Why should a DR roll give literally all possible information no matter what?
A Discern Reality roll - if successful - allows the player to ask questions and get answers. This establishes parameters for the situation,
and allows the player to take +1 forward when acting on those established parameters.
But there is no "all information" to reveal or conceal - the point of Discern Realities, as I understand it (or of the Read moves in AW), is to do just as I've described: to permit establishing parameters, which either grant an augment (Read a Sitch, similar to Discern Realities in that respect) or establishes fictional positioning for other character-influencing moves (Read a Person). That's why, upthread in the post you're replying to, I said that "The impression that I take away from these posts -
leaving out information, not comfortable with having something like <whatever> come out in this way - is that you have pre-authored backstory, and are using that to adjudicate the way you do or don't parcel out information to the players." I still have that impression, because it's my only way of making sense of "all possible information": you have some information, parcelled away somewhere (I assume in your GM notes), that you are revealing to the players. But if that's the case, I don't get how you are fitting that into the DW processes of play.
"it feels wrong for a successful roll to MAKE a specific person guilty." Now, if they made the discovery because they observed a smoking-gun clue, then sure, absolutely they would learn that thing. But if it's literally just looking over some evidence, it feels really, really, really, REALLY wrong for "I'm looking for proof of the Countess' guilt, checking her vanity for any suspicious substances, checking the clothes in her wardrobe for stains..." (aka, doing DR stuff) to then ask, "What here is useful or valuable to me?" and as a result MAKE the Countess the person who was always guilty, simply because that's where the player chose to look. That doesn't mean it's flat-out NOT possible for DR to reveal guilt--it totally is. But it has to reveal guilt that is actually there. It can't spontaneously create guilt.
This reinforces my impression that I've referred to above - I can't make sense of
guilt that is actually there as meaning anything other than
pre-authored GM notes that record that the Countess (or whomever) is guilty. And I still don't know how you're fitting this into the DW processes of play.
I also don't understand what you're talking about here with Discern Realities. There's no question
Who here is guilty?. But if the PC is searching the Countess's wardrobe looking for evidence - ie is
closely studying a situation or person - and the player succeeds on their Discern Realities roll, and asks
what here is useful or valuable to me? the GM has to provide an answer. And obviously its utility/value must be relative to the player's goal for their PC. There is no provision, in the rules, for the GM to squib just because they didn't want there to be anything useful or valuable that was connected to the Countess. Whether the useful/valuable thing would be proof of the Countess's guilt, or something else, would be pretty contingent - in all the ways that were discussed upthread about the Dwarven forge - but obviously proof of the Countess's guilt is low-hanging fruit here.
(Also, and referring back to
@Campbell's post upthread: this is a place where DW drifts closer to intent-and-task than AW does. In AW there is no "what's useful or valuable" question on either of the Read move question lists.)
pemerton said:
Some of what you have said in your posts, for instance about using a NPC to send the PC to "important" places, suggests that your play is focused on GM-established "quests"/"adventures" rather than playing-to-find-out.
This is...difficult. It's why I keep saying "okay so...does that mean
literally all prep is Force?"
<snip>
As above, this feels like mountains from molehills. Kafer-Naum was one such "important place" the players went to after consulting an NPC (IIRC, Shen) to find out more about the two cultic factions. It wasn't breadcrumbs due to exhausting local quests, it was a response to players seeking to address a threat.
What are mountains and what are molehills I don't know. My overall impression of your play from your posts is that there is a lot of GM pre-authored backstory, which shapes the scope of feasible actions for the players to declare, and that determines what happens when they declare those actions. What you say here about
finding out about factions and
seeking to address a threat reinforces that impression.
But on prep:
prep can't be force, nor not-force.
Preparation means imagining stuff and writing it down, right. And
force describes a certain range of ways of authoring/establishing shared fiction during play. So to equate them would be a type of category error.
What is the role of prep? In many otherwise different approaches to RPGing, it supports scene-framing: the GM has made notes about a person, or a place, or an event, and draws on those notes to frame a new scene. Sometimes scene-framing can be an exercise of force, most obviously if the GM frames a scene without regard to the outcomes of previously declared-and-resolved actions (my go to eg for that, in this thread, is the invention of the second stringer to keep the "big bad thread" going in the pre-planned fashion even if the PCs kill the "BBEG"). But there's no particular reason why it needs to be, or should tend to be.
Of course, if you as GM come up with an idea for a cool scene, and then the resolution of declared actions precludes framing that scene, your prep has to that extent been wasted! That can be a good reason, if you're a force-eschewing GM, not to prep too much.
Another role played by prep is to
resolve declared actions. But this is very system-dependent. In D&D, the canonical way of resolving the action
I walk that way is to consult a map, a movement rate, and a key, and then to (i) tell the player where the PC gets to and how long it takes, and (ii) to frame a new scene that is read off and/or extrapolated from the key. The same is true for the action
I look over there/at this thing/around this place. So when GMing D&D, adjudicating in this fashion isn't force per se - but if the GM starts rewriting the map and key on the fly to manipulate the fiction and outcomes (eg a certain sort of "quantum ogre" or "quantum clue") then that would be force.
But in DW, as I understand it, what I've just described is
not a canonical way of resolving either of those action declarations. Hence prep does not feed into action resolution in the same way as it does in D&D. It provides a source of GM moves, but the rules for the GM making moves are not sensitive to where the PCs are on the imagined map, nor what they are looking at in the imagined world. This is why I am a bit lost in some of your accounts of your play.
My players have responded positively to maps so I'm trying to use them. A player had also given feedback from some random-gen stuff we did a while back, saying he felt there was no tension nor merit to the choices to navigate around, when he knew that whatever we generated would be in whatever direction they travelled.
