Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[Thomas Shey]

So, a "condition" would generally be a hard move. And so would be imposed when the rules permit and the GM decides that it follows from the fiction.

I think "when the rules permit" is doing some heavy lifting there. Though perhaps there's a more broad case of "rules permitting" than I've noticed in either of the two PbtA games I own.

The rules of Apocalypse World permit a hard move (i) when a player's adjusted roll for a move is 6 or less, or (ii) when a player hands a golden opportunity on a plate.

Well, the first I was absolutely aware of. Can you elaborate on what you mean by the second?

This is why I am saying that the key difference is not the mechanics, but the rules that constrain a GM making a hard move.

I think the problem is I consider the latter to be mechanics. Mechanics aren't just about how you roll dice.

To give a concrete example: in Moldvay Basic, it's fair game (as far as rules and procedures are concerned) to have deadly traps strike from nowhere. The opening of the chest in the example of play, where Black Dougal dies from a poison needle (because the player fails a save) is an example.

In Dungeon World, on the other hand, you die from the poison (a hard move by the GM) is not permissible in the absence of a soft move that put the life of the PC at stake in some fashion.

OD&D is much the same as Moldvay Basic in this context.

Okay, I think I get what you're talking about.

But it's not the same in virtually any RPG.

Consider, again, classic D&D (in any of its varieties - Moldvay Basic, Gygax's AD&D, OD&D, etc): as part of the conversation, it is permitted for the GM to make hard moves (including "nothing happens") just as their prep, and their extrapolation from their prep, dictatees. But in Dungeon World the making of hard moves is governed by completely different principles. Likewise Apocalypse World. I don't know how different Monster of the Week is from these other PbtA RPGs, but I'd be surprised if it's closer to classic D&D than it is to them.

I think what I was referring to as "could happen in any game" are things that are either soft moves or not moves at all. They're things that may have some impact on the fiction but don't really have any, well, consequences of any account.

 

[bloodtide]

Now you are overburdening the word.

A consistent game experience results from always using the same rules to adjudicate a given type of action. If you are jumping a chasm, and you always use the same jumping rules, the results are consistent, because they are generated in a consistent fashion.

Like, if I am using a dagger, it consistently does 1d4 damage. It does not suddenly do 1d12 just because the GM feels like it one day.

I don't really get this? Are there DMs that just change things like the damage a weapon does on a whim? That seems odd to me.

I see more: On round two the character easily kills a monster with a fireball and the player is super happy. On round forty the same fireball bounces off a monster that "looks the same" and the player gets all mad the game has no "consistency".

But rules light or heavy there could be dozens of reasons for this, and one of them is not "the DM not being consistent".

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't really get this? Are there DMs that just change things like the damage a weapon does on a whim? That seems odd to me.

I see more: On round two the character easily kills a monster with a fireball and the player is super happy. On round forty the same fireball bounces off a monster that "looks the same" and the player gets all mad the game has no "consistency".

But rules light or heavy there could be dozens of reasons for this, and one of them is not "the DM not being consistent".

This assumes all the "dozens of reasons" are actually good. Plenty of them are easily terrible. And it doesn't contrast with "GM did this two sessions ago" and "GM does this significantly different now" which absolutely can be "GM is being inconsistent."

There can be legitimate reasons for that, but the majority of them should be visible before or after the roll.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't really get this? Are there DMs that just change things like the damage a weapon does on a whim? That seems odd to me.

I see more: On round two the character easily kills a monster with a fireball and the player is super happy. On round forty the same fireball bounces off a monster that "looks the same" and the player gets all mad the game has no "consistency".

But rules light or heavy there could be dozens of reasons for this, and one of them is not "the DM not being consistent".

The DM not being consistent absolutely would be a reason for that. There may be others, too… but I’m guessing a lot of those? Folks would just lump them in with “DM inconsistency” and be done with it.

I’d be among those. Something doesn’t work the way it’s already been established to work? I want a good reason for that and I want that communicated in some way to the players.

 

[pemerton]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by the second?

I think you worked this out - but for clarity, if the GM (say) "announces a threat", and then the player has their PC do something which ignores the thread, and then looks to the GM to see what happens next (which is the standard "trigger" for a GM-side move), the GM is permitted to bring the threat home in as hard and direct a way as they like.

This is the sort of thing that counts as handing the GM a golden opportunity, outside the context of a rolled player-side move.

