D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

robertsconley said:

some play styles aim to create a specific kind of narrative. In those games, the players and the referee (if there is one) enter play with a shared idea of the kind of story they want to tell, and they choose a system and style that supports that outcome.

Other play styles don’t work that way. The narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign, without being shaped by the out-of-game expectations of the players or referee. The story is discovered through play, not authored in advance.

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In case it needs saying, RPGs like Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Stonetop, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer don't involve a story that is authored in advance. In those RPGs, the narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign.

Cinematic implies genre reinforcing which does reflect Monster of the Week but it is not reflective of the sort of choices Apocalypse World puts forward through its moves. This is the problem with being far too general and lumping things together to make declarative statements about whole categories of things. Powered by the Apocalypse doesn't describe a single structure or arrangement of play - there are at least 3 diverging branches that have very different play expectations and even within a single branch the play expectations often differ significantly. It's dramatic but not cinematic.

Apocalypse World, Cartel, Monsterhearts, Bite Marks, The Veil all represent decidedly Narrativist play. It's premise forward, about finding who these characters are as people. They use genre as a stepping off point to ask questions of the characters. There is no reinforcement of narrative structure or conforming to genre.

Monster of the Week, The Sprawl and Fellowship are action-forward, adventure-oriented games that reinforce genre concerns and have structures that reinforce narrative structures.

The Powered by Brindlewood Games use mysteries as a vehicle for us to both explore a world in conflict and finding our characters' places within it.

Even within these trees there are significant differences. The Veil is very up front with its premises while Apocalypse World teases them out.

AlViking said:

I have no issue with the option of using Fail Forwards, Success with Complications and Degrees of Failure/Success in some cases. Sometimes it makes sense that you can't force a stuck door open immediately but maybe you make it budge enough that if you keep at it. Sometimes that means you'll make a lot more noise and something may hear, other times there's nothing that's going to hear. Frequently the characters don't know which one is the case.

If degrees of failure/success make sense in the given situation then I think it should be used. Quite frequently I'll have different numbers in mind for knowledge checks. Roll low enough and you don't know anything other than eliminate some possibilities. After that the higher you roll, the more details you recall.

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Exactly, I think people misinterpreted my comment as these are universally applicable or that absolute failure was off the table. That is not the case. I will say that I do not consider myself as running a Living World but more a World in Motion - and I came to this belief from conversations in this thread.
I do attempt to elevate the gaming part of the RPG in an attempt to curb my own bias and to be surprised and I suspect that my attempts clash at times with the principles of Living World.

Micah Sweet said:

GMs get to have fun too, and they shouldn't IMO have to get that exclusively from fulfilling the wants of others.

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Who do you think this is disagreeing with?

pemerton said:

I'm not sure what stories you are reading. Most stories I read, especially genre stories of the sort that RPGs draw from, have interesting and/or emotionally resonant things happening to the protagonists pretty frequently.

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In novels, I see plenty of narrative space where all that's happening is people investigating things or talking to people without things getting worse. If you don't, I'd have to reflect your statement back to you "I don't know what stories you're reading".

pemerton said:

In case it needs saying, RPGs like Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Stonetop, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer don't involve a story that is authored in advance. In those RPGs, the narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign.

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Noted. Those are precisely the same type of RPGs as OD&D. In both, the narrative emerges from the unfolding events of the campaign.

AnotherGuy said:

Ah I see. I generally use these tools in increments of 5 as is common for 5e and actual failure is always on the cards.
I posted upthread an example of how I ran the Persuasion check for one of our scenes at the table. Standard failure was part of it.

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Even in a D20 system, a lot of it will depend on the way difficulty is scaled, but you still have to deal with the question of whether players would rather have Failure than Success with a Complication; I think there's an assumption that its the other way around, but I'm not sold that's always the case. But the probabilities involved matter too.

AlViking said:

If I my players were not enjoying my game or if I ever had an issue recruiting or retaining players then I would have a reason to change. Why should I change when it works for us?

As a software developer I frequently upgraded my skill set and studied and tested new options to see if there was an improvement. Sometimes there was a reason to upgrade, sometimes there wasn't. Meanwhile some developers are like corvids, attracted by whatever is new and shiny whether or not there's any benefit despite considerable cost. I play the current version of D&D because I thought the changes they made were worth the cost of change for us. I see no reason to incorporate a narrative style of play because I see a negative impact, not a positive one. Why would I do that to my players? Just so I could form a different group? How would that by any definition be the rational choice?

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I believe in doing what you want to do without hesitation and finding the people you want to play with. It's what I have done in this space for 20+ years. The "some developers are like corvids" line is unnecessary. You do not need to accuse others who choose different paths of following trends without thought to make your point.

I'm also a software engineer and I understand that those who choose different technologies simply have different priorities.

clearstream said:

Well, the AW MC has the somewhat similar job of saying when a move is invoked.

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It's not very similar. The rule in Apocalypse World is "if you do it, you do it". So the fiction has to be brought under the relevant description - eg is this character acting under fire?

The rule I talked about, that you mentioned from 5e D&D, is that the GM has to decide whether or not a declared action has a consequence. The Apocalypse World GM doesn't need to decide this: if a player-side move is triggered, then the dice will be rolled and that will yield the parameters for consequence.

clearstream said:

I agree that heuristic is easier to apply

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The evidence of this thread is that, for some posters at least, it is easier to apply a heuristic of the GM decides if there are consequences than the GM, guided by the table, ascertains if something is at stake relative to some player-determined priority for their character.

Lanefan said:

Perhaps more to the point, and despite narrative games' insistence to the contrary, there is nothing wrong with "nothing happens" being the narrated result of an attempted action that fails.

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Nothing wrong for whom? I can tell you that I think "nothing happens" is pretty unexciting. If I sit down to play a classic dungeon crawl, I expect some of that sort of thing. But it's also why I don't sit down to play classic dungeon crawls very often.