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

[Maxperson]

For further information on this change. The reason being is because they now use magical contagions instead of diseases. Monsters that previously inflicted a disease now just inflict the poison condition. Mundane diseases are not really mentioned in the rules. So spells or features that cure diseases are obsolete.

I gather from my reading, that the designers want things like plagues or outbreaks to be hard to deal with and will probably need an entire quest to solve. So players are no longer curing themselves of filth fever every giant rat encounter. They are slaying the evil necromancer to find his alchemical zombie antidote to save the lands and cure their infected party member.

I don't see why they needed to get rid of diseases to do that. Just get rid of the spell cures.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't want disease to be curable?

Not with a spell slot, or at least not a low level one.

 

[AlViking]

Because that's not how GMing works, even in PbtA. And also because a GM can pick the most logical option and still make the story interesting.

Also, that's right. You probably wouldn't pick the cloak unless it had sentimental value. Or they were in an area with terrible weather and needed a warm cloak in order to not freeze or get soaked. If the cloak was otherwise meaningless, you'd pick something else, such as the orc getting a free blow in (the GM's "deal damage" move), or Brog not being able to prevent all of the Badness from escaping.

This is how an orc is written in DW:

Orc Bloodwarrior​

Horde, Intelligent, Organized
Jagged blade (d6+2 damage, 1 piercing); 3 HP; 0 Armor; Close, Messy

The orcish horde is a savage, bloodthirsty, and hateful collection of tribes. There are myths and stories that tell of the origin of their rage—a demon curse, a homeland destroyed, elven magic gone wrong—but the truth has been lost to time. Every able orc, be it man or woman, child or elder, swears fealty to the warchief and their tribe and bears the jagged blade of a bloodwarrior. Men are trained to fight and kill—orcs are born to it. Instinct: To fight

• Fight with abandon
• Revel in destruction

Orc Berserker​

Solitary, Large Divine, Intelligent, Organized
Cleaver (d10+5 damage); 20 HP; 0 Armor; Close, Reach

Special Qualities: Mutations

Stained in the unholy ritual of Anointing By The Night’s Blood, some warriors of the horde rise to a kind of twisted knighthood. They trade their sanity for this honor, stepping halfway into a world of swirling madness. This makes berserkers the greatest of their tribe, though as time passes, the chaos spreads. The rare berserker that lives more than a few years becomes horrible and twisted, growing horns or an extra arm with which to grasp the iron cleavers they favor in battle. Instinct: To rage

• Fly into a frenzy
• Unleash chaos

Those last two things in each statblock, the bulleted list, are the orc's moves. (You'll notice that they don't have any rolls attached to them. GMs don't roll.) Thus, a GM who is running an orc bloodwarrior or berserker would use the orc's moves--they would make the orc act in ways that allow it to fight with abandon and revel in destruction.

As I said before, the introduction of a kitten has nothing to do with the action of Brog moving past the orc. Therefore, it is not a legitimate complication to rolling low on Defy Danger. Now, you can establish that the orc has a bag of kittens and is yeeting them all over the place to get in the way. But that's the orc move Revel In Destruction or Unleash Chaos, not the result of Brog's move.

My point is you still have 3 options that the GM chooses from*

• Worse outcome: Brog gets to the lever and it won't budge.
• Hard bargain: the orc grabs Brog's cloak that has great personal value and he knows that he can continue on to the lever but it will get ripped in half and be destroyed.
• Ugly choice: he sees that his companion is soon to be surrounded by orcs and is in great danger. Does he go help or continue to the lever? Perhaps Brog is greedy and notices that there's a small pile of gold he could pilfer instead of pulling the lever.

If these are not good options, what would be? I don't really see an option really for making what a D&D opportunity attack, that doesn't really fit any of the three options. Unless it's worse outcome? Then again, they aren't actually defined.

*Note so self: don't bother to add a little levity to conversations by including poor helpless kittens. On the other hand the example I found on reddit included adding a goblin, an ooze or acid to the scene that had not been established before.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I might have misread the grounds for why they would be considered irrelevant? How is the notion that absence of rules can provide a better simulation irrelevant in game design of sims?

