Quote from: Emperor Norton;679396I'm of course, being nitpicky... but...

Only if the griffons weren't already there before .

If griffons roosting on the cliffs were already a thing that existed, then I could see a result of "Yes, you made it to the top, but you made enough noise doing it to rile up those griffons that were roosting". (On maybe a marginal success, or in a game like EotE success with threat).

Still better than the horrible failure where you didn't make it to the top and STILL riled up the griffons. Fighting griffons while hanging onto a cliff sounds really dangerous.

(Also, I think there is room for "you fail, but something good happens, and you succeed and something bad happens" in the traditional playhouse.)

The problem i have with this sort of thing is the griffons have nothing to do with the skill roll to climb. They are an external thing being brought in because i failed. If you have a degrees of success system that has normal failure but also partial success where there is some dawback, i am cool with that but it should be related to the actual climbing (ie: you scale the cliffs but it takes longer than you expected). If my skill roll to open a locked door results in the villain making a dramatic entrance, that feels very weird to me.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;679394So failing to open a door resulting in someone opening it from the other side "because the PCs need to get through that door" is illusionism.

And, at some level, so is the Rule of Three, though that seems to be a bit less contentious.  Anytime you start saying "the PCs need to do xyz", you've predetermined the plot and have killed player agency.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;679396I'm of course, being nitpicky... but...

Only if the griffons weren't already there before .

If griffons roosting on the cliffs were already a thing that existed, then I could see a result of "Yes, you made it to the top, but you made enough noise doing it to rile up those griffons that were roosting". (On maybe a marginal success, or in a game like EotE success with threat).

Still better than the horrible failure where you didn't make it to the top and STILL riled up the griffons. Fighting griffons while hanging onto a cliff sounds really dangerous.

(Also, I think there is room for "you fail, but something good happens, and you succeed and something bad happens" in the traditional playhouse.)

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;679402The problem i have with this sort of thing is the griffons have nothing to do with the skill roll to climb. They are an external thing being brought in because i failed. If you have a degrees of success system that has normal failure but also partial success where there is some dawback, i am cool with that but it should be related to the actual climbing (ie: you scale the cliffs but it takes longer than you expected). If my skill roll to open a locked door results in the villain making a dramatic entrance, that feels very weird to me.

Brendon got to it before me, but yeah it doesn't matter one bit WHAT is at the top of the cliff because you didn't make it up there to see!!  

Now if one of the consequences of a bad failure is making extra noise that could attract nearby hostiles, then the griffons might indeed see what all the racket is. Note that the griffons coming to investigate does not get you a free pass to the top of the cliff.

Quote from: robiswrong;679403And, at some level, so is the Rule of Three, though that seems to be a bit less contentious.  Anytime you start saying "the PCs need to do xyz", you've predetermined the plot and have killed player agency.

Yarp.

For the record I do conflict resolution/fail forward style play, and I wouldn't use the '...so griffins ATTACK' failure result. Unless it was already established they were up there or something, and the noise could attract them.

Part of the GM's job in those situations is to lay the fictional groundwork for a possible failure stake in advance, or at least to come up with one that makes sense in context. Just like 'and you get a PONY!' would be a terrible bonus to throw in on a lockpicking critical success.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;679402The problem i have with this sort of thing is the griffons have nothing to do with the skill roll to climb. They are an external thing being brought in because i failed.

One would assume that if you are making a climb up a cliff, and know that griffons roost on those cliffs, that your attempt to climb would be: "I attempt to climb the cliff in a manner that doesn't create noise or otherwise attract the attention of the griffons."

Unless you want to play a game of "But you didn't SAY you weren't climbing the cliff screaming at the top of your lungs", which is just asshat DMing. I generally assume that characters are approaching a situation in the optimal way based on the information they are presented. So if they know there are griffons roosting up there, there climb check isn't just an attempt to make it to the top, its an attempt to make it to the top in the best way possible.

Making noise, picking a climbing path that is highly visible accidentally, etc. are not external to you climbing.

Could it be done with two checks? One Climbing, one stealth? Probably, but I find it easier just to run it with one, and being skilled at climbing should cause going up that cliff without being spotted easier. (You could also do climbing check first, and give a bonus to the stealth check based on it. There are more ways to do it, but honestly, just using a climbing check isn't causing things to happen external to the character).

