Players establishing facts about the world impromptu during play

[The-Magic-Sword]

Non-protagonistic Story Now?

Yeah maybe, I see how that would work, though given how much of it and how to perform it I'm picking up from the OSR community and... the OS community? that feels like a weird fit.

 

[Manbearcat]

In your dragon example, the player must either respond with a believable means of surpassing the obstacle of the winds, or alter their actions to suit the fiction. The GM authored a complication, the Ranger Player is going to author a reaction to that complication. If DW is like Masks, that could be a creative new use of their ranger abilities (which would be a loosely defined idea of they're personal abilities and equipment) a completely different plan, or even a newly established element of the fiction (that the GM would in turn, be obligated to complicate) which would trigger a move to roll if its believable, on a hit it happens according to the move, but on a miss, the GM would decide what happens-- potentially giving the Ranger player what they want but with some further complication they're dealing with.

The Dragon, the Ranger Wanting to Shoot, The Wind being too much, the Potential Miss, each of these is functionally a prompt for straight authorship of the fiction being tossed back and forth in conversation. If these opportunities for authorship are policed to the extent that they begin to represent constrained toolboxes in a world simulated by the GM's sensibilities, we've practically, whether through system or playstyle, stepped away from the subject of the thread. Since players are no longer establishing facts about the world.

I want to go back to this because this is a very important.

Your first paragraph is spot on. But your 2nd paragraph here feels like it may be revealing a subtle misunderstanding of how Story Now games work broadly and PBtA games (like DW) work specifically. Or at least the lack of disciplined application of one of the primary principles that undergirds play (this is almost surely what cued @Campbell to question how "hygenic" the play of Masks is). The bolded bit makes me wonder how your play of Masks is with respect to the Make Threats Real GMing principle.

* Threats aren't real if they aren't truly threatening.

* Make the scope and focus real and meaningful (threaten something they care about).

* Provoke them to action to stop a threat.

* If they fail to overcome it (a miss on a move) or present you a golden opportunity (by ignoring the threat), follow through. Make it real.


This is as essential to Masks as it is to Dungeon World as it is to Apocalypse World. This principle undergirds the play of each of these game (frame threat and provoke to action - soft move > miss move or ignore threat > follow through - hard move).

So, to bring this all together and make this clear:

* Dungeon World's themes are inspired by Burning Wheel and 4e. You're fighting for your bonds/beliefs.

* The crucible of conflict will test your mettle with respect to these things. The GM will put these things in the crosshairs.

* Your job as a player is to respond to provocation with action (make a move that is an expression of your characters archetype/themes and what they hold dear). This is indeed a prompt, but it is absolutely not a prompt for "straight authorship of the fiction" as you write in your 2nd paragraph. Your 1st paragraph is correct here. It is a prompt for the player to (a) express their bonds/beliefs or (b) do something Rangerly or (c) (the best of all worlds) both. But its not conch-passing. The threats are real, remember? They can't just ignore the obstacles/threats in front of them (that would be "giving the GM a golden opportunity") and just do whatever the eff they want.

Yes, they get to establish facts about the world. But they have to do so by dealing with what is in front of them with moves that respect the integrity of the fiction before them. They might use Man's Best Friend to have their Animal Companion intercede before them and shield them from the hurricane wind (and therefore they're dealing with the fallout to their companion). A Discern Realities move might uncover a missing scale on the dragon that they can fire at (take +1 forward when acting upon it) and/or a stalagmite field to that will arrest the fall of the giant slab of glacier (take +1 forward when acting upon it).

But they have to make moves that deal with the obstacles before them so they can get that precious Volley/Called Shot move off.

* Enforcing this as a GM is your job. Your job is to follow through if the player's move results in a miss or if they ignore a threat (it here being the winds of a hurricane or the glacial ceiling collapse on them). Both the players and the GM are constrained by the structure of play, the principles of play, and the action resolution procedures.

---

TLDR - if you're playing Masks (and any PBtA game) like your first paragraph, then all is well. Its the 2nd paragraph that invites questions (or doubts).

 

[Aldarc]

I'll admit I should have been clearer, I was saying that even in the extreme of conch passing, it can be fun (as it was in college), not that Story Now games are conch passing, the example was meant to express my frustration with non-curated worlds. That curation is a little harder in Story Now, even though the systems give the GM final say because they simultaneously discourage the kind of elaborate world building that really makes other kinds of play for me, and because in practice there's social pressure to not be too judicious with saying no "Yes, and..." is still a major value in these games, it goes against their spirit to exert too much control over setting.

