D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Blue]

For myself:
A sapling is a small thing, its presence or absence having little effect other than making this one roll work this one time. I don't know if there is a mechanical difference, since (properly speaking) the "luck roll" is a generic mechanic and the Spout Lore is not. It's also diegetic, in the sense that your luck happened to not fail you this time--but it would have been Especially Bad if your luck had failed you.

A missed Spout Lore roll is not just that there is no information, there are also consequences to it. All missed rolls in PbtA games worsen the position of the characters by triggering a GM move.

Food, water, and shelter is more of a challenge, but not much. One example, you run into someone who happens to be out there (such things happen), perhaps a trapper or the like, who is of a favorable disposition and shares supplies with you. That seems diegetic to me, you literally lucked into finding help.
As I had understood it, it wasn't the DM authoring the Forge, because the whole point was player authorship.

Not quite. The Spout Lore mechanics the player used require the DM to describe a positive result, exactly in the Luck example. In this thread they have been calling that player authorship, since it's the player's success on their Move that required this, and the player's focus (What do I know about dwarven forges in these mountains / food, warmth, shelter in the tundra) that directs the subject.

However, the facts provided by the Spout Lore are from the DM, be it existing information or made up in the moment.

Because they got the best result, the information the GM was providing needed to be both Interesting and Useful. On the lower level of success, it is not required to be immediately useful.

Spout Lore

When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you “How...

a-dungeon-world.fandom.com

 

[Cadence]

Not quite. The Spout Lore mechanics the player used require the DM to describe a positive result, exactly in the Luck example. In this thread they have been calling that player authorship, since it's the player's success on their Move that required this, and the player's focus (What do I know about dwarven forges in these mountains / food, warmth, shelter in the tundra) that directs the subject.

However, the facts provided by the Spout Lore are from the DM, be it existing information or made up in the moment.

Because they got the best result, the information the GM was providing needed to be both Interesting and Useful. On the lower level of success, it is not required to be immediately useful.

Spout Lore

When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful. The GM might ask you “How...

a-dungeon-world.fandom.com

That description of Spout Lore does not seem problematic to me at all as a long time D&D-style player.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, yes, though there were varying opinions on what amount of leeway the GM in practice has here. And depending on how the player words the initial inquiry and what amount of leeway one assumes the GM to have, the end result might effectively be at least very close to the player reciting the lore.

Also, the forge thing also reminded me of the infamous summoning of Evard's Tower from earlier thread. I know that was Burning Wheel, but IIRC, the mechanism is rather similar. Though I don't really remember how specific outcomes wises checks allow.

Well, there's another aspect to this where there's a difference between what is done with Spout Lore and the forge vs the example of Medical Expertise and the Orc. You are KILLING THE ORC, which is overcoming your challenge in your example. The forge is simply an opportunity, no challenge has been surmounted. So realistically if you wanted an exact parallel for the forge in combat it would be a move something like:
You employ your Medical Expertise to attempt to find a weakness in your enemy's physiology which you can exploit. On a 10+ The GM must narrate some useful weakness which, if successfully exploited, will defeat this opponent, get a +1 Forward when attempting to exploit this. On a 7-9 the GM will narrate some weakness of the Orc, but whether or not it is exploitable is up to you to figure out. On a 6- you spend a precious moment looking for what is not there, in the meantime your opponent decides you must be weak and frightened.

THAT is equivalent to Spout Lore, IMHO, roughly. In fact, you could pretty much emulate it by attempting to Spout Lore about an orc in the middle of a fight, assuming the GM is game to accept that this sort of thing is possible while someone is attempting to eviscerate you...

 

[Numidius]

@Nephis Thanks for writing such explanatory reports.
Not only a pleasure to read, but also to affirm that such a Move to introduce the Forge was very grounded in setting, character and moreover not at all for free!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see the difference. I'd just add that to some degree it depends how much the player can constrain the DM. Too much constraint and such a move would allow the player to effectively recite lore. I'm not sure that any game in existence actually does constraints to this degree - but you see how under enough constraints such a thing would happen, right?

Well... now we get to a big question, so what? I mean, in the post/pseudo Gygaxian world of non-4e D&D it is anathema right? The foxes are now in charge of the henhouse!!! The expectation, drawn from early Gygax-era play, is that if the players get to decide the rules, they will 'loot the dungeon' with impunity and strut around their 20th level god characters which result, right? There's an expectation of play, which is that the challenges are purely fictional/mechanical designs of an omnipotent GM who constantly rules in such a way as to impose the designed in limitations of the environment, and the game is a contest to overcome that environment. Even when you evolve to 2e and 5e (and I guess 3e is somewhere in there though I was never exactly sure what it wanted) where 'story' supposedly supplants the simple 'get lootz, advance levels' (to a degree at least) it is then just substituting the GM's constraint-making ability to further enact plots that comport with their ideas of what will be challenging or interesting, or what they have prepped, or whatever.

