D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[pemerton]

You're saying that PbtA games don't have rules for when GMs or players can make a Move?

They have rules for when the GM make a move. The rule for when a player-side move is triggered is "if you do it, you do it" (which contrasts with "say 'yes' or roll the dice", or with 5e D&D's "roll the dice if the GM thinks things are uncertain).

But in the post to which I replied, you referred to games which have "hard rules for when an action can be taken". There is no rule about when a player can have their PC take an action in AW or DW, other than the basic requirement that it be feasible within the fiction.

Upthread I posted this, and what you are saying now is reinforcing my sense of its accuracy:

To me, it sounds as if you have made the error of assuming that every action a player declares for their PC must be a player-side move. That's not correct. The player-side moves aren't a list of things players can do. They're a list of rules for when dice must be rolled. If they're not triggered, then the conversation continues, with the GM making moves as the rules dictate.

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.

DW does not have a codified list of actions the players can take. The fact that you think it does might help explain why your play experience was unsatisfactory!

It does have a list of moves for the GM to make, described not in terms of setting elements but in terms of dramatic logic ("separate them", "put someone in a spot", etc). This is essential to making the game go.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Game systems that allow players to sit around with nothing happening are boring to me. I'm glad your experience is different!

 

[Micah Sweet]

They have rules for when the GM make a move. The rule for when a player-side move is triggered is "if you do it, you do it" (which contrasts with "say 'yes' or roll the dice", or with 5e D&D's "roll the dice if the GM thinks things are uncertain).

But in the post to which I replied, you referred to games which have "hard rules for when an action can be taken". There is no rule about when a player can have their PC take an action in AW or DW, other than the basic requirement that it be feasible within the fiction.

Upthread I posted this, and what you are saying now is reinforcing my sense of its accuracy:


DW does not have a codified list of actions the players can take. The fact that you think it does might help explain why our play experience was unsatisfactory!

It does have a list of moves for the GM to make, described not in terms of setting elements but in terms of dramatic logic ("separate them", "put someone in a spot", etc). This is essential to making the game go.

Yeah, that last part is the problem for me. I guess I don't care for what makes the game go.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Game systems that allow players to sit around with nothing happening are boring to me. I'm glad your experience is different!

If that's what the players decide, that's on them. My job is just to make sure they know there are choices.

 

[pemerton]

My job is just to make sure they know there are choices.

And I find games where the GM is the one who provides the choices and their consequences to be railroads.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I find games where the GM is the one who provides the choices and their consequences to be railroads.

If you provide no choices, nothing happens. If you provide one choice, its a railroad. You have to have a space with many choices, and real consequences for picking one over another, and be ok with them making any of them, including the choice of something you haven't thought of. That's what I'm talking about. I don't know what you were thinking of, but it's not my game.

 

[Autumnal]

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.

This right here is why I was initially very skeptical, to the edge of hostility, about early OSR discussion. I’m in my late 50s now, but I remember the years of wishing again and again for gaming that would feel like the stories I was reading and living in prose and comics, and never getting it, and trying to run such a thing myself and never getting it to work that way either.

(A big part of the reason I was so glad to meet Robin Laws and Rob Heinsoo the following decade was that they were both talking about stories in gaming in language that respected and affirmed my long-time desire. We’ve all come a very long way from my dorm and sickbed, Rob’s studies and translation work, and Robin’s video clerk days and cartoon zines on themes like “sod that, where’s the loot?” as the foundational PC question, but we are all those people too.)

Gradually I learned to recognize features that did interest me in OSR games, while simultaneously more OSR creators developed explanations and justifications that were more present-focused and amenable to more kinds of priorities. So we converged: they talked better and I listened better. But oh man did that Mentzner quote remind me of my bad old days.

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....

What’s “R x R” I’m this context?

 

[pemerton]

This right here is why I was initially very skeptical, to the edge of hostility, about early OSR discussion.

I'm aware of the OSR, and I can see that in some cases it has brought a type of design elegance and also an aesthetic (eg ZakS's reworking of Death Frost Doom) that was missing in early D&D.

But ultimately I have no real interest in OSR play. I do play Torchbearer, but the vibe is much closer to Burning Wheel with an overlay of black comedy, than to anything I would associate with the OSR.

 

[pemerton]

If you provide no choices, nothing happens. If you provide one choice, its a railroad. You have to have a space with many choices, and real consequences for picking one over another, and be ok with them making any of them, including the choice of something you haven't thought of. That's what I'm talking about. I don't know what you were thinking of, but it's not my game.

I'm thinking of a game which is very much like yours as best I can tell - the existence of the choices (be they doors, or something else), and the consequences that flow from opening them or not (be that traps, alarms, toad statutes, whatever) are all authored by the GM.

That's what I am calling a railroad. By my lights.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm thinking of a game which is very much like yours as best I can tell - the existence of the choices (be they doors, or something else), and the consequences that flow from opening them or not (be that traps, alarms, toad statutes, whatever) are all authored by the GM.

That's what I am calling a railroad. By my lights.

So it's a railroad unless the players control the fiction in a way beyond their own PCs? Wow, you and I are very different gamers.