Meanwhile, I value very emergent stories in my Pathfinder play, but not emergent worlds, instead I like for my nicely designed and curated worlds to collide with the players and produce stories by virtue of them making contact with it. That probably isn't trad, because it doesn't focus on making or telling a specific story?

This seems to confuse the principle of No Myth settings with Story Now. It is more difficult to have curated worlds in No Myth settings, but not necessarily Story Now. @pemerton, for example, has used Cortex+ Heroic to run both Story Now games for Marvel Superheroes and Lord of the Rings, which are both highly curated settings. Avatar the Last Airbender is being released for PbtA under Magpie Games. You can actually run a LOT of curated settings using games designed under Story Now principles.

That said. I personally find nicely designed, curated worlds a little suffocating to me as both a player and a GM. It additionally seems a little too self-serving as a GM. I even say this as someone who enjoys a bit of world-building as a hobby of sorts. But between No Myth and All/High Myth, there is still plenty of space between, which is often where I enjoy my settings with a few exceptions: e.g., Eberron. However, Eberron is also a setting that creates mysteries and questions but refuses to answer them to empower various groups to supply their own answers. I personally prefer something more akin to the Nentir Vale or Numenera settings: i.e., worlds that are partially sketched with plenty of open spaces to still draw.

I think that this is because some of my worst experiences as a player involved GMs with heavily curated worlds with elaborate world-building in which they were interested in "[exerting] too much control over [their] setting." In my personal play experiences, the emergence of emergent stories also tended to face higher resistance in conjunction with non-emergent worlds. It's almost like the Lego Movie where President/Lord Business (i.e., the kid's father) was quashing anything that deviated from his highly curated world. I've seen way too many GMs treat their elaborately curated worlds with the same sort of "do not disturb the perfection of my masterpiece!" as the kid's father did with the Lego sets.

 

[pemerton]

the difference is the texture of play as it relates to the "world being generated during play for the purposes of our story using procedures and player establishment, even if that establishment is moderated by the GM" (Story Now) vs. "the world being designed independently of the players, them inserting themselves into it is the fiction of the game session." (Story Before)

<snip>

In Masks I do the former as the game demands, in Pathfinder I do the latter even when I'm improvising. As far as I can tell, some of the posters here are trying to convince me I'm imagining that there's any difference at all.

the example was meant to express my frustration with non-curated worlds. That curation is a little harder in Story Now, even though the systems give the GM final say because they simultaneously discourage the kind of elaborate world building that really makes other kinds of play for me, and because in practice there's social pressure to not be too judicious with saying no "Yes, and..." is still a major value in these games, it goes against their spirit to exert too much control over setting.

Meanwhile, I value very emergent stories in my Pathfinder play, but not emergent worlds, instead I like for my nicely designed and curated worlds to collide with the players and produce stories by virtue of them making contact with it.

This seems to confuse the principle of No Myth settings with Story Now. It is more difficult to have curated worlds in No Myth settings, but not necessarily Story Now. @pemerton, for example, has used Cortex+ Heroic to run both Story Now games for Marvel Superheroes and Lord of the Rings, which are both highly curated settings.

Non-protagonistic Story Now?

There seem to be a few things going on here.

First, as @Aldarc says there is no particular correlation between no myth (at least in any strict sense) and story now. Robin Laws HeroWars/Quest is intended for story now Gloranthan RPGing, and is obviously not no myth! Ron Edwards has a good essay on the relationship between setting and story now RPGing here. @Aldarc notes that I have used "myth" in MHRP and Cortex+ Heroic LotR/MERP RPGing. In the strict sense my Prince Valiant play isn't no myth either: it is set in Europe c the 8th century; and we use maps (of Britain from the Pendragon rulebook, and of Europe and West Asia from a Penguin historical atlas) to work out where the PCs are and where they might be going.

One-offs I've run of Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights have been set in the real world, and that's also not "no myth" in the sense that eg Soho, the Thames, Boston Harbour, British colonialism in East Africa, etc have all been treated as existing and ready to hand in our games.

