First off, I object to the idea that the PCs are being "meekly led" into accepting anything. I don't know what type of non-PbtA games you've played, but every game I've played has had the players and GMs deciding what to do. Often it starts with the GM saying "I have an idea for a game," but the players have as much input as the GM on the direction it will take.
Secondly, I'd also say you're wrong because Blades does tell the players what their job is--they have to pick one of these playbooks, and all of the playbooks are for criminals.
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I fail to see how saying
"You're playing criminals who go on heists and run gangs (only you don't actually plan the heists; instead, you have to go on them and retroactively decide what your plans were), also, you all have to pick different types of criminals, what do you want to do?"
is less railroady than
"You're playing scholars and explorers who are trying to determine why the sun broke, how do you want to go about doing this?"
Telling the players they are going to play a criminal gang isn't telling them
what they will do or
what their goals are. It's a genre specification.
The second thing sets a goal for the player's action declarations. And seems also to suggest that a big chunk of play will be learning hitherto-unrevealed backstory.
They're very different games, to my eye. And the second looks to me like it will default to highly GM-driven.
Honestly, it I have to do extensive homebrewing just to get it to a point that feels playable to me, I might as well stick with a system I already know well. And I already have at least three or four other systems with D&D-like abilities other than D&D.
It's just that I've heard so much that's good with the system.
I think this issue of PC race in Dungeon World is of pretty minor importance to the system overall. Comparisons are tricky to make: it's a slightly bigger deal than whether or not the gear list from some edition/version of D&D has
candles or
needle and thread on it. It's probably closer, in D&D terms, to what is on the weapon list or the spell list.
I personally wouldn't count these as issues of
extensive homebrewing. But in any event, just as someone wouldn't normally choose what version of D&D to use based on the spell list - that's not where most of the action is across different versions of the game - so I would say the same for DW. If you're interested in it because of the system, it's pretty trivial to add whatever new race option will suit your table. If you're not, I don't think tinkering with the race options would be a reason to change your mind on that.
And it doesn't even let two people pick the same playbook! One of my current D&D games has two warlocks, and the two of them have such different personalities that it makes for a lot of fun for the party. They couldn't do that in Blades.
Here's Vincent Baker on this point:
You know the rule in Apocalypse World that everyone has to choose a different playbook? You might be interested to know, as a point of trivia, that the reason for this isn’t niche protection or whatever, it’s just so the MC doesn’t have to show up to the first session with multiple copies of every playbook.
Like the race/class issue, I don't think this is a very big deal.
I mean, if this is just the case of this MC not being very good at revealing info in ways I'd consider plausible, then fine, I can fully accept that. I could run the game and say "You're passing by your armory and hear noises coming from within, what do you do?" I do that all the time right now in D&D.
But if the game actually wants you to say "Meanwhile, across town in their secret hideout, the Hell Bunnies Gang are arming themselves and will be heading out to cause mayhem at your favorite dive bar, what do you do?" because that'll get the ball rolling, then I just find that silly.
How does Keeler know this? Did the MC here take over Keeler and force him to enter the armory in order to witness this? Does Keeler have X-ray vision and super-hearing? Are his gang members talking really loudly and narrating their actions? Are we to assume a third-person omniscient eye? I kind of hate this. If this were a TV show, I'd be rolling my eyes so hard right about now. Keeler's player should have to go into the armory to know what's going on, and if that means that that Keeler misses out on info if she doesn't, then oh well.
I think you've misread or misunderstood the example. From AW pp 154-55:
“Cool. Keeler—” turning to Keeler’s player “—you’re passing by your armory and you hear people in there. It’s Plover, Church Head and Whackoff, arming themselves. What do you do?” I’m announcing future badness.
“Hey, what’s up?” Keeler’s player says.
So here we learn
how Keeler knows it - the GM establishes framing (ie that Keeler is passing by her armoury and hears her three gang members in there, arming themselves) - and then Keeler's player asks them what's going on. That's not an action declaration that triggers a move, so the GM responds with free narration in accordance with the principles: in this case, the GM continues to announce future badness consistently with what prep and honesty demand:
“Marie attacked Isle,” I say, in Plover’s blunt, heavy voice. And in my own: “he stops what he’s doing and looks square at you, he’s still got a shotgun in his hand. Church Head and Whackoff, you know they’re going to back him up.”
