What Is Failing Forward?

Failing forward comes from players having to do skill checks. A skill check is something that you use as a Dungeon Master when you want to see if the players notice or know something or can complete an action that they are trying to do. An example of this would be the rogue doing a stealth check or something like that.

The idea of failing forward is that the players roll their skill check and they fail it. But instead of them not getting the information or completing they action, they still do that. However, it is going to add in some sort of complication for them. So they succeed but there is a cost instead of them getting it without that cost.

Why Use It?

So why use something like this? The big reason as a Dungeon Master that you want to use failing forward is some things need to happen. Let’s say the players don’t remember a bit of information about the Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal (BBEG). And it is something that their characters need to know to be able to eventually find the BBEG. So you have the players roll history checks for their characters, what happens if they fail? Now they are soft locked out of knowing that information.

So let me define what I mean by soft locked. They aren’t completely locked out of that knowledge, but you need to feed it to them another way. But the idea of failing forward is that they get that information, they pull it up in from their memory, you don’t need to create a new role playing situation or create a reason why they would learn it again. They just know it. But, as I said, there should be a cost to it. And I wills how you what I mean by that when I give some examples later on.

When Not To Use It

So there are times not to use it as well. I think that failing forward is a very useful tool for a Dungeon Master, but sometimes it doesn’t make that much sense to do it. If they fail to disarm a trap, okay, don’t fail them forward. Let them be creative to figure out another way to avoid the trap, or to set it off and just make a run for it.

But the other big time is when it doesn’t matter that much. If the player wants to search a room for gold and they role a one, who cares. They toss the place and the three gold they might have found they don’t find. Or the barbarian wants to throw something a long ways, they roll a strength and roll low, that’s fine as long as it’s not part of the plot that they need to do it.

So, just to recap, use failing forward when you need them to succeed to progress the story. Don’t use it when it is for flavor, the players doing something that doesn’t matter, or there are other ways around the problem.

Examples of Failing Forward

So let’s talk examples, and I want to do a couple of different ones here. But just to demonstrate how you can use it well. And this is something that I’d plan on in the moment. Don’t try and pre-plan for your session checks that your player characters will have to do as the Dungeon Master, it just adds work that might not happen.

Example 1: The Deity’s Hidden Past

The characters are coming to realize that there is something off about this deity who has reached out to them for help. They know some general knowledge on the deity but how much do they actually know. If they roll well they are going to know that the deity was actually killed years ago and now someone has taken it’s place and that matters because they would then know not to trust them.

So all the players roll religion checks, and because this is ancient history it’s a harder check. The best role is an 8 and now they players really didn’t succeed on this check.

What is failing forward going to look like here?

You give the characters the knowledge but you give them more knowledge than is actually right. You explain it to them in the way of a long forgotten myth that is passed down still in some tribes, but was passed down verbally for years. The general details of the deity’s death are there, but specifics are wrong, and who killed the deity is wrong and you give them a lot to sort through that is right or not.

Example 2: The Chase

The other example I want to give is of something a bit more physical. The players were supposed to have snuck up on a criminal and knocked them out. Instead they talk to them. And they tell them exactly what is going on. So the criminal is running through the market now throwing things down behind them.

The players need that item to progress the storyline. So you give them some challenges to complete with athletics and acrobatics. They roll really poorly on their checks while on the chase.

How do you keep the guy from getting away? Well, you already know the answer, you fail forwards.

In this case, that is going to look like issues with the market in the future. The barbarian is in pursuit and runs through a cabbage cart instead of pushing it of their way. The rogue leaps over a stall with an acrobatics but instead just jumps onto it and runs through all the tomatoes. Now the people in the town won’t like them. Yes, they get their criminal in the end, but there is a consequence to their action.

Final Thoughts on Failing Forward

This is an important tool for the dungeon master. And in the examples I gave, I want to just say one thing. The issue that can arise can be something the players know or the players don’t. In the second example the people working in the market are going to be raising a big stink and shouting after the characters so they will know. In the first example, the players might suspect but they won’t know for sure and they won’t know what is right and what isn’t.

