NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8648472" data-attributes="member: 71699">Hmm, okay. In previous discussion of "fail-forward" on these forums, the inclusion of fail-and-die (as an example) seemed ruled out for fail-forward. I see it described on multiple blogs in words similar to these,It felt unnecessary and was mistaken to call me unwitting. I considered "fail-foward". I did not choose it as a label because of the gating of 5e ability checks behind meaningful consequences. Those meaningful consequences can include set-backs. I don't especially want to fight you on label (it's not a great hill to die on!), but "fail-forward" is not universally understood to include set-backs so far as I could find.In a few places the DCs are given. A few examples<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Social Interaction DCs by attitude and objective</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Acrobatics and Athletics DCs for chases, jumping, swimming and so on</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Survival DCs for tracking and foraging</li> </ul>But certainly not as codified as say BW skills. I do have a collection of several hundred DC precedents from published material as a reference, but I shouldn't think that is a resource many DMs possess. (I didn't create the resource, it's found online. I just put it in an Excel sheet and sorted by ability.)A DM could run it as loosely as you fear, or could run it following principles and constraints indicated by the rules they opt to follow. For example, wording is used like "some kind of roll is appropriate." Does that mean roll? One DM might decide that "some kind of roll is appropriate" means "roll". Another might decide to wing it, case by case. That "maybe" depends on DM.They can also commit in advance to using the Core rules as written. Or do you see something preventing that?I value GDS and GNS hugely for opening space for designers to explore. On the other hand, I'm not too concerned to argue for one categorisation or another. For example, the "gamism" label has a few qualities associated with it. Those seem too narrow, and the contributing qualities are not simply present or absent. I can't really say that an RPG is "gamist" or is not "gamist". That doesn't really mean anything.I can say that for some important subsystem - PVE combat, say - game A's model and rules yield a simpler game state with less taxing decisions than comparative game B. And then I might have to caveat that game B's subsystem has transactions with some other subsystems that create another layer of decisions that are actually more taxing. Some players dislike combat, but they love trade. A detailed economic system with some bite to it will thrill them to bits. How can I say that combat-focused games A and B are "gamist" from their perspective? Or that their interests in play are not "gamist"?As Baker put it (in 2015)The concern here to my reading is mainly one of skepticism about whether a DM can rule in a way that is principled, constrained by fiction/description/system. Is that right? There seems to you too much scope - too much leeway - for any constraints to be strict enough to suit your preferences.A few times you've connected "GM-fiat" with "force", so I have understood it to be egregiously arbitrary. Was that what you really intended? I have resisted - and do resist - the notion that the degree of leeway in 5th edition necessarily guarantees egregiously arbitrary rulings. But maybe that's not what you intend after all? Your last line seems to indicate an out. So if time permits, can you clarify?</blockquote>

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