D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Xamnam]

I think that the language of "to tell stories" misunderstands what's going on in PbtA, though I may be misunderstanding what you mean by narrative structures. Very much like OSR games, PbtA games emphasize emergent story, playing to find out what happens, and explicitly resist GM story-telling:

This is why I'm resistant against the language of "to tell a story" when describing PbtA games. The story happens as a process of play. It's not something that is being dictated in a more traditional gaming fashion.

This might not be their perspective, but for me, it's not that the GM has a story that they are telling, but that there must always be forward momentum of a sort, thus "story" is always happening. There should be no stalling, no meandering, no pointless action. The GM is told:

You make a move:
•  When everyone looks to you to find out what happens
•  When the players give you a golden opportunity
•  When they roll a 6-
DW P.166

, which, as folks have said in this thread, should always leave the GM with a response to make! The above only becomes more potent under the consideration that doing nothing is a "golden opportunity" from the party, and that a GM is not allowed to respond with nothing happens, and is failing if they do. In addition, the GM is pointedly constrained to a specific set of moves they can make, all of which are primed to move things forward! Those are the reasons why, for me, calling PbtA stuff narrative/story games feels very accurate. Either the party is making a choice that is moving things along, or the GM is changing the world (edit: status quo? I'm not quite sure what word I want.) to force that.

I say that not as a flaw, it's what the games are designed to do, well done on them for doing it. However, it's also why I am caught in this teeter-totter feeling with games like these, pushed away from these systems as much as I'm actively interested in them. I read people extolling the virtues of the play structure, and how it forces good play, but what I see in this praise reads, to my brain, as both non-intuitive and constantly stressful. And that's the core loop of the game! This doesn't even touch all the other things I enjoy as both as a GM and player that these systems actively eschew.

 

[Pedantic]

This has always been an issue, where players rely on meta-mechanics rather than in-fiction actions (and their own descrpitions of such) in order to get things done.

That said, it seems like a bit of an over-reaction to go and design an entirely new game system in order to push back when all it needs is a great big note in both the PH and DMG saying "No Roll Without Reason" and going on to explain as a hard rule that if the player doesn't explain what the character is doing and how, there's no roll given. 5e kinda waves at this idea but still could be more hard-and-fast with it.

I don't want this point to slide completely into binary, as I don't think these two positions are the only options, nor even polls on a spectrum. I've always built play specifically around players calling for actions, and treated the fiction as a description of the resulting board state. If the action underlying a perception check is specified, and a player calls for that action, then it's just an act of translation to state the fictional outcome and no more difficult to do in reverse if the player announces they look around for enemies.

Task based resolution doesn't need to be a layer between the real fictional state and the players, it can just be the actual game.

 

[Aldarc]

Nobody has yet answered my questions from well upthread about whether those consequences have to be immediate or can be "saved up" for some future time when they are not expected.

I wasn't aware that you asked a question upthread, but I can try answering now.

When you say "those consequences," I assume you mean the consequences that transpire on GM moves as a result of mixed success and failure rolls? The answer is basically "no." Unless it shows up in some other PbtA game that I'm not aware of, you can't hoard GM Moves to spend them later. However, Dungeon World offers this advice for its principle of Thinking Off-Screen:

Think offscreen too
Just because you’re a fan of the characters doesn’t mean everything happens right in front of them. Sometimes your best move is in the next room, or another part of the dungeon, or even back in town. Make your move elsewhere and show its effects when they come into the spotlight.

The move should still follow the fiction but it may not be apparent immediately.

And similarly with Choosing a Move:

Choosing a Move
To choose a move, start by looking at the obvious consequences of the action that triggered it. If you already have an idea, think on it for a second to make sure it fits your agenda and principles and then do it. Let your moves snowball. Build on the success or failure of the characters’ moves and on your own previous moves.
If your first instinct is that this won’t hurt them now, but it’ll come back to bite them later, great! That’s part of your principles (think offscreen too). Make a note of and reveal it when the time is right.

So as a GM you are instructed to make your Move then, but the nature of that Move may not be revealed to the players until later when it's appropriate. However, it wouldn't be appropriate to save a bunch of moves and then slap them all down on the players as if you were throwing all your saved Draw Twos on someone while playing Uno.

