Recurring silly comment about Apocalypse World and similar RPGs

[Micah Sweet]

So why are you in this thread? If you don't care about Apocalypse World or PbtA games, or styles beyond the one you prefer... what are you here for? If you can't be convinced that these games may be cool, what are you here to do?

And please note... you can absolutely post in any thread you like... but if you post in a thread that's about a game you don't understand, and you make claims about that game, don't be surprised when people who do know those games counter your assumptions.

So again, post away... but it'd probably be better if you actually engage in the discussion instead of making a claim, and then when that claim is challenged, accuse the other person of insulting you.



But you have no actual experience to back up this assumption. That's the issue. You're making a claim about a game and you have no evidence at all that supports the claim. You've not played them, it seems unlikely you've read them, you don't seem to care to do so, yet you continue to comment about them.

And hey, that's fine... you don't need to know about every game. But considering you're posting in a thread about them, with folks who clearly know about these games, your continued reliance on your uninformed assumptions over the actual experience of others is a bit baffling.

I mean, if someone who had zero experience with D&D was posting in a D&D related thread, making assumptions about the game that ran counter to what your actual experience told you, I expect you wouldn't say "Oh well, everyone has different opinions shruggy emoji"... you'd share your experiences and offer your thoughts, which would be more informed than the other person's.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have played several PBtA games, and I do understand how they work. I just don't like them very much. To me, the whole system feel artificial, to me. It felt that way in Apocalypse World, and Dungeon World, and Monster of the Week, when I actually played them. In fact, I don't recall ever saying I'd never played. That was an assumption on your part, presumably based on your inability to understand how anyone could possibly disagree with your feelings on narrative games unless they have no experience with them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But... but... but... I glossed over a couple of pages in the book, saw a few online reviews and made up my mind about the game.

And nothing you say now can possibly change that. How dare you try to tell me what I like...

Wow. Does that sound awfully familiar.

I hope you're not talking about me. I've been very clear about my experience, and would love to see more questions and fewer assumptions.

 

[AnotherGuy]

DW is a game of dungeon exploration. The very concept of dungeon mazes constructed by mad wizards and filled with unnatural monsters and chests full of gold contains no element of plausibility whatsoever in my book. However, where DW intersects with reality the rules are generally silent, so I am not sure it's inherently implausible.

I'm curious what you mean when it intersects with reality the rules are silent? From skimming the thread I can very much see it working well for dungeon exploration as moves from both sides of the table are broken down into specific terminology putting at the forefront the game aspect of the RPG.

 

[pemerton]

I found these posts in a thread from a couple of years ago. They talk a bit about the logic of player-side moves (ie that these permit the players to push the action towards some sort of finality) and also a bit about what the GM can do when no player-side move is triggered and therefore everyone looks to them to see what happens next.

Let's say Dremmer is standing in front of the cabin used as the diesel store, looking mean with one hand on the little snub-nose .38 everyone knows he used to kill Mouse. Our PC wants to get in there.

In Apocalypse World, I can say: "I walk towards Dremmer, lifting my shotgun towards his face and say 'Step aside, fool. My boys need fuel and you ain't standing in the way."

And the moment I do this, I know, you know, everyone in the thread knows that this triggers the move Going Aggro, and if I hit a 10+ Dremmer can either step aside or is getting killed by a 12-guage shell. There's no wiggle room here for the MC. The situation is clear, my action is clear, and on a 10+ the outcome is clear.

Equally, on a 7-9 Dremmer can do one of five things, five clear and known things, and whichever one it is, it must also make sense in the contect of the established fiction.

So I can enjoy the fiction, and I can enjoy the risk and reward, because the relationship between the fiction and mechanics are crystal clear. Whatever I roll, I can enjoy the outcome and see where it goes.

As a player, I don't need to engage in meta-negotiation with the GM on what mechanics they will allow me to use achieve what things, and what they're deciding I can and can't achieve with what rolls. I'm not relying on the GM creating the 'getting around Dremmer' minigame and then communicating the rules and scope of that game to me, and then waiting for me to decide if I even want to play or can renegotiate the rules by which we're resolving this situation. Or if, having realised that none of this offers any guarantee of getting what I want, deciding it's easier just to kill him because the combat rules are the only clear and binding ones available.

