Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[pemerton]

if you're running a scenario like in Game of Thrones where the Wildlings are climbing the Wall of Ice, it's nowhere near as tense if everyone meta-knows most of the characters will survive no matter how far they fall.

If you're looking for tension in your RPG in virtue of fictional situations of type X, and the rules of your game make situations of type X tension-free, then something has gone wrong!

 

[pemerton]

So if the player's action declaration is "I search for secret doors in [area to be searched]", that invokes Discern Realities. Got it so far.

Normally the GM would clarify - "So you're closely studying the area - that's Discern Realities". If the player doesn't want to invoke the move, they can say (eg) "No, I'm just casually looking around."

The player rolls a success, and gets to ask a question. So far so good....maybe; given the focus of the action declaration, it seems to follow that the question asked should be rules-forced to directly relate to secret doors. The only one of those six questions that directly relates to secret doors is the last one; to which I gather the GM is not allowed to answer "nothing" indicating that the character has determined with high confidence that there is no secret door here.

I don't know what you mean by "it seems to follow that <X> should be <Y>" here. I've told you what the rules actually are.

how (without massive contrivance) can searching for a secret door tell me who's really in control here?

In your close study of the area, perhaps you noticed something?

 

[clearstream]

When the rule that's invoked by said fiction doesn't make sense with said fiction, they're in conflict.

It feels possible that you are reading my statements to have less exactness than I intend. Taking your case above, you describe

fiction (lethal fall)​

​

rule (survivable fall)​

A lethal fall is not a survivable fall, therefore your described fiction does not justify invocation of the rule. What I think you continue to presuppose is that the "justifies" step can be skipped and reconsidered in hindsight. But that's a case of the horse has bolted so we decide to close the gate. It's too late to check for justification of a rule we invoked after we invoke it. We check for match between fiction and rules at our disposal, and only invoke a given rule if doing so is justified by a match. Perforce, the invoked rule fits the fiction else it would not be invoked!

I think "justifes changing the rule" needs to be in there somewhere, for (ideally, rare) situations like this.

I agree, and it certainly does. Remember that among our lusory means is a super-rule for managing exceptions to specific rules. In D&D it's DM judgement. In the past I've said that rules extend and override norms. They can also reify them. You provide a good example.

After a spell of judging on "lethal falls" which no rule covers in the extant game text, a group decides to write down what they want their norm to be. A few options were briefly discussed up thread. Very often this process is one of putting into writing DM judgements on the matter. Now they have a rule to invoke, that looks like this

fiction (lethal fall)​

​

rule (lethal fall)​

We still won't invoke our survivable fall rule, instead we'll invoke our new lethal fall rule.

 

[mamba]

Now they have a rule to invoke, that looks like this

fiction (lethal fall)
rule (lethal fall)
We still won't invoke our survivable fall rule, instead we'll invoke our new lethal fall rule.

so we have two rules now? Why do we not have one rule for falling and it tells us whether a given fall is lethal or not (and if not, what the consequences are, e.g. damage taken)?

That would make more sense to me.

Is that a matter of your design only, or is there some deeper reason why you added a rule instead of changing an existing one? Is it because now the rule decides what is lethal and what is not rather than the fiction?

 

[AnotherGuy]

You mean besides it not being satisfying to us?

How do you mean?
That the failure (of the die roll for a specific action) seems disconnected from the failure narrated, such as a loose tile or as @pemerton provided clouds parting and you see x?

I play trad D&D, but I find being able to insert narration of this type (in addition to having the option of std narration) into failed (or even successful) skill checks far more liberating as a storyteller. It is just an opportunity, should you wish to use it, for greater depth, in the same way one has freedom on how they can narrate hit point loss i.e. it is not necessarily a wound.

I've been doing it for our table's skill checks for a few years and it works really well. It opens up doors to the fiction that would have otherwise remained closed because they had not been planned.

 

[clearstream]

so we have two rules now? Why do we not have one rule for falling and it tells us whether a given fall is lethal or not (and if not, what the consequences are, e.g. damage taken)?

That would make more sense to me.

Yes, I agree. Once we accept a new rule into our game text, we very well could decide that some existing rule is no longer needed. That's not always the case. For example, using the falling example, my new rule could be

specific rule (lethal falls) applies solely to falls from above 200 feet​

​

general rule (survivable falls) deals with falls unless a specific rule overrides it (drawing upon a metarule that already exists in 5e)​

​

But I take you to be contemplating

rule (falls, lethal and survivable, any height)​

​

It's really just a rule templating choice. I'm drawn to adding my specific rule over novation, because it sometimes turns out that a rule from the base text is doing something more than it appears on surface. So I just make the specific rule I need. That often makes it easier for others to know where they stand - "Yes, everything you read there is true, and..."

On the other hand, there's no doubt that novation is sometimes the best thing to do.

Is that a matter of your design only, or is there some deeper reason why you added a rule instead of changing an existing one? Is it because now the rule decides what is lethal and what is not rather than the fiction?

The rule never decided that, truly. We decided that lethal falls for high-level characters are something we want in our fiction. We want to be able to say "Ha ha, it's from 1000 feet, you die!" and savour the schadenfreude that affords us. Or maybe it just offends our suspension of disbelief every time high-level Harriet HALO jumps without a parachute.

