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Throwing ideas, seeing what sticks (and what stinks)
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7489172" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>DW is hard to compare with D&D-like games. In PbtA games each character has 'moves' they can perform (in DW there are common moves plus class-specific moves, many of which are 'pick on at each level from a list'). Since DW spells are just moves there's no clear superiority of 'wizards' over 'fighters'. The moves either might have are equally generalized and potentially fantastical in nature. Since DW relies pretty much entirely on fictional positioning, as adjudicated by the GM, to decide what happens or what is feasible, its hard to say that 'spells' are more generally applicable than anything else. In fact, oddly enough, spells tend towards a bit more niche use than other moves, since they have tighter thematic constraints. In D&D 'fireball' has a lot of thematic and mechanical constraints, but its very concrete, it can be applied in a variety of situations and its affectivity is high (it really blasts and burns things, hard to achieve by other means and blasting/burning is a frequently useful result). OTOH DW moves tend to be things like 'Defy Danger', or 'Holy Protection' or something like that. Not that wizards aren't powerful, just that the fundamental calculus of wizard superiority in D&D doesn't apply in DW.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You can take the Defy Danger move whenever you are threatened by something (fictionally). If you try to dodge falling rocks, you would Defy Danger (DEX). Failure might result in damage and non-progress, conditional success might be damage with progress, and total success (10+) would mean you avoided all the rocks and got where you wanted to go. Its actually a tricky move to use properly, but it is supposed to be used 'When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity', so its really ideally something the player actively gets into, but sometimes it could be a sort of 'saving throw' kind of a situation. I highly recommend against doing too much of the later as it tends to make the game too reactive. In any case on a 7-9 (partial success) "the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice." So it should be up to the player to pick from different choices, maybe like "you can cross the cavern but some rocks will hit you" or something like that. </p><p></p><p>DW breaks GM moves up into 'hard' and 'soft'. Depending on the situation Defy Danger would most often be a response to and perhaps provoke a 'hard move' (something that can directly effect the PCs right now, like an attack). However, DD is also applicable to social situations and whatnot, where it is usually a sort of 'choice to escalate' and might provoke 'soft' moves (something which forces the story further into conflict and represents a new challenge or obstacle for the PCs).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7489172, member: 82106"] DW is hard to compare with D&D-like games. In PbtA games each character has 'moves' they can perform (in DW there are common moves plus class-specific moves, many of which are 'pick on at each level from a list'). Since DW spells are just moves there's no clear superiority of 'wizards' over 'fighters'. The moves either might have are equally generalized and potentially fantastical in nature. Since DW relies pretty much entirely on fictional positioning, as adjudicated by the GM, to decide what happens or what is feasible, its hard to say that 'spells' are more generally applicable than anything else. In fact, oddly enough, spells tend towards a bit more niche use than other moves, since they have tighter thematic constraints. In D&D 'fireball' has a lot of thematic and mechanical constraints, but its very concrete, it can be applied in a variety of situations and its affectivity is high (it really blasts and burns things, hard to achieve by other means and blasting/burning is a frequently useful result). OTOH DW moves tend to be things like 'Defy Danger', or 'Holy Protection' or something like that. Not that wizards aren't powerful, just that the fundamental calculus of wizard superiority in D&D doesn't apply in DW. You can take the Defy Danger move whenever you are threatened by something (fictionally). If you try to dodge falling rocks, you would Defy Danger (DEX). Failure might result in damage and non-progress, conditional success might be damage with progress, and total success (10+) would mean you avoided all the rocks and got where you wanted to go. Its actually a tricky move to use properly, but it is supposed to be used 'When you act despite an imminent threat or suffer a calamity', so its really ideally something the player actively gets into, but sometimes it could be a sort of 'saving throw' kind of a situation. I highly recommend against doing too much of the later as it tends to make the game too reactive. In any case on a 7-9 (partial success) "the GM will offer you a worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice." So it should be up to the player to pick from different choices, maybe like "you can cross the cavern but some rocks will hit you" or something like that. DW breaks GM moves up into 'hard' and 'soft'. Depending on the situation Defy Danger would most often be a response to and perhaps provoke a 'hard move' (something that can directly effect the PCs right now, like an attack). However, DD is also applicable to social situations and whatnot, where it is usually a sort of 'choice to escalate' and might provoke 'soft' moves (something which forces the story further into conflict and represents a new challenge or obstacle for the PCs). [/QUOTE]
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