Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[Faolyn]

I never mentioned you. I suggested that the focused, codified style of PBtA and similar games would lead IMO to a less plausible world. Clearly, your mountain of insurmountable evidence proves me wrong in my subjective feelings about a style of RPG so, fair enough.

I haven't found that to be true, either in the game I'm running or the game I'm playing in. But I would like to hear what you think "less plausible" means, so we can be on the same wavelength when talking about it.

Do you mean, because the players are focused on one thing--say, monster hunting, or dungeon-delving--that it means they won't be exploring all the other options out there? If so, that's only semi-true. While I haven't played or run Dungeon World, the playbooks suggest that you're basically playing D&D-style classes, in which case you can do whatever it is you like with them. You don't have to only dungeon-delve anymore than you have to dungeon-delve in D&D. In MotW, yes, your characters are monster hunters, but they still have lives outside of monster hunting in which to do things, and many of the playbooks actively support that, even--the Gumshoe (a private eye) assumes you frequently have cases that have nothing to do with the supernatural, for instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That explains some things.

For me, the rules of an RPG are there merely to a) reflect the fiction and maybe give a bit of playable structure to it and b) abstract those parts of the fiction that can't be done at the table.

But the fiction comes first; and if a rule says something works in manner X but common sense says no, this time it works in manner Y, then it's the rules that give way; either by being ignored for that one instance or - if it's an ongoing issue - being changed by houserule to allow the fiction to make sense.

Falling damage in D&D (all editions) is one such instance: the rules make a rude gesture at common sense once characters reach even low-moderate level. Some tables don't care; many others have houseruled falling damage somehow to bring it more in line with reality.

The bolded is IMO always the most important question: given the conceits of the setting, the fiction, and the situation, does this make sense? It is even the least bit plausible?

Whether it's interesting, or whether the PCs can fail or not, or whether there's relevant consequences on either success or failure, is in my view irrelevant if it doesn't first make any sense.

Which is fine until and unless the GM simply can't make it make sense to either her own satisfaction or that of the players; and then what?

Yeah I do understand where you are coming from. What's weird for me is that it seems incoherent with current styles of play. Realism, or at least a consistency that everyone can reason about, like D&D falling damage, is needed in classic 'FK-like' Gygaxian skilled play. Otherwise devising clever plans and reasoning from fiction are impossible. However, the problem was, it tells lousy stories. This has led to trad play, etc. in which those considerations are at best secondary and really become essentially color. All of us long ago crossed that bridge!

It's like this discussion of 'plausible dungeons'. It's almost insane, no dungeon is even faintly plausible and thus any crazy thing makes as much sense as anything else. So I can't really think that plausibility is really the issue.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I haven't found that to be true, either in the game I'm running or the game I'm playing in. But I would like to hear what you think "less plausible" means, so we can be on the same wavelength when talking about it.

Do you mean, because the players are focused on one thing--say, monster hunting, or dungeon-delving--that it means they won't be exploring all the other options out there? If so, that's only semi-true. While I haven't played or run Dungeon World, the playbooks suggest that you're basically playing D&D-style classes, in which case you can do whatever it is you like with them. You don't have to only dungeon-delve anymore than you have to dungeon-delve in D&D. In MotW, yes, your characters are monster hunters, but they still have lives outside of monster hunting in which to do things, and many of the playbooks actively support that, even--the Gumshoe (a private eye) assumes you frequently have cases that have nothing to do with the supernatural, for instance.

As has been suggested, perhaps I should just put the blame on myself then. If you create the world, moment to moment, as you need it, I can't feel immersed in it, which makes it feel less plausible to me. I need prep, either from the GM or a third party (like a setting book) for the setting to make sense to me. Other people don't, and such games work great for them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's like this discussion of 'plausible dungeons'. It's almost insane, no dungeon is even faintly plausible and thus any crazy thing makes as much sense as anything else. So I can't really think that plausibility is really the issue.

I don’t agree. I hate nonsensical dungeons with monsters that shouldn’t get along with each other, traps in random places that would inconvenience the creatures that inhabit the dungeon, puzzles that have no reason to exist etc. I try to think at least a bit think why the dungeon was built, who uses it now, what sort of defences it makes sense for them to build etc. And then this is something that the players can learn and base their informed decisions upon.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, of course. But in D&D the GM is specifically empowered and instructed to make such decisions. Not so in AW, quite the opposite. "If you do it, you do it" seems to imply that once a vaguely move shaped situation has been reached, a move must be used, it is not the GM's call. Several people have responded by not actually doing this. Instead the GM says something like, "nah, this is so easy/irrelevant that we don't need to invoke the move." But to me doing this seems more like "say yes, or roll the dice," instead of "if you do it, you do it."

