D&D General On Skilled Play: D&D as a Game

[darkbard]

I think my way of answering your questions is that, for me, the most meaningful skillful play in DW is driving the fiction in ways to speak to immediate player (and PC, though not always overlapping) drives, while still holding on lightly enough to fictional drives beyond the Now to play to find out what happens. There are, of course, other facets of skillful play as I address above re character build and resource management (and as @Manbearcat alludes in his preliminary list), but what I identify here is what separates DW skillful play from D&D skillful play for me. Also, I make no claims of expertise regarding DW specifically or SP generally (as I identified my ambivalence regarding the term above), and I have no idea if Manbearcat would even view SP in our shared game similarly despite months of play and quite an overlap in gaming philosophy and agendas overall.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think a good way to ask that is - what is the goal in DW and how does being skilled at DW help the player acheive that goal? And What negative impact does being Unskilled at DW have on that goal?

Right. going back over my DW rules, I don't see that anything really SPELLS OUT a player-facing agenda. Its a game, players are there to have fun. The game allows for PCs to increase in 'level', gain treasure, and presumably they could achieve various fictional accomplishments (become king, whatever). They are clearly adventurers.

If we draw on the GM's agenda, then we have 'Portray a Fantastic World', 'Fill the character's lives with adventure', and 'Play to see what happens'. So, from this we can take that the there is a fantastic world through which PCs adventure, constantly, and there is no specific thing that must happen, all possibilities are open (or at least multiple possibilities, I guess technically it could be 2).

If we go on to the principles of play we can see techniques, and these also shed some light on the question. 'Be a fan of the characters', so the GM isn't out there to defeat the PCs with guile, BUT 'Think dangerous' he's definitely out there making things risky for them.

Honestly, at some level, as I've said before, classic D&D and DW are not diverging too much here. Both present the PCs and players with dangerous situations which may lead to rewards if challenged, though DW also emphasizes the PC's roles as heroes and the need for them to confront a living world and its dangers. A classic D&D character might theoretically become a shopkeeper, a DW character will never have that chance, some doom will overcome the world if he isn't there to fight against it!

I think my way of answering your questions is that, for me, the most meaningful skillful play in DW is driving the fiction in ways to speak to immediate player (and PC, though not always overlapping) drives, while still holding on lightly enough to fictional drives beyond the Now to play to find out what happens. There are, of course, other facets of skillful play as I address above re character build and resource management (and as @Manbearcat alludes in his preliminary list), but what I identify here is what separates DW skillful play from D&D skillful play for me. Also, I make no claims of expertise regarding DW specifically or SP generally (as I identified my ambivalence regarding the term above), and I have no idea if Manbearcat would even view SP in our shared game similarly despite months of play and quite an overlap in gaming philosophy and agendas overall.

Right, so here we get into the real differences between classic D&D and DW. D&D doesn't supply any drives/motivations. The character is 'a magic user'. He's one of many magic users, and being a 1st level MU is not that special. He will presumably become an adventurer, but he could just as well retire, open a shop, or take up knitting. Perhaps the GM could force the player's hand, but there is nothing in the structure of the game which forces this.

DW puts it all right up front, the character is 'THE wizard', there is non other like him! Furthermore this wizard has at least 2 bonds with other PCs which provide immediate motives (you could ignore them, nothing forces a player to act on a bond, but they are worth XP). Session zero should also supply some other motives for him to adventure. Finally, the mechanics of dooms and fronts will generate dangers ONLY adventurers can face. There is no other wizard to face them, you are THE wizard. Mechanically the GM is going to fill your life with adventure and keep making hard and soft moves that drag you kicking and screaming into the fray. You might open a shop, but you darned well will not sit around and enjoy a life of quietly brewing potions!

I think it is hard to really talk about skillful play on the part of the players in a sense. However, clearly if they are trying to sink the GM's agenda, that won't work well, and I would call it 'un-skillful'. Beyond that, having fun and playing your character so as to engage in the fiction seems to be the main thing. The GM is going to be as immersive as possible (again if he follows the principles of play found on DW p162) in the version of rules I have (First Edition, November 2012).

