Another way to help ensure internal consistency of the gameworld, that the players understand, is for the players to participate in shaping it (eg authoring PC backstories; declaring actions that then underpin the GM's narration of consequences; etc).
Judgement calls vs "railroading"
I quoted the entirety of the "pre-fab" setting.
It doesn't say anything about cabals, towers, catacombs etc.
I've explained where the tower came from: I narrated it because I wanted a high place (the mage PC had the Instinct "if I fall, cast Falconskin"), and I liked the Tower of the Elephant feel.
I've explained where the catacombs came from.
The cabal was an Affiliation established by the player for the PC at character creation.
As I posted in the long-running "lore" threads, the GH boxed set gives a map, a general geography, and a sketch of a swords-and-sorcery suitable history.
Let me requote the totality of the lore on Hardby:
[T]he heir [of the Landgraf of the Selintan] was wed to the daughter of the Gynarch (Despotrix) of Hardby, a sorceress of no small repute. Their descendants ruled a growing domain . . . In 498 it [Greyhawk] was declared a free and independent city, ruling a territory from Hardby . . . to the Nyr Dyv . . . These holdings have been lost over the intervening decades . . . The Despotrix of Hardby now pays tribute to Greyhawk to avoid being absorbed into the growing city state once again . . . Portions of the [Wild Coast] have been under the control of . . . the Gynarch of Hardby . . . at various times.
That establishes that Hardby is ruled by a magic-using Gynarch/Despotrix, and has an uneasy and unstable political relationship with the City of Greyhawk and with parts of the Wild Coast.
It's some basic colour. Not more.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
It might be true that there are adverse fictional outcomes a given player does not want to accept while at the same time removing those outcomes as mechanical possibilities might not be what that player is looking for. I think there is a sort of player who wants to feel like they are playing to find out what happens while at the same time desiring that "the story comes out right" and play matches an expected narrative structure. They want to feel the tension of the moment while not actually taking any sort of real risk that things might not turn out as they expect them to. They need a release valve, but a mechanized release valve requires acknowledging that they are not really willing to accept the results of following the fiction, playing their characters with integrity, and accepting the results of the game system. Instead the rely on social cues to get what they want from the GM and other players without saying it out loud because that would mean acknowledging it.
It's not just character death where we see this behavior in motion. That just happens to be the most visceral example. You also see this behavior in all sorts of examples where players have trouble accepting the consequences of their decisions or failed rolls, particularly in social situations. Alternatively there might be situations where they expect their characters to fail and will also apply social pressure to get the results they want to occur. Character concept seems to be the clarion call of this player type. My character would never be fooled by such a simple ruse.
This is an interesting thought.
So "character concept" becomes divorced from the idea of mechanics that give effect to character concept.
This sort of player would presumably not like 4e. Nor BW or MHRP, I suspect.
Manbearcat
Legend
You're fine. Doesn't bother me unless I'm fairly certain the involved party isn't sincere. I know you're sincere, so pick away. Besides, I invited it and I think this is good (and topical) conversation.
My thoughts here:
1) As you mentioned, the relevance of the Leverage can be an input to action resolution (take +1 or take -1). However, as you also mentioned, it is discouraged as being a mere input to action resolution. Therefore, we're left with it being an impact on the output of action resolution.
In this case, that output would be "what happens" on a 7-9 or a 6-. So, for consideration I've got (a) the holistic approach of DW's Agendas/Principles, (b) the overarching fictional positioning to account for, and (c) the specific fictional positioning of the leverage in question. On (c), my sense of it as an output for action resolution is to serve to mitigate failure prospects specific to that Parley move. That is, like Instincts in Burning Wheel, this Leverage (along with all of (a) and (b) above) contracts my prospects for for framing the fiction post-move resolution.
Now that doesn't mean that I can't make things suck post-resolution. It just means that I feel constrained such that I shouldn't make things suck post-resolution in a specific way (the dog going full aggro/hostile). I aslo think part of what may be happening here is maybe you're showing a certain predisposition toward tight coupling of causal logic in action resolution that I don't share (our conversations have gone in this direction in the past). In this case:
Parley = Task input to action resolution (this has primacy...not context, not intent, and/or not genre logic)
Fortune = Failure
Thefore...
Output must = Consequence of failure should mean adverse NPC attitude toward PC (possibly manifesting hostility, but either way, closing off social prospects).
In my case, I take the position that the the components in parentheses should have primacy here. There can still be conflict in Dungeon World even if the dog is predisposed toward wanting companionship, security, food. It can just be less apt to do so given the overarching context and its present circumstances. Therefore, the danger in Parley doesn't have to be hostility of the NPC. It could be any number of dangers; in this case the wilds, the weather, and the gathering dusk that the creature fled to. Dungeon World is predicated upon this kind of stuff snowballing into orthogonal content generation/danger introduction.
