What makes an TTRPG a "Narrative Game" (Daggerheart Discussion)

[Emberashh]

Well, according to YOU, but I'm not in agreement on that point! And this probably marks a philosophical divide that we may not be able to bridge. As long as I've played RPGs, my desire was always to act in a way in keeping with being fully a protagonist (modulus the tension that in a multi-player RPG that role must be shared in some fashion, or I guess potentially some players can be minor characters, though not many RPGs go that route).

This is a good example of when using Wikipedia as a source goes wrong, because Wikipedia blurbs aren't going to give you the appropriate context to accurately discuss a given concept, particularly when the specific Wikipedia page itself is explicitly about conventional writing, and not game writing.

The wiki entry for Video Game Writing brings us closer to where we ought to be, but even still can only give a broad overview, and can't really dive into the specifics were looking for. Though it does make clear the distinct differences that occur due to the interactive and non-linear nature of in-game events leading up to each given plot beat.

After all, that entry only barely touches on the video games that don't feature a fixed plot or a linear level progression (assuming the game even has levels in the first place) at all.

Instead, we would have to seek out more specific sources on the subject, which I can't be bothered to do atm.

Common sense however, tells us that the fundamental differences of the story mediums cannot possibly support the same functions in a protagonist, unless we are deferring to the idea that what is going on and what is desired is just story telling, and as such no characters would count as a game protagonist at all, in turn revealing that the game itself is basically superflous, and we're just doing narrative improv with extra steps and less room for emergent scenes.

I don't recall ever saying it was universally bad, or even bad at all, just not what we're interested in.

This is what we call backpedaling when there's a clear throughline from justifying a certain design to overdefensiveness when pushed back on and on to now claiming the issue was mere disinterest and not a problem that needed to be addressed.

There's no 'phoney jargon' here either

So fun story, I just traced the etymology of this particular Jargon. And I even identified the person who coined it around 2001.

And here's an interesting screenshot from The Forge where this term first got discussed online:

The key highlight here, is the very opening sentence of Greatwolfs reply here. The removal of significant choices.

What other word do we have to describe whats being removed here?

Agency is…

…an actor’s capacity to act in an environment.
…a character’s ability to make meaningful decisions.
…a demonstration of a character’s ability to affect the story.

Character Agency for Beginners

What is character agency? What's it good for, and what are some practical examples? How can I tell if my characters have agency?

mythicscribes.com

As such, if we're to take GreatWolfs interpretation as correct, and we should given Ron Edwards himself said the guy nailed it, and we can correctly identify what he is saying as just being what we already know as Agency, then the problem of Jargon reveals itself.

These forge folks for all their attempts to keep a high level of discourse were reinventing things and making them more convoluted through phoney jargon. It should be telling that while the word protagonism exists in the lexicon, being effectively a descriptive way of saying protagonist, the word "de-protagonism", as originally coined by Paul Czege, isn't recognized by anyone other than people following on from the Forge.

GMs run games, at least in the sort of game we're discussing here, so when you have a GM that is prebuilding a large part of the anticipated narrative structure, in a culture where the convention is strongly for the players to 'play it through', that may or may not be a 'railroad', but it IS in some degree deprotagonizing'.

Not really, because the act of denying agency can only happen when the GM enforces the railroad; it doesn't occur just because the tracks are there.

And anecdotally, theres no shortage of GMs over the years who never had any natural inclination to do it that then come to the forums asking about how to get the party back on track. It isn't the games causing these issues, but the way in which GMs are taught to run them. This is why I question the overall point of pursuing new systems when the system was never actually the problem.

PBTA style games do, for the record, address the actual problem by basically handcuffing the role compared to what other games do, but then add their own, as has been discussed in this topic already.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, absolutely. They’re not nearly as dogmatic about this stuff as many here. They were willing to try it because they trusted me, they knew I wanted something different from play, and they knew if we didn’t collectively like it, nothing would stop us at all from going back to the previous game.

