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And that's all cool and groovy, man. Just recognize that Dungeon World specifically and Powered by the Apocalypse generally isn't that kind of game. Actively choosing to play Dungeon World means actively choosing not to GM in the manner you're describing.

I generally agree with this, and would point to "Discern Realities" as a move to invoke in the face of an action declaration of, "I search the room for a secret door." In my mind the assumed situation is, whether declared by the player or not, "To better understand the situation of how monsters...

It's a function of how loosely held the GM's ideas about the world are. The narrative dice mechanic naturally pushes against some aspects of holding tightly to pre prepped material. It's not as heavy a pushback as PbtA, but it's definitely there. I felt exponentially better prepared to run FFG...

The second resolution axis (advantage / setback) seems to be a huge sticking point for GMs who struggle with improvisation and/or reimagining scenes/setting/framing to represent the die results. Trad GMs who instinctively treat their prep/ notes as gospel and not subject to change /...

Whereas I GM'd a 6 month Star Wars campaign using the exact system you're decrying (FFG Narrative Dice), and had some of the best roleplaying of my gaming career. It's a fantastic system that's not meant to be approached in strictly "trad fashion". If you get what it's trying to do and why...

I think I only have two systems in physical copy on my (very limited) gaming shelf that I wouldn't say, "Yes, I'd run/play that in a heartbeat." I'll hang on to my copy of Mechwarrior 1e soft cover pretty much forever for the lore and art, though I'll never play it. If I was going to run a...

Kind of like how defining X exists in your campaign world when you first brainstormed the setting 7 years ago is no less arbitrary than deciding that it exists 7 seconds ago, amirite? Oh wait, sorry, I forgot. Defining something seven years ago, even if it's boring and of no interest to the...

Doesn't the GM have the option of voluntarily constraining themselves to certain areas of the rules? Of course the follow up question from "trad" GMs is, "Yeah, but why would I agree to that?" The answer being, that you're attempting to try a different play style / play ethos that's in accord...

Emphasis mine. For Neo-trad game design, along with broader narrative-style designs, the "at best" proposition is, Players saying, "But the rules say so!" and the referee responding, "Oh that's right, we've agreed that in regard to aspects X, Y, Z, A, and B, I am just as bound by the written...

"Original Character" Often used (by my teenaged daughter at least) to reference a custom / new character devised to participate in an existing fandom / IP with the characters that already inhabit the fiction as created.

Of all of the unsubstantiated, baseless assertions ever uttered on the internet, this ranks up there pretty highly. What @Maxperson said above --- There are plenty of people in this world who "walk to the beat of a different drummer" who ultimately, in perfect syncopated rhythm, walk over a...

Savage Worlds WEG Star Wars D6 Ironsworn: Starforged Mini D6 / Tiny D6 The One Ring Swords of the Serpentine Genesys: Shadow of the Beanstalk Blades in the Dark Mythras Fantasy Craft

Legend of Huma and Kaz the Minotur are the only Dragonlance books I kept in my hard copy library other than the "Core 6" Chronicles and Legends. Very, very fond memories.

Oh great thread necromancy spirits, it has been too long. Do your great deed, and raise this thread from death to renewed, albeit shambling and slightly smelly, life.

I utterly abandoned D&D and everything even remotely resembling the D20 system, including Pathfinder, somewhere around 2012. I haven't owned a D20-based rule system in hard cover since 2016 or 2017. (Obviously no reason to get rid of PDFs, even if I'll never run the system.) I'll play anything...

Ironsworn. Ironsworn. Ironsworn. Ironsworn. Are you sensing a pattern yet? Ironsworn is fantastic and meets your criteria at every point. Ironswornrpg.com

I'm somewhat relieved by the fact that I'm not alone in my opinion of the final boss battle in Jedi Survivor. And the main culprit seems to be exactly what I described. Multiple instances where the boss gets to perform attack chains with dodge mechanics that the player has no recourse against...

Are you familiar at all with Ironsworn and its dungeon-crawling companion, Ironsworn: Delve? Ironsworn isn't BitD, per se, it's more of a hybrid of Apocalypse World / Dungeon World and Blades in the Dark. The resolution mechanic is different, and player traits are structured differently than...

@payn --- your comment kind of goes back to my thoughts on player expectation, and the idea that you want to be good at what you're good at, right? In my head this is kind of a "neo-trad" sort of headspace. In the past I've used a player who says "I want to be Batman!" as an analogy. The...

One other thing that came to mind about expectations of specialization --- In video games like Guild Wars or WoW, it's fully expected that you can just swap characters in a split second if the party needs something specific for a certain type of mission. I can't imagine a TTRPG game group...