I remember one of the YouTube DM advice channels saying that turning failures into story moments can really enhance your RP. I always have trouble coming up with good side effects or descriptions for natural 1s in combat, for example. So let's practice. I'll start.

Roll a History check to see if you remember your dream.

Natural 2, -1 for a total of 1.

You don't remember your dream. In fact you don't remember how you got here. Or what day it is. But you do remember it was something horrible. Prophetic, as you thought. But you don't remember what the dream was warning you to avoid today. You're so disturbed by this that you forget one of your cantrips until your next long rest.

Ok next one:

You are led out of the dungeon into an interrogation room. The back of a chair faces a desk with various torture implements. They look heavily used and dull, caked with dried blood and rust. The chair turns around, revealing ... a drow child. But they look somehow familiar. Make an Insight check.

Natural 1 ... +2 is 3.

Next person tell us what happens. Then ask for a roll and give the low result to the next person to narrate.

Usually, I think players prefer to move on quickly from failure, so I don’t make a big deal out of it. For crit fails in combat, I’ll say something like “massive whiff,” “nothing but air,” “the monster laughs at you,” “your ally leans away from your wild swing,” “you wipe dust out of your eyes,” or “you're not sure what you were aiming at, but it wasn’t the monster.”

I gotta disagree. I think players appreciate a description of the failure where their character still comes across as capable, not incompetent.

Normally, you cannot crit on a skill check of any kind.  That's only in combat, and has to do with hit rolls.  A one has no effect at all beyond that no matter what the armor class is, you miss, and a natural 20 on the it roll does double the dice in damage.

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're talking about.  You have a dream at some point, then when you're in combat, you roll a 1.  You miss, and then use a History Check (which would take an action) to try and remember your dream?  I'm not sure what the number you give are used on.  The next hit roll?  The next skill check?  If you fail to remember your dream the only thing that does is keep you from using a single cantrip.  If you're a caster, that's pretty minor, and if you're not, who cares?  It would cripple a Warlock who had no other cantrips but Eldritch Blast, but have almost no effect on anyone else.

The second example is even more confusing.  I'm assuming that's also a dream sequence, but you don't say what the numbers apply to either, It seems to be a bonus, and in this case, you don't give anything that happens if they fail.  Is it the same almost entirely irrelevant effect?

If you want to narrate a miss from rolling a 1 on your hit roll, all you need to do is describe why you didn't do damage.  The way the D&D combat system works, a "miss" can mean that the weapon actually did hit, just not hard enough to do damage.

• You try to attack, but the sun gets in your eyes and you miss when you swing.
• You try to attack, but you stumble on something and your swing goes wide.
• You try to attack, but your weapon glances off their armor and they sneer at you.
• You try to attack, but the grip of your hand is slippery with sweat and you almost drop it before you can attack and fumble around with it and don't attack at all.
• You try to attack, but you get a little over-eager and when you throw your dagger at them, it goes way over their head and doesn't come anywhere near them.
• You try to attack, but your bowstring gets caught in the armguard you wear to protect yourself from the string rubbing your arm and the arrow falls only moves a short distance and falls to the ground.

Yeah this some pretty basic rp things,here some I've done for intiative 

gets nat on intiative,for a 9 initiative."gust was looking for flowers in the swamp,when the battle begun,and joined far later then they normally would"

Nat 1 on guards Intiative "the guards decided the eat a poisonous flower,paralyzing them until later on in the fight"

Each of these tell us about the character in question,gust is carefree,peaceful,and like flowers.The guards are idiots.

Here's another idea.  I'll try to use the system you suggested more or less.

During a battle, if they roll 1 on their hit roll, you tell them about a dream they had.  You don't need to go into any details, (it's fine if you do), just have them remember that they missed and something terrible happened in the dream.  You have them make a History check (don't make them waste an action on it) to remember the dream clearly enough to realize if it was a prophecy or not.  If they succeed in the check, they realize it was just a dream, all is well ,and combat goes on.  If they fail, they either get a save, or you let them make another check (this time it probably should be an action) and if they make an Insight check, they realize the dream wasn't prophetic, and if not, they suffer from the Frightened Condition.

It seems my instructions were unclear.

I'm not (only) talking about crit fails, or (only) talking about attack rolls. It can be any kind of check, especially one where there are range of possible outcomes, where you do exceptionally badly (less than 5 total). It can be fun to narrate just how badly you messed up the check.

It's not meant to be a discussion about whether this is a good idea. It's meant to be a game where we make up some scenarios that would call for a check, and someone else suggests how to narrate a bad outcome on that check.

So once again.

You are led out of the dungeon into an interrogation room. The back of a chair faces a desk with various torture implements. They look heavily used and dull, caked with dried blood and rust. The chair turns around, revealing ... a drow child. But they look somehow familiar. Make an Insight check.

Natural 1 ... +2 is 3.

What is the outcome of the Insight check?

And after you narrate that, add a scenario of your own and call for a check ... which the next person will horribly fail.