For much the same reason the idea that hovercraft have incredibly low hydrodynamic drag is irrelevant to cruise ship design.

Freeform LARP/FKR has things to offer (and you can see some of them in Vincent Baker's games including Apocalypse World games as Meguey Baker is a freeform LARPer) but has some fundamentally different design assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses.

But once we have decided what type of game it is we've already cut off some approaches. It doesn't matter how low the hydrodynamic drag of a hovercraft is - you're never going to make a cruise ship hovercraft for many reasons starting with the noise.

I have played experimental roleplaying games where players are fed a fixed line of questions they should answer in character. And that is the game. It do not feeling railroady as the questions are very open ended. They manage to produce a very narrow, spesific experience though.

Not that specific unless the answers are somehow predetermined. At least not compared to e.g. Persona 3.

The idea of designing a game to be optimalised for a certain kind of experience

A certain kind of experience is much broader than a certain experience.

I think the original D&D was designed with a particular experience in mind.

More than just one - the three classes played very differently as did the three implicit tiers. And how it played out varied a lot.

A particular kind of experience (mercenary dungeon crawling) but not a particular experience

 

[Hussar]

(Emphasis mine.) Do you mean that the game system must not only produce results consistent with the imagined world, but must do so in a way that explains how that result was achieved in that world? Given that the results are often achieved by rolling dice it is hard to see how that will work.

Again, ANY. Any information. Not all, not every, but, at the very least, ANY information.

And no, it is not hard to see. There are thousands of games out there that do exactly that. Games with things like Parry and Dodge rolls, hit locations, more granular skill checks, there's a thousand ways to do it.

 

[Hussar]

Taking a step back, is it right to say that you are skeptical of simulationism altogether? Essentially, you think it is impossible to achieve in RPG?

Sorry, clicked respond on the first part without reading the rest, but, this point needs addressing?

In what way would you possibly think that I think that? I've pointed to many, many different games which provide some information about why things succeed or fail. The provide basic elements that inform the narrative. In a system which lacks any input into how a result was achieved, it is not simulating anything.

But there are TONS of systems that you can use the mechanics to inform the narrative without simply making it up after the fact.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If these are not good options, what would be? I don't really see an option really for making what a D&D opportunity attack, that doesn't really fit any of the three options.

Ugly choice: The orc swings their axe to stop your zig. You can either take thevorc's weapon damage or jump back, putting the lever on the far side of the orc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which one was it?

I was wrong. Nevermind.

 

[Hussar]

Answering @Hussar's question about missing by 5 or 10, D&D doesn't get that far into it's simulation of combat. But I put in a tweak that took me 5 seconds to implement that increases the amount of simulation involved there. If the miss is by the amount of AC provided by the target's shield(if it has one), then the miss impacts the shield and does no damage. If it misses by more than that, but by less than the amount of AC provided by worn or natural armor, it impacts the armor/body and does no damage. If it whiffs by more than the amount of AC provided by armor/shield, you miss completely.

See, now this I agree would be the mechanics providing a tiny kernel of information to guide the narrative. Makes my simulationist heart go pitter pat. ((Heh, you should see my preferred ship combat rules for D&D ((Broadsides!!)) - no one will play with me because it's FAR too into the sim weeds and no one is that interested ))

But, again, that's my point. You have to ADD that to D&D in order to get it to have any sort of sim base. That's great for your game. And I heartily approve. But, we're not discussing your game. We're not discussing my game. We're discussing the game as presented.

 

[Hussar]

Success being a good performance. Failure being a bad/unsuccessful performance.

Really? Success is always a good performance? Or could it simply be the audience is more receptive? Or could it be other factors? Is a success ALWAYS a good performance? Is failure ALWAYS caused by the performer? Or could there be a poor audience member/loud drunk heckler, etc?

There's a million possible reasons for success or failure and D&D does not provide ANY guidance as to which one is the reason for this particular check. It gives you results, but no reasons.