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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8634137" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Do you think that you could play DW purely by "having a conversation," without any reference to its game design? As someone who's been running it for over four years now, I can say I absolutely could not, and it's been a process for my group to learn how to work within the fiction and how to invoke mechanics without thinking in mechanics. But "tell the DM the situation, DM will narrate the result" is literally nothing more than two people having a conversation.Well...that's kind of my point. What do you do about "I literally died to the second attack roll I ever experienced," because yes, it is quite literally possible for even beefy 5e characters (e.g. Fighter with 14 Con, so 12 HP) to die in two normal hits, y'know, something that will happen pretty often purely from standing next to a monster for two rounds. It is quite possible for a fragile character (e.g. a Wizard with 10 Con, so 6 HP) to literally die outright to a single attack from a single attack from a single CR 1/4 (there are several CR 1/4 creatures that can deal 12 damage in a single hit). Or experiences I've had, where DMs have thrown together deadly encounters because they "have" to or the game isn't challenging, only to result in massive DM fiat or outright TPK.I mean, PbtA has been using that for ages, since I know at least the idea (if not the name) came up in the DW game where I was a player, and that was easily 4-5 years before 5e came out. Well before we started calling it "Advantage." But, as I said, the problem with that is you've just eliminated the simplicity. Ad/Dis and modifiers isn't ultra-simple anymore. You've sacrificed one of the key characteristics. (The characteristic you mention, raising/lowering results but not range, could only be sacrificed by ditching Advantage/Disadvantage entirely, hence why I didn't mention it.)And I wouldn't call FKR "G&S" anymore, at least, not as its core game-purpose. That's....literally what made it "Free," because it'd been transitioned to the (so-called) rules design of "referee decides." I, personally, would call it an effort at a high-detail C&E game, the Conceit being "literally portray a military commander so faithfully, you might actually learn something about how military command works" (much as how actors practicing for a demanding part--such as Sherlock Holmes--frequently do personal research to understand it better), and the Emulation being run purely through "what does the referee think makes more sense?" It's emphatically NOT just following the natural-reasoning conclusions that necessarily follow from the rules and resources as expressed--the whole point is that it not only can but WILL openly defy the rules if doing so leads to a "better" experience. That, that exact commitment, is one of the most blatant "no, we are not do ing G&S/'I'm There,' we are dong C&E/'Portray Concept.'" Because the former, the rules are reality (or as close as one can get to it), and just like reality, understanding the rules means knowing what will happen and why; for the latter, the rules are not reality, the Conceit is reality, and the rules are useful tools for reaching that Conceit--you can and should break them if doing so leads to more faithful portrayal.And I'm not alone in thinking that. I had to use the Internet Archive to dig it up, but <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200712004246/https://rolltop-indigo.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-invisible-rulebooks.html" target="_blank">the essay on "invisible rulebooks"</a> explicitly refers to genre conventions ("Book of Genre Conventions Volume XIV: Action-Comedy Westerns," emphasis in original.) Because it's not about a faithful simulation regardless of what people think it should be. It's about doing what feels right. Others mention how people use "movie physics" rather than real physics, or how <a href="https://scriptoriumludi.wordpress.com/2021/08/01/academic-papers-intuitive-magic-and-the-invisible-rulebooks-of-ttrpgs/" target="_blank">research shows</a> that if one person (in this case, a young child) believes a person in a fight has magical power, they're more likely to believe that person will win regardless of other considerations. Or in the parallel essay (that doesn't require the Wayback Machine, thankfully!) about "<a href="https://d66kobolds.blogspot.com/2021/03/play-worlds-not-rules-design-challenge.html" target="_blank">playing at the world</a>," the author instructs us to think of Star Wars by saying (emphasis added), "Close your eyes and imagine the tropes."FKR isn't G&S/"I'm There" anymore. It's C&E/"Portray Concept." And it makes that leap specifically because it no longer wishes to be bound by rules that are just true and must be reasoned through. Instead, it wants whatever conventions--tropes--seem appropriate to the thing being Emulated.</blockquote>

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