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

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely!

I played in a 2d20 game of Star Trek Adventures for a bit. I'm not a big Trek fan, so I wasn't crazy about the game... but I did like the way it handled initiative. Essentially, it grants initiative to the PC side of the conflict, and then they can select who of their characters they'd like to go first. Then it alternates to the NPCs, and then back to the PCs and the player decides who goes next... and so on, until everyone on each side has gone. Then you start a new round.

I adopted this for D&D for a while and it worked quite well. 5e isn't the most tactical game in many ways, so this added a level of tactics... of decisions to be made. Who goes next? Should we push the Wizard's turn to the end of the round and prolong the duration of his Spell effect, or do we have him go now? And so on. It kept the players more engaged as well... they were more likely to be paying attention no matter whose turn it was.

I mean... people have been tweaking D&D since the jump... it's really odd to see folks shooting down ideas out of hand just because they come from certain games, or are suggested by certain posters.

FFG Star Wars does the same thing with initiative. It's not terrible.

 

[pemerton]

This has nothing particular to do with the game or its rules but with fiction. Essentially Harper's arguing for an equivalent of Chekhov's gun -- the metaphorical gun the GM put on the wall gets fired, the Corleone family moves to crush their enemies, the thing that was foreshadowed earlier in play now happens.

I was thinking of Chekhov's gun before I read your post. The difference, I would say, is that in the sort of play Harper is describing not every gun is going to be fired. Or at least that's my experience.

And that's not because of clumsy authorship by anyone. It's because of the nature of the medium, namely, that it generates fiction spontaneously and with very little editing. This means that - again, at least in my experience - there tends to be a surplus of "leads", telegraphed threats and promises, and the like introduced, with not all of them being brought home - which ones get picked up and elaborated on and brought to resolution and so on depends on the particular trajectories of play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is there a reason why you can't just make it up in your head instead of random tables? Do you simply not want to? Is it something you feel you're not good at?


A soft move is "You see an orc; what do you do?" A hard move is "As soon as you see the orc, it raises its sword and charges! Roll for initiative." In other words, a soft move offer the PCs an opportunity to do things (they can choose to move out of sight, to attack the orc, to talk to the orc, etc.), while the hard move creates an immediate consequence (the orc is attacking).

I'm not entirely sure what a setup move is; that term isn't used in the games I've read.


They should align as closely as they would in any game. If you're breaking into a poor hovel, there won't be a cook (as in, a servant or employee whose job it is to cook). If you're breaking into an estate, there will be.

And of course they can create new NPCs, just like in any other game.

I could just make it up, but tables allow for more options than might occur to me in the moment, and also keep me from just forcing my will on a situation that could go more than one way. So etimes the GM likes to be surprised too.

What's wrong with tables? I love 'em!

 

[pemerton]

I know who the prime minister of Canada, and how their parliamentary system works

I was at a workshop last week with a colleague who is a professor of constitutional law. (At an Australian university.) She has a Canadian PhD student. He had just recently told her, and she in turn informed me, that in Canada it's not wildly atypical for the PM to not sit in Parliament, and that on at least one occasion the PM sat in the upper house (after exercising his power to appoint himself to it).

The lesson: I am still learning about the Canadian parliamentary system.

(Further context for knowledge-seekers: Australia has express constitutional provisions about ministers having to sit in Parliament, and it would be utterly inconceivable in Australia for the PM to be drawn from the Senate.)

(Further further context: my colleague and I trust the PhD student because he is a clever student of the Canadian constitution. And I trust my colleague's account of what her student told her because she is an authority on her own recollections of scholarly conversations.)

 

[Faolyn]

My bolding. Also for reference the heading for the list you quoted:
"Every time it’s your turn in the conversation to tell the hunters what happens, or when they look at you expecting you to say something, use one of these moves:"
The way this is formulated it sure sound like it is intended as a comprehensive list of all the possible moves in the game. That impression is also strengthened by how people have been talking about how DMs ae limited to certain moves in these games, as a good thing.

It's not intended that you're limited to that list except through the genre's convention. MotW is a game about hunting monsters, as per Supernatural or Buffy. So then you have to ask yourself: in a typical MotW game about hunting monsters and saving people, what else is the GM going to need to do?

(I mean, seriously. What gaps are you seeing that would hinder a GM in this game?)

This list of course do only include things DMs have been doing for a long time. The issue is that it absolutely do not contain everything a DM are prone to do in such a situation. For instance "time passes", "flashback scene", "reveal a colorful piece of lore, with no real impact on the story", "Ask player to describe something they want to happen in the session oracle style".