I can only conclude that 'skill in DW' is just 'being a good player', it doesn't specifically require any particular cleverness or thoughtful play in terms of overcoming the fiction. That might be something you want to do, probably will, but you could play DW beautifully and your character could be a total dolt who makes bad decisions at every turn!

 

[Manbearcat]

I guess the question would then be, does this sort of play really justify using the same term as 'Gygaxian Skilled Play', as the goal is completely different? I mean, it is clear to me that in a classic D&D game failing to manage your resources correctly will result in some adverse result WRT the players agenda, like they will fail to accumulate treasure, XP, etc. and may even leave their frozen corpses on the side of the mountain, necessitating starting over with new PCs. It is less clear exactly what the failure to manage resources means in DW in general. It certainly exposes the PCs to pressure from the GM from a particular direction, but they will be exposed to some sort of pressure regardless! There is no explicit goal to achieve any particular fictional result either. Character death, successfully mounting the summit, or turning back, all of these are results falling within "Play to See What Happens." Clearly both paradigms require that the result be in doubt. It is less clear that DW requires that the result depend in any way on 'player skill'.

I think a good way to ask that is - what is the goal in DW and how does being skilled at DW help the player acheive that goal? And What negative impact does being Unskilled at DW have on that goal?

I think my way of answering your questions is that, for me, the most meaningful skillful play in DW is driving the fiction in ways to speak to immediate player (and PC, though not always overlapping) drives, while still holding on lightly enough to fictional drives beyond the Now to play to find out what happens. There are, of course, other facets of skillful play as I address above re character build and resource management (and as @Manbearcat alludes in his preliminary list), but what I identify here is what separates DW skillful play from D&D skillful play for me. Also, I make no claims of expertise regarding DW specifically or SP generally (as I identified my ambivalence regarding the term above), and I have no idea if Manbearcat would even view SP in our shared game similarly despite months of play and quite an overlap in gaming philosophy and agendas overall.

I was going to do a post on this in the other thread (the one I started), but I think that has run its course. I'll put my thoughts here. Be forewarned, this is going to be sprawling because it addresses several things and I don't have the time to concisely break out all of these disparate thoughts.

GYGAXIAN SKILLED PLAY VS SKILLED PLAY

Dungeon World absolutely features Skilled Play. But its not Gygaxian Skilled Play. I don't agree with the position that the generic "Skilled Play" shouldn't be a normative nomenclature in our conversations and needs some sort of new term for the same reason that I don't believe (and no one else does so far as I can tell) that GM Force needs to be broken out into separate camps whether the Force undermines a tactical decision, a strategic decision, a thematic decision or some admixture thereof. Skilled Play isn't quite the inverse of this, but its in the neighborhood of doing the inverse work.

I do, however, (a) think it is very useful to identify "the Skilled Play meta" of various TTRPGs (b) and that there are games that, in fact, do not have Skilled Play as a priority at all (these are games where you're either entirely beholden to Force or there is no move-space or action resolution propulsion to control the trajectory of the fiction).

DUNGEON WORLD SKILLED PLAY META AND WIN CONS

@darkbard mentioned several things above. I'm going to mention some more and I'm going to talk about how you trace the through lines of these decisions to Win Cons. I'm going to say up front that Win Cons are not exclusively the capturing of the gamestate "the game is now over and you have won." I mean you can see this in MtG where either (a) you're in a tournament and you have to win multiple games (this is similar to campaign level Win Cons) or (b) "the conceptual Win Con" is proposed before a singular instance of play and yet once it is achieved either (i) the gamestate "the game is over and you have won" is not fully achieved or (b) the "Conceptual Win Con" is not a singularity that ensures play will invariably find its way there (there is still some doubt and on the rare occasion, some opposition Draws/Draws + Gambits find their way out of the "gravity" of that Conceptual Win Con).

To finish that line of thought, "Win Cons" can be:

* The actual gamestate attainment of having won.

* A feeling of the surety (even if misplaced) of control over the gamestate's inevitable trajectory toward having won.

