Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[Faolyn]

GURPS players don't spend a lot of time championing their preferences onto the larger gaming community. They just play GURPS. This thread (and the other one @pemerton created recently) are specifically preemptive strikes against perceived attacks of misrepresentation against narrative games by the trad community. He wasn't responding to any particular post. He was making an active complaint. Then he made the same complaint regarding a more specific (but very similar in principle) game.

In the case of GURPS, I'd say it's because there isn't that much misrepresentation about it. People either like the crunch or don't like it, but nobody is saying that those people who don't like the crunch are wrong because akchoolly, GURPS isn't really crunchy. And even then, people who don't like GURPS tend to at least appreciate the setting books or how well researched their material tends to be.

Whereas lots of people don't quite get a lot of basic parts of games like PbtA, like misunderstanding what moves are or how they work--such as how everything you do has to be a move.

 

[Lanefan]

Why not do both and say that this was the .0001% chance that someone would survive such a fall?

Because when it happens 10 times in a row, that .0001% chance becomes a joke.

I joke in the sense that this isn't how I'd handle it, but I think it's a relevant answer. Ideally, the game rules wouldn't allow for such an absurdity.

Agreed; the rules should make sense with the fiction.

 

[clearstream]

The way I read the post I was responding to, it came across more like the fiction had to bend to suit the rules; where this seems to indicate the rules have to bend to suit the fiction.

Which is it?

The question arises when the rules want to say one thing yet the fiction wants to say another: which one has to give way?

Given the fiction invokes the rule, how can they be in conflict?

Take a high-level character falling off a cliff (or out of a skyship) in D&D. The fiction - as expressed by real-world common sense - wants to say that character will 99.9+% likely die on landing, while the rules - as expressed by the number of hit points she has vs the damage the rules say the fall will do to her - want to say she'll brush herself off and walk away. Do you go with the rule, or go with the fiction?

This is a good example of what I've called a broken chain of justification. There are two ways to understand this.

Character in a soaring skyship justifies taking a lethal plunge justifies a rule for plunges that aren't lethal justifies further fiction​

One way to understand this is that our fictional action is "lethal plunge" which our rule does not handle. Therefore do not invoke that rule. Say something else instead. "You die", could feel appropriate.

Another way to understand this is that we helped ourselves to a resolution - "lethal" - that wasn't justified by facts about our game world. Plunges aren't lethal for high-level characters. Corrected, we should have

Character in a soaring skyship justifies taking a plunge justifies a rule for plunges that aren't lethal for high level characters justifies character sticks the landing​

Building the result we think should happen into our action - i.e. "lethal" - was jumping the gun. To see this, picture that the character was not quite so high-level, so had a 50% probability of dying. We ought not jump the gun and pronounce them dead at the point of the action declaration.

But how should we decide which to choose? In both cases, fiction takes priority.

Either our world is one in which high-level characters don't die from falls, in which case we're not entitled to help ourselves to the result "dies from the fall"... and certainly not at the point of action declaration without running it through the mechanic.​

​

Or our world is one in which falls from a sufficient height are always lethal for characters, in which case, we ought not to invoke a rule that doesn't deal with that. Given we're now in my third category - it's not covered by a rule - it's turned over to GM. (This is similar to the case I raised up thread, where the action very nearly but does not exactly fit the Assess a Situation rule. The same principle applies.)​

AW manages it with rigourous rules. Some other games manage it with adroit GMing.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

You don't actually have to create a world moment-to-moment. You can do most of the work before the game ever starts. I found an interesting essay earlier today, "45 Minutes Collaborative Worldbuilding". The writer is talking about a con game (99% sure it's Dungeon World; definitely PbtA) they ran:

I see there are a lot of races: a Human Thief, an Elf bard, an Half-Elf Ranger (I told them to take an extra move) and a Orc Barbarian. This is interesting.
I start from the obvious and ask, to the player: "What is an Elf?"
"Well, an Elf is an Elf, duh", he answers.
"Ok, humor me, can you describe your elves?"
"They are tall and magical, swift and agile"
"Great... why they are magical?"
This question takes the player by surprise. Excellent. He thinks a second and tell me that they are magical because they are closer to the Sky Gods than anyone else. I nod and ask were they live. Since they are closer to the gods they live in high mountain valleys ("Not forest?" "No, valleys. Maybe some tree", already broke with the stereotype, good) and, keeping asking question we discover that the Elves are a proud mountain dwelling race, divided in several great houses, each with their steading and with machiavellan politics.
It's the elf player to tell me all of this. I asked him why he is a Bard and why spoken language is so important for him, and he answered the machiavellan politics, I suggested the steadings... it could seem a complex process, but it went smoothly in a copule of minutes and three or four questions answered.

