Judgement calls vs "railroading"

Manbearcat said:

It keeps things in conflict with interesting, dynamic things occurring and corresponding decisions by the players to be made. Imagine if whatever D&D you're used to playing had an exciting Complications Deck that changed the situation dynamically on the heavy bulk of successful rolls you made. You draw a card and something interesting happens where a new branch on a decision tree emerges, you have to deal with a new problem, decide on a trade-off, pay a cost for a benefit etc. That is the deal.

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As a threshold matter, I'd prefer the complicataion be chosen by the DM rather than by drawing a card. I trust an experienced DM to more reliably produce enjoyable complications suited to the group (and their current mood) than a random choice being picked from a list drawn up in advance. For the same reasons, I rarely use random treasure generation, and also don't use wandering monsters (the closest I come is an ability check to bypass a known threat in an area).

But I also wouldn't want such complications to emerge on the heavy bulk of rolls. Instead I would want the frequency of such complications (as a percentage of die rolls) to closely reflect the choices made by the players. If they find a strategy to achieve their objectives that plays to their strengths (either on the character sheet or in-game resources and advantages), I would expect complications arising from check results to occur less frequently, on average, than for a party running greater risks, either through choice or desperation.

Also, I don't understand how this...

Manbearcat said:

And I don't want to get into subjective vs objective DCs, but yes, like 4e the system's target numbers don't move. 6- and you fail and mark xp. 7-9 (as above). 10+ and you get what you want.

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...and this...

Manbearcat said:

If you just go with the most basic fundamental part (2/3 of all Move outcomes resulting in success with costs/complications/hard bargains/ugly choices)

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...are compatabile with the bolded parts of this...

Manbearcat said:

Finally, the players have a staggering amount of agency in the game. Just to start with your question, yes a player's choices significantly affect both the trajectory of play and their odds of success on any given move:

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...and this...

Manbearcat said:

6) The players choose how they strategically deal with situations and, of course, make Moves at the tactical level which engage their PC build resources that affect the potential outcome of any given roll.

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If the target number to roll on the die/dice is always the same, how can the player's choices or the abilities on the character's sheet affect the probability of success?

The first two quotes suggest that no matter what the player's plan is, the odds of complications are fixed. The second two quotes suggest the odds of complications are not fixed. I'm sure I'm missing some mechanical element that makes those non-contradictory, but I don't know what it might be.

You mentioned the 2/3 was an average, but to be sufficient to resolve the apparent contradiction would require either that 1) making choices or using an ability to decrease the odds of complications on one roll necessarily increases the odds for complications on future rolls, or that 2) the frequency with which a player can change the odds is so limited as to not heavily affect the average. Both options would imply that the players only have tactical agency, not strategic agency, since in either case they lack the ability to affect the long-run average.

My apologies for the plethora of questions. I thought I'd inferred the gist of DW from the earlier discussion, but apparently I was wrong, so now I'm trying to clear up my confusion in arrears.

Xetheral said:

As a threshold matter, I'd prefer the complicataion be chosen by the DM rather than by drawing a card. I trust an experienced DM to more reliably produce enjoyable complications suited to the group (and their current mood) than a random choice being picked from a list drawn up in advance. For the same reasons, I rarely use random treasure generation, and also don't use wandering monsters (the closest I come is an ability check to bypass a known threat in an area).

But I also wouldn't want such complications to emerge on the heavy bulk of rolls. Instead I would want the frequency of such complications (as a percentage of die rolls) to closely reflect the choices made by the players. If they find a strategy to achieve their objectives that plays to their strengths (either on the character sheet or in-game resources and advantages), I would expect complications arising from check results to occur less frequently, on average, than for a party running greater risks, either through choice or desperation.

Also, I don't understand how this...



...and this...



...are compatabile with the bolded parts of this...



...and this...



If the target number to roll on the die/dice is always the same, how can the player's choices or the abilities on the character's sheet affect the probability of success?

The first two quotes suggest that no matter what the player's plan is, the odds of complications are fixed. The second two quotes suggest the odds of complications are not fixed. I'm sure I'm missing some mechanical element that makes those non-contradictory, but I don't know what it might be.

You mentioned the 2/3 was an average, but to be sufficient to resolve the apparent contradiction would require either that 1) making choices or using an ability to decrease the odds of complications on one roll necessarily increases the odds for complications on future rolls, or that 2) the frequency with which a player can change the odds is so limited as to not heavily affect the average. Both options would imply that the players only have tactical agency, not strategic agency, since in either case they lack the ability to affect the long-run average.

My apologies for the plethora of questions. I thought I'd inferred the gist of DW from the earlier discussion, but apparently I was wrong, so now I'm trying to clear up my confusion in arrears.