Second, most story now RPGs favour an approach to resolution that leaves some of the details "loose" so that they can be finalised/fixed/resolved as part of the narration of consequences. A striking (and notorious from other threads) example is whether or not a secret door exists, or what some secret writing says, being resolved as part of the outcome of a check to search or decipher or whatever. But other examples are probably less contentious but easily available: eg in Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant overland travel, if it is "resolved" at all (as opposed to just narrated via free RP) will typically not be resolved via map-and-key adjudication. Rather an appropriate check (eg Orienteering in BW, or Riding in Prince Valiant) will be made against a GM-established obstacle, and if the check fails then the GM will narrate something adverse about the travel (eg what it cost, or how the PCs got lost, or how they were intercepted by an enemy, or etc). Apocalypse World and Dungeon World rely on this sort of "looseness" to resolve moves like Read a Situation or Discern Realities (and AW even gives it a label to remind the GM: "misdirect", which means present the tightening of details as flowing from in-fiction causes although in fact it is being narrated in response to at-the-table prompts emerging from the resolution process).

This "looseness" could be seen to be a type of "no myth", especially if one's notion of "myth" is tightly connected to classic map-and-key preparation. My MHRP and LotR games have not involved any map-or-key in the classic sense - travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo (in MHRP) or from Rivendell into the troubled places of the land (in LotR/MERP) was narrated freely in the first case, and resolved by the use of Scene Distinctions in the latter.

The heaviest use I've made of map-and-key techniques in story now RPGing is in 4e D&D. 4e combat doesn't leave many details loose, and the resolution and consequences work in different ways (at an appropriate level of abstraction it can be compared to Fight! in Burning Wheel: it's quite detail-heavy, mechanically intricate resolution and other devices are being used to maintain the connection to theme and what are you willing to fight for?). But 4e non-combat I tended to resolve similarly to how I would BW or Prince Valiant, with one or two exceptions where the PCs pointed to maps and said where they were going, in which case it was free narration with the trappings (but not the actual machinery) of classic dungeon-crawling; and in the case of their travel through the UnderDark something closer to strict "no myth" as far as geography was concerned.

Our 4e game was very non-No Myth in one respect: it used the default cosmology and mythic history presented in the rulebooks, and generally available to the players via reading those books or by successful knowledge checks. This myth played a big role in framing conflicts and establishing the significance and consequences of events. It was much more gonzo and less "human-oriented" than what Edwards envisages in his essay, but had some similarities.

Third, the relationship between curated setting and the play experience will depend a lot on who who gets to decide stuff and who has to learn stuff, and how they do that. In my LotR/MERP game I rely on the players having ready familiarity with the basic places and ideas (eg Moria is the lost home of the dwarves). In games set in the real world, I am similarly relying on that familiarity - in our MHRP game, when action took place in the Smithsonian I chose that place because everyone knows it is has science/tech-type exhibits.

This contrast with an approach to setting where the GM is expected to be the conduit of setting to the players - so for them, being told stuff by the GM is (at least as a general rule) learning the setting for the first time. At least some of that stuff is conveyed in the course of resolving actions - eg the GM will narrate the outcome of the attempt to find a secret door at least in part by reference to a prior conception as to whether or not a secret door is present (and as per @The-Magic-Sword's post and edit, this can be done even if the actual details are being invented on the spot). This is quite different from what Edwards talks about. It is quite close to what Gygax describes in his PHB and DMG, though his focus is primarily (not exclusively) on dungeons which are a very particular type of setting. In other threads I have called this a type of play where the players learn what is in the GM's notes or in the GM's conception of the fiction.

I think two paradigms of this sort of RPGing are classic D&D and CoC. In both these cases there is a strong puzzle-solving element, and I think that's not a coincidence: solving a puzzle tends to require someone who is not the solver of it to put it forward and (perhaps) reveal bits of new information as the puzzle-solver goes about his/her task.

 

[Emerikol]

There seem to be a few things going on here.

First, as @Aldarc says there is no particular correlation between no myth (at least in any strict sense) and story now.

This is interesting as I've wondered how the to fit if at all. I'd think they are at least first cousins ;-).

Isn't it true though that every no myth game comes with a few established facts? Genre etc.. but even if you said you were playing in the Forgotten Realms generally, you could no myth a lot of details that aren't covered by the setting book.

