D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[AbdulAlhazred]

The freedom for both GMs and players to declare what they want to do and do it, without any requirement to figure out what "move" your proposed action counts as. The freedom to not concern yourself with following narrative beats and pay-offs, but rather simply to live in an imagined world and make choices.

Players never even need to think about moves! Players literally never say "I'm making move X" in DW or any PbtA that I know of. The player, in the voice of the character, describes what he or she DOES. "I advance with my sword at the ready and engage the goblin!" "I leap over the chasm!" "I hand the maiden the flowers I picked in the garden." Maybe its a 'move', and maybe it isn't! Who cares? I mean, sure, usually players have a pretty good idea what move they might trigger when they take an action, but they do not really need to worry about that.

And I'm not sure what you mean by 'narrative beats and pay-offs' either. At least in DW you have bonds, so yes, you might have one that you will get an XP point for if you 'save the halfling' or something. You picked the bond! If you don't want to save the halfling, don't pick the bond. And its not a big deal, you can just ignore those bonds, either the GM will notice them and pick on them, or at the end of some session you'll realize you fulfilled it and get your XP. Nothing to worry about. No more so than a 5e player thinking about if he can just kill that hell hound he'll get 10,000XP (or whatever it is).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In what way would opening a door with a 7+ lead to a tentacle-monster attack while opening the same door with a 10+ wouldn't? Where's the in-universe justification for that?

If you remember the scene, Gandalf had great difficulty figuring out the riddle, and the party spent quite an extended period of time near the pond. Had he walked right up to the door and instantly realized what the password was (10+) the party would have passed through the gates before the tentacle monster had time to appear. Honestly, it would have just been a creepy pond, the tentacle monster only exists (in the game version) BECAUSE there's a need to create a consequence for Gandalf's failure. That consequence was interesting too! I mean, it was kind of a wash plot-wise, but it did foreshadow the greater monster lurking within Moria.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Technically none of them exist so they aren't constrained by any game rules. So that's completely irrelevant to the conversation and is dodging the question. If you can't have an honest discussion about how this might work for an adventuring party in the game don't bother answering.

If there were a scene in a D&D game where there's a guardian at the gate and it takes a while for the party to figure out the puzzle, it's pretty straightforward. The monster has it's own actions and motivations. Perhaps the DM decided that the group was on a secret timer of how long it takes the tentacle monster to wake up. In addition the group failed perception checks to notice the ripples in the water. The tentacle monster gets a surprise round and attacks whatever PC they want. There's no need for anyone in the group to fail a move.

In DW, Gandalf failed their check but Frodo succeeds. But it's not Gandalf that gets attacked, it's Frodo. That seems to be contrary to my understanding of the way the game works.

I would just respond that it is the PARTY. Its a party, they failed to open a door, a monster attacked them. It happened to attack the one nearest to the water, or the one holding the super evil artifact it wants, or something (ask JRRT). It all makes perfectly good sense!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In other words, in D&D monsters, PCs, NPCs all act independently. In DW things only happen in response to character moves. Right? Could Pippin or Merry avoided attacks by the tentacle monster by just sitting the fight out?

No, because their inaction is giving the GM a golden opportunity which is permission to make a hard move! You can't defeat DW by this sort of 'logical attack', its driven largely by the fiction, and once something happens, you go back to the fiction. So maybe Merry and Pippin can hide and either DD away the threat to themselves, or delay the inevitable. But then they're out there in the wilderness, with only limited provisions, several weeks travel from the nearest safety, if they can find it. There are wargs and cremain patrolling, they are VERY likely to end up in a premature version of where they DID end up later, in a sack being brought back to Isengard by some Uruks. My point being, the game goes on, always on, from the door where it began.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah. A big part of Dungeon World that turned me off the most was how it leaned pretty heavily on the OSR aesthetics. It was really not what I was looking for, but I'm glad that it exists for the people who were looking for exactly that.



I'll have to check that out at some point.

I think you CAN play it like its "what if B/X was a PbtA" and get a sort of old school dungeon crawl transcript out of play. OTOH you can play it a lot more like a narrativist 4e and just use the trappings of Basic as set dressing. I mean, if you don't worry too much about light and only ask for rations when the rules say so (camping and journeys) and don't constantly make "and your gear broke/got lost" moves all the time, then its quite possible to run it as almost high fantasy.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which seems a bit odd, given that the bolded is also the exact function of a script in a play or movie.

I don't think your games are (or are intended to be) scripted in the least. That said, if everyone's input is that tightly constrained how can any of the participants say or do something unexpected, or with unexpected timing?

Well, what I mean is, DW says that the GM will do something (make a 'GM Move') when a player provides a 'golden opportunity' (basically ignores some potential danger completely). This is going to be a hard move, so its going to be irreversible and create a problem or use up a resource, or something similar. As for HOW, the GM starts with the fiction and ends with the fiction, makes a move that follows from the fiction, and never says the name of the move. She also addresses the characters, not the players. Some of the other principles will probably also apply, but here the GM often has leeway. She could reveal some unwelcome truth (you just lost all your rations). She could split the party (the rope breaks, Torg and Emillia are left in the boat, which immediately moves away in the swift current). Etc.