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Generally, to make an attempt, you roll 2d6 + modifier (stat or other; typically -3 to +3). The modifier used depends on what you're trying to do. Each defined move has a set die roll. Staying within your strengths will tend to better your odds for success. So to achieve a 7-9 result will typically require rolling a 6-8, 5-7, or 4-6 total, depending on modifier, on 2d6 which gives high probabilities of it occurring.

Nagol said:

Typically, to make an attempt, you roll 2d6 + modifier (stat or other; typically -3 to +3). The modifier used depends on what you're trying to do. Each defined move has a set die roll. Staying within your strengths will tend to better your odds for success. So to achieve a 7-9 result will typically require rolling a 6-8, 5-7, or 4-6 total, depending on modifier, on 2d6 which gives high probabilities of it occurring.

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Ahh! That explains it. So 10+ avoiding a complication is (effectively) a DC for the check, rather than a target number for the roll. So players can influence the long-run complication average higher or lower than 2/3, depending on their choices. That makes much more sense. Thank you.

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] , yup, those hard moves you mention are definitely "Make a move that follows (the fiction)" (and I have used them when the fiction warranted). You can still give players a hard choice on a 6- when you deploy Use Their Resources. It just needs to change the situation more punitively than that on a 7-9, because the player is getting none of what they want (rather than some). The fiction could be something like "you can leap to this tiny landing and hold on by your fingertips (thus you're still very much in danger...especially if there are enemies or further environmental hazards about), but you can't hold onto your magic sword at the same time!" So the player can either eat damage/Forceful tag (thus being in a bad spot spatially now...perhaps partially buried and swept down and lower on HPs) or they can lose their magic sword and "be in a spot."

[MENTION=6802765]Xetheral[/MENTION] , I'm posted out and have to exit stage left. I'll try to read your response and get to it tomorrow (most likely).

Xetheral said:

Ahh! That explains it. So 10+ avoiding a complication is (effectively) a DC for the check, rather than a target number for the roll. So players can influence the long-run complication average higher or lower than 2/3, depending on their choices. That makes much more sense. Thank you.

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Real quick here. I tried to convey that 2/3 was the aggregate number of 7-9 outcomes in the course of play (all players making all moves) due to the bell curve nature of the resolution mechanics. However, every individual move will yield considerable player agency toward avoiding that 7-9 result (either with a 10+ or a 6-), its just that the significant majority of sum total move outcomes (all participants together in the course of a session/campaign) will fall into that 7-9 outcome.

pemerton said:

Whether this is good or bad GMing depends, as @Ilbranteloth said, upon what a particular table is looking for in their RPGing. How it compares to "Fronts" in the PbtA sense I'll let @Manbearcat or @Campbell respond to - though my sense, resulting from play moreso than reading, is that there is a big difference between (i) a game in which the causation behind events is murky to the players, and a major goal of play is trying to unravel the GM's "metaplot" (I'm thinking of 2nd ed AD&D play experiences) and (ii) a game in which the rationale for what is happening in the shared fiction is clear (ie the GM is bringing pressure to bear upon the players via interposing obstacles to the PCs' pursuit of their goals) and the major goal as a player is not to work out what is going on but rather to choose which value to realise in circumstances where some sacrifices will have to be made, or costs borne (I'm thinking of DW play experiences).

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Mostly just going to quote here (I've more than used up my original word allowance for the day):

Manbearcat said:

GMs in Dungeon World don't prepare metaplot. They make a map with blanks and prepare 1 or 2, what is called Fronts. These are a collection of threats, and ill omens that are there to provide obstacles and dangers to the PCs. They fill their lives with danger and interpose themselves between the PCs and their goals. You make the very low resolution map (again...lots of blanks to be filled out during play) and the Fronts after character creation.

Everything else is generated during play through the basic play procedures and following the games Agenda and GMing principles.

So at the start of play we had a few adventuring sites/locales including the eerily quiet settlement (World's End Bluff) in the highlands that the PCs were going to.

As far as Fronts go, I had Apocalypse Cult (impulse; to bring about the end of the world) and Otherworldly Aboleths (impulse; to change everything and pave the way for The Mother).

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Manbearcat said:

Furthermore, Ask questions and use the answers is a VERY fundamental part of GMing in DW. This happens not only at the outset of the game, but all throughout play. Just a quick for instance of why this game was about "aliens" is in the player of Saerie's character giving me (a) how she wanted her formative conflict (which take place in the past - we play this out) that hooks her into the fiction to open and (b) a fundamental setting element that ties into her backstory:

2) Scene opener for past conflict:

The slimy, ethereal trail of an aberrant creature, no doubt from the Far Realm, leads down into the deep dark. If I spare a single moment, the ghostly remnant of the creature will fade beyond my means to track. A child's scream. The growls and yips of a feral pack of dogs.

