D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[hawkeyefan]

Well, I'm not subtle.

Keep in mind the goal was to show them "better built outlaw characters" then their "by the core rules only, bland characters". Hope maybe the figure out the evil twins deception. And once they fail that, let them jump back in with alt alt characters. And give them the chance to undo all the death.

They chose to whine, complain and end the game.

My point was more that you complained about someone striking a match but then proceeded to burn the whole house down.

 

[bloodtide]

My point was more that you complained about someone striking a match but then proceeded to burn the whole house down.

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

 

[Faolyn]

Which in effect isn't much different from D&D where I would never I throw an ancient red dragon at a party of 1st level PCs. I agree it takes a special kind of DM to deliberately set up a TPK, and not special in a good way.

Which is to say, if there's no restriction on what monsters the GM brings in for DW it seems like you could have a rocks fall everyone dies moment in that game as well. Which is why I asked the question because it seems like the scenario could happen in DW despite assertions to the contrary. Or I'm missing something.

There's no restrictions on what monsters you can bring in for any game, D&D included. It's just that most people don't throw ancient red dragons at low-level parties because that would be a jerk thing to do, and anyway it would more likely end the game. In DW, which is presumably not as combat-centric as D&D, there's even less of a reason to throw a too-powerful monster against a weaker party.

No disagreement here. Whether the players acted out of character or not is a different question. Many video games have you taking out guards left and right. If the players don't understand how the DM views the morality they may not have thought it through. Kind of like in many action movies/shows the protagonists mow down dozens of guards and then don't execute the BBEG to stop them from getting away and murdering thousands because they "don't want to be just like them". Morality only applies in many depictions if the person you're attacking has a name.

Bloodtide said the actual GM was shocked, which suggests that this is pretty out of character for them. I have a suspicion that they're not the most reliable of narrators so I have no idea what actually happened and what caused the PCs to go nuts like that.

Although, in at least a teeny bit of defense of the various action movies, mowing down the guards is often down in self-defense or defense of others, and often the BBEG is then brought to justice to pay for their crimes, which doesn't really happen if you just kill them.

I would have just talked to the players about it to verify that they knew what they were doing and what the consequences could be. But the OP "doesn't like talking".

I would have as well. Of course, my players aren't murderhoboes in the first place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The rather key part that seems to be incompatible to me is the degree of granularity (particularly in combat) of resolution and in the mechanics which support that; present in D&D (more or less) but not present in some of these other systems as described here and elsewhere.

I don't like the idea of 4e-like skill challenges for the same reason: they allow too much granularity and too many details to be skipped over.

My usual example here is a maze of sewers under a city, through which the PCs are trying to find their way from A to B. 4e would reduce this to, it seems, a single skill challenge, and other games would reduce it to a similar single-roll resolution; where I want them to have to make a choice at every intersection and, preferably, make even a vague map.

Why?

Because every choice point allows them an opportunity to do something different, or decide to take a side trek, or go a different way, or turn around and say "bugger it, we're going above ground for this!".

Yes this takes longer at the table. I don't care.

Up to a point that's fine, I mean, everyone wants to have choices. I just find its nicer if they're mostly the ones that will really make a difference. Anyway, that's not my real point: scale is a problem for games like D&D, they resolve discrete actions at the lowest cause->effect kind of level, but nothing else. I mean, you can obviously create some sort of subsystem like 'build a castle' or 'take an ocean journey' if you want, but it requires some sort of 'abstracting effort' of some kind. You can also obviously just elide stuff, and frankly all games elide a large amount of stuff! I mean, we don't play out a lot of mundane stuff. So the question is NOT a choice between "I'm going to play through everything" vs "things are always handled in an abstract way." There's a constant calculation happening in every game!

