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

[Maxperson]

How is it not playing the game right?

Because games are designed so that the players are having fun. How do they have fun? typically by having their characters encounter interesting things to do and see, which means that automatically those characters are not having boring lives.

If those characters are not encountering those things and are having boring lives, you are not playing the game right. You have altered it and now everyone(players and PC) are bored out of their minds.

If you have the one in a bazillion table where the players actually enjoy and have fun playing characters with boring lives, then making those characters' lives not boring would be the worst possible thing you could do. You'd be ruining the fun of those players.

All prep is being honoured. All mechanical interactions are being resolved in accordance with the principles and rules agreed by the table. All action declarations are being made in good faith and are being resolved in good faith. The location may be one that is fairly mundane or one that that has already been picked over for interest by the party.

If you do that, the characters are not bored. The players might be, but the characters won't be since they will be encountering places and things of interest, getting into danger, etc.

This is a No True Scotsman if we are playing fallacy bingo.

Nope. It's not. If you play the game as it was designed to be played, the characters will be in interesting(to them) positions, and their lives will not be boring.

Players being bored is a completely different issue, which is why the whole "Make the characters' lives not boring" is a bad name. The real principle being set forth there(despite the wording saying character) is, "Make things interesting for the players." It's about them, not the characters.

 

[Maxperson]

I've certainly used it in 3.5, PF, 4e, and 5e. It's fairly trivial to use.

"Oh, you failed your arcana check to identify the runes? They're definitely runes of demon summoning, and you've triggered them!"

Yeah. I don't see how it can be questioned that fail forward can be used in D&D. It can be used in any RPG that I can think of.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The player would be the one to decide if it worked, if it didn't work, if it didn't work but he played along to try and mollify the child, or whatever else. The d20 should have no part in that decision.

We do very much the same, it is discussed openly at the table amongst us all, we look at the TIBFs and if we can apply that in some way, but in the end the player decides if it can happen and if dice are needed for resolution purposes.
The player gets to determine the DC if dice are to be used.

 

[AlViking]

That was not the situation, though. It wasn't that there were no consequences and the character could try again and again. What I did was not what you are describing.

What was the consequence other than the time taken?

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah. I don't see how it can be questioned that fail forward can be used in D&D. It can be used in any RPG that I can think of.

Exactly. People might not like D&D played that way, because they're attached to the principle or aesthetic of "everything in the setting is already generated", which has deep historical roots in D&D. But it's not like using a "fail forward" methodology in D&D would violate a presented core operating principle of the game.

 

[AlViking]

Exactly. People might not like D&D played that way, because they're attached to the principle or aesthetic of "everything in the setting is already generated", which has deep historical roots in D&D. But it's not like using a "fail forward" methodology in D&D would violate a presented core operating principle of the game.

The question has been how to implement it without modifying the already generated setting or changing the rules of the game. It's also a question of how you determine the result of actions, the game takes the approach that you only take into consideration the direct and immediate result, not the downstream consequences of success or failure.

I can see some cases where fail forward can work, I just fail to see how you can maintain that sense of an established world reacting to character actions for both player and DM in all or even many cases. If that is the guiding principle it seems to me you have to alter or add a fair number of house rules to make it work in many cases. In other words, if a sleight of hand to open a lock doesn't result in a simple "yes it's unlocked or no it's not" the rule has to change. It becomes "the lock will always be unlocked but there's some other consequence".

Maybe I'm missing something. But it seems that either you have to modify some rules or you have to choose to change the paradigm of an established world reacting to character actions.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The question has been how to implement it without modifying the already generated setting or changing the rules of the game. It's also a question of how you determine the result of actions, the game takes the approach that you only take into consideration the direct and immediate result, not the downstream consequences of success or failure.

I can see some cases where fail forward can work, I just fail to see how you can maintain that sense of an established world reacting to character actions for both player and DM in all or even many cases. If that is the guiding principle it seems to me you have to alter or add a fair number of house rules to make it work in many cases. In other words, if a sleight of hand to open a lock doesn't result in a simple "yes it's unlocked or no it's not" the rule has to change. It becomes "the lock will always be unlocked but there's some other consequence".

Maybe I'm missing something. But it seems that either you have to modify some rules or you have to choose to change the paradigm of an established world reacting to character actions.

Uh... not following you here.

Easy example using your lock.

The DC is 15.

15 and higher? Success.

9 and lower? Failure.