Luckily, everyone has been enjoying these games quite a bit, so we’ve continued with new games!

Well, then good for you I guess. I've rarely run into players who want to try other games (especially as different as you're saying), and never a whole table.

I bow to your superior game mastering, I suppose.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I can see the pitfalls of a prewritten scenario, but having gone through a number of them, they can be quite fun, especially if it feels like characters have agency. I do remember a number of White Wolf scenarios where I distinctly felt as if agency was being roughly yanked away from players, more than any D&D module I ever ran, even Dragonlance.

There is definitely a difference in quality of adventures - and few D&D modules have ever been as deprotagonising as some of those White Wolf ones. At one end of the spectrum is a good "threatening sandbox" like The Enemy Within or possibly Caverns of Thracia that has a ceiling technically lower than homebrew but few D&D games ever come close to that ceiling. At the other is "you are here to hold the coats of the important NPCs the metaplot is about" that White Wolf was fond of and I believe D&D did a couple of times round edition changes.

I always preferred the term referee to DM or GM or Storyteller as it felt more neutral. What will the players do in this situation, and play role as impartial arbiter. That said, it’s also their job to apply pressure and challenge - that’s where the story comes. I’ve experienced this is plenty of traditional games, but it’s been mostly due to a good referee.

This is part of why Apocalypse World refers to their GM role as the MC - the Master of Ceremonies. It's a less exalted role. And one of the things AW does is tries to give the MC a good model of when and how to act to build that pressure and threat (that might also be challenge) in a way that will lead to a better story with more empowered PCs faster. And the sheer quantity of pressure it gets you to pour on is absurd by D&D standards; literally a third, arguably two thirds of all rolls lead to visibly increasing pressure.

This modelling good practice means that in my experience a C grade MC will both be as adept at pouring on the pressure as an A grade DM who specialises in it but will use quantities that might make a sadistic DM blush. And by the end of session 10 or so the campaign will be done, with non-trivial odds of the setting being blown up in one final bonfire. And part of the reason they can pour on the pressure so hard is it's rate to go much beyond ten sessions and setting survival is optional.

Does this modelling of good practice help MCs be good at everything? No. No one is and the game focuses on the parts that help the story; stakes, pressure, and what the PCs do.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Not that these questions were pointed at me, but its not really a matter of who it affects more, but of how the game itself as a collective experience is affected.

Its both. Game feel matters.

I didn't say it wasn't both. I asked with which it's more impactful. What would you say?

Well its not like there can't be multiple perpindicular issues at the root of why these games were created. Its just in terms of why the tyrant GM argument is reoccurring is because defensive arguments keep pointing at it as the problem.

The tyrant GM argument isn't recurring. No one is talking about abuse of authority so much as dissatisfaction with a specific distribution of authority.

It seems to me more that the people evoking the idea of the tyrant GM are mistaking one for the other. It's pretty much a straw man.

Thats as true here as it still is when you read the Forge, and historically, the context is clear on that. GMs in the 90s were, even at there best, all becoming tyrants because it was trendy to try and do the sort of thing Dragonlance made popular, and it wasn't long before the Forge came out and all these people were said to be suffering brain damage.

It still isn't the only reason the Forge showed up nor why its creators went down the paths they did, but it is a strong recurring theme throughout the last 20-30 years of indie TTRPG design.

Do you not see a difference between GM Tyranny and just high levels of GM authority?

The GMs input isn't really the issue here, unless we've come to a point where just describing a room is somehow a problem if the players don't get first dibs.

In COC, exploration is much of the point. Your set into a tense, moody world and will eventually find yourself compelled to address the strange occurrences in this world. But until then, you're just in it, and depending on the scenario this can lead to all sorts of things.

My first run at COC, we spent IIRC around 3 sessions worth just exploring a haunted house that had nothing to do with the actual mystery. It was just there as an impetus to bring the characters together, and while not known at the time, the Keeper was basically just making things up as we poked and prodded and got lost in that damn house lol that, as it turned out, was just a crappy old house.

