thoughts on Apocalypse World?

[pemerton]

I have a general idea what you mean by "scene-framing paradigm", but I haven't played any of the games you use as references. Although it sounds like establishing Effect & Consequences in Blades in the Dark, which can be done by negotiation, rather than the GM just saying "roll, and I'll decide what hammer drops if you don't get a clear success".

Snap! I don't know BitD well enough to compare it to what I have in mind.

I'll try and post something fuller soon.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I'll come back to the rest of your post later when I have a chance. But just focus on this: what you post here is part of the 5e D&D action resolution framework, but is not part of the AW resolution framework. That's probably the most important difference.

So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?

 

[Campbell]

So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?

Not at all. You just will not be assessing difficulty. There are no target numbers to set in Apocalypse World.

Generally on a 6- players are told to expect the worst and the GM has the opportunity to make as hard of a move as they like. You should be considering consequences although they should be fairly obvious if you are making your soft moves / telegraphing like you should be.

This post provides a more detailed explanation.

Picking the Right GM Move in PbtA: Part One | Magpie Games

magpiegames.com

John Harper is more succinct though.

The Mighty Atom

 

[niklinna]

So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?

I'd say that's generally not the case in Apocalypse World, but in my Blades in the Dark game, the GM will sometimes tell us ahead of the roll what failure will entail, and sometimes will ask us what, negotiating if what we offer isn't a serious or interesting consequence.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Firstly, thanks for the replies, I am honestly struggling to see what significant differences AW/PbtA has to... well most rpgs. I appreciate y'all taking the time to talk it through.

So... I am uncertain as to whether AW has target numbers or not. Ya see, in @pemerton's post above (#86) he definitely mentions target numbers. Is it that there are target numbers hard coded into the rules rather than set by the GM? If so they're still target numbers. If not, what were those numbers?

6's are bad. Again, sounding like target numbers.

I've got more, well not specific questions, but a nebulous feeling that I have more to ask. But I have to cut it short for now.

Cheers.

 

[niklinna]

In Apocalypse World, target numbers are always the same:

• 6 or lower – that's a miss, and the GM gets to hit you hard
• 7–9 – a qualified success; you get some or all of what you want, often with some negative consequence
• 10+ – full success; you get (more or all of) what you want, in the context of the move

Particular moves may give lists of the kinds of success effects you can claim. For example, "Read a Person" lets you ask 1 question from a general list on a dice roll of 7–9, or 3 on a 10+.

Some of those effects can be things that don't happen. For example, the chopper move (special ability) "pack alpha", for when you try to coerce your gang to do something they're not cool with, gives this list:

• they do what you want
• they don't fight back over it
• you don't have to make an example of a gang member

On a 10+, you get all three, on a 7–9, you get only one of those, and on a miss, someone in the gang tries to usurp you. So, on a 7–9, maybe they do it, but you have to fight them and make a particular example of one gang member. Those can both be handled by simple narration or further dice rolls. Or, you could say they don't revolt, but they don't do what you want, and you have to make an example of somebody to keep them in line. Pack alpha is a risky move that way!

Hope that helps.

 

[Tonguez]

Not at all. You just will not be assessing difficulty. There are no target numbers to set in Apocalypse World.

John Harper is more succinct though.

The Mighty Atom

What do you mean no target numbers?
The rules clearly state to roll 2 dice add stat. If the sum total is 6 or less, that’s a miss. If it’s 7 or more, it’s a hit. 7–9 is a weak hit, 10+ is a strong hit.
All the moves list what should happen on a hit, 7–9 or 10+, so follow them.

Sure they’re fixed but what makes you think 6, 7-9 and 10+ arent target numbers that a player has to roll to succeed on a move?

 

[Tonguez]

I'll come back to the rest of your post later when I have a chance. But just focus on this: what you post here is part of the 5e D&D action resolution framework, but is not part of the AW resolution framework. That's probably the most important difference.

I think the main difference between the two approaches is that AW style Moves focus on the outcomes and consequences of a scene rather than D&D focus on players taking actions (which eventually build to an outcome).

the change from RPG as a series of player actions and DM reponses and RPG as agreed Narrative scenes makes for a different play style.

 

[pemerton]

I have a general idea what you mean by "scene-framing paradigm", but I haven't played any of the games you use as references. Although it sounds like establishing Effect & Consequences in Blades in the Dark, which can be done by negotiation, rather than the GM just saying "roll, and I'll decide what hammer drops if you don't get a clear success".

I turns out there is another active thread where some of these same topics are coming up. Here is something I just posted on that thread about scene-framing, which might help.

