Quote from: Azraele;1054385Dammit Alderaan, stop being so goddamn nice. I'm in a bad mood and I was trying to be an asshole god

Shit, my bad. Hold on...umm...

"Azraele, more like ASSraele!"

Better?

Now, don't be in a bad mood! No matter what kind of style we like, gaming is fucking AWESOME!!!

Quote from: estar;1054388Me: (Playing Imperial Guardsmen Tannenberg) so I hop on the transport and head back to Capital. In the guise of making a formal report. I arrive at an audience with the Emperor and shoot him. Then assume the throne.

Ross: (The GM) That virtually impossible! OK roll the DN 25.

Me: (Rolls and fails badly) OK so I succeed in becoming Emperor although half my body had to be replaced by bionics and 3/4 of the empire lies in ruins after the ensuing civil war and I am now sterile and can't produce an heir except by cloning. But damn I am now the Emperor.

Substitute any number of intermediate steps (realistically it will be a lot) but this is the implication of fail forward. Either the referee or players can set a preordained result and they will achieve it.

I'm not... necessarily a fan of some implementations of fail forward, but this is just a plain old uncharitable reading of fail forward as a concept. That's well beyond any reasonableness or implication of a game. Fail forward, as I see it in Wrath & Glory is actually... well... it's this:

QuoteA fair referee would look at the base skill levels of the character and if they considered professional in survival then unless a improbable series of rolls occur, a determined party will be delayed not die.

Delayed, not die. It seems the difference in what you're describing and what Wrath & Glory is describing is simply that Wrath & Glory actually said to do something interesting with the delay (such as the biting cold dealt them a wound because they took too long). In fact, the comic even made a point to show that it was the Raven Guard who was a professional in survival making the test.

You could even reverse the idea in your head and go with degrees of success, where "True Success" is not achieved until you get above a certain threshold. Everything below that is functionally indistinguishable from a fail forward concept in execution, albeit not in fact.

Quote from: estar;1054388Me: (Playing Imperial Guardsmen Tannenberg) so I hop on the transport and head back to Capital. In the guise of making a formal report. I arrive at an audience with the Emperor and shoot him. Then assume the throne.

Ross: (The GM) That virtually impossible! OK roll the DN 25.

Me: (Rolls and fails badly) OK so I succeed in becoming Emperor although half my body had to be replaced by bionics and 3/4 of the empire lies in ruins after the ensuing civil war and I am now sterile and can't produce an heir except by cloning. But damn I am now the Emperor.

Substitute any number of intermediate steps (realistically it will be a lot) but this is the implication of fail forward. Either the referee or players can set a preordained result and they will achieve it.

This


!= (not equal) this


A fair referee would look at the base skill levels of the character and if they considered professional in survival then unless a improbable series of rolls occur, a determined party will be delayed not die. However if the party consist of nothing of urban dilettantes with minimal skill in survival then yes the likely outcome is death and the blame is not on the referee but on the players for trying to execute a plan that their characters are utterly unprepared for. Just as in my example Tannenberg wouldn't get far in his coup attempt and would likely be imprisoned, tortured, and then executed in short order.

What is the experience here? There is no challenge, no risk, no chance that the ultimate outcome will be anything but what was previously planned. And if you as a referee think that it is stupid that the party get lost, possible die, and get derailed from reaching the gate of a mining camp, why are you having them roll in the first place? Especially when it clear that Varkus the Space Marine is competent in survival.

Last why bother with having such a mechanic in the first place? The referee in tabletop roleplaying game always had the ability and authority to skew the results however they want. Just because the game designer deigned to allocate some word count giving permission to railroad, referees have been railroading since the beginning of the hobby. Just call for it what it is, using Wrath and Glory one is encourage to railroad the outcome of a roll. That you will always achieve the result, the roll is just to see how it was achieved.

In short this railroading dressed in the Emperor's New Clothes.

I can see where you're coming from there. I certainly agree that giving players who make bad choices no tangible consequences doesn't seem too fun, nor does scripting a narrative to be followed regardless of dice outcomes and/or player choices. The only times I'm OK with a scripted part is to tie things together logically, be it a prologue or denouement of sorts.

I've handled the "wilderness trek" both ways: a series of rolls going where they go as well as just rolling and hitting them with a little smack if failed. Both aren't bad, but my preference is now mostly, "You land near your destination and after a short but chilling walk through the freezing winds and snow, you arrive at the main entrance to the installation. What do you do?". We all want them to be at the installation, so why not just start there? Heck, I might even describe the door locked and no other (apparent) way in, so as not to waste time with, "Is the door locked?" and/or "Is there another way in?". After that, we just see where it goes.

