D&D General Creativity?

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be fair, my gripe in that last line was a lot less to do with PbtA and similar systems a lot more to do with "Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard" and "a level 16 challenge," instead of actual DCs that list the effect one gets if you achieve them.

See, I found the fact that 4e was fairly 'loose' in terms of the effects part (not entirely, it hard quantified jumping for instance) was pretty cool. So, you were always going to want to produce faithful fiction of a sort which matches well with the levels the PCs are at, so epic PCs have epic DCs to climb, but the thing they are climbing is a diabolical ice wall in Cania that is -100C and SENTIENT.

I am not confused about the structure of PbtA games. I'm proposing that the loop they present isn't fundamental to playing a TTRPG, and that you could (and I would contend, it would be good to do so) design an RPG where you would apply the exact same modes of thought you bring to a board game.

Either I am far from understanding what you are saying here, or we are very far from agreement. I would say there IS NOTHING more fundamental in terms of process of play (loop if you will) than what is described in, say Dungeon World. It is the very essence of the activity of RPGs shorn of most of its baggage (and then a measured amount is layered back on atop the core).

This is why I started in bringing in questions of agency and gameplay earlier. What is the decision I can make there that is better than some other decision?

Better in what way? You have to first HAVE an agenda, and the idea of decisions you CAN make also implies ones you CANNOT make, which now brings us to things like genre.

What action should I be declaring that will increase my odds of success at whatever my actual goal is (say, lighting a signal beacon on top of that mountain) and minimize my chances of failure?

What are you trying to achieve? I had this argument a billion times in the 4e days WRT the 19 item skill list of 4e. Someone would invoke a scenario, lets say the lighting of the signal fire, and insist that there must be some sort of skill that has to cover lighting signal fires. My answer is, no, because you aren't trying to light a signal fire, you are TRYING TO SIGNAL SOMEONE, and you are doing so for some purpose. Lets say the purpose is to get rescued, then "Roll a Survival check to see if you can light the fire and attract one of the ships sailing by in the channel." Notice how this is now WHAT you want to accomplish, and not HOW you are accomplishing it. The how is the fiction, and can be any genre appropriate description. That description might feed back into the mechanics too, So if you pour a flask of oil (IE use up a resource) on the beacon, maybe the DC is a bit lower.

I mean, sure, PCs desire success and not failure, presumably or they wouldn't bother to do stuff. Its a bit more complicated with PLAYERS, and they're the actual motive force here.

Can I, given the moves in that game, chart a course of action that will leave my goal achieved, my character less hurt, and present the least new complications before I go declare my next goal, and can some other player mess it up horribly by making the same choices poorly, given the same character to work with? Better, can they do so without making any obviously, comically bad decisions, and can another player, given the same character, make a compelling argument for a different series of choices than the ones I made as a better line of play?

Again though, you are only saying relevant things within a very specific agenda. So, sure, it may be that your D&D game is all about acquiring big piles of loot, getting to level 20, and not getting killed. Given that agenda you can make statements about 'good' or 'bad' play. I can equally make exactly the same sorts of statements about my BitD play, except the goals will be a lot different, because the agenda is different.

Generally speaking, I'm suspicious of any mechanic that asks me to declare my intent, because that sounds exactly like the system is going to now try and subvert it. That might just be my established board gaming suspicion talking, where you're either playing against a game state that can't use that information, or an opponent who will use it against you.

Well, actually, IME declarations of intent, and games operating on units of intention and not material quantification, is a stronger type of design all around. RARELY is it a GM's goal to subvert PC's intent. It is generally in those sorts of games the goal of the GM to make things 'follow' and see what happens as you play. So when the character says he's going to attract some ships that are in the channel to rescue him, then maybe if, in DW, he rolls crappy on his Defy Danger (lets call this 'suffers a calamity', this check is resolving the character being stranded on an island) then if he rolls a 6-, yeah, maybe he doesn't manage to build the fire and the ships go by. Maybe on a 7-9 the ship that approaches is a pirate ship, nasty vicious pirates who like to take slaves. That doesn't seem at all like 'using it against you', and in fact in DW the concept of the GM using things against you doesn't REALLY make sense! I mean, yes, he could leverage a part of your backstory to describe an 'unpleasant truth' or some such, but the GM is already making that move, what fiction is employed is secondary! If it wasn't "your sister is sick" it would something else, "plague rats are coming" or whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

What are you trying to achieve? I had this argument a billion times in the 4e days WRT the 19 item skill list of 4e. Someone would invoke a scenario, lets say the lighting of the signal fire, and insist that there must be some sort of skill that has to cover lighting signal fires. My answer is, no, because you aren't trying to light a signal fire, you are TRYING TO SIGNAL SOMEONE, and you are doing so for some purpose.

