Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gardens &amp; Goblins" data-source="post: 7070833" data-attributes="member: 6846794">Alive. Country may not be after the vote but hey.I'll catch up with the swathes of text over the last couple of pages when I can. In the meantime, this description of play/style of play - what is it/are we calling it? I ask because it seems to describe how we run our D&D sessions, at least today, rather well. Many moons ago, we'd expect the DM to fudge things - or at least realise that there was always some covert DM play involved, where aspects of play would be changed - during play - in order to better tailor the experience to the players.Today, we prefer a more, for lack of a better term, simulationist approach. I've never played Apocalypse World, only read the rulebook briefly though if I am inferring the style of play correctly, from your descriptions Manbearcat & Cambell, it seems close to how we play.Our expectation have shifted over time - things like attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws are fairly straight forward, and with the relative simplicity of the Advantage/Disadvantage system, 'soft' and hard moves' on the part of the DM become more apparent. D&D is not a complicated system ('low system cognitive overhead'), so folks can quickly gauge the outcomes of many situations when engaged with situations with a clear mechanical element. And when I personally feel the DM is making a soft move on my behalf, I feel dis-empowered as a player.As a result, the expectation is that the DM will be, 'true to their prep' as much as possible - let the events and the dice fall as play develops. Players are empowered through choice - to explore, engage with the world and to fail. However, saying all this, the 'prep' can and has been tailored to the players and continues to be tailored to the players between sessions, though it is obviously constrained by the choices and outcomes that have occurred during play from previous sessions. [sblock]For example, recently most of a character party were killed outright, no chance of healing or resurrection. The result was all down to the choices the players had made - they chose to push on with minimal resources. Their plan relied on some risky elements and luck was not on their side. The DM played it 'true', letting events unfold as the dice and circumstances dictated. However, rather than winking out of existence, the players then found themselves floating in a void, another time a space. Cue lots of astral craziness, where the characters first had to recognize what they were, where and what the other characters were before finally being approached by the patron of one of the (still living) characters. A terrifying chat later and they woke up near their bodies as ghosts, with a message for the living warlock character etched upon their souls. They then used their undead state to exact vengeance on their killer and right the wrongs of the town they were trying to protect and the last three sessions have had them hunting down an NPC in order to reunite them with their decaying bodies.Now, none of this was  planned at at the beginning of the campaign creation or the session or considered during play. Instead it was produce in reaction to the events, driven by players, during play.[/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification