D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[pemerton]

@clearstream's example of the druid and the stone reminds me of what @Hriston and I were discussing upthread, about players declaring "open ended" actions like what do I see? or what do I know that's relevant?

The canonical trigger for Discern Realities (DW p 68) is when you closely study a situation or person, and the explanatory gloss reinforces this by beginning "To discern realities you must closely observe your target." And the canonical result of a success is asking either 1 or 3 of the listed questions - this is reinforced by the existence of further moves that expand the list of permitted questions. Finally, acting on an answer grants +1 forward, which means that answers have to be the sorts of things that might be bases for acting upon.

I think these features of Discern Realities as a move are intended to push against the sort of thing that Hriston and I discussed, and to push towards "focused"/"particularised" knoweldge-acquisition action declarations.

In clearstream's example as posted, it's not clear to me exactly what situation was being studied (it seems clear that it was not a person being studied), nor exactly what question was asked and answered given the 8 result, nor what would constitute the druid acting on that answer so as to enjoy a +1 forward. Without that sort of clarity I can't really form a view as to how this little episode illustrates Dungeon World play, and the way "story" - in the form of fronts, dooms, etc - was or wasn't an input into that play.

That said, my tentative feeling is that, were I involved in that game and especially were I GMing it, I would not have called for a roll because I don't think the Druid trying to intuit what is not in its right place in itself triggers a player-side move (it dos not trigger Discern Realities, nor on its own does it seem to trigger Communion of Whispers). Nor is it a golden opportunity. So the appropriate GM response would seem to be a soft move - finding an ominous stone might serve that purpose, as a sign of an approaching threat and/or as a revelation of an unwelcome truth, although my own inclination would be to a bit more precise about the threat or unwelcome truth.

I can see why @Ovinomancer describes the ominous stone as "untethered". To me, and again just going on what has been described, it seems a bit unparticularised either as an answer to a Discern Realities question or as a soft move made in response to a player action declaration that does not trigger a player-side move.

@clearstream, I hope the above does not seem too much of an attack. It is always tricky commenting on someone else's play on the basis of a fairly brief description. I am trying to give a sincere response that ties back to some of the other lines of discussion in this thread.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Mavens FTW! The soft move is the stone, and what it portends: trouble coming nearer. Her question was very clearly what here is out of place. Do I really need to spell that out?

Yes. This isn't a soft move, it's just introduction of fiction. A soft move says "this is a problem" and requires a "what do you do about it?" It's a mistake to think that the complication here is just a vague possibility of badness somewhere down the line.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that I have grasped agenda as intended.


Yes. As I explained - due to our shared love of EarthSea the ominous stone excellently suits my agenda.

At best it fits into 1), but the abandonment of the other facets (it provides no adventure and it's not playing to find out what happens) is obvious. You don't "suit the agenda" by doing only a part of it and ignoring the other parts.

Look, if the fiction demands a move, then it's your job, under the agenda and principles of play, to follow the rules and do that. And this means that if you call for a DR move, then you need to be ready to have the game go off at this exact point. That you have a requirement to make a move on a 7-9 (usually a soft move) means that you need to make a move. Introducing a stone that might reference a favored bit of out-of-game fiction and may be a bad thing some distant time down the road is NOT showing signs of a future threat. That move is like finding wyvern tracks on the ground -- if you don't do something PDQ about that, then wyverns are going to swoop down on you! The point of play here isn't that some plot point for the future is introduced (the Fronts are about as close as you should be getting to this, and those should be pretty open) but rather that it creates play RIGHT NOW. Finding a mysterious stone should have immediately required the Druid do something else to deal with whatever threat this stone represents. And that's because you called for a move from the player, and that game demands that you follow the agenda and principles and rules for that move (and your moves). What you've described here is pretty typical Trad play. You've taken what DW says, filtered it through what you wanted to do rather than what it's telling you to do, and assumed that you've got the measure of the system. I don't doubt your game is great fun for you and your players, but it's not how DW is intended or described as running.