My answer would be, unless the burnables are soaking wet or conditions are otherwise awful, that the fire simply gets lit. No more skill required than what it takes to light the party's campfire each evening, and I've yet to see any DM make players roll checks for that unless conditions are extreme.

There's also no skill involved in the random element of whether anyone is in a position to notice said fire; and if yes, how long it'll take.

Lets say the purpose is to get rescued, then "Roll a Survival check to see if you can light the fire and attract one of the ships sailing by in the channel."

This conflates two discrete elements into one roll, which might be fine if you're consciously aware of doing it but not so fine if you're not; the two things being 1) action resolution: can you get the fire lit and 2) determination of consequences: does anyone out there happen to notice it. To me those are very separate things and would normally be rolled for by different people: the player rolls to get the fire lit (if necessary, usually it would be an auto-success) then the DM rolls every so often in game time to see if anyone out there sees it, with "anyone" also including low-odds things like hungry monsters flying by.

Notice how this is now WHAT you want to accomplish, and not HOW you are accomplishing it.

The HOW is every bit as important as the WHAT, in that the HOW often goes a long way to determining if the WHAT succeeds. I want to hear both; the WHAT tells me-as-DM what consequences you're trying for (though often it's pretty obvious), and the HOW helps me set the odds of success. Consider that...

WHAT: we're trying to attract attention of any passing ships.
HOW: we're lighting a big signal fire.

...is far more likely to attract attention than...

WHAT: we're trying to attract attention of any passing ships.
HOW: we're hanging a piece of bright cloth from the tallest tree we can find.

 

[Pedantic]

See, I found the fact that 4e was fairly 'loose' in terms of the effects part (not entirely, it hard quantified jumping for instance) was pretty cool. So, you were always going to want to produce faithful fiction of a sort which matches well with the levels the PCs are at, so epic PCs have epic DCs to climb, but the thing they are climbing is a diabolical ice wall in Cania that is -100C and SENTIENT.

That's a mechanic that prompts the DM to change the adjectives used to describe the situation, but doesn't in any way change player decision making. On the other hand, if I can climb any wall at full speed, one handed while wielding a weapon at a DC 30 or whatever, then I can use that information to play differently than a character who can't do that, and differently than I could before I could do that.

Either I am far from understanding what you are saying here, or we are very far from agreement. I would say there IS NOTHING more fundamental in terms of process of play (loop if you will) than what is described in, say Dungeon World. It is the very essence of the activity of RPGs shorn of most of its baggage (and then a measured amount is layered back on atop the core).

Yes, that is getting asserted a lot.

Better in what way? You have to first HAVE an agenda, and the idea of decisions you CAN make also implies ones you CANNOT make, which now brings us to things like genre.

Ultimately, I want to climb this mountain and light a signal fire. It probably signals the Rohirrim or something. To do that, presumably I need to deal with an icy cliff and who knows what else between here and there. In the model of games I like, several salient facts might include the ambient weather conditions, the height of the cliff, visibility and so on. I might then pick a tool, like say, throwing a grappling hook, hammering in some pitons, carving handholds with an ice axe, just barehanded climbing it, casting levitate, and so on.

I'll pick from that set of tools, whichever one I think will best achieve my goal here. If the cliff is short, probably that grappling hook, if I have time and a reasonable climb check, probably the pitons or ice axe, if I'm being pursued or afraid to make noise, maybe the spell slot or potion of levitate, or if I think my odds of success are good enough, maybe I'll just climb.

What are you trying to achieve? I had this argument a billion times in the 4e days WRT the 19 item skill list of 4e. Someone would invoke a scenario, lets say the lighting of the signal fire, and insist that there must be some sort of skill that has to cover lighting signal fires. My answer is, no, because you aren't trying to light a signal fire, you are TRYING TO SIGNAL SOMEONE, and you are doing so for some purpose. Lets say the purpose is to get rescued, then "Roll a Survival check to see if you can light the fire and attract one of the ships sailing by in the channel." Notice how this is now WHAT you want to accomplish, and not HOW you are accomplishing it. The how is the fiction, and can be any genre appropriate description. That description might feed back into the mechanics too, So if you pour a flask of oil (IE use up a resource) on the beacon, maybe the DC is a bit lower.

The advantage of mechanics that do not care what the player wants, and can only accept the input of what the player does, is that you can chart more than one path to getting what the player wants, and that these paths can be of different lengths, and that you can then make a bunch of different decisions about how you get there.

I mean, sure, PCs desire success and not failure, presumably or they wouldn't bother to do stuff. Its a bit more complicated with PLAYERS, and they're the actual motive force here.