Dungeon World at least has the option to say "yeah, that whole thing over there, I am going to handle it with a single action declaration." That's cool when you want to move on to what you're actually interested in. NOTE: It has to be the PLAYERS who do this, not the GM! They are not missing out on anything. If me and my buds decide we aren't playing out some routine sewer scramble, then we say to the GM "OK, we all traverse the sewers." That's it! AFAIK the GM in a DW game can't really say "boo" about that. I mean, he can say "OK, every one of you needs to give me a Defy Danger to avoid the hazards of the sewers!" And if there's some more serious danger that needs real attention, sure he can say "well, you defied danger, but around halfway you started to smell this awful stink..."

One thing that I think is hard to adjust one's thinking to WRT DW is that it doesn't actually matter what the scale is. You get XP based on stuff you did, checks you failed, etc. Danger comes, and its immaterial if that danger is clothed in highly discrete little units separated by a few steps, or if the units are half an ocean apart. Handling time is purely going to depend on numbers of moves made, and so is everything else! Pacing really is strictly separate from 'granularity'.

 

[Faolyn]

So if you find some mechanics artificial, you must accept all similar mechanics as artificial for all games?

All mechanics are artificial. Every mechanic in every game is an abstract method to judge success or ability. None of them are actually truly natural.

What's important is to find mechanics that flow the best for you.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My goal is to create an immersive fantasy world with lots of interesting places to go and things to do, and let the players interact with and change it through the actions of their PCs.

Sounds like my current PbtA game.

I'm not here to tell a story, or make sure there's enough drama to keep everyone constantly entertained, and the PCs are not in and of themselves unique and special. What they do in play determines that.

I think this idea of the PCs being special gets mixed up. I think it depends on the game, of course. But setting aside the fictional events, the characters are special by virtue of the fact that they’re central to play. This is unavoidable.

Now, in the fiction, they can be nobodies or they can be movers and shakers, that’s all a matter of preference. Some games lean one way or the other, but no matter how they lean, it’s always true that the PCs are more important than any other characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

First of all, there are clearly plenty of times when nothing happens in LotR, they just don't get put on the page because it's a story and the focus is on things happening.

Exactly! Why is that? Because readers are not that interested in reading about how Samwise is slightly disgruntled that he's always on latrine duty and exactly what those leaves that the elves wrapped Lembas in get used for...

An RPG shouldn't, in my opinion, be presented as a story, but rather as a setting that the PCs interact with and change through their actions.

OK, so lets get to the changing! Gawd I got so sick of all this faffing around, until one day I literally just started falling asleep at the table.

That's my whole problem with the narrative/story game sphere. I don't want to describe anything in my campaign as "rising action", and I don't create plots for the players to run through. I provide a setting where there are lot of points of interest to explore, and reasons to visit them, and let the players decide what to do. Otherwise, the world keeps spinning, which means sometimes nothing happens.

No DW GM is 'creating a plot for players to run through', in fact that's what classic play does! You say 'provide a setting', but there's a pretty hard-coded story built into that by the way I reckon things. You provide the points of interest, the reasons to visit them, etc. Nor do I think that there's any realistic world where things don't keep happening! In my game the players decide what to do too. It always feels like we're discussing some sort of straw man version of narrative play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you say it, it's true....that is in the rules, right?

No. It has to make sense with what has come before and to the people sitting at the table. That's the critical thing. You can't just make up whatever you want

Right, the GM can make a move that is obvious to the GM, By the Fiction.

No. That's what I keep trying to tell you. It is absolutely not that you can do something obvious merely to the GM. It must be obvious to everyone. Even in the example of thinking offscreen, the players know they failed a roll--and thus they know something has gone wrong, even if they don't necessarily know what.

You cannot--absolutely, positively CANNOT--just use "It's what I as GM know By The Fiction." I keep telling you this, and I'm hoping this time it will come through: That is forbidden by DW rules! Explicitly! You are not allowed to just give a handwave and say "it's By The Fiction." That's openly and flagrantly breaking DW's rules!

