D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Lanefan]

You've hunted at this sort of question before, and previously Micah Sweet wrote...

And honestly, I find this baffling.

What do you mean "at what cost"/"what is sacrificed"? I genuinely don't understand. It doesn't seem to me that DW is "sacrificing" anything, and the "cost" is merely that GMs actually have a few rules they must abide by, just lile everyone else at the table.

What's lost?

Granularity and detail, it would seem, particularly in combat.
Moments of tension where nothing happens. (...yet?)
Anything that might happen during the time/journey between framed scenes.
The ability to truly catch the PCs (and thus the players) off guard, even though they have the ability (if lucky) to do this to their foes.

So, what are these "costs" of which you speak? What is sacrificed? Because unless you can spell that out, these comments sound like specters without substance.

So, though not the person you asked, the above is my attempt to quickly spell some of it out based on what you and others have said about the system.

 

[Faolyn]

Because the game mechanics focus more on making drama than modeling a fantasy world. Which is fine if that's what you want. I don't.

While modeling a fantasy world is a great goal, it often devolves into the players waiting while the GM goes into description porn mode--and even more often doesn't actually change anything about how the players interact with the world.

 

[Oofta]

My proposal was entirely valid. You just didn’t like it.

Here are a couple of others:
DM: Gandalf, you failed your Lore roll with the consequence that the Watcher in the Water attacks you.
Frodo’s player: Wait! I use the Protect Another move.
DM: How?
Frodo’s player: Wouldn’t the monster rather go after the plump halfling rather than the tough and gamey wizard?
DM: … … I’ll allow it.

Or (though this is from Monster of the Week, not DW, so I can’t confirm it translates). Frodo has used his last point of luck, and is therefore doomed under the game rules. The DM thus decides to attack Frodo rather than Gandalf.

You dodged a simple question with a non-answer. Then added another that has to stretch the fiction into something that did not happen. I'm done.

 

[Oofta]

While modeling a fantasy world is a great goal, it often devolves into the players waiting while the GM goes into description porn mode--and even more often doesn't actually change anything about how the players interact with the world.

So that's different from a player doing a lore thingy (okay, I can't remember the correct word) and doing an info dump? Nothing can stop a game from occasionally being a bit dull.

 

[Lanefan]

While I haven't played 4e or, indeed, read any of the books, I would imagine that something like those sewers should be treated as a single challenge if they existed only as an obstacle and there wouldn't be any fun to be had actually going through every intersection. If there are no clues to be found, treasures to be claimed, NPCs to be dealt with, monsters to be fought--if the only point of those sewers is to get through them (or, perhaps, to get through them in X amount of time or less), then I can't imagine there would be much fun roleplaying finding your way through it.

Sure, the PCs may decide to go a different way... but is it really fun to get so annoyed in-character that you want to turn around and go a different way?

It's realistic that the characters might get annoyed, and thus I want to somehow get the players to mirror that feeling.

I'm happy to frustrate the hell out of players if that frustration suits the situation their characters are in; even more so if they inflicted it upon themselves e.g. "Hey, nobody will see us if we use the sewers to get there - let's try that!".

 

[Oofta]

It's realistic that the characters might get annoyed, and thus I want to somehow get the players to mirror that feeling.

I'm happy to frustrate the hell out of players if that frustration suits the situation their characters are in; even more so if they inflicted it upon themselves e.g. "Hey, nobody will see us if we use the sewers to get there - let's try that!".

If I never feel frustrated when I'm stuck, I'll rarely feel elated when I succeed.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The problem is how do you keep from frustrating the player to the point that just stop playing.

 

[Lanefan]

But the character that failed (Gandalf) was not attacked. Frodo succeeded and was attacked. That's the disconnect that DW doesn't seem to handle as far as I can tell.

Well, in fairness Frodo did have that +10 Trouble Attractor around his finger...

Also in fairness, one could in this case say the success and failure was at a party level rather than that of an individual character; and who got attacked was thus somewhat random. (in the movies I seem to recall a few others got attacked as well)

 

[Baron Opal II]

I do thank you for your answer, but do you have an example of one with no "medical part". Where someone is just doing something "because".

Actually, yes, and it ties into the question I had for you earlier. When I used to run and "after school" game for some local youth I occasionly had one or two who would harass other players. "It's just what my character would do", &c. I would reprimand them at the time, and if it happened again I would take them aside after the game or before the next one and inform them of the standards of behavior I expected. A third time and they were gone. There were a small number that needed some guidance for certain reasons, but if they were just being a jerk they were not long for the game.

The ages were 10-15, mostly boys.

 

[Lanefan]

And yet I imagine you accept things like Action Surges and Raging and initiative order without really being phased, right?

In sequence: no, no, and only so far as I have to (init. is rerolled each round and things can happen simultaneoulsly).

Right. I mean... Hit Points are a pacing mechanic at the center of D&D combat. Mounting danger as hit points dwindle... it's all right there. You're not avoiding the thing you claim to not like. It's just in a form that you've internalized to the point of not seeing it for what it is.

Yeah, hit points are their own special type of nuisance: a poor idea but still arguably better than all the other worse ideas.