Quote from: soviet;679413For the record I do conflict resolution/fail forward style play, and I wouldn't use the '...so griffins ATTACK' failure result. Unless it was already established they were up there or something, and the noise could attract them.

Part of the GM's job in those situations is to lay the fictional groundwork for a possible failure stake in advance, or at least to come up with one that makes sense in context. Just like 'and you get a PONY!' would be a terrible bonus to throw in on a lockpicking critical success.

The main problem I have with failing forward is that some things are just binary, yes/no type results and having to come up with a constant stream of minor positive incidents to keep the Players failing forward would be exhaustive to me over a multiple hour game session.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;679415One would assume that if you are making a climb up a cliff, and know that griffons roost on those cliffs, that your attempt to climb would be: "I attempt to climb the cliff in a manner that doesn't create noise or otherwise attract the attention of the griffons."

Unless you want to play a game of "But you didn't SAY you weren't climbing the cliff screaming at the top of your lungs", which is just asshat DMing. I generally assume that characters are approaching a situation in the optimal way based on the information they are presented. So if they know there are griffons roosting up there, there climb check isn't just an attempt to make it to the top, its an attempt to make it to the top in the best way possible.

Making noise, picking a climbing path that is highly visible accidentally, etc. are not external to you climbing.

Could it be done with two checks? One Climbing, one stealth? Probably, but I find it easier just to run it with one, and being skilled at climbing should cause going up that cliff without being spotted easier. (You could also do climbing check first, and give a bonus to the stealth check based on it. There are more ways to do it, but honestly, just using a climbing check isn't causing things to happen external to the character).

You could use two checks.

If the climbing check failed the top still wouldn't be reached, but a good stealth check could prevent noise from being a result of the failure.

There is no way for a failed climb check to result in a successful climb without narrative concerns becoming a factor.

Quote from: jeff37923;679416The main problem I have with failing forward is that some things are just binary, yes/no type results and having to come up with a constant stream of minor positive incidents to keep the Players failing forward would be exhaustive to me over a multiple hour game session.

Honestly, on some checks I just roll with it and say there are no bonuses or penalties. Trying to do it on every check is tiring. If I can't think of something that fits in context, or no one else suggests something that I think fits in context in a very short amount of time, I would just go "Ok, you succeeded/failed" and move on.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;679415One would assume that if you are making a climb up a cliff, and know that griffons roost on those cliffs, that your attempt to climb would be: "I attempt to climb the cliff in a manner that doesn't create noise or otherwise attract the attention of the griffons."

Unless you want to play a game of "But you didn't SAY you weren't climbing the cliff screaming at the top of your lungs", which is just asshat DMing. I generally assume that characters are approaching a situation in the optimal way based on the information they are presented. So if they know there are griffons roosting up there, there climb check isn't just an attempt to make it to the top, its an attempt to make it to the top in the best way possible.

Making noise, picking a climbing path that is highly visible accidentally, etc. are not external to you climbing.

Could it be done with two checks? One Climbing, one stealth? Probably, but I find it easier just to run it with one, and being skilled at climbing should cause going up that cliff without being spotted easier. (You could also do climbing check first, and give a bonus to the stealth check based on it. There are more ways to do it, but honestly, just using a climbing check isn't causing things to happen external to the character).

And i am fine with a partial success being you do execute the skill in a manner clumbsy enough to make noise. That isnt what I am objecting to.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;679418You could use two checks.

If the climbing check failed the top still wouldn't be reached, but a good stealth check could prevent noise from being a result of the failure.

There is no way for a failed climb check to result in a successful climb without narrative concerns becoming a factor.

... See, this is where I'm talking about something different than you. Which is why I said that "failing forward" is probably a terrible term for what I do and "Non-binary resolution" is closer. I'm talking about things like the EotE dice where you have options of:

Succeed
Succeed with Advantage
Succeed with Threat
Fail
Fail with Advantage
Fail with Threat

(and a few more options based on Triumph and Despair)

If you fail, you fail, you don't "make it to the top but something bad happens".

