Quote from: Archangel Fascist;680237:rolleyes:

Too busy to slapfighting with Justin to spare the time.

I'm afraid I don't have much time for that either. A post once in a while, like about level limits or game balance or here why I think "failing forward" is a "narrativist" solution in search for a problem, sure. Arguing the notion playing mind games over pages and pages with someone who's already made up his mind... I'll pass, thank you.

The first place I came across this personally was DnD 4e with skill challenges. The guidance given includes the idea that if the group fail the skill challenge they face an additional encounter as a the negative outcome. This is where the thinking around the idea of 'failed lock pick check = you get caught in the act' comes from. The guards would constitute an additional combat encounter which has to be overcome due to the failed skill challenge.

Since then I have seen it in lots of other games (and I don't pretend that 4e created the concept).

I don't have D&D 4e core, but skill challenges looked like a group version of cumulative success rolls. That too is one of the basic methods of stochastic resolution, which can be mixed with others such as pass/fail, degree of success, and contesting rolls. But from what I heard and experienced in 4e Encounters was rather sloppily dissociated in practice; there was a vomit of justifications to use one's highest skill on such rolls that left me cold.

Quote from: dbm;680268The first place I came across this personally was DnD 4e with skill challenges. The guidance given includes the idea that if the group fail the skill challenge they face an additional encounter as a the negative outcome. This is where the thinking around the idea of 'failed lock pick check = you get caught in the act' comes from. The guards would constitute an additional combat encounter which has to be overcome due to the failed skill challenge.

That's what skill challenges should have been. I think the way they actually got played out a lot of the time was just 'oh, you lose, next!'.

The skill challenges were poorly explained and they did become a game of 'who can justify using their best skill' irrespective of the challenge at hand.

But the key thing here is not how success/failure was determined but what happened in the case of failure.

Quote from: Opaopajr;680272But from what I heard and experienced in 4e Encounters was rather sloppily dissociated in practice; there was a vomit of justifications to use one's highest skill on such rolls that left me cold.

Encounters was like the worst form of 4e (followed closely by LFR).  Skill challenges were poorly explained in general, I've only dealt with a few people that could run them for crap - as in, you never realized it was a skill challenge.

The "justifications" problem is inherent in any scenario where you give players a problem and say "how do you solve it", which is pretty much what a skill challenge *should* be.  It's the role of the GM to squash the blatant idiocy - or, at least, set the DC appropriately high for improbable actions.

The alternative (which I've also seen) is that it's treated as a totally mechanical exercise where you are given the exact three skills that will be allowed.  Which ends up, as play, just waiting til your turn and picking which one is the highest.  Less abusable, sure, but there's no actual gameplay there.

True, such a cumulative accounting of rolls should be recessed from explicit view and should expect of the GM a sensible DC response to improbable long shot attempts. The trouble is definitely in the explaining. Similarly this topic has shown a painful lack of clarity for another bit of suggested GM stochastic technique. Which goes back to my thinking there needs to be a primer about basic roll functions and their uses (like intro to color theory for painters or something).

I guess the easiest way to express the options from a result might be some grammatical, boolean-sounding expression:
yes, and
yes
yes, but
no, but
no
no, and

and explain how different roll types may be linked together, therefore graduating to complex things like:
yes, by this much versus who, but that due to length of time
(i.o.w. cumulated contested rolls with degree of success signifier)

But anything that complex is going to need people to respect the meaning of mutually shared expressed value. So there cannot be any deliberate word twisting ambiguity, like 'no, but' is interchangeably equal with 'yes, but'. That's fun for philosophy class and bong smokin' time, but disingenuous behavior if you really want to communicate with any sort of consistency in a community.

The concept that "you fail, but some lucky thing happens right now" is, in my mind, flawed.

But the idea that failures can teach you something is very real. Edison failed to make a lightbulb 10,000 times, but each failure showed him one way not to make a light bulb. (The "10,000 ways" quote.)