And then use it as a tool for the future as well. There are examples I could give where the character is undercover and fails a check to blend in. Now the boss knows that they aren’t who they say they are, but instead of acting on it, the crime boss just holds onto that for later. The players might know that they failed and be surprised, but now it’s something that they are worried about coming back to bite them later.

How do you use failing forward? Is it something that is part of your campaign, or do you not even make the players do a check when they need to know the information?

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/icarusgames/class-cheat-sheets-for-5e

So two things before I get to the meat of the article, this one doesn’t embed for some reason, but it’s a quick read so go checkout the page. And also this is a bonus Back or Brick, because, well, it’s a cheap Kickstarter to back that I think is worth at least glancing at.

Pros

• Price
• Design

Cons

• Not All Subclasses

The Page/Project

This is a pretty simple project but one that is laid out well. It gives you the information as to what the project is right away. It’s a one page layout for a lot of Dungeons and Dragons classes, well, all 12 plus then sub classes. It’s meant to help make learning your class and how to play Dungeons and Dragons easier. And hit hits the most common subclasses, which is nice.

I also really like that you get a blank template if you are at the GM Bundle Level. And if this interests you, I recommend backing at that level. Why, because of getting that blank one. I plan on going through every class, and subclass to get sheets written up and printed out. Probably when I have a player who is playing that class and subclass. This will be easier to handout to players versus having them trying to short hand stuff onto their character sheet. I might even laminate them for reuse.

Back or Brick

So is this a Back or Brick for me? It’s a Back. As someone who only runs Dungeons and Dragons, I can see this being really useful. It’s basically a sheet that allows players to see what they have coming up, what abilities they already have unlocked, and gives more space for knowing what their abilities do. Honestly, I think this could be a no brainer for a lot of Dungeon Masters. Especially if you have newer players or players who don’t have their own players handbook.

How about for you, is this Back or Brick?

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Listen To The Players

The first step is really simple, listen to the players. You’re listening to what they are interested in doing, what storylines they are going after, what they are looking for and then building upon that. If they want to know what is happening at the mill, doesn’t matter if nothing was happening there, now something should be happening there. If the player guesses what is going to happen, for example, removing part of a ritual and the ritual explodes, let that happen as a call back to that thought later. This doesn’t mean you give the players everything they want, having the big bad be at the mill because the players want them there when it doesn’t fit into the story, that doesn’t work, but something odd happening at the mill that adds to the story, that’ll be memorable.

Give Up Control

I’ve touched on this some already, but you can just see where the players are going to take you as well. You don’t need to know everything that is going to happen to create memorable moment. In fact, for them to be most memorable to you, it helps when you don’t know what’s going to happen. An example of this actually came up just a week ago in Tower of the Gods. I had an idea for the session as to where it might go, and it ended up in a bank heist with a gnome wearing stilts and a Tiefling riding a cart of cabbages into the middle of the bank and exploding them with the Thunderwave spell. With that cart, the player asked, is there are cart or anything like that around outside, the answer to that was simply, what do you need? Give it to them even if in your minds scene it wasn’t there, because you never know what wacky thing might happen because you gave them that or epic moment might happen because you let them do something that was hard.

Describe Big

This is one that’s a bit hard for me at times. I fall into the habit of saying at the bad guy attacked and missed or hit. But that could be described in a bigger more epic way. And this is another area when you can entrust the story into the hands of the players. In the series Critical Role, Matt Mercer always asks the question of how the players want to kill a monster when they deal the final blow, and they narrate it out. Well, I play theater of the mind, so that can be done even more. When my attack misses, I can entrust the story to the player to describe how they dodge it, especially on an important attack. But describing big is something that the Dungeon Master can set the tone for. I have 3-4 bad guys in a fight, I am describing more than everyone else. And this doesn’t have to be a fight, when there is a puzzle or an important room, I can build out more of that to help the players get a clear idea of the area, but all while holding loosely so as the players interact with it more, they can get what they need from it, which is known as the “There’s Always a Chandelier” rule or Rule of Cool. Basically, if it sounds cool, let them do it, let them have their chandelier.