To me it's a distinction that isn't really that great. I mean if I say I'm playing no myth sci-fi or no myth fantasy haven't I established something in advance. I assume everything not established (and of course a lot isn't established we'd agree) is no myth and can be created by PCs during the course of play.

To be honest, I think you could probably do no myth with D&D with a some ground rules about monsters stats and magic items etc... You'd make the basic rules the established knowledge and the rest is no myth. So I'd think the no myth starting point may vary in terms of degree but if it's allowed at all there are at least elements of it present.

 

[Fenris-77]

To be honest, I think you could probably do no myth with D&D with a some ground rules about monsters stats and magic items etc... You'd make the basic rules the established knowledge and the rest is no myth. So I'd think the no myth starting point may vary in terms of degree but if it's allowed at all there are at least elements of it present.

I'm running an essentially no-myth OSR game right now. Perhaps more accurately it would be really low myth, but the setting is pretty much a blank slate. There's some history and cosmology, and there was some player input during char gen, but mostly the setting is a blank slate that doesn't get filled in until the players need it to. None of the prep I did actually effects the physicality of the setting, or the presence or absence of anything in particular, it just does some basic thematic work to give the characters feel for how the setting feels, moreso than how it is. Anyway, it's working well so far.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm running an essentially no-myth OSR game right now. Perhaps more accurately it would be really low myth, but the setting is pretty much a blank slate. There's some history and cosmology, and there was some player input during char gen, but mostly the setting is a blank slate that doesn't get filled in until the players need it to. None of the prep I did actually effects the physicality of the setting, or the presence or absence of anything in particular, it just does some basic thematic work to give the characters feel for how the setting feels, moreso than how it is. Anyway, it's working well so far.

Black Hack 2e?

 

[Fenris-77]

Black Hack 2e?

Yup, somewhat modified with some exploration stuff from Into the Wyrd and Wild, as well as some hacks to make it a little more PbP friendly.

 

[Fenris-77]

Here's the rules resources I posted for the game. Plus if you noodle around the forum you can find the campaign info dumps too. Those are actually a little more-myth than the actual campaign ended up being. The emphasis shifted a bunch during session zero and char gen.

 

[kenada]

Yeah maybe, I see how that would work, though given how much of it and how to perform it I'm picking up from the OSR community and... the OS community? that feels like a weird fit.

I had started to suggest OSR minus all the other bits, but that didn’t feel right. Pathfinder isn’t old-school D&D, a retroclone, or particularly adjacent to those games. Pathfinder 2e does have an exploration mode, but it still lacks most of the techniques one would use to create OSR-style play. Also, based on our prior conversations, your approach to balance is quite different from OSR play (which is itself [OSR play] non-normative for PF2).

There seem to be a few things going on here.

First, as @Aldarc says there is no particular correlation between no myth (at least in any strict sense) and story now. Robin Laws HeroWars/Quest is intended for story now Gloranthan RPGing, and is obviously not no myth! Ron Edwards has a good essay on the relationship between setting and story now RPGing here. @Aldarc notes that I have used "myth" in MHRP and Cortex+ Heroic LotR/MERP RPGing. In the strict sense my Prince Valiant play isn't no myth either: it is set in Europe c the 8th century; and we use maps (of Britain from the Pendragon rulebook, and of Europe and West Asia from a Penguin historical atlas) to work out where the PCs are and where they might be going.

One-offs I've run of Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights have been set in the real world, and that's also not "no myth" in the sense that eg Soho, the Thames, Boston Harbour, British colonialism in East Africa, etc have all been treated as existing and ready to hand in our games.

Second, most story now RPGs favour an approach to resolution that leaves some of the details "loose" so that they can be finalised/fixed/resolved as part of the narration of consequences. A striking (and notorious from other threads) example is whether or not a secret door exists, or what some secret writing says, being resolved as part of the outcome of a check to search or decipher or whatever. But other examples are probably less contentious but easily available: eg in Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant overland travel, if it is "resolved" at all (as opposed to just narrated via free RP) will typically not be resolved via map-and-key adjudication. Rather an appropriate check (eg Orienteering in BW, or Riding in Prince Valiant) will be made against a GM-established obstacle, and if the check fails then the GM will narrate something adverse about the travel (eg what it cost, or how the PCs got lost, or how they were intercepted by an enemy, or etc). Apocalypse World and Dungeon World rely on this sort of "looseness" to resolve moves like Read a Situation or Discern Realities (and AW even gives it a label to remind the GM: "misdirect", which means present the tightening of details as flowing from in-fiction causes although in fact it is being narrated in response to at-the-table prompts emerging from the resolution process).

