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

[Lanefan]

I thought a structure had to be built for defense to be considered a castle.

In days of old, perhaps, but I think most people today tend to use "castle" for any big structure made of stone that isn't a church. Many refer to Buckingham Palace as a castle, for example, even though its primary purpose has always been a royal residence.

Just down the road from me there's a late-1800s coal baron's residence named "Craigdarroch Castle"; because it's big and stone and looks a bit fairy-tale-ish.

Even if held by a squad of Marines it probably couldn't defend itself from a determined litter of kittens.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most of the “main line” community follows the AW model to some degree, but you have all the forks (FITD, Belonging outside belonging, carved from brindlewood) showing where you can go.

This, by the way, is why I felt manifestly unqualified to answer @Micah Sweet question; the only PbtA games I own are the first edition of Monsterhearts and the second of Monster of the Week, and they seem both well within the main line of PbtA descent, but I'd heard others described that seemed to swing significantly farther from that.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, it is a change. It's not a direct violation of the integrity of the roll, though.

When the roll says fail and yet you narrate success anyway, what was the point of the roll?

Or was success always guaranteed and the roll merely to determine degree of success? If yes, I get it, but wouldn't that be somehow mentioned to the players up front, as in "Getting up won't be a problem but time is crucial: you'll need to roll to see how long the climb takes"?

( @EzekielRaiden recently gave me a bad time for suggesting the reverse, where failure is guaranteed and the roll is to determine what that failure looked like and-or caused).

This is a perfectly valid way to handle the situation and your resistance to it is just an example of the thread title.

I don't see it as conservative to not want to undermine the integrity of my own game.

 

[Maxperson]

I’ve seen many examples of that kind of stuff from people who don’t always understand those kinds of games… or people who simply allow players to author elements of the fiction directly regardless of the type of game they’re playing (for instance your blacksmith example would be something I’d be fine with in many instances in my 5e games).

And I know some games explicitly allow certain things… the Knight class in Spire, for instance, grants the “Pubcrawler” ability, which allows the player to declare once per session that there is a pub nearby whose owner he knows. But that’s to represent the character’s knowledge of pubs and the importance of pubs amongst knights.

But I can’t think of any other examples of the sort you’re talking about.

I'm very sure the blacksmith example was from one of the folks on your side things. That said, it was a long time ago and I can't remember the context. It might very well have been someone who was just allowing players to author things.

 

[zakael19]

When the roll says fail and yet you narrate success anyway, what was the point of the roll?

Or was success always guaranteed and the roll merely to determine degree of success? If yes, I get it, but wouldn't that be somehow mentioned to the players up front, as in "Getting up won't be a problem but time is crucial: you'll need to roll to see how long the climb takes"?

I swear to god you either have to be doing this on purpose to be difficult or somehow failing to read a jillion replies to you on how “fail forward” actually works. I’ve replied directly to you pointing this out and saying how fail forward means failure still, but you keep coming back to this.

Why? Are you being intentionally provocative?

 

[Lanefan]

This is very much of an issue of framing though. The sentence "I failed to climb the cliff in the time I needed" is not an inappropraite use of "failed", and it could very well be an appropriate use of "failure" in a resolution system. Frankly, in some respects climbing is one of those things where short of falling (which seems better reserved for fumble rolls) its not clear what failure should even mean other than taking longer than intended most of the time. That's true of a lot of repeatable-attempt things.

I can think of a rather ridiculous number of cliffs and banks that I tried and failed to climb as a kid (and a much lower number where I succeeded!). I rarely fell, but always ended up back at the bottom more or less where I started; usually because I'd either bitten off more than I could chew or (far more likely) just didn't know what I was doing.

And to me, that's failure: you don't get to the top (or safely to the bottom, if you're trying to climb down). And in the game, where you're supposedly rolling to determine the binary states of success or failure, success is defined as reaching the top and failure is anything else.

 

[Lanefan]

I swear to god you either have to be doing this on purpose to be difficult or somehow failing to read a jillion replies to you on how “fail forward” actually works. I’ve replied directly to you pointing this out and saying how fail forward means failure still, but you keep coming back to this.

Why? Are you being intentionally provocative?

No, I'm defining failure as failure and success as success. They're a binary thing, and can't both happen at once.

What you're not getting - or are intentionally ignoring - is that what you and others call "fail forward" isn't failure if it includes success on the root task being rolled for. The concept of success with complications is fine enough but the actual term being used for it is garbage.

What you (general) seem to want to bundle together under "fail forward" are two completely different concepts and types of outcome:

1 - success with complication(s)
2 - failure with complication(s).

These are not the same thing!

If roll integrity means anything, you can't have '1' on a roll of 'fail' and you can't have '2' on a roll of 'success'. Now if you want to chuck roll integrity out the window that's of course your prerogative, but - just like fudging - it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to see advocated as a suggested mode of play.

 

[Lanefan]

I've always found it weird that metacurrencies are considered a narrative mechanic. Their meta-narrative nature always distinguished them as somewhat gamist to me.

That's fair. They're not something I ever want to see in my games, in any case.

 

[AlViking]

No, I'm defining failure as failure and success as success. They're a binary thing, and can't both happen at once.

What you're not getting - or are intentionally ignoring - is that what you and others call "fail forward" isn't failure if it includes success on the root task being rolled for. The concept of success with complications is fine enough but the actual term being used for it is garbage.

What you (general) seem to want to bundle together under "fail forward" are two completely different concepts and types of outcome:

1 - success with complication(s)
2 - failure with complication(s).

These are not the same thing!

If roll integrity means anything, you can't have '1' on a roll of 'fail' and you can't have '2' on a roll of 'success'. Now if you want to chuck roll integrity out the window that's of course your prerogative, but - just like fudging - it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to see advocated as a suggested mode of play.

There is one gray area in here in my games occasionally, it's just not what I would call fail forward because there is no chance of not making it to the top. Let's say you have a steep climb but you know the character will make it to the top, it just isn't easy.

In some cases I would just say it's difficult terrain, you move up at half normal speed. But if its a bit steeper than that I might ask for a check. Failure and you're moving at quarter speed instead of half speed as you slip and slide backwards now and then. Really blow it and you take a few points of damage as you slip, slide and catch yourself. But you will get there. Eventually.

Like I said, that's not fail forward because there's no chance of falling. But its still a somewhat strenuous climb.

 

[Maxperson]

Considering that the GM is the one who makes up all the factors that may be considered when coming up with the timing, they may as well just make up the timing, too.

I don't agree with that. With all kinds of things, and not just RPGs, folks are okay dealing with parts of something one way, but not the other parts the same way.

You can certainly treat the timing as the same as the rest, but that's a personal decision.