A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Ovinomancer]

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]
[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]

Sure. You guys are right.

I mean, whether we're talking about politics, or religion, or playstyle preferences, or steak/sushi ....

...or someone saying that maybe it's not a communication issue ...

the real problem is people just don't understand you well enough.

Got it! Carry on. I'm back out of this thread, because I'm too dense to understand y'all.

Wait, I thought this was just a disagreement!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Satyrn]

I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.

And most of them contain words.

BIG WORDS!

On the plus side, the whole discussion can be boiled down to about five lines:

10 Playing a game isn't like real life
20 I never said it was
30 Well, it isn't is what I'm saying
40 Yeah, I know. I never said it was
50 Mother may I loop to 30?

 

[hawkeyefan]

I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.

And most of them contain words.

BIG WORDS!

Yes, but due to repetition, the actual number of unique words is much lower than you'd expect.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Lanefan]

To expand, Legend Lore was/is just a more powerful way to pierce more closely guarded GM secrets. You're still asking the GM to tell you what's in his notes, which may be "nothing".

Spout Lore obliges the GM to tell you something relevant and useful in accordance with what you ask.

The difference is pretty big in use. Legend lore gets gets at more of the GM's fiction, while Spout Lore obliges the GM to create fiction in accordance with your question.

People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.

First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid

Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.

Are we good so far? Excellent.

Now here's what I don't understand: why does it matter where that new information comes from or how it is generated?

Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)

Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*. We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found. The ability/check succeeds and we learn that yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work.

From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?

* - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)

 

[Lanefan]

I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.

And most of them contain words.

BIG WORDS!

If it wasn't for board rules it'd probably contain naughty words too.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What if we remove synonyms for, "Suck it, Trebek."

14 words left.

 

[hawkeyefan]

People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.

First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid

Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.

Are we good so far? Excellent.

Now here's what I don't understand: why does it matter where that new information comes from or how it is generated?

Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)

Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*. We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found. The ability/check succeeds and we learn that yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work.

From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?

* - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)

It's a question of method, not the result. You're right in that the result could be largely the same. Or similar, at least.

But would you say that reading a novel and writing a novel are the same? Because what happens on page 78 is the same for the reader as it is for the author, but the way they got there is certainly different.

Edited to add:

Generally, the DW world is generated not before hand, but rather through play. This may also be true of D&D, depending on how one plays it, but the mechanics of D&D assume that the world is largely predetermined either by the DM, by the DM and players through collaboration, or by some published setting.

With DW, establishing fiction as you go as a result of dice rolls is the standard procedure. The GM has a predetermined set of "moves" that he can make in response to player actions and their level of success. This is how the fiction of the game is built. I'm not an expert, so others may have more to say on this; I've only played DW a few times, and never GMed it myself.

 

[Numidius]

People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.

First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid

Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.

Are we good so far? Excellent.

Now here's what I don't understand: why does it matter where that new information comes from or how it is generated?

Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)

Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*. We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found. The ability/check succeeds and we learn that yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work.

From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?

* - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)

Let me try

Spout Lore is a standard Move (check) on Int, available to any Pc.
On a success the Gm says something interesting and useful on the subject, on a partial something only interesting (is up to the players to make it useful), on a failure it's the Gm's turn (to make something happen against the Pcs, following Gm procedures, moves.... etc).
The info provided by the Gm can come from prep or improv, doesn't matter, it's "true" either way.
The Gm may/should ask the player, in return, how the Pc knows about it (adding new content, background info, to be taken into account for the future).
(The Bard in DW, in particular, has also some Class specific Moves/powers to "know stuff" when she encounters that stuff/Npc for the first time)