Despite making no real progress on anything of note, I would never say that experience was wasted. It perfectly set the tone and even when we all came to the conclusion that it really was just a crappy old house, the mood was still tense going into what we were actually there for, because we didn't know what to make of what we went through.

That's where the idea of story making game really shines, because when a game facilitates story making, your real life experience is as much a part of the overall narrative as the in-game events are. The line between Player and Character blurs because we were completely synchronous. Mr. Archibald was just as stumped as I was.

There's nothing inherently stopping the PBTA style of game from doing this (Ironsworn does it, and I've had good experiences with how Fellowship works), but they are, on the whole, not very careful about how their ludonarrative elements merge with the intended story telling that comes from the player themselves.

As I mentioned earlier, thats the crux of how my Events system works. Players have a lot of agency to spontaneously create and collaborate on elaborate side adventures, but the way it is designed aligns the system much better ludonarratively speaking.

I feel like that last part got a little word salady, so let me rephrase: while Players can input their own narratives, the game guides the integration of these new narratives into the gameworld through carefully designed ludonarrative mechanics.

The impetus to introduce a new narrative is diegetic, the prompt nudges the player towards a likely distraction in their task, and their input is then converted through improv mechanics into a more concrete part of the gameworld.

Even when the Player wants to be cheeky and try to conjure a pile of gold into the forest, the means by which that becomes a real part of the gameworld is what tempers the amorphous nature of its creation. The pile of gold is now cursed, and makes for one heck of a curiosity, especially when the Bandit chasing my friend faceplants into the pile and turns into gold himself.

I don't think this addressed the question at all. The GM came up with the old house, the GM decided to let you all wander in there. Perhaps to establish mood, perhaps to show that not everything you do will be related to the "main story" or whatever. You're still interacting with the GM's story.

Call of Cthulhu has a mystery to be engaged. This mystery is one that the GM is going to present to the players. How the GM creates the mystery... by using a published module, something he's written beforehand, or something he comes up with on the fly... doesn't change that the game revolves around uncovering the mystery through declaring actions and finding the right triggers to learn about it. That's the game. There's nothing wrong with that at all... I'm currently a player in a Delta Green game and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. But that's the way the game works.

I don't think your comments about "the players in COC needing to engage in the gameworld in more ways than just those that get the GM to say something" actually means anything.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, then good for you I guess. I've rarely run into players who want to try other games (especially as different as you're saying), and never a whole table.

You guess? haha why would you doubt it at all?

I mean, the players in this group are made up of good friends. Being GM for like 90% of our games earned me a bit of favor.

I also kind of put it to them like "I've GMed enough 5e and I'm not really going to do it anymore. I will happily play it, but I'm not gonna run it." So that kind of lit a fire and each of them took a turn or two in the GM chair for D&D, and I started running other games on another night.

I bow to your superior game mastering, I suppose.

I mean, no one said anything like that, man.

But if it was any skill, it was more like a Charisma check than a Knowledge check.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a good example of when using Wikipedia as a source goes wrong, because Wikipedia blurbs aren't going to give you the appropriate context to accurately discuss a given concept, particularly when the specific Wikipedia page itself is explicitly about conventional writing, and not game writing.

The wiki entry for Video Game Writing brings us closer to where we ought to be, but even still can only give a broad overview, and can't really dive into the specifics were looking for. Though it does make clear the distinct differences that occur due to the interactive and non-linear nature of in-game events leading up to each given plot beat.

After all, that entry only barely touches on the video games that don't feature a fixed plot or a linear level progression (assuming the game even has levels in the first place) at all.

Instead, we would have to seek out more specific sources on the subject, which I can't be bothered to do atm.

