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People are free to organize their play however they want. But assuming the whole hobby either is or should be organized on a take it or leave it perspective is misguided. I know my group would be unusual in the mainstream, but we have 5 total players (including whoever the current GM is). 3 of...

I wasn't trying to say anything about D&D. I meant the previous as an addendum to the one before. Basically, to clarify that when people are talking about the rules binding the GM in games like Apocalypse Keys there are not really dealing with the nuances involved. That the rules expect the GM...

On a practical level when it comes to superseding rules and making rulings the vast majority of the time when it's done in the trad space is because the rules are specific and often leave no room for interpretation. It's you take X damage, climb Y feet, etc. This is not how the rules work in...

The stuff that binds the GM in Apocalypse World and similar games are big picture flow of the game type stuff. It's similar to 5e's description of its play loop and casting the DM as a world builder and referee - the stuff the game does not equivocate on - that no version except 4e equivocates...

I'd say early on I had a fair amount of play experiences I was not very fond of, but it was not because the GM or other players were bad, but because I was not getting what I wanted out of those games on a creative level. The experience on offer was not what I wanted, mostly because I took...

I don't where this idea that games that have best practices or agenda and principle laid out for the GM are doing so to protect players from the GM. They're there to help the GM run the specific game in question to like line up with the objective it gives its players. Make PC-NPC-PC triangles...

Who have you heard this from? Which games did they play? What happened in these sessions?

FKR advocates have setup a boogie man of rigid mechanics to strike down, assuming a given event must be resolved either entirely through GM judgement or a mechanic that takes in fictional circumstances and a dice roll and spits out a direct result rather than imagining mechanics like we see in...

The fight in question was the first real scene of what was originally planned as a 2-3 session game. I went in with 4 Fear since there were 4 Player Characters and each PC had their initial 2 Hope.

Just a quick note on the background I'm coming from: The last 6 games I ran were: Blades in the Dark Masks Girl By Moonlight (Magical Girl Forged in the Dark game used to play an Escaflowne inspired mecha game) Apocalypse Keys Scion 2e Lancer The games we have played in the two play groups...

I disagree with basically everything @Faolyn just said. Will have more to say later.

We had a fairly equal distribution between Success with Hope, Success with Fear, Failure with Hope and Failure with Fear. That distribution did not feel good to me. 3 out of every 4 rolls was some sort of GM Move. That felt like way too much, even with trying to do softer moves for like half of...

I'm the GM for the game in question. I run almost exclusively Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games. That every Fear is essentially a GM Move and that about 75% of the rolls in our test combat were some form of a move meant despite spending a couple fear early on in our initial...

Whether I want long lasting injuries or not depends on the aesthetics of the particular game. In L5R or Warhammer Fantasy absolutely. In other contexts, not so much.

@AlViking Narrative focus would be better, addressing premise would be best (for Apocalypse World at least). Like there is more than collaborative storytelling and simulation as viable aims. Some games are genre emulation, some are aiming to address character, some aiming to do those other...

As a sidenote, when GMs make decisions in games like Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts "the story" is not part of the agenda. Quite the opposite. In fact, Monsterhearts goes out of its way to tell us not to make decisions based on what we think makes for a better story. I don't know why...

In Dungeon World there is complete asymmetry. The rules (basic moves and the like) only apply to player characters and the rules that apply to the GM only apply to the GM. The only thing that binds the GM are their agenda, principles and moves. There are no rules for how environments function...

Warhammer - The Old World Roleplaying Game should fit the bill. The game uses an opposed roll (Attack or Shoot versus either Defense or Athletics). If the attacker wins compare damage (which is a static value modified successes) to Resilience (Toughness + Armor). If damage beats Resilience, you...

In general, I'm a firm believer in just talking about what the expectations for the game you will be running. Meta-analysis of its place in the broader hobby is not necessary or helpful.

There is no real Narrativism (premise-forward play) in traditional roleplaying games, including in games like Pendragon and Vampire that some of us saw as failing to live up to their premise despite them being thoroughly genre emulation / high concept sim. A lot of the flawed incoherent game...