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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9261848" data-attributes="member: 6790260">No. It needs to be genuinely open-ended, not a coy "well it COULD have gone differently if you'd touched the exact right pixel" faux commitment to openness.Now, that does not mean it needs to be tOtAlLy UnPrEdIcTaBlE. Because, I mean, you can often have an idea of what your players like doing or what you've seen them do before. Nobody expects you to cover both eyes and pretend that you're totally ignorant. But it needs to be genuinely, meaningfully possible for the players to direct things in ways you didn't expect, as long as those ways aren't ridiculous or illogical. Of course this then requires that the GM have an open mind and not instantly nix everything as ridiculous or illogical—if the only "logic" I allowed was my own, I wouldn't be playing fair, I'd be a dogmatic jerk.It very much sounds to me like you have ensured there is essentially only one or perhaps at most two ways this could go. The party fails to notice the trap, and dies. The party notices the trap, and does not die. This is not being open-ended. This is a fixed path, it just branches once. You have not framed a scene; you have defined the two endpoints you will accept.But let's use this as a starting point for how DW would handle this.These werewolves are clearly a Front. Their ultimate goal is, most likely, to hunt and consume. They might want to grow their pack as well, but overall they want fresh meat. They're also trying to be clever about getting it, hence your baited trap. This sounds like an adventure front: something that resolves mostly locally. If they are allowed to fester, it could grow in the future, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. From the sound of it, this werewolf pack has already been active for some time, so it doesn't make sense to have it be an initial infection the players can prevent; instead, the danger of the existing pack is relevant. However, it's a bit boring to have just one group involved. Where there are werewolves, there are werewolf hunters, no? But maybe the hunters are foolish and at risk of being manipulated. In DW terms, this is the idea that a given Front should have more than one "Danger" in it; having only a single danger is a bit too simple for a Front.Here, we certainly have a Horde danger (Plague of Werewolves, with the impulse to Hunt And Consume Human[oid] Flesh), and I'm adding an Ambitious Organization danger (Misguided Good werewolf hunters, with the impulse to do what is "right" no matter the cost). More dangers might become relevant (e.g. the ordinary townsfolk could get riled up by some other force), but for now these are all we need. Point being: Fronts are not set in stone, they should adapt as the players act and react, changing the state of play.The "Impending Doom" (the bad thing that would happen if the players don't mess things up) for each danger seems pretty straightforward. For the werewolves, they'll have a Bloody Feast, where the trap is sprung and they gorge on any kills they make. For the hunters, they'll Cleanse Without Mercy, deciding that this infection has gotten so bad, it's better to exterminate everyone rather than risk that any infected escape to spread the curse further.Now we make "Grim Portents," which are the steps of escalation for Fronts. Note the plural; sometimes one Grim Portent can affect more than one Front. We're only considering a single adventure front here so there's no need to worry about that now. Just noting that Grim Portents can reverberate in ways nobody really expected at first. Usually, you want around 2-3 Grim Portents per Danger, so that each one has a chance to escalate. For this werewolf problem, this is one possible option (you could do something quite different, depending on the context and setting):The bridge is sabotagedThe Pack kills a lone hunterThe mayor's child goes missingThe town meeting erupts into chaosThe trap is sprungThe Extermination beginsPer the rules, you can advance these descriptively or prescriptively. The former happens when you observe that it has happened, e.g. "The town meeting erupts into chaos" could happen on its own, if the players oppose the Hunters and the townsfolk start to take sides. The latter happens if the players fail a roll (or otherwise give you a golden opportunity) in a way relevant to thar Grim Portent, e.g. a character is assigned to guard the church where the children are being housed, but they roll a 6 on their Defend basic move, and you tell them, "The night goes quite smoothly, until shortly after dawn, when you realize one of your charges has slipped the leash...and it's the mayor's rebellious son!"The final step of making this into a Front is to set a handful of Stakes, which are questions you think should be answered as part of the process of this Front resolving. (Keep in mind, having all the Grim Portents come to pass, so the worst results manifest, counts as "resolving" the Front...it just means it resolved by having the bad thing happen!) Stakes are extremely important because they identify specific questions that you, as GM, are no longer allowed to answer. They generally need to be tailored to your specific group, however, because they tend to be about the specific lives and goals of the PCs involved.So, for the sake of argument, let's say this group has a dragonborn Cleric of Bahamut, a human Barbarian, a tiefling Thief, and a halfling Fighter. Possible Stakes for this group could be:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Will Dronaash accept an invitation to become a Hunter?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Can Barbariccia resist being infected? Does she want to?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Temperance has never liked the Hunters because they're racist, what dirty secrets of theirs will she uncover?