I would also add that you aren't supposed to name your move as a GM. So a GM won't be saying to the players, "Okay, so I'm using my move 'separate them.'" Instead, it is supposed to be a natural part of your duties as a GM describing the scene, so more like "Okay, so fighting in the cave damaged the support beams that were holding the roof up. Rocks, dirt, and splintered timbers come crashing down. When the dust settles, Morc and Felf are now on one side of the cave-in and Dwarm and Nafenal are on the other side. What do you do now?"

That said, it seems like a bit of an over-reaction to go and design an entirely new game system in order to push back when all it needs is a great big note in both the PH and DMG saying "No Roll Without Reason" and going on to explain as a hard rule that if the player doesn't explain what the character is doing and how, there's no roll given. 5e kinda waves at this idea but still could be more hard-and-fast with it.

(1) Vincent Baker was not trying to design a different version of 3e D&D. (2) I explicitly said and italicized "partially." He also designed Apocalypse World, again in part, so that it was more conducive to his wife's own roleplaying preferences. Also, the dude was designing a game for his own play sensibilities because that's what this hobby is about, Charlie Brown! DIY attitude!

I guess "Traditional Play" as a term is being used differently here than I'd use it, but I otherwise get your point.

It's also very possible to play old-school D&D on an emergent-story basis, starting with either a sandbox or West-Marches premise and just seeing where things go from there.

See the Six Cultures of Play, which I know you have participated in conversations discussing. From what I recall, I believe that you described your play in past discussion as being closer to "Classic," though possibly a mix of Classic and Traditional.

That is my preferred method. I don't care for anything resembling an AP, no matter how popular it might be.

It's not mine either. However, my partner enjoys APs since they provide more "structure" for players than "Do whatever you want" and it can be like experiencing a linear story while playing through a video game, which they also enjoy. So I prefer to keep an open mind about APs and those who prefer that style of play.

I will mention again that "popular" is not equal to "good", and neither is "new".

Regardless of whether you think the PbtA system is good or not, I don't think that it's really controversial to say that Apocalypse World has proven fairly popular and influential in the indie gaming scene. How long does PbtA need to be around to not be considered "new" anymore. Apocalypse World (2010) is approaching 13 years old and is older than 5e D&D and only a hair younger than Pathfinder 1. You can fit the lifespan of three whole Confederate States of America in that time.

 

[Faolyn]

I will mention again that "popular" is not equal to "good", and neither is "new".

So? Old doesn't mean good either.

No one should be pressured to try something that doesn't appeal to them, especially if their current method is producing positive results.

No, you shouldn't be pressured to try something new... but you should also keep an open mind and try to not bring your pre-concieved notions into something new, nor expect something new to work exactly like the old things.

 

[pemerton]

In D&D there is no "move" by the DM. The PCs are interacting with the world around them. Maybe they heard an alarm go off when they failed because this door was really a trap, maybe they set off an alarm somewhere else, maybe they wasted enough time that something else happens. Maybe there is no consequence. It all just depends on what makes sense for the scenario.

<snip>

I establish the world and it's inhabitants. Maybe someone or something will hear if they try to bust the door down or cast knock. Sometimes nothing will happen because no one will hear it. The only response I'm going to have is one that's logical to the scenario.

D&D has "moves" by the GM, although it doesn't use that terminology. I mean, you may as well say that AW has no GM, because instead it has a MC!

You even give an example: players "We try and open the door"; GM "The door doesn't open, but you do hear an alarm go off." That's the GM making a move, adding to the shared fiction.

But, as I said, in your (and @Lanefan's) account of D&D play, sometimes the GM doesn't make a move, in the sense that the GM does not add to the shared fiction, beyond "nothing happens". And as I posted, that is a difference from some other RPGing. Which you seem to agree with!

I agree that they will open the door or not. Beyond that, so what?

My point, which again you seem to agree with, is that you were describing an approach to RPGing in which "the locked door is something the GM has established, prior to play, as part of their prep. The GM has notes about what's behind it (the toad statues). And so to a certain extent the significance of opening, or not opening, the door is already established - ie the players will or won't learn this pre-authored bit of fiction." That's a distinctive, not a universal, approach to RPGing. You seem to agree with this too.

What caused the situation was a DM not establishing boundaries and then punishing the players for not following his unspoken boundaries.

But if he's established the boundaries it would have been okay to punish them?

