



13th Age & Fail Forward

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Like "yes, and..." (or yes-but, or yes-or-roll-the-dice, and so on), fail forward is one of those things that seems to get a lot of praise in the "indie" RPG/storygames camp, but despite being one of the largest (if not the largest) publisher of third-party Dungeon World content is something I disagree with.Also like"yes, and", I found a variety of definitions for fail forward, but near as I can tell it's is essentially a reinterpretation of failure: instead of a character trying to do something, failing, and having to think of some other way to keep going, you ultimately give the character want they want, but youhit them with something bad along the way.An "infamous" example of fail forward is when a character tries to pick a lock on a door and fails (though I've also seen examples involving climbing cliffs).In a normal RPG, if the character fails to pick the lock, either because she rolls low or the Difficulty is beyond her skills, she just fails. Now, in a horribly written adventure in which theway to proceed towards your goal is through a locked door, and theway to proceed through the locked door is by picking it, thisbe an issue...assuming it'sbeing run by a horrible DM thatdeviates from the adventure-as-written, that is.When relying on fail forward, you'drule something along the lines that the character actuallypick the lock, but she triggers a trap, guards show up/are waiting for her on the other side (replace with wandering monsters as needed), breaks her lockpicks, takes a really long time, and so on. Fail-forward proponents claim that by going this route you prevent the game from "grinding to a halt due to one bad roll", but the problem with this is two-fold.First, the consequences are often irrelevant to the character's capabilities and skills: a trap shouldn't suddenly be present due to a failed lock pick skill check, because a character's lock picking skill hasto do with the presence of traps. Same goes for a guard patrol and wandering monsters (and the weather getting worse, which I've seen pitched for characters that fail a Wisdom check while scouting or traveling).The only two outcomes that seem reasonable at all are how long it takes and the broken lock picks, both of which can be handled in something likewithout the DM just arbitrarily declaring them to have happened in order to spare the players from having to think, which leads to issue two: fail forward robs the players of the chance to be creative and figure out a way around an obstacle.As a GM Iseeing the kind of shit my players come up with. In the case of a locked door, maybe they'll try to bash it in, wait outside for someone to come through and ambush them, disguise themselves as guards, try stealing the keys from the guards, charm one of the guards, tunnel around the door, hire someone with the necessary skills/abilities, or *gasp* come back later when they're more skilled, or have an ability or item that'll get them through (like, say, a portable hole).Fail forward comes across as an inconsistent "solution" for lazy DMs and/or entitled players that don't like to "lose", or even take the time to come up with a plan B: they wanna get through the door, so just have it open regardless of their skill check, and if they fail have guards suddenly appear for them to fight instead because that's easier (well, so long as the door is barring them from getting on with the "story").Or, you could let your players try, let them fail, and if they're still alive let them try again. It may not be as quick or as easy, but when theysucceed it'll be more rewarding for both sides of the screen.Someone pointed me to's section on fail forwardso I figured I'd address it specifically since it has some pretty cringe worthy examples. It claims that outside of combat, "true failure tends to slow action down", and that, "a better way is to interpret failure as a near-success or event that happens to carry unwanted consequences or side effects".The first example has a rogue make a Charisma check in order to befriend an officer on a ship. The rogue fails, and the GM interprets this to mean that rather than fail to befriend the officer, the characterin fact make a good impression, but the officer is now suddenly a cannibal.The second has a character make an Intelligence check to determine the likely result of a competition. He fails, but instead of him failing to guess correctly, the GM determines that heguess correctly, but a gang of gnomes controlling the bets lost a bunch of money and for some reason blame him.So, what does the guy being a cannibal have to do with the character's Charisma check? The same thing a character's Intelligence has to do with a gang of gnomes losing out on a bunch of money: nothing at all.better way of handling the first situation is to have the character fail to make a good impressionjust leave it at that. If the guy happens to be a cannibal, then he could also set his sights on the annoying character as his next meal. This adds tension or whatever to the game,doesn't bizarrely punish the character for a completely unrelated reason.For the second one, I dunno: the character guesses wrong, and then it's up to the GM to determine how the competition ends and thereby whether the character wins or loses money. Winning or losing money is sufficient all by itself, but I guess if the character was making a show of winning a bunch of money maybe someone would try to rob him. DriveThru is currently running a, so for the next 8 or so days you can snag any PDF in our store for 30% off is out (and also available in dead-tree format )! If you for some reason don't want the entire setting, you can just snag the races and classes has manifested!By fan demand, we've mashed all of our 10+ Treasure volumes into one big magic item book , making it cheaper and more convenient to buy in print. Lichfield is available for public consumption . If you want a concise adventure with afeel, be sure to check it out!is also out, so if you want to catch a glimpse of