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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8501162" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think all the 'chess talk' is not really relevant to RPGs and what is going on there. So, you say that the story itself is not that compelling an aspect of an RPG. Aside from my reluctance to decree what compels others, I can understand what you mean; the stories we end up with in our games are at best only modestly compelling, and would hardly bear retelling. Certainly the playing was more compelling than the mere narrative that resulted. Thus I don't really disagree with this, but I think it gives more weight to what I've said before. That is, any standard board game is not like an RPG, where the engagement comes from something that involves making a fiction, the drama of playing through the story. This is why I find the PbtA kind of directive, to 'play to see what happens' to be compelling. It is why the associated process of creating that story must be highly collaborative, etc. This all leads me to the belief that the most effective RPGs generally speaking will provide process and mechanics, and principles/agenda which build this in.So, I SUSPECT the difference between how you and [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] would run Dungeon World, or Brindlewood Bay I suspect (I really know nothing more about it than 'cthulhuoid murder mysteries using PbtA') is WHY any given fiction is introduced.Let me go back to my little pet example here. The GM introduces "The Spider King steals the gold." This is a 'move', it is dynamic, it does potentially introduce novel fiction, but it is directly facing to PC concerns. The 'gold' is something vital to the PC, she cannot save her sister without this gold (or maybe there's another way, things are always possible). No fact introduced here is merely 'some stuff'. There's no "We found an ominous stone... I'm not sure what it's connected with..." I don't see how this ominous stone relates to a dramatic need of a character (I am just guessing it doesn't particularly based on how you phrased things, I could be wrong of course). It seems like just 'generation of fiction' and then what? How does this fiction 'snowball'? How does it move things forward in a way that confronts the PCs and creates or furthers dramatic conflict? I mean, yes, you can have a 'doom' in Dungeon World, which is a portent. It will relate to a front and probably a danger within that front. This 'ominous stone' doesn't really seem to be a doom either. I mean, OK, its not like finding an ominous stone is somehow contrary to anything in DW, specifically. Characters look around, they experience, trees, rocks, roads, buildings, etc. and those aren't particularly anything beyond 'color', so maybe an 'ominous stone' is just color, but it seems like an odd kind, and you clearly don't consider it as such. I would just say it lacks much 'punch' as a either a move or a doom (and I assume that unveiling a doom IS a move)!So, maybe the PCs find an ominous stone in the ruins of an outlying village that has been destroyed by some sort of magical force. This village might not be super important to the PCs in and of itself, but it is telling us, this doom is coming, the front is on the move! Its mild pressure, perhaps, but it would due as a basic starting point. You want your fiction to begin with things only STARTING to get tense after all.</blockquote>

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