<snip>
there truly is a real difference between going north vs south or the like
<snip>
If there is no fact of the matter about where things are located, then there's no merit in choosing north vs south, because things will appear in either the illusionism-based order the DM wants, or whatever the dice happen to produce.
Going north vs going south seems like an issue of colour. Wouldn't the difference between going north and going south reflect that colour? Eg (assuming a northern hemispheric setting, and assuming large scale travel) wouldn't going north tend to result in obstacles and outcomes like snow, and tundras, and polar bears? While going south would tend to result in obstacles and outcomes like high temperatures, and dense rainforests, and jaguars?
Or making it more local, and thinking of my own BW play: travelling through the undercity of Hardby produces obstacles and outcomes like cultists lairs and getting lost in the sewers; travelling through the hills to the east of Hardby produces obstacles and outcomes like box canyons and ambushers attacking from the high ground on either side of you.
Obviously, though, this is very different from map-and-key resolution. The GM doesn't frame a scene in which the PCs get ambushed, or meet a polar bear,
because the PCs went to this place, where the GM's notes say polar bear or box canyon ambush. It's because (i) the process of play called for the GM to make a move, and (ii) the GM, in making that move, said what honesty and the fiction demanded (which includes the fact that the PCs have travelled north, or are travelling through the hills to the east of Hardby).
There is no
illusionism here. But in describing it in those terms, and in suggesting that you use map-and-key resolution, you are further reinforcing my impressions of some departures from what I would regard as standard by-the-book DW processes of play.
if the player says they're from the Shield Dwarf clan, that creates tethers. Either I as DM am allowed to build new stuff about the Shield Dwarf clan, or I'm not. If I'm not, the player now has carte blanche to make the Shield Dwarf clan whatever they want, whenever they want, which sounds hella abusive to me. If I am allowed, then necessarily things I invent after the game starts can't be something the player knows to begin with, so I have to tell them. If I'm allowed to do so, but am absolutely forbidden to tell the player any of this, then they can invent whatever they like no matter how it might contradict past experience in play, hence, unmoored
I think there's miscommunication or cross-purposes here. And I'm still puzzled.
I posted (#2273) that "nothing makes me feel more alienated from the setting - and hence conscious of its "artificiality" - than needing the GM to tell me the fundamentals of what my character knows and feels and experiences." You replied #2365) that "If it's not possible to tell you 'your character would already know this,' that seems to cut off an
enormous amount of interesting stories that depend on, for example, having a cultural background in the setting. It's not really possible to establish absolutely every cultural value a character might pick up over time . . . I'm confused how you manage to have characters that adventure in locations where their cultural background is relevant without either (a) just letting the player write that culture all by themselves, which falls into many of the issues I had had with my mistaken understanding of the dwarf forge (that is, unmoored from any fictional tethers and invented by the player for the players' benefit)"
My response (#2381) was that "I would expect that a player would take the lead in establishing the sort of information you describe" and that "I don't understand what you mean by players inventing this stuff
unmoored from any fictional tethers an invented for the players' benefit." Both these things remain true. Yes, expecting the player to take the lead grants them largely carte blanche to (eg) establish information about the Shield Dwarf clan. I don't see what the problem is. Which is to say, I don't get what the risk of abuse is that you assert is there ("which sounds hella abusive to me"). (Contradicting past fiction is a red herring, as far as I can see. Everyone knows that past fiction is constraining on everyone else. A player telling us what colour Shield Dwarf clan members like to wear is no different, in this respect, from a player telling us whether or not their PC has a kid sister. Once it's established, it's established)
When you refer to you, as GM,
building new stuff about the Shield Dwarf clan, what GM move do you have in mind? Of course a DW GM is, from time to time, going to reveal unwelcome truths and/or show signs of an approaching threat (in AW terminology: announce future or offscreen badness). But are you saying that you would want to tell a player that (eg) an unwelcome truth is that they actually endorse human sacrifice (because that's a cultural value you're wanting to specify as GM)? I don't think that's standard for DW (or AW).
If we're imagining the PCs having to attend a Shield Dwarf funeral, and for whatever reason the GM has to make a soft move in response (I don't think there would normally be a hard move here, as there is no
attend a funeral move that could generate a 6 or down result), and we don't yet know what Shield Dwarves wear to funerals, then couldn't the GM just ask the player? If the player says "white" then the soft move is "all you white duds are stained with mud <or soot, or . . .>, from that episode back in the <whatever>". I don't see what is at stake here as between GM and player authoring of the cultural details.
If you're saying that you would want to build up a Shield Dwarf clan front that is full of cultural details that are not known to the player, that's the sort of thing I would find alienating as a player. I don't see why players of Shield Dwarves should be alienated from their PC's self-understanding in a way that players of "ordinary" humans and others are not.
I guess I'm having trouble fitting your use of
abusive and
GM building stuff into the AW/DW process of play. I can't work out what it is that you have in mind.
We built parts of the setting together. I didn't bother perfectly nailing down every tenet of Safiqi faith, for example, but given that the Bard player enthusiastically embraced being a casual practitioner (and partly-trained clergy), that has certain consequences.
If the player invents everything from whole cloth, well, that may be alright. But it's also quite possible for there to be abusive uses of such freedom, the "well my backstory says..." thing.
I'm still lost.
As I posted, I would expect the Bard player to take primary responsibility for establishing the details of a religion that their PC is an adherent of. In DW, if I as GM wanted to trade on those details, then I would ask the player when it comes up (
ask questions and use the answers).
And I still don't know what you have in mind that is abusive. There's no player move in DW that is triggered by
if your backstory says . . ..
