I am--or at least was--earnestly trying to understand what "Force" means. I had assumed "make it so the character definitely appears here, where the players just happen to be" automatically made it Force because I was doing what was convenient to keeping the game going, as referenced earlier with Force being what is used to make desirable results happen.
So...yeah. I honestly have no idea what's supposed to differentiate "scene framing," "Force," and the player-triggered-DM-authorship stuff that had confused me so much.
GM Force is neutral, in the sense that it's a technique - namely, the use of certain authority (over mechanics and/or adjudication and/or the fiction) in order to achieve outcomes and/or frame scenes without regard to the players' declared actions and the goals at which those declared actions aim.
The difference between the players can declare whatever actions they like for their PCs and the players are expected to declare actions that conform to a pre-established sequence of events is clear.
The difference between the GM secretly changes mechanical details like dice rolls and hp totals on the fly and the GM doesn't alter those details, and/or manages them in the open, is clear.
The difference between the GM creates new bits of backstory - second-stringers to replace defeated BBEGs, or clues to prompt the players to make the "right" action declarations - in order to keep play "on track", and the GM doesn't do that, is clear.
The difference between the GM uses their authority over scene-framing to ensure that a series of pre-authored scenes take place and the GM frames scenes in accordance with some other principle - eg extrapolating from the prior backstory (as in a sandbox or map-and-key dungeon) or following player cues (as in Burning Wheel) or building on the fiction and the action declarations in a soft-then-hard-move pattern (as in AW or DW) - is clear.
I personally tend to think of Force as a certain approach to the use of authority the GM enjoys as GM - ie certain ways of exercising authority over backstory, situation/scene-framing, resolution and adjudication, etc.
Whereas pressuring players via social cues about preferred action declarations (eg as per FrogReaver's example just upthread, about the consequences of declaring an attack) I think I wouldn't consider Force because it is not the GM using their GM's authority, but simply the GM acting as a participant.
The basis on which I call it a type of Force, or Force-ish, is what I have been discussing, upthread, with @Campbell: the GM is using their authority over the fiction (eg the backstory of the Rainbow Rocks) in order to try to shape the players use of their authority over action declaration (ie to have them declare actions about travelling to and exploring Dark Clouds).
what's the number-one reason for using Force? To ensure a satisfactory story. (A "palatable narrative", as @prabe put it upthread.) The satisfaction/palatability is ensured by (i) pre-authorship, and (ii) "curation" on the way through via the use of Force to make sure action declarations don't perturb things, and to make sure the right scenes are framed.
What's the main risk in the use of Force? That the players arc up!, because the actual impact on the fiction of their action declarations is not what they thought/hoped/expected it would be.
I'm not seeing any disregard of the players' declared actions and the goals at which those declared actions aim. Nor any ensuring that a series of pre-authored scenes take place.
Obviously scene-framing can involve force - when it is done in disregard of prior outcomes, with a pre-conceived series of situations/events in mind. Now maybe I'm missing something, but from what you posted - "we were going to need to re-introduce our Druid player who had been out of the game for about a year" - all I'm seeing is a decision that the Druid is present in this particular scene, so that the PC's player can be part of the game.
@EzekielRaiden is no dum-dum. If they still don't understand the concept of Force (and how it applies to their DW games) after this point in this discussions as (mostly) explained by @pemerton and @Ovinomancer, then perhaps their needs would best be served by other people explaining it.
I think the big issue is really that most of the discussion of Force has been in relation to D&D. Ezekiel is running a game that's moved far enough from D&D that a number of the examples don't align. They haven't made the shift to understand that Force is dependent on system and so what Force looks like in a DW game can be different from what it looks like in D&D. There are a few cases where I can very much see Force in DW where it would not be Force in 5e. A tight dungeon crawl, for instance, would not be Force in 5e but would absolutely be Force in DW. It's a matter of grasping the concept through the definition rather than through the examples from one game. However, at his point, it's likely that ill will has been assigned, and that makes it more difficult.
@EzekielRaiden why are you worrying whether you use force? (According to someone else's definition.)
Have your players complained? If they're having fun, you're not doing anything wrong.
Why let others evaluate your game and why have your players formally evaluate your play?
Because it keeps you humble, heightens your awareness, and broadens your perspective.
If you work to be humble, if you constantly work to heighten your awareness and broaden your perspective…
…you give yourself your best shot at getting_better_at_your_craft.
Two easy examples I can think of for myself:
1) Like 2015 (maybe 2014...I don't recall), we were discussing a play excerpt from one of my DW games. @Nagol (well...crap...it looks like he's no longer on the site...that sucks) critiqued a move I made on a 6-. He felt it wasn't hard enough of a move. Given all of the context, I didn't (still don't) feel like the harder move was the better way there...but I can totally see it. I mean, I feel like the move I made was maybe a few % points better (given all) than the move Nagol was stating...but, honestly, we're splitting hairs there and I could go either way.
