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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7769258" data-attributes="member: 29398">I usually leave consequences (if any other than the obvious) to random roll: did this happen - no?  How about this - no?  See below for more on what I mean here.Considerably.  Thank you.Well, yes, when the outcome is obvious and-or locked-in either way and any roll becomes meaningless.What about when there's only interesting consequences for one of success or failure but not both?  Example: searching a room for something specific.  Interesting consequences if you find it, but not really if you don't.The problems I see with this are twofold.First, it concatenates what should potentially be two (or more) discrete rolls and-or decisions into one.  There are two different things at stake here: can the PC climb the wall, and can the PC keep the gold in the process (with a third being how quietly this can all be done).  I'd do it that there'd be a roll for the climb part and also a roll for the holding-on-to-the-gold part, and should things go wrong the player/PC would be given a choice along the lines of a) drop the gold and keep climbing, b) keep the gold and fall, or c) spill a random amount of the gold and try the roll again.  I'd also point out that all of these options carry a risk of making some noteworthy noise.Second, it takes away all the other options or choices for what happens should things go wrong because the consequence of failure is now locked in as "you drop the gold".  Falling is taken off the table, as is spilling some of the gold, as is the noise factor, and so forth.  And no matter what happens the PC's personal escape is also locked in - the PC, on failing the roll, cannot decide to risk staying put with the gold and trying to find another way out, for example, as that decision has been taken out of her hands.I think the word 'forward' is getting in the way here.  My original post probably should have said the narrative only wants to move in the direction it's already going - in other words, going with the momentum of the story - and that fail-forward consequences (using the "Yes" or "Yes, but..." model) will rarely if ever deflect or turn the momentum in a different direction.  A flat-no fail, on the other hand, either forces the momentum to change direction or stops it outright, forcing the players/PCs (not the DM!) to either find a new direction or to find a way to push it in the direction it was already going.Take off the "despite failure" at the end there and those say exactly the same except the words are in a different order."The expectation that action continues despite [anything]" is, if applied across the game, a straight-up expectation of continuous action...right? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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