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

[The Firebird]

What 'actually is' here that's being changed???!!! There's no real runes, there's not even a fiction of what these pretend runes 'mean'!!! So, nothing the character did, fictionally changed anything except their knowledge of the runes' content. That seems entirely diegetic to me. In the real world all that changed is the fiction was updated to add an agreement about the runes' content. This new fiction is in accordance with the wishes of the player who rolled the dice. This is literally no different from an attack roll in combat.

In character, it is reasonable to change things happening now or in the future, but not in the past. So the character's hopes changing fiction which ocurred in the past (when the runes were placed there) is nondiegetic. While their actions changing present and future (whether the orc lives) are.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because in many cases, that preference is based on an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the rules. Look at all the people still bringing up the idea of the screaming cook and treating it as the way all these games work, based on one person's blog--not even rules from an actual PbtA game. And no matter how many times we have said "that's not how the games actually work," people still use them as "proof" that narrative/fail forward games are are nonsensical, invent things, use "quantum" events, etc.

If you (generic you) don't like a game's rules, that's fine. If you don't like the rules, but you don't actually understand how they work, if your understanding of them comes from misreading them, from a mediocre blog post, other people's strawmanning of them, then don't you think that's a bit less fine?

Not really. Preference is preference, and I think it's clear that the goal of changing people's understanding of the rules to align with your own is not working at this point. Why keep banging your head against the wall and instead just accept that people have different opinions about the same things? There are no "winners" here. We have IMO long ago reached "agree to disagree".

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's an implied setting created by a combination of the psychic maelstrom, the playbook types, the Hot and Weird stats, the sex moves... it's the type of apocalypse where sexy people kill and/or have sex with one another while psychic weirdness abounds. It would be kind of hard to turn that into a disease or zombie apocalypse where everything is dark and gritty and focused on survival and working together above anything else. Probably not impossible, but kinda hard.

Yeah, from what I read and the brief amount I played AW provides a fairly specific post-apocalyptic world.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Are you saying gathering information is not a change in situation? How do this jam with AW's Read a Sitch and Read a person? On a miss you still only get information ("but expect the worst"). Is that a blatant violation of fail forward? How would your analysis change if I simply reframe the pick lock attempt as "I study the lock with my tools to figure out if I think I will be able to pick it?"

The MC is now going to make a move. Guess what? That 'worst' is about to manifest!

If a thief studied a lock in DW, I would trigger Discern Realities and they'd roll. On a 6- the lock might be trapped, and you're now poisoned with deadly red jellyfish toxin! You recognize the symptoms, and your arm is totally paralyzed. You'd better find an antidote soon!

 

[Micah Sweet]

What 'actually is' here that's being changed???!!! There's no real runes, there's not even a fiction of what these pretend runes 'mean'!!! So, nothing the character did, fictionally changed anything except their knowledge of the runes' content. That seems entirely diegetic to me. In the real world all that changed is the fiction was updated to add an agreement about the runes' content. This new fiction is in accordance with the wishes of the player who rolled the dice. This is literally no different from an attack roll in combat.

I think what is being suggested is that, to be comfortable with the fiction and with play, there really should be a fiction of what those runes mean, before someone decides to try to read them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In character, it is reasonable to change things happening now or in the future, but not in the past. So the character's hopes changing fiction which ocurred in the past (when the runes were placed there) is nondiegetic. While their actions changing present and future (whether the orc lives) are.

Again, nothing changed. Presumably in the fictional world we are to imagine the runes always represented a map. While I agree that 2 minutes ago that imagined fact didn't exist, many other things are also not yet established in the fictional world. All that I can see really being objected to is the player getting a chance to say what some detail is. This seems to me to be exactly the GM directed nature of the fiction and resulting game play that @pemerton has mentioned was not to his taste.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, from what I read and the brief amount I played AW provides a fairly specific post-apocalyptic world.

There's NO established world at all. The apocalypse is not described nor constrained in any way. The premise is simply that civilization as we know it, no longer exists, for some undefined reason. The characters have obviously survived and it's up for grabs what sort of life they have. The game assumes it's hard and tenuous.

 

[The Firebird]

Again, nothing changed. Presumably in the fictional world we are to imagine the runes always represented a map. While I agree that 2 minutes ago that imagined fact didn't exist, many other things are also not yet established in the fictional world. All that I can see really being objected to is the player getting a chance to say what some detail is. This seems to me to be exactly the GM directed nature of the fiction and resulting game play that @pemerton has mentioned was not to his taste.

Yes...the extent of my comment is that the way the player changes the fiction is different from how the declare they attack an orc. This difference harms verisimilitude for some players, myself included.

 

[Enrahim]

The MC is now going to make a move. Guess what? That 'worst' is about to manifest!

By the formulation, I still assume they are only allowed to answer the one question selected? That is they are still just allowed to provide information. Very well that the information might be "there is a sniper on the tower that has you locked in", but wouldn't it require another move for the sniper to actually pull the trigger?

If a thief studied a lock in DW, I would trigger Discern Realities and they'd roll. On a 6- the lock might be trapped, and you're now poisoned with deadly red jellyfish toxin! You recognize the symptoms, and your arm is totally paralyzed. You'd better find an antidote soon!

DW is different in that it provide a general all purpose miss. This is in my understanding what allow stuff beyond information to happen on a discern realities.

 

[AlViking]

Again, nothing changed. Presumably in the fictional world we are to imagine the runes always represented a map. While I agree that 2 minutes ago that imagined fact didn't exist, many other things are also not yet established in the fictional world. All that I can see really being objected to is the player getting a chance to say what some detail is. This seems to me to be exactly the GM directed nature of the fiction and resulting game play that @pemerton has mentioned was not to his taste.

The fact that nothing existed before the player decided what it was going to be if they succeeded on their check is the issue for some of us. We don't want to play that game. If you do, have fun!

Just stop pretending our games are exactly the same. They're not.