Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ok. But how is it determined what is colour? Can we have a locked door, which the mighty warrior nevertheless easily kicks in without triggering a move, even though there is a move for physically breaking objects with your amazing strength?

Yeah I think that is how you can handle it, the game just doesn't contemplate such stuff really. I think you can describe it as a 'flimsy door' and just assume it doesn't require a move to open, but this means the GM is eschewing any sort consequences here. Or at least they are not immediate ones. I would avoid doing a lot of this, lest one begin to miss the point of the game.

I mean, back in the day when I wrote classic dungeons I rarely, like never, had much that was just empty waste space like that.

 

[Tonguez]

The game world definitely has doors, but we're talking here specifically about the case where the GM has put a door in front of the PCs as a barrier to progress. If it's not a barrier (because it's open, or because it's unlocked and unguarded, or because it's flimsy, or whatever) then it's set dressing and the PCs can just open it.

see this is why I prefer Fate in Fate if the GM says theres a solid oak door on the north wall then that door is now a scene aspect - the players gets freedom to do whatever they want with it - attempt to open, bust through it, pick the lock, ignore it etc. Moreover if they do find a monster on the other side the Door can now be invoked by the GM as a choke point (advantage Monster) and by the PCs as a thing to hide behind or to provide cover (advantage players) or offensively slammed in the monsters face.
I know those things can be done in AW too, its just that the playbooks seem to direct things into a much narrower funnel

 

[pemerton]

What I've seen in a few groups is puzzlement when moves nearly but not quite cover the action. From Avatar

<snip>

Sometimes it feels to the group like they are gathering specific/useful info in a tense moment, with meaningful stakes on the answer, but their questions aren't addressed by those listed for Assess. The way I see it most often played is that even though it doesn't fit the move, it doesn't trigger a GM move either: there's a bit of puzzlement and then folk shrug and add the question they do need to the player move.

I don't know anything about Avatar.

Here is the relevant example from AW (p 200):

He stops at a safe spot and reads the way forward, and hits with a 10. “Cool. What should I be on the lookout for?” “Dremmer sends patrols through here, of course,” I say. “You should be on the lookout for a patrol.” “Makes sense. How far will I have to go exposed?” “A few hundred yards, it looks like,” I say. “Okay,” he says. “Question 3—” “Oh no, no,” I say. “That didn’t use up any of your hold, I was just telling you what you see.” “Oh! Great. How often do the patrols come through?” I shake my head. “You don’t know. Could be whenever.” “But can’t I make that my question, so you have to answer it?” “Nope!” I say. “You can spend your hold to make me answer questions from the list. Other questions don’t use up your hold, but I get to answer them or not, depending on whatever.” “Okay, I get it,” he says. “So I’m on question 2 still? What’s my enemy’s true position?”​

In answering the question, or not, depending on whatever, the GM is following the principles and making moves - eg reiterating announced future badness (be on the lookout for Dremmer's patrols, which could come through whenever).

 

[mamba]

Here is the relevant example from AW (p 200):

I am starting to see where the 'DMing with training wheels' idea that was mentioned at the beginning of this thread comes from. Not saying I agree, just that I start to get an idea of what causes that reaction

 

[Aldarc]

Ok. But how is it determined what is colour?

If we are playing D&D, how are we determining which doors require a DC to open and which the PCs can open without a check? Who gets to decide that? Why did they decide that? Why is this door Easy but this door is Hard? These seem to be questions of determining color.

 

[pemerton]

This is second time I have seen this claim, specifically about doors in story now games, to be made in a recent thread. It seems implausible to me for this to be the case in practice. A lot stuff just has to exist in the fictional world for it to be real and plausible. Such as doors.

You've had ample replies to this, all in a similar vein.

If the GM narrates a door, and a player says "I open it", the GM - being in charge of the whole damned world except for the PCs - makes a move. That move might be to announce future badness - eg "You open the door, and see a stone-flagged room on the other side. You hear something - or somethings - skittering off into the shadows. And is that a faint echo of laughter? What do you do?" Or that move might be to provide an opportunity - ""You open the door, and see a huge chamber on the other side. In the middle of the chamber is a huge statue, with gemstones for eyes. What do you do?"

