D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Faolyn]

Well, a different set of rules, especially with a narrative bent to them (I really don't like anything having to do with FATE-like statements on the character sheet) leads me to just not see any reason to bother with the system in a fantasy setting, where I'm just a lot more comfortable with a D&D-style game. In fact, the only game I've ever considered that has some of those elements is Star Trek Adventures, and that's only because I really like Star Trek.

<shrug> I like trying new things. If you like it in Star Trek, you might like it with a different genre as well.

Then why are the moves on your character sheet at all, if you're not supposed to think about them?

So you don't have to keep looking them up in the core book.

 

[pemerton]

The rules in PBtA are designed to facilitate telling a story together, and include specific restrictions on when actions can be taken, based it seems largely on narrative beats.

The rules in AW aren't designed to facilitate telling a story together. They're designed to ensure that, even though no one at the table is telling a story, the shared fiction that is created will have the basic shape of a fiction - rising action, crisis/climax, characters whose lives are transformed by the events they undergo, etc.

To have devised a way of generating such a fiction although no one at the table has to tell a story or even worry about telling one is the great technical achievement of AW.

Also, there are no restrictions in AW on when actions can be taken. There are rules that tell the GM when to say things and what sorts of things to say. Moldvay Basic has those rules too (though they're different ones: roughly speaking, the rule is to tell the players about the dungeon in response to the players declaring actions for their PCs that would reveal information about it). Gygax in his PHB assumes that GMs are working under similar sorts of rules, though his DMG then moves on to a different model of GMing which I think is closer to yours.

 

[Olrox17]

As I have said, it would not have mattered. I could have done the parent/teacher/cop thing where before the game I told the players "we need to talk". They would immediately get hostile and violent and defensive. And it would go down hill from there.

Yeah, I’ve got this nagging feeling this is a you problem, not a they problem.
Nothing personal, but judging merely from your posts in this thread, you might have rolled a 3 for Charisma IRL.
I don’t think one can really be a good DM without some modicum of empathy, and the ability to communicate and compromise, and, well, frankly it looks like you’re bragging about being the opposite of that. If you’re actually finding players that enjoy your style, good I guess, but you shouldn’t be springing it on people that clearly don’t.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

One of those ways. Not the only way.

Particularly when there's no others around, e.g. when the party is stuck at a door they can't open or a cliff they can't climb and nothing else is happening. At times like that I'd say it's on the players to move things forward by sooner or later having their characters do something different, such as in these examples try going in a different direction.

Also, what's stopping the players in a DW game from suddenly deciding to have their escaping characters drop the hammer on their guards?

 

[pemerton]

The DW roll has nothing to do with wandering monsters, while the wandering monster roll is there for that specific purpose. The effect doesn't follow from why the player made the roll.

This makes no sense. The DW roll clearly does have something to do with wandering monsters, because one possible consequence of the roll is that the GM narrates a monster! And the reason the player makes the roll is that the rules of the game call for it, because the rules have established that this sort of thing is the sort of thing on which dramatic outcomes might turn, such as monsters turning up!

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.

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.

Huh? The rules are fundamental. But the player just declares actions. They don't need to worry about whether or not a move is triggered. The GM will take care of that, and call for the dice roll if it's required. If no move is triggered, then the GM will do their job, which is to make a move - by default a soft one, but a hard one if the players have handed the GM an opportunity on a plate.

Then why are the moves on your character sheet at all, if you're not supposed to think about them?

I don't know what character sheet you were using. In AW, the basic moves aren't on the playbooks (at least the versions I got with my copy). As @AbdulAlhazred says, nothing stops you thinking about moves if you want to. But thinking about moves is not a player's job. As AW says (p 12) that "it’s your job as MC" to keep track of the relationship between fiction and moves.

To me, it sounds as if you have made the error of assuming that every action a player declares for their PC must be a player-side move. That's not correct. The player-side moves aren't a list of things players can do. They're a list of rules for when dice must be rolled. If they're not triggered, then the conversation continues, with the GM making moves as the rules dictate.

 

[Lanefan]

Why does the GM rolling a 6 on a wandering monster check mean that six Orcs have just turned the corner into the corridor, but rolling a 5 or less means that they haven't. Where's the in-universe justification for that?

