D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then why are the moves on your character sheet at all, if you're not supposed to think about them?

The moves for each playbook appear in the rules. Character sheets are just an organizational nicety that puts commonly used information along with your ability scores and such together in one place so you can play easily. Its not like players have zero interest in how moves work, but then AFAIK a 5e rogue is pretty interested in how her abilities work too, and they're normally recapitulated in some form on the character sheet, right? Why the double standard? I mean, I could easily enough make a character sheet that has nothing but the move names, you'll just have to constantly refer to the rulebook when the GM says "OK, that sounds like Defy Danger".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One of those ways. Not the only way.

Particularly when there's no others around, e.g. when the party is stuck at a door they can't open or a cliff they can't climb and nothing else is happening. At times like that I'd say it's on the players to move things forward by sooner or later having their characters do something different, such as in these examples try going in a different direction.

Well, this won't happen because it will go like: Rogue: OK I pick the lock 6-. GM: You work on it for a while but it must be dwarf-made, you get nowhere, soon you hear the sound of hobnailed boots marching up the corridor from the left.

The GM HAS to make a move, SOMETHING has to come about. Now, the player could say "well, I just keep trying to pick the lock!" and sure enough the GM will now make a hard move (aka golden opportunity). Now maybe the rogue player asks if they can roll DD to manage to get the lock picked at the last second and escape through the door. OK, fair enough, he manages to slip into the room beyond, I wonder what's in there....

Also, what's stopping the players in a DW game from suddenly deciding to have their escaping characters drop the hammer on their guards?

Well, its not forbidden. Graaahhhh! Foecrusher feels humiliated to be in the custody of such lesser warriors than himself! He reaches over and snatches one of their swords right out of the guard's hands! Fight on! Its not like DW is removing options from players, but its also not so natural to think in terms of needing to execute that one certain course of action. Whatever comes next, the PCs ARE going to be expected to act in some way in the next scene, and it is certainly going to present some form of challenge. The only real reasons to act NOW are either because its in character (as I tried to convey for Graaaahhh!) or the player perceives that whatever moves they can likely trigger NOW are more advantageous than ones they likely can trigger THEN.

I mean, nothing in DW precludes a group from composing itself as a band of homicidal thugs. Its just that there are plenty of other things you CAN do, so it is not the most likely outcome, and all these different choices are going to be mechanically similar (give or take some bonuses).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess I'm looking at it through the lens of taking one person (the DM) who maybe wants to tell or create a story or at least has one in mind as a fallback and expanding it to five* people who each have their own story in mind (the DM plus four* players), and wondering how this can be or remain functional in the long term.

And yet it does work! Just as well IME as any of the other techniques. You'd be surprised how much players are interested in gaming together and depicting their characters as mostly able to work together and often pulling in the same direction. Honestly, it isn't any more remarkable than that D&D parties stay together etc. In neither case is it a logical given based on a realistic assessment of the situations that come up. It is just something we do so we can play together in the end.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, it seems pretty clear that the OP is not going to take the, "learn from Dungeon World" lesson to heart. So continuing to extoll its virtues on a D&D thread about a situation that arose in a D&D game doesn't seem any more worthwhile.

Its pretty clear that the OP doesn't take ANY ADVISE FROM ANYONE, EVER. Gads, he won't even have a conversation with his players. lol. At no point was anyone deluded into the idea that they were giving meaningful advice. In fact the OP did entirely what most of the thread thought was exactly a bad idea. What do you know, the game imploded!

 

[Lanefan]

Based on the design commitments of D&D, and looking at the cultures of play that have historically held sway, I think there's actually quite a lot we can say to answer this question. D&D is:

• A group activity. No official D&D ruleset, to the best of my knowledge, has ever supported fully solo play. Even "duo" play, with just one player and the DM, tends to conflict with the design of D&D, regardless of edition.

Having done a fair bit of "duo" play as you describe, I can tell you from experience that it can and does work fairly well in 1e-adjacent as long as either a) the player is willing to run more than one character at a time or b) the character is willing to run as a party of one.

