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

[Micah Sweet]

I think the issue here is the difference between simple task adjudication and Narrativist 'fiction resolution'. Even in AW I'd like to see some generalization. Jane is breaking into the warehouse, of course she can succeed! If the place is entirely unguarded why even roll? Is there a secondary goal, like not leaving any sign of a break in? Adjudicate that! Honestly, the problem here is wasting time on nothingburger play. The place is completely safe, let's adjudicate whether you got what you wanted. Goodness! The problem is all this stakeless BS play.

A clear statement of personal preferences, if a little universally phrased. I don't see why you see this as a problem, since it's obviously not the way you play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, not at all. The PCs can interact with anyone. If it's something the GM hasn't fleshed out explicitly, ideally there are random tables or the like (as Micah said) to help do it on the fly.


Consider--the reason people aren't responding to your example despite you quoting it 4 times is because it isn't clear what the example is doing. I've read the first paragraph several times and I'm still confused. There are many tests there, they reference a bunch of different mechanics and characters and setting details that not everyone is familiar with.

It would help me if you made your point with a simple toy example, like the screaming cook, or like John Harper did in his blog post.


Yes.


Hard moves? Setup moves? or both?

How closely do they have to align with the fiction? Can they create new NPCs that previously didn't exist?


Here, the door to an estate was locked. The players tried to pick and got a fail forward result. The GM ruled they got through the door but a cook saw them an is about to scream.

This is a soft move in AW/DW parlance, Describe Future Badness (IIRC). There are a bunch of things that could be going on. First, the cook follows from the fiction, it's a situation and scene element that is logically consistent with the existing fiction. Second, the GM might be considering something like a conflict between alignment statements or bonds with respect to how this is handled. The evil thief moves to gang the cook, but the Cleric who's bond is about saving the thief's soul from damnation has a bit different plan! This is what the GM's framing authority is for.

The GM also has other options, like asking the players what they think happens next. Or she could lean on her prep if something there follows.

 

[Campbell]

No one is saying your use of fail-forward doesn't work for you.. they're saying it doesn't work for them, because it doesn't suit their expectations and preferences for play. Why then is there this push to get others on board with your way of doing things? Can we not just play our own game our own way?

No one is trying to get you or anyone else to change their preferences. We just want you to not be so careless in how describe play you do not care for because it presents a faulty impression of how it actually works in practice. Because as minority voices in the hobby it is already challenging enough to share how we do things without having to overcome misinformation about how our play is structured.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No one is trying to get you or anyone else to change their preferences. We just want you to not be so careless in how describe play you do not care for because it presents a faulty impression of how it actually works in practice.

At this point I think it is clear that people simply draw different conclusions, based on their comfort level and experiences. Being more technically correct or not having the issues others have with one system or another is unlikely to change anything IMO.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No one is saying your use of fail-forward doesn't work for you.. they're saying it doesn't work for them, because it doesn't suit their expectations and preferences for play. Why then is there this push to get others on board with your way of doing things? Can we not just play our own game our own way?

Because no one is challenging the preference. Please seethe bolded below.

What some people call Fail Forward would have the game move forward by saying they still open the door but some additional threat or obstacle is added to the narrative that has nothing to do with the failed action declaration

This is what’s getting push back. He’s not just stating a preference. It’s a description of a GMing method that he admits to not being familiar with that conflicts with how those familiar with it would describe it.

It would be like if I said “Hey, it’s cool that trad gaming exists for those who want it… a lot of people like to play through a GM’s story.”

If I said that, and you called me out on it, ai wouldn’t try to hide behind me stating a preference. If I comment on a GMing style in that way, I’m doing more than stating a preference.

To be honest, I find all those things more interesting than why people like Narrativist games (and conversely, why people don't like what I prefer). At least, I feel there's a point (long since reached in this thread), where that knowledge has been acquired, and people look to be just trying to get to admit to being wrong.

I love knowledge for knowledge's sake, but I don't spend a lot of time analyzing things I've determined aren't fun for me.

Sure seems to me like you do!

 

[AlViking]

No one is trying to get you or anyone else to change their preferences. We just want you to not be so careless in how describe play you do not care for because it presents a faulty impression of how it actually works in practice. Because as minority voices in the hobby it is already challenging enough to share how we do things without having to overcome misinformation about how our play is structured.

When a poster is saying "Why can't you..." and "This inability to make forward work..." they are telling us the only reason we don't do it the correct way is because we're incompetent. I could make it work if I wanted to, I do not want to because I do not care for the results.

 

[AlViking]

Because no one is challenging the preference. Please seethe bolded below.



This is what’s getting push back. He’s not just stating a preference. It’s a description of a GMing method that he admits to not being familiar with that conflicts with how those familiar with it would describe it.

It would be like if I said “Hey, it’s cool that trad gaming exists for those who want it… a lot of people like to play through a GM’s story.”

If I said that, and you called me out on it, ai wouldn’t try to hide behind me stating a preference. If I comment on a GMing style in that way, I’m doing more than stating a preference.