</li> </ul>These things are now off-limits to you. You want to find out what the answer to these questions is. That means you are empowered to frame scenes where it's likely that these questions could get answers, but you are forbidden from simply declaring the answers yourself; they must arise from play, from players asking and answering questions.I find it is rather the reverse. Most railroady DMs fix whatever specific event they want, and if that event happens to require that the PCs lose, so be it. The world is what the DM has declared it is. The players just happen to be witness to it.Honestly, bloodtide, you are using two people you know as though they are representative of all DMs. This is so far from the truth I can hardly begin to explain it. This is like if you used Dr. Kavorkian, Dr. Mengele, and Dr. Wakefield (the man who harmed disabled children in order to fake a connection between vaccines and Autism so people would buy his alternative vaccine instead) as your reference points for doctors, and thus insisted thar the vast majority of doctors must be absolutely terrible people. Your sample is biased as hell, and this makes you think most DMs are terrible.They aren't. And unless and until you let go of these terrible examples and start judging things on the basis of what they are, not what you have personally seen from two poor DMs, you will always struggle and be left confused and frustrated.Responding to what you actually say here though, this still sounds to me like railroading. "Pure nightmare fuel"? That sounds like if a combat happens, you've designed it to be a major loss, and the only way that changes is if the players get insanely lucky or just happen to do the one thing you left in so they could succeed. That isn't framing a scene. That's trapping the PCs in a Saw-style puzzle.Working with your players. Not the crap awful thing your two terrible example DMs do. Actually listening to what the players find interesting, and then using that to develop real, actual, honest-to-God challenges, but ones that are open-ended, not nigh-insoluble meat grinders. Real, genuine possibilities of change and growth, driven not by what you want a scene to be, but by what the players choose to do in a scene.There is no special name for this. It isn't your "hard fun." But it also isn't the horrific caricature you have painted via those other two DMs you know.Not at all. You can have a plot and still be open to change! That's the whole point of this method. You don't HAVE an "exactly what to do." You just have what the group knows is true, what you know is true, and the rules for finding out what happens.You keep players focused and productive by doing four things:1. Framing scenes that truly compel a response. That is, scenes which are dynamic and engaging, which inspire the players to do something about the situation they're facing.2. Asking questions and using the answers. Questions are extremely useful for knowing what the players are thinking, and for letting them give you enough rope to hang them with! Further, every question you ask is also telling your players something.3. If they attempt to do something that doesn't make sense or which is inappropriate for the context, talk to them about it. Usually, the player wants to do something productive, they're just confused, or failed to connect the facts correctly. A simple discussion is almost always useful for getting the game rolling again.4. Make GM moves. In DW, these are defined things. In D&D, these are a lot more nebulous, but good practices will usually resemble DW GM moves, because those moves were very carefully, intentionally designed.Here's the opening section from DW on GM Moves. Note: one of the Principles of Dungeon World is that GMs must never speak the name of their moves. This is mostly because saying "I'm going to Reveal an Unwelcome Truth!" is kinda spoiling the moment, y'know?[SPOILER="GM Moves"]<h3>Moves</h3>Whenever everyone looks to you to see what happens choose one of these. Each move is something that occurs in the fiction of the game—they aren’t code words or special terms. “Use up their resources” literally means to expend the resources of the characters, for example.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use a monster, danger, or location move</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reveal an unwelcome truth</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Show signs of an approaching threat</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Deal damage</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Use up their resources</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Turn their move back on them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Separate them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Show a downside to their class, race, or equipment</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Offer an opportunity, with or without cost</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Put someone in a spot</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask</li> </ul>Never speak the name of your move (that’s one of your principles). Make it a real thing that happens to them: “As you dodge the hulking ogre’s club, you slip and land hard. Your sword goes sliding away into the darkness. You think you saw where it went but the ogre is lumbering your way. What do you do?”[/SPOILER]Firstly, there should be no "sit around and wait." If the players don't engage, that means there is a problem and the group needs to figure out why the players aren't playing.Secondly, if you will never accept anyone but yourself being in the driver's seat, then you cannot ever have any method other than the one you use, where you throw punitive fight after punitive fight at your players and ensure that whatever it is you wish to happen always happens. Whether you do this clumsily or deftly, eventually the players will figure it out, and you will be left without recourse when that day comes.If you truly cannot ever accept that someone else might get to drive the story forward, then are you actually being sincere about wanting to find a different way to run games?Your mockery does you no favors. There is nothing "at the level of Scooby-Doo" in my game, as I have repeatedly told you. You have just quite literally insulted both me and every player I have ever run the game for, and painted six years of story- and intrigue-heavy, serious roleplay as being nothing more than a slapstick Saturday morning cartoon. Simply because I tried to crack a joke and lighten the mood in the thread.Are you truly sincere about wanting to learn a new way of doing things? If so, it would behoove you to stop insulting things you, by your own admission, do not understand.</blockquote>

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