• Collaborative. Even in the (somewhat uncommon) cultures of play where openly competitive/"PVP" play is allowed (or even expected/encouraged), the exercise as a whole is collaborative. There is no game without the other participants, and various forms of influence over what is "in" the game are permitted (e.g., PC backstory is usually allowed, if not free reign, rather a lot of leeway.)
• Mostly cooperative. As noted, some specific cultures of play allow/expect/encourage PVP, but even within that, you usually have at least two players working together. The design of the game, whether "strengths vs weaknesses" or "complementary/synergistic niches," is specifically present to encourage cooperation and diversification of labor.
• Teamwork-focused. As noted, the design encourages players to support one another, and many players have a stated policy of "I'll play whatever the group needs." This is also why player policies like "don't split the party" and "kill the healer first" are central. Preserving your own teamwork capacity and breaking enemy teamwork are essential strategies in every version of D&D.
• Rooted in mathematics, specifically statistics. Every version of D&D, and indeed a majority of TTRPGs, uses a mathematical framework built around some source of randomness (usually dice) to add uncertainty. Despite the next point, this framework is very important to many players, even ones who sometimes disclaim caring about it. (Consider the backlash against silvery barbs.)
• Story-related. Doesn't need to tell a story, per se, nor will a story always result from play. But story--"a narrative, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct"--is pretty important. It's why names and archetypes matter. It isn't just bare math, and some players take great pains to emphasize just how highly they prize the story element.
• Fantastical. While some effort has been put into "modern" and sci-fi rules, the vast majority is either pure fantasy, or science fantasy (e.g. the Barrier Peaks.) This means "magic," a blessing and a curse because of how easy it is to abuse, but it also means an emphasis on letting players do what they like, within some boundary, often explicitly a greater boundary than other pastimes (video games are often explicitly contrasted here.)
• Focused on individuals and (relatively) small groups. One does not, generally, run a single session for more than (say) eight people, and even that would be an unusually large group today (less unusual for early D&D.) Some cultures of play encourage having many distinct PCs, but many do not. Almost all players will at least expect to only play one character at a time, and the gameplay process will focus on only one set of active characters. (What occurs outside of actual, in-session play may differ wildly.)
• Extemporaneous for DMs, improvisational for players. DMs will do varying degrees of prep work before running a game, while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to things they didn't prepare for (again, commonly compared to video games.) Generally speaking, players will do little to no such prep work, and instead focus on responding to events moment to moment.

That's not a bad summary. Nicely done.

I'm dead certain I could come up with more if I wished to, but that will do for now. That's a lot of stuff we can say about what it means to play D&D! It also is a lot of stuff we can use for honing the rules, so that they support the things above as fully as possible. That final bullet, for example, emphasizes that DM prep is a pretty important concern. Rules that make DM prep easier, or more effective, are thus pretty much unequivocally good things.

Agreed. Where the debates arise is around which of the above aspects the rules are honed to support, as a few of those bullet points tend to push against each other a bit. Focising more on the mathematical (and mechanical) aspects, for example, risks pushing against the story-related and fantastical aspects, so designers have to walk a bit of a line there as you note just below.

From the above, we can at least take an initial stab at describing the core concepts--what is most important about "playing D&D"--and fundamental methods and guidance for fulfilling them. For example, consider the contrast between "story-related" and "rooted in mathematics." As noted, plenty of people--even people on this board who have publicly opposed 'balance' in the past--will speak up about an option or spell or feature which they consider to be mechanically unacceptable, even if it is in no way narratively problematic. Silvery barbs is sort of the poster child there, but the Twilight Cleric got similar arguments. (Generally, math-based opposition is to anything considered to be overpowered; things considered weak rarely get the outrage solely for mathematical reasons.) Conversely, some things are opposed purely for their narrative content, without any regard to their power; as I've mentioned in other and previous threads, opposition to dragonborn and tieflings often boils down to "I think the story behind this is dumb and bad, and don't want anyone playing dumb and bad stories."

On a larger scale, the general design-level question of more mechanics vs less mechanics kinda has to be answered before much else can get done.

Totally separating mechanics from thematics or vice-versa is a fool's errand, but that doesn't mean they're exactly equal in importance. So, perhaps we can come up with a principle that reflects this. Something like:

Function follows form: The nature of a thing should guide you on how it works.

This is at best a rough draft hypothetical--as I have said many, many times, these things would need to be tested, a LOT, and almost certainly repeatedly revised. But this is the kind of thing I would expect as a "Principle" for D&D (sorry for making comparisons to DW, hope I haven't crossed your invisible line of "morph[ing D&D] into something it's not.") It would require elaboration, just as Principles in PbtA games do, because just SAYING it is not as helpful as actually going over it. The pithy phrase (in this case, "function follows form") is just there to make it easier to remember the guidance.

By comparison, an "Agenda"-equivalent is something that needs to be extremely high level--something that binds in basically all cases, less "guidance" and more "you need to be doing this for it to count as D&D at all." I'm afraid I'm drawing a blank for something that would work as a D&D "Agenda" that isn't simply a rephrase of one of the DW ones.

How about something around keeping the players coming back for more - "The ultimate goal of play is, in the end, further play" or something like that. (I'm not sure if DW hits that one or not)

For example, "Play to find out what happens" already contains within it the thing I wanted to phrase as a "D&D Agenda," something to the effect of, "Respect the consequences of everyone's actions," which has been brought up repeatedly as a mantra in this thread, that anything which might somehow "take away" consequences is anathema.

*By which I mean: an ability score bonus is a strength, an ability score penalty is a weakness. This form of design is in some sense "transactional," requiring that a strength in one area be "paid for" by a weakness in another. Niche-based design, whether complementary or synergistic, focuses on ensuring that each character has some particular thing they definitely DO contribute, but which on its own is not enough. It is thus, in the strict sense of "it adds things," a purely "positive" design. Both things are used in pretty much every edition of D&D.

