounter. Your forest encounter teleports all over the map, so long as the PC's are somewhere in that forest, at 6 pm, they will have a specific encounter that is determined by your random die roll. Doesn't matter what they are doing, zero context. So long as they are in the forest at 6 pm, they will have THAT encounter. Camping? Fishing? Forced marching? Playing a song? Doesn't matter. Hiding in the trees? Sleeping in tents? Lying out on the ground? Doesn't matter. It's 6 pm and you WILL have that encounter. Full stop.

Quantum.

But you will never be right since one involves the DM and the other the player(s) which makes a difference in whether it's quantum for the players or not. Those are differences.

And you clearly did not read my forest encounter, despite my posting it multiple times, since it not only did it not teleport, but it didn't even move. I just rolled it in advance rather than on the spot. The location of the encounter did not change, because the party did not change locations out of the forest. If they had, there would have been no encounter.

 

[AlViking]

No, it's about what failure means for play. My players fail to get their full intent all the time. We had a crap ton of 6-s rolled last Monday. What we show is that a) you're not failing because you do something a competent person in that situation wouldn't do for laughs, b) that failure doesnt mean that play slams to a halt necessarily, and c) the fiction still evolves because by god you did something interesting and the world will do something interesting back, because we are playing games to have an interesting conversation.

5e fail-forward may play out differently because of some inherent design differences in d20 task resolution, but it doesn't have to if you frame the rolls. Just go read (or watch, if you must) some fiction where thievery is on the table and you'll see that "oops all locked doors" just doesnt really show up standalone.

Since this has gotten truly absurd, here's a recasting of the whole dang thing. You are allowed to say "I dont like it because failforward sucks" but this is I think way more reasonable to actual play:

Yarin is a thief of some sort. He's approaching the town mansion of the evil merchant Uzvek, needing to retrieve an artifact from somewhere within the house. Because he's a halfway competent thief, he's cased the place during the day and done some other stuff within the game's procedures for gathering info.

We can resolve the following escapade via conflicts to see what happens. For instance, scrambling over the low stone fence doesnt need a roll unless there's an obstacle a competent thief would face (say: magicked guard dogs). So: "as you climb the fence and pull yourself to the top, you can hear the snuffling sound of one of those dogs you saw when you cased the place out...what do you do?"

Or, we can know that the dogs are there and leave them out for now. "Ok, you climb the fence and see the kitchen door in the moonlight. Looks like it's quiet for now. What do you do?"

And if Yarin says that he creeps over to the door ("it's locked, right?"), keeping a wary eyes and ears open for problems we can frame the conflict out to "Yeah, cool so as you get to work with your picks you can hear the ticking of claws and a muttering guard in teh distance. You've got limited time here...what do you do?" And if Yarin says that he's going to try and pick it in a hurry (instead of anything else he could do here), we have a framed conflict (will you win and get in and away from the guard dog, or lose and get discovered and have to deal with something new?).

Or we could frame the conflict around sneaking across the grounds of the mansion (if this was Blades, I might do that instead), and elide the door lock entirely. The conflict is "do you get inside without being noticed."

Because stakes are clear, the player knows within the fiction what the possible complications are. On my door+guard example, on a 7-9 partial I might offer a choice between a cost and a consequence here (maybe something like ok, you get in just as they're rounding the corner, you can either drop your locrkpicks in your haste to get in, or the dog is going to start growling and searching around outside and the guard is going to be alerted).

The example I quoted only focused on one particular skill check failure. Obviously there could have been other checks, or not. If the character(s) had looked before they attempted to open the door there would not have been any indication of anyone inside but that could be easily explained. Perhaps the windows are shuttered or similar, perhaps they didn't think to look.

Just as obviously there are stakes to breaking into a house that were not explained in detail but "stakes" do not matter to me. I don't think in terms of "stakes" so I do not care. Please stop telling me I'm doing it wrong if I do not share your approach to gaming. If there is impending danger and risk I will decide what the players know based on what I think the characters would know.

I am not playing a narrative game. I don't want to run a narrative game. As DM I'm providing the setting that I think provides plenty of opportunity for adventure. If there's a dog inside and they listen at the door as a precaution, they may hear the dog. If there's a chef inside, they may hear the rattling of pots and pans. Except in the example I found there was no dog nor was there a chef until the lockpick check failed.

I understand where you're coming from but no amount of explanation is going to change how I run my game. I do not understand why you care that your preferred style would not work for me, I know I don't care how you run your game. I do what works for me, what works for my players. I see no reason to add fail forward techniques when we have fun with the game we're running and I don't see fail forward having any benefit. If it makes sense in the fiction that a failed check complicates things, it will.

 

[Maxperson]

Yep. In play we often have to decide what our character does and if we treat the game as a game then we might arrive at one answer and if we treat the game as a simulation we might arrive at another.

And if the narrative is the priority, you might arrive at a third.

 

[AlViking]

Nice example. This seems similar to games I've played.

I want to focus on the bolded:

A key difference, imo, is that in your example there is no "figure out what went wrong", because the game is not fixed in a way that can be solved. The dog catches your scent just because you rolled a 7-9. Whereas if you had say, 3 rounds until it caught your scent and you can pick the lock in 1 round with a DC 15, 'nothing happens' on a failure is its own interesting result. You've lost a round--do you try again or reassess your strategy? The decision making is about how to solve the encounter.

This is why I think the notion of failure comes across differently--it means two different things. In the fixed world game, failure is opposed to your goal of beating the encounter. In the narrative case, sure your guy failed but it's fun to watch and leads to some interesting consequences, so it isn't a 'fail state' for the player in the same way. Drive your character like a stolen car, right? If they get banged up, broken, pushed to a new low, that's all a win as far as the system is concerned.