I don't really care if you play DW this way, mind. It's your table and you should be prioritizing that. Drifting or wholesale hacking games to do what your table wants is just fine, and I 100% support it. However, drifting a game like this and then trying to claim you're playing it straight is a place that I'll challenge you. Play it how you want, but don't claim it's the straight game. I say this to 5e players as well, when they have houserules that have altered the game in significant ways.

What is this about? Is the dragon one of your enemies and the demon your impending doom?


The designers' words and examples on creating fronts etc: you might take another look at them.

I have, very much. They're intended not to run counter to the agenda and principles of play, but work with them. Fronts should be created with the PCs and their goals/needs/beliefs/etc in mind to provide honest antagonism to the PCs, not as the GM's idea of a cool story. Fronts should be open and obvious to the players, with it being obvious they're in play as consequences to play. Fronts should only advance according to what happens in play -- both with what portents and dooms are inserted and when they're used. You can prep Fronts, absolutely, but like all prep this should be at most an aid to play, not a truth that exists but is yet to be revealed. Nothing in a Front's prep is true until it enters play, and it should only be entering play when the play demands it.

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream's example of the druid and the stone reminds me of what @Hriston and I were discussing upthread, about players declaring "open ended" actions like what do I see? or what do I know that's relevant?

The canonical trigger for Discern Realities (DW p 68) is when you closely study a situation or person, and the explanatory gloss reinforces this by beginning "To discern realities you must closely observe your target." And the canonical result of a success is asking either 1 or 3 of the listed questions - this is reinforced by the existence of further moves that expand the list of permitted questions. Finally, acting on an answer grants +1 forward, which means that answers have to be the sorts of things that might be bases for acting upon.

I think these features of Discern Realities as a move are intended to push against the sort of thing that Hriston and I discussed, and to push towards "focused"/"particularised" knoweldge-acquisition action declarations.

In clearstream's example as posted, it's not clear to me exactly what situation was being studied (it seems clear that it was not a person being studied), nor exactly what question was asked and answered given the 8 result, nor what would constitute the druid acting on that answer so as to enjoy a +1 forward. Without that sort of clarity I can't really form a view as to how this little episode illustrates Dungeon World play, and the way "story" - in the form of fronts, dooms, etc - was or wasn't an input into that play.

That said, my tentative feeling is that, were I involved in that game and especially were I GMing it, I would not have called for a roll because I don't think the Druid trying to intuit what is not in its right place in itself triggers a player-side move (it dos not trigger Discern Realities, nor on its own does it seem to trigger Communion of Whispers). Nor is it a golden opportunity. So the appropriate GM response would seem to be a soft move - finding an ominous stone might serve that purpose, as a sign of an approaching threat and/or as a revelation of an unwelcome truth, although my own inclination would be to a bit more precise about the threat or unwelcome truth.

I can see why @Ovinomancer describes the ominous stone as "untethered". To me, and again just going on what has been described, it seems a bit unparticularised either as an answer to a Discern Realities question or as a soft move made in response to a player action declaration that does not trigger a player-side move.

@clearstream, I hope the above does not seem too much of an attack. It is always tricky commenting on someone else's play on the basis of a fairly brief description. I am trying to give a sincere response that ties back to some of the other lines of discussion in this thread.

Sigh, and yes: I was mindful of the move's call for specificity. It's a basic move that often comes up in play.

The player in question described walking arpund and checking the place we'd imagined, expressly stating they examined the hedges, the path, and the stream running along beside it. They were looking for odd patterns, anything an animal would instinctively dislike. They were specific enough that I judged DR to be reasonable. That's what lead to a strangely marked stone in the stream. It's blurred markings and great age signifies a ritual or magical wrong gathering for a long time. It's misplacement here, worryingly close to her grove signifies a closing threat: a sense of claustrophobia. I think it will drive some nice conversation down the line. She wants to remove or obscure the markings - a small victory possibly - but we haven't gotten to that yet.

Before starting my campaign I watched some sessions of a campaign run by one of the designers.

