The implicit problem though is what I was relating through the Kerbal example. Kerbal (in sandbox mode) doesn't force any sort of plot. It has a de facto goal list to follow (ie, eventually you're going to make a goal of going to the Mun), but you can also just sit around and make stupid contraptions out of the lego rocket parts.
By taking that framework and approaching it with the direct intent to make a story happen, it quickly spirals out of control.
This doesn't mean forcing a plot. It means forcing a narrative.
I think I understand your issue, especially with the rest of your reply. The MC in Apocalypse World is not supposed to be framing neutral situations. It’s made explicit in the agenda that you’re supposed to make their lives not boring. This also leads to zooming in and out as necessary with time handled pretty fluidly. Based on your comments about turn structure, I assume you prefer a style where that is handled more discretely.
Apocalypse World is a game that is designed to focus on the PCs and exploring their dangerous lives. I think what you describe is a valid issue for you, but I also think the game is doing what it was designed to do. It’s also perfectly fine not to be interested in that or want that out of a game.
I don't believe I related it in this topic, but in the past Ive given a criticism of PBTA being the fact that its near impossible to play most of them without a Narrative forming. I can't just play, I always have to be telling the story the game constructs. They feel like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenn Ross telling me to naughty word myself, metaphorically. (Literally in AWs case)
I don't think, given that, its coincidental all of my favorite games are ones where I have the relative freedom to just not do anything like that. Simulator games tend to do it the best, as do sandbox and open world games. But even more structured experiences can introduce that sort of lull state.
As noted above, I think what you’re seeing is an intentional part of the design.
Civ V for example is one where I can just play. I often will set up Marathon games where I turn all the victory conditions off. Id probably like EU4 and all that better, but the Civ games appeal to me more.
And in the tabletop space, the ones I play and prefer all support it. When I play DCC, we can just dick around within the context of the game and its still all good fun, and I'm intentionally designing my own game to be very supportive of this, as well as the concept of "home" in games. (A virtual Third Space)
My homebrew system is designed to support “campaign as science experiment”. The players indicate at the beginning what they want to accomplish in the campaign, and then we play to find out whether they do. The referee is just supposed to be playing the world though, so neutral play is possible. Rewards are based on accomplishing player- and group-set goals. For example, one
session was mostly downtime where Deirdre (the barbarian) wanted to brag to people about their adventures while Dingo (the thief) set up a prank.
Something I should note is I still use degrees of success as inspired by Apocalypse World and have some influence from games like that. The reason is to constrain the referee, so I can’t use my conception of the situation to negate the PCs’ actions. If the PCs get success, I have to respect that even when adding consequences (per
here). For example,
tricking the dragon into eating a poisoned corpse is the kind of gambit that one unintentionally undermine by deciding things about the dragon that would make it not fall for the trick.
Indeed, this is another reason why Ironsworn in particular clicks for me, because the bulk of the narrative it imposes is the same thing I'd do when I play. It doesn't fight me because its base experience is how I'd play.
I think PbtA games are the sort where you have to buy in with what they are about because play is intentionally about exploring that and putting your character to the test.
You're not wrong. As far as genre emulation goes, Moves are typically going to synch up with specific narrative patterns that endemic to the genre being emulated. Go Aggro, for example, is pretty straightforward.
Its emulating basically any scene in a post-apoc story where someone is using the threat of violence to get their way, and the possible results reflect how such scenes play out in the genre.
And in fact, going back and reading it (or at least version Im looking at), it even constrains the agency of the player:
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The only purpose such a thing serves is to reinforce the genre. If a character goes aggro in these stories, and the person they're doing it to forces their hand, the story generally isn't going to pull back on it.
This is what the Moves and Dice has to say about moves (Apocalypse World 2e, p. 10; emphasis mine):
The rules for moves is to do it, do it. In order for it to be a move and for the player to roll dice, the character has to do something that counts as that move; and whenever the character does something that counts as a move, it’s the move and the player rolls dice.
Usually it’s unambiguous: “dammit, I guess I crawl out there. I try to keep my head down. I’m doing it under fire?” “Yep.” But there are two ways they sometimes don’t line up, and it’s your job as MC to deal with them.