10-14? Fail forward (success with complication)

As a game mechanic, this is simple- it's a matter of narration and consequences. 15 and higher is a narration of success (DC15! Woot!). But you've also included a lower DC (10, in this case) - and if that DC is made, then there is a success, but there is a narration of consequences. What consequences? That's dependent on the established world. If the party is trying to be stealthy, maybe the opening of the lock succeeds, but it's noisy and attracts attention.

And so on. In other words, you aren't choosing to change the paradigm of the established world. You are providing a response that acknowledges the established world.


You can play around with this, but I've never seen any real issue with implementation for those who want to do it in D&D. IMO.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My experience with 4e skill challenges comes from the first 4e DMG and from converting some 4e modules to run. Seeing what was put forward as skill challenges in the modules really left me wanting, as I saw tons of opportunity being skipped over for some more detailed play and, thus, more granular resolution.

One example: there's a 4e module "Marauders of the Dune Sea" which I converted and ran. In it, one of the obstacles is a permanent sandstorm the PCs need to get through in order to reach some other stuff within. The module wants the whole sandstorm piece to be done as a single skill challenge; I took one look at it and realized that sandstorm could (potentially) provide hours of play and all sorts of interesting possibilities if travel through it was resolved in a more detailed manner, and so I ran it that way.

That my players then aced every possible roll and beelined through it straight to the goal without getting lost even once, well, that ain't my fault.

Yeah, an SC is an encounter worth of play, complexity 5 might need 14 rolls to resolve. Even at 5 minutes each it's an hour of play. So, sure, if you want to spend a whole evening playing through a scenario then it should be 3-5 SCs of varying complexity.

You can do things like framework SCs, something where many of the tallies are entire encounters of their own. What I especially liked about it is it provides an objective measure of when to move on.

 

[pemerton]

I'm sorry, but there are all sorts of games that do exactly that. You get hit, take damage, and the mechanics tell you how you react to the pain. Heck, even 5e has things like Vex which grants advantage on your next attack or disadvantage to enemies for their first attack. What exactly do you think that means? Why does hitting someone with a longsword give them disadvantage on their next attack?

I would be extremely surprised if Lanefan has a positive reaction to knowing this, as IIRC he does not play 5e and has a skeptical view of many things it does. Might be better to give examples from one of the TSR editions.

If the GM rolls a NPC's to hit die, and it succeeds, that dictates stuff about how my PC behaved: did I dodge? was I taken in by the NPC's feint? etc.

 

[pemerton]

At a mechanical level it's just fail forward. The way that it's deployed is as fits that mode of play. I suppose one could say that involves changing what would be "improper" in that mode.

I don't know what you intend by "fail forward at a mechanical level". The mechanical level is rolling some dice and identifying a success or failure on the roll. "Fail forward" is about the process and heuristics used to narrate the consequence if, at the mechanical level, the roll fails.

I don't see how it can be questioned that fail forward can be used in D&D. It can be used in any RPG that I can think of.

I don't think it fits very well into classic, Gygaxian dungeon-crawling, D&D.

And I don't think it fits at all into Rolemaster, where the consequences of failure tend to be prescribed fairly tightly by the rules and tables that govern a particular action resolution, and don't encompass "fail forward".

If you only ever use this concept in a PbtA game and never in a D&D game then I don't see how that it applies to D&D. The games have a completely different frame of reference, we may as well be discussing American football vs UK football without ever clarifying which one we're talking about.

If you have an example of anything from a D&D game you've played feel free to share. I will do my best to comprehend it all.

I've certainly used it in 3.5, PF, 4e, and 5e. It's fairly trivial to use.

"Oh, you failed your arcana check to identify the runes? They're definitely runes of demon summoning, and you've triggered them!"

My heavens, quantum runes that both do and don't summon demons while simultaneously both scrambling and not scrambling eggs!

Anyway: I've used "fail forward" in 4e D&D. It's basically mandated as part of skill challenge resolution, and the DMG 2e discusses it expressly (p 83):

Each skill check in a challenge should accomplish one of the following goals:

*Introduce a new option that the PCs can pursue, a path to success they didn't know existed.

*Change the situation, such as by sending the PCs to a new location, introducing a new NPC, or adding a complication.

*Grant the players a tangible consequence for the check's success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions. . . .​

In a good combat encounter, the situation constantly changes. The same thing applies to skill challenges. The best challenges are those that you can adjust as you react to the players' decisions.​

That's "fail forward" even though the label is not used.