Ideally, there's no need for the character's and players motivations to diverge. Wanting to play well, and wanting to get survive and get something done should lead them both to making the same decisions.

Again though, you are only saying relevant things within a very specific agenda. So, sure, it may be that your D&D game is all about acquiring big piles of loot, getting to level 20, and not getting killed. Given that agenda you can make statements about 'good' or 'bad' play. I can equally make exactly the same sorts of statements about my BitD play, except the goals will be a lot different, because the agenda is different.

You're projecting a whole series of goals on to me there that I never claimed. Generally, I think goals are a function of roleplaying. Your character cares about the people of this village and wants them not to die in the oncoming flood, your character wants revenge for the murder of their sister, your character has heard stories about this mysterious maze for years and wants to know what's inside, that layer is where you get the victory conditions for your game from, and the ability to pick new ones, and keep playing after you achieve them or they become unachievable is what differentiates an RPG from most board games.

Well, actually, IME declarations of intent, and games operating on units of intention and not material quantification, is a stronger type of design all around. RARELY is it a GM's goal to subvert PC's intent. It is generally in those sorts of games the goal of the GM to make things 'follow' and see what happens as you play. So when the character says he's going to attract some ships that are in the channel to rescue him, then maybe if, in DW, he rolls crappy on his Defy Danger (lets call this 'suffers a calamity', this check is resolving the character being stranded on an island) then if he rolls a 6-, yeah, maybe he doesn't manage to build the fire and the ships go by. Maybe on a 7-9 the ship that approaches is a pirate ship, nasty vicious pirates who like to take slaves. That doesn't seem at all like 'using it against you', and in fact in DW the concept of the GM using things against you doesn't REALLY make sense!

This is where it feels like we're speaking entirely separate languages. How do I play well, when the mechanic is structured to keep causing bad things to happen to me? What planning can I do to avoid them? I'm trying to describe the course of action that doesn't give you any choice but to say "you get off the island safely" when I'm done doing it, and if that doesn't occur, I want to think about why it didn't occur, and try to find something else I could have done to make it occur. At some point, I'll likely be forced to try something that has a chance not to succeed, and I can point to that risk and say "well, that was the best line of play, I think I still made the right choice" and then deal with the resulting new board state.

 

[pemerton]

Let's try this again.

In each scenario there are two steps:

A -Step 1. The player reasons about ways and means of taking a tapestry along on leaving the area.
A -Step 2. That reasoning leads the player to creative use of ropes and brute force.

B -Step 1. The player reasons about ways and means of escaping a seemingly inescapable cell.
B -Step 2. That reasoning leads the player to creative use of a spell.

You keep trying to equate Step 1 in A with Step 2 in B. Further, you seem to be saying that creative use of a spell does not equate with reasoning about and-or engaging with the fiction...and with this I disagree, in that a spell and its effects are every bit as much a part of the shared fiction as are ropes and knots. The only difference (a difference that is IMO both arbitrary and artificial) is that spells have hard-coded rules around them that both player and DM are expected to honour, where ropes and brute force do not.

If there's hard-coded rules around the use of ropes and brute force, then what?

In both cases the player is simply trying to use what the PC has available to change the shared fiction to the PCs' advantage.

This seems more like thinking about the mechanical benefits first, then trying to find a way to make the fiction work such that those benefits apply.

I'm not interested in steps 1 and 2. You can parse the steps however you like.

It won't change the fact that one example of play involves the player thinking mostly about the shared fiction, and the other involves the player thinking mostly about the rulebook.

You assert that this difference is arbitrary and artificial - why? The difference between participating in shared imagination and working out the conceptual and logical relations between two spell descriptions is not an arbitrary one. That's like saying the difference between being a novelist and being a mathematician is arbitrary!

For the same reason it's not artificial either.

 

[pemerton]

These are substantially different situations. One is leaning on real world experience that the players presumably share - most folks have a pretty good sense of the forces and skills involved. D&D would handle that situation in basically the same way, except for making it a strength check instead of a labouring check.

The other is based around an entirely abstract, imaginary situation, so really the only way into it is through interpreting rules. But that doesn't mean that you are also outside of the fiction being created at the game table. When I thought about that rope trick example, my impulse was to imagine the situation in game, combined with the description of rope trick, to ascertain if the proposed solution made sense. Given some lack of specificity in the spell the best interpretation was to have the player's idea work because it does not contradict any explicit rules and makes for the best story. Any detailed magic system is going to be rules intensive.

The more abstract the game gets, the more you are going to need rules to maintain a sense of narrative cohesion unless your role playing group is really, really copacetic.