You Can’t Plan Them

Finally, you really can’t plan them. My tips might foster more of those memorable moments, but those are just tips. The truly memorable moments happen when the players do something that interacts with your ideas in an unexpected and cool way. Whether that’s by a great roll, or some great role play, you’ll not know until it happens. It’s hard to give up that control at times, but when it feels like something big might be about to happen, let it happen. Now, you can help foster more of these potential situations by giving a wide variety of challenges or interactions, but you never really know which one is going to have that moment that players will remember, but also that you will remember as well.

What are some of your most memorable Dungeons and Dragons or really any RPG moments?

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His name is Kippington Thumble Elf-Hater, Kentish Bughammer, Kip for short. He’s a gnome who upon coming out of the tower had been given the skills to become a rogue. However, at this other school, there was an unfortunate incident, all alleged, involving a cake he may or may not have made that may or may not have been poisoned. Oh, and he has an untrusty squirrel friend named Karl, who mainly hangs out for food.

Upon Kip being introduced by Assendial, Bokken goes up and introduces himself, to the squirrel. Assuming that Kip is the squirrel, it nibbles on Bokken’s finger but gets bored pretty quickly. Kip doesn’t bother correcting Bokken on anything. The group catches up Kip on what has happened at the school, including Bokken outing Addrus and Parrag as spies, much to the dismay of both of them as the group had promised to help keep their secret.

It comes time for their final and Parrag comes down with the mumps so Kip has to join them, and Karl. The groups are brought up to the 2nd floor of the tower one at a time with their start times staggered by 30 minutes. Assendial gives them directions, they have to get through a series of rooms and to the teachers. Each room resets after 5 minutes, so they have a limited amount of time. They get scored based off of damage to their group, how many times the room has reset, and if they have caught any other groups who were in there before them. If they do catch a group, they get to go ahead of them and that group has to wait for another time for the room to cycle.

The first room that they enter looks like a foyer to a house. There is a fire place that is lit with a couple of torches in sconces by it, a book shelf filled with a number of books, and a chair with a table and some books on it. There is no door, in or out, once Assendial closes the door they came in on them. Bokken looks around the room hoping to find some scotch and finds a hollowed out book with a bottle of scotch and some glasses in it. Bokken pours himself a drink and sits down in the chair. Barrai thinking that there must be a hidden door looks around the shelf to see if there is anything, like an out of place book or something that would open a hidden door. He finds an out of place book and pulled it out. It causes the chair that Bokken is sitting in, and a part of the wall to rotate around, so when they look there is just a skeleton of an elf that is there. After Kip and Thrain investigate the bones and determine that these are in fact real bones or a real elf, Barrai puts the books back and removes it several times, this causes the wall to spin again several times, but they end up with Bokken back on the side they want. Bokkens next idea is to try and remove the torches, but he just ends up with two torches in his hand. Thrain investigates the sconces realizes that they aren’t attached as they should be, so he pulls on one and door frame appears in the middle of the room with a door in it. Eventually, after some more investigating they go through it.

They find themselves balanced along a ledge in a room with floating stones and lava on the floor. it looks a bit like a grand hall as there are chandeliers above it. They try and figure out how to get across the rocks that are floating there. Barrai is able to use mage hand to move one over, but it takes about minute, and then, after spending a bunch of time in the first room, the rooms reset and the rock goes back to where it was. They decide instead to use a grappling hook that Thrain has an 250′ of rope that Bokken has and Barrai mage hands the grappling hook up around the first chandelier which was just in range, it was 32′ form the ledge where they were standing. Smartly, though, I don’t know if the players were thinking about it, they decide to run the rope between the chandeliers and completely avoid the rocks and lava, as compared to their plan to swing on the rope. With the lava 4′ down from the ledge, a swing from one towards the middle would have most likely dragged them through lava, or at least caught the rope on fire, neither which is ideal. They manage to make their way across after a bit of a scare from Kip who loses is grip mid way across the rope, but is pulled back to safety with Bokken’s help.

