Why is Failing Forward so disliked on these boards? [!silva]

[Kaelik]

Because we always say "oh yeah if you fail a sneak roll you still get through but you set the guards on alert" and that's great for *one* roll. But if you roll 10-15 sneak rolls over the course of a session (and that works out to 3-4 party attempts at sneaking, which isn't unreasonable in an infiltration situation) then you can only repeat the same "fail forward" events so many times before your players get board and glaze over.

Agreed. Thats why I find the concept works better with intent/conflict resolution systems like the one in AW, where the amount of rolls you do is much smaller.

Once it was explained to you that you were asked to stay out of the thread, you decided to break the rules because?

[Dean]

Once it was explained to you that you were asked to stay out of the thread, you decided to break the rules because?

He knows what it means, he just chooses to ignore the rules. My thread titled "Required Reading (Silva keep out)" left no room for confusion and he posted in it a ton despite multiple people telling him he had been told to stay out of the thread. Its not that he doesn't understand he just doesn't give a shit.

[silva]

Sorry if my contributions somehow offended you guys. Im wont participate in this thread anymore.

[Dogbert]

As long as there are reasonable benchmarks for what can and can't happen and restrictions that protect players from Quantum Bears(tm) are present, I'm all for it.

[hogarth]

Failing forward is really appealing to me because players are lazy and uncreative gits. Most groups will seriously only come up with 2 ideas to handle a problem, and if they both fail then the game grinds to a halt while they stare at you hoping you'll bail them out.

I'm a big believer in having the GM move the story along, but I wouldn't call that "failing forward", personally.

[TiaC]

So, Silva's posting in this thread made me think of this.

As has been said in many discussions of rules-lite games, having fewer rules just makes the rules you do have more important. This is also true of forum rules. The Den has very few real rules, but that means that it is important that they be applied, especially since biased application of rules was one of the things that led to the Den's userbase.

Failing Forward should really be a somewhat rare thing though to be at least slightly on-topic.

[Chamomile]

Because we always say "oh yeah if you fail a sneak roll you still get through but you set the guards on alert" and that's great for *one* roll. But if you roll 10-15 sneak rolls over the course of a session (and that works out to 3-4 party attempts at sneaking, which isn't unreasonable in an infiltration situation) then you can only repeat the same "fail forward" events so many times before your players get board and glaze over.

I have identified the problem: You do not know what failing forward means. Failing forward means failing in such a way as to move the game forward, rather than bring it grinding to a halt. But it is still failing. The locked door is an example where a failure usually produces a grind-to-halt result: You fail to the pick the lock, now what? So you use a fail forward result. The die roll isn't to pick the lock, you pick the lock automatically. The die roll is to pick the lock quickly or silently. If you fail to pick the lock quickly enough, you are caught and have to fight. If you fail to pick the lock silently enough, you are detected and will be ambushed by guards on the other side. Stealth is much more straightforward: If you fail, this is now a combat encounter. The guards aren't on alert, they are stabbing you in the face, because you failed.

[TheFlatline]

Because we always say "oh yeah if you fail a sneak roll you still get through but you set the guards on alert" and that's great for *one* roll. But if you roll 10-15 sneak rolls over the course of a session (and that works out to 3-4 party attempts at sneaking, which isn't unreasonable in an infiltration situation) then you can only repeat the same "fail forward" events so many times before your players get board and glaze over.

I have identified the problem: You do not know what failing forward means. Failing forward means failing in such a way as to move the game forward, rather than bring it grinding to a halt. But it is still failing. The locked door is an example where a failure usually produces a grind-to-halt result: You fail to the pick the lock, now what? So you use a fail forward result. The die roll isn't to pick the lock, you pick the lock automatically. The die roll is to pick the lock quickly or silently. If you fail to pick the lock quickly enough, you are caught and have to fight. If you fail to pick the lock silently enough, you are detected and will be ambushed by guards on the other side. Stealth is much more straightforward: If you fail, this is now a combat encounter. The guards aren't on alert, they are stabbing you in the face, because you failed.

That's... not failing forward as I've seen it in multiple games. That's keeping the game running when you've put a firewall down in front of the adventure/plot.