In my experience, it's not true that imaginary situations require rules in the way you describe.

I'm thinking of the use of magic in Marvel Heroic RP and the fantasy adaptions of it I've GMed. And also the use of magic in my 4e D&D game.

Players can use their imaginations and make things up, in relation to magic as much as anything else. What matters is that there are rules that govern who gets to say what - as Vincent Baker puts it, to ease negotiations over what is to be true in the fiction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What matters is that there are rules that govern who gets to say what - as Vincent Baker puts it, to ease negotiations over what is to be true in the fiction.

Agreed. Rules ultimately serve a handful of functions, as far as I'm concerned:

• Making it easier to settle ("easing negotiations over") what becomes true in the fiction.
• Providing situations that are not foreknown to players (often, though far from always, via probability)
• Giving players incentive to follow certain intended behaviors and avoid undesirable behaviors
• Supporting the overall design goals of the game itself (e.g. cooperative vs competitive, or roleplaying vs answer-finding, etc.)

Of these, only the first is particularly relevant for discussing player creativity. The last two are about how games are designed, not played, and the second doesn't really invite much discussion, or at least it doesn't sound like it would to me.

 

[Manbearcat]

Ultimately, I want to climb this mountain and light a signal fire. It probably signals the Rohirrim or something. To do that, presumably I need to deal with an icy cliff and who knows what else between here and there. In the model of games I like, several salient facts might include the ambient weather conditions, the height of the cliff, visibility and so on. I might then pick a tool, like say, throwing a grappling hook, hammering in some pitons, carving handholds with an ice axe, just barehanded climbing it, casting levitate, and so on.

I'll pick from that set of tools, whichever one I think will best achieve my goal here. If the cliff is short, probably that grappling hook, if I have time and a reasonable climb check, probably the pitons or ice axe, if I'm being pursued or afraid to make noise, maybe the spell slot or potion of levitate, or if I think my odds of success are good enough, maybe I'll just climb.

Ok, this gets back to what I was speaking to above. I brought up "climbing" (and BJJ) for a reason. I did that because mountaineering or rock climbing is a very technical, very intricate endeavor and it is so multi-dimensionally; gear and how its deployed (if its even deployed), developing the understanding of various faces and mixed faces to develop a climbing beta, the multi-layered physical and mental fitness component.

What I'm seeing above here? I'm not expecting a granular, process simulation nature of play where you're making decisions that are supposed to be informed by a vital decision-space and dynamic consequence-space that are discretely and collectively informed by naturalistic coupling of cause and effect. I'm seeing:

* 4 different forms of genre logic. One deployment of gear (hammering pitons) that is only one stage of a complex technical procedure that employs other gear and other technical expertise. One deployment of gear (carving handholds with an ice axe) that is a mismatch for naturalistic coupling of cause and effect because (a) this isn't how ice axes are used (they're literally your hands and your "acoustic equipment" when climbing a mixed-face with ice or a fully iced face) and (b) they require more gear (crampons minimum...you're not "canvassing" with ice-axes; hand climbing where foot placement isn't "in play"). Hand climbing is a very complex thing with multiple, diverse, essential parameters involved. Simply "hand climbing" is basically the equivalent of deploying abstract genre logic; the same as each of the other choices.

I don't see any meaningful differences between these genre logic choices above and I certainly don't see vitality of decision-space or dynamism of consequence-space or a tight coupling of naturalistic causal logic.

* Finally we get to "casting Levitate." Unsurprisingly, this is the only piece here that results in "applying a somewhat granular packet of (total fantasy) inputs onto a clear situation where we can operationalize the decision-space and consequence-space (hint; there is none because unfortunately, D&D spells are OP as hell and don't require a casting check) in a meaningful way." And that way is "spend a 2nd level spell to obviate an obstacle or set up a gambit when dealing with a multi-dimensional obstacle."

---

So you've been talking to various parties about Dungeon World. So I'm going to show you how something like the above actually works in Dungeon World (and how I've actually operationalized it in the past...this could basically be an excerpt of play from one of my DW games). This will be a bit involved, but I'll try to build out what a back-and-forth conversation between myself-as-GM and a player who very much understands the "meta" of Dungeon World. If this below doesn't operationalize an extremely vital decision-space with a dynamic consequence-space, then I don't know what does. But it has no pretension whatsoever to granular process simulation:

GM: Alright, you're well above the tree line staring up at the fortress domain above you. Your campsite is situated on the shallow cave of a precarious landing. Before you is an array of prospects to navigate the vertical pitch.

* You've got a flat, mixed-face of granite and ice with dangerous seracs looming above. Cold, wind-swept, and gear-dependent....but quite obscured from the above (in large part due to the dangerous serac above you).

