D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[see]

This is a problem as old as the game: How does a DM get the players to stop just outright slaying all NPCs, but more specifically the "good guys". Assuming that the PCs are at least sort of good, or at least want open access to good/neutral civilization.

AD&D 1st edition answer: "Well, you were a 6th level chaotic good ranger. When the first guard dropped, you became a 5th level chaotic neutral fighter, so rework your sheet. If you help drop another guard, you'll be a 4th level chaotic evil fighter."

 

[Aldarc]

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.

IME, this can be the difficult part of the game if you are used to and coming from map-and-key play with GM prep. And if you are not used to improvising consequences or moves after each mixed success or failure, then I can sympathize with those who find that sort of play stressful. It's like a classically-trained musician switching over to bebop jazz.

 

[pemerton]

IME, this can be the difficult part of the game if you are used to and coming from map-and-key play with GM prep. And if you are not used to improvising consequences or moves after each mixed success or failure, then I can sympathize with those who find that sort of play stressful.

Sure, it can be stressful in the sense of being unfamiliar or even difficult at first.

Writing dungeons, or preparing DL-ish or CoC-ish prewritten scenarios, is a skill too, that can take a while to learn. (Which I imagine you are aware of! But some posters talk as if the more traditional D&Dish approaches are intrinsically simpler, more obvious, or even self-evident.)

 

[bloodtide]

AD&D 1st edition answer: "Well, you were a 6th level chaotic good ranger. When the first guard dropped, you became a 5th level chaotic neutral fighter, so rework your sheet. If you help drop another guard, you'll be a 4th level chaotic evil fighter."

1E is such a great game. I should get more games going.

In my more deep storytelling R x R games I use a mix of the ye old 2E Ravenfloft/Necromancer Dark rules and a bit of 3E Taint to drop things on characters that do evil. Some players even love it until the drawbacks kick in....

 

[Micah Sweet]

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:

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

And similarly with Choosing a Move:

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?"


(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!


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.


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.


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.

I was responded to @Faolyn , and her suggestion to try something new.

Plus, from my perspective everything that's come out after the late 90s is new .

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

How much time do you have to give something new before it's ok to form an opinion about it?

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

You're saying that PbtA games don't have rules for when GMs or players can make a Move? I'd just prefer not have a list of codified actions I can take as either type of player, whether we're supposed to use their names or not. Choosing from a list feels wrong to me. Probably the presentation is part of the problem. Give these things as just examples of stuff you can do in a less formal way and I'd probably be more on board with it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.)

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.

By the same token, game systems whose mechanics are expressly designed to deliver that experience feel pushy and artificial to me. I'm glad your experience is different.

 

[Micah Sweet]

IME, this can be the difficult part of the game if you are used to and coming from map-and-key play with GM prep. And if you are not used to improvising consequences or moves after each mixed success or failure, then I can sympathize with those who find that sort of play stressful. It's like a classically-trained musician switching over to bebop jazz.

Yeah, don't really care for jazz either to be honest. To each their own.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, it can be stressful in the sense of being unfamiliar or even difficult at first.

Writing dungeons, or preparing DL-ish or CoC-ish prewritten scenarios, is a skill too, that can take a while to learn. (Which I imagine you are aware of! But some posters talk as if the more traditional D&Dish approaches are intrinsically simpler, more obvious, or even self-evident.)

I don't think they're any easier necessarily. But they are familiar by this point, and learning a whole new way of playing the same genre doesn't seem worthwhile to me, especially if I don't see it as being significantly (or at all) better than the way I know.