4e modules are, on the whole, awful. Some people like some of the later ones; they may speak up in this thread.

The essence of scene-framed play is this: situation (normally authored, at least to a significant extent and in 4e D&D to a great extent, by the GM) that responds to the players' evinced interests/hooks/thematic concerns (ie while the GM is the one who frames the scene, it is the players who implicitly or explicitly set the stakes); action declarations from the players for their PCs that engage the situation (which they should be able to do by just playing their PCs, assuming the GM has done his/her job properly at the framing stage); typically there is some sort of back-and-forth of success and failure and emerging consequences (this is the rising action); then there is the resolution and pay-off of the scene, which may do any or all of the following: lead to a change in the characters (eg one of my players decided that his dead human wizard, when raised, would return in his "true" form as a deva invoker - but not all changes need be as big as that); lead to a change in the setting (eg now the hags are allies of the PCs rather than enemies; now the djinni are reconciled with the gods rather than getting ready to fight against them in the Dusk War); lead to some new conflict or challenge (eg now that you've defeated Torog, there is no one holding back the Elemental Chaos - oh, and you sealed the Abyss too? So now all that chaotic energy and matter is not getting siphoned down into that well of nothingness, it's just overflowing into the world!)

The framing of the next scene has to have regard to the fallout from the previous scene. Otherwise it wasn't really fallout, it was just meaningless froth and bubble. But the approach of the typical D&D module is to ensure that no fallout ever matters - and often within a story before framework, so (eg) if the PCs kill a particular antagonist early, the GM has advice on how to keep the villains going in any event, or if the PCs miss a crucial clue the GM has advice on how to make sure they get the information in any event, etc.

The 4e modules I own are mostly like this. I used bits and pieces of them for maps, characters, stat blocks, and ideas for particular scenes or antagonists. But not as written.

The single best 4e adventure I used was Heathen, from one of the early - and free - 4e-era Dungeon magazines. I cut away some of the cruft. But in its basic structure it resembled the excellent Prince Valiant episode The Crimson Bull - which is the best example I know of a multi-site, multi-event scenario for a scene-framing-based game.

The core structure of both these scenarios is to use the early episodes to reveal aspects of the antagonist, and elements of the stakes, so that in structural terms they form part of the framing of the final climactic scene even though - in the fiction - they occur at earlier times and places.

Anyway, on the back of that account of how scene-framed play works, here is why 4e lends itself to it: most PCs have rich hooks built in which the GM can respond to in framing scenes (as I said, there are some exceptions - archer rangers don't bring much energy to the table by default, and I think halflings are the same of the PHB races); the mechanics give the players a lot of capacity to impose their will on the fiction through robust action declarations that really make things happen and with little to no GM gatekeeping; and there is tight scene-based resolution for both combat and non-combat (skill challenges are the key mechanic for the latter).

If you look at the thread I linked to earlier - D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e - you can see all this discussed in quite a bit more detail.

And from the same thread, a post I also just made contrasting scene-framing with Dungeon World/PbtA:

Here's one way the difference plays out in the 4e vs DW context:

DW relies on each check to be a possible source of complication - and the pacing considerations of success vs failure are managed via the use of the 6- equal "the GM may make as hard and direct a move as they like" together with the 7-9, which is a success but normally also licences the GM to make some sort of move, which may be quite hard (eg deal damage) though from a constrained list.

In 4e, there is generally only success or failure on any given check, because that balance bewteen failure and success and what that means for pacing is played out over the whole of the resolution of the scene. So in non-combat, individual checks in a skill challenge may fail, but the challenge itself is lost only if 3 failures occur - so the end-state of the challenge is success, success but with some failed checks which will mean some things happened that the PCs didn't like, or failure. In combat, similarly, individual PCs may suffer damage or even die, or suffer in other ways (eg lose or have to spend equipment, or suffer a disease or curse, or have someone they care for like a NPC be killed). So even though each check is binary the end-state is just like for a skill challenge.

Other games that use a scene-framing approach to "story now" that is very similar to 4e's, rather than the PbtA approach, are HeroWars/Quest (one of the earliest systematic scene-framed RPGs), Cortex+ Heroic (and I suspect Cortex+/Prime more generally - @Aldarc will know). Prince Valiant and Burning Wheel are also scene-based games, but probably not quite as close in their core structure to 4e as those other ones. (That said, the best GM guide I read for 4e was Luke Crane's Adventure Burner for Burning Wheel.)

Sorry to recycle replies, but hopefully those help make the ideas I was using a bit clearer.

 

[pemerton]

So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?

No.