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

[Maxperson]

If the OP clearly has a desire for gameplay and preference for certain principles or techniques, pop in to propose an alternative, by all means, but what seems to have happened here (predictably) is that those who disagree with the OP's persepective are trying to argue the OP into a perspective he doesn't agree with and works against the very gameplay and preferences his OP presents.

Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this. If you come for help, just ask for help. If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.

This is like having started a post saying "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" and having opposing ideologues jump in again and again to tell you to write your own adventures rather than rely upon prewritten material or that gnolls are boring enemies even though that is expressly against the purpose of the thread. It's reasonable to propose the OP consider writing their own material or choosing different enemies; one needs consider what motivations are really at work in continuing to argue against what the OP is asking for.

No, this is a False Equivalence. Saying, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" is a fine way to go about asking for help. If you instead say, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies, as nobody in their right minds would ever use any humanoid other than gnolls" you will derail your own thread and people will come in to argue with you. You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread.

 

[Aldarc]

I am a little puzzled by this post. This thread wasn't started form a critique of non-puzzle oriented games.

How the thread starts is not necessarily how discourse proceeds. And in this case, a new branch of discussion opened from Lanefan expressing vexation that "saying no" has somehow become unpopular, which I don't think that it has. Less popular maybe, particularly among indie games, but certainly not unpopular.

What ticks me off a bit, is he can't seem to do that without belittling or refusing to see how other people approach the game. And that mentality is prevalent in so many of these threads on this kind of topic.

In my own reading, I don't think that is the case. You may be making too much of too little offense, while also ignoring those with carry similar mentalities who are debating against pemerton. Though I also think that [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] also has a good take on this situation.

Obviously though, if players are there for the puzzles, they probably won't like a game that doesn't engage puzzle solving skill, but rather focuses on drama. The reverse is true as well.

Most definitely, which ties back into my point that you quoted. SYORTD is a principle oriented towards a different play emphasis than games focused on player-skill overcoming puzzles.

Why not? Not only is this not One True Way, but it's pretty much required if you want to enjoy a game. If I prefer 1e style games, I absolutely should be analyzing every RPG I come across on 1e design principles, play priorities/values, campaigns, etc. To fail to do that will eventually result in my purchasing or playing a game that I won't like, wasting my money in the process. Presumably people want to buy and play in games that they will enjoy, and the way to do that is to evaluate games on what they do that you enjoy vs. what you don't enjoy.

I would suggest returning to my earlier analogy of Pandemic and Monopoly for a better idea of what I am talking about here.

Gygax may have had his personal preference on how to play D&D, but D&D was written in such a way as to enable it to pretty easily encompass many different playstyles. It's the driving strength of D&D in my opinion.

Since then many other RPGs have come out and many of them are not written in that way. As you note above, they are designed with one particular playstyle in mind, making them poor games to use with differing playstyles. You can force the square peg into the round hole with them, but it won't be as satisfying as playing a different game.

It's odd to me that you are again wanting to create "exceptionalism" for D&D's design where you ascribe D&D as having "many different playstyles," but other games as having only "one" playstyle. Maybe though I am misunderstanding you, and you are not describing all non-D&D games but only a smaller subset of non-D&D games. That said, based upon what I have read and seen about these early days of D&D, these other playstyles may have arisen as an unintended but then swiftly capitalized upon once Gygax et al. realized the versatility of their rules set. I think D&D is less open than you suggest and that there are other games are more open than you suggest. So your reading seems to lack any nuance.

 

[darkbard]

Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this. If you come for help, just ask for help. If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.

Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints. Has your virtue been offended, Max, by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?

 

[Campbell]

I've done some trawling through John Harper's old blog (The Mighty Atom) but can't find it.

@Campbell, can you help?

The quote comes from Jesse Burneko's Play Passionately blog. He's a member of The Forge who just really grokked Sorcerer in the same way that John Harper just really got Apocalypse World. His blog just does a much better job of articulating the way I approach role playing games.

Here's the post:

Imagine for a moment that you are playing poker. After the round it’s revealed that you have the high hand with two pair when all of a sudden the guy across from you says, “Ah! I’ve got the Ace of Diamonds!” and collects all the cards on the table and places them in front of himself. Just to make it a little weirder he doesn’t even stop you from taking your winnings. You might rightfully ask, “What are you doing?” To which he replies, “I always like to take tricks in my card games.” You might then carefully go over the rules of poker and this individual smiles and nods and says, “Yes, I understand that you won the hand, I just find that trick taking really enhances card games.”

You would assume, I hope, that the person you were talking to was insane. So, why, I ask, do we as role-players not blink an eye when a fellow role-player says something like, “When I GM I usually have the players submit a detailed character write up for approval. I generally like at least two pages.” without any context as to what is being played? Role-playing games are the only games I can think of where players carry around with them huge systemic behaviors from game to game. The GM who *always* has his players submit detailed character write ups for approval is going to have a hard time with “In A Wicked Age…” in a shocking way and will probably be confused on a profoundly disappointing level with something more subtle like “Sorcerer.”

