Just a quick post for clarification because it seems like we're still misfiring on the difference between "objective" and "subjective" when it comes to TTRPG resolution mechanics:
Subjective:
1) 4e DMG2 page 63
Ruined Wall
This sagging wall is ready to fall over with just the right application of force.
Standard Action
Requirement: You must be adjacent to the wall.
Check: Athletics check (hard DC) to topple the wall.
Success: The wall collapses.
Target: Each creature in a close blast 3 in the direction the wall fell
Attack: Level + 3 vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d10 + one-half level damage, and the target is knocked prone.
Miss: Half damage.
Effect: The space the wall covered and the area of the blast become difficult terrain.
Notice how this mechanically scales with the heroes (from DC to attack, to damage). The fiction of this wall will be reskinned as you move through the tiers to coincide with the sort of battlefield objects that heroes will be encountering as the tiers progress. Notice that it can (and has in one of my 4e games) easily be entirely refluffed as a tree!
2) Skill Challenge Framing, Action Declaration, and Resolution:
GM
Magic, arrows, poisonous stingers, blasts of frost breath, edged weapons, fell teeth and claws. Even a "god" from an alien dimension has its limits.
The tentacle is torn asunder, releasing Otthor. The core is shredded to ribbons. A mental wave washes through your collective minds. It is the keening death knell of The Blood Queen. Almost instantaneously, her colossal form is swallowed by the singularity from whence she came. Leaving Otthor in free fall. <he survives via a Defy Danger move to grasp a Blizzard Dragon ally's tail> Leaving a legacy of inexhaustible green haze that spills over the edge of the mountain...like a great creeping doom of inevitability...down toward the fleeing refugees...down upon civilization...intent on ruin.
Is this what victory looks like?
Otthor
Crestfallen at our suffered losses, I walk to Saerie and embrace her. "I'm so sorry my friend." Exhausted and aghast, I just look down the mountain at the green haze corrupting everything it touches. I don't know what we can do about it. Perhaps we just have to try to beat that malevolent fog down and evacuate the surrounding areas. All I do know is that we cannot rest or tarry, so as soon as Saerie tells me she is ready to set out, I'll be right behind her.
Saerie
I look at my dear friend with eyes welled with tears and intense consolation. I embrace him and quietly say "You need be sorry for nothing. We will avenge them." I pull him back to arms length and stare intently into his eyes. "Every aberration we slay will be in their name." I turn and rush to the cliff edge to behold the perilous journey that lies before us.
GM
Thinking of making a mad dash/climb down the treacherous mountainside in order to save the refugees? That would be a feat only the epic of the most epic are capable of, no doubt. It would take normal mountaineers a staged, 2-day trip to get down this precarious peak, reach the trail and high-tail it to the refugees before they are overcome (by aberrations or the mutagenic mist itself).
Mechanics
[sblock]Level + 3 (24), Complexity 2 SC. 6:3, 1 H DC. E = 21, M = 28, H = 37. As always, Surge loss on any failure.[/sblock]
There is a point where the mountain becomes "relatively hikable". However, that is a few hundred meters down a sheer, icy face that would give the willies to even the most adept climbers of the world. But that is the quickest way down.
Mechanics
[sblock]Group Check Hard DC, including Rawr (Lucky need not apply), so 2/3 must pass. You can have a 2nd success for your trouble if you make it. If you fail though, your Fort is getting attacked for - 1 physical skills until Extended Rest.[/sblock]
There is always the hard sprint back down the other way...or trying to find an alternative route...with precious time lost...
Saerie
I reach down to the edge of this precarious drop, unbridled rage brimming from me, making the corners of my mouth quiver. I touch the frozen drop-off.
Mechanics
[sblock]Used Nature's Rage Daily to bring the earth to life with writhing plants that can anchor and make our climb down easier.
Group Athletics Check followed this move so I allowed this to bump the DC down from Hard to Medium and would give 2 successes in the Skill Challenge if successful.[/sblock]
As the frozen earth springs to life with the verdant overgrowth of a healthy Spring, my eyes scan the treacherous descent for the best way down. I locate it quickly and point it out to Rawr and Otthor. "Stay with me. We move as the cheetah hunting the antelope on the open plains." With that, I literally vault into motion, scurrying down the abundantly green face like a monkey might. Rawr is fast behind me, his extraordinary climbing skills put to the test.
Mechanics
[sblock]Using the 1st Secondary Skill for Perception to grant everyone a + 2 on their Athletics. My Perception is 21 so it automatically passes the Easy DC.
Saerie Primary Skill Athletics + 24 + 2 (SS) + 5 (Mighty Sprint) = 31. Passes Medium DC without a roll.