What I do do is force them to go to the installation. That's poopy. I often remind players of things they might've forgotten but their PCs would probably think of or give them advice as to how I think the PCs might see something. I usually ask if they need/want a little advice and have no problem stating the obvious, "This is most assuredly a bad idea" if it's obvious (to the PC, at least) that it's assuredly a bad idea.

I certainly flub my GMing at times but overall, I feel happy with how the games go. I sometimes railroad but if I do it's upfront; I don't remove or invalidate player choice. If I had to pick a style I might say "a bare-bones idea of things going on that are influenced by player choice and PC actions". I don't know if that's even a style, it's just how I do. I like players being creative and having agency and PC death is rare. Still, I find other ways to make them feel threatened and such. Trust is a huge benefit in our games and my way of GMing might not trip other people's trigger.

Quote from: estar;1054390Read my post again, my main thesis was that it antithetical to pretending to be a character within a setting. Not whether bad referee will abuse it. In a follow up post, I demonstrated how a player can use the mechanics as a form of wish fulfillment that would otherwise be impossible.



Again setting are worlds with all their inherent possibilities. What I advocate is that referee consider fully the environment in which the characters exist. That often what seems like a result of death or total failure isn't quite that. I stated numerous times when talking about sandbox campaigns that a referee job isn't to always pick the most probable outcome but to look among the possible outcome and choose one that is most interesting. That also it is a good idea to pick several possible outcome and roll to see which one occurs to minimize one's own bias.

It not hypocritical all although on the surface both what I stated and fail forward gets the character to the mining gate. The difference that fail forward will always get the players to mining gate. While my technique will sometimes (but not always) result in the playing alter their decisions. In rare cases they will opt to ignore the gate and mining camp in favor of a new goal.

You bring up choose your own adventure. These books have choices true but they all prescripted. What I do instead is paint a landscape both physically, and socially. It is a canvas on which the player's choices play out on. As many degrees in a compass that how many options the players have at any given moment. It only looks like a AB style alternate path in hindsight as one looks back in see how the consequences of different choices led to what happened.

We seem to have misunderstood each other. I only considered this on an individual immediate task basis, not the course of the entire campaign.

Quite honestly I think it depends on what the players want to do to have fun. If they care more about the journey than the outcome, then they might use your usurpation plot seriously or any of the other railroading conventions. If the plot is being made up on the fly, then it would work like you described you wanted the plot to be.

If you enjoy brutal and gritty campaigns where the PCs drop like flies only to be immediately replaced by new PCs, more power to you! My own tastes are vastly more childish in nature. Literally, I like fairy tale stories where logic goes out the window.

The problem I have with "Fail Forward" is that it often seems like a crutch for bad encounter design.  It's often defended with the idea that it keeps the game moving and stops everything coming to a grinding halt.  For example if the PCs don't find the clue the game can't go anywhere - to which, to my mind the correct response is of course it can - the bad guys advance their plan and the PCs have to react.

In general I don't like it - and I think it's usually a band-aid solution to a deeper problem - however it doesn't pay to be too ideological about this kind of thing.  Overland travel, such as described, is one situation where this kind of approach seems perfectly fine to me.   But really it come's down to knowing what you are rolling for.  Is the location so difficult to find that genuine failure is really option?  If not then it seems perfectly fine to say "roll to see how long it takes you to get there" and abstract from there.

There's also meta-concerns.  Do the players enjoy wilderness encounters or do they seem eager to get to where they're going - what happened last session - is there a risk of the game becoming boringly repetitive?  What we're concerned with here is as much, or more about the level of abstraction as anything else.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1054393I've handled the "wilderness trek" both ways: a series of rolls going where they go as well as just rolling and hitting them with a little smack if failed. Both aren't bad, but my preference is now mostly, "You land near your destination and after a short but chilling walk through the freezing winds and snow, you arrive at the main entrance to the installation. What do you do?". We all want them to be at the installation, so why not just start there? Heck, I might even describe the door locked and no other (apparent) way in, so as not to waste time with, "Is the door locked?" and/or "Is there another way in?". After that, we just see where it goes..

Sounds good to me. The way I think of it is something I call "assumed competence". If the character has X experience with a skill, task, or profession (class) then I think it reasonable that for ordinary tasks to make the ruling that it just happens as the result isn't particularly uncertain. The only caveat that I would make a roll it if is something like a 1 or a 3 or 4 on 3d6 roll high. Then I would create some type of event with potential negative consequence that the player has to deal with. Why? Because shit happens even with routine. Not often but it happens. Adjust the odds to taste.