Whatever the case, the fiction came first. To see that, consider that we wanted a game about airbrush artists showing off their hotrods. Then it makes sense to build rules we can invoke around airbrushing, hotrods, that sort of stuff. But if our game is instead about hirsute Visigoths plundering Rome, we'd not design those sorts of rules because we've never invoke them (unless we're picturing hirsute Visigoth airbrush artists in hotrods, plundering Rome?)

Constitutive rules can open up new possibilities, and then we can design rules into that space (aka "design space".) Doing so at times casts light on new possible fiction. Otherworldly fiction, at times. That's why I have been neutral on whether falls should/should-not be survivable. While I say that the rule never decided that; in our engagement with rules they influence whether or not we accept them into our norms of play. To see this, picture a D&D feat that read "Rubbery: never takes more than 10d6 damage from falling, from any height." We could well accept that rule into our norms even though it on surface breaches our possible feeling that falls from some heights should be lethal regardless of character level. It would probably be even more acceptable if we positioned it as trait of a new (non-human) race.

 

[thefutilist]

I was talking about what is involved in GMing a no myth, story now game.

I didn't assert or imply that all story now is no myth. But some is, as Edwards discusses here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html

Ah I was misunderstanding your point, in my crusade against no-myth I can become overly zealous.

To answer the broader point of the thread. I do think you can run Apocalypse World in a similar way to how you’d run a fully prepped D&D. By which I mean the motivations and resources of each npc are set in stone. When you frame a scene, who and what is there are already established. Basically you're not allowed to change your prep when you commit to it. Also when you roll the dice you’re mostly determining whether you succeed or fail. That kind of thing. It’s pretty much how I run it. Think of it a bit like a wind up clock, all the elements are in place and you’re just playing to see how they interact.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So if the player's action declaration is "I search for secret doors in [area to be searched]", that invokes Discern Realities. Got it so far.

The player rolls a success, and gets to ask a question. So far so good....maybe; given the focus of the action declaration, it seems to follow that the question asked should be rules-forced to directly relate to secret doors. The only one of those six questions that directly relates to secret doors is the last one; to which I gather the GM is not allowed to answer "nothing" indicating that the character has determined with high confidence that there is no secret door here.

Where this loses me is that depending on the question asked, the resolution might very easily have nothing to do with the stated action of searching for a secret door. Put another way, how (without massive contrivance) can searching for a secret door tell me who's really in control here?

Well, again, the move is not 'Search for Secret Doors' and the text of Discern Realities talks about 'When you closely study a situation or person' as the trigger. A room is neither a situation nor a person. Now, maybe I'm at odds with others here, but I DO NOT consider DR to be a 'Perception Check'. It is an investigative move! It isn't an attempt to find some specific thing, it's an attempt to learn all you can about a SITUATION (IE lets say "what's up with the people in this room?") or a specific person (and I would say 'In context' not patting them down or something, though that might trigger it). I see it as basically a 'Sherlock Holmes' move.

If all you are doing is feeling around on a wall, then I agree, you are not going to learn "who's in charge here" or anything like that, so the move is NOT appropriate. In that case NO MOVE was triggered, as there's no move for perception. The GM is entirely free to narrate any answer they want, respecting their duties within the game. It could be a soft move, a question of a player "What do you think might be here, Dwargon?" Honestly, DW is often just "rule of cool" in my book. Cool may help or thwart the PCs, but the game does say "depict a fantastic world."

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, again, the move is not 'Search for Secret Doors' and the text of Discern Realities talks about 'When you closely study a situation or person' as the trigger. A room is neither a situation nor a person. Now, maybe I'm at odds with others here, but I DO NOT consider DR to be a 'Perception Check'. It is an investigative move! It isn't an attempt to find some specific thing, it's an attempt to learn all you can about a SITUATION (IE lets say "what's up with the people in this room?") or a specific person (and I would say 'In context' not patting them down or something, though that might trigger it). I see it as basically a 'Sherlock Holmes' move.

If all you are doing is feeling around on a wall, then I agree, you are not going to learn "who's in charge here" or anything like that, so the move is NOT appropriate. In that case NO MOVE was triggered, as there's no move for perception. The GM is entirely free to narrate any answer they want, respecting their duties within the game. It could be a soft move, a question of a player "What do you think might be here, Dwargon?" Honestly, DW is often just "rule of cool" in my book. Cool may help or thwart the PCs, but the game does say "depict a fantastic world."

That’s how I read it to, but I get the impression that’s definitely at odds with others. Thanks for highlighting the differences though, it helps the rest of us not be so confused.

 

[Xamnam]

It's the same as that (IMO awful) theatre maxim that says that any prop on stage has to be used at some point during the performance.

That doesn't really capture what Chekhov's Gun is about.

"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."

This is not saying there can't be set dressing, or ancillary details to things. There's a reason the example is a loaded gun, and not a cup of tea. A gun has intrinsically higher stakes, and the audience is going to focus on it because of that. It's also worth noting his advice says it should 'go off', instead of someone should get shot. The answer doesn't have to be obvious, it just should have some form of dramatic payoff if something that important and full of tension is present.

But also, advice for playwrights (especially versus directors) doesn't exactly map to trying to simulate dungeon crawling in an interactive medium. Conservation of detail matters a whole lot more in the context of the space, time, and audience focus constraints of a theatrical performance. It's a maxim about narrative. If you're not concerned with crafting that, it doesn't really apply.