So "say yes" wouldn't need (and I say shouldn't) apply here. I don't think the situation was trivial at all. The situation was definitely fraught with peril and there was danger to be had with no guarantee of gaining the asset (despite the predisposition and the canny Leverage the PC deployed).
Finally, Blades in the Dark has introduced further formalizing of GM adjudication that you may like (I think its helpful). Each situation's fictional positioning is declared as "controlled", "risky", or "desperate". The complications/costs/results of action resolution become more punitive as you move from the left to the right. For instance, "controlled" would be when you're on your turf and holding most (but not all) of the cards. My opinion going into that play moment would definitely have been that the situation was either controlled or somewhere between controlled teetering on risky.
2) As I re-examine this moment of play, the only real prospect of removing the asset from the fiction (because I don't believe hostility would apply and running headlong into the reindeer herd would be absurd) would be a predation from below. The Ranger (and high Wis Ranger at that) shouldn't have a hard move introduced where an avian or land-based creature (specifically on an open glacial expanse that isn't under fulldark) swoops/sneaks in right on top of the PC and takes the dog. That would be akin to violating an Instinct in BW. So the only option for outright removing the asset would have been a subterranean predation. Problem is, I wasn't even aware of the Remorhaz at that point (I introduced evidence of the creaturet the next afternoon I believe). So it didn't even occur to me.
If I had thought of a Remorhaz attack (the ground beneath begins to subtly rumble, geysers explode in steam all around, etc) and it consumed the dog as it exploded from the earth (then potentially threatening the PC), I'm assuming you would have found this more palatable (not from a process-sim perspective, but from a "locked the asset out" perspective)? I may have done that if I would have thought of it. Sometimes you're limited by the best bit of dangerous fiction your brain can offer you in the moment (even though I still think the route I went was best all things considered).
I think holistically the system is considerably more coherent, transparent (the machinery of action and resolution should be apparent for players), and wholly easier to "play to find out" than you give it credit for here. Trying to apply force seems to be much more arduous and flat difficult than just playing straight.
That being said, Blades in the Dark has introduced "Clocks" in a different way than the Threat Clocks of Apocalypse World. These serve as a physical, player-facing countdown to failure/escalation as a conflict is introduced. When the clock ticks, things get more and more pear-shaped until all the segments are filled or the scene has been resolved positively for the players.
Well, on this we get into the abstraction of the Near and Far tags. Near is "can see the whites of your eyes" and Far is "shouting distance". To firm up the fictional positioning when its required for players to make informed action declarations, I typically default to 10-15 meters for Near and beyond that out to 100 meters for Far. Real world hunters typically stalk and kill between 30 and 40 meters. Proficient archers can hit targets with compound bows at about 50 to 60 meters. 60 meters is well inside the limits of being able to understand someone shouting. All told then, I think 100 meters would apply and is more than fair, IMO, for fantasy genre hunters.
Our fastest speed in the 100 is about 28 MPH. You're talking inside 10 seconds. Move that up to a 50 MPH sprint and you're effectively talking in your face in short order. The prospects of escaping by foot-speed seem rather grim. You're almost assured of being trampled by those 10 reindeers that can move about double your speed. If a player would have declared that they were going to attempt to outrun them, I would have declared "allright, but (a) you can't get a 10+ and (b) you take -1 (this would definitely be a situation that would apply)."
So, I suppose here my sense of "immediate" may be slightly different than your own. My sense is that you're Defying Danger right now if you don't have some other method of eggress (more on that below).
If she would have gotten a 7-9, my response would have likely have been:
"Alright, you give the dog some food (mark off 1 Ration). It scarfs it down and looks at you for more. Sating its appetite and earning its trust will definitely require more than a single Ration."
So you're looking at a situation where the player gives up a 2nd Ration. Most D&D groups don't know what its like to be "Ration-stressed." Dungeon World games exist in that state perpetually so this isn't a small resource expenditure. Further still, this group was inevitably going to be Ration-stressed beyond normal (limited areas to resupply and in a wasteland bereft of foraging and hunting opportunities. So every extra Ration spent is costly. Exacerbating things further still is taking on the extra mouth of the dog. Further still, the Ration-stressed situation would be exacerbated the next day as the group took on several more mouths to feed! Coin (which they were also desperately short on, so they would then become "Coin-stressed") and Resupplying (in Earthmaw) would become a desparate thing.