If you opt to do this, make sure make the players do the roll in full view. It just absolutely hilarious when a botch comes up even it if something minor as falling off a ladder and taking a point of damage.

Lately for journey I liking the Middle Earth approach. You have a table of events, half mostly positive and half mostly negative. There the chance for a friendly or hostile encounter as an event but the rest are mostly color confer minor benefits and complications. At most you roll a handful for a journey that take months. Then you sprinkle them in wherever they make sense. Which works well due to the vagaries of the map.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1054394I only considered this on an individual immediate task basis, not the course of the entire campaign.

Sure however keep in mind a series of these can be connected together in pursuit of a larger goal. While Wrath and Glory has consequences so it not a total free ride. But from everything I read, it seem that the assumption is that the campaign will how the group wants it to go as metagame decision. That the mechanics just determines what happens along the way.  

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1054394Quite honestly I think it depends on what the players want to do to have fun. If they care more about the journey than the outcome, then they might use your usurpation plot seriously or any of the other railroading conventions. If the plot is being made up on the fly, then it would work like you described you wanted the plot to be.

Sure storygame, hybrids, and purist games can be fun. However when something is being labeled as something that it is not, I am going to say sometime forcibly.

For example with the right plot and referee, railroaded campaign can be fun. While in most cases they are a negative experience it possible to execute them in a way that the player don't mind they are riding the rails to some foregone conclusion. Something I learned from managing and running LARP Events. The problem with LARP is that the live action impose constraints on time and resources. You just can't push event staff or get people to where they need to be. So having to schedule results in some plots being railroad and not as sandbox as one would like. So rather than throw up my hands at the limitation I just learn how to run really good railroaded plot when I needed too. And in the long run I was to able make things a little more flexible but  never completely escaped the constraints of live action.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1054394If you enjoy brutal and gritty campaigns where the PCs drop like flies only to be immediately replaced by new PCs, more power to you!

Again the chance of failure != brutal and gritty. For any action successful or failure there what probably happens and there a range of what could possibly happen. Sometimes what probably happens is the most interesting. Sometime it one of the possible results that is more interesting although it not as probable.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1054394My own tastes are vastly more childish in nature. Literally, I like fairy tale stories where logic goes out the window.

Actually Fairy Tales have their own logic or it would not exist as something one can point to and say "That is a fairy tale." And I don't consider it childish want to play in campaigns and be a character interacting with a fairy tale or whimsical setting

Quote from: estar;1054419Sounds good to me. The way I think of it is something I call "assumed competence". If the character has X experience with a skill, task, or profession (class) then I think it reasonable that for ordinary tasks to make the ruling that it just happens as the result isn't particularly uncertain. The only caveat that I would make a roll it if is something like a 1 or a 3 or 4 on 3d6 roll high. Then I would create some type of event with potential negative consequence that the player has to deal with. Why? Because shit happens even with routine. Not often but it happens. Adjust the odds to taste.

If you opt to do this, make sure make the players do the roll in full view. It just absolutely hilarious when a botch comes up even it if something minor as falling off a ladder and taking a point of damage.

Lately for journey I liking the Middle Earth approach. You have a table of events, half mostly positive and half mostly negative. There the chance for a friendly or hostile encounter as an event but the rest are mostly color confer minor benefits and complications. At most you roll a handful for a journey that take months. Then you sprinkle them in wherever they make sense. Which works well due to the vagaries of the map.

So much of how I do things is based on the game itself as well as our moods. We usually move past things where the dice results...good or bad...simply don't interest us. At times we'll let a single roll determine a large swath of in-game stuff. For example, if the group's traveling overland to a known location (familiarity, maps, etc.) on horses in autumn and it's not a terribly dangerous trek, they just get there. If, say, there's bandits about, the place is in difficult terrain/hard to find and/or the weather's bad, then the dice come out. Since we play things like GeneSys, Cypher and Forged in the Dark (the system Blades in the Dark uses), the results are almost always nuanced and interesting. If they simply get lost, it might mean going deeper into more dangerous territory. If it's a bandit attack, a fight. Or, they're lucky and the journey's safe and pleasant.