In the next room there are two imps guarding two doors. As they walk in, one imp says “Welcome to our room, sit, stay a while. One of us tells the truth and the other lies.” The other imp says “Both of us tell the truth.” Thrain, the dwarf, immediately asks both of them if he is a dwarf, and they both say “No”. Doing an insight check on both of them, he knows that the second imp for sure is lying, but the first one might actually believe what he is saying. They ask them more questions trying to figure out a pattern or if maybe one tells the truth some of the time, but they eventually decide to try and restrain one, which gets them into combat. They kill one and get the other restrained and they open the doors. They had previously been told by the imps that one door had a dragon behind it and one a pit of acid, but all they see are two empty rooms. They toss the imps, one alive and one dead, into both empty rooms and they both fall through the floor, but they don’t hear the crunching of a dragon or the splash of an imp hitting acid. Attaching a rope to Thrain, and with Bokken holding on, Thrain is lowered through the floor, below he sees what looks like a forest, with a lake in the middle and an island in the lake, which he recognizes as the first floor where they’d taken their previous mid-term. He gets pulled up and goes down through the other door and sees the same thing just form a few feet over. The room resets and there are two imps in there again. This time they forgo much of the talking, and after a little bit of fighting, as Bokken opens up one of the doors and an imp tries to push him through it, Barrai puts them to sleep with the sleep spell. They spot rings on the imps fingers, so they look at them, however, they just look they are school rings from an infernal school and it doesn’t change the rooms or add any doors. Kip wakes one up and asks them a question along the line of “What would you do to not leave this room through a secret door?” to which the imp answers, “Kill us”, so they kill the imps humanely and a door appears between the other two.

This leads them into a room that I had intentionally created for the players. I’m going to write it out briefly the description that I gave them, but there are five pillars that are shooting flame, one in each corner and one in the middle of the room. The one in the middle of the room starts shooting flame backwards, while the others start from front left shooting along the left wall, the front right shooting along the front of the room, the back left shooting along the back of the room, and the back right shooting at a diagonal into the middle of the room. From there I explained how they move, basic idea is that you need to follow the right side and then take a step to the left to let the back door open again. One of the players, paying attention to what I was saying, was able to figure it out just from hearing the description once, which was awesome, so they breezed through that room.

In the next room, and final room, there is a Bearded Devil sitting at a table that magically has four other chairs appear around it. He motions for them to sit and says, “Come sit and enjoy some tea.” They sit and he pulls out what amount to a tasting flight of four teas for each of them. The first is a red tea with a fruity nose, the next is black and smells bitter, the third is a herbal green tea, and the fourth has a yellow color and smells of citrus. The Bearded Devil tells them that they have to try them in the right order and that the order is important. The players think about it and they assign a tea to each season, black for winter, green for spring, yellow for summer, and red for winter. They start with green, and Barrai takes a bit of poison damage, Thrain tries yellow and then red, taking poison damage for both. They offer the Bearded Devil some scotch even though they don’t have some, because Kip thinks scotch solves most problems. The Bearded devil says that sounds great, but he prefers Bourbon before Scotch. Bokken drinks the black tea and isn’t poisoned. He then tries the yellow tea and takes some poison damage. The Bearded Devil tells them that they have one more try or they’ll be fighting him. They think about it and decide since bourbon is earlier in the alphabet than scotch, maybe they should try alphabetical, which works for them and they are allowed to pass into the next room.

In that room they find the teachers waiting for them and the group who had gone ahead of them fighting as Narius and Castillia are debating how yellow or orange that last tea was with Narius insisting it was orange. At that point the session ended and the players leveled up.

Behind the DM’s Screen

This one I actually planned a bit more for sometimes. And I actually had two ways to bring in the new player. They suggested that transferring in made sense, so we went with that route. Otherwise I was going to somehow have Parrag end up rotating behind the wall and into stasis with Kip being brought back out and joining the group.

I also really enjoyed the creative ways that they tried to solve the problems. Could they have just jumped between the rocks, probably, but I wanted to see what they would come up with, and the swinging, while a bad idea was an option, but even better was climbing along the chandeliers. So you can have a room that is very dangerous, fire bad, and just let players problem solve, you don’t need a perfect solution, just give them options.

The pillars and fire room, that one, like I said, i wanted the players to puzzle that one out themselves. It took the time of me explaining it for one of them to figure it out, but I’m glad that didn’t take too long. For a puzzle like that, just running through would have been possible, but it was dangerous, so I wanted to make sure there was a good away through that made sense.

How does that session sound, is it one that would be fun for you to play in?

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