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

[AlViking]

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If it matters to you let’s work through those different scenarios.
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It's funny. People complained about how the cook example is so terrible so I asked them to provide alternatives. The closest I remember is that it wasn't a cook in the room, it was a guard wandering by or a nosy neighbor. Just shifting from a cook to a different individual doesn't really change anything. Then there's the house rule that successfully picking the lock is whisper quiet and if you fail apparently you decided to knock on the door instead or something. Add in the actions taken completely separate from the sleight of hand check like the squeaky hinges on the door that apparently opens of it's own accord on a failed check to open the lock or the cat in the room that, once again, only exists if you fail.

There are rare times when I will simply take a timeout and clarify the options the characters have, what the characters know, perhaps ask for a roll to give the players a hint. But that's because the game has bogged down and the people at the table are getting frustrated. I don't remember the last time that happened, as I said it's rare. If they're having fun discussing options and what to do I let them have at it. It's their game and it's up to them to move it forward.

Providing "better" examples of fail forward shouldn't be hard. If people use fail forward in their games give some examples of what that looks like. I'm still probably not going to use it because I don't see my job as a GM to push the narrative forward and definitely not on a failed action. But instead of repeatedly saying that the example I found is flawed, perhaps try providing an example that is not flawed?

 

[Maxperson]

This seems to me to be a clear illustration of you not having, as part of your agenda, Make the players' characters' lives not boring. Rather, you seem to be espousing a principle of fidelity to the prepared setting, along the lines of what I stated just above.

Except that I do have an agenda of not making the characters'(and players') lives boring, which can be done in conjunction with fidelity to the prepared setting.

 

[Maxperson]

But failing a stealth check does not guarantee that you fall, does it? It simply means you were noticed. Being noticed is not the same as suddenly having guards swarm around you. Quite different, in fact. Guards certainly might do that. Or they might wait until they can catch you red-handed. Or they might not think they have enough people on hand, and wait until they get reinforcements. Or they might make a pretend show of force (because they know they don't have enough people on hand.) Or they might call for the actual police. Or maybe you weren't spotted by a guard, but instead by a scullery maid, who is fearful that if she raises the alarm you'll kill her. Or maybe you were spotted by a disloyal servant who wants their master to suffer. Or, or, or, or...

I had this discussion with @pemerton. Stealth isn't what dictates much of anything. Perception is. You literally cannot fail a stealth check, since a 1 does not auto fail and all stealth checks successfully set a DC for perception checks against you. You roll a 2 -1 and you get a total of 1, you are seen with perception rolls of 1 or higher. Someone with a -2 to perception who rolls a 2 has failed to see you due to your successful roll of 1.

If you're a DM who has things happen on failed rolls, stealth is not the skill you are looking for.

 

[Maxperson]

Whereas in TRoS or BW, the player establishes their Spiritual Attributes or Beliefs based on their own priorities, and is able to control how they change and how they impact play. For instance, BW expects Beliefs to be broken as much as adhered to, and has a "reward system" for both possibilities. The system doesn't ask the player to faithfully portray their PC, but rather to make a statement by portraying their PC a certain way.

Breaking a belief is as much a faithful portrayal of the PC as keeping it is.

People are people. We have beliefs. Some of them we keep. Others we keep and then break, sometimes forever and sometimes only briefly. The system you describe is asking for the player to faithfully portray their PC. It just rewards the player no matter how that portrayal takes effect.

 

[FrogReaver]

Except that I do have an agenda of not making the characters'(and players') lives boring, which can be done in conjunction with fidelity to the prepared setting.

Right. The ‘not boring’ stems from other areas than action resolution. It comes from the setting/situation in your play.

 

[clearstream]

Pemerton already called this out, but you're committing a formal fallacy here, called "denying the antecedent."

"P→Q" does not mean "¬P→¬Q". In non-symbolic terms, "if P is true, then Q is true" flatly does not say a single thing about whether "if P is false, then Q is false." The two statements are totally unrelated. For example, "if an animal is a cat, then that animal has hair" does not, in any way, imply "if an animal is not a cat, then that animal does not have hair."

It's only if you have a bidirectional relationship, "P↔Q", which has various non-symbolic translations such as "P if and only if Q", "P iff Q", or "all Qs are Ps, and all Ps are Qs."

It's slightly complex to parse

If you don't have an agenda as GM that includes making the character lives' not boring you should not use fail forward.​

One way to read it seems to be: if I have an agenda as GM to make the character lives not boring I should use fail forward.