* A micro Win Con that establishes the actual trajectory of having won a tournament (yet the tournament still being in the balance).

So...Win Cons and Skilled Play in Dungeon World:

1) End of Session. Did play resolve a Bond, did play fulfill Alignment statement, did we discover something new and interesting about the world, did we overcome a notable enemy, did we loot a memorable treasure?

Each of these are micro Win Cons for a session. The aggregate of them (did we affirm most/all of them) is a separate micro Win Con.

2) There are inevitably going to be multiple conflicts in any given session. However, there is going to be a seminal conflict to the session that resonates with a particular player more than others and it is very likely that this will be a universal thing for all participants.

- Did I propel this conflict toward a satisfying conclusion via aggressively and thematically advocating for what I've loaded my PC with (and the game's default thematic loading in the playbooks)?

- Did I play skillfully in that aggressive thematic advocation via (i) managing the fictional positioning so as to open up the move-space for my character and/or one of my allies, (ii) once I opened up the move-space for myself or my allies was I able to marshal the resources and the moves necessary to wrest the trajectory of the conflict from our opposition (which is a combination of "the GM's say" + "the system's say"), and (iii) did I skillfully manage the decision-points (costs and complications, Dangers and Discoveries) inherent to the 7-9 results so that the game of "Spinning Plates" (inherent to DW and PBtA) doesn't "get away from me"?

TLDR - Did my thematic aggression/boldness + management of the fiction to create Team PC "move-space" + resource martialling + 7-9 cost/complication/danger/discovery game of "Spinning Plates" get away from me or do I stay on top of it = the apex volitional force over the outcome of a conflict that was thematically satisfying (whether won or lost or even if terrible losses were incurred such a a treasured Cohort going down...yet going down memorably)?

3) Invariably in many Story Now games (particularly those like DW), a series of paramount goals will emerge from play for each character. Sub everything at the conflict level into this "cross session" goal and you have the same net situation.

4) Loading out the Map with interesting sites that a PC or Team PC wants to explore to experience dangers and discoveries relevant to their playbook and/or the thematic elements they've loaded out their PC with. Further, the continual, aggressive renewal of this process in the course of play (often by making moves that will add them but sometimes by answering GM questions) so that players ensure they control the trajectory of the developing shared fiction.

---

So these 4 sites of Skilled Play are my thoughts on the subject. I can go over play excerpts myself and extract the through line of Skilled Play to Win Cons, but I'd rather @darkbard do so (if you have the time). If you don't have the time, I can do it (and my weirdo memory is good enough to cull things with precision so if you need an assist/don't have the time, let me know!).

Conflicts that are on my mind are:

* The Guide Labor Union Fore(wo)man and the oath to your friend.

* Essemer's Simalacram and the savant toymaker.

* The Covington Affair (or Dogs in the Vineyard again...really?).

* Camp 2, the Frost Giant, and the Ancient Blue.

* The Yettis, the Remorhaz, poor Petunia, Saving Porter Baati.

* The Devourer and Dirk the Bold's final embolditudization.


I think if you pulled out a couple of those and talk about how you feel they interacted with all the facets of Win Cons above, that would do some heavy lifting. If you don't have the time/aren't up for it, let me know and I can transcribe the meaty systemitized carrot + aggressive theme advocation + deft move-space handling and resource martialing.

EDITED - I forgot a big part of Skilled Play in Dungeon World. So added.

 

[Cadence]

RE: Combining Sports

List of hybrid sports - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Cadence]

I actually don't think it does run both ways. If everyone sits down to play Moldvay Basic, we know the goal of play is to extract treasure for the win. (Perhaps 38 years ago we didn't know that, for the reasons that @clearstream posted not far upthread; but now we do.) So having someone who refuses to play in that spirit would be similar to sitting down to play (say) Forbidden Island and have one player insist that s/he will only shore up a tile if she thinks that's what her "character" would do!

