NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8503089" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the verbs determine and say are not necessarily synonyms here. Only the second directly has the player contributing to the shared fiction.I think this is a point of radical difference between 5e D&D and DW/AW.The essence of AW, and therefore DW, is if you do it, you do it - at which point a dice throw is required, which is apt to generate the well-known spread of results (success, limited/complicated success, or a hard move from the GM). This is the "not functionally optional" apparatus of AW: the fiction generates rightward arrows, and that process will generate leftward arrows, and then action declarations trigger new rightward arrows. The GM's agenda and principles are key here, as they channel the narration of soft moves, when players don't make moves, towards situations which will prompt players to declare actions that trigger their moves. (This is a key design requirement for PbtA: the moves and the principles align properly.)The earliest RPG I know to use a version of this structure - not as clever or tight as AW, but far from hopeless - is Classic Traveller.5e D&D, on the other hand, doesn't have anything like if you do it, you do it. It's almost always the case that whatever action the player declares, unless it enlivens some cubes-to-cubes-ish subsystem (attacks as discussed above, using spell slots or other character abilities), the GM can decide to call for a check, or can go straight to new fiction (as per my reply not far upthread to [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER], with the example of the slippery wall).So I don't think it's right to say that "the D&D basic pattern directs players to work fiction to mechanic and back again". It directs the GM to think about how they want the fiction to change (if at all), and to perhaps call for a check by a player as one way of seeing if the fiction changes.</blockquote>

Verification