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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8934965" data-attributes="member: 70468">I can’t speak for [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER], but I view them as a fundamental part of the basic play loop rather than being “just” a constraint. They’re making a trade-off. It’s true you are giving up the ability to decide how a situation will play out, but in response you get to say whatever follows when you do get to say something. There’s no need to play nice and hold back.For example, suppose the PCs are trying to climb up a tank of dangerous liquid that melts skin (as the party has determined both from the skull at the bottom of the tank plus other experimentation). The ladder is shaky, and the tank is visibly damaged. They know that one of the things that can go long is the tank collapses, dumping its contents everywhere and possibly exposing them to it. So they attempt to climb up, triggering Act Under Fire (the pressure being the risky situation). They roll and get 6−, and the tank comes toppling down.How would that play out in D&D? Can the DM decide ask you to make a saving throw or die on a failed skill check? Well, yes. But there are caveats. Depending on the edition you’re playing, that kind of thing is going to be more or less normative in the play culture. I think it would be highly unusual in play with modern D&D editions, and some (if not many) players at least would view it unfairly. Their understanding is that you fail to complete the task on a failed skill check, and only disabling a trap prescribes that the trap goes off on a failed check, which is not what they were rolling.Let me be clear, I’m not saying this isn’t the kind of response you can make in D&D when you narrate what happens. In fact, the example comes out of The Incandescent Grottoes, an adventure for Old-School Essentials (it’s room 17 on the 1st floor). While the dangerous tank isn’t the defective one, it’s absolutely in the referee’s purview to say it comes down or someone falls in. However, what the principles do in Apocalypse World is remove the sense of unfairness because it says explicitly: prepare for the worst on a 6−. The MC in that case is just doing what the rules demand of them.The way Apocalypse World integrates principles with the mechanics and uses them as part of the play loop is easily one of my favorite things about PbtA systems (including relatives like Blades in the Dark). It’s one of the things I definitely wanted in my homebrew system when I realized they let me make moves like the above without risking a sense of unfairness. I think if I had been just running OSE, the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/commentary-thread-in-that-“describe-your-game-in-five-words”-thread.682741/page-11#post-8920457" target="_blank">conflict from last session</a> would have seemed like I just wanted the monsters to fight the PCs regardless, but the principles (similar to PbtA but needing to be enumerated due to a WIP system) insulate from that. I’m just doing what the rules tell me to do when I frame those kinds of consequences.</blockquote>

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