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

[pemerton]

Also, "be a fan of the characters" means, in effect, cheer for them

Why do you say this? I mean, it's not as if the rulebook fails to tell us what is meant! And it's not what you say here.

 

[pemerton]

Thanks. To my reading, those posters had in mind something like an adventure path or preordained story.

Yes. That's why I referred to a bowdlerised version of "fail forward" that involves "the GM narrating failure in such a way as to keep things 'on the rails'".

 

[Faolyn]

The reason I asked a question was because everyone for some reason has now decided that the lockpicking can only happen on a wealthy estate with multiple servants who apparently work 24 hours a day. I was curious if the answers changed if the scenario changed. Or if people would ever clearly state whether the cook would have been in the kitchen even if the lockpicking attempt had been successful.

But I shouldn't bother asking these kind of questions since most people on the fail forward side aren't even playing D&D and are playing games that work on different principles or are unwilling to answer* with actual examples.

*With the exception of @Faolyn. Their examples were a guard dog, breaking lockpicks or somehow hurting themselves. I don't see the guard dog as any different from the cook - either they're an obstacle either way or they're not. Breaking lockpicks or hurting themselves is to me just an extra penalty where I don't see how it's moving the narrative forward. Even so, I did appreciate it even if I was in a hurry before and forgot to say it.

Have you even bothered to google "fail forward D&D" to find out ways to use that method with the game?

 

[Faolyn]

Except that the determination to not run away has nothing to do with playing "in character" but, with whatever is most advantageous to the player. Running away makes a LOT of sense when a beholder just disintegrated your friend. Running away when you are already wounded and baddies are closing in is very much in character. Believing an NPC or not because you Dungeon Master doesn't make what you feel, not your character, what YOU feel, is a compelling argument is 100% not playing "in character".

The dice provide the direction. You provide the script. By never allowing the dice to determine the mental state of your character and insisting that you, and only you, can ever do that, combined with the fact that you just said that players will never accept any outcome that is disadvantageous to themselves, means that no player actually ever plays in character. Players will always do the cost/benefit analysis and choose the best option. That's not "method acting". That's very much not playing a personality.

To me, not allowing for the dice to influence how a character behaves is far more immersive breaking. It means that characters act very implausibly all the time.

Wait, wait, wait. If you let dice determine what your character is doing, that's playing in character. If you decide what your character is doing, that's not playing in character. Uh-huh.

I also think I'm going to need a citation on that "Players will always do the cost/benefit analysis and choose the best option" line. Because I know from my own experience that is very much untrue.

 

[zakael19]

Trauma--long term type trauma, like what you're talking about--should be an opt-in experience for several reasons. If its enforced via a die roll, then as I said before, it prevents you from playing your character because the dice have taken over. Many players don't want their characters to be burdened with this sort of trauma because they want to be playing a heroic game, or a game where everyday issues don't need to be tracked--they signed up for D&D, not Monster: the Angsting. And unless it's really well done, it's going to be insulting and/or triggering to people who actually have traumatic issues. Especially those who play D&D-alikes to escape them.

FWIW, I've kinda come around a bit on how say Blades encodes this whereas at first I really hated the idea of being all "ok you have trauma now." First, the player picks the Trauma (and in Deep Cuts Harper heard/saw the community liked the idea of them also being able to work through it instead of being locked into inherent self-destructive spirals that's kinda the premise of the core game) when they max their stress - showing the toll that sort of life and world takes. Second, it's up to them to show how it affects them. Even in Deep Cuts where there's provision to "invoke the trauma to complicate the situation" the player can always choose to instead "tough it out" via Stress - reflecting that your mental scars press in on you.

Now the game is very up front about this being built in, so if you're not up for that in play, probably best to not play it.

I do really like how the FITD Songs for the Dusk handles it though, which is recasting them to Scars - and letting the player define what they are instead of a pick list of "hardened pulp/noir criminal stereotypes." I've got some wonderful ones from my players in that game, that really illustrate how they've been affected by their actions and the world around them on their journey. And since they pick them and write them down, I've got the permission now to grab that with both hands and yank and Invoke (which has led to some of the best moments of RP I've seen).

 

[zakael19]

Have you even bothered to google "fail forward D&D" to find out ways to use that method with the game?

At this point I think every single poster in this thread that's even a mild proponent of the concept of Fail Forward in any game has exhaustively explained what it is to him, including a massive variety of examples from at least 5 different games to include running 5e.