Finally, the ultimate cost of the whole ordeal was:
1) 3 Ammo
After a quick look around at her options, Saerie determined that the reindeer were probably maddened and indeed making a bee-line for her. Further, the snow-drift was likely her only real chance to escape. She grabbed the dog, dove into the partial burrow and collapsed the roof on she and the dog. She rolled a 9 on her Defy Danger. Consequently, in the doing, the frantic dog squirmed and kicked and upended her quiver. Out spilled nearly all her arrows (only 1 Ammo left..so now "Ammo-stressed"...for a primary archer Ranger). She could snag them and face the danger of the herd or sacrifice them and stay put. She chose to sacrifice them.
Now this could have easily snowballed very badly if Saerie would have failed her Discern Realities or Defy Danger effort. So the danger/threat level of this situation was not only not insignificant, it was positively deadly.
2) 2 Rations
She had to pay the equivalent of the 7-9 Rations for the dog anyway.
In the doing, she gained an old, deaf dog as a Cohort/Hireling which she would have to regularly pay its Cost to keep up its Loyalty. The dog could help her on Hunt and Track (take +1 but you can only get a max 7-9) or grant her a +1 to Defy Danger (with 7-9 max result) where the fictional positioning warrants it...but it would put the dog in peril.
I don't believe she may have used the first feature once and the second perhaps twice.
Further, she would get some minor intel (mostly independent confirmation on what they found in journals/records in the village or what they had surmised/deduced) on what transpired in World's End Bluff.
She would form a bond with the old dog though, so when he died it was a big deal (hence her Spirit Realm journey to commune with his spirit).
So I guess what I'm getting at with the above is:
* I don't think "say yes" was the right approach here despite the situation being the equivalent of "Controlled" fictional positioning in Blades in the Dark.
* I think Leverage as an output (constraining or opening outcomes contingent upon Leverage deployed) to action resolution rather than an input (eg take +1 or -1) is the way to go.
* The move certainly felt much more of a Hard Move to me than it seems it was to you.
* The ceiling cost (high likelihood of death or at least considerable HP damage or Debility) of the move made was even higher than the cost that was ultimately paid (which was significant from a resource perspective).
* I think a Dungeon World that uses Blades in the Dark's Clocks as conflict resolution would likely be much more palatable to you as a gaming engine (or hell, just use all of BitD's machinery rather than DW).
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Just as likely to impair the internal consistency, though...too many cooks, and all that.
The bit you quoted didn't, but you then went on to say what locations within Hardby you'd used, implying they were pre-written things you'd simply reskinned or reflavoured to suit your group's own game/story.
Which is already far, far more than someone designing their setting from scratch has.
I'm assuming the totality of the lore has more detail to it, given all the ". . ." included. You'll also have a map showing where the town is and what's around it. Again, that's what I'd have to come up with myself - which then gets me accused of having a DM-driven game.
I think you need to cut those of us who design our own settings a little slack.
Lanefan
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I've given you the entirety of the lore on Hardby. The elisions are comments about other things (you'll see that the lore is spread over 3 pages, none of which has "Hardby" as a heading - the info is in the sections on Greyhawk City and on the Wild Coast.
As I think I already posted twice:
The fictional backdrop can be created in play. it doesn't need to be pre-authored.
This is related to techniques of resolution: eg when characters are racing one another through the city, we don't plot out paths on a city map (there is no city map). We make opposed checks; when the PCs are trying to make their way through the catacombs, there is no map we look at, and no "getting lost" roll - rather, we make a Catacombs-wise roll (the last of these that was made failed; hence the two PCs got lost in the catacombs while the assassin, whom they had drugged, regained consciousness and was able to beat them to the tower).
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] talked upthread about world creation in Dungeonworld. It is not identical to what I've described - eg [-]BW[/-]DW has the concept of "Fronts" and doesn't (I don't think) have the concept of "Circles checks". But it similarly works with a low degree of detail at the start, filled out via play.
And in this Cortex Fantasy game, which has run now for two sessions, the starting setting was vikings. That's it. All the details were established in play. It wasn't lacking in colour.
As I think I already posted twice:
The tower was introduced in the first session, because one of the players had an Instinct "If I fall, cast Falconskin". I therefore wanted a high place. I'd also been recently re-reading Tower of the Elephant.
The owner of the tower - the head of the cabal - was introduced into the fiction by the mage player, attempting a Circles check in the first session.
The cathedral was introduced into the fiction in response to the player making contact with a friendly cleric (via a Circles check).
The catacombs were introduced in play, via the interaction between narration of the mummy (whom the mage PC was investigating) and the PCs attempt to flee the city by making contact with a friendly noble.
The GH boxed set gives us a map, some names for locations on the map, and some basic background (eg the ancient Suel) which support swords-and-sorcery tropes.