IMO the bolded bit should be painted in great big letters on the wall of every D&D designer's office.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait, so you're saying you made rules to resolve conflicts? And they worked?

I didn't make the rules, but I did think the end result was a good idea.

Why do you have such philosophical opposition to developing rules to solve conflicts then???

I don't. Rules for solving conflicts are fine, as long as they get solved with a clear result rather than a wishy-washy compromise where no-one ends up happy.

 

[Lanefan]

Not that I disagree with this in theory. People have fun in different ways. But it holds a danger.

I've twice now encountered GMs who were SO in love with their own world building that the PCs were an afterthought to them.

The First one let us encounter his world and move through it, but we were basically spectators who never did anything major. That was left to his own NPCs - who were the protagonists. To the point of when we were fighting the BBEG, we couldn't affect him but the protagonist NPCs swooped in and took care of it. I somehow lasted through the first time this happened. The second time this happened, I was out!

Years later, different city, completely different group. GM was a great storyteller, but it became VERY clear to me that the PCs were window dressing to the GMs world and where just there to "marvel" at the GMs world building without affecting much of anything.

Yeah, that's poor.

I build worlds - and spend a fair bit of time and effort doing so - in full realization that sooner or later the PCs are probably going to find some way to break them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How about something around keeping the players coming back for more - "The ultimate goal of play is, in the end, further play" or something like that. (I'm not sure if DW hits that one or not)

Well, I think DW is not strictly intended to cater to years-long campaigns which simply go on and on. Like, my sister runs these games, and its always the same players, same setting, not always the same characters, but I know there are plots that have carried on over more than a decade of play.

I don't think you can do that with DW. I'm not sure its an absolute limit of the underlying game architecture, but DW itself clearly 'moves along'. That is, there are only 10 levels, there's only a limited number of spells, and items, and whatnot (kind of a lot of monsters actually). Each playbook, I would say, has about three really super distinct character concepts in it. You could build 10 different wizards, but eventually its going to wear thin unless you create more moves/spells/playbooks. Basically, a year long DW game has probably normally topped out and reached the conclusion of the campaign front. YMMV of course.

But that's fine. I don't actually aspire to play the same game for 10 more years, crud I'll be lucky if I can still roll dice by that point! lol.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, this won't happen because it will go like: Rogue: OK I pick the lock 6-. GM: You work on it for a while but it must be dwarf-made, you get nowhere, soon you hear the sound of hobnailed boots marching up the corridor from the left.

The GM HAS to make a move, SOMETHING has to come about.

And that right there is my objection. If there's no reason for something to happen then something shouldn't happen, even if the Rogue fails on the lock. The result of that failure is that time passes and the PCs/players are stuck having to proactively think about what to do next, perhaps even to the point of turning away and abandoning whatever it was that had them trying to get through that door.

"No change to the status quo" is a valid outcome of an action.

Well, its not forbidden. Graaahhhh! Foecrusher feels humiliated to be in the custody of such lesser warriors than himself! He reaches over and snatches one of their swords right out of the guard's hands! Fight on! Its not like DW is removing options from players, but its also not so natural to think in terms of needing to execute that one certain course of action. Whatever comes next, the PCs ARE going to be expected to act in some way in the next scene, and it is certainly going to present some form of challenge. The only real reasons to act NOW are either because its in character (as I tried to convey for Graaaahhh!) or the player perceives that whatever moves they can likely trigger NOW are more advantageous than ones they likely can trigger THEN.

OK. This wasn't clear in prior descriptions of how things work.

I mean, nothing in DW precludes a group from composing itself as a band of homicidal thugs. Its just that there are plenty of other things you CAN do, so it is not the most likely outcome, and all these different choices are going to be mechanically similar (give or take some bonuses).

To the bolded, why?

 

[Lanefan]

Well, I think DW is not strictly intended to cater to years-long campaigns which simply go on and on. Like, my sister runs these games, and its always the same players, same setting, not always the same characters, but I know there are plots that have carried on over more than a decade of play.

Nice. That's the sort of campaign I like.

I don't think you can do that with DW. I'm not sure its an absolute limit of the underlying game architecture, but DW itself clearly 'moves along'. That is, there are only 10 levels, there's only a limited number of spells, and items, and whatnot (kind of a lot of monsters actually). Each playbook, I would say, has about three really super distinct character concepts in it. You could build 10 different wizards, but eventually its going to wear thin unless you create more moves/spells/playbooks. Basically, a year long DW game has probably normally topped out and reached the conclusion of the campaign front. YMMV of course.

But that's fine. I don't actually aspire to play the same game for 10 more years, crud I'll be lucky if I can still roll dice by that point! lol.

Fair enough.

For my part, if a game system isn't capable of supporting a campaign that could potentially last forever*, I'm not interested in it. And there's all sorts of tricks and ways and means, at least in D&D, of extending a campaign; and I've probably used most of them over the years.

* - as in, the rest of my life or when I or the players no longer want to continue, whichever comes first.