 

[clearstream]

Yes. This isn't a soft move, it's just introduction of fiction. A soft move says "this is a problem" and requires a "what do you do about it?" It's a mistake to think that the complication here is just a vague possibility of badness somewhere down the line.

I say it is. I'm very satisfied with it as a soft move. It has the player feeling worried, which is precisely what I wanted. There is something bad coming but she has time to avoid it.

[Also you have to rethink time in open campaigns. A threat is close enough if we will encounter it soon in session time.]

 

[clearstream]

Grapple is similar -- there's not flow from the fiction into the action. The mechanic is selected, and it's resolution creates an impact in the fiction if successful (if unsuccessful, no real change is created).

Second, some of the things you mention seem to me to involve rightward pointing arrows - eg I grab the Orc leads to make a roll as per the grapple rules - but some don't - eg the Battlemaster ability that causes fear (Menacing Strike) seems to me to be boxes-to-boxes, as the player doesn't actually have to do anything with or say anything about the fiction in order to use the ability.

Baker characterises When your character attacks mine, roll dice as a rightward pointing arrow (see step 1 in Resolution System #1). That's because something is changed in the fiction as a result of someone's narration (a participant who enjoys the appropriate authority declares that one character attacks another character) which then "activates" a rule that tells us to do some stuff with some cues (in this case, dice and to hit and defence numbers).

I'm assuming your two views aren't intended to be contradictory, right?

If "my character attacks yours" produces a rightwards arrow. Then so does "my character grapples yours".

If "I move to higher ground" gives advantage (rightwards arrow). Then so may "and I pounce from higher ground".

If the grapple succeeds your move is zero, with consequences for your possible fiction. Having grappled you, I can move us both half my speed. Are those leftwards arrows?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I say it is. I'm very satisfied with it as a soft move. It has the player feeling worried, which is precisely what I wanted. There is something bad coming but she has time to avoid it.

[Also you have to rethink time in open campaigns. A threat is close enough if we will encounter it soon in session time.]

No, I don't. This is not how DW is meant to be played. Again, if you want to play this, it's fine, but it would be absolutely incorrect to assert that you play DW as intended with this approach.

Honestly, I reviewed the move and discussed it a bit with a friend, and I'm wrong -- DR on a 7-9 should not be creating a GM move. It's a success, but moves the response from useful to maybe useful. But the PC still needs to be asking a specific question. The one you show isn't a question per DR at all -- it's a "I'd like the GM to tell me things." The proper response to this in DW is to make a soft move straight out -- no roll. Something already needs to be at stake for DR to be a useful thing for the player. And that means there's already something that's insisting on the question "what do you do (about it)?" This is a right now question, it's how the game is structured. The kind of slow, generally neutral, may be important later thing your referring to is a staple of Trad play. It's not how DW is supposed to be working.

If you're following the agenda and principles of play, you should be able to review those and look at this example of play and see where it's not doing the job it's supposed to. That you held up this example of play as an exemplar of your understanding of DW is very telling. Again, because this disclaimer is so necessary, it's fine to play this. It's not fine to claim this is exemplary DW play in the way it's intended, though, and that's what I'm pushing back against.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Chess defines the moves that can be made, and its goals guide the moves that are made. Machines play it well, so we cannot say it is a human-only domain.

This is where the analogy of phase-spaces come in (using the term to label the volume containing all states of a system on each degree of freedom). Or let's just call it the list of all possible games (which may be infinitely vast, even while containing only games with the features a given game implies.)

When I read a book, if I reread it I know what is going to happen. The dramatic-narrative is the same because books are linear and non-dynamic. Chess is non-dramatic, but it implies all its narratives. Thinking about its "phase-space" is just a way of noting that we don't need to play all those different games to know that they are implied.

That's interesting and compelling to me. RPG stories that I have observed, for example the game's designer running a session of BB, are not as great a story as say Hamlet (or whatever literature you count great.) Even when successful and fun. What is compelling is something else.