It seems to me that one obvious cause of the OP issue was the GM exercising a very high degree of control (via the pre-authored railroad) while at the same time not making moves that would tell the players what the GM expects them to do (ie it was a mistake to stick to a set of pre-scripted "revelations" and not introduce new content or new "revelations", even when the players were obviously going off the intended rails). The solution, it seems to me, would be defter GMing of the railroad, and I mentioned some concrete approaches that could help here (eg GUMSHOE, and one could add the Alexandrian's "three clue rule" as a variation of that; better use of non-hostile NPCs). I don't think the OP's situation would be helped by exercising even more control, at the meta-level ("setting boundaries"). If the PCs remain in, or end up back in, prison, the game has still become pretty stuck!

The DMG does have guidance. It should have more, and clearer, guidance.

For reasons I don't really understand, the DMG - and a lot of other GMing advice - seems rather hesitant to give advice on how to deftly run pre-scripted adventure scenarios, even though this seems to be a very common, and perhaps the most common, way of playing D&D. As I posted, there are techniques to help with this, and a book of D&D GMing advice seems like it should talk about them.

You keep speaking in PbtA terms as if it's relevant to a D&D game. I don't think it is in many, if not most, cases.

<snip>

I just don't see anything relevant to D&D here and I'm not discussing PbtA any more.

The post you quoted didn't mention any PbtA game, and used the terms "move" and "moves" once each. The systems it mentioned were GUMSHOE and three versions of D&D (AD&D, 4e, 5e).

In an earlier post (#978), I explained how thinking in terms of "soft" and "hard" moves could be relevant to GMing D&D, by helping to avoid the sort of situation described in the OP, which is an exaggerated version of a fairly well-known thing that can go wrong when trying to run a pre-scripted scenario by relying on a combination of GM-introduced hooks/cues, and GM control over the fictional situation of the PCs (eg overwhelming numbers of guards), to get the players to declare actions that will follow the pre-scripted plot:

I think a D&D GM who thinks about their exercise of control over the fiction in terms of soft and hard moves may be a little bit better able to modulate how they adjudicate this sort of scenario. It might help them reflect on what sorts of hooks/cues they're presenting, and how these speak to the players' play of their PCs; and it might also help them think about how to present incentives and options as part of their narration of fiction.​

I stand by those comments, which are highly relevant to a very common approach to D&D play.

I also think it's a bit outrageous of you to present your particular way of playing D&D, based around the GM pre-authoring the fiction and then telling the players about bits and pieces of it depending on the actions they declare for their players, as if that covers the ground of D&D play. In the very post to which you were replying, I pointed out that D&D can be played in other ways, and that I had done so using both AD&D and 4e D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, that's a big part of my problem with these kinds of games. They've created hard rules for when an action can be taken that has mechanical consequences (on either side of the proverbial screen) and when it can't. Even if those rules make sense, it is limiting to mandate what's allowed in this way.

What games are you describing?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a RPG that has a hard rule for when an action can be taken that has mechanical consequences.

 

[Oofta]

So? Old doesn't mean good either.


No, you shouldn't be pressured to try something new... but you should also keep an open mind and try to not bring your pre-concieved notions into something new, nor expect something new to work exactly like the old things.

Then you should also accept that people can look into things and they just aren't for them.

 

[Aldarc]

This might not be their perspective, but for me, it's not that the GM has a story that they are telling, but that there must always be forward momentum of a sort, thus "story" is always happening. There should be no stalling, no meandering, no pointless action. The GM is told:

, which, as folks have said in this thread, should always leave the GM with a response to make! The above only becomes more potent under the consideration that doing nothing is a "golden opportunity" from the party, and that a GM is not allowed to respond with nothing happens, and is failing if they do. In addition, the GM is pointedly constrained to a specific set of moves they can make, all of which are primed to move things forward! Those are the reasons why, for me, calling PbtA stuff narrative/story games feels very accurate. Either the party is making a choice that is moving things along, or the GM is changing the world (edit: status quo? I'm not quite sure what word I want.) to force that.

I say that not as a flaw, it's what the games are designed to do, well done on them for doing it. However, it's also why I am caught in this teeter-totter feeling with games like these, pushed away from these systems as much as I'm actively interested in them. I read people extolling the virtues of the play structure, and how it forces good play, but what I see in this praise reads, to my brain, as both non-intuitive and constantly stressful. And that's the core loop of the game! This doesn't even touch all the other things I enjoy as both as a GM and player that these systems actively eschew.

