Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

[Emberashh]

As an aside, it is interesting to not want to engage with the necessary nuance I'm speaking to. The ability for someone to be dissuaded from something by another person's unshakeable bravery isn't something you can capture with such abstracted mechanics, at least not without a much more robust set of Moves that can better mirror a real interaction rather than a set of narrative beats.

I could easily see Moves that trigger off of Player actions that could provide for these dynamics, and it'd make for a more detailed and nuanced depiction of a scene that can be greater than the sum of its parts.

But at that point we may as well just design the game to be closer to the real thing, and trust that the story will emerge from playing, rather than trying to force it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not at all, given I explicitly made a hypothetical out of it. You can't deny the premise of the hypothetical like that.

The new scene in the hypothetical game scenario =/= same scene from the film. You can't judge the hypothetical by making a non-sequitur about the movie.

And yet I have.

I'm the Bears player and I hadn't decided. I fundamentally couldn't until I actually threatened the dude and saw his reaction. I can't do that if the Move is already engaged. I don't have a choice in the matter once the Move is in process, as the Move itself explicitly says.

If you’ve not decided yet, then you don’t Go Aggro. You’d ignore the “Oblige him!” order from Aldo and dither about what to do, and eventually maybe decide on what to do. I don't expect that scene to be an example of exciting roleplaying.

If I was playing the Bear, I’d have already decided, and I’d Go Aggro. And then the scene would play out as it did.

Again, without stepping out of the scene and negotiating some other way to resolve the scene, which as said is just as undesirable, my hypothetical does not work in AW.

Sure it does. You simply don’t trigger the Go Aggro move.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If someone draws their weapon and puts it to a target’s throat for a Charisma (Intimidate) check and then fails the roll, can the DM have the blade slip and kill the target?

I wouldn't consider that to be a good adjudication of the situation. I am also unsure of the relevance of this question.

 

[Emberashh]

And yet I have.

Well, then I can no longer take you seriously and won't be.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, you need to play these games, because NOTHING I have played in almost 50 years of RPG play experience is more visceral or directly to the point and in character than AW, nothing. You are pontificating about something you clearly have not experienced! No other game, aside from some clearly derived by the application of the same design philosophy delivers the same raw stream of consciousness in character play. This sort of play is, IMHO, not even close to approachable by the techniques you espouse, at least in games I've experienced. 4e and a few others do get close, and have their own virtues, but if your objection to AW and PbtA as a general design pattern is that it cannot deliver visceral, convincing, in-character play, you are simply in error.

I might have played AW once a long time ago, but I don't really have recollections of it. (Maybe we just created the characters and never played, who knows. )

I have however played Blades in the Dark, and there my experience was that it was harder to stay in-character, and not shift constantly to the writer's room stance, due the decision making process of the character and the player not being in synch. Other players reported similar experiences, and we communally decided to pay more attention to staying in character. I reported this earlier here, and several people were rather incredulous, but it happened and to me it isn't even unclear why it happened.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It appears Emberash has blocked me before I could respond to his last reply to me.

To clarify for anyone reading along, the problem is entirely of his own interpretation of the rules. He’s trying to make a move that doesn’t really apply based on the situation and then saying that move removes agency. But the problem doesn’t exist if an appropriate move is used.

It’s that simple.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

OK, how about the situation where you are not sure you will or will not go ahead and blow his brains out, but you drew and pointed the gun at his head anyway? It turns out, for whatever reasons, it goes off, and the inevitable ugliness ensues. How does your system handle this?

I generally hate fumble mechanics and this is seems like that. Though this happening would still be less annoying than forcing the predestined decision to pull the trigger on the character.

You see, all you are going to achieve is constructing a narrative where you are always in total, calm, rational control of the situation. You can't go anywhere else, and that's DEFINITELY not where AW wants to go! It just won't work within the agenda of that game, and your approach will not feel authentic (take this from someone who's actually dealt with people pointing guns at them). Now, it may be a perfectly valid approach for 'test of skill' AD&D (or 5e played that way). It just isn't a valid approach for AW and 'test of skill' is not going to produce highly intense in-character RP that FEELS realistic like AW does. I mean, AW is not perfect, though it may be as close as we can get with TTRPG, to this sort of experience, but it has advantages over classic/Trad approaches. Again, that won't necessarily meet your goals, but be clear what those are!

So I am really not talking about some 007-like cool and calculated decision making about combat moves. I want highly intense RP; I am talking about the player's agency to decide their character's response to the situation as it unfolds. Like the character might be pretty damn ready to commit violence, but then the person being threatened says something that makes them change their mind. (Or, not! That's for the player to decide at that moment.) You know, the Martha moment, except not done badly.

 

[kenada]

(We would)

I don't like negotiation period. Doesn't matter the game.

Fair enough. We might, but I don’t think the overall conversation would be the same or would have started the same way. The key objection seems to be how multiple steps in the conflict are being resolved together rather than individually as might be done in a task-oriented approach.

I'm referring to the player's roll on part of a Move controlling other characters. If the Move is percieved as a direct action on part of the player, then it produces an aesthetic issue that conflicts with idea that the action is a reaction.

Oh, okay. I see how the analogy breaks down. Reactions supplement or respond to the trigger while actions resolve what triggered them. This can cause aesthetic problems should players think of them as reactions when they’re functionally not behaving that way.

That issue dissapears the more the theme of the Move is shifted away from being a task, which you can do willingly with buy in or by playing in a particular way, such as having the GM do all of the Moves, or by just calling for Moves because you want the Outcomes, rather than trying to make the triggers happen organically through Improv.

As noted previously, I don’t like how moves play at the table, but I don’t feel like that’s an issue with the game or something that needs fixing. If someone were to ask me how I felt about it, I’d call it a “me” issue.

Mechanics are what produce gameplay. Genre Emulation is a specific kind of gameplay. Ergo, genre emulation mechanics contribute to creating that kind of gameplay.

Let’s step back for a moment and clarify what we are discussing. When I say “moves”, I mean the structure described in the advanced chapter at the end of Apocalypse World in the form of “when _, then _”. My position is this structure is not inherently a genre emulation mechanic. Can it be used to reinforce genre? Sure. Must it be used that way? I would say, “no.” Defy Danger in Dungeon World and Stonetop is an example of a move that’s thematically pretty neutral.

Baker touches on genre in the PbtA blog series I linked in post #122. When he designs a game, it’s the first thing he decides, and that informs the subsequent decisions he makes. It also seems to be used pretty loosely. He provides a worked example of his process at the end of part 2.

 

[kenada]

I wouldn't consider that to be a good adjudication of the situation. I am also unsure of the relevance of this question.

If it seemed like a gotcha question, then I apologize. I was trying to get at the heart of the issue while avoiding contention over particulars of how Apocalypse World works. I think your answer is perfectly fine. I also think it’s interesting that at least some here would be okay with that result. I’m not sure how I would answer. It feels too extreme for just the task at hand, but I can see its being a possible result on a nat-1 (assuming that nat-1s have been house-ruled to mean something like critical failure or worse).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It appears Emberash has blocked me before I could respond to his last reply to me.

To clarify for anyone reading along, the problem is entirely of his own interpretation of the rules. He’s trying to make a move that doesn’t really apply based on the situation and then saying that move removes agency. But the problem doesn’t exist if an appropriate move is used.

It’s that simple.

So you are saying that Go Aggro is appropriate move only in situations where the character is committed to following through with violence regardless of what happens? Because if that's the case, then I think that is an utterly useless move, as that is practically never the situation. There always could hypothetically be something that would recontextualise the situation, and what would be sufficient for that specific character we don't know until we actually get there.