These encultured systems have their roots in the very dawn of the hobby where play was a highly individualized amalgam of rule-books, magazine articles and house rules. It probably reached the height of formalization with games like Vampire where rules to “do stuff” were provided but to what end, what emphasis and under what structure were *intentionally* left “up to the individual group.” Play groups *had* to develop individualized systemic techniques to make functional play happen at all. These personally developed techniques then got carried around from game to game as a matter of course often unacknowledged. Sometimes players would go so far as to claim these techniques were how the game was “supposed” to be played despite the total lack of (unified) textual backing.

Now some of you might be thinking, “Isn’t this just System Matters all over again?” or maybe the idea of purposeful design? Yes, yes it is. Then why bring it up? Because the community has forgotten. I see people carrying around Kickers, Bangs, Relationship Maps, Scene Framing and Stakes just likes Detailed Character Backgrounds, The Party, Faction Maps and Rule Zero got carried around. “Say Yes, or roll the dice” has become encultured as a particularly poisonous mantra. This has lead to the idea of “Forge-style” or “Story Game style” games. People aren’t playing the game at hand; they’re playing some weird amalgamation of every game they have ever played.

However just like it was toxic to bring all your Vampire techniques into Sorcerer it’s equally as toxic to bring all that “Story Game” stuff as some kind of unified play-style into other games. How many people know that The Producer always frames scenes in Primetime Adventures? Don’t believe me? Look it up. How many people know that there’s a perfectly functional and more basic way to play Sorcerer without a Relationship Map? Read Chapter 4 carefully. Look at how people’s ideas of Stakes has lead to mass confusion on how to play “In A Wicked Age…” and yet the text is rather clear on what to procedurally do.

To address this I offer two pieces of advice. To designers, I say consider what systemic (social and mechanical) techniques are required and/or work in your game and say that in the text explicitly. Don’t hand wave it away as, “It’s a story game. People know how to play those.” To players, I say read the text. Do what the text says. Don’t drag encultured rules into play. Stop taking tricks in your “card games.”

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this. If you come for help, just ask for help. If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.



No, this is a False Equivalence. Saying, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" is a fine way to go about asking for help. If you instead say, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies, as nobody in their right minds would ever use any humanoid other than gnolls" you will derail your own thread and people will come in to argue with you. You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread.

I generally found the OP the previous thread pretty reasonable. I can agree to to disagree with someone if there is a level of respect and politeness. I still maintain that mother may I started getting used in an insulting way toward a style of play that emphasizes exploration and immersion in a world, but it happened because of other posters. I think there is a game state that becomes mother may I. I also think people can disagree on what that line is. But if one side feels utterly belittled, dismisses, and/or condescended to, there will be bad blood in a thread. This thread based on my post I felt was particularly hostile and dismissive of the playstyle in question.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints. Has your virtue been offended, Max, by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?

But surely posters have a right to disagree when their playstyle is labeled something that insulting. Especially when the overall tone of the discussion grows increasingly dismissive of other perfectly valid approaches to play. I can totally accept that people on this thread want some variation of say yes or, without attributing negative qualities to them or that style. But a substantial number of posts on this and the other thread can’t seem to acknowledge our playstyle without throwing in an insult or calling our level of gaming experience into questions (in many instances it feels like our intelligence is being called into question).

 

[Maxperson]

It's odd to me that you are again wanting to create "exceptionalism" for D&D's design where you ascribe D&D as having "many different playstyles," but other games as having only "one" playstyle. Maybe though I am misunderstanding you, and you are not describing all non-D&D games but only a smaller subset of non-D&D games.

I didn't ascribe one playstyle to other games. I agreed with you guys that system matters. D&D is leans towards DM facing games. However, it does so weakly, not strongly. That allows it to be easily fit into a myriad of playstyles that are both DM and Player facing.

Other systems(not all of them by any stretch) are strongly leaning towards DM or Player facing games. Those can easily be used for playstyles that match the facing of the system, but are less easily used for playstyles of the opposite facing. You can do it, but it's really shoving a square peg into a round hole. You will have to make more system changes than it is often worth.

That said, based upon what I have read and seen about these early days of D&D, these other playstyles may have arisen as an unintended but then swiftly capitalized upon once Gygax et al. realized the versatility of their rules set. I think D&D is less open than you suggest and that there are other games are more open than you suggest. So your reading seems to lack any nuance.

I've seen many ways to play D&D, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have used it for even more of them if you believe their posts here(and I do). That is pretty strong evidence that it's pretty easy to use D&D for virtually any playstyle you want to attempt.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints.

I covered that with, "You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread." Those are the people who need to not jump at every opportunity.

Defending your playstyle against a blatant attack against it is not "jumping at an opportunity," but rather is just a normal reaction by people who are human. Humans defend things that they like from attacks against those things.

"Has your virtue been offended, Max,"

I lost my virtue a long time ago, and roleplaying was not a part of that at the time. Hard to offend something that I no longer have.

"by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?