A group of us six of us with a combined 180+ years of playing experience across dozens of RPGs and play styles played 1e a few years back, and getting treasure and beating monsters were side points at best. We were out to save the world with each of us having a personal goal as well (I did avenge my Father, and got to surprise the DM by having another character sacrifice me for wisdom because it seemed like what Odin would want). Were we not sitting down to play 1e? Were we playing it wrong? (We certainly worked a large number of things out very differently than 4e skill challenges would have). Is it B/X or 1e that makes people play a certain way, or is it what they all talk about in session 0 and all being on the same page? My most recent playing as a 5e game (with a bit less experience, but still over 20+ years each on average) felt a lot more like a classic dungeon crawl.

I just don't think this has anything to do with "skilled play". It's no different from whether a typical 5e D&D group should worry that someone might want to play an intense, character-driven game that 5e is inherently incapable of delivering;

If 1e can be played boatload of character driving, I'm not sure why 5e can't? Is it that there aren't rules to do it? Is it that most of the settings don't? Did VtM allow for a lot of intense character-driving?)

Which is to say - approaches to RPGing in which player decisions don't matter much to what happens in play.

This was RE: Trad and NeoTrad I think. Is that because Trad and NeoTrad are usually dungeon crawls or railroads? Or is it because Trad and NeoTrad wouldn't have the characters do what they would do if they were characters and instead try to optimize things? (I need to remember that lots of people didn't actually play the Trad or NeoTrad way back in the 80s and stop thinking the label necessarily applied to my groups).

I don’t agree (obviously!).

All of these games involve significant creativity,

I'm having trouble with the creativity in kickball (or throwball with a tennis ball when we didn't have a utility ball) either as a former player or current parent.

1) it is absolutely more difficult to abide by most ball and combat rulesets than it is D&D.

2) It is absolutely more difficult to referee most ball and combat rulesets than it is D&D.

Basketball surely is. And it feels like Football and Baseball have a ton of rules that are hard to come up with in real time. Is golf that hard to follow or judge the rules on (as opposed to actually playing it)? Are there any you think are easier?

Here is the Moldvay Basic Foreword
<snip>

As @pemerton has reminded many-a-times, the Moldvay Foreword bears no resemblance to the actual play! The Moldvay Foreword looks a lot more like D&D 4e!

It sure felt like heroic fantasy when the party was steeling F-14s from the air base we got to via time travel back in 1983 or so... Ok, maybe we weren't even close to anything in the actual rules that time. :-/

Just one criticism - Bayesian implies certain independent style challenges and D&D is far from independent challenges.

There are Bayesian models for time series, longitudinal models, and correlated errors.

What you do in previous challenges impacts what happens in future challenges.

Isn't yesterday's posterior today's prior?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mentioned an example: international rules, played between ad hoc Australian and Irish teams. It "sutures together" Australian Rules football and Irish/Gaelic football.

So, I basically...don't know what those things are. But I feel I've been pretty consistent in asking for something of the order "American football and croquet" or "hockey and basketball," the latter of which I explicitly called out at least once. I don't really feel that Australian Rules football and Irish/Gaelic football are dramatically different sports in the same way that waltz and swing are dramatically different musical styles. This, of course, gets into the thorny, Sorites-paradox-like concept of "what counts as a difference of degree vs a difference of kind," which is doubly problematic with D&D stuff where there's already presumptive similarity (e.g., if I don't think international rules football is an example of sufficient difference, does that mean I'm being inconsistent by saying that I do think B/X and 4e would be a sufficient difference? I don't know.)

That said, Wikipedia has a list of "hybrid sports." I've literally never heard of any of them before, though some of that may be due to being a Unitedstatesian and thus rather outside the culture of association football (which is the sport that everyone seems to try to combine with something else). Certainly they aren't the kind of thing people just do casually on a weekend (from what I can tell), which remains a difference, but my point is weakened by their existence.

Edit: Posted the above before seeing your post, Cadence, but yes that is the article I mentioned.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm having trouble with the creativity in kickball (or throwball with a tennis ball when we didn't have a utility ball) either as a former player or current parent.

I'm not clear on what you're putting forth here? Is it "some games aren't well-constructed/encoded such that creativity and/or skilled play becomes muted so that play and the trajectory of play isn't governed by those things?"