* You've got a much longer climb that is ice-free, featuring a nice crack and an arete (vertical corner of rock that juts out from the face and likely spans a large portion of the climb). Again, very gear-dependent and technically demanding. A long climb. Totally exposed to the elements and to any aerial or scout surveillance.

* Finally, you've got a pair of smaller faces with a rest in between them. This is both obscured from aerial or scout surveillance and protected from the elements as the bulk of it is recessed chimney climbing. But the danger here is the fall. Its pretty nearly absolute. Mechanically, the risks here go from fairly minimal to moderaly punishing on the first part of the ascent...like 1d4 fatigue damage - no armor - on a 7-9 on the first portion of the climb (the first Defy Danger move) or a Debility Strength (-1 ongoing to Strength...the ability they would be leveraging here most likely and their "big gun" PC build-wise if they chart this course) on a 6-. That 2nd portion of the climb though? That invites death. 6- there and you're just toast; donezo (unless you have some sort of means to turn a 6- into a 7-9...of which there are ways to do this). 7-9 and you're utterly exhausted. If you didn't get a Strength Debility on the first portion, I'm hitting you here on a 7-9. If you did, I'm nailing you with 1d8 fatigue damage no armor. You can tell, you'll be pumped beyond words; fingers, forearms...damn nearing useless for a good while.

PLAYER: Considers their options.

* Maybe decides to surveil the scene with a Discern Realities which will (a) invite consequences on a failure (from the weather suddenly worsening...which is apt to happen in these kinds of places...to the introduction of aerial or scout recons...or possibly a serac failing and triggering serious danger that they'll have to deal with...or maybe they realize that they didn't load out as much gear as they had thought and I tax them 1 Adventuring Gear which is a precious and scarce commodity, typically sitting between 2-4 uses, particularly considering the situation before them) but (b) will decrease their unknowns by sharpening the imagined space and (c) amplify their movespace (they take +1 forward when acting on the answers).

* Or maybe they decide to Spout Lore to learn something interesting, or interesting and useful (which changes the situation because now maybe they have a new course they could chart)...but this also invites "bad news" on a 6- because I'm "showing signs of an approaching threat" or "revealing an unwelcome truth" which indexes the conversation we're having around the accumulated knowledge that they have on the subject matter at hand.

* Or maybe they pull out a playbook-specific move that does particular thing x (like broadens or amplifies their move-space and prospects) or guarantees thing y (like removes certain complications from the menu of things I can choose from should things go wrong).

* Regardless, we're having a conversation about the possible routes to be taken, the possible moves to be made, the possible resources to be spent, the suite of consequences staring them in the face if things go pear-shaped. Like maybe that mixed-face climb with the serac means they'll need to spend 1 of their 3 Adventuring Gear (ice axes and crampons) to make that climb, but doing so will let them use Wisdom in their Defy Danger because ice-climbing is so much about the senses (tactile and acoustics) as much as it is about technically deploying equipment. Maybe the realities and consequences of this is 2 x Defy Danger moves to start, but a 6- will increase that...you've gone off course a bit and made very little headway...now you're going to have to deploy yet another of your scarce Adventuring Gear (2 now spent) and reroute with a more dangerous situation before you (taking -1 forward) on these next 2 subsequent moves. And we'd talk about serac failure and the peril of being swept from the face unless they spend yet more Adventuring Gear to mitigate that consequence and just suffer 1d6 (no armor) damage from the debris...or no Adventuring Gear but they can manage to cling to the face with their ice axe and crampons but their head takes the worst of it (no further Adventuring Gear spent...but now they're concussed and eating a Wisdom Debility, which is -1 ongoing).

And then maybe the last climb is 3 x moves, Adventuring Gear (pitons & hammer, carabiners, rope, harness, etc) allows Defy Danger Int (because its so technically demanding), and they can use their Mountaineer Hireling and their special ability (they can Intervene and give the player take +1 but (a) they can't get a 10+ result and (b) the Hireling is also at risk for the consequences the PC endures...and maybe the sherpa has an ability to give their life for the PC...but this is an important NPC to the player and they have a Bond, mechanical and fiction, with the NPC...so putting them at risk or sacrificing them has multidimensional consequences for play). So its very Adventuring Gear intensive, but much "safer" while also inviting the prospect of an increasingly hostile and escalated situation at the top (due to the exposure that this route entails).

