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

[AlViking]

Sure, but there isn't even a Lock Picking skill... it's a subset of Tool Proficiency with Thieves Tools.

And?

Was he good at disarming traps? Or did you just ignore that?

This was before they clarified sleight of hand for disabling traps but yes, he was decent at thieves tools so he could disarm traps.

That's fine. But you asked "Why should the game rules tell us why or how we fail a climb check?" so I explained why, per @Hussar 's post, that would be the case.



I have.

I understand that @Hussar ha different opinions, he was clear in what he wants. I just disagree.

If you've provided examples i don't remember them or I missed it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed. IMO plate is logically as simply making you impervious (or nearly so) to certain weaker attacks.

I do think there's clearly a need to make the numbers work, which is trickier than AC. Different levels of magical protection, leveling, and a desire to generally make higher level PCs tougher in a D&D type system does create some constraints. OTOH HomL definitely doesn't care if your high level knight just laughs at goblins. A level 15 PC is frightening to immortal beings and literally ignores goblins.

 

[CreamCloud0]

In one, the GM made it up before, and in the other, the GM made it up now.

I keep asking but nobody will really explain how that difference is any better--especially when some people have said that making it up even a few seconds before the roll is somehow better than making it up a few seconds after the roll.

i feel like you must've been told several times over by now, please stop claiming no-one's explained it to you: the difference is that in being decided beforehand the result and state of the world is independent and in no way influenced by the outcome of the skill check.

 

[FrogReaver]

And the purpose of fail forward design being baked into the rules is to prevent poor GMing from the start.

People always complain when games like D&D don't provide guidelines or rules for how to GM well, but then get annoyed at games that do.

I’d suggest those are different people.

 

[clearstream]

Y'know, people keep getting hung up on the lock and/or cook, but in reality, this applies to anything. Fail to climb a wall, nothing happens. Fail to search a room, nothing happens. Fail to answer the riddle, nothing happens. Fail to convince the NPC, nothing happens.

The point isn't that you can take a crowbar and break a window. The point is when "nothing happens" prevents the game from continuing, and that's not fun.

I agree. "Nothing happens" must leave room for the game to continue.

 

[Enrahim]

I don't think so. What's happening is that you are all criticizing the method by attacking the flawed example. If you are not attacking the valid example... the one you call "fixed"... then you're acknowledging that the method works perfectly fine.

Indeed. I think everyone is on board with failforward being an ok technique for the games it is made for. It also has been identified that the version that is not succeed with complication could even be imported into trad play under certain not very limiting conditions. Succeed with complication has been found to not be relevant for trad play as it breaks the social contract of task resolution in those games.

The only thing that lingers is that before we came to these conclusions we were digging into potential failure modes of this technique. This problem example was by some found to be such a failure mode for living world play. The conflict is that others have denied this example being a failure mode even for living world play. While the example spawning this discussion might be academic, the resulting discussion has actually been quite constructive.

It has helped illuminating some key properties of living world play, and some observations that I think you also would appriciate regarding effective use of the success with consequences result in the context of preventing unnecessary suspension of disbelief moments.

So indeed we are well beyond accepting that the method works fine, and deep into the territory of how to optimize it's use to various non-standard contexts. The tone might be confrontational, but I actually think we are making nice progress amid all the noise.

Of course they can.

Yes of course they can the thing you have in mind. I formulated myself poorly.

Right, this is why people have pointed out it is a different skill set.

If folks were saying "I don't like fail forward because it forces me as a GM to be creative in a more immediate manner" then I would say that you have a point. But I don't think people want to frame it that way because it's an admission of some kind of shortcoming as a GM... so it's far easier to criticize the method about how it can result in absurd outcomes.

The technique is clearly not dismissed outright. Fail with story progressing measures has been accepted as a technique with constraints that actually make it harder to improvise with it than what is the case if you could just use the first that come to mind. I think you should have a long hard look at the concerns actually being voiced, and the context those concerns are coming from. I really think you would agree that these have at least some merit given the contexts.

But 5e and many similar games give the GM the authority to do that any time they want. So why does your criticism not apply to that game as well?

Yes, so 5ed GMs that has mastered the art of presenting a solid believable organic world experience despite absolutely no support from the system, might have some insight into what sort of content discipline is required to make such an experience work

 

[Campbell]

Yeah, certainly. I think the narrative systems give players more agency, separate from their characters, to change the fiction, and I see why this seems less GM driven.

The disconnect is that I think giving the players power in this way actually gives them less agency in-character. Their in-character actions aren't connecting with anything solid and so they don't really matter. In that sense, the game is more GM-driven--you just want to convince the GM action X will make a good story. ('Hmm...will Pemerton, the GM, go for this runes = map idea?')

Convince the GM X will make for a better story isn't how any of this works.

In games that utilize intent like Daggerheart, Burning Wheel and L5R 5e what matters is credibility. Given what's been established is that intention a credible one?

In games like Monsterhearts it's all about establishing the fictional positioning so a given basic move will apply.

Regardless, if you want to narrow down the possible consequence space the way you do so is by taking actions that bring more of the unfixed offscreen stuff into concrete onscreen stuff. So, you do stuff to find out more about stuff that's currently offscreen. The benefit is that this stuff that's part of the shared fiction is stuff you can actually depend on because false positives are not part of the information environment. If you find stuff out, you find it out for real.

The fixed stuff is like actually fixed. You can depend on it. The stuff offscreen yeah that's flexible, but my experience is that you cannot really depend on your hunches on that stuff anyway.

None of these addresses the aesthetics bits. Just core gameplay agency.

The one thing is true is that you generally cannot out-think there being conflicts or just out right win without playing the game or taking risks, so yeah slightly less agency there.

 

[clearstream]

I'm questioning whether there's any need for anyone to claim one or another technique maps to more or less ability to do that. It's quite possible we agree. I've not had the time to track every single quote back. It sounded like you were advocating for a distinction there.

It's possible. My post was highlighting how natural it is to treat the imagined world as existing in some sense independently of characters. That can be differentiated from the structural facts of the game (narrating a cook prompted by a character move doesn't necessitate commital to a world in which cooks are conjured by picking locks.)

I believe most accept that we can address the imagined world as if it were independently real regardless of its 'metaphysical' status... but I could be wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Y'know, people keep getting hung up on the lock and/or cook, but in reality, this applies to anything. Fail to climb a wall, nothing happens. Fail to search a room, nothing happens. Fail to answer the riddle, nothing happens. Fail to convince the NPC, nothing happens.

The point isn't that you can take a crowbar and break a window. The point is when "nothing happens" prevents the game from continuing, and that's not fun.

Why would it? You can always do something else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't forget that most narrative games don't allow this level of player power, though.


In one, the GM made it up before, and in the other, the GM made it up now.

I keep asking but nobody will really explain how that difference is any better--especially when some people have said that making it up even a few seconds before the roll is somehow better than making it up a few seconds after the roll.

It feels better, provides a stronger sense for immersion for those who care about it, etc. The difference is subjective, but plenty real for folk who care.