If that is your contention, that that is trivially true in all games (from competitive physical sports to TTRPGing). I'm not sure what work you're intending that to do here?

However, even in a game like kickball (which falls toward the lower end of skilled play and/or creativity governing play) its also a triviality to note the following features of play:

* More skilled/creative players will identify the weak spots in the defense and kick the ball were they ain't (as the adage goes).

* More skilled/creative players will be able to pre-kick pump fake/deke their intended placement of the ball as they're addressing it on the run-up (to lure the defense or a defender in a direction just like a QB in American Football manipulates a back 7 defender/Safety).

* Some players will be faster, more coordinated, have better arm strength/accuracy. All of these will have a decisive impact on both sides of the ball but particularly when playing defense (on the Venn Diagram with Dodgeball, there will be huge overlap in skill).

Basketball surely is. And it feels like Football and Baseball have a ton of rules that are hard to come up with in real time. Is golf that hard to follow or judge the rules on (as opposed to actually playing it)? Are there any you think are easier?

Are you asking me if some games are easier to referee or judge than others? Sure. Of course.

But golf is an interesting game because (a) its an extraordinarily rules-dense system that requires both letter and spirit understanding while simultaneously (b) relying upon a damn near unenforceable social contract where players govern all aspects of their play and even assess themselves Stroke Penalties! And when there are questions related to the PGA rules or for this particular course's rules, martials are called over to govern the interaction (and they may be missing key pieces of interactions that have taken place before they arrived...such as intentional or accidental ball manipulation by a competitor).

The PGA tour has been having many issues of late with this (and some of the omission or commission or rules violations/adjudications have the same competitor involved!)

It sure felt like heroic fantasy when the party was steeling F-14s from the air base we got to via time travel back in 1983 or so... Ok, maybe we weren't even close to anything in the actual rules that time. :-/

I'm sure you had a great time, but once you start going completely outside of the rules for your play, at a certain level of departure from the ruleset and the paradigm of play fundamentally means you aren't playing this particular game anymore. A game featuring F-14s (and any sort of decision-points/action resolution around aerial combat resolution of dogfights) simply isn't playing a Moldvay Basic Dungeon Crawl.

You can absolutely still bin it broadly under the D&D umbrella...but you aren't playing Moldvay Basic. So whatever statement being made about system or skillfulness deployed within a particular game ceases to have utility in the discussion of playing the actual game.

 

[pemerton]

RE: Combining Sports

List of hybrid sports - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Glad to see it's got the ones I mentioned - water polo and international rules football - in the list.

@EzekielRaiden: water polo is a pretty standard/popular sport as far as I can tell (more obscure than basketball, but not more obscure than lacrosse - which could be argued to be a hybrid of hockey and "let's use these wacky sticks to play catch"). I don't think international rules is played outside of the international matches I mentioned upthread that are also described on the Wikipedia page.

 

[darkbard]

I was going to do a post on this in the other thread (the one I started), but I think that has run its course. I'll put my thoughts here. Be forewarned, this is going to be sprawling because it addresses several things and I don't have the time to concisely break out all of these disparate thoughts.

GYGAXIAN SKILLED PLAY VS SKILLED PLAY

Dungeon World absolutely features Skilled Play. But its not Gygaxian Skilled Play. I don't agree with the position that the generic "Skilled Play" shouldn't be a normative nomenclature in our conversations and needs some sort of new term for the same reason that I don't believe (and no one else does so far as I can tell) that GM Force needs to be broken out into separate camps whether the Force undermines a tactical decision, a strategic decision, a thematic decision or some admixture thereof. Skilled Play isn't quite the inverse of this, but its in the neighborhood of doing the inverse work.

I do, however, (a) think it is very useful to identify "the Skilled Play meta" of various TTRPGs (b) and that there are games that, in fact, do not have Skilled Play as a priority at all (these are games where you're either entirely beholden to Force or there is no move-space or action resolution propulsion to control the trajectory of the fiction).

