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

[pemerton]

Stackexchange discussion pins the term down to first appearing in 13th Age, with no mentions found earlier than 2013. Though it confirms that authors you cited were promoting it earlier than that under different guises. Apparently the concept may have comes to RPG from improv theatre.

It is also called "no whiffing".

And given the term is found in Over the Edge 20th anniversary edition, which is a 2012 publication and did not coin the phrase (it was sufficiently well known that it could serve as a heading in that book), Stackexchange is wrong.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I'm not the one who demanded perfection! They specifically used that word, perfect. I did not introduce that. They did.

while they did use the phrase 'perfectly rational' i think you've fixated too much on the dictionary meaning of perfect (flawless) rather than the conversational use (very well), i believe you've seemed to of done similar in this thread a few times where you've taken things to the extreme end of the scale expecting complete total adherence to a concept rather than allowing for nuance.

 

[clearstream]

It is also called "no whiffing".

And given the term is found in Over the Edge 20th anniversary edition, which is a 2012 publication and did not coin the phrase (it was sufficiently well known that it could serve as a heading in that book), Stackexchange is wrong.

Well, they refer to a pre-release edition of 13th Age that was published in 2012. The designers phrasing could imply that they were knowingly coining or coopting a phrase for something they knew to already exist. To be well enough known that it could appear in contemporaneous publication suggests the latter. Stackexchange posts suggest that they and OtE may have drawn the term from earlier use in other domains.

 

[pemerton]

To me it is abundantly apparent that a motive for choosing fail forward is an intent that characters take risks, but fail forward doesn't encourage that risk-taking (I've seen it encourage aversion to rolling) rather it makes that risk taking more sincere or consequential.

What encourages risk-taking is player knowledge that failure won't bring the trajectory of play - or the PC - to an end. "Fail forward" can be a component of that.

The underlying idea is that the players are ready to take risks in advocating for their PCs, and the failure as a consequence of those risks won't bring that advocacy to an end. Because the situation that the GM narrates, in response to failure, will still speak in some fashion to the PCs' concerns.

it seems significant that the designers on 5e 2024 promoted rolling only when failure is consequential from DMG to PHB.

As I posted upthread, the roll only when failure is consequential framing tends to me to suggest GM-driven play: that is, that the GM is the one who decides whether or not failure is consequential.

I drew the contrast to "say 'yes' or roll the dice", where the need to roll is determined by what is at stake in the situation, and this then dictates that failure must be narrated in a way that is consequential. This is how Burning Wheel, for instance, does things.

 

[pemerton]

For example, an engine is not an example of a car but it is part of a car.

Does this clear that part up?

Not really. I don't see how rising action is to be analogised to a car. The latter is a machine, that has parts.

Rising action or rising conflict is not a machine. It's a sequence of events. It's components are events. Put in an event like Andy Warhol's Sleep, or an hour of two of play focused on inventory and calculating healing times, and you will not have rising action. At least that' show it seems to me.

 

[thefutilist]

Well, they refer to a pre-release edition of 13th Age that was published in 2012. The designers phrasing could imply that they were knowingly coining or coopting a phrase for something they knew to already exist. To be well enough known that it could appear in contemporaneous publication suggests the latter. Stackexchange posts suggest that they and OtE may have drawn the term from earlier use in other domains.

It was Luke Crane that coined it. I'm pretty sure I've read the thread where he did so but I'm not sure where it was, maybe storygames or Lumpley. It referred specifically to the Indiana Jones movies.

At a guess I'd say maybe 2007 but possibly much earlier. It wasn't widely adopted amongst indie circles because the games used a variety of resolution methods, I think it had more uptake with people porting various techniques into trad games.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

while they did use the phrase 'perfectly rational' i think you've fixated too much on the dictionary meaning of perfect (flawless) rather than the conversational use (very well), i believe you've seemed to of done similar in this thread a few times where you've taken things to the extreme end of the scale expecting complete total adherence to a concept rather than allowing for nuance.

I would take this more seriously if the rest of the context did not imply otherwise. Such as the word "exclusively", or the fact that TwoSix had specifically said, "It's hard to create an interesting story around a character who always makes the most rational, pragmatic decision possible." That was the specific thing to which Enrahim objected, and found it execrable enough to speak from a place of emotions rather than calmly.

The context--very clearly--was one of "always" and "most". That makes the phrase "exclusively perfectly" an extremely bad choice, if their intention was "mostly very adequate", whether or not we factor in the values-system/imperfect-informedness element.