I get that in such a game the player can alter the game reality at will.

No. That's simply false, and everything you've concluded from it is fruit of a poisoned tree.

And, frankly? You're being extremely rude and condescending.

Deft Danger is like a reality altering saving throw?

...what? No. It's literally "there's a bad thing happening. How do you try not to get hurt by it?" The answer must make sense. Players are as much bound by the fiction as the GM is. There are various examples given, e.g. "with charm and social grace" means you roll +CHA, but since you can't charm or social grace your way out of a problem then that the isn't valid. You can't sweet-talk a falling boulder, and you can't nimbly dodge to recover from saying something stupid in front of the king. Maybe you could go on an adventure to learn the powerful magic that would let you do that! Could be a fun time. But until then, you'll be dodging boulders with Dex and insults with Cha.

I get that a big part of such a game is all the times you need to stop playing the game and explain everything to the players at length so that they understand the illusion of the fiction. The GM can take the players through a half hour of fictional finances until the players understand and accepthe price of a item

Your condescension and mockery are showing through again. Further, there is no "need to stop playing." Players asking and answering questions and describing what they do IS play. Again, you speak of this as though you are an expert but nothing you have said even remotely describes Dungeon World.

Players is the illusion though, so there is that.

I...have no idea what this means.

An active game with four players will have four characters each making moves every minute of game time. So in just a couple minutes, the characters can set off like 4-16 triggers. The players will have a hard enough time keeping track of just their personal actions, much less all the actions of all the players.

So? Every round of combat in most editions of D&D is six seconds. That means every character in a D&D combat is taking rule-mediated actions (casting spells, making attacks, making saving throws, etc.) dozens of times every minute as well. Yet you don't think D&D players would have a hard time keeping track of that. It's not any harder in DW. I promise you. I have, in fact, been explicitly told by my players (two of whom have attention deficit disorders) that Dungeon World is liberating because it means they DON'T have to be constantly keeping track of a bunch of things. They can just relax, keeping their focus purely on the roleplaying. If a move is needed, it will be obvious that it is needed.

Why? It's bot game to say "Beep, every single item is available world wide for the exact price listed in the rules. Beep. That's like playing a video game.

No. But it's a pretty obvious "screw you player, you can't have fun" to fling out something like that. You've jacked up the price by a factor of twenty.

Well, to be fair to the game it is a Improv Script. The rules tell you what to do, but make it vague enough you can improv. Like if you get attacked you can take the Dodge action, but your free to write out the game reality as long as you are "dodging".

.....that's literally what Defy Danger does. Like, that's literally everything it does. It just gives you the one-stop-shop for any danger, including those that can't be dodged but can be physically endured (+CON) or reasoned through (+INT) or whatever else. It's (very literally) just "something bad is gonna happen unless you stop it. What are you going to do?" If you need to break out of ropes, rolling +STR makes sense (breaking the ropes), perhaps +DEX to try to wriggle loose enough to untie them.

I use the classic "You have to tear it all down to build it back up" method.

And if, once things are torn down, the player decides that being torn down really sucks and they don't have time for this when they could do something fun to start with?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

D&D has always been more about group success and synergy to me. Yes, individual PCs have different goals and desires. I'm certain that different groups focus far, far more on individual stories than I do. But the difference is that since D&D is more external to the character driven, you can't get too caught up in an individual's story because you can't guarantee that the PC will be there next session, much less the player. But it's not that characters and player choice are unimportant in my game. Other actors and events can be dramatically impacted by what the PCs do. I've had what was supposed to be a high-tier BBEG turned into an ally because the PCs repeatedly came to her aid and support while she was still being groomed.

On the other hand, the world doesn't revolve around the characters.

Well, I don't think Dungeon World has a problem with say "oh, that character died" either. I mean, since you only prep a small fraction of what happens at the table its sort of irrelevant which characters are present. I mean, obviously it could be an issue if a player is missing for a session or something, but individual characters can definitely be replaced. DW is fairly 'character driven', but its also 'Story Now', so it kind of balances out.