DUNGEON WORLD SKILLED PLAY META AND WIN CONS

@darkbard mentioned several things above. I'm going to mention some more and I'm going to talk about how you trace the through lines of these decisions to Win Cons. I'm going to say up front that Win Cons are not exclusively the capturing of the gamestate "the game is now over and you have won." I mean you can see this in MtG where either (a) you're in a tournament and you have to win multiple games (this is similar to campaign level Win Cons) or (b) "the conceptual Win Con" is proposed before a singular instance of play and yet once it is achieved either (i) the gamestate "the game is over and you have won" is not fully achieved or (b) the "Conceptual Win Con" is not a singularity that ensures play will invariably find its way there (there is still some doubt and on the rare occasion, some opposition Draws/Draws + Gambits find their way out of the "gravity" of that Conceptual Win Con).

To finish that line of thought, "Win Cons" can be:

* The actual gamestate attainment of having won.

* A feeling of the surety (even if misplaced) of control over the gamestate's inevitable trajectory toward having won.

* A micro Win Con that establishes the actual trajectory of having won a tournament (yet the tournament still being in the balance).

So...Win Cons and Skilled Play in Dungeon World:

1) End of Session. Did play resolve a Bond, did play fulfill Alignment statement, did we discover something new and interesting about the world, did we overcome a notable enemy, did we loot a memorable treasure?

Each of these are micro Win Cons for a session. The aggregate of them (did we affirm most/all of them) is a separate micro Win Con.

2) There are inevitably going to be multiple conflicts in any given session. However, there is going to be a seminal conflict to the session that resonates with a particular player more than others and it is very likely that this will be a universal thing for all participants.

- Did I propel this conflict toward a satisfying conclusion via aggressively and thematically advocating for what I've loaded my PC with (and the game's default thematic loading in the playbooks)?

- Did I play skillfully in that aggressive thematic advocation via (i) managing the fictional positioning so as to open up the move-space for my character and/or one of my allies, (ii) once I opened up the move-space for myself or my allies was I able to marshal the resources and the moves necessary to wrest the trajectory of the conflict from our opposition (which is a combination of "the GM's say" + "the system's say"), and (iii) did I skillfully manage the decision-points (costs and complications, Dangers and Discoveries) inherent to the 7-9 results so that the game of "Spinning Plates" (inherent to DW and PBtA) doesn't "get away from me"?

TLDR - Did my thematic aggression/boldness + management of the fiction to create Team PC "move-space" + resource martialling + 7-9 cost/complication/danger/discovery game of "Spinning Plates" get away from me or do I stay on top of it = the apex volitional force over the outcome of a conflict that was thematically satisfying (whether won or lost or even if terrible losses were incurred such a a treasured Cohort going down...yet going down memorably)?

3) Invariably in many Story Now games (particularly those like DW), a series of paramount goals will emerge from play for each character. Sub everything at the conflict level into this "cross session" goal and you have the same net situation.

4) Loading out the Map with interesting sites that a PC or Team PC wants to explore to experience dangers and discoveries relevant to their playbook and/or the thematic elements they've loaded out their PC with. Further, the continual, aggressive renewal of this process in the course of play (often by making moves that will add them but sometimes by answering GM questions) so that players ensure they control the trajectory of the developing shared fiction.

---

So these 4 sites of Skilled Play are my thoughts on the subject. I can go over play excerpts myself and extract the through line of Skilled Play to Win Cons, but I'd rather @darkbard do so (if you have the time). If you don't have the time, I can do it (and my weirdo memory is good enough to cull things with precision so if you need an assist/don't have the time, let me know!).

Conflicts that are on my mind are:

* The Guide Labor Union Fore(wo)man and the oath to your friend.

* Essemer's Simalacram and the savant toymaker.

* The Covington Affair (or Dogs in the Vineyard again...really?).

* Camp 2, the Frost Giant, and the Ancient Blue.

* The Yettis, the Remorhaz, poor Petunia, Saving Porter Baati.

* The Devourer and Dirk the Bold's final embolditudization.