First is when a player says only that her character makes a move, without having her character actually take any such action. For instance: “I go aggro on him.” Your answer then should be “cool, what do you do?” “I seize the radio by force.” “Cool, what do you do?” “I try to fast talk him.” “Cool, what do you do?”
Second is when a player has her character take action that counts as a move, but doesn’t realize it, or doesn’t intend it to be a move. For instance: “I shove him out of my way.” Your answer then should be “cool, you’re going aggro?” “I pout. ‘Well if you really don’t like me…’” “Cool, you’re trying to manipulate him?” “I squeeze way back between the tractor and the wall so they don’t see me.” “Cool, you’re acting under fire?”
You don’t ask in order to give the player a chance to decline to roll, you ask in order to give the player a chance to revise her character’s action if she really didn’t mean to make the move. “Cool, you’re going aggro?” Legit: “oh! No, no, if he’s really blocking the door, whatever, I’ll go the other way.” Not legit: “well no, I’m just shoving him out of my way, I don’t want to roll for it.” The rule for moves is if you do it, you do it, so make with the dice.
You don’t ask in order to give the player a chance to decline to roll, you ask in order to give the player a chance to revise her character’s action if she really didn’t mean to make the move. “Cool, you’re going aggro?” Legit: “oh! No, no, if he’s really blocking the door, whatever, I’ll go the other way.” Not legit: “well no, I’m just shoving him out of my way, I don’t want to roll for it.” The rule for moves is if you do it, you do it, so make with the dice.
Note the second reason to ask. The player is not committed to a move if they don’t want to make it, but they can’t have their character do something that would trigger a move without triggering the move. Expecting to act a certain way and not have a move trigger would be like declaring in D&D that you are casting
fireball without a
fireball spell subsequently going off. Of course, you could back out and not cast the spell, but there is no casting a spell without casting the spell.
Apocalypse World is structured this way to take how the status quo changes out of the MC’s hands. It does that in two ways, first by having rolls trigger by moves, the MC doesn’t get to say when they happen. If you do it, you do it (and have to roll). The second is that by prescribing when the roll happens, the MC can’t decide whether you success or miss based on a preconceived notion of what should happen.
Obviously, one can prefer that the GM be empowered to make those kinds of decisions. That’s a pretty core element to certain styles of play. Apocalypse World not only isn’t trying to do that, it doesn’t want to do it.
This specific example is actually a case where I'd say the genre emulation has gone completely wrong, as I could easily imagine a lot of scenarios where this constraint would be out of place. Easily ignored in-game, but its still there, and as they say, the System Matters.
I’m still not following how this is “genre emulation”. It’s about how authority is distributed at the table. Compared to games like D&D, the MC is constrained in certain ways and expected to be following their agenda and principles. The game is supposed to be about the lives of the PCs, and this helps keep it focused that way.
So Im not familiar with BITD. I read it once to see what Clocks were about, but by this point I had bounced off these games. Does Stress/Trauma have any sort of feedback response that the Player is obligated to incorporate, or are they just resources with a thematic name?
Stress is gained from various sources. Resisting is one. You can also get it from using flashbacks and from pushing to add dice to a roll. I believe certain advancements also come with stress costs. Stress is relieved during downtime by indulging your vice. During a scene, if you go over your limit, you’re taken out of the scene and gain a trauma (then your stress resets).
If you struggled with issues from your vice or trauma during a session, you get to mark (up to two) XP. That means you are not
obligated to incorporate your trauma into play, but choosing not to incorporate means you are foregoing up to 25% of the possible XP you can earn in a session. Over the course of a campaign, that’s going to result in a character with lower action ratings and fewer advances compared to those who do.
By response, Im thinking along the lines of a Wound. In my own game, a Wound is mechanically a Status Effect, but also directly represents a real, major wound like a Laceration. This in turn obligates the Player to treat and roleplay their PC as injured.
Is Stress actually reflected like that, or is that just left to the player to interpret and incorporate if they want? If its the latter, then I don't count it as being an example of the trope.
Stress is a resource, but it’s limited. When you take harm (such as being shot), you can resist it like you would any other consequence. If your stress is high, you have to decide between risking a trauma or taking a harm. I’ve made that decision poorly before (I had no harm and wanted to avoid take any, which resulted in a terrible roll taking me out of the scene, leaving my character haunted.)