* So we'd be building out a multidimensional move-space and a dynamic consequence-space for the prospective ascents. Gear resources, PC build resources, basic moves, the ability to employ different ability scores and opening up playbook moves based on the fiction/array of obstacles, different and varying consequences being on the line (from HP loss, to Gear/Coin/Armor/Weapon complications contingent upon a risky effort to recover them or outright loss, to Debilities (-1 ongoing and difficult to recover this status), to an escalated situation top-side, to a possible encounter with aerial predators/threats, to falling or being swept from the mountain outright, to implications for Hirelings (including the negative resolution or loss of Bonds, to Loyalty loss, to loss of service or outright death), etc.

Players should be making decisions based on multidimensional inputs and hard choices (catch 22s) when things go wrong and an increasingly perilous and accreting consequence-space that has to be assessed and re-assessed.

This is not process simulation or the granular type of 3.x play you seem to be enamored with. But, I'll be honest...I've run an S-ton of both 3.x and Dungeon World. You ask me to a run climbing conflict of this variety in Dungeon World vs 3.x? Its going to be DW all day long and twice on Sunday because its got way more tools (and provocative ones at that), built-in efficiencies, and a host of beefy, biting consequences that can be employed to build out a compelling play space for this sort of scenario.

And even if we have a Wizard, its waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more intense than it is in D&D proper. Levitate isn't even a Spell in DW (because its so stupidly powerful...and happens to be level 2). But if I was going to include it, it would be a 3rd level spell in the game along with Fireball. DW Wizard spell loadout is rather punishing (not as punishing as Torchbearer, but its many times more trying than the comparatively EZMode D&D Wizarding). You can Prepare Spells whose total levels don't equal your level +1. So if we're level 5 when we're tackling the above? That DW Wizard is having to choose between an array of (a) 5th level spell + 1st level spell loaded out or (b) a DW version (read; nerfed) of Levitate (3rd level) + either 1 more 3rd level spell or 3 x 1st level spells. Further, to cast Levitate, you have to make the Cast a Spell move (roll +Int) which invites an array of stock or supernatural complications:

Cast a Spell (Int)​

When you release a spell you’ve prepared, roll+Int. On a 10+, the spell is successfully cast and you do not forget the spell—you may cast it again later.

On a 7-9, the spell is cast, but choose one:

• You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
• The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Prepare Spells.
• After it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells.

Note that maintaining spells with ongoing effects will sometimes cause a penalty to your roll to cast a spell.

So a DW version of Levitate + the short route (the handclimbing one) would most likely result in:

* The Wizard has levitated to the top but now has to spend 1 Adventuring Gear to set a rope for their pals to ascend to the Wizards position.

* A complication (because of the likelihood of a 7-9 result); either Levitate is gone (now they have either 1 more spell at 3rd level or 3 x 1st level spells), take -1 ongoing to cast a Spell, or some kind of danger has manifested (either supernatural or related to the the physical imagined space).

Alternatively, the Wizard might have made a Discern Realities move to amplify their movespace and they took +1 forward when acting on the answers and got a 10+ on Cast a Spell. And/or they used Spout Lore and have the Wizard suite of moves around this so they tyically find something interesting and useful. So they find an easy way up once they're at the top and they don't have to spend 1 Adventuring Gear to deploy a rope for the ascent of their mates...they lead them up an unseen path. Or maybe the Wizard has a bunch of moves like Empowered Spell so they're able to cast Levitate on multiple folks and they Levitate everyone up top. There are multiple prospects for the gamestate based on PC build and move-space and moves made by the player. Regardless, the Wizard is "balanced" with the Fighter in DW (despite the DW Fighter being significantly more powerful than its Classic D&D counterpart, sans 4e, and the DW Wizard being massively nerfed by comparison to its Classic D&D counterpart)...and their spellcasting is more volatile and compelling genre-wise (because of the expansive supernatural consequence-space from Cast a Spell).

 

[Campbell]

To be fair, my gripe in that last line was a lot less to do with PbtA and similar systems a lot more to do with "Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard" and "a level 16 challenge," instead of actual DCs that list the effect one gets if you achieve them.

I am not confused about the structure of PbtA games. I'm proposing that the loop they present isn't fundamental to playing a TTRPG, and that you could (and I would contend, it would be good to do so) design an RPG where you would apply the exact same modes of thought you bring to a board game.

This is why I started in bringing in questions of agency and gameplay earlier. What is the decision I can make there that is better than some other decision? What action should I be declaring that will increase my odds of success at whatever my actual goal is (say, lighting a signal beacon on top of that mountain) and minimize my chances of failure? Can I, given the moves in that game, chart a course of action that will leave my goal achieved, my character less hurt, and present the least new complications before I go declare my next goal, and can some other player mess it up horribly by making the same choices poorly, given the same character to work with? Better, can they do so without making any obviously, comically bad decisions, and can another player, given the same character, make a compelling argument for a different series of choices than the ones I made as a better line of play?