I think if you pulled out a couple of those and talk about how you feel they interacted with all the facets of Win Cons above, that would do some heavy lifting. If you don't have the time/aren't up for it, let me know and I can transcribe the meaty systemitized carrot + aggressive theme advocation + deft move-space handling and resource martialing.

EDITED - I forgot a big part of Skilled Play in Dungeon World. So added.

I don't have a ton of time, but I will examine two of the scenarios from your list and sketch out some relevant details and how they might relate to Skilled Play in Dungeon World. I'll select the first and last items bulletpointed.

In the first scenario, Alastor the Paladin had negotiated a raft to speed his journey to the rough and tumble harbor town of Lowcanyon Falls and avoid some of the perils of nearby bandits and hags inhabiting the bordering Hag Frost. For the draft's use, he promised the guide Fennick (an acquaintance of his trusted companion-guide Dirk, a lay member of his religious order) that he would help redeem his reputation, slandered by the lies of Desamine, the greedy and exploitative proprietor or The Long Walk, the guides' guild in Lowcanyon Falls. Alastor's patron is Memna, the goddess of Truth and Emotion, so this set up is the GM testing my commitment to those values in session one.

In session three, amid other hijinks in Lowcanyon Falls, Alastor made his way to The Long Walk to confront Desamine. In this scene, I twice deployed the Paladin starting move I Am the Law, first against Desamine's feckless husband who tended the office/outfitter and then against Desamine herself. In short, the move, on a successful check, forces the NPC to do as I say, flee, or attack as is fictionally appropriate. Knowing full well my Paladin's imposing presence (as evidenced by his high CHA, armor bedecked with symbols of his deity, and weaponry), I was confident in my ability to get Desamine to retract her slanders and repair Fennick's tarnished reputation. With a successful roll, I did.

This played to your (1) above by flagging my alignment (at the time Lawful, Deny mercy to a criminal or unbeliever). As my first Quest, it played to both (2) and (3) above by propelling play in the scene and across sessions by playing to my character's thematic drives, not suffering an untruth (something anathema to his goddess) to go uncorrected/unpunished. We devised the map together, players and GM, in session one (as per standard DW procedure), creating Lowcanyon Falls as a lawless, "wild west" frontier town as a foil to my character's desire for law as evinced through alignment as part of character build (your 4 above).

The second scenario is from our latest session, a near endgame confrontation with one of the two BBEGs that emerged from play early on (in fact, this one before play even began in the bud of an idea by my wife that something was consuming magic in the world and her Wizard would set about to repair it). In the scene, the Wizard's casting of a force spell interacted with a portal to a Feywild elven enclave to catastrophic effect (my wife rolled a 6- on her Cast a Spell move), drawing The Devourer, a Lovecraftian horror that had been consuming the magical tapestry that subtends the mortal world into our plane. Combat ensued, and without going into a blow-by-blow recap, I will highlight that Dirk, the guide from our very first session and companion throughout (a) steeled his nerves to fight this extra dimensional horror and his minions (earlier, my wife's Wizard dedicated several downtime activities to making him comfortable with magic and the like after he fled a scene of combat with spirits earlier in play, exactly to keep him involved as an additional combatant) by tossing a blazing whiskey bottle at a creature, Molotov cocktail-fashion (my wife here deftly manipulating the fiction of his Instinct, a defined game element, to overindulge in the sauce). The combat was brutal, and my Paladin's protege Rose, a young woman whom I suspect may be the promised Thorn of Memna, a figure from religious prophecy I made up between sessions, faced certain death by Devourer maw. But instead, I looked to my newly fashioned Bond with Dirk ("Dirk's newfound zeal for religion will put him in danger and I will leap to his defense") and decided he should make a Defend move of Rose, taking the blow aimed for her. He took it and died. And Rose lived for another move, a heroically successful Hack and Slash that vanquished The Devourer, proving that she is, indeed, the Thorn of Memna!