I wholeheartily agree. GMing PbtA games can be tricky if you are used to more traditional GMing practices with map-and-key prep play. I had a hard time adjusting to this too, and I still make mistakes. It's a slightly different skill set, and it can feel scary to not have prep notes at the ready. I think that it's like anything else, it takes a bit of practice, which is done by playing the game without getting too nervous about whether you goof and learning as you go. Kinda like how many people described playing B/X in the day.

As a GM it can feel like you are constantly being put on the spot to improvize some radically new thing after another, but really moves can be much smaller and simpler than that. A soft move can be as simple as, "The goblins loose their arrows in your direction. What do you do?" or "Silence passes for what feels like a short eternity after you drop the pale down the mine shaft with a loud clank and clatter. Then suddenly you hear the sound of war drums in the deep. What do you do?"

One thing that helped me with moves was this little nugget:

Each move is something that occurs in the fiction of the game—they aren’t code words or special terms.

This is to say, you don't need to consult your book for moves and you shouldn't name them anyway. GM Moves mostly codify the sorts of generic consequences that typical GMs may utilize anyway. So I try to think about what's going on and use "what makes sense in the scenario," to borrow a phrase from Oofta.

All that said, I don't believe that there is one game or system that exists to be the one-size-fits-all of gaming. I play 5e D&D to get the 5e D&D gaming experience. I play OSR games to get the OSR gaming experience. I play PbtA or FitD games to get their respective gaming experiences. I play Fate to get the Fate gaming experience. There are strengths and weaknesses to each game out there. There are things that I enjoy in each of them as a GM and player. There are things that each of them will eschew that I may like. Nevertheless, I find that it's worth trying different games out there. I've been pleasantly suprised by a fair number. The end result is that I have stockpile of games to play that I can rotate between depending on the mood of my given group.

Then you should also accept that people can look into things and they just aren't for them.

That's fine, as long as they aren't toxic about their dislike of it.

Spoiler

It's simply something that I like reminding myself about when it comes to games and media. Just because someone isn't into or dislikes a tabletop roleplaygame doesn't mean that they need to be toxic about it.

 

[Oofta]

D&D has "moves" by the GM, although it doesn't use that terminology. I mean, you may as well say that AW has no GM, because instead it has a MC!

You even give an example: players "We try and open the door"; GM "The door doesn't open, but you do hear an alarm go off." That's the GM making a move, adding to the shared fiction.

But, as I said, in your (and @Lanefan's) account of D&D play, sometimes the GM doesn't make a move, in the sense that the GM does not add to the shared fiction, beyond "nothing happens". And as I posted, that is a difference from some other RPGing. Which you seem to agree with!

My point, which again you seem to agree with, is that you were describing an approach to RPGing in which "the locked door is something the GM has established, prior to play, as part of their prep. The GM has notes about what's behind it (the toad statues). And so to a certain extent the significance of opening, or not opening, the door is already established - ie the players will or won't learn this pre-authored bit of fiction." That's a distinctive, not a universal, approach to RPGing. You seem to agree with this too.

But if he's established the boundaries it would have been okay to punish them?

It seems to me that one obvious cause of the OP issue was the GM exercising a very high degree of control (via the pre-authored railroad) while at the same time not making moves that would tell the players what the GM expects them to do (ie it was a mistake to stick to a set of pre-scripted "revelations" and not introduce new content or new "revelations", even when the players were obviously going off the intended rails). The solution, it seems to me, would be defter GMing of the railroad, and I mentioned some concrete approaches that could help here (eg GUMSHOE, and one could add the Alexandrian's "three clue rule" as a variation of that; better use of non-hostile NPCs). I don't think the OP's situation would be helped by exercising even more control, at the meta-level ("setting boundaries"). If the PCs remain in, or end up back in, prison, the game has still become pretty stuck!

For reasons I don't really understand, the DMG - and a lot of other GMing advice - seems rather hesitant to give advice on how to deftly run pre-scripted adventure scenarios, even though this seems to be a very common, and perhaps the most common, way of playing D&D. As I posted, there are techniques to help with this, and a book of D&D GMing advice seems like it should talk about them.

The post you quoted didn't mention any PbtA game, and used the terms "move" and "moves" once each. The systems it mentioned were GUMSHOE and three versions of D&D (AD&D, 4e, 5e).

