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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8151780" data-attributes="member: 82106">So, I think that there's a question of just how flexible are D&D DMs? They need not have any flexibility really, you're the (hopefully benevolent) dictator of all your table! There's nothing saying you have to give players much freedom to do things, and if you just don't particularly have a taste for something a given player is trying to do, there are a dozen easy ways to quash it, and they're well-supported with rules right out of the book (rule 0 if nothing else). Now, obviously there can be fairly basic 'unobtrusive' goals that players can easily adopt for their PCs that will probably 'just work'. "I want to collect weird looking daggers." or whatever. But I've found over the years that AP type play is going to be pretty much about the AP. There's a set sequence, or a small set of possible paths, that can be taken through it. Any significant player agenda is mostly going to be in the way, it isn't adding directly to the main thrust of the game, and thus tends to get minimized. That's just how these things work.Part of the problem that I see here is that I say "A narrative type game system works like X." and then someone says "Well, I could do X in my D&D game too!" and that's TRUE, but will it actually happen that way? I can guarantee that in a Dungeon World game that the action will center on the PCs as major protagonists doing the things that are written in their alignment, bonds, and the statements made by the players when asked questions by the GM. It is 100% assured! Maybe the DM in a D&D game might maybe accommodate some element of plot to interact with something I wrote on my character sheet, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I will have some idea what the plot is about, assuming their is one, and maybe it will just be some sort of thing hidden away in the DM's notebook and I never even figure out why something happened in game or what the consequences of any random action I take might be. Again, this is all guaranteed in a DW game to consistently put the characters at the center of the story and create a consistent narrative that the players can help to direct, along with deciding what sorts of 'stuff' go into it. So, yeah, D&D can do a lot of stuff. But its not really a fair comparison to say "I could do this" in one game and "this IS what will happen" in this other game. They are worlds apart in fact.</blockquote>

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