The CEO of Proctor and Gamble said "I think of my failures as a gift. My experience is that we learn much more from failure than we do from success."

"The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance," said Randy Nelson of Pixar.

We do learn from mistakes (or can), and failure is a necessary step to succeed.

The weakness of Fail Forward is the notion that the benefit has to come RIGHT NOW! Which is stupid. It comes at some point in the future, in ways we don't expect.

My notion (for my own little action-movie RPG) is this: when you fail a skill check, you gain a +3 bonus to a future use of that skill on a different task.

If you're picking the lock on a door, but fail, each successive check suffers a penalty. (Pretty standard.) But you also get a +3 bonus to some future use of lockpicking. You learned something from the failure.

Anyway, that's my thinking right now.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;686007The concept that "you fail, but some lucky thing happens right now" is, in my mind, flawed.

But the idea that failures can teach you something is very real. Edison failed to make a lightbulb 10,000 times, but each failure showed him one way not to make a light bulb. (The "10,000 ways" quote.)

The CEO of Proctor and Gamble said “I think of my failures as a gift. My experience is that we learn much more from failure than we do from success.”

“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance,” said Randy Nelson of Pixar.

We do learn from mistakes (or can), and failure is a necessary step to succeed.

The weakness of Fail Forward is the notion that the benefit has to come RIGHT NOW! Which is stupid. It comes at some point in the future, in ways we don't expect.

My notion (for my own little action-movie RPG) is this: when you fail a skill check, you gain a +3 bonus to a future use of that skill on a different task.

If you're picking the lock on a door, but fail, each successive check suffers a penalty. (Pretty standard.) But you also get a +3 bonus to some future use of lockpicking. You learned something from the failure.

Anyway, that's my thinking right now.

If the fail forward concept had anything to do with, or a logical connection to action resolution I could see your point.

It doesn't so your concept is lost on the drama queens who favor the fail forward mechanic. Storygamers are like dogs. They have no concept of time, and certainly no patience for this "later" you speak of. Everything is about resolving the drama of the moment according to the rule of kewl.

If the story needs a door open to move forward, then that door is gonna get opened. If the skill roll fails, then nazi clowns in ninja suits riding dinosaurs will burst it open from the other side and the resulting combat will be the penalty for failure, BUT, the door WILL be opened and the story can continue.

You cannot apply the logic of rational failure consequences against the rule of kewl.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;686011so your concept is lost on the drama queens who favor the fail forward mechanic.

That's fine.

Having (stupidly) undertaken the task of writing my own little RPG, I only have to satisfy a few people, not everyone. And ∞ Infinity is not a storygame.

And the concept of "fail now, get a bonus for later" is interesting enough to try out, at least. It's one of those tiny little links to reality that make a system feel real, without getting bogged down in pages and pages of modifiers and hyper-specific mechanics.

How about "you fail now, but it doesn't go as badly as it could have been."

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;686132How about "you fail now, but it doesn't go as badly as it could have been."

That sounds more like a degree of failure thing rather than a fail forward. Degrees of failure fit fine within the action resolution scope.

On the ever popular lockpicking example we could range from bad failure (the attempt took twice as long and you broke your lockpicks) to a just barely failed (the attempt only took half the time but the lock was just beyond your skill)

The key point is that a failure is still a failure and the door doesn't magically open by some bizzare happenstance because the plot needs it to open or all is lost.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;686007We do learn from mistakes (or can), and failure is a necessary step to succeed.

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;686132How about "you fail now, but it doesn't go as badly as it could have been."

That translates to "no, but."

So far, the explanations of Fail Forward seems "no, but" converts into "yes, but" as if they are interchangeable. And the justification seems "because its cool, otherwise the game's instant gratification (or worse, the plot) would come to a halt."

Quote from: Opaopajr;686261That translates to "no, but."

So far, the explanations of Fail Forward seems "no, but" converts into "yes, but" as if they are interchangeable. And the justification seems "because its cool, otherwise the game's instant gratification (or worse, the plot) would come to a halt."

Pretty much, yeah.