Harm in Blades in the Dark is broken down into tiers. Tiers 1 and 2 have space for two harm. Tier 3 has one. Taking tier 4 harm results in death. If a tier is full, the harm is taken at the higher tier. That means harm 4 usually comes from accumulating too much, but something especially dangerous could kill you outright (but you can resist it). The harm itself is free-form, but it imposes its penalty whenever it would come up for the roll.
For example, suppose I get shot in the hand. If I choose not to resist, that might be harm 2, “Wounded Hand”. That would mean any action roll using that hand takes −1d. If I resist, it would just be harm 1, “Grazed Hand”. I still have problems, but the result is reduced effect. If all my tier 1 and 2 boxes are full, and I don’t resist, then I’m going to be in worse shape. That might result in harm 3, “Mangled Hand”. In that case, I can only make an action roll involving that hand with help.
Note that the GM gets to decide the harm inflicted before the player resists. I have been in situations where I was looking at harm 3 and harm 4 from the initial framing of the consequences. My rival had thrown a massive bomb at me in the harm 3 case. If I do nothing, I’m taking a pretty nasty wound. I was able to resist it down to harm 2, but I was still pretty hurt afterward. The harm 4 was coming from a massive supernatural creature while I was in the ghost field with another character traveling somewhere. It saw us, and that was bad news.
See the Go Aggro example above. Actually an example of an unambiguous Success causing the same issue.
Its not so much that what was done in the fiction was unintended, but what the Move introduces to the Fiction may be unintended and uncontrollable in a way that reflects on the player's agency as their character.
Hopefully my explanation above helped clarify. Of course, it’s fine to not like moves. I don’t particular like the structure myself. (I especially don’t like how it’s used in Stonetop because Stonetop uses them for too many things. Even rolling with advantage is a move, which is absurd. Moves should trigger off of what you do in the fiction. They should not trigger off the things players do or even the GM. There are moves like that too.)
A healthy blend of immersion and that sense of Home I mentioned earlier. I enjoy narratives, and I enjoy them best when I engage them willingly, but I also need to be able to back off from them, and I don't want that to mean I stop playing.
Being creatively expressive as a form of fun for me works better within that space, incidentally. In real life my first passion and most skilled talent is in creative writing, and I liken that as being another reason why I, unintuitively, don't really click with those games. If I want to form a narrative, I can do so dramatically easily. Gamifying it just gets in the way of how I do that normally, so its seldom enjoyable unless the game is in a state where expression isn't obligate.
I don't think its that coincidental that this tends to be the exact appeal of Minecraft, which is another video game I particularly enjoy and find very immersive and homely. Even in Survival mode, you can slip back into the lull that Creative mode provides all the time, and its actually in a way kind of brilliant, as that lull is essentially integrated into the Survival experience.
Once you've got a stash of blocks to play with and an Automatic KFC going, you can basically play Creative until you run out, and then you can kick in for more Survival, and then it just keeps going. Immensely satisfying gameplay loop, and it, as well as other games like it (Space Engineers, Ark) is why Crafting and Gathering in my game is as massive a part of the game as it is, to the point that I innovated a new dice mechanic just to run it. Very exciting.
The way I handle crafting in my homebrew system is inspired by how Final Fantasy XIV implements crafting. You have a completion clock plus a quality clock and a durability clock. Making rolls reduces durability, and consequences on rolls can add to that. If you fill the completion clock, the item is created. If you also fill the quality clock, the item is HQ. Instead of making progress or working on quality, you may also choose to restore durability. There is space here for specialities to affect your ability to craft, but I haven’t explore it yet.
Crafting requires ingredients, which sometimes have to be worked themselves. You could take ore and turn it into HQ metal, which would start your quality clock higher. There are some other ideas like working certain materials might require specific sources (such as magic).
There are still a lot of details to work out and document. Crafting is normally done as a weekly downtime activity (downtime being something players elect to take while in town, which lasts one week for two activities), but certain things make more sense to take shorter increments. I also want to support making quantities and stopping part of the way through. Dingo wants to make fire arrows, and he gets a few done then struggles. He should be able to take what he has without fully filling the progress clock.
