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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9464384" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think if you read Gygax closely you'll find quite a bit of "insistent" language in which he sets out his account of the game. Just yesterday, after reading a review of Quests from the Infinite Staircase, I was looking over my copy of S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and enjoyed this concluding passage (p 30; Gygax's AD&D rulebooks are replete with similar sorts of commentary):During the course of several game sessions, player characters may accumulate enough experience points to qualify for an increase in level. Because the caverns are so far from any place where characters can train, the DM may allow player characters to advance without prior training, provided that the quality of play has been very high. Regulating the amount of time and treasure needed to train is important in the proper handling of a campaign. If you choose to allow player characters to advance in level without training, it should be because of their playing skill, and the special circumstances of this module. Advancement without training should be regarded as a reward for excellence rather than as a normal part of the campaign. Poor play does not merit special consideration. Players will not improve if the DM pampers rather than challenges them. If your players perform badly, do not allow their characters to increase in experience level. Be most judicious in how you handle awards to player characters. Allowing foolish and ignorant players to advance their characters to high levels reflects badly upon the game and even more so upon the Dungeon Master who allowed such a travesty to occur. In effect, it is the excellence of the DM which is judged when the caliber of play by any group is discussed. Keep yours high!Of course D&D players from the very beginning have ignored Gygax's account of how to play the game, and have retained its basic action resolution rules while completely abandoning Gygax's approach to framing and consequences (that is, the approach of dungeon-crawl or hex-crawl map-and-key plus random encounters) in favour of alternatives (most often, "GM decides"). But there's ample, and unsurprising, evidence that people do that with PbtA games too! For instance, a lot of the Dungeon World play that I see described, and perhaps most of it, seems closer to a type of shared storyteller approach than to the spirit of Apocalypse World.</blockquote>

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