I think "when the rules permit" is doing some heavy lifting there.

<snip>

I think the problem is I consider the latter to be mechanics. Mechanics aren't just about how you roll dice.

I'm not treating "rules" and "mechanics" as synonyms. For instance, there is a rule in Burning Wheel that the GM must frame scenes that speak to (in some fashion) the priorities that a player has established for their PC. But that is not a mechanic, any more than the rule in classic D&D that, before play, the GM must prepare a dungeon is a mechanic.

Apocalypse World doesn't include the BW rule, but it achieves a somewhat similar result by use of a different rule - namely, the GM at various times must make a move, and the GM's moves are framed and constrained in ways that are relative to the interests the players have established for their PCs (eg announce a threat, provide an opportunity, etc).

Dungeon World is very similar to AW in its GM-side moves, and it is these constraints/framings of the GM-side moves - together with the rules about soft and hard moves - that will produce a very different experience from classic D&D. We could put classic D&D onto 2d6 resolution (something which was known at the time, and even used in some D&D mechanics, such as clerical turning) but if all the other principles and rules were left the same, we would still have something very different from AW/DW.

I think what I was referring to as "could happen in any game" are things that are either soft moves or not moves at all. They're things that may have some impact on the fiction but don't really have any, well, consequences of any account.

In which case I think you and @Faolyn may have been speaking about different things. I too Faolyn to be talking about soft moves made by the GM in the course of the "conversation", in a context in which (i) no player-side move has been triggered, and (ii) no golden opportunity has been handed to the GM to bring things home with a hard move.

The AW rulebook example of play (under "Moves Snowball") shows this sort of thing unfolding.

It's pretty different from the "conversation" of (say) classic D&D play!

 

[bloodtide]

I’d be among those. Something doesn’t work the way it’s already been established to work? I want a good reason for that and I want that communicated in some way to the players.

I see this as the real issue. How open the GM is to telling the players things in the game. Even more so things the characters would never have any way of knowing, but the best buddy GM just tells them anyway.

This assumes all the "dozens of reasons" are actually good. Plenty of them are easily terrible. And it doesn't contrast with "GM did this two sessions ago" and "GM does this significantly different now" which absolutely can be "GM is being inconsistent."

There can be legitimate reasons for that, but the majority of them should be visible before or after the roll.

This goes back to how much the GM tells the players about each detail.

When the GM just says "the skeleton in the next room is immune to fire, best buddy players" and the players just nod "thanks buddy GM, we will attack it with cold instead!"

Though in other games, the DM does not give out such information to the players just to be buddies. The players have some ways to discover things in character, but otherwise they can only learn that skeleton is immune to fire by encountering it and attempting to use fire to combat it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't really get this? Are there DMs that just change things like the damage a weapon does on a whim? That seems odd to me.

Yes.

These people exist. You may wish they did not (especially after playing with them), but they do exist.

The more common kind of irritating inconsistency is when DMs really wildly change DCs for no apparent reason, and can't explain their reasoning well if asked about it. Or DMs who are very inconsistent about what calls for a roll. Like, the general rule of thumb is you call for a roll when failure would matter, but I've played with DMs who sometimes just demand roll after roll after roll for no apparent reason, and then at other times, everything goes on one roll. One guy I played with, literally ever sentence we said to this relatively-neutral NPC who wanted to hire us (literally came to us to hire us), the DM made us "roll Diplomacy". I pointed out that:

A) Diplomacy isn't a thing in 5E, do you mean Persuasion? They're different in how they're applied.

B) Even if you do, we weren't trying to persuade him of anything at all, we were literally asking him questions!

And it was unclear what we were even rolling for because he was trying to hire us, so like, what were the consequences of failure?

Later in the same adventure, we wanted to negotiate with some official, and we'd come ready to actually RP that out, and make arguments, and probably be forced to roll "Diplomacy" (sigh) a bunch of times, but, nope, suddenly it's one roll.

The same DM really just pulled DCs out of his ass too, even in cases where 5E had a clear procedure for setting the DC, or it was a fixed DC.

I see more: On round two the character easily kills a monster with a fireball and the player is super happy. On round forty the same fireball bounces off a monster that "looks the same" and the player gets all mad the game has no "consistency".