In many published adventures there really isn't much if any in-fiction justification for the wandering monsters they expect a DM to use, which is why I tend to largely ditch wandering monsters unless there is a good justification for their presence.

For example, if the adventure is set in an Orcish stronghold with a population of many dozens then occasionally bumping into a few Orcs makes perfect sense. Or if somewhere in the dungeon there's a spawner that every so often churns out three ghouls at a time, then meeting groups of ghouls makes perfect sense until-unless the spawner is shut down, after which there'll still be some ghouls wandering around but the frequency of meeting them should steadily become lower.

But if the same module lists, say, giant ants as a wandering monster in those locations, I won't use them; the Orcs would long since have wiped the ants out at source (or harnessed them as a food supply, whatever) and the ghouls would likely take care of any ants they met long before they got to the PCs (though just for kicks and variety I might toss in a giant-ant-ghoul or two).

 

[Lanefan]

The rules in AW aren't designed to facilitate telling a story together. They're designed to ensure that, even though no one at the table is telling a story, the shared fiction that is created will have the basic shape of a fiction - rising action, crisis/climax, characters whose lives are transformed by the events they undergo, etc.

To have devised a way of generating such a fiction although no one at the table has to tell a story or even worry about telling one is the great technical achievement of AW.

I guess I'm looking at it through the lens of taking one person (the DM) who maybe wants to tell or create a story or at least has one in mind as a fallback and expanding it to five* people who each have their own story in mind (the DM plus four* players), and wondering how this can be or remain functional in the long term.

Even in full-sandbox no-plot D&D a story still ends up emerging - it just doesn't often become obvious until looked at in hindsight - and if there's a story then it naturally follows there's an author (or several); stories don't write themselves.

* - or however many there may be at the table.

Also, there are no restrictions in AW on when actions can be taken.

Outside of combat, I'd say the same is true of D&D.

 

[pemerton]

I guess I'm looking at it through the lens of taking one person (the DM) who maybe wants to tell or create a story or at least has one in mind as a fallback and expanding it to five* people who each have their own story in mind (the DM plus four* players), and wondering how this can be or remain functional in the long term.

Well, here are two possibilities (there may be others)

(1) No one at the table wants to create or tell a story.

(2) Everyone at the table is able to integrate their story conceptions.

Given that thousands of people the world over are playing functional games of AW and DW, somehow they are managing to pull it off!

(The rules state (1). Some people, eg I believe @EzekielRaiden though I could be wrong, prefer (2).)

Even in full-sandbox no-plot D&D a story still ends up emerging

Really? With rising action, and crisis and climax, and characters whose lives are changed? I mean, just upthread you've explained how - unlike in stories - D&D may have rafts of "nothing happens".

I mean, the D&D stuff can be edited into a story, by cutting out all the stuff that is not part of a story. The goal of AW is that play will actually generate a story, without anyone needing to set out to write one. Not that it will generate a fiction which can be edited into a story. The latter would not be any sort of technical achievement at all, given that kids playing playground games can achieve that.

Outside of combat, I'd say the same is true of D&D.

And? I was responding to a post that said that, in DW, action declarations are constrained.

 

[FrozenNorth]

You dodged a simple question with a non-answer. Then added another that has to stretch the fiction into something that did not happen. I'm done.

Seems like you are in the minority. Three people who actually play DW felt that my description of a PbtA game was sufficiently accurate that they upvoted it.

You, who do not, felt it didn’t follow the fiction. But even if you discount my example, several other posters have given examples of how that scene could have happened in PbtA games.

 

[Oofta]

Really? You say this because you've surveyed all the games in the world?

When I play BW it's not occasionally a bit dull. When I play Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights and In A Wicked Age it's not occasionally a bit dull. When I play Prince Valiant, it's not occasionally a bit dull.

When I play Classic Traveller it's occasionally a bit dull, most often because Traveller handles wealth and expenditure through tracking every credit, which is tedious. As I've often posted, it would be better with a BW-style Resources/Wealth system.

One point of the structure of play in DW is to make sure that play avoids being dull.

If you're playing with a group of dull people, or people who aren't good at aspects of the game that make it not dull, the game will be dull. No rules will ever change that.