I agree, and that's what's frustrating. What failure means, how it's handled, is very dependent upon the game and the goals of play.

Note - you can obviously share some techniques and if people want to implement fail forward in D&D and it works for their group that's fine. I used to introduce "dramatic" events on an ad-hoc basis to my game on a regular basis as well. Not exactly fail forward, just throwing in a monster or a complication because it felt like the game wasn't exciting enough. But eventually I realized my players knew I was doing it and that what we came to call OTAs (Obligatory Thug Attacks) just didn't add a lot. Randomly encountering monsters in a dangerous area sure, but a group of ninjas just attacking you in the middle of the street because we hadn't had a fun combat encounter lately or I wanted some "filler"? Just not for me.

I happen to feel like fail forward kind of like those OTAs if I'm running a D&D game in the sense that frequently failure will have a cost, but it's going to be directly related to the action taken.

 

[Enrahim]

No, it's about what failure means for play. My players fail to get their full intent all the time. We had a crap ton of 6-s rolled last Monday. What we show is that a) you're not failing because you do something a competent person in that situation wouldn't do for laughs, b) that failure doesnt mean that play slams to a halt necessarily, and c) the fiction still evolves because by god you did something interesting and the world will do something interesting back, because we are playing games to have an interesting conversation.

5e fail-forward may play out differently because of some inherent design differences in d20 task resolution, but it doesn't have to if you frame the rolls. Just go read (or watch, if you must) some fiction where thievery is on the table and you'll see that "oops all locked doors" just doesnt really show up standalone.

Since this has gotten truly absurd, here's a recasting of the whole dang thing. You are allowed to say "I dont like it because failforward sucks" but this is I think way more reasonable to actual play:

Yarin is a thief of some sort. He's approaching the town mansion of the evil merchant Uzvek, needing to retrieve an artifact from somewhere within the house. Because he's a halfway competent thief, he's cased the place during the day and done some other stuff within the game's procedures for gathering info.

We can resolve the following escapade via conflicts to see what happens. For instance, scrambling over the low stone fence doesnt need a roll unless there's an obstacle a competent thief would face (say: magicked guard dogs). So: "as you climb the fence and pull yourself to the top, you can hear the snuffling sound of one of those dogs you saw when you cased the place out...what do you do?"

Or, we can know that the dogs are there and leave them out for now. "Ok, you climb the fence and see the kitchen door in the moonlight. Looks like it's quiet for now. What do you do?"

And if Yarin says that he creeps over to the door ("it's locked, right?"), keeping a wary eyes and ears open for problems we can frame the conflict out to "Yeah, cool so as you get to work with your picks you can hear the ticking of claws and a muttering guard in teh distance. You've got limited time here...what do you do?" And if Yarin says that he's going to try and pick it in a hurry (instead of anything else he could do here), we have a framed conflict (will you win and get in and away from the guard dog, or lose and get discovered and have to deal with something new?).

Or we could frame the conflict around sneaking across the grounds of the mansion (if this was Blades, I might do that instead), and elide the door lock entirely. The conflict is "do you get inside without being noticed."

Because stakes are clear, the player knows within the fiction what the possible complications are. On my door+guard example, on a 7-9 partial I might offer a choice between a cost and a consequence here (maybe something like ok, you get in just as they're rounding the corner, you can either drop your locrkpicks in your haste to get in, or the dog is going to start growling and searching around outside and the guard is going to be alerted).

I want to call out a few properties this example is having that the (silly) example that has been discussed before have, that can be educational for how to properly handle fail forward in a trad system:
1: The fail condition is known ahead.
2: The fail condition involve the door not being unlocked (it is a "real" fail).
3: The fail condition make full sense in the fiction as a consequence of failing the action.
This is still fail forward as "something" is happening on failure.

I think that with these properties as a requirement, fail-forward should work fine as a recommendable principle in traditional play - with a lower priority than the principle of allowing risk mitigation.

 

[Enrahim]

Maybe, but most people focused on dropping THAC0 as "the big change". We had also been using a lot of the supplements like S&P so for me it didn't feel like gameplay was that much different. It also likely depended on what your focus is in gaming. I tend to envision what my character was doing as if it were a novel or a movie, so going from a fighter that just kind of slapped on armor and hit things to having one that could use rain of steel and become the Tasmanian Devil, it was a pretty radical departure.

It's all just opinion and point of view. I thought gameplay was changed significantly, about the only other edition change that was close was from OD&D to AD&D.

Yes, that is a good point. 3ed was very cleverly making it look like the same game, while completely changing the internal workings (For instance feats looked deceptively like something you could get in S&P for instance, but the seemingly minor difference that you chose them on leveling as well as at char gen is huge in changing what the game actually become about). The combat also seemed like just a "clarification" of the existing rules.

This way the 2ed players could play the game as they were used to - theatre of mind and everything. Maybe try out a bit of this grid stuff. And of course the little treat of getting some extra snack on leveling. And without noticing everyone was suddently playing a completely different game than they did before.

With 4ed it was almost the other way around. They did some seemingly minor changes to improve on the same core gameplay loop. But as these changes removed certain ways you previously could interact with the game (like figuring out what spells to memorize) there wasn't the smooth onboarding as it had been from 2ed to 3ed.

 

[Faolyn]

Re: Bridge

That it's not built on imagination has nothing to do with anything.

What matters here is that it's baked into the game design that someone has to sit out each hand, and every player fully knows this going in.

Why can't RPGs take the same tack and make it abundantly clear right up front that a) there's going to be times when you have to sit out for possibly quite some time and b) there's going to be times when the results of play will frustrate you.

Then, when the frustrating moments do occur, they're taken as being an accepted part of the game and nobody really bats an eye.

"Why can't they?" is not the same thing as "why should they?"

And because there's a difference between momentary frustration and dead ends.