If their intent was in fact "mostly very adequate", then I don't see how they actually have much of an argument against what TwoSix said. That is, if we're not demanding exclusivity, then we are allowing for there to be times where this rule is broken. Not all the time, I'm sure, but some exceptions occur. Further, even when it isn't an exception, someone might make a poor choice even if it isn't an outright irrational or unpragmatic one.

I did not, for example, bring up "honor before reason" as a contrast, because that would fit with the stated values-system limit. Sometimes, though, people do things on a lark. Or they act impulsively, without really thinking it through. Or they--as some of us have admittedly done in this thread--act based on a tide of emotion, rather than making a decision in a calm, rational manner, thus doing something that is un-pragmatic. Further, some values-systems are inherently unpragmatic, whether they be idealistic/naive, dogmatic, cynical/jaded, theoretical/doctrinaire, or sentimental/intuitive, such that there may not be any action which is simultaneously in keeping with a person's values-system and also pragmatic in any meaningful way.

 

[pemerton]

Well, they refer to a pre-release edition of 13th Age that was published in 2012. The designers phrasing could imply that they were knowingly coining or coopting a phrase for something they knew to already exist. To be well enough known that it could appear in contemporaneous publication suggests the latter. Stackexchange posts suggest that they and OtE may have drawn the term from earlier use in other domains.

Jonathan Tweet is the link between 13th Age and Over the Edge.

I don't get the impression that he coined the phrase just to use it in those rulebooks, though.

It was Luke Crane that coined it. I'm pretty sure I've read the thread where he did so but I'm not sure where it was, maybe storygames or Lumpley. It referred specifically to the Indiana Jones movies.

At a guess I'd say maybe 2007 but possibly much earlier.

This makes a lot more sense!

Edwards's term is "no whiffing", as far as I know.

It wasn't widely adopted amongst indie circles because the games used a variety of resolution methods, I think it had more uptake with people porting various techniques into trad games.

The concept was bowdlerised early on, yes, as part of the techniques needed for effective railroading.

 

[thefutilist]

The concept was bowdlerised early on, yes, as part of the techniques needed for effective railroading.

Yeah that's an important clarification. Back then it didn't refer to what it refers to now.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have, perhaps, a slightly-more-useful demonstration case for a "Fail Forward" situation.

The party is chasing someone, say an assassin. They know this is their target, but the target is very fast and might get away. So, they try various things to get to the assassin. They roll very poorly, and repeatedly fail--eventually, enough so that the assassin escapes.

Fail Forward emphatically does not mean that the assassin somehow doesn't escape, nor that the party spontaneously "knows" (or declares, or whatever) where the assassin went, nor any other form of result that isn't clearly failure.

It does, however, require that this failure not be a dead end, and there are many ways one could theoretically do this. The specific path that things take will be (and should be) shaped by the GM's understanding of the world, the assassin (since they know things the players and PCs don't), and the players themselves. Intentionally pushing things in a direction the players would find frustrating or boring or annoying would be counterproductive. Possible Fail Forward pathways include:

• The assassin gets away, but the fastest person in the party snatches something from them--a cloak, perhaps. Now they have an item they can examine to try to learn more. They still failed to catch the assassin, who has now gone off to do some other kind of nefarious deed or to report back to their masters, but they have a lead.
• The assassin, feeling spiteful, throws a poisoned dagger at the closest PC before they get away. Now there's a new problem ("save our ally from a poison we don't know!"), and a lead (the dagger, poison, or both might help).
• The assassin decides that the party is too persistent, and needs to be taken out--ASAP. So while they're catching their breath and trying to figure out what to do...the assassin is bringing in two buddies to jump them.
• Other people not-so-coincidentally harmed the process of getting to the assassin...but now those people can be squeezed for information as they're a lot less squirrelly.
• Someone else, who also wants to take down this assassin and their employers (perhaps a local thieves' guild?), observed the party trying to catch the assassin, and offers their aid--for a price.

In all of these circumstances, the fundamental action still failed: no catching the assassin. But instead of that just being a dead end with nothing further, as the party has almost no information to go on, failure still gets them a something--whatever that something might be--which permits the story to keep moving. The state-of-play neither (a) remained functionally unchanged, nor (b) changed into a complete dead end. All of the above are things that could be rooted in information the GM already knows, or in things they could reasonably extrapolate from what is already known--standards that have been repeatedly emphasized as essential to the "traditional-GM" running a sandbox-y campaign. Which, if any, would be "correct" for a given game depends on information I cannot possibly have--knowing the specific context of a given campaign, its world, its players, its GM.