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How much control do DMs need?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8993944" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>What is? (I don't know what your "it" is referring to.)</p><p></p><p>Upthread, you posed the following:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Someone upthread mentioned a game where the resolution to jumping a chasm is to roll 2d6 and it's predefined what happens. Except ... what if the chasm is so wide that it would practically take a miracle to jump? What if it should be easy, but don't trip over that root as you leap?</p><p></p><p>Your phrase "Except . . . what if . . . ?" seemed clearly intended to pose a puzzle or problem for Dungeon World. But there is no puzzle or problem here. DW has clear procedures for resolving this, and they don't rely on "a judgement call on the part of the GM", as you are using this phrase.</p><p></p><p>There's a reason for that: every chasm, in DW, is narrated in terms of the threat or opportunity it provides to the characters as played by their players. So we already know, from the sequence of play that led up to narration of the chasm, whether a roll to jump over it is required (was the chasm narrated as a threat, or as an opportunity?) or even permitted (if a threat, was narration of the chasm a soft move or a hard move?). I've posted discussions of just this example in past threads that I think you've probably posted in, although in relation to AW rather than DW so imagining a player who declares that they jump the chasm on their motorcycle.</p><p></p><p>And this is precisely the difference from DW that underpins [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER]'s point.</p><p></p><p>The GM decides how wide the cavern is; how difficult the Athletics check is; and what happens if the check is succeeded or is failed.</p><p></p><p>DW doesn't have a rule about how far anyone can jump. And doesn't resolve <em>jumping</em> by imagining how far someone can jump. More generally, DW doesn't work by having one person's conception of the fiction - ie the GM's - generate the bulk of the subsequent fiction. (What you call a "GM judgement call".) It works by way of an interplay of <em>the narrative meaning of past narrations</em> (opportunities, threats narrated as soft moves, threats and other unhappy consequences narrated as hard moves) and <em>the salience, to play, of certain sorts of actions that the protagonists might perform</em> ("if you do it, you do it").</p><p></p><p>Trying to suggest that these are similar processes of play strikes me as no more plausible than suggesting that backgammon and go have similar processes of play. I mean, both use round tokens on a roughly square board, but that's about it; in go there is no movement and no dice; both those things are fundamental to backgammon.</p><p></p><p>To work out <em>what happens next</em> in the shared fiction, 5e D&D uses GM framing and imagination, informed at the GM's discretion by dice rolls that are called for at the GM's discretion. DW uses a process based around an interplay of narrative trajectory and core salient activities of the protagonists in the fiction, with dice rolls having a fixed role to play in that process. Both games involve shared fiction with similar tropes, both games involve asymmetric participant functions, both games involve dice rolls, but that's about it.</p><p></p><p>Which game one prefers obviously is a matter of taste (I play heaps of backgammon but very little go). But it strikes me just as muddleheaded to suggest they are played in much the same way.</p><p></p><p>I don't know how I'm meant to reconcile this remark with your claim that both involve GM judgement calls. It makes me hard to work out what your point is. I mean, the general tone of your posts is one of disagreement with me, [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER] but here you seem to be making a version of the same claim that we are making.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8993944, member: 42582"] What is? (I don't know what your "it" is referring to.) Upthread, you posed the following: [indent]Someone upthread mentioned a game where the resolution to jumping a chasm is to roll 2d6 and it's predefined what happens. Except ... what if the chasm is so wide that it would practically take a miracle to jump? What if it should be easy, but don't trip over that root as you leap?[/indent] Your phrase "Except . . . what if . . . ?" seemed clearly intended to pose a puzzle or problem for Dungeon World. But there is no puzzle or problem here. DW has clear procedures for resolving this, and they don't rely on "a judgement call on the part of the GM", as you are using this phrase. There's a reason for that: every chasm, in DW, is narrated in terms of the threat or opportunity it provides to the characters as played by their players. So we already know, from the sequence of play that led up to narration of the chasm, whether a roll to jump over it is required (was the chasm narrated as a threat, or as an opportunity?) or even permitted (if a threat, was narration of the chasm a soft move or a hard move?). I've posted discussions of just this example in past threads that I think you've probably posted in, although in relation to AW rather than DW so imagining a player who declares that they jump the chasm on their motorcycle. And this is precisely the difference from DW that underpins [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER]'s point. The GM decides how wide the cavern is; how difficult the Athletics check is; and what happens if the check is succeeded or is failed. DW doesn't have a rule about how far anyone can jump. And doesn't resolve [I]jumping[/I] by imagining how far someone can jump. More generally, DW doesn't work by having one person's conception of the fiction - ie the GM's - generate the bulk of the subsequent fiction. (What you call a "GM judgement call".) It works by way of an interplay of [I]the narrative meaning of past narrations[/I] (opportunities, threats narrated as soft moves, threats and other unhappy consequences narrated as hard moves) and [I]the salience, to play, of certain sorts of actions that the protagonists might perform[/I] ("if you do it, you do it"). Trying to suggest that these are similar processes of play strikes me as no more plausible than suggesting that backgammon and go have similar processes of play. I mean, both use round tokens on a roughly square board, but that's about it; in go there is no movement and no dice; both those things are fundamental to backgammon. To work out [I]what happens next[/I] in the shared fiction, 5e D&D uses GM framing and imagination, informed at the GM's discretion by dice rolls that are called for at the GM's discretion. DW uses a process based around an interplay of narrative trajectory and core salient activities of the protagonists in the fiction, with dice rolls having a fixed role to play in that process. Both games involve shared fiction with similar tropes, both games involve asymmetric participant functions, both games involve dice rolls, but that's about it. Which game one prefers obviously is a matter of taste (I play heaps of backgammon but very little go). But it strikes me just as muddleheaded to suggest they are played in much the same way. I don't know how I'm meant to reconcile this remark with your claim that both involve GM judgement calls. It makes me hard to work out what your point is. I mean, the general tone of your posts is one of disagreement with me, [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and [USER=7027139]@loverdrive[/USER] but here you seem to be making a version of the same claim that we are making. [/QUOTE]
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