When we look at dramatic-story-focused games, are we trying to force something that is great in another medium, into a medium that has different strengths? When I read Law's narrative beats, I wonder if this dramatic-programming is the right analysis.

Are we at the end of history for RPGs, and they will be judged on how well they can compare with dramatic-stories in linear media? Or is there more to find out?

I think all the 'chess talk' is not really relevant to RPGs and what is going on there. So, you say that the story itself is not that compelling an aspect of an RPG. Aside from my reluctance to decree what compels others, I can understand what you mean; the stories we end up with in our games are at best only modestly compelling, and would hardly bear retelling. Certainly the playing was more compelling than the mere narrative that resulted. Thus I don't really disagree with this, but I think it gives more weight to what I've said before. That is, any standard board game is not like an RPG, where the engagement comes from something that involves making a fiction, the drama of playing through the story. This is why I find the PbtA kind of directive, to 'play to see what happens' to be compelling. It is why the associated process of creating that story must be highly collaborative, etc. This all leads me to the belief that the most effective RPGs generally speaking will provide process and mechanics, and principles/agenda which build this in.

So, I SUSPECT the difference between how you and @Ovinomancer would run Dungeon World, or Brindlewood Bay I suspect (I really know nothing more about it than 'cthulhuoid murder mysteries using PbtA') is WHY any given fiction is introduced.

Let me go back to my little pet example here. The GM introduces "The Spider King steals the gold." This is a 'move', it is dynamic, it does potentially introduce novel fiction, but it is directly facing to PC concerns. The 'gold' is something vital to the PC, she cannot save her sister without this gold (or maybe there's another way, things are always possible). No fact introduced here is merely 'some stuff'. There's no "We found an ominous stone... I'm not sure what it's connected with..." I don't see how this ominous stone relates to a dramatic need of a character (I am just guessing it doesn't particularly based on how you phrased things, I could be wrong of course). It seems like just 'generation of fiction' and then what? How does this fiction 'snowball'? How does it move things forward in a way that confronts the PCs and creates or furthers dramatic conflict? I mean, yes, you can have a 'doom' in Dungeon World, which is a portent. It will relate to a front and probably a danger within that front. This 'ominous stone' doesn't really seem to be a doom either.

I mean, OK, its not like finding an ominous stone is somehow contrary to anything in DW, specifically. Characters look around, they experience, trees, rocks, roads, buildings, etc. and those aren't particularly anything beyond 'color', so maybe an 'ominous stone' is just color, but it seems like an odd kind, and you clearly don't consider it as such. I would just say it lacks much 'punch' as a either a move or a doom (and I assume that unveiling a doom IS a move)!

So, maybe the PCs find an ominous stone in the ruins of an outlying village that has been destroyed by some sort of magical force. This village might not be super important to the PCs in and of itself, but it is telling us, this doom is coming, the front is on the move! Its mild pressure, perhaps, but it would due as a basic starting point. You want your fiction to begin with things only STARTING to get tense after all.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm assuming your two views aren't intended to be contradictory, right?

If "my character attacks yours" produces a rightwards arrow. Then so does "my character grapples yours".

If "I move to higher ground" gives advantage (rightwards arrow). Then so may "and I pounce from higher ground".

If the grapple succeeds your move is zero, with consequences for your possible fiction. Having grappled you, I can move us both half my speed. Are those leftwards arrows?

Fiction is on the left. Mechanics on the right. What in the fiction affects the grapple? Yes, there's a right arrow from "I try to grab the orc" to the mechanics to resolve the attempt, but there's nothing else from the fiction that goes in here. You resolve the mechanics. On a failure, there's no left arrow back to the fiction -- nothing changes. You were not grabbing the orc before, and you are not now. On a success, there's a leftward arrow -- the fiction changes from not grabbing to grabbing. However, there are almost no left arrows in the fiction that adjust/impact the resolution of the grapple.

And this is intentional design! 5e combat works on turns, where on your turn you can propose a change, but whether or not one happens doesn't affect the next step, which is that the next person gets to propose a change. This structure, of fixed alternating turns, is what drives the process, but it's entirely boxes, not fiction. Other games, though, do not have this structure, and so rely more strongly on interactions between.