Generally speaking, I'm suspicious of any mechanic that asks me to declare my intent, because that sounds exactly like the system is going to now try and subvert it. That might just be my established board gaming suspicion talking, where you're either playing against a game state that can't use that information, or an opponent who will use it against you.

What I can personally say is that our current game of Blades is some of the highest agency I have ever experienced. I can almost always tell when I have made a misplay or when someone has made a really strong play. There are few reasons for that:

1. The way Information Gathering works provides meaningful opportunities to get actionable information that you can trust as a player about the obstacles you will be facing. It can also expose vulnerabilities to take advantage of. This has often allowed my character to utilize the Acquire an Asset mechanic to specifically prepare for what we will be facing.
2. Transparency of setting information. We have a high level of understanding of what various factions are up to thanks to ticking faction clocks. We also have a strong awareness of where we stand with individual NPCs and factions. This helps us to navigate and think about what moves to make next, which efforts to oppose and situations we can take advantage of.
3. A meaningful action economy for downtime. Combined with an awareness of what each relevant faction is up to this allows us to have strong indications of what resources will be involved in halting or affecting the efforts of various groups in the setting. Since the crew has a high-level awareness of what a given faction can accomplish in time X, they can marshal their resources more effectively.
4. An intimate knowledge of the risks involved in any given effort and the ability to shift position and effect lets me choose which risks I am willing to take.
5. Specific mechanical features have a massive impact on outcomes. Takeo, our cutter, has a fine long blade (improves tier by 1) which combined with our crew's weapon upgrade means he effectively fights as if he were 2 tiers higher. His Ghost Fighter advance moves up to 3 tiers higher when fighting supernatural creatures. When we seized Lord Scurlock's Manor he effectively faced down 2 powerful vampires at once without breaking a sweat.

 

[Pedantic]

@Manbearcat I feel the need to reiterate that I am not confused about the play pattern you're talking about and explaining it to me again is not an argument for its value. I just don't like it, and don't think it's particularly essential to an RPG. I've said elsewhere I don't like board games that have a similar structure (something like Dead of Winter's push your luck combined with shedding and resource deleting feels close, or maybe from what I've heard Flesh and Blood, a game I haven't tried that involves a constantly weakening board state and a really to down your opponent before you run out of resources). The point of those games is generally to space out the damage you're taking across several different resources, and/or concentrate it into one resource. I find it frustrating to go from a largely unconstrained decision space, to an increasingly desperate one, and tend to prefer games where the decision space increases as time goes on, or is constrained in specific places at specific times. This is a maxim that's true about me across genres and mechanics, meaning I don't like quite popular games like Warchest or Undaunted that involve a similar spiral. I certainly don't find that play more compelling as the basic structural building block of a TTRPG. If anything, it's a distinct disincentive to this entire genre of design.

It honestly doesn't matter if any of the 4 choices I presented earlier is a particularly good description of the actual experience they're purporting to model. I picked those specifically, because they all break down neatly into different climb DCs in the 3.5 RAW, and frankly are sufficient abstractions to the task that will all cause slightly different board states. It's perfectly possible none of those board states matter, or that there is one that's a particularly good choice. Perhaps the only that really matters is the time spent on the situation because there's other stuff happening elsewhere that needs attention.

I worry that we're getting caught up in all these examples because it is arguably a strength of the kind of game you're talking about that just about anything can be cast as a "challenge." It's simply a matter of framing the situation as the obstacle, and then working out the space between the goal and the player's choices, until you get to a move which will, more likely than not, allow a new complication to emerge, whereas my position necessitates that an obstacle is only as relevant as the actual rules allow it to be, and if it's not, then it's simply not a problem. The players will then pick some other goal, until they eventually run into a problem, the scope of which will change wildly with level.

The sort of play I'm looking for, involves the player trying to win as efficiently and completely as possible, all the time, and gives them a diverse set of actions with specific outcomes they can leverage to do that. It's not up to the rules to make the situation interesting, it's up to the situation to be interesting. The rules are the tools the players are going to use to break whatever the problem is down.

I'm not interested in steps 1 and 2. You can parse the steps however you like.

It won't change the fact that one example of play involves the player thinking mostly about the shared fiction, and the other involves the player thinking mostly about the rulebook.

You assert that this difference is arbitrary and artificial - why? The difference between participating in shared imagination and working out the conceptual and logical relations between two spell descriptions is not an arbitrary one. That's like saying the difference between being a novelist and being a mathematician is arbitrary!

For the same reason it's not artificial either.