Nagol (to my knowledge, this was the first time I'd seen it...I'm not sure if this was cribbed from elsewhere, but it was a perfect piece of jargon) coined the term "Soft-balling" for this instance of play:
SOFT-BALLING - When a GM has the option of a soft move or a hard move and makes a move that isn't sufficiently hard given the array of objects and orientation of them in the shared imagined space.
So far as I can ascertain (yes, I'm an emotionless robot), Force and Soft-balling have about equal connotation. But eff connotation and eff my feelings for Nagol telling me "Manbearcat, I feel like you Soft-balled there." I'm not too proud to learn from that perspective. Even if I didn't/don't fully agree with that interpretation, (a) I can absolutely SEE it (and he may still be right...its damn close), and (b) Soft-balling is the PERFECT term for the TTRPG phenomenon Nagol was depicting and particularly as it pertains to the soft move/hard move intersection in certain situations of PBtA games (which is, imo, the most difficult part of GMing these games).
So...yeah.
Soft-Balling.
GREAT new piece of technical jargon (even though its iteration was, so far as I can tell, deployed first to depict what someone felt was a degenerate move on my end because it wasn't sufficiently hard given the circumstances). Has immense explanatory power and you can use it to make predictions about how a scene will be perturbed based on its deployment.
2) @darkbard and I discussing a scene where I could have chosen an avalanche when a Lightning Wand move went awry (this was @Nephis first deployment of the wand). He was expecting a discharge of lightning to bound off of the loose snowpack that I depicted earlier (show signs of an approaching threat) in play; immediately preceding session. Instead, I had it explode out of Maraqli's hand and down into the Dragon Well (a huge ossuary of dragon bones) to test Maraqli and Alastor's bonds (related to her impulsivity and haste in decision-making and whether this makes her a reliable or unreliable ally). Would she jump down the well and go after her Lightning Wand (leaving her to confront what was lurking down there and leaving Alastor to confront the horror of the Bone Dragon topside by himself and their Cohorts)?
She did...and it was awesome...but I don't think @darkbard thought so at that particular instance in time!
I still like my move...but I think that I may have liked darkbard's better (though I'm not convinced it would have led to better play...process-wise it may have been a hair better move than my move just like I felt my move was a hair better than Nagol's move in (1) above). Further, that helped darkbard and I align our perspectives better for future play.
So that is why critique from your peers and your players is important. Lets just say it sucks 90 % of the time (I don't believe that...but lets just say). That means 10 % of the time its constructive and helpful with the stray chance that a nice piece of analysis like Soft-Balling emerges from it.
Man, I'll suffer that 90 for that 10 all day every day.
This is an extremely important point, and I agree. Your Move with the wand led to an amazingly fun sequence of events (and a running joke with serious legs!) and probably led to some more interesting stuff than introducing an avalanche would have. But that's besides the point of good process. Good process is about achieving the desired results with more predictable consistency. It's as much about future play as the current moment.
It's like a batter in baseball trying to work on controlling the strike zone better by taking more pitches (obvious balls) getting lucky and poking a double down the opposite line on a ball way off the plate. Good result, but bad process. (Obvs this analogy fails in that your wand move was also good process. Just not as good as mine. ;^) )
This is an extremely important point, and I agree. Your Move with the wand led to an amazingly fun sequence of events (and a running joke with serious legs!) and probably led to some more interesting stuff than introducing an avalanche would have. But that's besides the point of good process. Good process is about achieving the desired results with more predictable consistency. It's as much about future play as the current moment.
It's like a batter in baseball trying to work on controlling the strike zone better by taking more pitches (obvious balls) getting lucky and poking a double down the opposite line on a ball way off the plate. Good result, but bad process. (Obvs this analogy fails in that your wand move was also good process. Just not as good as mine. ;^) )
“Good result, bad process” is the message whether you’re a baseball player, a QB, a martial artist, a climber, a potato, an experimental/applied scientist, mathematician, computer modeler, car mechanic, doctor, or a TTRPG GM.
If you instantiate that moment of play 1000 times, your move is the Michael Jordan of moves and mine is merely Kareem Abdul Jabbar!
“Good result, bad process” is the message whether you’re a baseball player, a QB, a martial artist, a climber, a potato, an experimental/applied scientist, mathematician, computer modeler, car mechanic, doctor, or a TTRPG GM.
If you instantiate that moment of play 1000 times, your move is the Michael Jordan of moves and mine is merely Kareem Abdul Jabbar!
@EzekielRaiden is no dum-dum. If they still don't understand the concept of Force (and how it applies to their DW games) after this point in this discussions as (mostly) explained by @pemerton and @Ovinomancer, then perhaps their needs would best be served by other people explaining it.
I'd make a try, but honestly, I think other people are using the term rather more specifically than I usually have been too, so I'm not sure I understand it any better than ER does.