3) My statement about the world and my backstory:

In the ancient times, our seers unlocked a mystery. That unlocked mystery revealed to them several signs from which they were able to predict the collapse of the tangible barrier between the Prime World and that of the Far Realm. I believe I've seen some of these signs come to fruition. I fear very soon that the unfathomable monstrosities of that deranged world will crossover and undo the great civilizations of this world and even move on to the Feywild.

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We play this out. She fleshes out her Alignment/Bonds/relationships/place in the world using the results and this propels us into the current fiction.

The creation and nature of Earthmaw is an example of "in-play" Ask questions and use the answers when the player of Otthor achieved a 10+ on a Spout Lore move (supplemented by the expenditure of a Bag of Books - secured from the records of the ruined settlement of World's End Bluff).

So then, sum told, "going rogue" and introducing whatever-the-hell fiction I want to in DW is "not a thing".

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I hope its clear from the above how the two Fronts and their Impulses came about (and future Fronts and content introduction) as a product of basic Dungeon World set-up and "Ask questions and use their answers." And I hope the implication of a "player-driven" play premise is clear.

pemerton said:

On "framing", I had a lengthy post not too far upthread (here).

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Sure....my point is that framing entails the GM making decisions that can steer the game. Your example of the PC who can shapechange into a falcon being imprisoned....you can frame the situation with there being a window or a small port in the door for the falcon to fly through thereby allowing the PC to escape, or you can frame it so that the door is one continuous piece, meaning the the PC will remain imprisoned and must figure out another means of escape.

pemerton said:

But a map isn't a flowchart, is it? Even a recipe isn't a flowchart, in the sense that you might change the sequence of steps (eg often I don't turn the oven on at the start like the recipe says, because it doesn't take that long to heat up and I want to conserve power).

Whereas an "event-based" flowchart isn't a map. It's a temporal sequence of events - a "plot", if you like.

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I didn't say a map was a flowchart....I said they had similarities, and that both an RPG map and an RPG story can be designed with this idea in mind. I'll ignore the bit about it not being a recipe either since I didn't mention recipe.

If you take an RPG map at it's most basic, it is a series of sites connected by lines, yes?

Manbearcat said:

The nature and breadth of "GM purview" in 4e (a part of GM Agency) is different than in the D&D you're used to. See some of my posts above to folks for more insight into this. DW, taken holistically, puts a lot of constraints (good constraints - they ensure System Agency, maximize Player Agency, alleviate both macro cognitive workload and micro mental overhead for the GM, and work to both facilitate integrity of the fiction and genre coherency) on content introduction.

Furthermore, Ask questions and use the answers is a VERY fundamental part of GMing in DW. This happens not only at the outset of the game, but all throughout play. Just a quick for instance of why this game was about "aliens" is in the player of Saerie's character giving me (a) how she wanted her formative conflict (which take place in the past - we play this out) that hooks her into the fiction to open and (b) a fundamental setting element that ties into her backstory:

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Okay, understood. But then doesn't this mean that the players and the GM are basically determining the story elements ahead of time? Wouldn't this then be a mix of GM Force and Player Force?

And if so, is it that different from my 5E game where my players had as much input into what we played as I did before we began? I've gone to them for a good amount of the content I've used. I would still likely put that content somewhere in the 2/3 GM and 1/3 player ratio, or thereabouts.

How are the two approaches so different in the "play to find out" sense?

Manbearcat said:

See here is where you will find dispute with me. "Tension and drama", all of frequency, potency, inherent dynamism, and breadth of prospects) and can absolutely by systemitized. When I say systemitized I mean both in the machinery (System Agency), in the GMing techniques to be deployed and principled to be followed (GM Agency), and in the players ability to either introduce content/conflict or in their ability to respond to it (Player Agency).

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I don't disagree with this. I think that drama is more a result of the fiction and player buy-in to it and with other narrative elements not unique to RPGs....but I will say that system mechanics can be designed to reinforce those elements. And from your descriptions, I would agree with you that DW and similar games seem to be mechanically designed with player agency in mind.

Manbearcat said:

I understand what you mean here. The problem is the whole "contact with the players" part. The more Player Agency and System Agency a game has, the more difficult it is to be able to create a preemptive flow chart or story tree (even with wildly deviating branches). Furthermore, if you don't have to do it...I mean, if things just flat out work with you having to put that effort in (and you get to "play to find out what happens" as a bonus), why would you put the time in to try to do so?

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Well, I tend not to think it takes as much effort as all that. And I also find it fun. But generally, based on the players I DM for and the campaign we are running, I tend to have a good idea of what they'll do....which way they may take things. They actually don't tend to move very far afield from the story I have in mind. They are invested in it and actively add to it all the time. They veer a bit, and I like that....but they always go back to the main story elements at some point.