It should be evident how the resolved Bond with Dirk earned me experience end of session, even at the cost of the life of our longest supporting cast member. And played to my Bond with Rose to foster her to this position. Clearly, this has been a highlight not only of the session but the whole game so far, and that was propelled by my wife's skilled play of the fiction by suggesting the obvious outcome of her failed spellcasting roll: drawing The Devourer into combat now, even though we were unprepared for the confrontation (this was, essentially, the BBEG cast as Wandering Monster). And again, the scene played out in a location crafted in session one, at the top of a giant mountain shrouded in magical mists, and, it appears, a manifest zone to another plane beyond, perhaps the home of my wife's Wizard, who was found as an infant on the trails of this very mountain and is suspected of having fey heritage. It is no coincidence we are here; it has been the driving goal of play since session one. I will defer on the question of whether it is just play or Skilled Play that has us here, now, to face the game's greatest challenges.

I may have elided some details or emphasized elements of play differently than what you might have chosen to highlight here, but I think this suffices to illustrate your points.

 

[pemerton]

A group of us six of us with a combined 180+ years of playing experience across dozens of RPGs and play styles played 1e a few years back, and getting treasure and beating monsters were side points at best. We were out to save the world with each of us having a personal goal as well (I did avenge my Father, and got to surprise the DM by having another character sacrifice me for wisdom because it seemed like what Odin would want). Were we not sitting down to play 1e? Were we playing it wrong?

<snip>

It sure felt like heroic fantasy when the party was steeling F-14s from the air base we got to via time travel back in 1983 or so... Ok, maybe we weren't even close to anything in the actual rules that time.

I wasn't at your table. But I am guessing that you used techniques that are not stated by Gygax in his AD&D books - including one you mention in your post, of choosing player goals.

Probably also for resolving player actions, unless all the action took place in a classic dungeon.

Is it B/X or 1e that makes people play a certain way, or is it what they all talk about in session 0 and all being on the same page?

My most recent playing as a 5e game (with a bit less experience, but still over 20+ years each on average) felt a lot more like a classic dungeon crawl.


If 1e can be played boatload of character driving, I'm not sure why 5e can't? Is it that there aren't rules to do it?

The only version of D&D I know of which has rules that encourage the players rather than the GM to establish antagonism is 4e (with its rules for player-authored quests). It also has rules to support the resolution of non-combat situations other than via granular engagement with and extrapolation of the fiction (ie skill challenges).

4e also has other rules/systems to fit into the idea of quests - eg the notion of treasure parcels which are completely divorced from the idea of obtaining treasure by skilled play, and instead are periodic entitlements keyed to XP gain which is in turn keyed to the pacing of events in the fiction including the achievement of quests.

4e's focus on the "scene"/encounter as the basic unit of play also supports strong GM-side scene-framing which in turn is good for a quest-based game.

I've read and re-read Gygax's AD&D pretty closely over the past few years. There's a lot in it, but in many ways it's incredibly narrow. It's action resolution rules do not go very far beyond engaging with geography and architecture. (The reaction and loyalty systems are complex but I'm not sure they're the product of serious playtesting - I don't think they're super-workable.) It assumes that players will take the lead in scene-framing, by choosing where to go and when to fall back - which sits uncomfortably with a quest-oriented game. I've played A&D with strong GM-side framing, but you start to bump into other aspects of the system like its recovery rates being build around "the day" rather than "the scene".

When I look back at the most character-driven AD&D I've GMed - which was in the late 80s - I think it would work better in Prince Valiant in one case (an OA game) and perhaps DW in another (an all-thieves game).

This was RE: Trad and NeoTrad I think. Is that because Trad and NeoTrad are usually dungeon crawls or railroads? Or is it because Trad and NeoTrad wouldn't have the characters do what they would do if they were characters and instead try to optimize things?

A version of your second sentence.

"Railroad" is a vexed term. I tend to use it more liberally than some other posters. But in Trad and NeoTrad D&D not only is scene-framing strongly under GM control, but so is most establishing of consequences - at least outside of combat there is no action resolution that establishes things with finality. And this manifests itself in modules that are full of advice on what the GM should do to make sure that subsequent events still come to pass even if the outcomes of the current scene suggest that they shouldn't. But those modules are the symptom, not the cause.