Common sense however, tells us that the fundamental differences of the story mediums cannot possibly support the same functions in a protagonist, unless we are deferring to the idea that what is going on and what is desired is just story telling, and as such no characters would count as a game protagonist at all, in turn revealing that the game itself is basically superflous, and we're just doing narrative improv with extra steps and less room for emergent scenes.

This is what we call backpedaling when there's a clear throughline from justifying a certain design to overdefensiveness when pushed back on and on to now claiming the issue was mere disinterest and not a problem that needed to be addressed.



So fun story, I just traced the etymology of this particular Jargon. And I even identified the person who coined it around 2001.

And here's an interesting screenshot from The Forge where this term first got discussed online:

View attachment 358407

The key highlight here, is the very opening sentence of Greatwolfs reply here. The removal of significant choices.

What other word do we have to describe whats being removed here?

Character Agency for Beginners

What is character agency? What's it good for, and what are some practical examples? How can I tell if my characters have agency?

mythicscribes.com

As such, if we're to take GreatWolfs interpretation as correct, and we should given Ron Edwards himself said the guy nailed it, and we can correctly identify what he is saying as just being what we already know as Agency, then the problem of Jargon reveals itself.

These forge folks for all their attempts to keep a high level of discourse were reinventing things and making them more convoluted through phoney jargon. It should be telling that while the word protagonism exists in the lexicon, being effectively a descriptive way of saying protagonist, the word "de-protagonism", as originally coined by Paul Czege, isn't recognized by anyone other than people following on from the Forge.



Not really, because the act of denying agency can only happen when the GM enforces the railroad; it doesn't occur just because the tracks are there.

And anecdotally, theres no shortage of GMs over the years who never had any natural inclination to do it that then come to the forums asking about how to get the party back on track. It isn't the games causing these issues, but the way in which GMs are taught to run them. This is why I question the overall point of pursuing new systems when the system was never actually the problem.

PBTA style games do, for the record, address the actual problem by basically handcuffing the role compared to what other games do, but then add their own, as has been discussed in this topic already.

Well, this is a LOT of verbiage to address, but let me just point out that what GreatWolf is saying here is perfectly valid and congruent with what I'm saying! "So, for example, a Narrativist player is making story-based choices, and therefore he needs to have the freedom to make those choices."

What I think you are not appreciating is that, in the context of Narrativist protagonistic play meaningful choices are far more than simply choosing which of the proffered adventure locations to explore, or whether or not to Charm Person the NPC, or whatever. The Wikipedia entry on Protagonist is EXACTLY apropos here, as it makes clear that the protagonist makes "key decisions which affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and driving it forward."

You can dredge up whatever other definitions of 'protagonist' suite you, of course, but I have no idea why ones that are related to things like video games would have the slightest relevance. IMHO there is NO similarity between Narrativist RPG protagonism and that found in the vast majority of video games, so I don't find such definitions terribly relevant.

Again, as I said before, agency and protagonism are NOT IDENTICAL THINGS, you can possess agency without being a protagonist! So, I think you're 'problem with jargon' is simply you aren't analyzing this with enough clarity to see why certain distinctions needed to be made. Nor IMHO are the terms in their usage here exactly bizarre or hard to understand. 'de-protagonisim' or 'de-protagonization' seems like a pretty straighforward construct given the topic at hand. As for who recognizes it, are you really saying that anyone didn't understand the usage? Seriously?

And furthermore, I disagree with your position that there is only some hard and fast "when the GM enforces the railroad" as if anything short of absolute GM force is nothing at all... I have played in MANY MANY sessions of trad play, as recently as in the last several years, and I can say with total conviction that social convention and expectations brought in from long history of play of these types of games can be quite influential. Not only that, but systems that are designed for this type of play are fairly anemic in terms of providing other means. In Dungeon World for instance as soon as the players "look to the GM to see what happens next" or roll a 6- on some check, then the GM is bound to look at well-articulated character features, and/or mine answers to questions, or ask more questions, and supply a plot that is relevant to the PCs.