In 5e, if I attack the orc, my declaration as a player is in the fiction -- Bob the fighter is swinging their longsword at the orc. This creates a rightward arrow to the mechanics. The attack is then resolved here, without further input from the fiction. The result, unless it zeros the orc's hitpoint total, doesn't generate any required leftwards arrows back into the fiction. A miss or hit is pretty much interchangeable in the fiction -- it might get an arbitrary narration, but, as I've shown, a hit and a miss can be described identically*. This would appear to stop the process, but 5e has the imitative mechanic, so once completed, the turn then goes to the next person in order (perhaps the orc) who then does the same general process. This works because the end result of this process tends to generate a left arrow -- the orc or Bob is out of hitpoints. For the intermediate moments, the initiative mechanic clicks along keeping thing moving.

In DW, however, there's no initiative mechanic. In fact, there's no turns at all. Foes do not have a fixed turn. So, here, there's more need for arrows back and forth. The fiction of the action is a right arrow, and resolved, but it creates immediate left arrows back into the fiction. An attack in DW always changes the fiction in some way. Always. And this gets even more pronounced in other game, like Blades in the Dark, where the initial right arrow of the action declaration immediately calls other right arrows from the fiction into the resolution mechanic, and then some left arrows are proposed for results prior to resolution, negotiation takes place and is agreed to, and then resolution occurs and a hard left arrow results according to the negotiated agreement. This is iterative tech based off of PbtA.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do you mean solely the physical act of writing down, and exclude the ongoing consequences of the new hit point total?

I would close the loop. Fictionally an orc attacks your PC. It hits, and the GM describes this as the orc whacking you with his battle axe, ouch it hurts! The GM tells the player his PC took 9 points of damage. The player notes this and further notes that his PC is below his bloodied value and indicates this, pointing out that this triggers a reaction. The player carries out the reaction, which results in the orc taking 6 points of damage and being pushed back a square, which the player describes as a reposte in which he smashes his shield into the orc's face and it falls back. This is why the arrows go in various directions in the model @pemerton is discussing. fiction happens, which invokes mediation using cues in accordance with rules, which modifies game state, which in turn evokes more fiction, possibly with the mediation of more cues.

I find your reformulation of Lumpley to be a bit high level. I don't think the original was intended to capture things like WHY people are playing or what the goals are, specifically. It was about what play consists of, its nature. I think 'theme' as you are putting it, or maybe better 'objective' or 'goal' is a useful concept as well, but that can live beside Lumpley comfortably, they are not exclusive or contradictory.

 

[clearstream]

Honestly, I reviewed the move and discussed it a bit with a friend, and I'm wrong -- DR on a 7-9 should not be creating a GM move. It's a success, but moves the response from useful to maybe useful. But the PC still needs to be asking a specific question. The one you show isn't a question per DR at all -- it's a "I'd like the GM to tell me things."

So that is something I have been doing wrong. We took the basic outcomes to imply a soft move on 8-9 (complications or trouble.)

Your friend has it wrong though. 8-9 doesn't change the quality of the answer, but only the number of questions. From 3 to 1. The answer to that one question isn't worsened. I'd have expected your conference on one move in our play to have at least turned up an accurate ruling.

The proper response to this in DW is to make a soft move straight out -- no roll. Something already needs to be at stake for DR to be a useful thing for the player. And that means there's already something that's insisting on the question "what do you do (about it)?" This is a right now question, it's how the game is structured. The kind of slow, generally neutral, may be important later thing your referring to is a staple of Trad play. It's not how DW is supposed to be working.

As DM in our circumstances for my players I am confident I made the right call in the moment. I bet if I rake over your games second-guessing you I will find many calls that I can criticise. I have a less aggressive, more hesitant player, my soft moves are very soft. The +1 forward is going to feel good for her.

[EDIT Please consider what you are doing here, as it feels very much like nitpicking to undermine my input to an ongoing debate.]