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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6575458" data-attributes="member: 42582">Can you point to the sorts of examples you have in mind, or elaborate further? I've mostly seen critics of skill challenges present them in the terms you describe (ie a dice-rolling exercise to walk the players through the GM's script).That's not a very accurate statement of "fail forward". Fail forward has two main elements - Ron Edwards and Luke Crane emphasise one, Robin Laws the other. The first is sometimes called "no whiffing" - that a failed check doesn't mean the PC failed at the task, but rather circumstances external to the PC somehow conspired to mean that succeeding at the task didn't achieve the goal.The second is "no roadblock" - a failed check results in a new pathway opening up, but one that contains a complication or adverse consequence.An example of combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the PCs are trying to assault a goblin fortress, but get lured into an ambush by dead spirits, set up by the goblin shaman. A "TPK" results: but instead of ending the campaign, after discussion with the players about who wants to do what with their characters, three of the PCs wake up in the goblin cells.An example of non-combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the drow sorcerer is riding a flying carpet in an attempt to take a message from a desolate tower to the town. The carpet has been stolen from an enemy wizard in command of local hobgoblin raiders, and when the PC sees signal lights from the nearby hills, he realises they are probably being transmitted by the hobgoblins. He tries to respond but doesn't know the code; is pursued by wyvern riders, whom he can neither shake off nor blast away, and in the end - after turning back to his friends at the tower - he crash lands 50 squares from his allies and in combat with a hobgoblin captain and his wyvern.This is fail forward - the goal wasn't achieved (the skill challenge to escape the hobgoblins failed) but there was no roadblock. Rather, the situation transitioned into a geographically challenging combat.In neither case is their any illusionism. The players know what they are trying to achieve (via their PCs), they know whether or not they succeeded and why (they can track the combat status, or the skill challenge status) and they know why the GM is narrating the relevant consequence.What's the illusion?</blockquote>

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