And as an MC I'm not put in a position of having to fill in an empty space where these mechanics should be. Traditionally that void is filled with pre-written notes, combined with a sense of entitlement that my version of this situation matters more than yours. That doesn't exist in Apocalypse World. As an MC I don't have the burden of the deus ex machina role - the mechanics tell me what I can do just as much as they do the players.

The subtler impact of the move structure is that it guides players to actions which trigger moves, and therefore provide clarity on the range of outcomes.

Let's say Dremmer is standing in front of the cabin used as the diesel store, looking mean with one hand on the little snub-nose .38 everyone knows he used to kill Mouse. Our PC wants to get in there.

We've looked at what happens if we walk up with our shotgun pointed at his face and tell him to scram. But what happens if we walk up and politely request that he gives us 50 litres of diesel?

Well, firstly we know that this isn't a 'Say yes or roll the dice' system. We're under no obligation to either hand over a barrel of diesel or contrive a roll to contest it. This isn't Burning Wheel.

And we know that the player hasn't triggered a move, but they're looking at us for a response. So we get to make a move.

So the player ceded the initiative to us instead of taking it themselves, and now they're no further forward to getting any diesel and now Dremmer has a gun pointed at them, instead of the other way round.

Apocalypse World provokes players to take the initiative in play by triggering moves because that's how you get to engage in the conflicts around you on your own terms.

What this means is the tone and clarity in the wording of the moves in each individual PbtA title is fundamental to the quality and robustness of the play experience.

I don't think it's a coincidence that that example, the Isle example, and the examples I've come up with, involve going places (or trying to go places, as with starting the gyrocopter) and looking for people - because there is no basic move that has when you go somewhere or when you look for someone as its trigger. It seems to me like deliberate design to have left these things open, as opportunities for the GM to do there bit in the conversation by making Apocalypse World seem real and barfing forth apocalyptica and responding with trouble and rewards and offering opportunities.

Another way to offer an opportunity is via the play of NPCs, and Baker gives this as another example of non-player-side-move-triggering action (pp 187-8 of 1st ed):

Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. To seduce or manipulate, the character needs leverage —-sex, or a threat, or a promise, something that the manipulator can really do that the victim really wants or really doesn’t want.

Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.​

So this will require saying what prep and honesty demand, probably responding with trouble or rewards, perhaps announcing future badness or offering an opportunity or even - building on @chaochou's example upthread where the PC asks Dremmer for diesel - the infliction of harm as Dremmer shoots them in the leg and tells them to "F*** off!" (And we already had a prior GM soft move in that example, where the GM has announced that "Dremmer is standing in front of the cabin used as the diesel store, looking mean with one hand on the little snub-nose .38 everyone knows he used to kill Mouse.")

For the reasons that @chaochou set out upthread, these features of the system mean that players have an incentive to make threats or offers (ie to go aggro, or to seduce/manipulate) in order to have the chance to assert control over the fiction. But they don't have to, and it doesn't seem to me to be a failure state that a player decides to have their PC just interact with a NPC. After all, the players too know that the GM has to say what honesty and prep demand, and maybe not every NPC is going to be like Dremmer!

AW is not Burning Wheel. There is no principle of "Say 'yes' or roll the dice". To put it another way, not every action declaration by the players for their PCs puts a limit on what the GM can say next. Some do: the ones that trigger player-side moves. But some don't: the ones that just continue the conversation, and invite the GM to play their part in that. Is it unskilled play for the players to declare actions that don't trigger player-side moves? Eg, and to go back to @chaochou's example, is it unskilled play for the player to have their PC ask Dremmer for petrol rather than Go Aggro? My view is: in the abstract we can't tell. Why is the player having their PC ask Dremmer rather than threaten them? Because the player is a newbie who doesn't get the game and genre? Then maybe the GM should clarify things, and/or give the chance of a take-back (as we see in some of the play examples in the rulebook). Is the player having their PC follow through on a promise they made to Birdie? Maybe risking getting shot in the leg by Dremmer is worth it!

 

[pemerton]

To follow up on the previous post:

So, one question that AW raises, via play, is when will a principled person break?

As in, when will someone give up asking nicely, and instead shove a 12-gauge shotgun into their face? Or give up asking nicely, and instead offer them something they want. How long can someone hold out against violence and commodification?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's lot of reasons for dungeons though. Are all the ones in DW made by mad wizards on a budget?

