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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9234986" data-attributes="member: 42582">I read the blog. I won't comment on its comedy (I'm a po-faced poster). But when it comes to RPGing technique, I don't find it that insightful. In particular, it seems to take for granted that - at least in a lot of RPGing - the players' main activity is to declare actions that will prompt/trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-hidden backstory, so that the players can then declare more actions to either (i) prompt/trigger the revelation of yet more backstory, or (ii) prompt/trigger the GM's main event.This underpins both I and III in the post, and seems to inform the discussion of IV as well. From my perspective, RPGing that works in that way is railroading full stop, before we get to questions of what happens when the players get sick of, or fail at, &quot;clue&quot;-hunting?As far as II is concerned, the Champions move looks like a railroad (or something in the neighbourhood), the M&amp;M move looks like it is part of the game, and the Masks example doesn't have enough detail of the custom move and what it is done in response to. In GMing MHRP I have had NPCs with the ability to spend Doom Pool to have a defeat turn out not to be one (eg spend 2d8, and it turns out the heroes only defeated a Doom Bot, not Dr Doom himself). That worked pretty well, and fit within the overall game parameters (which make the Doom Pool a constraint on GM moves).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9234986, member: 42582"] I read the blog. I won't comment on its comedy (I'm a po-faced poster). But when it comes to RPGing technique, I don't find it that insightful. In particular, it seems to take for granted that - at least in a lot of RPGing - the players' main activity is to declare actions that will prompt/trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-hidden backstory, so that the players can then declare more actions to either (i) prompt/trigger the revelation of yet more backstory, or (ii) prompt/trigger the GM's main event. This underpins both I and III in the post, and seems to inform the discussion of IV as well. From my perspective, RPGing that works in that way is railroading full stop, before we get to questions of [I]what happens when the players get sick of, or fail at, "clue"-hunting?[/I] As far as II is concerned, the Champions move looks like a railroad (or something in the neighbourhood), the M&M move looks like it is part of the game, and the Masks example doesn't have enough detail of the custom move and what it is done in response to. In GMing MHRP I have had NPCs with the ability to spend Doom Pool to have a defeat turn out not to be one (eg spend 2d8, and it turns out the heroes only defeated a Doom Bot, not Dr Doom himself). That worked pretty well, and fit within the overall game parameters (which make the Doom Pool a constraint on GM moves). [/QUOTE]

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