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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8136404" data-attributes="member: 42582">The following is really just an in-passing comment: AW seems to me to have a pretty rich implied setting (there's been some sort of apocalypse, there's plenty of petrol and ammunition left over, there are "hardholds" governed (in some loose sense of that term) by hardholders, there are motorcycle gangs and brooding drivers and there's also the world's psychic maelstrom and those who interact with it).Whether or not someone's into that is of course another thing; but to me the setting seems to be pretty front-and-centre in the game.So first, that last example you give is canonical in 4e D&D. From the Rules Compendium (p 163, setting out an imagined example of the play of a skill challenge):Kathra: I’d like to talk to the men to see if any of them saw the demon come by here. How about a Diplomacy check—an 11. DM (marking the second failure): The thugs make a show of ignoring you as you approach. Then one of them snarls: “Around here, folks know better than to stick their noses where they’re not wanted.” He puts a hand on the hilt of his dagger. Shara: I put a hand on my greatsword and growl back at them, “I’ll stick my sword where it’s not wanted if you keep up that attitude.” I got a 21 on my Intimidate check. DM (marking the second success): The thug turns pale in fear as his friends bolt back into the tavern. He points at the building behind you before darting after them. Dendric: What’s the place look like? Is it a shop, or a private residence? DM: Someone make a Streetwise check. Uldane: Using aid another, I try to assist Dendric, since he has the highest Streetwise. I got a 12, so Dendric gets a +2 bonus. Dendric: Thanks, Uldane. Here’s my check . . . great, a natural 1. That’s a 10, even with Uldane’s assistance. DM (marking the third and final failure): It looks like an old shop that’s been closed and boarded up. You heard something about this place before, but you can’t quite remember it. As you look the place over, the tavern door opens up behind you. A hulk of a half-orc lumbers out, followed by the thugs you talked to earlier. “I heard you thought you could push my crew around. Well, let’s see you talk tough through a set of broken teeth.” Roll for initiative! Unfortunately for the adventurers, they failed the skill challenge. If they had succeeded on the last check, they would have remembered stories of a secret entrance into the building.This is not actually a very good teaching text, because there is no explanation of what is going on and in particular of how the GM is making decisions. But what we see taking place is that as a result of a failed check to recognise and remember something about a building, which brings the whole skill challenge to a (failed) conclusion, the GM introduces a hostile half-orc accompanied by the earlier-introduced thugs.But it's hardly unknowable or unfair - it follows right from the prior events, of the thugs retreating into the tavern. Using the terminology of Apocalypse World MC moves, the GM first announced future badness (you're in a rough part of town with unfriendly thugs about) and then followed through by putting someone (in fact, the whole party) into a spot by having the half-orc and crew come out of the tavern to beat them up.Frankly, when I compare the play of these sorts of player-driven, fiction-first systems (and for current purposes, despite significant differences of technique and mechanics across AW, DW, BW, 4e D&D, MHRP, etc, they all count as player-driven and fiction first) to more "traditional" or typical D&D play, the concern about "partial blindness" just seems bizarre to me. In a D&D adventure when I open a dungeon door there might be one orc or five ogres on the other side; when I walk down a corridor I might fall down a 10' pit or fall down a 20' pit onto spikes or trigger a scything blade or wh knows what; when my PC is walking through an urban area and the GM tells me that someone in a cloak is approach my PC I don't know whether its a friendly cleric with a message or a spy trying to trick me or an assassin hoping to kill me; when the GM reads me one of the plot hooks to H3 Pyramid of Shadows and I have my PC follow the proffered lead who knows what I'm going to find?If you play GM-driven D&D and are not affected by your almost total inability to control these sorts of possibilities, what are you worried is going to happen in AW play?</blockquote>

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