It also occurred to me that a common issue with games with rolls causing complications is rolling too often. "If you do it, you do it" attitude might contribute to that, as it eschews judging whether this is actually the sort of situation which is best served by rolling the dice.

Inevitably there's a judgement which must be made. If a fighter says " I smash the empty cardboard box" nobody thinks invoking BBLG makes sense, right? So there's certainly a line somewhere beyond which a move is justified or demanded. I don't think @loverdrive is wrong, but there's always a grey area. This comes up a lot with questions about Defy Danger in DW.

 

[FrogReaver]

As has been suggested, perhaps I should just put the blame on myself then. If you create the world, moment to moment, as you need it, I can't feel immersed in it, which makes it feel less plausible to me. I need prep, either from the GM or a third party (like a setting book) for the setting to make sense to me. Other people don't, and such games work great for them.

So our last game time our regular 5e DM wasn't feeling up to running a game. I ran a 5e one instead. Had 30-40 mins of prep (the time they spent making their level 10 characters).

I gave a very a bit of world backstory - 'Worldwide bad event that's ruined cities, made normal places dangerous, made odd alliances from monsters etc- town they are in is running low on resources. Players bit on the first suggestion I gave them, going to the elemental temples where they battle a squad of elementals, air, fire, water and earth." So that was the ground work. I hadn't pre keyed the temple area, other than the elementals and an event where after defeating them they elementals would merge into a new combined elemental creature (side note, the 4 elementals was a surprisingly tough battle for them)."

These bits were totally on the fly:
I had the creation of the new quad-elemental creature proceeded by a blast that knocked them back and unconscious.
They explored the fire temple first, I had the back wall lined with a carved dragon with glowing red ruby eyes, obviously magical. One player decided to try to break the wall with his magical great axe. He made no progress, but i rolled some dice to see if something interesting would happen and it rolled in the players favor so I had him light on fire that didn't burn him - essentially granting him the fire elemental burn on touch or hit ability (while raging since he had raged at the carving). Another player shattered carving and broke it. - again all decided on the fly, sometimes with the help of dice

The red gems they eventually got out, but found they burned through nearly everything except the rogues psychic daggers and the carving they were in. They lined a brazier with some carving debris and were able to carry out the gems. No idea what purpose they will serve in the future. Session ended there - again on the fly.

So alot of what is being said about AW sounds very similar to how I run D&D. Not everything, but alot. Like I could describe every time they act as proceeding to look to the DM to make a move - and while my moves aren't defined in D&D as they are in AW you can certainly see how they drive toward the action so to speak.

 

[Faolyn]

There are no actual dungeons like this.

Actually, there's been a fair number of underground cities built over the years that could count as dungeons.

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And don't forget places like the Catacombs of Paris.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

By way of prelude: this post is not an assertion of expertise. It's a response to the quoted posts, and a contextualisation of them in terms of things I've already posted upthread of both. As the OP of this thread, I'm making this post in an attempt to identify and bring together common threads in the discussion. But not to eliminate differences of approach with an unwarranted prescriptivity.

Absolutely!

As per my post upthread,
In terms of principles, I would identify this as one way (by no means the only way) of being a fan of the players' characters. They are the protagonists, and events follow them, not vice versa.

Which leads me to this:

When @loverdrive says that, in AW, rules take precedence over the fiction, I take her (i) to be referring to the procedures of play, and (ii) to be using "the fiction" to mean "what has been established so far, and its apparent trajectory" and even moreso "what the GM hopes that trajectory will arrive at".

I see it as a different way of expressing the same point, or at least a closely related one, to my point that GM prep is not a basis for adjudicating that a player's action declaration for their PC fails. This is what I take to be implied by the contrast drawn between "trad" GMing and AW GMing: the AW GM is not expected or required or even entitled to make a call whether a situation at hand warrants using the rules or not. Does this make sense? Is this situation interesting enough? Can PC even fail here? That whole "don't roll the dice if there are no interesting consequences for both failure and success."