So, obviously in the above Gygax paradigm you CANNOT have a game where the players can decide anything at all except the actions of their PCs, which should be relatively unconstrained outside of fictional positioning and mechanics. In a Story Now game of the DW ilk there are no such considerations! The consideration is only DRAMATIC TENSION and the most fundamental limiter I know of is the Czege Principle. The GM exists to be the author of tension, to present the challenges to the players in a way that directly opposes their agendas and thus automatically constructs a dramatic narrative structure. So, in DW, you cannot have the players dictating everything about the challenge, but its not unacceptable for them to be able to state the general parameters of it. If a DW move dictated that a player describe something it would have to be constrained in some way to preserve tension, but it wouldn't matter if, for example, the answer gave the PC access to some great treasure or whatever, as long as the result was dramatically interesting and thematic. You cannot 'win' at Dungeon World, not even in the same sense you could 'win' in D&D.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'd be interested to see the reaction to a similar scene with the following modifications. 'Backstory is that PC and Orc are about to engage in combat' 'PC says I want to Spout Lore (or equivalent) about orc physiology so that I may determine orcs weak points so I can more easily defeat him'.

1. Would that be a valid move?
2. What would the DM author on a success?

My response would PROBABLY be that I don't think Spout Lore is really intended to be the move that covers this sort of thing. Spout Lore represents a PC acting like a 'scholar', they are recounting things from their memory. How would the PC have any memory of this specific orc? They might be able to Spout Lore about orcs in general, and that might even be helpful, but they need the fictional positioning required to do it (IE as the orcs battle axe comes crashing towards your head is not the time to calmly recollect all the things you know about orcs!).

So, I would consider a couple of possibilities, depending on exactly what the player narrated. They could be attempting to Discern Realities, and if you go look up the questions that DR addresses I think you would see that many of them could be relevant to a combat situation. In fact the player probably prefers DR, since on a 7+ you get at least one answer, and a couple of the questions are quite pointedly interesting to ask here.

Failing DR as an option, though why I'd do that I'm not sure, then things fall inevitably to Defy Danger. While you would generally attribute DD as being a physical action based move, this is not really the case, you can DD with any attribute, including INT or WIS which could supply you with some sort of options. Thus the player might say something like "As I watch the Orc coming towards me, I carefully analyze his Axe technique and formulate a countermove." Again, that might really be best taken as a DR move followed by something else informed by it, but it could be wrapped up in a DD against, say, INT where you pit your swording technique against the Orc's axe and see if you can outwit him. You might further describe your move, as in "Noticing that he has poor control of his backswing I attempt to unbalance him as he reverses his stroke." DD, success, the Orc stumbles, the PC quickly attacks, Hack & Slash, etc.

Remember, DW is VERY rooted in the fiction! There are actually no rules for 'turns' or anything like that. Combat is a narrative exercise in which the different players and the GM simply chime in with moves (the GM should insure that everyone gets an appropriate chance to supply input) and the results flow entirely from that via creative description. You cannot run a DW combat in anything like the way you can in D&D where everyone just recites which rule they invoke and what the dice produced for results.

 

[Numidius]

As a thought experiment let's suppose there was a game that let you attack enemies but anytime you did so you had to roll a dice and on a failure you missed AND the GM must author fiction that some cute innocent young animal somewhere dies (his choice of kitten or puppy or etc). Do posters like @Manbearcat and @pemerton have any issues with the structure of such a mechanic? Afterall, the mechanical structure is the same as the Spout Lore forge example as far as I can tell, it's just the fictional subject matter has changed.

Kill Puppies for Satan RPG by Vincent Baker... actually his first one!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ha ha! No.

Optimism is the triumph of hope over experience.

Pessimist!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

2nd thought on this - How would Blades of the Dark play if you did try to play a law abiding cabbage farmer?

The various factions would be constantly threatening your cabbage patch and you would be forced to band together with your fellow farmers to form the Order of Oppressed Cabbage Farmers, local 666. You would then undertake daring raids and operations in order to recover your cabbages and equipment, and to gain enough power to keep your enemies at bay. The authorities would look dimly upon this and various other powerful factions would align themselves either for or against you, necessitating further 'ops' in order to continue to grow.

Frankly, I think the game would play exactly the same as it does now, except there might be some light fictional color which would produce slightly different descriptions for some locations and whatnot. Botany might replace some other knowledge, and tending cabbages might replace some other chore, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I doubt mine would be super illuminating to most people here, as mastery of Finnish language is not terribly widespread.

Haha, my Mother could half understand you, her family were a mix of Karellians and Sami. I guess the czarists kicked them out...