You keep saying this, and I don't know why it's a problem. The fiction motivated the player to get to this situation, and will motivate them to do something else once they leave, why should they not go look at the rules of the game, and try to find the best action to take to succeed in the current board state? If we set aside that we're playing a TTRPG, you're describing the actual thing people playing board games do for fun, as if it's a problem. Assume that it's intrinsically appealing to make decisions and use rules in a complex system. Figuring out the best line of play given a set of choices is intrinsically interesting, and a fun thing to do.

The fiction gives way to the goals the player is pursuing, it gives a reason to make all these decisions and sets the victory condition you're aiming for, but it doesn't need to do anything else. You keep positing that mechanical interaction is intrinsically bad somehow, as if it must be less interesting than pretending you're not playing a game, and letting the rules come to bear descriptively after you've made choices without them, where I'm very much looking for a game where the player reads the book, finds a thing they can do, and does that thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My answer would be, unless the burnables are soaking wet or conditions are otherwise awful, that the fire simply gets lit. No more skill required than what it takes to light the party's campfire each evening, and I've yet to see any DM make players roll checks for that unless conditions are extreme.

There's also no skill involved in the random element of whether anyone is in a position to notice said fire; and if yes, how long it'll take.

Agreed. So, I would say, that in DW this would be Defy Danger +WIS maybe. A wiser PC is more likely to have thought carefully and remembered where some dry wood might be, etc. So he has a bit of an edge, the plan is "in his wheelhouse" so to speak. The throw of 2d6 itself is more of a 'fortune roll' than anything else. It provides suspense and a hook upon which rules hang, like when DD is rolled and a 7-9 result happens, the GM must "offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice." Hence the pirate ship, you can be rescued, BUT now you have to hang with pirates! That might turn out great, who knows? Its an ugly choice though, stay stranded or deal with the pirates. A +3 WIS character will only get this result on 4-6 anyway. The 6- result isn't actually specified, so its the standard GM move, "The GM says what happens and you mark XP." This could involve a LOT of possibilities.

This conflates two discrete elements into one roll, which might be fine if you're consciously aware of doing it but not so fine if you're not; the two things being 1) action resolution: can you get the fire lit and 2) determination of consequences: does anyone out there happen to notice it. To me those are very separate things and would normally be rolled for by different people: the player rolls to get the fire lit (if necessary, usually it would be an auto-success) then the DM rolls every so often in game time to see if anyone out there sees it, with "anyone" also including low-odds things like hungry monsters flying by.

OK, but in my analysis of the nature of this type of game (PbtA at least) there isn't any differentiation. As a general rule, as you said above, characters mostly competently do their thing. In terms of the direction things go in, the PbtA dice mechanism has us fully covered. On a 10+ things go swimmingly, the PC achieves their goal; on a 7-9 the move WORKS, but the results leave something to be desired; on a 6- things pretty much squibbed, many moves will describe a particular sort of outcome here or present players with some specific sort of problem/disadvantage, others just assume the GM will follow their principles and do something that doesn't usually include 'things working' (although they might, maybe the signal fire goes crazy and starts a giant conflagration, sure, you're seen, but now the island is burning and you're on it!).

The HOW is every bit as important as the WHAT, in that the HOW often goes a long way to determining if the WHAT succeeds. I want to hear both; the WHAT tells me-as-DM what consequences you're trying for (though often it's pretty obvious), and the HOW helps me set the odds of success. Consider that...

Well, the player is describing how they do things, light the signal fire, that's necessary in order to specify the fiction that is in play! So HOW isn't 'not there', but its not what is being resolved by the dice, explicitly. I try to light the signal fire, and I roll 2d6. If I get less than a 10, then my intent is not fully realized, but its quite possible that the fire was set; or maybe the fire wasn't set, the GM can describe this however he wants. In fact, since DW tells the GM to ask questions, maybe he asks the player "how did this go wrong?"

WHAT: we're trying to attract attention of any passing ships.
HOW: we're lighting a big signal fire.

...is far more likely to attract attention than...

WHAT: we're trying to attract attention of any passing ships.
HOW: we're hanging a piece of bright cloth from the tallest tree we can find.

OK, but I would analyze the situation here. If its night time, then the bright cloth is simply ruled out by fiction, certainly for the time being. OTOH if its day time, well, OK a distant ship won't see it, so maybe a canoe full of natives paddles by, and they see it; 7-9 they're not that happy to see you; 6- they're glad to see you, they love to hunt the heads of adventurers! lol.

You see what I'm saying? PbtA is literally not adjudicating success and failure in terms of what you did. The mechanism isn't really meant for that, its meant for driving the fiction. Its an entirely different game architecture from trad RPGs. FUNDAMENTALLY different.