One thing I try not to do is have successive rolls of bad to worse without a big switch in the narrative. For example, if the group fails a navigation roll and gets lost, I don't usually just have them keep rolling at a higher difficulty, at least not without something cool happening. Maybe an avalanche blocks them backtracking. They roll to find a new path, but the map's obviously wrong (maybe that merchant swindled them!). Another roll and a failure brings, "You realize that despite your best efforts, you're lost. What's worse is you see the strange, menacing etchings in some of the trees, seemingly colored with blood...". A quick lore roll (or whatever's appropriate) let's them know it's the boundary markings of the Eight Sorrows Tribe. Nasty, violent folk who detest outsiders. Sadly, they got a little oopsie, too. The orcs might know they're there. Or the loremaster misremembered the signs of greeting. Or a storm's brewing. And so on.

Now, if everyone's simply wanting to get to where they're going and we didn't just elide time, the rolls might go the same way, but after they finally deal with the consequences...and assuming they survive...I might just say, "You barely manage to escape (assuming they do) the Eight Sorrows hunters, using the raging river to your advantage (again, assuming they do). As the current settles, so do your hearts, especially as you see the Curstley Ridge far in the horizon. You're off-course by days, but you're no longer lost...and are back in the Duke's lands. You're safe". The next scene is at a tavern or hunter's lodge or wherver they wish to go that's appropriate.

One thing I'm sure many will dislike is my disdain for killing PCs because of bad rolls. If a player is playing their ass off and shitty rolls doom them, but we can realistically say they live, awesome. They will certainly suffer for things, based on the severity of the defeat. For example, death might bring the loss of a hand and favored weapon. You might be blinded. Whatever is interesting, has weight but is most of all, fun. I don't mind players not being afraid to die all the time. They can die, to be sure, but it's a last resort to me. It's simply boring for me and can be frustrating as a GM to inject a new PC. That's not always the case and the players don't get away free, I just find it so much more interesting to see how a PC handles waking up blind or being told their best friend died saving them. If others loathe this, I can respect that.

Fail Forward only matters if you're on a railroad.

If the game isn't about following a pre-ordained plot, then "failure" just means the PCs have to do something different to achieve what they want.

Or roll up new PCs. That's not the end of the world.

Unpredictable dice are my friend. Without them, I can just write fan fic at home.

/caught trying to blow out the torch while tied upon the stake
:eek: "Gotta love us heretics, no?"

Quote from: Opaopajr;1054552/caught trying to blow out the torch while tied upon the stake
:eek: "Gotta love us heretics, no?"

Lol yeah my Fantasy game ended because the diplomat made a very convincing case that the group exposed themselves to corruption while trying to break up a Nurgle infiltration.  So they were burned at the stake just to make sure their souls were clean.  I guess that is succeeding backwards?

[video]https://giphy.com/gifs/tumbleweed-O38dU2kkQ9sWc[/youtube]

Quote from: Spinachcat;1054492Fail Forward only matters if you're on a railroad.

If the game isn't about following a pre-ordained plot, then "failure" just means the PCs have to do something different to achieve what they want.

Or roll up new PCs. That's not the end of the world.

Unpredictable dice are my friend. Without them, I can just write fan fic at home.

I have to disagree, especially with a game like Blades in the Dark that goes where it wants. Even with its high-level of player agency it's not railroady in the slightest. In fact, it feels very off if you try to run a predetermined plot. I'm not sure how "failing forward" would flow in a game like D&D, though. That might feel less organic. In the end, it's really about what people like, not if it's being done wrong.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1054580I have to disagree, especially with a game like Blades in the Dark that goes where it wants. Even with its high-level of player agency it's not railroady in the slightest. In fact, it feels very off if you try to run a predetermined plot. I'm not sure how "failing forward" would flow in a game like D&D, though. That might feel less organic. In the end, it's really about what people like, not if it's being done wrong.

I may be wrong, not having played it, but I thought that in Blades in the Dark it was more like Apocalypse World where you can "succeed with consequences" rather than fail forward.

In AW there are basically three states fail/succeed awkwardly - with consequences/succeed.
Isn't this how Blades works?

Edit: the difference being that there still remains a clear "fail" state.

AW stole its idea from Better Games (Crimson Cutlass, Battle Born) who owned the Space Gamer magazine in the 90s. They had very traditional RPGs, but you had Fail / Mixed Success / Success and Mixed Success was stuff like "you jumped across the chasm, but your scabbard broke lose and your sword fell into the lava below".  That's not "failing forward", that's "mixed results" and many DMs were doing that back in the day in D&D when you just made the roll or missed it by one.

EDIT: "Fail Foward" has become this Deux Ex Machina that gets the game back on the rails so the players can choo choo along to the next encounter. That's a different beast than mixed results.