Rules-Lite VS "Crunchy" TTRPG Systems

[AbdulAlhazred]

What is done if someone declares an action and there's no apparent proper Move?

Then the thing just happens. The GM does not have some magical say in which they decide what happens in the world. They could, or another player could, say "well, I don't think that's possible" or "that doesn't match up with the genre of AW" or whatever, but remember, whatever it is that does NOT trigger at least "Act Under Fire" must be fairly low stakes! In a general sense the conversation simply continues, with the GM responding to player action declarations with moves (soft or hard as the rules specify). Basically these games do not DEPEND on the execution of moves. Remember your Onion Diagram! The core conversation is more basic than moves, which build on it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then the thing just happens. The GM does not have some magical say in which they decide what happens in the world. They could, or another player could, say "well, I don't think that's possible" or "that doesn't match up with the genre of AW" or whatever, but remember, whatever it is that does NOT trigger at least "Act Under Fire" must be fairly low stakes! In a general sense the conversation simply continues, with the GM responding to player action declarations with moves (soft or hard as the rules specify). Basically these games do not DEPEND on the execution of moves. Remember your Onion Diagram! The core conversation is more basic than moves, which build on it.

And that's what I'm talking about with "Say yes." and clipping out the borders. It allows them to run the game with very little mechanics comparatively but not a lot of GM-just-says because the default is for the players action to continue until it bumps up against a Move.

This is not what goes on in most more traditional rules light games, and while its not my cuppa for various reasons, it doesn't contain the same problems from my POV.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That didn't answer the question, Pemerton.

If no apparent Move seems to be a response to the player's decoration, what does the GM do?

And he answered you! The GM makes a move. He actually quoted the rules indicating what the GM does next, and explicated it. How does that not answer the question?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And that's what I'm talking about with "Say yes." and clipping out the borders. It allows them to run the game with very little mechanics comparatively but not a lot of GM-just-says because the default is for the players action to continue until it bumps up against a Move.

This is not what goes on in most more traditional rules light games, and while its not my cuppa for various reasons, it doesn't contain the same problems from my POV.

Well, again, I think @pemerton said it a lot better than I did. The GM makes a move, and that move might imply that whatever the player did "drop a box on the rat" worked, or didn't work, but it is fundamentally 'about' executing the GM's part of the process of play of AW. So, expressed in GM moves, announce future badness, take something away, provide an opportunity with a cost, etc. Again going back to the rules quote of Pemerton, something which is the 'start of action', not the 'end of the action'.

The GM is primarily in a position of assisting in generating momentum, of moving the game along on its trajectory towards whatever is in store. It is this sense in which AW is a 'Story Game', NOT in the sense of the participants 'authoring a story' by their play. The story focus is in terms of momentum, of the flow of the process. Every time a player acts (which 100% of the time necessarily involves some action by their PC, remembering something, thinking something, etc.) the GM then bats the ball back into their court by responding with some kind of potent situation. Now, eventually things will reach a peak, a point where direct consequences accrue, a HARD MOVE. Sometimes the hard move is just 'making it real', other times it will produce some local finality in play. Maybe someone dies, some resource is irrevocably lost, some goal is attained, etc. At that point a GM move might be to spark a new cycle, here's where things like bringing in a 'doom' might be most likely to happen. "Yeah, you killed the marauders and secured your food supply, for now. However, strange noises are coming from the wellhead and the water is coming up murky with some reddish stuff..."

 

[Thomas Shey]

And he answered you! The GM makes a move. He actually quoted the rules indicating what the GM does next, and explicated it. How does that not answer the question?

Because the question was "what if no move is appropriate"? That clearly is a present design space as you yourself answered above. If I ask "If not X, then what?" then the proper answer is not "then X".

(If the claim is that's never the case in Apocalypse World, that's certainly not true in the two PbtA games I own.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Just to move this little PbtA/AW aside back in the direction of the thread... This is why I've always considered these games relatively 'rules lite'. While there can be a lot of moves, potentially, in PbtA playbooks, and there are some ancillary subsystems in most of them surrounding things like equipment, harm, threats, etc. they're really at their heart very lightweight systems. Everything is really pretty centered on a conversational cycle, some GM goals/principles, and the core 2d6 "see how things turned out" mechanic.

However, I don't really think they fall, generally, into the true 'microgame' level of rules lite, though 'World of Dungeons' certainly could (basically DW where all you have is Defy Danger) and the GM maps out the dungeon ahead of time, though actually it isn't very spelled out exactly how it would play.)

 

[Cadence]

Just to move this little PbtA/AW aside back in the direction of the thread... This is why I've always considered these games relatively 'rules lite'. While there can be a lot of moves, potentially, in PbtA playbooks, and there are some ancillary subsystems in most of them surrounding things like equipment, harm, threats, etc.

Does a similar argument work for spells, etc... not really adding to the heaviness in DnD adjacent systems?

they're really at their heart very lightweight systems.

Or does it depend on a judgement of how clunky the d20 resolution is too?

 

[aramis erak]

And he answered you! The GM makes a move. He actually quoted the rules indicating what the GM does next, and explicated it. How does that not answer the question?

No, YOU answered it; Pemerton dissembled around it.

It feels very much like pedantry on Pemerton's part to avoid admitting that, fundamentally, the rules require the GM to accept player narrations about their character, and is to riff off of anything they narrate outside it but in genre.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Because the question was "what if no move is appropriate"? That clearly is a present design space as you yourself answered above. If I ask "If not X, then what?" then the proper answer is not "then X".

(If the claim is that's never the case in Apocalypse World, that's certainly not true in the two PbtA games I own.)

I have no idea what you mean. Look at the rules of AW, as quoted by @pemerton. The player says SOMETHING ABOUT THEIR PC, that's all they do! Moves, on the player side, are not all the things you can do, they are only specific things which happen to, usually, trigger throws of the dice. If no move is triggered, then the GM simply responds by describing some update to the fiction which is appropriate! Now, all such GM updates are generally termed 'moves' and AW assigns some names to them in a categorical sense (IE 'take their stuff').

So, there's NO SENSE in which the GM can have no appropriate move, it simply isn't possible, unless the PCs are all smoking heaps of ash and the game is over. As for the players, they just describe their PCs actions, presumably they can act! Again, I guess the exception would be they're all dead or completely helpless. Presumably in that case the game ends or the GM has to describe "when you wake up..." or something like that, right? Notice, there's always an appropriate response!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Does a similar argument work for spells, etc... not really adding to the heaviness in DnD adjacent systems?



Or does it depend on a judgement of how clunky the d20 resolution is too?

I mean, this is where the whole discussion of what is 'rules lite' gets complicated. I agree, you could describe a d20 game as 'rules lite' in a similar sense, but as a rule they add a LOT more 'chrome'. I am certainly not saying d20 cannot be rules lite though. However, in core terms, PbtA games seem to me to more compactly contain the "stuff which makes a game move forward" than most actual d20 games do. That is, just describing a d20 mechanic, in a bare sense, isn't a complete game at all. The first 17 or so pages of Dungeon World OTOH pretty much is! (well, I'd add the first few pages of the GM section perhaps).