Here’s my big plan, by the way. Isle’s listed in the cast for a threat called Isle’s family, which is a brute: family (naturally enough). Its impulse, accordingly, is to close ranks and protect their own. What’s most fun is that I’m acting on that impulse but I’m using Plover, Church Head and Whackoff — members of Keeler’s gang! — as Isle’s family’s weapon. It’s just like when Keeler uses them to go aggro or seize by force, only I’m the one doing it.
If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about imposing her will upon her gang to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it.
Finally, instead, “knock yourself out,” she says.
Marie’s player: “damn it, Keeler.”
So we have two PCs - Marie and Keeler - and a group of NPCs - Isle's family. Those NPCs are related to the PCs in two different ways - for Keeler, they're part of her gang, which is an element of her PC build (in the playbooks,
Keeler is listed as a name for a gunlugger; and one advancement option for a gunlugger is to get a gang and the pack alpha move, like a chopper); for Marie, they're the people she's pissed off by brain-fragging Isle (as per the earlier part of the example). The GM is interweaving the lives of the two PCs by cutting from what Marie is doing - brain-fragging isle, then going back home - to what is happening over at Keeler's place. Keeler's player could intervene - by
imposing her will upon her gang (which is the trigger for the chopper's
pack alpha move) - but chooses not too. Which prompts Marie's player to curse her ("damn it, Keeler").
That sort of interweaving of the action is pretty central to any GMing of a non-party-based game. In my own case, it's a technique that I've used in Cthuhu Dark and Wuthering Heights one-shots, and use fairly often in my Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel campaigns.
I still think that there's times when there would be consequences for failure even if there weren't actual danger in the air
Compare to the PC race thing or the duplicate playbook thing,
this is a big deal. It suggests you haven't quite followed the fundamental dynamic of AW play. If a player (as their PC) looks around, and for whatever reason the situation is not a charged one, then they haven't tried to read a charged situation, and the GM's correct response is simply to make a move. This is a special case of the general principle: if a player's action declaration doesn't trigger a move, then the game just proceeds by way of conversation - "free narration" or "free roleplaying". There's no occasion to throw the dice.
Thinking of this in terms of "consequences of failure" is imposing an assumption - something like
that the PCs' actions take place in an "indeterminate" space, with an indeterminate range of possible outcomes, and we use the dice to resolve the uncertainty. That is not how AW works. And I don't think it's how DW works either. (I'm more familiar with AW than DW in this respect, but I think the latter is pretty closely modelled on the former.) The purpose of the throw, in AW, is to
settle the question of who gets to establish the fiction in certain sorts of circumstances, namely, the ones that the game cares about given the sort of play experience it aims to create.
So if a player has their PC look around in circumstances that are not charged (so it's not
read a (charged) sitch); or has their PC try and jump a chasm in circumstances where they're not under any sort of pressure (so it's not
acting under fire); or has their PC ask a NPC for a favour without offering anything in return (so it's not an attempt to
seduce or manipulate); then we have "free narration" and the game just proceeds by the back-and-forth of talking. The rulebook expressly canvasses the last of the three items in my list, on pp 192-93:
Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. . . . Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.
I would add that this would be an example of saying
what honesty and prep demand.
When the GM responds in free roleplaying, the response should generally be a soft move, as per the following advice (AW p 117):
Generally, limit yourself to a move that’ll (a) set you up for a future harder move, and (b) give the players’ characters some opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its conclusion.
However, when a player’s character hands you the perfect opportunity on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you like. It’s not the meaner the better, although mean is often good. Best is: make it irrevocable.