In an earlier post (#978), I explained how thinking in terms of "soft" and "hard" moves could be relevant to GMing D&D, by helping to avoid the sort of situation described in the OP, which is an exaggerated version of a fairly well-known thing that can go wrong when trying to run a pre-scripted scenario by relying on a combination of GM-introduced hooks/cues, and GM control over the fictional situation of the PCs (eg overwhelming numbers of guards), to get the players to declare actions that will follow the pre-scripted plot:

I think a D&D GM who thinks about their exercise of control over the fiction in terms of soft and hard moves may be a little bit better able to modulate how they adjudicate this sort of scenario. It might help them reflect on what sorts of hooks/cues they're presenting, and how these speak to the players' play of their PCs; and it might also help them think about how to present incentives and options as part of their narration of fiction.​

I stand by those comments, which are highly relevant to a very common approach to D&D play.

I also think it's a bit outrageous of you to present your particular way of playing D&D, based around the GM pre-authoring the fiction and then telling the players about bits and pieces of it depending on the actions they declare for their players, as if that covers the ground of D&D play. In the very post to which you were replying, I pointed out that D&D can be played in other ways, and that I had done so using both AD&D and 4e D&D.

Different people find inspiration in different ways. If you've found a way that makes you a better DM, good for you. I don't find conversations about or using terminology from PbtA (or really, any other game for that matter) helpful. I've never stated one true way, I explain what I do and why.

 

[pemerton]

for me, calling PbtA stuff narrative/story games feels very accurate.

As I've posted multiple times upthread, the technical genius of Apocalypse World is that the play of the game (following the rules) will produce a story - in the sense of rising action, climax/crisis, and character change/development - without anyone having to sit down to tell a story, to create rising action, to change a character.

All the player has to do is play their PC, based on their understanding of the character's needs and desires. Contra @Lanefan, they do not need to have a sense of the character's "story arc", and in fact that would be an unhelpful way to approach the play of the character.

All the GM has to do is to make moves in accordance with the rules of the game - soft moves most of the time, but hard moves when the rules permit and that is what follows from the established fiction.

(Vincent Baker has pages and pages of of blogs, easily accessible by Googling "lumpley" or "anyway", in which one can see the technical work being done. You can see one key one here, in which Baker set out the relationship between the character, as an imagined person, and the "character sheet" which lists the mechanical resources the players are able to bring to bear so as to change the shared fiction.)

Either the party is making a choice that is moving things along, or the GM is changing the world (edit: status quo? I'm not quite sure what word I want.) to force that.

I say that not as a flaw, it's what the games are designed to do, well done on them for doing it. However, it's also why I am caught in this teeter-totter feeling with games like these, pushed away from these systems as much as I'm actively interested in them. I read people extolling the virtues of the play structure, and how it forces good play, but what I see in this praise reads, to my brain, as both non-intuitive and constantly stressful.

To each their own.

The first version of D&D that I owned was Moldvay Basic. In its Foreword, it offers the following picture of what play might be like:

I was busy rescuing the captured maiden when the dragon showed up. Fifty feet of scaled terror glared down at us with smoldering red eyes. Tendrils of smoke drifted out from between fangs larger than daggers. The dragon blocked the only exit from the cave. . .

I unwrapped the sword which the mysterious cleric had given me. The sword was golden-tinted steel. Its hilt was set with a rainbow collection of precious gems. I shouted my battle cry and charged.

My charge caught the dragon by surprise. Its titanic jaws snapped shut just inches from my face. I swung the golden sword with both arms. The swordblade bit into the dragon's neck and continued through to the other side. With an earth-shaking crash, the dragon dropped dead at my feet. The magic sword had saved my life and ended the reign of the dragon-tyrant. The countryside was freed and I could return as a hero.​

It's virtually impossible to produce play like that in Moldvay Basic: there is no rule for mysterious hermits giving dragon-slaying swords (the rules for acquiring treasure are all about taking loot from dungeon rooms); there is no rule for decapitating dragons with a single blow; the whole orientation of play has nothing to do with freeing the countryside from the reign of the dragon tyrant (cf the example of play in the text, in which the response to Black Dougal dying is to transfer useful gear from his backpack to the pack of a still-living PC: that does capture the general orientation of play).

But for me that has always been the promise of RPGing: playing a character in a story that is reminiscent of the inspirational material.

Game systems that actually deliver that are, for me, not counter-intuitive at all.