They wouldn't be considered moves in MotW. The Keeper can easily reveal a colorful piece of lore that has no impact on the story, but it wouldn't be a move. Because moves are made in response to player action. If the player makes a move that requires the Keeper to reveal a colorful piece of lore, that lore is going to have some sort of impact on the story. For instance, from the Expert's playbook:

Dark Past: If you trawl through your memories for something relevant to the case at hand, roll +Weird. On a 10+ ask the Keeper two questions from the list below. On a 7-9 ask one. On a miss, you can ask a question anyway but that will mean you were personally complicit in creating the situation you are now dealing with. The questions are:

• When I dealt with this creature (or one of its kind), what did I learn?
• What black magic do I know that could help here?
• Do I know anyone who might be behind this?
• Who do I know who can help us right now?

(This is a move the Expert needs to choose; it's not automatic.)

Your other options are not GM moves because they don't need to be. And anyway, the GM is encouraged to have flashbacks and cutaway scenes in order to build tension and make the game more cinematic by showing the monster in them--I've done both; it's fun--but this isn't a move, any more than describing a room is a move. And this isn't a game like BitD that includes flashback mechanics.

So if the thing you bolded actually is true and we are free to come up with whatever moves we would like with no prior player buy in,

I'm confused. If the GM in a D&D games decides to have monsters attack, do they need the players to allow it to happen?

If not, why do you think that the GM would need player buy in come up with a move?

I seriously do not see the point of the move system. Given all the confusion around it

The only confusion I've seen is from people who haven't really read it yet. It's actually quite simple once you spend the time to read it. For instance, moves are not abilities.

I think it should by clear by now that if it really was intended to educate people about suggestions of things they could do that they could find in Dragon Magazine, then Dragon Magazine provided a pedagogically superior way of conveying this information...

You mean, the magazine that's been out of print for longer than many current gamers have been alive?

And it clearly wasn't pedagogically superior if it didn't teach you to recognize the same thing used in a different system.

 

[Faolyn]

I could just make it up, but tables allow for more options than might occur to me in the moment, and also keep me from just forcing my will on a situation that could go more than one way. So etimes the GM likes to be surprised too.

What's wrong with tables? I love 'em!

There's nothing wrong with tables. It's the idea of only using tables that's weird, if that's what @The Firebird actually meant.

 

[pemerton]

I do not think it was common in competative play to see a frog men guarding the entrance to a cave and think "hm, maybe we could get them to worship our petrified prior companion rather than their current idol to get on their good side?"

I don't see why not. That seems like a good move in a skilled play game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How does your refutation of my statement actually refute it? Your goal is to bash on / aggressively analyze traditional play. And that's what's happening, with a side of "Narrativist games are the best! Why are you playing other games?"

My goal is not to bash on anything. It's to look at what D&D does, and what it has done traditionally, and to see where/how it may change.

D&D is not beyond critique. Citing a criticism of the design is not "bashing on" anything. This thread is about discussion of how D&D and its fans may be able to change. That's the topic. If you don't want to discuss that, then why are you posting in this thread so consistently? Why are you frustrated by people discussing things related to the topic of the thread?

Nor am I saying narrativist games are the best or that you should be playing them. I have a strong inclination that you personally should not, and others here should not, either. It likely wouldn't be fun for you, and your inclination to not enjoy it may impact anyone else at the table's ability to enjoy it, too.

But in looking at D&D and considering what it may do different, I'm going to look at other RPGs and see how they handle things.

For instance... fail forward has been discussed ad nauseum at this point. As a GM of D&D, why would I just outright reject the use of this potential tool? And even if I did decide that for me (for whatever idiosyncratic reason) I simply will never use such a tool... why object to it being an option for others? It's a great option for a GM to have, regardless of the game that's being played.

The reactions to this kind of thing just kind of proves the thread title. It's like when I tell my son he doesn't have to eat his peas if he doesn't want them, and he flips out and says "GET THEM OFF MY PLATE".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which was kind of my point (I think), people are using Fail Forward to mean different things. What @pemerton is talking about is just keeping the story moving forward taking into consideration the failure. That is not how other people use the phrase. Hence the confusion.

I choose not to argue with @pemerton about his example. I can see the argument against the things he mentioned there being fail forward. Maybe we do use the term a bit differently, or maybe there was more to play than came across. Perhaps a bit of each. Perhaps I am simply wrong and he might tell me why, or not. But games like BW focus heavily on intent, so FF is going to often show up in the form of mixed results.

 

[pemerton]

I know you're trying to answer but the the thing is that saying "...look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition." is meaningless to someone who doesn't play the game. It also doesn't explain how this relates to fail forward in any way. This is what I'm talking about when it comes to vague answers that are meaningless. They make sense to you, but anyone else? Pretty hit or miss.

