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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 8253476" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!From the article...:"The first order problem many DMs have with failure is introducing it at the wrong time. Mystery scenarios are a great example of this, where players must uncover a clue to move the game forward."Old Grognard Voice: Whell, thar's yer problem!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />(Emphasis mine) That's, to me, a "new-age DM" mentality. Where the thought that the game is going to "stop" or "fail" or otherwise "stall unrecoverably". It doesn't. That's the beauty of RPG's: There IS no 'end'.In the case of the mystery scenario, if the PC's don't uncover some specific clue that they somehow 'must' discover or the final chapter simply won't occur...we, then that final chapter doesn't occur. The game keeps going. The players keep playing. The DM keeps playing the NPC's/Monsters according to what the PC's do or don't know. The game does, in no way, "fail". Old time DM's like me are well-versed in the "...well...uh...ok guys. Give me 5 minutes...", and then everyone takes a 5 minute break while I quickly jot down some interesting notes and ideas about how the main plot just changed. Note I said changed, and not "failed", "stopped", "ended". When a plot hook is missed, or, more often, misinterpreted, all that does is change the story. THIS IS A GOOD THING! The game is best played (imnsho) when it is the Players that make the choices that determine the outcome of some particular story element...and not the DM trying to come up with new rules or outright "fudging" them in order to keep the "written-in-stone plot line" from unraveling.So, again IMHO and IME, the article in question oozes "New-Age DM'ing". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if everyone enjoys it and the Players are happy knowing that they will never truly 'fail' at anything important. That sort of game just isn't my cup of grog, at least as far as D&D or most RPG's go. Some RPG systems I have no problem with it and even enjoy it (ex, Dungeon World where a roll of 7 - 9 is "Success, but...").At any rate, just wanted to get my 2 coppers in to point out that I think the idea of the "fail forward" type of DM'ing does a disservice to the Players and DM because it robs everyone at the table of discovering a completely new story or event that otherwise would never have come out of it. That's, as I said, the beauty of RPG's: That the game never truly "ends" or "stops".^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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