Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
There's a couple of answers for this, depending on the context.
1. They fail. Stories have upbeats and downbeats, and just lead to different forks of the story. Embrace these. Plan for them - don't cause them, but have them in your mind when doing planning.
2. They fail. And it sucks, things go very wrong, and it's the party's fault. Because if there's no chance of failure, there's no earned success. And work out where to go from there - which may barely resemble your original plans.
3. Fail forward. If failure blocks the plot from moving forward, but does not branch into an alternate plot, then fail forward. If the party doesn't find the secret trapdoor to the hideout the plot stalls? Then have that a failure means they take too long and a patrol comes out the other side. Still a failure with repercussions, but those moved from "blocking" to "interesting and moving the plot forward".
There should always be a consequence for meaningful failure, and a GM needs to be cognizant when they are gating moving forward behind a check or combat or somesuch what happens if it is not successful.
1. They fail. Stories have upbeats and downbeats, and just lead to different forks of the story. Embrace these. Plan for them - don't cause them, but have them in your mind when doing planning.
2. They fail. And it sucks, things go very wrong, and it's the party's fault. Because if there's no chance of failure, there's no earned success. And work out where to go from there - which may barely resemble your original plans.
3. Fail forward. If failure blocks the plot from moving forward, but does not branch into an alternate plot, then fail forward. If the party doesn't find the secret trapdoor to the hideout the plot stalls? Then have that a failure means they take too long and a patrol comes out the other side. Still a failure with repercussions, but those moved from "blocking" to "interesting and moving the plot forward".
There should always be a consequence for meaningful failure, and a GM needs to be cognizant when they are gating moving forward behind a check or combat or somesuch what happens if it is not successful.
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