What would count as a perfect opportunity on a golden plate, in the context of a PC looking around in a non-charged situation? I don't think it's easy to come up with an example out of context. But suppose that the PC is visiting their savvyhead friend's workshop, and their friend (as established by some prior fiction) isn't home, and the player describes their PC poking around while they wait, and the GM described a few things including the metal box with complicated wiring sitting on the workbench - this is the
psychic maelstrom distillation machine that the savvyhead has been working on - and the player of the visiting PC says
I stick my head inside the box! The situation isn't charged. The player (as their PC) isn't hoping for anything. The GM hasn't established any hint of threat or adversity. As far as the various sorts of approach to establishing fiction in a RPG are concerned, we're in the freest of free narration. But I think that player
has handed the GM the perfect opportunity on a golden plate. If I was GMing that, I think my next move might be to ask the savvyhead's player what happens! And then building on the answer to that, we might have anything from
inflicting harm (some combination of electricity and psychic malice) to
taking away their stuff (uh oh - the PC's interference with the delicate machinery seems to have shorted out the flux capacitor!) to
announcing some offscreen badness that the player (as their PC) really didn't want to be the case (the machine plugs the PC straight into the maelstrom, and they see and hear the "echoes" of Isle's death at the hands of Dremmer's executioner).
it's the use of the term misdirection that bugs me. OK, this is a word probably meant for new GMs, but it's such an odd choice of words that I feel like I'm missing something.
The previous few paragraphs of my post hopefully have brought out what you've missed.
When you have posted
that there might be a consequence of failure even if the situation the PC is examining is not charged with potential danger you have failed to misdirect yourself! You've supposed that the function of the dice roll is to model some "possibility space" within the fiction. But it's not. Here's the explanation from the AW rulebook (pp 110-11):
Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. . . . Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible. . . .
The truth is that you’ve chosen a move and made it. Pretend, though, that there’s a fictional cause; pretend that it has a fictional effect.
AW has no random determination of the fiction. At every point someone has the job of deciding what the fiction is: either a player is saying what their PC does, or the GM is announcing backstory, or framing, or consequences. The dice only come in because at certain points - ie the ones that the game cares about - the dice are used to decide
who gets to make the decision, and
what the parameters are within which they are obliged to choose. Even on a successful attempt to seduce or manipulate, there is a moment of choice - the player has to actually have their PC make the promise; and of course on a 7-9 also has to follow through in some fashion, now, if they want the NPC to comply.
The point of
misdirection is that the GM is not to speak in the (real world) language of decision-making. They are to speak in the fictional language of (imaginary) cause-and-effect.
I'll compare and contrast with Classic Traveller. In Traveller, if a PC is fictionally positioned appropriately (eg is across a room from someone else, with a gun drawn) and the player declares
I shoot them, then a resolution procedure is triggered: first a throw to hit has to be made (modified by weapon expertise, armour, etc); if the shot hits, then a damage roll is made; then a roll is made to see which stat(s) the damage is applied to (for Traveller fans - in this example the shot is the
first shot of the exchange, and so doesn't allow any choice as to where the damage is allocated); and then if one or more stats drop to zero the rules tell us whether the victim is unconscious or dead. In this process of resolution, the AW notion of
misdirection has no work to do.
In Traveller, if a PC is wearing a vacc suit or similar environmental protection suit, and the player declares some non-ordinary action such as
jumping, then the rules call for a throw (modified by vacc suit expertise). And if the throw is failed, the PC finds themself in a dangerous situation, which can be remedied only by a further successful throw (normally a more difficult one, especially for those without vacc suit expertise). This is a case where
misdirection applies: the real reason that the referee is narrating a dangerous situation is because someone said something and rolled something and now the rules tell the referee they have to narrate something. But the GM needs to set out a fictional cause-and-effect (I've used snagged oxygen tubes, a suit caught on a rocky protrusion, seal failures that become evident when the suit is put under stress, etc). Unlike in the shooting case, this means establishing additional features of the situation (eg the protrusion, the seal failures, etc) that hadn't been specified earlier.
The places where a RPG obliges a GM to do this sort of thing help tell us what the RPG cares about. (Classic Traveller cares about doing tricky manoeuvres in space suits. It doesn't really care about charged situations, though, unless they're about to explode into violence, and so while it does have encounter surprise and evasion rules, it doesn't have any subsystem comparable to
read a (charged) sitch.) And whether a GM can do this well or poorly is often what marks the difference between a good or a less-good RPGing experience.