Quote from: jeff37923;679416The main problem I have with failing forward is that some things are just binary, yes/no type results and having to come up with a constant stream of minor positive incidents to keep the Players failing forward would be exhaustive to me over a multiple hour game session.

That's fair and occasionally it can be an issue. For the most part though I find that those situations can be resolved either as an autofail or autosuccess, or the failure stakes are something fairly flat like 'not only did you fail to pick the lock this time, but in fact this lock is unpickable using those tools (this injury can't be healed just with level one magic, this armour's too strong for blasters, etc). So at least that way the situation has changed in some way rather than just 'you fail, try again'.

Thinking about it one failure stake for climbing griffin mountain could be 'you can't retry because your tools aren't up to it/the rockface is too treacherous/you now have a bit of a phobia about it'.

Another way of looking at it is, again, similar to Take 20.  If there's nothing preventing you from just trying and trying again, just auto-succeed and get on with it.

Identifying what prevents that from happening, and drilling down to that tends to get to the meat of the matter and skip a lot of procedure.  "What's the bad thing that happens if I fail?" is a pretty useful question.  If the answer is "nothing", then you'll keep trying and trying... until some bad thing happens.  So the real question is "do I succeed before bad thing happens?"

Given infinite time, resources, and no opposition, a PC should be able to accomplish just about any task.

After thinking about it at lunch, it seems like a reasonably precise definition of this would look something like:

"Any roll or player action, successful or not, should result in some type of change."  Even actions that should do 'nothing' can support this, as they often give information that 'hey, that didn't work, try something else'.

If the result of failing to pick the lock is that you can't pick that lock until you level, that's a state change, and is sufficient.

Quote from: robiswrong;679437Another way of looking at it is, again, similar to Take 20.  If there's nothing preventing you from just trying and trying again, just auto-succeed and get on with it.

Identifying what prevents that from happening, and drilling down to that tends to get to the meat of the matter and skip a lot of procedure.  "What's the bad thing that happens if I fail?" is a pretty useful question.  If the answer is "nothing", then you'll keep trying and trying... until some bad thing happens.

Given infinite time, resources, and no opposition, a PC should be able to accomplish just about any task.

Well, on a climb, the bad thing is you fall. Have to check, but take 20 probably doesnt apply to the skill (if it does, probably shouldn't).

But this is also different from take 20. On that it is simply a matter of skipping over all the failures that would naturally occur to get the one good result you eventually will obtain. This is about failure producing a "forward" outcome (at least as I have seen it described online). So like I said, instead of falling down the cliffs, you stumble into a forgotten chamber guarded by spiders. That is the sort of thing I object to: inserting that element because the player failed a roll (if that was already the established consequence of failure ebcause the character was wlaking over a chamber filled with spiders, things are different). Some people love failing forward and that is totally cool with me. But in the discussions I have had about it, it is generally clear it isnt what I shoot for in a game,and works against it to a degree. Bt like I said, something that is a workable aspect of a degrees of success system, I am fine with.

Otherwise, failing forward seems a very akward term to use. My reading is it is about baking excitement into the game by having failures produce twists, challenges, etc. that is totally cool. However some people just want to know whether you climb the mountain or not, or by what degree or how fast.others do not want the mechanic to force the gm to throw in complications every time there is a failure. For some folks that is great, for others it is a nightmare to have to do each time.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;679442Otherwise, failing forward seems a very akward term to use. My reading is it is about baking excitement into the game by having failures produce twists, challenges, etc. that is totally cool. However some people just want to know whether you climb the mountain or not, or by what degree or how fast.others do not want the mechanic to force the gm to throw in complications every time there is a failure. For some folks that is great, for others it is a nightmare to have to do each time.

That certainly can be part of it.  But I really think it's mostly about just keeping shit moving in some direction.

And even for the cliff climb, given infinite time and resources, the players could conceivably train in cliff climbing, get appropriate/better gear, acquire appropriate magic, etc.  So falling can be a consequence, as it puts something at risk.

But again, it's not the *only* possible consequence.  Making it to the top, but having lost stuff is very possible as well.  Getting bruised/banged up on the way is possible.  I bet that if you were to query people that actually do rock/cliff climbing in the real world, that they'd tell you that those types of failures are far more common than "splat".