Which brings us to system, where it is just so vastly much easier to work with a system that is DESIGNED to give you protagonist PCs, in the fullest sense, vs one that, at best may not actively stand in the way, but doesn't actually facilitate it. And most, including 5e, DO in some ways actually stand in the way to at least some degree.

As for something like Dungeon World 'handcuffing' the GM... OK, so why the dual standard here? If you are going to maintain that a player who has some choices in play that will have some impact, has all the agency required to be a full protagonist, then why do you insist that a GM who must operate within certain strictures (and they're not very restrictive BTW) is 'handcuffed' and this is such a terrible thing? I've GMed plenty of DW and at now point in time was my imagination and agency as a GM to do stuff harmed by the need to adhere to the principles and practices of the game. It is like saying that Americans are not free because they have to obey some laws. It just doesn't fly.

 

[Emberashh]

What would you say?

The question itself doesn't work, was my point, as we shouldn't be approaching them as though they're competing.

The tyrant GM argument isn't recurring.

You might be lost in context here. I can't be bothered back track atm but someone was talking about the idea being consistently brought up in these kinds of discussions, and my OP on the issue was in response to that.

Do you not see a difference between GM Tyranny and just high levels of GM authority?

There's a clear difference, but the context for why the GM Tyrant is being evoked is based on rhetoric that describes issues that go far beyond just a distribution problem. This is why I've noted with others how over-defensiveness is self-defeating, as you'll start exaggerating what you're talking about without realizing it. (General yous here, not you specifically)

Its fine to prefer a different delineation between the player roles, but when we're talking about brand new systems and what they bring to the table, and they're being sold on the basis of what X GM is doing in whatever way, which Y system doesn't do, it very easily leads into the GM Tyrant being a common denominator.

Particularly when, after seeing this, others come in and attempt to temper the perspective by, correctly, identifying that the problems being pitched as solved by Y system aren't a system problem at all, they are then met with a double down, and it just continues in that way until somebody eventually comes along and tries to reframe what was said as something else entirely, and then another someone has to come along and recount how the discussion actually went.

The GM came up with the old house, the GM decided to let you all wander in there. Perhaps to establish mood, perhaps to show that not everything you do will be related to the "main story" or whatever. You're still interacting with the GM's story.

Thats where we come to the Writer's Room descriptor, which then gets rejected and we go round and round.

The gameworld has to exist, one way or another, and a player who doesn't end up participating in a collaborative approach to establishing its existence is, from this perspective, liable to be just as slighted as they would under a more unilateral baseline. Should the Player be seeking a new system, or is the effect of not having a say on what the gameworld is being overstated?

As said elsewhere, the only actual thing stopping a more collaborative approach is the GMs willingness to do so, not the game system they're running. If a new system is being pitched on the basis of addressing the lack of a collaborative approach, then the pitch falls flat, and the game then has to try and make up for it in what else it actually does.

Hence an argument from yesterday I believe, that much of PBTA style games successes have more to do with just being simple to run and learn because they're not very deep mechanically, and not much to do with what they do narratively.

I don't think your comments about "the players in COC needing to engage in the gameworld in more ways than just those that get the GM to say something" actually means anything.

As I said, the game isn't about racking up a high score. You can just exist in the gameworld and proceed from there.

In other words, you don't have to play the game to win. You don't have to do anything, but you can do practically anything, within general reason given you are just human in the game.

The perspective on COC you're supporting is that the people playing are coming in to explicitly solve the mystery and beat the game. Thats not how it actually plays nor how anyone I've ever played with approached the game, as I related through my experiences with it. When I play COC, everyone there is present for the spooky and the roleplay. The mystery is near entirely incidental.

The Keeper will eventually introduce a means to get everyone involved, but thats kind of the point, and no Keeper I've ever played with railroaded us. If we reject the Call, to spin a phrase lol, we proceed with whatever consequences that entails, and we as Players as our Characters, are none the wiser precisely because it'd go against the whole premise of the game if it was different.

