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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9032271" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I'll be honest Micah.  I think you're expressing a zoomed out, not-particularly-informed idea of how these games work during play and what they ultimately yield downstream of play.  There are some people that might use Dungeon World non-normatively to express an agenda outside of the game's primary ethos (in the 7 cultures of play it would be OC/Neotrad...on the Forge it would be a version of High Concept Simulation) where play looks like "power fantasy."  Testimonials for that might appear to convey "servant of player desires."  But, consider what happened during the first few sessions (Expedition #1 of the 2nd Stonetop game I'm running):* The Ranger lost 2 of their 3 dogs (as in dirtnap).* The Marshall nearly lost their entire Crew (6 essential Followers both thematically and tactically) during a ferocious effort to save Stonetop's group of children who collect deadfall for firewood.  They would have all perished if not for a timely move by the Seeker and attendant good dice result and a series of subsequent good plays afterward by all of the other players involved (Marshal, Lightbearer, Ranger).* The Cave Bear they befriended during the Expedition was forced to make a last stand against their enemy to cover the PC & children retreat after the group saved Stonetop's children.  That could have gone much worse than it did, but it still ended in The Cave Bear falling prey to an entity of terrible corruption (of which she will now be a part of and that Threat and will manifest in the future on its behalf either in play as a Monster or as a Grim Portent).* The NPC Requisitioned Expedition to handle an Opportunity (to lend Stonetop's Midwife to deliver a child for a goatherding Hillfolk tribe...compensation for success would have been a family of goatherders as assets for Stonetop) went disastrously.  It failed in every way possible leading to (a) the group losing the +1 Fortunes they gained from Returning Triumphantly (saving the kids from the Threat in The Great Wood), (b) the Expedition leader being bent at his failure (which turned into a Homefront Threat last session and was resolved) and (c) the town Cobbler going missing.  If (c) isn't resolved, we're going to have shoe/boots complications (the social issue with the cobbler's parents was resolved during this Homefront phase...that also could have gone terrible wrong).[HR][/HR]That ain't power fantasy.  That ain't wish fulfillment gaming.  That ain't "servant to the players.""Being a fan of the player characters" and "asking questions and using the answers" isn't about "being subsurvient to the players."  Honestly, I inflict hardship, duress, and harm on the players at a frequency and magnitude in these games than in any Trad game I've ever run (and its not close).  People coming from a trad perspective and playing in these games (without being acquainted with and having their cognitive space appropriately mapped to how the games work) could (and has) absolutely feel like "HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE MOST ADVERSARIAL GMING POSSIBLE...WTH?"  That is the thing.  Its structured and principled adversarial GMing.  I have resources I can draw upon.  I have moves I can make.  These are structurally and principally constrained by the ruleset in question.  As a result, all of the stuff that happened above was neither expression of "subservience to players" nor "adversarial GMing."It was an expression of running the game with a combination of the integrity required of me + the assets at my disposal + the creative means afforded to me personally (such as they are).</blockquote>

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