You got a reply to this from @Old Fezziwig. I've also posted about this in many posts in this thread, including some in reply to you.

John Harper is assuming that the fiction that is established during play has a type of emotional and/or dramatic and/or thematic "heft". And that it has a "trajectory" or "momentum" related to that. Here are the examples that he gives:

When you make a regular MC move, all three:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It gives the player an opportunity to react.
3. It sets you up for a future harder move.

This means, say what happens but stop before the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

- He swings the chainsaw right at your head. What do you do?

• You sneak into the garage but there's Plover right there, about to notice you any second now. What do you do?
• She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone,' she says. What do you do?

When you make a hard MC move, both:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It's irrevocable.

This means, say what happens, including the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

- The chainsaw bites into your face, spraying chunks of bloody flesh all over the room. 3-harm and make the harm move!

• Plover sees you and starts yelling like mad. Intruder!
• 'Don't come back here again.' She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home

.

See how that works? The regular move sets up the hard move. The hard move follows through on the threat established by the regular move.​

Focus particularly on the last example. It assumes that there is a reason the player's character has come to speak to her. And that there is a reason that she has to be cold to the PC. And also that the player cares about how she responds to the PC. It is not assuming a CoC-esque scenario in which the NPC is nothing more than a possible source of clues, and the only "cost" to the player of her slamming the door is that now the clue has to be found some other way. It is assuming human relationships.

If you look at the middle example, you will see that it involves sneaking into somewhere, with the risk of being spotted. It's less intimate and more adventure-y than the last example. I don't think it's that hard to imagine a variant on that in which the risk is not being spotted by Plover, but startling a cook.

(The first example is interesting mostly because it illustrates the difference between how interpersonal violence is approached in AW and how it is approached in D&D. AW uses the interplay of GM-moves and player-moves; whereas D&D uses something much closer to a wargame style of resolution.)

The common modern usage of the term "Fail Forward" means that you succeed at what you attempted but there's an additional cost or complication.

Well, if you know what you mean by "fail forward" then I'm not sure why you're asking about it.

But this whole discussion of it began with the contrast between "fail forward" and "nothing happens". And that is how I am familiar with the term "fail forward", which also used to be called "no whiffing".

Notice how none of John Harper's examples is "nothing happens". And in my examples of play, none of them is "nothing happens".

The example of fail forward that started this was "You climb the cliff only to find your dead friend." Examples of what I can find online are some variation of "You fail your lockpick check but open the door anyway and there's a screaming chef."

How you want to read those examples is up to you. Maybe you think the people who posted them are advocating for silly RPGing.

But my guess is this: that with the friend being dead, they are imagining that the player knows that what is at stake is whether or not their PC's friend survives, and they are having their PC climb the cliff to try and rescue them, and - because the roll fails - the PC fails to make the climb in time.

And with the screaming cook, I imagine that whoever posted it has something in mind very similar to John Harper's example with Plover.

None of these are fail forward from the definitions and examples I've ever seen since I first heard of the term. To me they aren't fail forward, they're just you failed and didn't accomplish what you wanted.

Notice how, in none of the examples, does "nothing happen".

Aedhros doesn't simply fail to find a kidnap victim - rather, a potential victim escapes, causing word to spread of a knife-wielding assailant. Aedhros doesn't simply fail to bolster his sense of self by singing - rather, he is harassed by a guard. Aedhros doesn't simply fail to have a helpful Elven Etharch turn up - a second guard turns up to join the first.

Notice also that the failure narrations don't have to entail that Aedhros is no good at what he is trying to do. The first tends towards that implication - he can't kidnap someone. But the second doesn't - there's nothing wrong with his singing, but it attracts a guard. And the third is ambiguous - it's true that the guard arrives and no Elves do, but is that because Aedrhos is hopelessly alienated from his fellow Elves, or simply because guards like to travel in pairs?

(Notice also that these guard NPCs have never been mentioned before at the table. The GM nevertheless brings them onto the stage because they are implicit in our shared idea of a pseudo-mediaeval city. Maybe the screaming cook is similarly implicit in an attempt to break into a rich house by sneaking through a kitchen entrance.)

Anyway, these examples are what "fail forward" looks like. I'm sure that everyone's game has some of it. But I'm equally sure that there are some games that don't use it consistently - eg they would narrate the failed Sing test as singing poorly, perhaps for laughs at the table. Or they would resolve the kidnap attempt by first calling for an encounter roll or a Streetwise test to find a victim, and if that failed the narration would be that Aedhros is wandering the city streets but not finding anyone - Aedhros goes out looking for a victim, but nothing happens.