This "looseness" could be seen to be a type of "no myth", especially if one's notion of "myth" is tightly connected to classic map-and-key preparation. My MHRP and LotR games have not involved any map-or-key in the classic sense - travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo (in MHRP) or from Rivendell into the troubled places of the land (in LotR/MERP) was narrated freely in the first case, and resolved by the use of Scene Distinctions in the latter.

The heaviest use I've made of map-and-key techniques in story now RPGing is in 4e D&D. 4e combat doesn't leave many details loose, and the resolution and consequences work in different ways (at an appropriate level of abstraction it can be compared to Fight! in Burning Wheel: it's quite detail-heavy, mechanically intricate resolution and other devices are being used to maintain the connection to theme and what are you willing to fight for?). But 4e non-combat I tended to resolve similarly to how I would BW or Prince Valiant, with one or two exceptions where the PCs pointed to maps and said where they were going, in which case it was free narration with the trappings (but not the actual machinery) of classic dungeon-crawling; and in the case of their travel through the UnderDark something closer to strict "no myth" as far as geography was concerned.

Our 4e game was very non-No Myth in one respect: it used the default cosmology and mythic history presented in the rulebooks, and generally available to the players via reading those books or by successful knowledge checks. This myth played a big role in framing conflicts and establishing the significance and consequences of events. It was much more gonzo and less "human-oriented" than what Edwards envisages in his essay, but had some similarities.

Third, the relationship between curated setting and the play experience will depend a lot on who who gets to decide stuff and who has to learn stuff, and how they do that. In my LotR/MERP game I rely on the players having ready familiarity with the basic places and ideas (eg Moria is the lost home of the dwarves). In games set in the real world, I am similarly relying on that familiarity - in our MHRP game, when action took place in the Smithsonian I chose that place because everyone knows it is has science/tech-type exhibits.

This contrast with an approach to setting where the GM is expected to be the conduit of setting to the players - so for them, being told stuff by the GM is (at least as a general rule) learning the setting for the first time. At least some of that stuff is conveyed in the course of resolving actions - eg the GM will narrate the outcome of the attempt to find a secret door at least in part by reference to a prior conception as to whether or not a secret door is present (and as per @The-Magic-Sword's post and edit, this can be done even if the actual details are being invented on the spot). This is quite different from what Edwards talks about. It is quite close to what Gygax describes in his PHB and DMG, though his focus is primarily (not exclusively) on dungeons which are a very particular type of setting. In other threads I have called this a type of play where the players learn what is in the GM's notes or in the GM's conception of the fiction.

I think two paradigms of this sort of RPGing are classic D&D and CoC. In both these cases there is a strong puzzle-solving element, and I think that's not a coincidence: solving a puzzle tends to require someone who is not the solver of it to put it forward and (perhaps) reveal bits of new information as the puzzle-solver goes about his/her task.

I’m responding for my own edification since it seems like what’s being described fits with what Edwards describes as “setting-centric Story Now play”. Is the issue that if you aren’t taking a principled approach (e.g., something like what Edwards describes for doing it with a confused game text), that the game risks becoming incoherent?

For example, let’s assume we’re going to play a campaign using Pathfinder 2e. We decide on a village on the border between Andoran and Cheliax. Andoran is sort of like a fantasy frontier America while Cheliax is an empire of diabloists. Play starts with various situations like the Church of Asmodeus has come to town, rebels against the rule of House Thrune are causing trouble in the area, and so on. So far, it sounds like we have all the pieces in place to begin our setting-centric Story Now play.

Of course, play doesn’t just start at the status quo and then nothing happens. The PCs are going to go out and do things. They’re going to impose themselves on the setting all over the place (break the rebels’ stuff, etc). We’re playing for the emergent story, so that’s the point. However, because there are no principles to keep the GM honest, will a plot emerge arise in the GM’s notes eventually (inevitably?)? And if one does emerge, we’ve ended up playing something different from what we think we’re playing (Story Now vs. Story Before).

Edited for clarity: don’t use two different meanings for emergent plot.