I don't care if they hold that view or not. If they come to a semi-public place and attack my playstyle, though, I'm going to defend it. If they want to have a clean(cleanish?) thread, they shouldn't be attack other styles, but rather just talk about what they like and how to achieve it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

AFAIK searching for a secret door in Dw does introduce nothing to the fiction. If the Gm likes the idea and thus decides to use it on the fly, why not, but there is no rule, nor indication whatsoever to do so, and moreover there is no check involved.

The other way round might be legit: the Gm may asks the Thief if there are supposed to be secret doors present and how they work etc and build on that.

The principle in DW is that there is a 'Map with holes in it' which describes the area in which the campaign's Fronts are interacting. This map MIGHT be pretty detailed in a specific area and thus rule out the possibility of a secret door, in which case the DM not really obliged to present one.

Here's the main thing though, there is no MOVE 'search for secret doors', or even 'search' in DW. There is 'Discern Realities' and 'Spout Lore', either of which might elicit the description of a secret door by the DM (whether previously mapped into the DM's fiction or not isn't addressed). I suppose 'Defy Danger' might also be a way for the DM to introduce such an element. I would note however that DM's moves are ALL "create more pressure on the PCs." In each of these cases the DM needs to make some kind of a move (IE alter the fictional state of the game). This is never going to simply provide a solution for the players that doesn't put them in some kind of another bind. I guess you could interpret total success in one of the above move types to do something like that.

So, for example:

The characters are fleeing from a horde of orcs which they cannot defeat in outright combat (this probably was a result of a hard move by the DM previously). They come to a dead end in the corridor they are fleeing down. As the orcs torches appear around the bend 150' back the thief desperately attempts to use his wits and asks if he can use Evasion (a thief move) using INT. He rolls a 12, and informs the DM that he has achieved a 'sublime evasion', and the DM informs the party that the thief sticks his finger in a crack and pulls open a secret door.

Note that it is perfectly possible for the DM to have simply said 'yes' and produced a secret door at this point without any checks. This would generally constitute part of a DM move, which would, as I said above, dump the PCs into a new and probably worse situation, but maybe would get them out of their current bind, for the moment. The Evasion check OTOH would produce good results for the PCs, reducing pressure on them, though the DM would likely respond with a soft move of some kind once they reached the next location.

DW doesn't exactly use the terminology or explicit process of Story Now, nor discuss saying yes vs checking, but there's certainly nothing antithetical to these concepts in its basic structure. It is certainly a game that wants you to 'play to find out what happens', and it doesn't seem to care much about 'simulationist' kinds of concerns like the DM neutrally arbitrating. It is heavily invested in the DM coming at the PCs with challenges to their plans, their person, and their values. It is a bit different from things like DitV which deal explicitly in stakes, but the bonds system certainly leads to a similar result.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The only thing I see this approach accomplishing is the removal of some of the mystery from the game/setting. Many times the tension and sense of mystery is increased when the DM calls for rolls for no reason whatsoever in order to disguise the real roll when it happens...just as one example.

I see nothing in SYORTD which precludes this... I mean, if you over-literally assume the GM must utter the word "yes" without any ceremony, then sure, but I have not seen a game describe it that way.

Which, taken to it's conclusion, means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications. Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?

This is the old hoary time-honored blind alley which doubters of player-introduced goals constantly stumble down. Any game which is competently written/run doesn't have this issue. The GM introduces, via scene framing, challenges, NOT THE PLAYERS. These challenges are expected to relate to the player's interests, usually as evinced by the things their characters are, do, value, hate, etc.

If players can introduce fiction into these sorts of setting, it is not in the context of "I am going to search for the gizmo. Oh look the gizmo is right here!" that would be a preposterous type of game, and it doesn't exist (except degenerately when something went terribly wrong with someone's reading of the rules). Instead players introduce fiction in terms of maybe acquiring a resource, or attaining progress towards a goal by some means. Finding a secret door which lets you evade the bad guys so you can achieve some goal is a good example. This would normally require a check, and failing would, perhaps, result in failing to evade said bad guys, or it might result in a secret door that dumps everyone into a pit on the next dungeon level when you close the door behind you!

With a "puzzle", as you call it, the players via their PCs have to think to find a solution; and have to accept 'no' sometimes when their ideas don't (or can't) work. And by 'no' I don't mean 'no but something else happens', I mean a flat 'no, that doesn't work' or 'no, that's wrong'. The simplest example is where the party have to solve a riddle in order to move forward - they either get the right answer or they (perhaps repeatedly) don't.

Usually these types of games are testing the CHARACTERS more than the players. This is because they are games in which the play is about producing dramatic play in which the characters' enter into conflict related to things interesting enough for the player to put them on the character sheet. So it isn't normally about the player being involved directly in the conflict. In this sense OD&D (which was often structured as a test of player skill) IS antithetical to this sort of play, entirely. I wouldn't generally create a scenario where the players must solve a puzzle in story now play. I'm not saying its impossible, and maybe there are games which have explored techniques for doing this. I don't think we have discussed this in any recent threads which come to mind. Certainly if some of the experts on this kind of play have something to add on that I'm curious.