1 is a auto fail no matter what, and rolling a twenty is an auto succeed, regardless of the monsters AC or the ability checks DC. Also, regarding the crit fails, I would ask the Players if it was ok with them if I told a little 3 sentence funny story about why they missed and that they hurt themselves, and that I would also do it with the monsters, and they seemed to not care they rolled a 1 and they would also just start cracking up about how stupid their PCs were being.

Quote from pavilionaire >>

 

You are led out of the dungeon into an interrogation room. The back of a chair faces a desk with various torture implements. They look heavily used and dull, caked with dried blood and rust. The chair turns around, revealing ... a drow child. But they look somehow familiar. Make an Insight check.

Natural 1 ... +2 is 3.

 

 You fail to realize this is the same noble's child that you met at the mansion before you were arrested by guards bearing said noble's crests. A child that wanted you to play a game, with very specific rules, which you didn't read.....

Now it's torture time.

NEXT:  You post to the DM's forum where people usually give advice on how they handle things as a DM. What forum might be more appropriate for playing a game of narratives? Make an Investigation check.

Rogue rolls low on an investigate check looking for a trap on a door (that's not trapped). You tell them that they think the door is certainly trapped and they think it's almost certain death should it be opened. 

Ok.  I think I understand what you were trying to accomplish.  I don't really see anything wrong with.  Try it and see what happens.  :-)

A natural 1 for an attack, for me, often results in collateral damage. You swing, you hit a good yard wide of the mark, and split the table in half.

I have had convenient ones, such as a bloodhawk being killed by a crossbow bolt just before a hobgoblin rolled a nat 1 on the attack, meaning they missed the player, connected perfectly with the falling bloodhawk, and knocked it out of the park!

I tend to set a limit of 10 on attacks for narration purposes, which denotes whether the attack would have even hit if the players agility/armour hadn't intervened. It's a good way to vary things, for attacks in both directions. A miss roll of 15 means the blade squeals along the rim of a shield, turned away at the last moment. A miss of a 3 means the opponent scarcely flinches as your blade swings a foot over their head. They look at you in disbelief.

My one thing is that, unless the players have decided to take a risk, there's no repercussions on the game mechanics - no forgetting cantrips or dropping weapons!

I do love the idea of a poor roll indicating to someone that something completely safe is in fact dangerous, I'm stealing that one! "Can I poke it and see if it moves?" "roll investigation" "...2" "you poke it, and you're convinced that you saw it move."

Brilliant!

Something I often do when describing a Critical Miss in combat is to give some kind of narrative reason for it that isn't just, "You slipped on a banana peel, you big dummy". For example, the other night the Ranger had Haste cast on t hem and got a Nat 1 on the extra attack granted... I narrated it as the character not yet being adjusted to just how fast they're moving and they failed to put enough force into the draw of their bowstring and the arrow fell well short.

I usually avoid having a character do collateral damage, unless it's extremely minor like, say... missing a swing on a bandit robbing the tavern and you knock over a tankard of ale instead, but I wouldn't have them miss and then chop a table in half or something that drastically changes the play area, because I feel like stuff like that should be done as full actions.

In general I try to follow the "fail forward" philosophy. I don't like skill checks that act as gates to more story and simply require the party to keep trying until they beat it. Failure or success, the story should keep moving. Failure just means the story moves forward in a more ... interesting and probably less pleasant manner. If I rack my brain and simply cannot think of an interesting way that a failure could somehow add to the story that means the skill check isn't narratively important enough to even require a roll, and therefore I just let them succeed. That said, I will take part in the game in a good faith manner.

Quote from pavilionaire >>

 

You are led out of the dungeon into an interrogation room. The back of a chair faces a desk with various torture implements. They look heavily used and dull, caked with dried blood and rust. The chair turns around, revealing ... a drow child. But they look somehow familiar. Make an Insight check.

Natural 1 ... +2 is 3.

Next person tell us what happens. Then ask for a roll and give the low result to the next person to narrate.

Given my premise, I feel I need to add some context here. I'll assume the child is not what they seem and are in fact much older and or knowledgeable than one would think. A failure in this check needs to move the story forward. Given that an Insight check is being called for, it means that there is something about the child that is not readily apparent AND that the direction of the story depends on whether the characters can glean this information or not. So I'm going to add some background plot as context. This child is actually the Matron of the Menzoberranzan house the party has been tangling with. She has found a way to restore her youth and add another millennium to her rule. What the party doesn't know is that the effect is not yet complete and requires another rare ingredient to be made permanent. If they succeed on the Insight check they pick up on her subdued anxiety and thus know there is something she fears or wants. But since they failed, they only sense her victorious triumph at completing the ritual. They sense no cracks in her overwhelming confidence and thus are more likely to try and find safer avenues of dealing with her like outright capitulating to her demands or maybe just trying to get out of her realm of influence.

Next: The characters have defeated a dungeon guardian and broken into a dusty vault only to be confronted with at least a dozen different artifacts when they were only expecting one. There are various inscriptions in the plaques beneath the artifacts, all in ancient dead languages. The exact number they roll on their Investigation check doesn't matter, they failed. How do you run the result?