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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8586487" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, this is all true IME. So, the very example [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] mentions is one that is derived from our play. My character was quick-witted, and descending a drop using ropes and pitons. I'd already invoked my Nature, so I had rather more dice than I needed (and invoking nature itself followed a similar logic of "hey I need more dice"). So, I chose to do a hasty job, using Quick-witted to justify taking a 1d penalty and earning a check. It was a pure 'boxes' thing! No way did it start with the fiction! Fiction is clearly pretty important in any RPG, TB2 included, but it is OFTEN a 'map of possibilities', like a maze, you can go left or right, well, you can deploy various traits, abilities, skills, and wises, which ones depend on the fiction at any given moment. You make your check, you succeed/fail by some margin, the GM does his thing, and it all references the fiction, but a LOT of it starts in mechanics. Where fiction is MORE significant, in a story sense, is in deciding how things play out.So, for example, last week we beat a Hedge Witch in a negotiation. Well, that was tricky, but at the end we naturally had to compromise a bit. We agreed to take on another adventure, we got some help from him, and assuming we survive, we'll get what we were originally after. At least in the case of my character, that 'originally after' stems from his belief and general background. So, fiction is central in terms of the overall story and thus establishing our goals in a given scenario, but at a detailed level IME so far, we operate based on "what mechanics can I justify being invoked here that will give me the best advantage." In that sense TB2 feels very OSR D&D!Yeah, at least in my PbtA play, there's much more of a feel of really starting purely from the fiction. Your bonds may be considered when you think about how you will react, for example, but I don't recall a lot of strategizing how I'm going to get +1 forward or something. Its more like if I don't have a good idea how to proceed I might invoke DR in a DW game, but its less about getting dice bonuses and closer to a D&D-esque sort of "I want to evaluate which directions I can go next." I would generally think (though my experience is pretty limited) that TB2 is going to put "get me a check" or "How can I bring untaxed nature into play so I get more dice?" TB2 is also a very 'conflict centered' game. Exploration is more 'glue' than anything. You get to a conflict, and its all basically this structured process where you roll against obstacles in a structured way. Even in exploration it has felt more like we came to some keyed situation and it has an Ob rating, and we came up with how to get the dice we needed with the least grind, chance of a twist/consquence, and the most chance of a check! (all without using any inventory that wasn't required).Exactly. DW for instance is generally more forgiving in absolute mechanical terms, there aren't the sort of harsh conditions that stack up on you through the grind/failure as there are in TB2. You generally feel a lot less urgency to milk every throw of the dice, though some will be pretty significant. The dice throwing mechanics are also a lot simpler. You always have 2d6, the target numbers don't vary. You might get hold/forward, and you do have ability bonuses, but that stuff is simple to game out, the strong guy tosses checks for 'strong stuff'. TB2 requires a LOT more thought in terms of getting the right dice etc. So in DW you spend a second or two probably with "OK, what am I doing about the charging orc?" but in TB2 you might well all spend 2 minutes with your sheets figuring that out! Now maybe the differences get compressed with some GMs. DW can definitely produce very high pressure play that really rewards "hey, if I make a DR check now, I can possible get a significant advantage later, but it might also expose us to a soft move, hmmm...." and things can 'snowball', the PC's inventory DOES have significance, etc. Likewise I think a GM could really surface the story and move things quicker and slightly de-emphasize the "milking the mechanics" kind of thing in TB2. It might require building a certain confidence in the GM using a style where maybe not every misstep or untaken advantage is deadly.Yeah, right, DW is just not a game where you are worrying the boxes a lot. You get pushed there by the fiction, the box happens, you are back at the story without a lot of wandering around on that side. Each action is pretty atomic and most of what happens is fiction-first. There's a lot more of a feeling of in TB2 you describe the general thing you will accomplish and then sort of fiddle around with it a bunch until it trips the right mechanical buttons. At least in my DW play that doesn't really happen. You declare an action, a move is (perhaps) equated to it, and you just roll to see how it goes.Yeah, it can be subtle. So, in 4e you have this pretty mechanistic combat process where both sides roll against the other guy's defenses. You can certainly bring a lot of story into that via various paths, but in my game, HoML, there are no 'defenses' and the players roll all the dice. If a monster attacks you, you pick a 'defense' (which can be basically anything you can fictionally justify and that works within your action economy). Its a rather more story now kind of way of running combat. In the limited play we've managed to get in it seems like the typical process has been that the player comes up with a fiction of how they defend, and then there's sort of a fuzzy decision made as to exactly what that is, but the general point being its pretty centered on the fiction. I mean, you may well do like in DW and describe what your character does full well understanding exactly what mechanic will result, but that feels a lot close to 'PC Stance' reasoning "I know how to use this axe really well, I'll threaten the orc with it." vs TB2 putting the mechanics more front and center (or even 4e doing that in a lot of typical cases).Right, a TB2 adventure is a fairly structured affair. It has a location, which you have to get to via the rules for traveling, and it consists of a number of obstacles, some of which may be conflicts, and some not. While its going to be pretty flexible in terms of "Oh, the players decide to talk to the goblins instead of trying to hack them to bits." the existence of goblins at a point in the adventure as an obstacle is keyed AFAIK. There isn't anything like the back-and-forth that happens in DW establishing the shape of the world or what you will run into next. Players do get to inject some fiction, similarly to BW I think, but I don't think the idea of the game is that this is going to shape everything in quite the same sense. Maybe more in a strategic sense it does? Not so much in a tactical sense within an adventure though.'Right to Dream'? lol. There sure seems to be a mind-boggling amount of very specific terminology out there now...</blockquote>

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