D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Micah Sweet]

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).

That sounds like, "the rules don't really matter because you can ignore them and they'll happen anyway!" That's fine, I guess, but not really a ringing endorsement to play the game.

 

[Lanefan]

What other ideas do you have in mind? I know of a few games that I've played that have a better system than Hit Points.

Damage reduction/prevention from armour doesn't work well as it makes magical damage (and other damage that bypasses armour) too powerful relative to melee damage, which never gets that bypass.

Non-numerical narration-only damage or injury doesn't work well as it's too open to (mis-)interpretation, and therefore arguments. Quantifying it somehow is IMO essential.

Wound-Vitality points as used in the Star Wars game doesn't work as too many things bypass Vitality and go straight to Wounds (though a variant on this is a clear improvement over the current straight-HP system if one wants lingering-injury rules or a better-defined split between meat and fatigue).

What else is there?

 

[Lanefan]

But it was only for a brief time--a week or two, maybe three.

Unless he said something about the original GM stepping down for good and I missed it.

Yes, the latest update said the original DM has now bailed completely.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That sounds like, "the rules don't really matter because you can ignore them and they'll happen anyway!" That's fine, I guess, but not really a ringing endorsement to play the game.

I mean, you have said at times you're familiar with some PbtA games. I have to imagine you know what I'm talking about, at least in a general way. GM describes a scene, a player states their character takes an action, GM looks at it, says to herself, "Well, that isn't really triggering a move, not even Defy Danger, its just doing stuff." That involves RULES, an evaluation of the triggers of, at least theoretically, every possible move that character has access to (obviously most will be ruled out trivially). Alternatively, the GM looks at it and says "Yeah, this is dangerous, you're Defy Danger move is triggered, roll +DEX." I don't see how the 'rules don't really matter' here, but at the same time the player didn't have to think about moves, the GM did. GMs are not players, even in D&D they're sorting out rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Damage reduction/prevention from armour doesn't work well as it makes magical damage (and other damage that bypasses armour) too powerful relative to melee damage, which never gets that bypass.

Non-numerical narration-only damage or injury doesn't work well as it's too open to (mis-)interpretation, and therefore arguments. Quantifying it somehow is IMO essential.

Wound-Vitality points as used in the Star Wars game doesn't work as too many things bypass Vitality and go straight to Wounds (though a variant on this is a clear improvement over the current straight-HP system if one wants lingering-injury rules or a better-defined split between meat and fatigue).

What else is there?

There have, historically, been a LOT of systems. There's Traveller attribute damage (you take damage against your STR, END, and DEX attributes, with the player deciding which order they're lost in). If you lose all of one attribute you are moderately wounded, 2 you are severely wounded, 3 you die. Healing is usually a high tech thing, but there are healing rules. Blades in the Dark has stress, which is used up as a currency, and possibly lost for various reasons, and harm, which comes in 4 levels. Levels 1 and 2 have 2 slots each, levels 3 and 4 only 1 each. If a level is full, the injury goes up to the next higher level of slot. Level 4 is dead, a level 3 puts you out of action. Level 2 reduces your dice pool, level 1 your effect.

Those are 2 systems that both work OK. I don't know that they're less abstract than hit points though.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

See, this is one of those things that's a bit hard to grasp--it's taking me a while as well. But this is why the games all say, "to do it, you have to do it." Moves aren't actions, skills, abilities, feats, or anything else like that. A move is simply a way to move the story along.

And quite frankly, having to figure out what skill or feat or class ability you're going to use in a tradgame like D&D is a requirement to figure out what your proposed action counts as. As someone else said, you're just so used to it, you've internalized it. I can't tell you how many times even the most experienced gamers at my table have had to look at their D&D sheets to remember if they had such-and-such an ability.

Example: say that the bad guys are closing in and one of the players says, "We gotta get out of here; where's the exit?"

In D&D, the DM might say "it's over there, but you think you hear growling from that direction," or they might say "roll Wisdom (Perception)," if the exit isn't immediately obvious.

In MotW, the Keeper might say "it's over there, but you think you hear growling from that direction" (which happens to be the Keeper's Reveal Future Badness move), or they might say "it sounds like you're trying to Read A Bad Situation. Roll +Sharp," if the exit isn't immediately obvious.

Same thing.

And if there's no move that stands out as the obvious choice, then there are basically two options: One, you can always have the player Act Under Pressure if there is, in fact, something putting pressure on them (for instance, having to get out of the area before whatever was growling comes after them); and two, you simply don't have them roll, especially if there's no pressure (such as if they go for the obvious exit and you know the monsters aren't actually there to attack them).

The PC does what they wanted to do, and you as the GM can put a cost there, if you like, in the form of the GM moves. For instance, if the PCs want to search the room, then in DW there's the Discern Realities move, which, if successfully rolled, allows you to find treasure. But if there's nothing standing in the way of them finding the treasure but time, you could also just say "You can search the room thoroughly, but it'll take some time to do so, and the noise you make while doing so is likely to draw attention. What do you do?" and this would likely be "Reveal Unwelcome Truth" or possibly "Show Signs Of An Approaching Threat." (I haven't read enough DW to know.)

That's it. You don't actually pick your move. You don't examine your sheet looking for what best fits the action you want to do. You just talk it out. Really, the only reason GM moves even exist is to help out newbies.

 

[Faolyn]

Yes, the latest update said the original DM has now bailed completely.

I guess he didn't want to deal with murderhoboes either!

 

[pemerton]

You just missed the whole point of the post you responded to. In the real world and in D&D, nothing happens is perfectly legitimate. You're also wrong when it comes to the LOTR.

You've been rebutted on LotR.

As far as "nothing happens" being perfectly legitimate. Well, that's a thing that happens in real life, legitimacy be damned!

To the extent that it's a legitimate GM move in D&D, that helps create problems like the one described in the OP. Because "nothing happens" leaves the players fishing around for options and ways to make play move forward, and one of those ways - in D&D - is to engage violently with others.

That's why I'm saying DW has a structure of play that makes the OP less likely.

Now you're not keen on DW - that's fine. But doesn't have any bearing on what I'm saying.

 

[pemerton]

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.

How do you see applying "if you do it, you do it" as any different from (eg) in D&D working out that an ability check or attack roll or saving throw is required?

 

[pemerton]

Let's say the PCs see a (non-magical, non-living) statue and decide to talk to it. In both a logical and fictional sense, nothing would happen and this clearly wouldn't trigger a move. What would you, as a Dungeon World GM, then do. In my mind, unless there was a logical and in-fiction reason for the PCs talking to cause a different problem (attracting a monster, activating a sound-based trap), saying "nothing happens, what would you do?" makes sense.

I would probably being by asking questions - "Why are you talking to the statute?" "What are you expecting it to say?" Depending on answers to that, we might establish that really there is an attempt to Discern Realities, or a need to Spout Lore.

But if the player is just having their PC speak to the statute, and then looking to me as GM to see what happens next, then I do my job - which is to make a move, probably a soft one. "While you stand around talking to the inanimate statute, you hear the sound of drums ring out from the deeps." That might work in a dungeon context.

Or "While you stand around talking to the inanimate statute, a villager - you think her name is Nell - comes up to you, wondering what you're doing." That might work if the statute is on the village fountain.

These are contexts where fronts can help, because the prep gives the GM something interesting to say.

EDIT: I was pretty soundly ninja'd by @FrozenNorth.