Call of Cthulu is about the futility of asserting mans ego over the cosmic. That theme runs deep, and is reinforced whether you go after the mystery or you don't. Our agency doesn't disappear simply because, when we step out of the gameworld we're supposed to be in, the Keeper has a general story line that we may or may not be following. It would be futile to begin with to suggest our characters could be anything more than the petty insignificants they are.

This is why I picked on evoking COC in particular, as its a game that's actually really well designed from the perspective of a harmonious ludonarrative. Gameplay and roleplay are indistinguishable.

 

[Emberashh]

Well, this is a LOT of verbiage to address, but let me just point out that what GreatWolf is saying here is perfectly valid and congruent with what I'm saying! "So, for example, a Narrativist player is making story-based choices, and therefore he needs to have the freedom to make those choices."

Ie, you're talking about agency, as I stated.

What I think you are not appreciating is that, in the context of Narrativist protagonistic play meaningful choices are far more than simply choosing which of the proffered adventure locations to explore, or whether or not to Charm Person the NPC, or whatever.

Ah, so the reason you think you're not talking about agency is that you're arbitrarily creating tiers in whats meant by "choices", and the choices as we recognize in what agency is are some lesser form.

But sure, lets run with the premise that what Wikipedia has to say about Protagonists, which as noted is explicitly about protagonists in literature and not games, is applicable. Here's what comes up when I slap "Agency Literature" into the google search bar:

Character agency' in fiction is used to describe the ability a character has to take action to affect the events of the story. It's often used in a negative sense. Rejection letters may refer to the 'lack of agency' of the main character as the reason a literary agent passes on a submission.

For clarity, this is what you quoted from Wikipedia:

key decisions which affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and driving it forward.

So are we now going to try and say that "actions" in the definition of literary agency somehow doesn't include what we would call "key decisions"?

You can dredge up whatever other definitions of 'protagonist'

There are no other definitions. Just what the rest of the literary world agrees it means and what the Forge says it means.

but I have no idea why ones that are related to things like video games would have the slightest relevance

Game design is game design, and game writing is a part of that, whether we're talking movie plots or the complete absence of plot. Which is all besides the point that, even in a TTRPG, individual player characters do not work like literary protagonists. Literary protagonists, which is what you've chosen as your correct definition, are entirely preauthored. Game protagonists are not; they can't be, because player actions cannot be predicted or authored.

So, I think you're 'problem with jargon' is simply you aren't analyzing this with enough clarity to see why certain distinctions needed to be made.

If the logic here is clarity then I can only imagine the kooky things that must come with this logic's form of clairvoyance.

Nor IMHO are the terms in their usage here exactly bizarre or hard to understand. 'de-protagonisim' or 'de-protagonization' seems like a pretty straighforward construct given the topic at hand. As for who recognizes it, are you really saying that anyone didn't understand the usage? Seriously?

I think what you're trying to say is that I'm just an idiot who can't possibly fathom what you're even talking about, and just need to get my head out of my ass and agree with you.

Of course, you can't actually say that, so you shoot from the center line trying to gaslight me, as though I'm not looking at several google results in the vein "what does this even mean?"

As an aside, heres an interesting snippet of one result:

Golly, there goes the GM Tyrant from a 3rd party source this time. Makes me wonder if there's perhaps a reason for that rooted in something the GM always has control over...

Which brings us to system, where it is just so vastly much easier to work with a system that is DESIGNED to give you protagonist PCs, in the fullest sense, vs one that, at best may not actively stand in the way, but doesn't actually facilitate it. And most, including 5e, DO in some ways actually stand in the way to at least some degree.

All systems provide you protagonist PCs. This is, to reiterate, how games work.

And its particularly poignant, I have to add, when we consider the idea of a players expectation not being met as related in the snippet, and then juxtapose that issue with the overall point of any tabletop game being a collaborative venture. As the snippet says, there's a desire to want to be the star of the show, the capital-P Protagonist. Something that, apparently has to go beyond what you already are by virtue of playing the game.

