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<blockquote data-quote="Arilyn" data-source="post: 7768439" data-attributes="member: 6816042">This is a misunderstanding of fail forward. Fail forward is not invoked to protect the players from losing. It exists to keep the game going. The obvious being failing to find the secret door, which leads to the bulk of the adventure, or failing to find a clue, which will bring the while adventure to a screeching halt. Old modules used to sometimes do this. Everyone blew that secret door check? Adventure over. With fail forward, there is a cost but the adventure can continue. The players can still fail to save the prisoners, or lose to the villain, but they are not going to lose in an anticlimactic way, like just not finding the bad guy's lair at all, or spending hours spinning their wheels cause they missed an important clue through a bad die roll. Failing a secret door check, which just leads to some extra treasure, can be simply left as a failure, since that extra treasure is not vital to the adventure.&nbsp;As far as your D&amp;D example goes, unnecessary combat has traditionally been used as punishment for players tarrying too long or resting in a dangerous location. Yes, there is exp. to be had, but those combats eat away at resources needed for the final showdown. Players who fail to quietly break into a keep, for example, are not celebrating because now they'll get more exp. for fighting guards. If they are looking for guard exp., they were probably, at least, trying to avoid fighting them all at once.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Arilyn, post: 7768439, member: 6816042"] This is a misunderstanding of fail forward. Fail forward is not invoked to protect the players from losing. It exists to keep the game going. The obvious being failing to find the secret door, which leads to the bulk of the adventure, or failing to find a clue, which will bring the while adventure to a screeching halt. Old modules used to sometimes do this. Everyone blew that secret door check? Adventure over. With fail forward, there is a cost but the adventure can continue. The players can still fail to save the prisoners, or lose to the villain, but they are not going to lose in an anticlimactic way, like just not finding the bad guy's lair at all, or spending hours spinning their wheels cause they missed an important clue through a bad die roll. Failing a secret door check, which just leads to some extra treasure, can be simply left as a failure, since that extra treasure is not vital to the adventure. As far as your D&D example goes, unnecessary combat has traditionally been used as punishment for players tarrying too long or resting in a dangerous location. Yes, there is exp. to be had, but those combats eat away at resources needed for the final showdown. Players who fail to quietly break into a keep, for example, are not celebrating because now they'll get more exp. for fighting guards. If they are looking for guard exp., they were probably, at least, trying to avoid fighting them all at once. [/QUOTE]

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