The owner of the tower - the head of the cabal - was introduced into the fiction by the mage player, attempting a Circles check in the first session.
The cathedral was introduced into the fiction in response to the player making contact with a friendly cleric (via a Circles check).
The catacombs were introduced in play, via the interaction between narration of the mummy (whom the mage PC was investigating) and the PCs attempt to flee the city by making contact with a friendly noble.
The GH boxed set gives us a map, some names for locations on the map, and some basic background (eg the ancient Suel) which support swords-and-sorcery tropes.
The fictional backdrop can be created in play. it doesn't need to be pre-authored.
This is related to techniques of resolution: eg when characters are racing one another through the city, we don't plot out paths on a city map (there is no city map). We make opposed checks; when the PCs are trying to make their way through the catacombs, there is no map we look at, and no "getting lost" roll - rather, we make a Catacombs-wise roll (the last of these that was made failed; hence the two PCs got lost in the catacombs while the assassin, whom they had drugged, regained consciousness and was able to beat them to the tower).
[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] talked upthread about world creation in Dungeonworld. It is not identical to what I've described - eg [-]BW[/-]DW has the concept of "Fronts" and doesn't (I don't think) have the concept of "Circles checks". But it similarly works with a low degree of detail at the start, filled out via play.
And in this Cortex Fantasy game, which has run now for two sessions, the starting setting was vikings. That's it. All the details were established in play. It wasn't lacking in colour.
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Ilbranteloth
Explorer
Why? The same reason that video games let you pick up right where you died, as if you didn't? I didn't say that I get it, but it's not an uncommon situation to run into people that expect that they can just keep going. The death saves and ever increasing access to resurrection magic has a similar effect.
So the question is, what's worse/different:
The players meet a tough battle, and one of them dies. The cleric casts a healing spell, and they jump up as if nothing has happened and get back to the fight.
The players meet a tough battle, and one of them dies. The cleric casts revivify and the character jumps up and joins the fight as if nothing has happened.
The players meet a tough battle, and the DM fudges the die, so the player is knocked down to 1 hp. The cleric heals the player, and he rejoins the fight as if nothing has happened.
Personally, I don't like any of them, so the rules are different in my primary home campaign. Whether I use them for other groups depends on the group.
Really, the way the game is currently set up, the PCs aren't only "not (necessarily) meant to die" but it's expected that should they decide so, there is always an option to recover from death. This is even built into Adventurer's League.
On the flip side are people who are adamant that only the dice, with no interference, should decide the fate of their PCs and the actions they choose to take. If they die, so be it. And they roll another character. Between those two extremes is almost everybody else.
Ilbranteloth
Explorer
Depends on the players, and what sort of consistency you're trying to maintain. Even "professionals" often have difficulty maintaining the consistency of a world, witness the Forgotten Realms.
Multiple authors gives a different feel and a different type of consistency, not to mention a different gameplay experience. I think most people agree that the players should have a lot of input into the backstories of their PCs, although the degree of latitude varies from table-to-table. Beyond that there's a wide range of what individual players and DMs prefer, and are capable of doing. After that, most default to what D&D really provides as their framework - you have control over your character, and the actions they take. The DM will handle everything else.
And before anybody jumps on "capable of doing," it is a thing. Just like some people are not suited to be a DM, some aren't capable of world design, etc. I had a friend who tried playing with us and just could not wrap his brain around even being a character in an imaginary world. No matter what the situation, the scenario, description or clarification, he was totally incapable of playing the game as a character. And he admits it. You're being attacked by goblins, what do you do? He had no idea - well, you're a wizard, and have these spells you can cast, what do you want to cast? I don't know. The only thing he came up with was to cut off the hand of a troll they killed so he could slap people with it.
It's just not the way his brain works. I'm not sure I've ever really seen anything like it, but he's amazing at something like MtG or League of Legends.
Manbearcat
Legend
Dungeon World being a PBtA inspired mash-up of BW (more like Mouse Guard in tone though) + B/X + 4e, there is a lot of DNA overlap. So the equivalent stuff (GMing procedures, Beliefs/Instincts, Circles et al) in Dungeon World to add things in play would be:
1) the GM principles of "ask questions and use the answers" and "draw a map, leave blanks"
2) GM Fronts with Impulses that oppose what the players have signaled their PCs care about
3) the play Agenda of "play to find out".
4) These couple with the PC-side stuff of Basic Moves of Spout Lore, Carouse, and Recruit coupled with Class playbook specific moves like:
Etc, etc. Hopefully that helps [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (and whomever else is following your conversation) with the gist of how this stuff comes to pass/emerges in play for games like BW or DW and why these games would be considered (comparatively) player-driven.
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