Maybe the GM has prepped a Landscape threat, and this door is in it. And so the player narrates "I open the door" and the GM responds with a threat move, to bar the way: "It doesn't open. It's locked, or maybe jammed. What do you do?" This could also be seen as a way of providing an opportunity (ie to find out what is on the other side of the door), perhaps with a cost (if opening the door is going to be hard).

"if you do it, you do it" forcing triggering of a move seems like rather questionable principle to me, as it seems to rule out the character just auto succeeding in a move related thing even if fictional positioning would seem to warrant it.

The point of "if you do it, you do it" isn't to provide a model of character talent. As per this post from the first page of the thread,

If, as a player, you want to push things to finality in resolution then you have to make a move. That's the point of the player-side move architecture: to establish the domains of activity in which the game allows for finality. In AW (at least as far as basic moves are concerned), that's threatening violence, using violence, or seducing or manipulating. From the point of view of the game, that's a feature, not a bug; conversely, if you don't like the idea of a game in which finality in resolution is achieved those ways, then you're going to have to look elsewhere.

 

[pemerton]

Plausibility seems to play a distant second fiddle to narrative value in no-myth games. One reason why they've never worked for me.

Over many threads I have linked you to actual play reports of several low-myth or no-myth games. Here are just a few:

Torchbearer 2e: https://www.enworld.org/threads/tor...ay-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9138753

Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic: https://www.enworld.org/threads/middle-earth-lotr-rpging-using-cortex-heroic.670013/post-7947768 (LotR/MERP) https://www.enworld.org/threads/into-the-north-cortex-plus-heroic-fantasy-actual-play.530990/ (Vikings)

Burning Wheel: https://www.enworld.org/threads/keep-on-the-borderlands-shenanigans.473620/

Prince Valiant: https://www.enworld.org/threads/prince-valiant-rpging.690321/

Cthulhu Dark: https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/

Classic Traveller (but changing the method of starmap generation from that in Book 3, to no myth): https://www.enworld.org/threads/cla...t-with-reflections-on-the-system-long.586642/

4e D&D: https://www.enworld.org/threads/session-report-the-mausoleum-of-the-raven-queen.484945/​

Where is the lack of plausibility?

Or to put it another way: perhaps you and the people you play with struggle to create plausible fiction. I don't know - I'm not there. But it seems rude to project that onto others!

 

[pemerton]

I am starting to see where the 'DMing with training wheels' idea that was mentioned at the beginning of this thread comes from. Not saying I agree, just that I start to get an idea of what causes that reaction

I don't know what you mean.

The extract I posted is from the rulebook. It's a worked example, so - unsurprisingly - includes instructional text, such as "Other questions don’t use up your hold, but I get to answer them or not, depending on whatever."

 

[Campbell]

Yeah, that narrow focus is a factor in my feelings on these sorts of games too. Trad games, even one focused on a particular kind of play, don't have this sort of mechanical gap IME.

Generally, when game A is capable of providing experience X but not Y and Game B is capable of providing experience Y but not X we do not call either narrower than the other. We simply accept they both have something of value that might appeal to different parties or the same parties at different times.

In other words, we accept that there is room for diversity in the hobby and do not decry the existence of things not to our tastes.

 

[Manbearcat]

After the subject came up in chat with some friends, I realized that I'm of three minds on the subject of "AW is GMing with training wheels" refrain.

I know the folks that employ it are nearly exclusively using it as an epithet to diminish the game. But at the same time I’m like “uhhh...yeah, I’ll take some training wheels! Make my life easier thank you!”

It’s the LAWL TRAINING WHEELS ARE FOR WHEENIES AND PUNKS + this game does a lot of work to ensure you don’t eff up play (get into a bike wreck) dichotomy.

Kinda makes me want to pull a “turn their move back on them” GM move!

However, while working through those thoughts, I realized I'm of a third mind. GMing AW and kindred is quite hard…but just in a different way than GMing a trad game; the demands of in-situ cognitive agility and of integrating multiple axes of information at all times in your framing and consequences is extreme in AW and kindred and relatively relaxed in trad GMing (because the difficulties of trad GMing lie elsewhere; in prep, in skillful exposition dumps, in deftness/finesse of telegraphing and prompting). So accepting the “training wheels refrain” surrenders clarity on the core issue at hand; difficulty of GMing.