I’m not sure I can parse this. Was this meant to be a further reply to the original thread? Obviously my output isn’t a model of anything, the model is what’s running in my head and helps me say interesting crap during play and do prep.
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D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.
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I’m not sure I can parse this. Was this meant to be a further reply to the original thread? Obviously my output isn’t a model of anything, the model is what’s running in my head and helps me say interesting crap during play and do prep.
Actually, the exact opposite of that.
The fiction doesn't make anyone do anything. Imagining prompts someone to do something.
Here's another example:
A person visits a "haunted house". They "see a ghost", and are so terrified that they collapse from a heart attack.
What actually happened: a person entered a building. They had an experience - heard a noise, saw a shadow, whatever - and they formed the belief that there was a ghost. And due to that belief, they became so terrified that they suffered a heart attack.
No doctor is going to enter, in their medical records for that patient, a ghost caused them to have a heart attack. That would be grounds to bring an application to have the doctor stripped of their licence to practice!
Imaginary things don't have real effects. Because they don't exist.
Yes, the model is what's running and helps you say things. I agree.
But upthread people have told me that their setting is a model, and a simulation. And I'm disagreeing.
robertsconley
Hero
I’m concerned with both sets of goals.
Read what I actually wrote before asking a loaded question. Every system has creative goals and priorities. I place plausibility first. Other systems place their priorities first before plausibility.
I don’t find clocks to be a useful aid for tracking what’s going on in my campaigns. Due to the ripple effects of interconnected events from different groups, I rely on notes and a combined timeline of projected developments.
What you're missing is that very little of what happens during my sessions is procedural in the sense you're describing. The session unfolds from first-person roleplay. There’s no need for an "intent and task" mechanic like in Burning Wheel. The players show intent by roleplaying their characters. Tasks arise naturally from what they describe their characters doing, including combat.
This post describes an example.
To expand on it further:
The group arrives at Gold Keep.
They crest the ridge and see the town about a half mile away. I describe the scene.
As they get closer, they can see buildings like the inn and shops, so I add labels to the map.
Sometimes they split up to do different things, I handle this round-robin style and can manage up to three or four subgroups before it bogs things down.
In this case, they all head to the castle. At the gate, Erdan (an elven merchant-adventurer) asks to meet the Constable, Sir Jerome Blackhawk. The group is polite and looks respectable aside from the tribal priest from the steppes. No roll needed, they're let into the Great Hall.
Five minutes later in-game, the Chancellor arrives. I roleplay him in first person. He asks the party their business. Erdan reveals he’s an elf, which carries high status in some human realms, and explains his concerns about hill giant activity. I call for a persuasion check, but only to see if he rolls a natural 1. He doesn't, so they’re shown to Sir Jerome’s study.
In-character, they lay out a proposal to deal with the giants. It aligns with the NPC’s goals, so no roll needed. Sir Jerome agrees. They’re offered supplies, decline, rest overnight, and head out in the morning. All of this handled in first person roleplaying.
They scout, find Yonk’s lair, kill a warg patrol, hide the bodies, then decide to approach the Elves of Silverdim to request help. The elves refuse, they’re refugees rebuilding from the fall of Silverwood and have no desire to provoke the giants. They also pay Yonk’s fee themselves for peace.
Still, the players learn a lot: local politics, hill giant culture, and elven attitudes, all from first person roleplaying and interacting with NPCs.
They return to Gold Keep. Josh didn’t mention in his post that the party chose not to involve Gold Keep’s military due to high likely casualties. Instead, they plan a small-team disruption campaign. With an assassin, monk, rogue-style merchant, and tribal druid/cleric, they feel confident.
The next game day, they leave Gold Keep. I roll encounters like always. Then the events Josh described unfold.
At that point, the party realizes their actions will ripple far beyond Gold Keep, so they wrap up and continue on to Castle Westguard, following their original mission.
You say using the term leadership is “needless.” I disagree. It’s not just a label. Refereeing a long-running campaign where the world is persistent and consequences matter takes actual leadership. I’m not talking about ego or table dominance. I mean the responsibility to maintain continuity, ensure fairness, and uphold the internal logic of the setting. When players know their actions have real consequences, because the world doesn’t bend to spotlight them, they trust the game more. That trust has to be earned, and that’s part of the referee’s leadership.
The idea that the difference between my playstyle and Pemerton’s is just a matter of timing misses the point. It flattens a structural difference into a superficial one. In my campaigns, the world is in motion. It doesn’t sit idle waiting for a dramatic beat. I’m not listening for what the players might want to see happen and then slotting it in. I’m adjudicating how a world with its own agendas and timelines reacts to what the players choose to do. That’s not just a difference in pacing. That’s a difference in how player agency functions.
As for player chatter during sessions: sure, I’ve drawn inspiration from it. But I don’t treat that as a cue to give them what they want. If it aligns with what’s already in motion, great. If it doesn’t, the world doesn’t change to accommodate it. That’s part of the discipline of running a Living World. You’re not just building forward, you’re maintaining consistency backward. When I talk to players between or after sessions, it helps me flesh out the elements they care about at the level of detail they expect, if and when they choose to engage with those elements. That’s not improvisation in service of narrative, it’s prep in service of agency.
