thoughts on Apocalypse World?

[Marc_C]

I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.

 

[Numidius]

I'm not sure about that. I think that the use of dice adds something different from just saying what honesty demands.

I agree.
Anyway it is doable, even just fewer dice rolls than usual.
I wonder if also handing all rolls to the gm if a player wants a full immersion experience, might be a thing.

 

[Numidius]

I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.

Well, once I had this GM that, after making characters and background, started the session in a completely different situation than what emerged before.
That become soon the last session he ran with us.

 

[pemerton]

I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.

The word "scene" appears once in the DW rulebook, on p 171:

A hard application of this move [introduce a faction or a type of creature] will snowball directly into a combat scene or ambush.​

It's not a scene-framing game.

As you describe it, the person who GMed your session wasn't doing what the book tells him to do.

 

[Aldarc]

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.

IMO, when starting out it can be difficult to wrap your head around what rolls represent in the PbtA engine. Because I agree that they do sound like target numbers of success and failure, but PbtA is not all that interested in atomic or discrete actions of success/failure that represent the character's skill or training in a thing. PbtA is primarily interested in 7-9 on a roll. The dice resolution system is designed to generate complications that push the narrative forward in ways that generate further complications for the characters. The dice resolution system for PbtA is akin to a Rube Goldberg machine where there are patches of smooth flowing action, but also often involves one action in the fiction triggering another which triggers another and then another.

 

[Gradine]

The word "scene" appears once in the DW rulebook, on p 171:

A hard application of this move [introduce a faction or a type of creature] will snowball directly into a combat scene or ambush.​

It's not a scene-framing game.

As you describe it, the person who GMed your session wasn't doing what the book tells him to do.

To be fair, DW is also garbage

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, DW is also garbage

In what sense?

 

[Gradine]

In what sense?

In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.

I mean, a ton of people seem to like, so it's obviously somebody's jam. But instead of being a perfect blend of my favorite genre and my favorite system I instead got an old-school dungeon crawler straight-jacketed by a system much better suited to telling more fluid stories. It feels like a square peg in a round hole which is, in my personal opinion, poor game design.

 

[Marc_C]

Is there a good YouTube PtbA channel I could watch to see it in action?

 

[pemerton]

In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.

Personally, in reading and in my (admittedly limited) play experience I've never got the least bit of OSR vibe from Dungeon World.