Search results

No, not really, they're just different, but pretty analogous. Neither is better. Why the insecurity?

Eh, there's both more and less differences than you imagine. Playing AW is related to playing 5e as MLB is to high school baseball, they're essentially the same activities, with somewhat different rules and rather different goals and context. It's absolutely possible to compare and contrast.

What exactly do you mean by 'correlates to more traditional games'. There are differences, and many similarities, which have been extensively discussed for years on this venue. As for the comparison of D&D and FATE that you are apparently referencing. I think of FATE as being specifically...

Yeah, I always thought that D&D's leveling system is one of the best reasons it is so often used for long campaigns. It was certainly designed specifically for that purpose. Hit points are another, and they go together. Mechanically the original game, AD&D being quite similar, is well designed...

Sure. But I am more thinking of the sort of structured exposition of aboutness and roles that something like Apocalypse World provides. I, and I think many other players of more modern RPGs, find the lack of such to be a fairly obvious deficiency given how frequently issues seem to stem from...

Someone just mentioned a 'steering wheel' and my natural reaction is "no steering at all!" That's where really interesting story emerges, where play 'in the zone' is. Nobody is steering, nobody knows where anything can go. Now, VB I believe, said to "drive it like a stolen car" but that may...

Right, but this is basically not connected to who can say what, it's true regardless. Also, as you articulate it, what would be the harm in a game being a little more specific about the kinds of stuff it expects to be about?

Previous to 2e XP from combat in D&D was a rounding error, unless the GM was extremely stingy with treasure to a degree which would warp several aspects of play. The case is slightly less clear in 2e as the XP rewards are more subjective.

Sure! I'm personally a bit skeptical that, say, a Cthulhu game based on a d20 style hi power gain leveling curve is going to very naturally produce the kind of creepy "you are up against things that you cannot even understand, and cannot possibly defeat" which kind of defines the genre. I'd...

Maybe our opinions are not far off, though what I started out hearing was about this great deal of d20 games. Anyway, I think there are quite a few PbtAs that are VERY close to AW, mostly tweaking the tone, genre, and 'feel' of the core moves a bit. Obviously they include playbooks and things...

Yeah, I think that is a perfectly cromulent answer. I'm personally more happy with just playing games that run on high transparency. And interestingly the same GM in my example also introduced me to Dungeon World. Honestly I find it odd that this forum seems so divisive.

Right, you can hack D&D in various ways, and you end up with 'Other D&D'. I'm not sure why that's taken to be flexibility. As soon as you go much out into the vast universe of the RPG world, my perception is that D&D is just one tiny niche and its system is not good for much else! But to...

Well, the thing went far beyond the module, but I guess? I can't read the GM's mind. But how is what you describe NOT the GM engineering the flow of events? This all is what I label GM-directed play!

And what this description tells me is that, in the process of play/style in which you are discussing this definition, there are sets of fixed preplanned encounters to be bypassed. In a Dungeon World game I might run this is much less true! I might have a map which I prepped in response to things...

Sure, if you set your expectations low enough! PF1e is a 3.5e clone, not really a separate d20 design, it trades on being 3.5 to a high degree. I've never seen a copy of SG-1 or Spycraft, I don't know how to evaluate that. Anyway, yes, Paizo found the formula of success with PF/SF, clone 3.5...

Seriously, they're NPCs, all the 100s of ways we use to judge the competency and reliability of people, to know who to trust are not present in RPGs. They had explicit instructions and the information needed to (not) act foolishly. So I covered my bases. This was, fundamentally, a gotcha, but a...

There were a glut of products, but AFAIK almost none of them were successful. Is there even one such product that got further development? I think the best one was Mearles' Iron Heroes, which is basically a variant D&D.

My experience is that generic rules tend to produce bland technically sim-centered play that generally fails to capture what is really interesting. All GURPS is GURPS. D&D, any iteration, is not really all that flexible either. This is why d20 modern quickly fizzled. Every game is just D&D with...

Wasn't it Edwards who pointed out that narrative and gamist agendas are pretty compatible? And yes, this sort of stakes setting serves both, is in fact vital to both. @Manbearcat has also pointed this out many times. 4e is quintessentially this type of game and the entire design is architected...

What if, instead of being a black box, the GM in this case just explicated the risks and rewards? Instead what I see is that typically tad play involves the players having no idea whatsoever as to the implications of an action. This is a great strength of good Narrativist play. I mean, at least...