Dungeons and Dragons and the Importance of Failure

I was recently listening to one of my favourite podcasts, WTF, which hosted by comedian Marc Maron. His guests were Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the directors of the mind-blistering Everything Everywhere All At Once. Maron's podcast has been a huge inspiration to me as he is very open and honest about things in his life, especially failure and how he perseveres in the face of it. 

They talked about many things but one thing that stood out was a comment by the directors that stated:

People are afraid to fail because they see their peers being destroyed on social media for the smallest mistake, therefore they become extremely guarded in their behaviour. 

As someone who works with youth, we as staff are always trying to put forward the importance of failure but with exams and constant testing that occurs here in the UK, what happens is that our students become deathly afraid to fail, any slip up means the end of the world as they know it.

We know that failure, especially at a young age helps built compassion, bolsters creativity, builds resilience and character and overall makes you a more well-rounded, empathetic human being (Source).

Yes, success is good, but true success only comes after mountains of failure. I could write a novel on the number of times I've failed and yes it did get me down. I've struggled with employment my entire life but I've finally seemed to have landed on my feet after twenty years of losing job after job. 

What does Dungeons and Dragons have to do with it? A lot. Anyone who has seen me on social media knows I never shut up about it, this is because I love it. I run D&D several times a week for some amazing teens and I play D&D on the weekends with some equally amazing adults. 

These people mean a lot to me and I do not say that lightly. 

Failure is a part of D&D and in my opinion it's what makes it fun.

There are many reasons for this. One is that there are no real-life consequences. When you fail in D&D, it doesn't matter, your character can (hopefully) dust themselves off and try again. If you have a good Dungeon Master, failure will be an integral part of the game, a break from the tension and a hilarious moment that the players will remember long after the game is finished.

In my experience, our players love to recall the failures of their own characters and their friends' characters much more than any piece of treasure they've found or monster they vanquished.

Another reason is that it builds a unique sense of family. It's hard to put into words but everyone who plays D&D will experience a critical failure at some point, even the Dungeon Master. 

This is part of the comradery of D&D, the idea that "hey, that was a spectacular failure, but we've all been there." D&D builds empathy in a way that is unique to any other game and in my opinion it is primarily through the failures we experience together.

If you've never played D&D, all you need to know for this article is that most actions / decisions are based around the rolling of a 20-sided dice. Rolling a 20 or a "natural 20" is considered a critical success or a critical hit if you are attacking an enemy. 

Rolling a "natural 1" is considered a critical failure and a DM should always have consequences for a natural 1, these consequences are what makes the game fun and interesting. I can often see the students leaning forward with smiles on their faces to find out what has happened to them because of a natural 1 roll.

Here's an example that happened just the other day when I was the Dungeon Master for my amazing teen group.

They were in a house which had caught on fire (long story), the roof had collapsed and buried two of the players, they were both at 0 hit points and were in danger of losing their characters if things didn't improve swiftly.

One of our players, a cleric, one of the healers of the group, stepped forward.

"Stand back!" he shouted, "I am here and will resolve this situation."

I assumed he would dig through the rubble to pull them out, but no, he had other plans. 

"I will cast the spell 'Create Water'," he said. This is a spell that can make 20 gallons of water appear.

"Ok," I said, "however, you need to find an empty, open container to place the water in when you cast this spell as the rules state."

"I will cast this spell into my own mouth, my mouth will be the open container, I will then spit this water all over the fire using another spell, Shape Water."

If I was being a strict, rules-lawyer of a DM, I could say something like "that won't work" or "this doesn't seem feasible" but the number one rule of D&D is that if it sounds fun you should let them try it, they can always try, if the dice allow it, then there should be a chance that it will succeed.

"Ok," I said, "just to be clear, you want to hold 20 gallons of water in your own mouth?"

"That is correct."

"You need to roll a constitution save to see if you can hold this much water in your mouth."

A constitution save means they roll a twenty sided dice and add their constitution bonus. Constitution represents the characters' health and physique, toughness etc. 

The player rolled the dice.

"That would be a natural 1."

The rest of the players groaned, laughed, some banged their heads on the table.

As a DM, I have to think fast about what that means, there needs to be consequences but I still wanted to give him a chance to succeed.

"Ok, look, you are choking on this water, it's coming out of your nose, your ears, you are spitting and spluttering on the floor. Roll a dexterity check to see if you can somehow spit the water out and spread it over the fire."

He rolled the dice, in my head, he's got to roll a 15 or a higher to have any success, and that's probably being generous.

"That would be a 3," he said.

A 3 is not a natural 1, but it's a terrible, terrible roll, again, there needs to be consequence and I need to figure out what to do with this.

"You try to spit the water out but again, there's too much of it, you choke on 20 gallons, it's going to damage your insides." 

I rolled a six-sided dice to determine the damage, I got a 6.

"You take 6 points of water damage from this as gallons of water rush down your throat."

"I only have 4 hit points left."

"Ok, you fall forward into the burning rubble, unconscious. You have drowned yourself in the middle of a burning building."

The group was howling with laughter, as was I. They emailed me about it later, I know this will be an event they will remember a long time. 

This is a spectacular failure and no one's feelings were hurt, no one was angry that this happened, there are no real consequences. They will survive this and they will laugh about it and move on. 

That's why D&D is such a powerful tool because not only have they all experienced failure before, they will credit that player with creating a powerful memory for them, one when all the garbage they may have experienced throughout the week went away and they were wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. 

It also allows other players to save the day, players who might not always have that opportunity, like when one of our more quieter players used a wand of wonder on one of my more powerful monsters, a beholder. She rolled a 99, meaning I could be turned to stone unless I rolled a 12 or higher. I rolled a natural 1 and the monster was turned to stone. My failure made another powerful memory for the players and let this player, who normally shies away from speaking very much, be the hero, it as a huge moment for me and I hope it was for her. 

It is through this weird and wonderful game that in my opinion every librarian should run that youth can experience failure in a safe and meaningful way. Failure and learning to fail is a hugely important part of life, if it can be done in a controlled environment such as D&D, it will help create more empathetic, resilient and understanding young adults.