This is pre-game stuff, and it's actually really decent world-building for something that took only a couple of minutes to do. The writer also asks the other players similar questions: The thief points to a blank spot on the map and says there's a town on a river, and the river flows down from the mountains; the ranger points to a blank spot and says there's a forest there; the orc comes from somewhere off the map, far away. The GM draws the town, river, and forest in. And so in 45 minutes, they built a world and the players all of which are now more invested because they made the world.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don't actually have to create a world moment-to-moment. You can do most of the work before the game ever starts. I found an interesting essay earlier today, "45 Minutes Collaborative Worldbuilding". The writer is talking about a con game (99% sure it's Dungeon World; definitely PbtA) they ran:


This is pre-game stuff, and it's actually really decent world-building for something that took only a couple of minutes to do. The writer also asks the other players similar questions: The thief points to a blank spot on the map and says there's a town on a river, and the river flows down from the mountains; the ranger points to a blank spot and says there's a forest there; the orc comes from somewhere off the map, far away. The GM draws the town, river, and forest in. And so in 45 minutes, they built a world and the players all of which are now more invested because they made the world.

But I've been specifically told right here that you can't use prep to determine the success of anything the player wants to do.

 

[pemerton]

I propose this is because the moment we get past the facts of play accounts, that we all have different perspectives of how those facts relate to rpg design theory and ultimately what they prove or disprove.

In what way is the plausibility of the fiction a matter of "RPG design theory"?

 

[pemerton]

We were playing Blades in the dark. One player got on a rooftop with a long range rifle and was taking shots at baddies. The player rolled a failure. But fictionally we had established no baddies near the player and mostly shorter range weapons. It was a bit hard to come up with an appropriate consequence. We ended up saying the gun misfired and fell off the roof. Possibly was some harm involved as well. It didn’t feel great, but not alot of other great options either.

I see nothing wrong with your example.

Can the consequence move be indirect?
i.e. nothing to do with the rifle or firing a shot but that a loose tile made the character lose footing so a further "climb/balance/reflex" check is needed....

What about a malfunction? Bullet caught in rifle chamber, requiring delay while character fixes problem. I'm not a gun-guy so I'm spitballing here.

I don't know BitD, other than by reputation and by reading various people's commentary.

But I am familiar with twists in Torchbearer 2e, and narrating consequences of failure in Burning Wheel.

So someone is taking a shot from a roof, and the player rolls a failure: as they're about to shoot, the clouds part for a moment, they clearly see the face of their target, it's their kid brother. (For lower stakes, it's the kid who was serving at the cafe where they got lunch earlier that day.)

Or as they're about to shoot, they see a group of pedestrians walking down the street. For sure, someone's going to hear their shot.

Or as you suggest, they're about to shoot when the gun misfire.

Etc, etc.

 

[FrogReaver]

In what way is the plausibility of the fiction a matter of "RPG design theory"?

I don’t think it is.

I don't know BitD, other than by reputation and by reading various people's commentary.

But I am familiar with twists in Torchbearer 2e, and narrating consequences of failure in Burning Wheel.

So someone is taking a shot from a roof, and the player rolls a failure: as they're about to shoot, the clouds part for a moment, they clearly see the face of their target, it's their kid brother. (For lower stakes, it's the kid who was serving at the cafe where they got lunch earlier that day.)

Or as they're about to shoot, they see a group of pedestrians walking down the street. For sure, someone's going to hear their shot.

Or as you suggest, they're about to shoot when the gun misfire.

Etc, etc.

i like these better!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because when it happens 10 times in a row, that .0001% chance becomes a joke.

I mean, unless your campaign is Cliff-World, would this be an issue?

I mean, falling damage in most of my games is almost always for much smaller falls, of the 10 to 30 feet range. Anything more than that tends to be very rare.

 

[pemerton]

For the people with experience with PbtA games, do you tinker with the systems, perhaps grabbing ideas or parts from other "better" designed PbtA games and homebrew your game in the same vein some trad DMs do for their games?

From your posts it sounds you guys are slavish to the rules for each particular game. I don't see (granted I'm not on a lot) any threads for homebrewery for these PbtA games which surprises me because of my tinkering nature. Surely the systems are easier enough to incorporate things you enjoy from the plethora of these games?

The concluding chapter of AW (at least in the original rulebook) is all about adaptations and "tinkering", and includes examples (with attribution) from people other than Baker (eg ideas from John Harper; proto-Dungeon World).

And "custom moves" on the player side are a core component of threat design.

So if I've properly understood your impression, I think it's a false one.