So it really isn't that hard to have a decision point, and then kind of loosely come up with the possible choices they would make, and then consider what the outcomes would be. I then jot down some of these outcomes, and then see what they do. If it's something I haven't planned on, then I come up with things on the fly....but that little bit of prep that I did in jotting down ideas is usually enough of a foundation to be able to facilitate a totally unexpected choice or tactic.

This is why I look at my approach as a blend of GM driven and player driven. I see elements of both.

This blog post by John Harper does an excellent job instructing on how to use regular and hard moves appropriately. Key bits are quoted below. All credit goes to John Harper for really understanding this stuff, maybe even better than Vincent Baker. I am posting this because there's been some contention, but also because I think there's some good general GM wisdom in there.

Regular Moves said:

When you make a regular MC move, all three:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It gives the player an opportunity to react.
3. It sets you up for a future harder move.

This means, say what happens but stop before the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

- He swings the chainsaw right at your head. What do you do?
- You sneak into the garage but there's Plover right there, about to notice you any second now. What do you do?
- She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone,' she says. What do you do?

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Hard Moves said:

When you make a hard MC move, both:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It's irrevocable.

This means, say what happens, including the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

- The chainsaw bites into your face, spraying chunks of bloody flesh all over the room. 3-harm and make the harm move!
- Plover sees you and starts yelling like mad. Intruder!
- 'Don't come back here again.' She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home.

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The way this works in practice is that you never just select any old move, or even any old move that could work in the fiction. You really should be trying to follow the fiction as much as possible, not like writing it. Also when it comes time to make a hard move look to your regular or soft moves. Moves should snowball. You just made a threat with your regular move, deliver on it with your hard move. Hard moves should usually come from a fairly obvious place because you are telegraphing them with your soft moves.

Another thing to keep in mind is that how hard of a move you make has nothing to do with severity of the consequences. Hard moves are irrevocable, but not always severe. That comes from the fiction.

Campbell said:

This blog post by John Harper does an excellent job instructing on how to use regular and hard moves appropriately. Key bits are quoted below. All credit goes to John Harper for really understanding this stuff, maybe even better than Vincent Baker. I am posting this because there's been some contention, but also because I think there's some good general GM wisdom in there.

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My observation is the hard moves (your second list) can pretty much be inserted directly to replace the first list without changing the fidelity of the fiction.

• He swings the chainsaw right at your head. The chainsaw bites into your face, spraying chunks of bloody flesh all over the room. 3-harm and make the harm move!
• You sneak into the garage but there's Plover right there and he starts yelling like mad. Intruder!
• She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone. Don't come back here again' she says. She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home.

The primary purpose of the split as originally presented seems to be to give the player a chance to mitigate a failure/partial success. There are times where going to a soft move is narrative appropriate such as


But there is no seeming expectation that the tactic isn't used to softball a situation and present the player with ways to recover.

pemerton said:

One of the interesting things about this thread, for me, has been the distinctions that [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has been drawing between "scene framing" approaches and "MCing/principled GMing" approaches.

To me, at least, that's new - I don't recall seeing it in any of the other threads you referred to.

Another interesting thing has been the discussion - especially between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and me - over the difference between a "static" situation, which reacts to player action declarations for their PCs, and a "GM puts the world into motion" situation. Some posters (eg [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], I thinik also [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]) seem to classify these both as sandboxes and see the salient difference only being whether the world is "boring" or "interesting because living/breathing".

Whereas I feel my discussion with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has brought out quite a different point of contrast, namely, the extent to which one tends to support a style of player-driven RPGing, whereas the other tends to put the GM into the driver's seat.

I recognise that others may not be interested in these matters, but - as the one who started the thread! - I regard them as worthwhile outcomes.

I'm not sure I get this: what is the connection betwee "illusionism" and players not wanting their PCs to die?

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I hadn't finished reading all the posts yet (still haven't). I was just saying that I was getting a very real sense of Deja Vu with a lot of what I had read. A poor attempt at a joke. I'm sure there is some good stuff yet to read!

To answer your second question: In some campaigns I've run, there are certain players who get very upset if their character dies. In some cases, the only real way around that is to fudge die rolls, for example. It's not directly related to Illusionism. I was just pointing out that there are a number of things (like Illusionism and fudging) that some people consider cheating, and for other situations controversial techniques like either of these are almost required.

Personally, I don't have a problem with any of them per se. If the table would prefer that the DM ensure that things stay on track, or that players don't die, or anything else that requires the DM to take more control of the consequences of the game, I can work with that. And I think I can do it in a way that doesn't ruin the illusion and immersion for them.