Rather, "if you do it, you do it" and the dice are rolled and it is the GM's job to make it interesting, including by making up new fiction and perhaps taking the established fiction in some unexpected direction. Like maybed a hard move in response to a failed Go Aggro against a bound prisoner: that bastard sneakily got out of the ropes and has been biding his sweet time to escape right until now! (respond with <mischief> by taking away their "stuff").

In abstract structural terms, there is a resemblance to a 4e D&D skill challenge (which also, in this respect, resembles a HeroWars/Quest extended contest, a BW Duel of Wits, or any Torchbearer 2e conflict): in a skill challenge, the GM is obliged to the scene "alive" and developing until the requisite count of successes or failures is achieved. I commonly read criticism of this: but what if the players have their PCs do <this thing> which "naturally" brings the scene to an end? The response, of course, is that there *is no such thing: the fictional resources of the GM are unlimited, and they are obliged to draw upon those resources - or, less metaphorically, to make things up! - that keeps the scene going. The same as happens in any D&D combat if no one is reduced to zero hp yet.

So likewise in AW. There is no "it doesn't make sense to roll here" or "going aggro will never work on this NPC - why would Dremmer be scared of you?" If you do it, you do it, so make with the dice: and GM, get ready to think up some stuff that makes sense and is interesting.

As I said above though, there must always be a question as to whether things rise to the level of move invocation. There can be no completely hard and fast rules, as the interpretation of fiction is involved.

 

[niklinna]

I don't know. I don't answer for them and I'm not accountable to them. I answer for me and I'm accountable to my own textual analysis (which has been provided here and elsewhere) and my own substantial amount of time GMing said game and GMing alternative games that are actually dungeon crawl games (designed for it and which its play can't help but operationalize such play; like Torchbearer or B/X). I am a coalition of one and I'm quite comfortable being so.

If you have your own textual analysis on these matters supported by substantial amount of GMing or play which are empirical confounds to all that I've written on this subject in the last decade, I'd love to hear about it.

Games that are primarily dungeon crawlers don't:

* Organize so much of their thematic and premise material around non-dungeon crawl content and/or content/tropes that are actually dungeon crawl-averse.

* Organize their incentive structures around games like Burning Wheel (xp for failure and the first EoS question or "go boldly into danger and actively generate and discover the world simultaneously"), Shadows of Yesterday (alignment or ethos), and Apocalypse World (bonds or relationships).

* Organize moves (both playbook and basic) that put players in positions of profound, in-situ content generation, particularly the kind of generation that is of a player protagonist nature (whereby players gain extreme capacity to reframe current scenes or generate framing inputs for subsequent scenes).

* While simultaneously not being possessed of the profound, dungeon-crawling structure and systemization of a game like Torchbearer.

Now none of that is to say that Dungeon World doesn't have a substantial and compelling Gamist layer when run and played both correctly, deftly, and aggressively. However, that Gamist layer is not "dungeon explorer-centered" and its 100 % not "map-and-key-dungeon-explorer-centered" (like B/X or Torchbearer).

But, it does have the word "dungeon" in its title! Therefore ergo facto(tum) it must be focused around dungeons exclusively.

 

[niklinna]

I think you've hit on it well, again with the bolded in particular. On the one hand, my players and I do just enjoy that intrinsically, and going along with world/scene description (which can have some overlap with framing, but not inherently), it lets us all cohesively imagine and embody ourselves better.

However, that time, which would be momentumless padding in a more conflict-driven game, is also what I feel like gives my brain the time and space to realize escalations that do hound on the dramatic question of the scene or the players. When there is little separating out having to make GM moves, my brain starts to fry, and I feel like my ability to make the consequences/increased pressure fully relevant to what is going on diminishes rapidly. Especially in combination with: Not wanting to leave dead air fighting against making sure my reactions do fit in the framework of the established GM moves. Pacing, both in direct response and overall scenic development, is the pressure point.

I don't think longer expository conversation in an RPG is incompatible with high pressure. There's different kinds of pressure after all. A GM can hit their players with sudden pressure, or they can drop little hints that build up slowly to the players realizing, "Oh s***, we are in The Mess". And then, no matter what they do, like a pressure cooker blowing off the steam, they only reduce the pressure a little bit, and the low flame just continues adding heat....

I might even argue that the sudden-pressure style is more prominent because it developed in reaction to low-pressure expository style and thereby gained a certain level of prominence. Also that people's real play time has become more and more limited, so folks want to get stuff done with in 2–3 hours rather than an 8–12 hour gaming day like when I played D&D in high school.