This, to reiterate, is why I'm pointing to the distinction between Game and Literary Protagonists.

Here's a great link to look at on that very subject, by the way:

Video Game Writing And A Protagonist You Don’t Control

When there are as many styles of play as there are players, how do you write for them all?

www.killyourdarlings.com.au

And a key quote:

In a novel, the protagonist will go from point A to point B as the author intends. In a game, this is not a given, since players decide which actions to take. As a result, a games writer may need to ask even simple questions like, ‘How do we make the player go from point A to point B?’

This is where the Writer's Room thats often denounced comes from, fyi. When what a game writer does becomes what the Players do, you're in a Writer's Room.

OK, so why the dual standard here? If you are going to maintain that a player who has some choices in play that will have some impact, has all the agency required to be a full protagonist, then why do you insist that a GM who must operate within certain strictures (and they're not very restrictive BTW) is 'handcuffed' and this is such a terrible thing?

Because the GM is also a Player and its a critical mistake I think all RPGs are making in not designing adequate and engaging gameplay for them beyond Improv and Combat, may be, and relegating satisfaction to watching everyone else actually play.

I started this hobby by full sending into being a DM for 5e. I was sold on the promise of a fun experience in of itself, because to me at the time what DM actually did was obscured and it seemed like the funner part of the experience.

While it was by no means "not fun" it also isn't something Id ever categorize as a comprehensive gameplay experience, and much of my actual fun came more from writing and designing, which aren't gameplay and things I didn't need the game to facilitate.

That's why I call my GMs World Keepers, because I'm designing their gameplay around a kind of world management that will stay consistently fun and can be engaged with as consistently as players engage with their own gameplay. And all of that before the two roles merge and all the usual fun parts express themselves.

 

[Umbran]

Just because YOU cannot understand, or don't want to understand...

Mod Note:
It is past time you spent more time understanding the board rules against insulting people.

The personal attacks and insults need to stop, now.

 

[Wolfpack48]

There is definitely a difference in quality of adventures - and few D&D modules have ever been as deprotagonising as some of those White Wolf ones. At one end of the spectrum is a good "threatening sandbox" like The Enemy Within or possibly Caverns of Thracia that has a ceiling technically lower than homebrew but few D&D games ever come close to that ceiling. At the other is "you are here to hold the coats of the important NPCs the metaplot is about" that White Wolf was fond of and I believe D&D did a couple of times round edition changes.

This is part of why Apocalypse World refers to their GM role as the MC - the Master of Ceremonies. It's a less exalted role. And one of the things AW does is tries to give the MC a good model of when and how to act to build that pressure and threat (that might also be challenge) in a way that will lead to a better story with more empowered PCs faster. And the sheer quantity of pressure it gets you to pour on is absurd by D&D standards; literally a third, arguably two thirds of all rolls lead to visibly increasing pressure.

This modelling good practice means that in my experience a C grade MC will both be as adept at pouring on the pressure as an A grade DM who specialises in it but will use quantities that might make a sadistic DM blush. And by the end of session 10 or so the campaign will be done, with non-trivial odds of the setting being blown up in one final bonfire. And part of the reason they can pour on the pressure so hard is it's rate to go much beyond ten sessions and setting survival is optional.

Does this modelling of good practice help MCs be good at everything? No. No one is and the game focuses on the parts that help the story; stakes, pressure, and what the PCs do.

Well I don’t know about burning the game world down, but I do appreciate the explanations. I’m not sure if pressure needs to constantly rise, only that the game moves forward in some way and that there are clear paths the players have agency to take. One benefit of a well laid out scenario (as opposed to linear plot) is that there can be multiple paths and multiple endings all within a light framework. A dungeon of course in a constraint but Thracia is a good example of a dungeon with multiple ways through it.