I've never seen a player talk about "consistency" with that sort of thing, so I am somewhat skeptical you have. I have seen players moan that they didn't know a monster would do that, but the word "consistency" or even the implication of it hasn't really been a thing. Usually they want to be able to find out why that happen, but that's a bit different.

 

[Aldarc]

I have definitely lost the plot of this thread by this point.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I see this as the real issue. How open the GM is to telling the players things in the game. Even more so things the characters would never have any way of knowing, but the best buddy GM just tells them anyway.

Your need to leap to hyperbolic caricature of anyone’s opposing stance does you no favor.

It’s not about being best buddies or anything silly like that. It’s about realizing that you are the players’ interface with whatever is going on in the game world. If you’re not accurate… and I’d put consistency in that overall category… then you can’t blame the players for making poor calls.

When the GM just says "the skeleton in the next room is immune to fire, best buddy players" and the players just nod "thanks buddy GM, we will attack it with cold instead!"

No one’s talking about this crap you’re bringing up.

Though in other games, the DM does not give out such information to the players just to be buddies. The players have some ways to discover things in character, but otherwise they can only learn that skeleton is immune to fire by encountering it and attempting to use fire to combat it.

Who cares? Seriously… no one is talking about the solution to a puzzle monster. People were talking about consistency in rulings and in applying the rules and processes of play.

As for details that characters are unaware of… yes, there may be reasons to keep such info from the players as well. My point is that when the players have observed something working in a given way once, if it doesn’t work that given way when encountered again, there better be a good reason. And the GM should say “there’s a reason for that” at the very least.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think you worked this out - but for clarity, if the GM (say) "announces a threat", and then the player has their PC do something which ignores the thread, and then looks to the GM to see what happens next (which is the standard "trigger" for a GM-side move), the GM is permitted to bring the threat home in as hard and direct a way as they like.

Got it. That seems to me to be a considerable difference from the options presented in some games where the GM doesn't really need to take any input from the player to cause such things to happen, which was my (perhaps not well presented) original point, that its a considerable difference from a lot of "rules light" games.

This is the sort of thing that counts as handing the GM a golden opportunity, outside the context of a rolled player-side move.

I'm not treating "rules" and "mechanics" as synonyms. For instance, there is a rule in Burning Wheel that the GM must frame scenes that speak to (in some fashion) the priorities that a player has established for their PC. But that is not a mechanic, any more than the rule in classic D&D that, before play, the GM must prepare a dungeon is a mechanic.

But I think the difference is that if the GM was making up the dungeon as he went, that wouldn't have been considered poor form in OD&D. In fact there were tools to help him do that. He wasn't required to pre-prep that dungeon, where (to the degree you can describe such a thing as a rule in the first place), as I understand it, it would be considered breaking the rule to do not do that in Burning Wheel (not that there's any real enforcement method, but how could there be outside of group enforcement). I don't consider genuine rules and mechanics significantly different other than the fact the latter may involve randomizers (but even that distinction isn't all that solid).

Apocalypse World doesn't include the BW rule, but it achieves a somewhat similar result by use of a different rule - namely, the GM at various times must make a move, and the GM's moves are framed and constrained in ways that are relative to the interests the players have established for their PCs (eg announce a threat, provide an opportunity, etc).

Yeah, I'd consider that effectively a mechanic too.

Dungeon World is very similar to AW in its GM-side moves, and it is these constraints/framings of the GM-side moves - together with the rules about soft and hard moves - that will produce a very different experience from classic D&D. We could put classic D&D onto 2d6 resolution (something which was known at the time, and even used in some D&D mechanics, such as clerical turning) but if all the other principles and rules were left the same, we would still have something very different from AW/DW.

In which case I think you and @Faolyn may have been speaking about different things.

That seems entirely possible. I dropped my conversation with them because there seemed to be some terminal communication breakdown going on, and I lacked the energy to disentangle it.

I too Faolyn to be talking about soft moves made by the GM in the course of the "conversation", in a context in which (i) no player-side move has been triggered, and (ii) no golden opportunity has been handed to the GM to bring things home with a hard move.

I was under the impression one of the differences between soft moves and hard was that was legitimate; have I erred there?

The AW rulebook example of play (under "Moves Snowball") shows this sort of thing unfolding.

It's pretty different from the "conversation" of (say) classic D&D play!

This is why I'm confused about some of the responses I have; pointing out that difference from most other rules-light games was my original point! I have to conclude somewhere I expressed that in a way that did not convey what I was trying to.