Lore and Legends of the Dezzyverse

Making Failure less Frustrating

There are nights when the dice just hate everyone at the table. Except the DM. Players can’t roll above a 6 and their characters can’t accomplish even the simplest task. Nothing happens and the characters are stuck. The only door blocking their path can’t be opened, the speed-bump combat becomes a slog of swing-and-a-miss, the stream, easily crossed, ends up washing the whole party away. The first time these things happen, it’s kinda funny, “Remember that goblin that no one could hit and we had to just run away?”. But over the course of a game session it looses it’s charm, “Failed AGAIN? I have a plus 12 to the roll and I can’t roll higher than 3! @&#! this dungeon!

Failing forward helps with this. The basic principle is this. Your character succeeds in their roll, but if they fail to score higher than the Target Number, the character suffers a consequence. The classic example of this is “you force the door open, but make such a racket that anyone within a hundred feet hears your entry.” Or, “You knife the guard, but, as he falls, he slaps the panic button at their station” characters can progress, but there’s an added challenge.

Let the Player Choose

Often when a character fails forward, it helps engagement to ask the player what the consequence should be. This helps give the player a hand in the fate of their character, and gives the Game Master a clue as to what the player is expecting from the adventure. The player should express their character’s consequence as briefly as they can. The consequence should be proportional to the degree of failure, and the consequence should never be more effective than success.

The Game Master could alternatively let the player group choose. This helps to avoid putting a player, who might not be comfortable improvising like this, on the spot. The final decision on consequence needs to have the consent of the character’s player, and approved by the Game Master. This encourages everyone at the table to remain engaged with the game as it’s being played.

Keep it Proportional

As mentioned, failing forward should never be a better result than success. Failing forward progresses the adventure at a cost. If the failure is slight, or the task relatively minor, failing forward should apply slight consequences. If the failure is great, or the task critical, failing forward should extract a much greater price.

The goal here is to allow a path forward with a cost. Some of the build up of narrative drama grows from dwindling resources. Dropping your character’s rations down a crevasse or breaking your lantern can be just as tense as loosing 2d10 hit points.

A Brief Word About Combat

I’m not a big fan of brushing off damage as a fail forward. Just having a minimum rolled damage, or half-damage result tends to throw off the balance of monster stats in Dungeons and Dragons. Furthermore, it is not any less frustrating and it doesn’t change anything except to continue to whittle down the adversaries’ hit points. Again I’d fail forward, allowing say a hit on the target, but the character hurts themselves for minimum damage, or they loose some ammunition. Or they don’t do damage but gain a cumulative +1 bonus to hit each time they miss until they do hit. Maybe they do damage, but the GM gets to move their character 5 feet (roughly 1.5 meters) maybe placing the character in a less advantageous position.

My point here is that combat, whether you employ failing forward or not, should be dynamic, even if you’re not playing on a battlemap. Very little is less exciting than endlessly whittling away hit points from one another’s pile. But, that is a whole ‘nother essay.

Things That Should Not Fail Forward

Failing forward is not appropriate for all situations. Saving Throws, Death Saves, All-or-Nohing tasks are but a few. With these situations, one either succeeds, or fails and suffers the consequences. Also, NPCs and adversaries should never fail forward. The GM shouldn’t ever be frustrated by the Players’ Characters’ success in the adventure. TTRPGs aren’t adversarially competitive games (even Call of Cthulhu!). Or at least they aren’t any more.

Remember, the Game Master’s job is to provide challenges to the players who resolve them through their characters. TTRPGs have evolved a long way from it’s wargaming roots. Even if you’re not “telling a story” with your adventure, you are engaging in drama. The purpose, is to have fun, not slog away under a series of cold dice rolls.