13th Age - Foolz!

particularly bad way. But a failure isn’t always
entirely terrible. . . .
Fail Forward!
A simple but powerful improvement you can
make to your game is to redefine failure as
“things go wrong” instead of “the PC isn’t good
enough.” Ron Edwards, Luke Crane, and other
indie RPG designers have championed this idea,
and they’re exactly right. You can call it “fail
forward” or “no whiffing.”
The traditional way to interpret a failure is
to see it as the character not being up to the task
at hand. A low roll on the d20 implies some
unexpectedly poor showing on the character's
account. This interpretation is natural, and in
practice we still use it quite often: occasionally
we want failure to mean sheer failure and
nothing but. That’s particularly true when
characters are attempting skill rolls as part of a
battle; when the rogue tries to be stealthy in the
middle of a fight and fails we’re generally not
failing them forward.
But outside of battle, true failure tends to
slow action down rather than move the action
along. A more constructive way to interpret
failure is as a near-success or event that happens
to carry unwanted consequences or side effects.
The character probably still fails to achieve the
desired goal, but that’s because something
happens on the way to the goal rather than
because nothing happens.
Suppose a player makes a Charisma check
to have his or her rogue rustle up some clues as
to where a certain monk of the black dragon
might be hiding. The player fails the check.
Traditionally, the GM would rule that the
character had failed to find any information.
With 13 th Age, we encourage you to rule that the
character does indeed find clues as to the
monk's location, but with unexpectedly bad
results. Most likely, word has gotten to the
monk that the rogue is looking for him, and he
either escapes before his lair is found, or
prepares for the group, either setting up an
ambush or leaving a trap. The failure means that
interesting things happen.
Here’s an example from Jonathan’s
campaign: Honeybottom, the ambiguously gendered
halfling rogue who is way too friendly with the
Prince of Shadows for her allies’ comfort, is sailing to
Drakkenhall thanks to the Archmage’s artificially
channeled winds thrusting the ship efficiently
forward. As an accomplished mingler and agent,
Honeybottom attempts to befriend and impress one of
the ship’s officers. It’s a Charisma check using
Honeybottom’s entertainer background. It’s not that
hard a task, so it has DC 15, but Honeybottom rolls a
4 and her level bonus, Charisma modifier, and points
in entertainment don’t get her anywhere near 15.
Used to the old way of interpreting failure, the player
offers this interpretation: “I try to make small talk
with him, but then I throw up a little on myself.”
With “fail forward” as his mantra, Jonathan
interprets the bad d20 roll quite differently. The
suave PC does indeed make a good impression on the
officer, but in private conversation the officer seems
to be strongly hinting that he’s a recreational
cannibal of some stripe. Honeybottom hasn’t exactly
failed in winning the officer over, but she has failed in
advancing her own agenda. If anything, the party’s
prospects became a bit dimmer now that one of them
has drawn the attention of a sociopath.
Here’s another example from one of Rob’s
games: Sir Gilly Tallfather makes an Intelligence
check using his heraldry background to loudly
proclaim the likely result of the upcoming game of
Cricket, a complex halfling sport in which two
trained crickets alternately sing beautiful songs
together or tear off each other’s legs in gladiatorial
combat. Gilly fails badly, but instead of making the
wrong prediction, he correctly calls the result of the
match, while costing a gang of gnome toughs who
were controlling the betting a hefty chunk of change.
Rob didn’t know the toughs were involved in the
match UNTIL Gilly failed.
And one final example that almost
happened in Rob’s campaign but the action
went elsewhere: The party is climbing a set of cliffs
to stage an ambush on agents of the Diabolist
traveling in hot-air balloons kept aloft by demons.
The Strength and Dexterity checks using various
relevant backgrounds don’t go very well, but ruling
that the characters can’t climb any further or that
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