And yes, I improvise. But your framing ignores how I actually run things and tries to pull everything back toward a framework you’re more comfortable with. My improvisation is bounded by world logic, not driven by theme, character arcs, or narrative tension. I’m not asking myself “What would make a compelling story here?” or “What will challenge the character emotionally?” I’m asking, “What happens next based on everything that came before?” That’s not a stylistic difference. That’s a procedural one.
Wrapping this up, I’m disappointed in this kind of response. If you conflated how Powered by the Apocalypse procedures, of which Moves are a part, with how Burning Wheel handles Intent and Task, the reaction would be annoyance, maybe even anger, and the conversation wouldn’t go anywhere. This is no different.
I’ve said, other said, repeatedly, that Pemerton’s techniques and philosophy make sense given what he values in RPGs. But he cannot conceive of a universe where my Living World sandbox, and the versions shared by others here, are equally valid approaches grounded in different assumptions. And now you’re defending that dismissiveness, that quiet gatekeeping, that subtle effort to diminish how we play.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This kind of rhetorical narrowing is exactly what we’ve seen before, from Edwards, Baker, and others who’ve made it clear that only one kind of play counts in their eyes. It’s frustrating to see that dynamic repeated here.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
What’s the counter argument?
Should RPG design be done by emotional intuition?
On vibes?
robertsconley
Hero
Appreciate the compliment. I still have work to do, but interestingly enough, the comments in this thread, from everyone involved, including yours, have helped me organize my thoughts on how to better present the Living World sandbox approach as a whole. I've always been comfortable writing about specific elements, like with How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, but until recently, I hadn’t nailed down how to approach it comprehensively.
Again thanks.
(1) The loser is not forced to agree with a viewpoint. They're obliged to go along with whatever they agreed to. (This is a small point, but @Faolyn is very concerned about it, so I thought I had better mention it.)
(2) The result is binding like any other outcome in BW. It can be changed when circumstances drastically change. The rulebooks and commentary give various illustrations. A couple have also come up in this thread: the most common (in my experience, at least) is when the players re-stake their win.
A non-DoW example of such "re-staking" was posted by me upthread - the PCs had drugged Halika to give themselves the opportunity to get to Jabal's tower without her interference. They then snuck carefully through the catacombs to get into Jabal's tower - but the test failed. Working carefully gives a bonus die, but if the test fails then the GM is licensed and indeed obliged to introduce a serious, time-sensitive complication. The examples given in the book are things like the guards show up or the bomb goes off. What I did was have Halika recover from her drugged stupor and herself head to the tower.
The players didn't expressly put Halika's torpor/consciousness back into play. But they made time matter; and her torpor was the most salient thing that might wear off if time passes. So I decided that Let it Ride no longer applied. The players didn't disagree - they sheepishly accepted the consequence. (Sheepish because the decision to go through the catacombs had been made principally because Jobe's player wanted to earn a test on Catacombs-wise. At the time I had expressed surprise at this decision, given his weak rating in that skill, and the fact that both characters had more reliable ways of sneaking into a tower than via the catacombs; and when the plan fell apart as forecast, I didn't hold back in my response.)
Hussar
Legend
But that's the point that you keep trying to ignore. It is YOU who are choosing between the plausible outcomes. It is YOU who defines "plausible". The world doesn't define that. There is absolutely nothing in your setting that defines what is plausible or not. Every single decision point is grounded in your personal views of what is plausible or even possible.
That is what people are pushing back against. This notion that there is some sort of objectivity in your setting. There absolutely cannot be any objectivity here. Not when every single element of your setting is defined and detailed by you. Every single outcome, decision, event, whatever, is 100% sourced from you. There is not way that can be objective.
Note, "not objective" in no way means that it's bad. It just means that it's not objective. Since the only judge of what "fits the logic of the setting" is the person who created the setting, I'm going to call shenanigans on any claim of objectivity. It can't be objective. It's simply not possible.
Which is where the notion of "own your decisions" comes in. Why be coy and try to claim something that is obviously untrue on its face? Why not simply state that in a trad-sandbox game, the DM is going to be deciding 99% of what's going on in the game? While the players will have input through the actions of their characters, everything else is 100% down to whatever the DM decides.
It's not expressly mentioned in the passage you referred to. It's expressly mentioned in various die traits, and in the list of obstacles. Which I've already posted, in reply to you and others, probably four or five times now.
To me, that seems like quite a mis-reading.
I chose.
I mean, one bizarre aspect of this conversation (one of many) is that you seem to treat hesitates when attempting X as is unable to attempt X.
Read the actual play report, and you'll see.
Huh? Alicia and Aedhros were robbing the innkeeper at night, out of anger at how he had treated them. Aedhros decided to escalate to murder; Alicia objected.
I don't understand why you are wanting to project your own idea about what might happen in a RPG onto an actual session that actually happened, that you can read an account of if you like.
I've never met you and know little about you. You were not in my mind when I created my PC. I was thinking of Eol and Maeglin from the Silmarillion, filtered through an urban degradation vibe.
Ah, gotcha!
I think it might be fair to say that "my collection of tables and oracles are an organizational model that help me keep my setting in motion and consistent" maybe?
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