So, its not a SCRIPT, but it is a pretty well-specified set of instructions and parameters. What a game like DW (almost) never specifies is what exactly the fiction is that is going to happen, and exactly what sorts of things that fiction implies. DW tells you to reveal a threat perhaps, but its entirely up to you as to what that is, commensurate with the rest of what's been depicted.

 

[Saracenus]

It's always weird to take over a game. Their DM was of the "are you sure you want to do that" question type. So their DM can control the game and the 'wild' players. I don't do that.

I think having a quick session zero (15 to 30 min.) to calibrate playstyles and expectations would be in order then. It sounds like a clash of gaming cultures is at the heart of this. They were used to one style of DMing and yours is not the same.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So here's my issue with some of this. Let's call the OP's scenario specifically designed to end in TPK a "rocks fall everyone dies" moment. It doesn't have to be this specific scenario, but any scenario where TPK is effectively guaranteed.

I would never run a rocks fall everyone dies scenario. I don't see the point, I'd just talk to the players about the issues I have and we'd figure things out. However, in DW people have said that a rocks fall everyone dies scenario could not happen. Period, full stop. But if the tentacle monster can attack multiple people because the fiction demands it, why can't the fiction demand that rocks fall everyone dies? If the fiction demands that the tentacle monster attacks everyone, couldn't it also demand that each tentacle does enough damage to kill the characters?

I understand that wouldn't be in the spirit of the game, I don't think rocks fall everyone dies is in the spirit of any RPG. I just don't see how the rules can stop the DM or GM from pulling out enough rocks to end up with the same result.

I doubt it is really 'in the spirit' of any RPG either.

However, it is NOT precluded in Dungeon World, it is simply the final end state of a lot of terrible luck, maybe some bad play, or maybe even of some great and inspired play! The GM frames the scene, the hamlet of Thorp is in great peril, an ice flow has created a temporary dam and the characters, standing on the shoulder of the nearby mountain, can see that a vast accumulation of icy water will inevitably crash down on the villagers below, who seem to be ignorant of the danger... Hey, you decide, how brave are you? You want to risk your life to save those people? Go for it. Not all heroes live to tell their tale, and its perfectly, excellently, appropriate that a player commit their character to the whim of the dice gods (as well as whatever good planning and play they can muster) to see which way it goes. Play to Find Out.

Very simple, nothing is precluded, except "oh, you failed your perception check, as you blunder down the mountain a giant wall of icy water and rock obliterates you all." THAT is 100% precluded by DW. Yes, its probably 'unrealistic' that such anticlimactic and unfun possibilities are excluded, but we're here to have fun playing a game, not to wonder why the GM was homicidal enough to set up this situation! Principled rocks fall, unprincipled ones we skip in the name of fun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see it very often. I tend to bring out emotions in people.

Better than knives and hand guns

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In response to someone's concerns about not having the freedom to say things in a manner unprescribed, you said:

But then a page or two later we got this:


Any chance you two can get your story straight here?

There is no contradiction.

You are free to declare whatever you want to do. That happens before any moves are triggered. It must, by definition; that's why we call it "triggering" a move. The fiction chugs along until it happens to hitch upon a move, which you then resolve, and return to the fiction. Hence, "Begin and end with the fiction." The trigger phrases for moves should thus be clear and fairly straightforward (though, often, not necessarily specific; "acting despite an imminent threat" is clear, but covers an enormous variety of situations.)

As soon as a move has been triggered, the rules tell you what to say and how to say it in order to resolve whatever is ambiguous about the situation. So, for example, Hack & Slash is the move for when you want to attack something in melee. (If you're using some kind of ranged weapon, that would be Volley instead.) So you can describe all the things you want to do to prepare, and once you describe your attack, that's Hack & Slash--it is not clear whether your attack will succeed or fail, and there are interesting consequences for either result. You follow the instructions for the Hack & Slash move so you can find out how things change (good, bad, or both), and then once that's done, you return to a focus on the fiction and things continue as they had been. Combat, obviously, tends to trigger moves a lot--but it's entirely possible to go an entire session without rolling dice, or even having moves occur at all.

@Micah Sweet described Dungeon World play as, essentially, picking moves from a menu and then trying to find some way to make them happen. That is exactly the opposite of how DW is supposed to be played. You are supposed to just say whatever you do, or ask questions if you don't know what you want to do. As long as whatever you've decided to do makes sense (which will be determined by general table agreement), it happens--unless it happens to be the case that what you've decided to do triggers a move.

Hence: When you're operating with just the fiction, the only limit is what people agree makes sense. When you're using the moves, they tell you exactly what you need to do, because that's the point. You don't know what will happen, because you want to not know what will happen, and the moves give the structure necessary to resolve that desired ambiguity successfully. Once it's resolved, you go back to doing whatever makes sense for you to do, with the express purpose of some things (like "embrace the fantastic" and "be a fan of the characters") to guide the group toward being open and enthusiastic about what makes sense--while recognizing that that actual line will vary from one group to another.