What you described is not a feature of a game so much as a GM skill. There are no mechanics to support that, it's almost magic tea party. Whereas something like Star Wars you can succeed but have lots of disadvantages that get "spent" doing shit to the party that's negative. Or you can fail but pick up a lot of boons on the roll that benefit you or the party somehow. That's the shit I'm talking about.

And to nitpick, let's be honest, if you're trying to pick a door open and sneak through the room on the other side and there are guards that are close enough to hear you trying to pick said lock, then they're probably going to notice you regardless of how good your pick lock skill is. Usually by the door swinging open of it's own volition. And that's where Schrodinger's Bears come in. Because those guards probably didn't exist right up until the die roll was blown. Otherwise, making too much noise forcing the lock wouldn't have mattered short of kicking a door down.

[Chamomile]

That's... not failing forward as I've seen it in multiple games.

Then people are using a term with "failure" in it to mean something other than failure, and they are stupid and should stop.

What you described is not a feature of a game so much as a GM skill.

Not true. "Any character with lockpicks can pick a lock, but they must roll against a DC on the following table to pick a lock quickly or quietly" is very much a different rule from "you must beat a DC on the following table to pick a lock at all." I suspect what you're really thinking is that a good GM will revise the DCs listed in a book to being the DC to pick a lock quickly or quietly rather than to open it up at all, because that's a house rule that requires very little effort or knowledge of statistics to make, but it is still a house rule so that argument is still Oberoni.

And to nitpick, let's be honest, if you're trying to pick a door open and sneak through the room on the other side and there are guards that are close enough to hear you trying to pick said lock, then they're probably going to notice you regardless of how good your pick lock skill is. Usually by the door swinging open of it's own volition.

If the guards detect you when the door swings open, the guards turn and confront you when the door opens. If the guards detect you while you're fiddling with the lock, you get smacked in the face with a warhammer when the door opens, because they know someone without keys is trying to enter so they can set up an attack.

And that's where Schrodinger's Bears come in. Because those guards probably didn't exist right up until the die roll was blown.

While it is possible to run a game like that and some people who advocate failing forward might even say that it is a good thing, there is nothing inherent about the failing forward concept that requires this. If there are no guards on the other side to alert, the GM might just declare you successful with no dice rolled or he might let you roll the dice to keep you in suspense before revealing there was never actually any danger, but either way what you're criticizing is the actions of a misuse of the concept, which is therefore irrelevant to a discussion of the concept itself.

EDIT: And so long as I'm here, I'll toss my opinion on the pile that if you can break a rule without being banned, it isn't actually a rule and we should stop pretending it is. Either silva gets banned for this kind of thing or else we need to stop acting like "X keep out" is anything else but a polite request and a board convention.

[Longes]

EDIT: And so long as I'm here, I'll toss my opinion on the pile that if you can break a rule without being banned, it isn't actually a rule and we should stop pretending it is. Either silva gets banned for this kind of thing or else we need to stop acting like "X keep out" is anything else but a polite request and a board convention.

[silva]

Ok, ok, its fair. Rules are rules.

See you guys.

[erik]

IF he stays out of this thread then that's fine. The rule is working as intended.

[Dean]

IF he stays out of this thread then that's fine. The rule is working as intended.

I dont know if you've been paying attention but he's posted in this thread 4 times since being told to stay out and about 20 times after being told not to do so in the last thread I mentioned.

[erik]

IF he stays out of this thread then that's fine. The rule is working as intended.

I dont know if you've been paying attention but he's posted in this thread 4 times since being told to stay out and about 20 times after being told not to do so in the last thread I mentioned.

I didn't read the other thread. As for this one...

The first couple was silva being an idiot and not knowing what it meant. The 3rd was a kind of stupid post stating that he was going to obey and leave the thread for reals in response to people who were directly asking silva questions after silva was requested to stay out (which is a dick move). At that point I was willing to say "hey, silva is an idiot and so long as he stays out from here (and other threads that ask the same), fine."

And then the 4th came while I was writing my post above.
I almost went back to edit it and say "fuck it, ban the troll" but I was heading out the door to meet friends and I just got back.

Yeah, now it just looks like he is trying to taunt and derail the thread. I'll leave it to a fence builder or associate fence builder to weigh in. Maybe this whole discussion on 'posting when requested not to' can get forked off to a thread in the About the Gaming Den forum.