After re-reading, it's clear to me that @pemerton has a different definition of Fail Forward than other people have. I've stated my preference on why I don't care for Fail Forward (e.g. a chef that screams for help only exists because of a failed check to pick a lock). What @pemerton calls fail forward? I would call "You failed a check, your declared action did not work and now there are repercussions". In the games I play a failed check doesn't guarantee any repercussions other than the failed action but that's because we talking about different approaches to gaming.

 

[Campbell]

I wanted to take a moment to show why it's important to look things through the prism of a game's intended GM and player roles when looking at mechanics. A lot of commentary gives mechanics like basic moves, or a failed dice roll is causing a particular thing in the fiction, but these mechanics are being utilized by humans who are making judgements and there is a particular context.

Because in a game like Apocalypse World the GM is going to make a move regardless because that's what they do - they make moves that establish new fiction in response to player actions. This is true if the result is 10+, 7-9 or 6-. I am going to make some sort of move that will follow from what has been established and will either setup future moves or act on ones that have been setup. I'm setting them up and knocking them down regardless of results, but how I go about that is constrained by the mechanics and established fiction. A success is as likely as a failure to introduce a new element - maybe there is a dossier inside the safe their opening up that includes some plans the mayor is planning to act on.

It's not the moves doing this. It's the GM, being an MC, and bringing it.

The other important piece is that the particular move and how much that move makes sense is on the MC. They have carte blanche to choose from a wide variety of moves that give all sorts of authority to make an immediate impact on the scene. Which one they choose is on them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Overall I like this post. Let me try to bring up a few of the things people just aren't getting.

1. I think there is some misunderstanding about what you mean by implicit. For us, the idea of kitchen in the house is implicit and that attempting to break into the house at an unspecified time has an implicit risk of a cook being present. Maybe that's not exactly what you mean by implicit? Or maybe time of day in these games is necessarily more codified than we imagine?

2. Part of what's happening in our discussion is that the scene is subtly being changed midstream as we walk through this example, from 'house at unspecified time' to 'house at 2am'. I think we all agree that a cook in the kitchen at 2am would not be implicit, which would seem to align with what you are trying to say above. I think this answers the cook in the kitchen at 2am critique very well as it just wouldn't be something that will occur at least without a prior soft move establishing the cooks presence.

Though this still leaves open the scenario of
A) a soft move previously established the presence of a cook in the kitchen at 2am
B) and possibly others


The notion being that chamber pots and jugs are typical to sick rooms and thus implicit to them. Similar to the way a cook is implicit to a kitchen but not exactly the same.

But the last part of this about a player making a check to see if those things are in the room, I really want to walk through that as it aligns almost perfectly with my Scenario A above.

Scenario A (expanded) Assuming our premise is breaking in at 2am, the player checks the house to ensure no one is awake (or maybe that's not a valid player move in these games?). The player fails the roll such that a soft move is called (scenario A) and this establishes the presences of the cook in the kitchen. What the player does next would have the possibility of triggering a hard move involving the cook screaming for help. To make this more concrete let's say the player threatens the cook, 'if you scream i'll kill you', which triggers a hard move where on failure the cook look at his rather large kitchen knife and says just try it while he yells for Help.

But there's a couple of things with this

1a - It's fairly clear that instantiating the cook screaming for help over a soft move then hard due to the where and when being somewhat implausible otherwise clearly makes for better gameplay doing it over just a hard move in this scenario. But, is handling that over soft then hard move actually changing the conceptual critique any? I'm not really sure it is.

1b - What is the game incentive for the player checking for anyone awake in the house? It seems like the fewer precautionary moves you make the fewer potential obstacles will get put in your path? I presume not making those precautionary moves will typically influence either your failure rate or strength of your effect on some future moves, but it's not clear whether that's necessarily the case and whether the player is informed of those potentialities beforehand. This is cutting to both an 'actually informed' critique and a 'gamification' critique.


Implicit...

DW has Discern Realities, which surely any competent player is likely to trigger. They're going to ask at least one question, and it's likely to be "What should I be on the lookout for here?" The GM is bound by this, as it is part of the fiction now. A cook puttering in the kitchen is a fine answer, and the player can factor that into play. But if the GM gives some other answer, they're implicitly ruling out a cook! Such a cook would be obvious to the experienced thief who's just looked for exactly this sort of thing. Honor the game mechanics and the fiction!

 

[AlViking]

DW has Discern Realities, which surely any competent player is likely to trigger. They're going to ask at least one question, and it's likely to be "What should I be on the lookout for here?" The GM is bound by this, as it is part of the fiction now. A cook puttering in the kitchen is a fine answer, and the player can factor that into play. But if the GM gives some other answer, they're implicitly ruling out a cook! Such a cook would be obvious to the experienced thief who's just looked for exactly this sort of thing. Honor the game mechanics and the fiction!

If this were a DW subforum or specifically labeled DW it would be logical to assume people are talking about this issue from the perspective of DW. On the other hand, we're on a D&D subforum labeled D&D general so why do you expect people to assume another system's rules are at play?