D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

Well, if you can't align on X but can on Y, Z, A, B, C, etc., then play those other games. If you can't align on most of those games, or if the players deliberately won't stop misaligning--not can't, but won't, then maybe stop playing with them.

I'm glad you clarified. That's not what I got from your original statement.

 

[AlViking]

In my understanding of the term, it absolutely should maintain the failure (the "fail" part), but that something else must happen to drive the narrative forward (the "forward" part). For example, with the following:

The door remaining locked is perfectly appropriate, but perhaps the rogue (or whoever) notices that there's an alternative, more risky, ingress.

Yep. In my games there will always be an alternative. IIRC it was explicitly discussed in one of the DMGs - don't hide anything the players must have behind a secret door. Of course I don't do linear campaigns so there's always the option to just pursue something else.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From what I've read there's a ton of variations with PbtA games, which makes sense. A lot of them will ask a player to fill in some details but its always going to be something their character could know. Some piece of history, rumors and so on. But that never changes the state of the world, its never predictive. It just fills in lore and color.

Wishing for a map out, even if its not guaranteed, crosses that line into establishing something about the world the character doesn't know. That's fine, different games make different assumptions. I just don't get the denial or what purpose it serves. I'm not going to play a PbtA game for multiple reasons but if you're going to bring up an example for conversation, be willing to discuss it honestly.

I'm not so sure. I mean, I agree that's the simplest level of play, but let's imagine I'm playing DW, and I'm fleeing from some terrible monster. I come to a dead end. I Discern Realities. I get a 10. There are kind of limited options available to the GM here! Some sort of fiction is required which I can use. It doesn't HAVE to be a secret passage, but such an outcome is fairly compelling!

Now consider beyond this maybe I developed the idea that I am a master dwarven mason, and my escape is somehow central to some conflict bearing on my character. GMs in this type of game may well be hard pressed not to go in a given direction.

 

[AlViking]

It seems the discrepancy could resolved for you if the runes remained a map (or way out, or whatever), even on a failure, but something else happened instead, like they were magically booby-trapped or something? But I'm not sure if such a thing would occur in @pemerton's game.

That kind of thing could happen in my game I suppose especially if things are being improvised. The character reads the map but gets a turn or two wrong on a failure which they eventually realize.

Every once in a while I could get away with that. Happens too often though and it would cause an issue. A few times? Coincidence. Regular basis? Wouldn't feel right to me.

 

[AlViking]

I'm not so sure. I mean, I agree that's the simplest level of play, but let's imagine I'm playing DW, and I'm fleeing from some terrible monster. I come to a dead end. I Discern Realities. I get a 10. There are kind of limited options available to the GM here! Some sort of fiction is required which I can use. It doesn't HAVE to be a secret passage, but such an outcome is fairly compelling!

Now consider beyond this maybe I developed the idea that I am a master dwarven mason, and my escape is somehow central to some conflict bearing on my character. GMs in this type of game may well be hard pressed not to go in a given direction.

I assume where the line is drawn and when that depends on the game.

 

[JConstantine]

I don't know BitD well enough to comment. AW, no. Because the GM does not "embody the setting" in AW. The players play a crucial role in respect of the setting in multiple ways in the game.

I don't have Apocalypse World to check directly myself, but per John Harper (from the crossing the line article):

In Apocalypse World, the players are in charge of their characters. What they say, what they do; what they feel, think, and believe; what they did in their past. The MC is in charge of the world: the environment, the NPCs, the weather, the psychic maelstrom.

This is a pretty trad delineation, and - unless you're an adherent of the Humpty Dumpty school of language - seems to conflict with your view.

 

[clearstream]

Which can be a trivial feature of a lottery: as I just posted, my friends and I can decide to raffle <X> among ourselves (where X is some thing that one of us owns), and draw lots for it.

This notion that someone else always sets the prize in a lottery is (a) false, as per the example just above, and (b) not relevant to the point being made in my posts.

Drawing in a lottery isn't the same as deciding its prize. That's evidenced by the way you separate out deciding to raffle X from drawing lots for X. The example just shows that the same person may do both.

As for relevance... it's your analogy!

 

[clearstream]

This is true - to the extent that it is - of all RPGing. I mean, it's all just "narrative dressing", that is, establishing shared fiction:

Roleplaying's Fundamental Act​

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.​

​

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"​

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What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?​

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1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.​

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2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."​

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3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!" The thing to notice here is that the mechanics serve the exact same purpose as the explanation about this thing about her tribe in point 2, which is to establish your credibility wrt the orc in question.​

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4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.​

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(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)​

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So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

To use your terminology, resolving combat in D&D is not really about fighting, it's really about choosing between possible worlds - one where the PC wins the fight, and one where their opponent does.

Yes, although I was describing how deciphering could choose among possible worlds without discarding features that separated it from other abilities.

 

[JConstantine]

I'd take like-minded strangers over misaligned friends in a heartbeat. One provides a fun game. The other feels like a social struggle mired in emotional baggage.

I came to the same conclusion and am increasingly convinced that I will need curate a group of like-minded strangers to get the level of satisfaction I want.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This seems contradictory to what you've said here:

The setting is the purview of the GM in Apocalypse World, right?* I'm genuinely trying to reconcile these two views and struggling.

*Hence the whole crossing the line article

There is no 'setting' in AW, it's a purely Zero Myth game, beyond identifying a genre (post apocalypse). Player's choices of play book will then establish some constraints on the fiction. If there's a Hard Holder, then a hold exists (a refuge or base of some kind) etc. Normally at that point, the start of play, the MC should ask questions aimed at establishing a fictional basis for a scene to frame. Presumably this will produce some sort of fiction about the character's situation, threats, etc.

Going forward the MC does own the threat map and NPCs, and may establish custom moves, possibly describe work that the PCs can find, etc. All of this is supposed to be directly responsive to player input and liberal use of asking questions.

Overall I would not describe the milieu as a setting that can be owned.