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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9694513" data-attributes="member: 29398">Which points out what might be a difference here.When I think of what happens in the fiction due to a roll, I'm thinking of the immediate stakes on which the roll is made.  Do I climb the cliff or fall.  Can I open the lock or am I stuck here.  Can I sneak past the guards or do they notice me.  Those are stakes.Anything and everything beyond that falls under downstream consequences, which are not the same thing as immediate stakes and are also not always (as in very rarely) 100% predictable or guaranteed.  They can very often be changed, mitigated, or even eliminated by subsequent actions provided those actions are themselves successful.Falling due to a failed climb doesn't necessarily even mean I'm going to go splat at the bottom - I might grab a handhold and slow or stop my fall, I might have someone below willing to take the risk of trying to catch me, someone (including myself) might have a magical means of preventing or easing my fall, and so on; and despite the fairly obvious train of causality in the fiction these would all - if available - be declared and resolved as independent actions.In hindsight, it might come down to did I go splat because I fell or did I go splat because you didn't catch me.A downstream consequence, not related to the immediate stakes of opening the jar.Ditto re worrying about the mindanity in an actual game.  The example is intentionally very mundane in order to remove all the baggage surrounding the break-in example we've been using.A lot of the examples we've been given of fail-forward in this thread seem to be doing just that: hosing the characters by adding in extra complications rather than just narrating a straight nothing-happens result.  Some of the games even tell the GM do this, put in terms of "always drive them toward conflict" or similarm which makes it seem like a very stressful way to play.Consequence, not stake; and only visible as such in hindsight after any other possible consequences or outcomes have been somehow eliminated.No, in that the surrounding conditions will be changing the odds of success. Yes in that the actual task resolution still comes down to a binary succeed-fail on whether the lock is picked or not; and also in that the immediate stakes - whether or not the lock is opened - are the same.</blockquote>

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