Rawr Primary Skill Athletics + 20 + 2 (SS). Rolled 3. 25 fails.[/sblock]
This is an endgame Dungeon World game that was played with 4e for the next wee bit. In fiction and mechanically, this is a mid-Epic Tier 4e Skill Challenge. What this means is:
a) The urgency of the situation is maximal. The PCs have hours at most to reach the refugees before they are overcome.
b) The mountaintop environment is akin to the most remote and inhospitable environment on earth.
c) The sheer, perilous, precipitous nature of the climb down would take the greatest mountaineers (who aren't Epic heroes) in the world a multi-staged, days-spanning climb.
d) The PCs must face obstacles many times more malevolent than deep cold, slick ice, and treacherous slope (a horde of recently-turned aberrations and sentient mutagenic mists).
That is the only sort of action they will face at this point of play. The subjective peril they face (the fundamental maths of the epic tier of play and the attendant fiction) they face is based on
who they are (the two protagonists). A High DC for them is 37 at level 24. Not 29 or 21 as they are at 14 (Paragon) and 4 (Herioc) respectively. The Ranger Saerie can use the broad descriptor Daily of Nature's Rage to call upon the fury of the wild (this is not magic by the way) to aid their impossible descent. And it will answer. Because of
who she is (one of two protagonists).
This play is not about fidelity to objectively parameterizing a fantasy world model, hitting the execute button, and watching the simulation unfold as we play.
3) A Barbarian in Dungeon World has the Herculean Appetite of "Pure Destruction":
Herculean Appetites
Others may content themselves with just a taste of wine, or dominion over a servant or two, but you want more. Choose two appetites. While pursuing one of your appetites if you would roll for a move, instead of rolling 2d6 you roll 1d6+1d8. If the d6 is the higher die of the pair, the GM will also introduce a complication or danger that comes about due to your heedless pursuits.
The same Barbarian has these two moves:
My Love For You Is Like a Truck
When you perform a feat of strength, name someone present whom you have impressed and take +1 forward to parley with them.
What Is Best In Life
At the end of a session, if during this session you have crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you, or have heard the lamentations of their kinfolk mark XP.
In Dungeon World, the GM frames scenes around a very specific Agenda. The GM follows the rules and procedures, observes the GMing principles, and makes moves against the PCs accordingly. The players roll all the dice. In Dungeon World, Ogres take things by force, fly into rages, and destroy things with their amazing size and strength:
Special Qualities:
*Destroy something
*Fly into a rage
*Take something by force
So the PCs come upon a band of Ogres who have laired in a stand of trees near a major trade route (of course). The Chieftain offers them their lives if they give up all their wealth and perhaps a tasty limb to sweeten the deal. The PCs refuse. The Ogre Chieftain knocks over a tree on them. The Barbarian, unimpressed, meets the chieftans rage with his own appetite for destruction. He declares he is Defying Danger (obviously the falling tree) with Strength. He is going to catch it and heave it back the way it came. ALL of the DW follows the basic resolution mechanics of roll 2d6 + modifier (-1 to +3). There are 3 possible results (these would be the equivalent of subjective DCs); 10+ and you get what you want, 7-9 and you get what you want with a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice, a 6- and things don't go well for you (I make what is called a Hard Move) but you Mark 1 XP.
Barbarian rolls his dice and gets a 10+, but the d6 is the higher of the pair (the other being the bumped up d8 for Herculean Appetite). The player gets what they want, but I have to escalate the fiction with a complication or a danger. I
show signs of an approaching threat . The band of Ogres reveal themselves and wade in from the dark recesses of the stand of trees. Uh oh.
However.
My Love For You Is Like a Truck, remember? The Chieftan is impressed. More than a little. Take +1 to Parley.
Parley ensues. The now fearful chieftan acquiesces with a successful social move, perhaps with some sort of condition. The Ogre Chieftan maybe saves a little face. He definitely saves his skin (and he knows it). But he is definitely diminished in the eyes of his band.
Triggering at the end of session:
What Is Best In Life
At the end of a session, if during this session you have crushed your enemies, seen them driven before you, or
have heard the lamentations of their kinfolk mark XP.
So what are subjective resolution mechanics not? They're not:
* Granular hex scaling from wilderness > province > kingdom > continent (and PC build mechanics that interact on this level such that the spatial units are expected to be relevant to action resolution).
* Granular time tracking that involves making note of days passed so you for planned critical events from a metaplot.
* An Ability Check system predicated upon natural language descriptors that correlate to the objective world experience as assessed by "everyman" (or low level character).
* A DC system that involves objectively set DCs for hazards and environmental exposure events that granularly increase by 1 per unit (temporal or spatial) of exposure.
* Damage expressions that are pre-correlated to fiction for you (rather than you doing the correlation yourself); "being struck by lightning," "stumbling into a vat of acid", "hit by whirling steel blades," "tumbling into a vortex of fire on the Elemental Plane of Fire."
