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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8503011" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not sure exactly what would be covered by 'what is there'. I tend to focus more on design and how it relates to process mostly because endless debates about how people are doing stuff tend to just bog down in arguments about who's preferences are being insulted. I can concretely discuss the design of a game, it is just an objective set of facts. Analysis has some factual basis, theories of design have some factual objective relationship to actual game designs. FROM THERE I can meaningfully discuss actual practice in terms of those, but starting at practice in this kind of discussion seems fairly fruitless, from experience.I think this is because they are FUNDAMENTALLY very similar. As an illustration imagine some fundamentally different forms of RPG. You could have a game where the players take the part of different characters as they play, even action by action, or however such a game might parse things. I could imagine an RPG where everything was determined by some sort of mechanical process and the players only provide color. My point is, games where each player assumes the role of a single character and a Game Master arbitrates and assumes the roles of (nearly) all NPCs is ALREADY a narrow subcategory in the broad landscape of possible games that might reasonably be called RPGs. So, yes, there are significant similarities. The one you cite here seems almost diagnostic of a category, given all that it seems to imply.Well, DW makes all its choices in fiction, the players are expressly not given the authority to name moves. They 'start with the fiction' and 'end with the fiction', and the GM supplies access to the mechanics in the middle where she determines it is appropriate. Given the well-defined agenda and principles a GM should be fairly constrained however. Like, if the player responds to a hard move with an attempt to avoid damage, the GM PRETTY MUCH has to go to Defy Danger. So, yes, DW is fairly explicit, but the player has almost infinite fictional options and they translate to relatively few moves.Now, in HoML there are actions, but not really a limited set of moves. I guess you could sort of think of it in a similar way, you start at the fiction, declare an intent and an action, and then the GM selects an 'aspect', the governing knack, ability, proficiency, or feat that governs it. This is actually probably a bit messy in that knacks describe general approaches, whereas a feat is a pretty specific technique, but I think in practice it can work OK. In the case of a defense the intent is usually going to be fairly obvious, to avoid damage. HOWEVER, there's opportunity there to be a bit more open, maybe you can accept the consequences of the attack in return for doing some damage of your own, or to achieve some other intent. Its a lot more open-ended than the original 4e D&D-derived model, almost a completely different beast, and I have not really fully come to grips with that. I mean, maybe I want to constrain it to mostly defending yourself and relegate everything else to attacks, I'm not sure yet.I'm not sure when you would go fiction -> fiction in D&D, though it is certainly possible to imagine someone doing it. Actually Gygax suggested that the combat system was inappropriate for situations where, for example, one side wasn't in a position to fight back (I think there's a 1e DMG example of killing someone who's sleeping or something like that). Anyway, certainly mechanics -> mechanics (looping arrows) is, as [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] has pointed out several times, pretty common D&D practice.Well, it is true, there's not some huge burning need to do it the way I've done it in HoML, the player will get back in front of the dice pretty soon anyway. 4e even gave players a lot of choices in terms of reactions and such too. I just thought it might open up a more direct and substantive interchange between fiction and mechanics where you cannot simply stay in the mechanics box all the time, which does tend to happen in D&D, and especially in WotC versions IME.Well, yeah, the GM could roll NPCs attacks, and the player could STILL describe which defense is relevant. Honestly, who rolls the dice isn't that critical, but what I noticed in D&D combats is people tend to tune out when they aren't on the spot, and giving them some dice to roll is a pretty clear signal to stay engaged. Not sure how well it will work out, but its worth a try. Either way I still need to work through all the possible options that might be invented for when you are defending.</blockquote>

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