Honestly, I don't understand this. Nothing in fiction has a 'reason', its all pretense. There are no actual dungeons like this. So one can only apply some very basic logic, bigger stuff is more expensive for example.

 

[loverdrive]

What I was stuck on when I posted, is that in D&D it would feel bad to have the cleric be able to open the door if the DM wanted them to be able to, but that the DM was required to have the fighter make a roll. I think I'm getting my head to grok that the play in this style game is just different and that this is just not an issue. (And I'm good with that).

Even if that's what would make the most sense in the fiction; which is another reason this just wouldn't work for me as a system.

And also @AbdulAlhazred and @Crimson Longinus , I guess.

Counter-intuitive thing about PbtA that many, including many fans of PbtA, don't understand is that rules takes precedence over fiction. Dungeon World with its "fiction first" idiocy didn't help either.

In World of Darkness, GURPS, Dark Heresy, whatever, and, yes, D&D, it is expected from GM to make a call whether a situation at hand warrants using the rules or not. Does this make sense? Is this situation interesting enough? Can PC even fail here? That whole "don't roll the dice if there are no interesting consequences for both failure and success."

In Apocalypse World, you just roll the damn dice as the damn rules tell you to and then it's GM's job to make it make sense. To make it interesting. When you kick down a door, you don't know what lies on the other side. When you go aggro on a bound hostage you don't know if the bastard didn't sneakily got out of the ropes and isn't now biding his sweet time to escape. GM doesn't either.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Honestly, I don't understand this. Nothing in fiction has a 'reason', its all pretense. There are no actual dungeons like this. So one can only apply some very basic logic, bigger stuff is more expensive for example.

What about natural cave systems? Re-purposed tombs or catacombs? Abandoned fortifications? @Lanefan Mentioned some of this stuff. The point is that not every dungeon you encounter was purpose-built by its current resident.

 

[Campbell]

What if game C can provides experience X and experience Y, but perhaps neither in the same way or even to the same degree as games A or B. Am I allowed to talk about how I feel then?

I mean if you can actually explain how than we can actually have a conversation. However, the way this usually goes is that people will claim that a game will support a playstyle they actively do not enjoy and have never tried to achieve with game C while paying no need to efforts people playing game A have made running game C while being absolutely frustrated by the process. This is often done by people actively campaigning against making game C more amenable to the sort of play engendered by game A.

People can feel however they want, but unless they are willing to actually discuss how to get the deeply personal, player character focused play that doesn't really concern itself with tracking time and place or require pacing based on daily resources from games that are designed with features that actively work against those things then there is no requirement to agree or respect such sentiments.

Simply calling something narrow and not actually backing up your thesis with supporting arguments does no work here. You have not shown that you understand what is involved in supporting the sort of play these games support. Can you speak to how to get that visceral, snow balling, character focused play with minimal world building using trad techniques without things like game balance, having to manage NPC stats and process simmy rules getting in the way? Show me how C can do it. I shall wait.

Addendum: The reason I find this particular take so deeply frustrating is that I spent more than decade running games like L5R, Vampire, 3e, et al fumbling around in the dark trying to get them to do what I wanted them to do to no avail. Then I found games that did what I wanted them to do only to have people who have no interest in the sort of play I was striving for but not getting claim it was there to be had yet not saying how while actively showing derision to that sort of play.

I don't really care what games any given person likes or does not like. I just want people to be responsible in their critiques.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And also @AbdulAlhazred and @Crimson Longinus , I guess.

Counter-intuitive thing about PbtA that many, including many fans of PbtA, don't understand is that rules takes precedence over fiction. Dungeon World with its "fiction first" idiocy didn't help either.

In World of Darkness, GURPS, Dark Heresy, whatever, and, yes, D&D, it is expected from GM to make a call whether a situation at hand warrants using the rules or not. Does this make sense? Is this situation interesting enough? Can PC even fail here? That whole "don't roll the dice if there are interesting consequences for both failure and success."

In Apocalypse World, you just roll the damn dice as the damn rules tell you to and then it's GM's job to make it make sense. To make it interesting. When you kick down a door, you don't know what lies on the other side. When you go aggro on a bound hostage you don't know if the bastard didn't sneakily got out of the ropes and isn't now biding his sweet time to escape. GM doesn't either.

That is a big difference, and explained in a way far better than I could manage.