If you and @pemerton are right you would also accept: if I have an agenda as GM to make the character lives not boring I should use simple fail.

The "should" is mildly problematic as where doing A rules out doing B, as it is reasonable to assume here, then to say I should do B contradicts saying I should do A.

@Campbell did you mean both? Or did you mean to tie making the character lives not boring to using fail forward? The latter seems unlikely to me, based on the way you normally contribute to these conversations, but to mean both seems to empty the sentence of import... so what did you intend?

To hazard a guess, did you mean that it would be harder to create flat, downward or circular narrative trajectories with fail forward? It'd be an impediment to such experiences. And that would not be about boring play or otherwise. Fail forward could make play I found more stimulating less achievable, for e.g.

 

[Campbell]

So what. All you guys are showing is that the structure of the argument is logically sound, not that the argument is sound. DMs don't have an agenda of making things boring for the players.

Not having an agenda of make the player characters' lives not boring is not the same as having an agenda of making the player characters' lives boring. We're also specifically talking about the player characters, not the players here. I was speaking to having an active agenda where the undefined parts of the setting are actively used tools to keep play flowing and compelling (and reflective of what the characters are up to).

If you consider yourself a referee or someone who inhabits the setting than I don't know why this should be contentious because then you should have no agenda.

 

[Campbell]

It's slightly complex to parse

If you don't have an agenda as GM that includes making the character lives' not boring you should not use fail forward.​

One way to read it seems to be: if I have an agenda as GM to make the character lives not boring I should use fail forward.

If you and @pemerton are right you would also accept: if I have an agenda as GM to make the character lives not boring I should use simple fail.

The "should" is mildly problematic as where doing A rules out doing B, as it is reasonable to assume here, then to say I should do B contradicts saying I should do A.

@Campbell did you mean both? Or did you mean to tie making the character lives not boring to using fail forward? The latter seems unlikely to me, based on the way you normally contribute to these conversations, but to mean both seems to empty the sentence of import... so what did you intend?

To hazard a guess, did you mean that it would be harder to create flat, downward or circular narrative trajectories with fail forward? It'd be an impediment to such experiences. And that would not be about boring play or otherwise. Fail forward could make play I found more stimulating less achievable, for e.g.

I meant a one-way relationship. There are obviously different methods to making the characters' lives not boring. One way just to have complicating forces bear their heads regardless or setting things up on a situation level between sessions that should make it very difficult for players to have boring lives.

My biggest beef with this conversation is pulling a mechanic out in isolation without the infrastructure that normally surrounds and like acknowledging the huge role the GM plays in how it's implemented. The latter of which is a big problem to me because we (this community) never seems to acknowledge the craft involved in running games like Apocalypse World.

 

[Maxperson]

Dude attempts to pick lock and fails.
How much time did that attempt take? Do you inform the player beforehand how much time it is going to take for their best attempt?

It takes less than 6 seconds. RAW says you can attempt to open a lock on your turn during combat. Success and it opens. There is no penalty, increased loudness for speed or anything else. It's a normal lockpick attempt in your 6 or less seconds. That means that outside of combat, it also takes 6 or less seconds. It can't take longer or you would incur penalties during combat for rushing the attempt.

In the lock pick example, the person takes x minutes and fails, are you really saying that it makes sense in the fiction for that dude to not be able to pick that lock the whole day because in that 5 minutes his best roll was y?

Take-10 and Take-20 are great rules as they short-cut the issue with the cost (consequence) advertised.
I'm not against ALL gamist rules obviously as I have advertised plenty that I use in this thread to limit my own GM bias.
I am though against rules that make no sense to me for the fiction at the table.

This depends on whether the DM allows re-rolls or not. If he doesn't, then the single roll is your best attempt and if you fail, the lock is beyond you. If retries are allowed, then you will eventually get natural 20, so taking 20 or just allowing the PC to open 20+skill lock with no roll indicates the best attempt.

Each attempt is at most 6 seconds, though. So even 20 attempts would only be 2 minutes.

 

[Maxperson]

Right. The ‘not boring’ stems from other areas than action resolution. It comes from the setting/situation in your play.

I mean, this whole "not make the characters' lives boring" is a Red Herring. Even if the characters are bored out of their minds here and there shopping or traveling, they still adventure, find loot, become pirates, talk to dragons, walk other planes of existence, and more. Their lives quite literally can't be boring if you're actually playing the game.

The only concern with regard to boring that the DM needs to be concerned with is the players. You don't want THEM to be bored. That's my true agenda. I don't want my players to be bored.