[OgreBattle]

Well this is the kind of situation that TGD prepare for with the ignore button:


Use at your leisure.
-----

I figure a game that can deal with "no falling forward" is a hexgrid sandbox crawl. If you get stuck, you get stuck, try exploring another hexgrid and maybe the key to success can be found there.

[...You Lost Me]

He might be doing it so he can use it as bragging rights later: "TGD is so closed-minded, they banned me for talking about bearworld!"

And the problem of failing forward is (like Cham said) not that it's a bad thing, but people use that name to describe quantum bears instead of calling quantum bears by its actual name.

[Ghremdal]

My issue with failing forward is that making up consequences of failing (but still going forward) is more difficult / time consuming then making a encounter that doesn't grind to halt if the players fail their rolls.

Its just more work for the MC, and that is never a good thing.

[fbmf]

EDIT: And so long as I'm here, I'll toss my opinion on the pile that if you can break a rule without being banned, it isn't actually a rule and we should stop pretending it is. Either silva gets banned for this kind of thing or else we need to stop acting like "X keep out" is anything else but a polite request and a board convention.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Sorry, I was in Holiday Travel mode and am just getting to this. I looked back at the referenced thread, and while Silva ignored the injunction to stay out of the thread, nobody called him on it or reported it.

In this case, I would agree that Silva didn't understand what was being asked, but then chose to participate even after it was explained.

Therefore, Silva, please be advised that this is your warning for posting in a thread you've been asked to stay out of.

All, be advised that banning someone from a thread and then talking about them or to them in the thread is considered inviting them back into the thread, if only to address what it asked or said about them.
[/TGFBS]

[nockermensch]

For those who don't know, "!X" means "not X"

In context, I'm not sure how "!silva" could mean anything except "no silva", which would almost certainly mean, "silva is not welcome in this thread"

I thought he might be Portugese or something? And at least in spanish they begin and end exclamations with a (upside down) exclamation point.

Silva is Brazilian, and we write our exclamations just at the end of sentences.

But then again, programming memes never actually entered our Internet jargon, so for the most part, people here will not understand that !word means not word.

[Orion]

if you roll 10-15 sneak rolls over the course of a session (and that works out to 3-4 party attempts at sneaking, which isn't unreasonable in an infiltration situation) then you can only repeat the same "fail forward" events so many times before your players get board and glaze over.

If you find yourself rolling that many checks, you haven't really taken advantage of failing forward. The whole point of fail forward is that whether your roll succeeds or fails, it removes you from the situation in which making the check made sense. Honestly, even outside a fail forward context, stealth check bloat is just a huge problem. Frank has talked in great length about the failings of "extended tests" in every game that's introduced them, but yet it's the default way D&D players tend to run infiltration. It should really only take one roll to successfully scout or infiltrate a camp or small complex. Maybe 3 to 4 for a big superspy set-piece with escalating stakes and escalating difficulties where the PCs have multiple opportunities to fold and take the info they got so far or press on for more.

EDIT: Honestly, stealth checks usually "fail forward" by default, in that they either succeed in their goal or shunt you into a combat or chase scene.

[fectin]

It should really only take one roll to successfully scout or infiltrate a camp or small complex. Maybe 3 to 4 for a big superspy set-piece with escalating stakes and escalating difficulties where the PCs have multiple opportunities to fold and take the info they got so far or press on for more.

You could just as easily say that about combat though.

[Orion]

Yeah, you could totally do that. There's no inherent reason fight scenes need to be a big deal in RPGs. We just make them detailed and time-consuming because we like fight scenes and want the game to revolve around them. Bear World does let you fight a whole gang with a single roll, and while the game has some problems, that's really not one of them. It's probably the best argument for playing it in the first place.

[Dogbert]

But then again, programming memes never actually entered our Internet jargon, so for the most part, people here will not understand that !word means not word.

Except that "!" as negation isn't "programming jargon," it's from math.

[John Magnum]

The most common negation symbols I see used are ~ and ¬. I think ! for negation is used more often in programming.

[momothefiddler]

My understanding is that ¬ is the longest-standing negation symbol of the three (in math) and that ! and ~ are more frequently used with keyboards that don't have a ¬ character, leading to more use for programming.