My campaigns are driven by group choice in my games, I may provide the broad outline but they still choose the direction. Even then though, it is a democratic choice and vote amongst the players. I pitch campaign ideas that I'm willing and able to run. During the campaign I have the group vote on which direction to go based on the threads I've dangled, or they can suggest following up on something else that's been presented.

While I may have potential arcs thought out ahead of time, I don't have a preplanned story. That's more an artifact of how most modules are written. My campaigns are less character driven, obviously, than PbtA games but also far more flexible than most mods or old school dungeon crawls.

Yeah, and I think at the higher levels of campaign organization it gets easier to be collaborative in D&D. As you say, prepared material can put a monkey wrench in that, but then I haven't run a module in decades either, even before I stopped running 2e.

D&D can have boring slogs. Some DMs just don't really know how to run a campaign that reacts to the players, with the OP being a prime example. Others, like a DM I had a while back, meant well but just couldn't breath life into the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign. It's not that they were a bad DM, it's just that WDH is more of a campaign setting with an outline of a campaign attached. It's meant to set up a playground, but the DM has to fill a lot in, and this DM just didn't. My wife and I had started a WDH campaign with a different DM right before it was cancelled due to COVID and it was amazing. Some of it was DM skill but I think primarily it was just the attitude that they just weren't expecting the kind of linear flow other modules enforced.

Yeah, I feel like D&D puts a lot of that on the DM's shoulders. I can do pacing OK, I'm less good about planning, so it means its easier for me to run systems that ask for less detail work up front.

At the same time I think even pretty straight-up dungeon crawls can be made far more enjoyable by the players other than the DM. With the right group, even a dungeon slog can still have a lot of fun RP and interaction. But here's the catch. Some people just want to show up to a game, roll some dice, tell jokes with their friends. They may care deeply about the mechanics of their character and the tactical options of combat (and some may gravitate to different games because D&D 5E isn't tactical enough). I just don't see the PbtA approach working very well for them. Then there are the people that simply aren't very good at extemporaneous creativity and would feel a great deal of pressure if they weren't adding to the game narrative.

I'm not sure why you say that. I mean, I want input from players, but at the same time, their action choices are going to say a lot. If Fran doesn't want to give elaborate answers to questions, its OK. DW is mechanically a pretty simple game too, so I've always found it works pretty well for casual play. You learn your moves from the little PDF, you're good to go, its only 4 pages including your playbook (unless you insist on playing the wizard, then you're up to maybe 8 pages at higher levels).

One last thought on this. I get the feeling that D&D is more capable of running games for casual players, easier to use as one-shots or with a rotating cast of characters and players. A prime example is Adventurers League, the current public play for D&D. You sit down at a table, play for 4 hours and then the group splits up. Next session you may sit down with the same PC from the previous game but all the players and DM are different. I just don't see that happening with PbtA style games. Maybe I'm wrong.

Well, I don't think I have, personally, any hard evidence on that, so I am agnostic. I think you can play one-shots, though it may give a bit different experience. Still, play is play, a 4 hour one-shot SHOULD work fine I would think. I'd rely on other people's experience on that though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the whole "move" system feels artificial to me. Takes me out of the immersion I'm looking for.

That was actually understood, and leads to "Always speak to the characters" and "Never name your move." In fact, GM moves are sort of almost not really a thing. That is the GM 'moves', he says something, but that's what GMs do in ALL RPGs, right? He does NOT say something like "and now, since you decided to enter the dungeon, I am making the "split up the party" move, mwaaahahahahahaha!" No, the GM simply says "You decide to proceed on and ignore the strange slots in the walls? Well, a barrier slides across the passage just as Graaahhh and Felicity move forward, everyone else is left trapped on the other side!" Doesn't seem any more unnatural than any other play.