# thoughts on Apocalypse World?



## Bird Of Play (Sep 27, 2021)

This dude I know has the manual for that rpg, and looks like I may join his campaign.
The manual seems very intriguing and absolutely up my alley, but I'm confused about how the DM explained me that he doesn't prepare anything in advance. How do you make a good story like this?

Has anybody tried that rpg?


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## aramis erak (Sep 27, 2021)

I have not tried it, but have read it. That sexual activity is one of the primary mechanical subunits is, for me, off-putting; it thrusts an element I avoid in general in RPGs into a point where I would have to say, "Hey, I don't want this move used"...

The wording "To do it, do it" was, for me, the singularly most obtuse advice given in a game. (It was finally explained to me successfully by Luke Crane. "To get to roll, have the character do the triggering action in the fiction" is what it means.

It's one of the most influential games written.


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## Bird Of Play (Sep 27, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> I have not tried it, but have read it. That sexual activity is one of the primary mechanical subunits is, for me, off-putting; it thrusts an element I avoid in general in RPGs into a point where I would have to say, "Hey, I don't want this move used"...
> 
> The wording "To do it, do it" was, for me, the singularly most obtuse advice given in a game. (It was finally explained to me successfully by Luke Crane. "To get to roll, have the character do the triggering action in the fiction" is what it means.
> 
> It's one of the most influential games written.




Yeah the whole sexual activity part, I still haven't understood since I didn't play it yet.

Looks like is actually something that..... gives a bonus or an effect to your character? Did I get it right?

If so, I like it: it allows to roleplay sexual elements as part of the story (and shock value I guess) and AVOID using them for an erotic rpg, which I don't enjoy.
If I got it right, you don't get to actually roleplay a sex scene (which would be all kind of disturbing to me....). But you get to say "ok, my character just did it with this X character, now I get this and that, and the event may influence the story".
I got it right, isn't it? ....isn't it??


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## aramis erak (Sep 27, 2021)

Bird Of Play said:


> Yeah the whole sexual activity part, I still haven't understood since I didn't play it yet.
> 
> Looks like is actually something that..... gives a bonus or an effect to your character? Did I get it right?
> 
> ...



No, it doesn't require playing the sex scene. 
But it does make sexual activity a significant part of the mechanical interest, and that's where It puts me off.


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## Numidius (Sep 27, 2021)

There is an implied setting, also present on players' playbooks/class sheets, and tons of gm advice, so Not Preparing Anything isn't really true. 

First session (or session zero) is when you make characters and explore the setting around them. Then gm builds on that. 

Trust your gm and go with the flow is my advice

Re Sex moves: just don't overthink about it. Take them as moments of intimacy that have a mechanical bit afterwords.


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## Aldarc (Sep 27, 2021)

Bird Of Play said:


> This dude I know has the manual for that rpg, and looks like I may join his campaign.
> The manual seems very intriguing and absolutely up my alley, but I'm confused about how the DM explained me that he doesn't prepare anything in advance. How do you make a good story like this?
> 
> Has anybody tried that rpg?



There are a LOT of RPGs built on the Apocalypse World game engine: i.e., Powered by the Apocalypse. I have not played Apocalypse World, but I have played several of these other games and their kin. 

It's more accurate to say that the Master of Ceremonies (MC) does not prep storylines in advance. They may prep a scenario or scene framing, but not a plot or a story. It's a game engine that, on the whole, resists railroading. However, MCs do have what are called "Fronts," which are like linked background threats (e.g., factions, events, etc.) that the MC uses for the opposition for the PCs that may come into play. Like if this were D&D, then one front may be "a hobgoblin warlord assembling an army on the border of the kingdom," while another may be "hidden cultists of Orcus among the nobility," or "festering evil lurks in the Dark Forest." 

From there it will be the MC's job to put opposition and challenges in front of your characters that make their lives interesting and exciting. Your characters will have plenty of hooks built in that the MC can play off of. The story will propel forward as a result of your character choices in the fiction and rolls triggered from them: i.e., moves. Your complicated successes and failures will likewise trigger GM moves, which will further propel the action forward. 

The story is emergent rather than pre-prepped and plotted out. Apocalypse World (and, by extension, PbtA games) is less interested in your character's power progression and more interested in the drama, conflict, and snowballing action that results from the choices your character makes and the subsequent consequences of your successes and failures.


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## DemoMonkey (Sep 27, 2021)

The "sex moves" don't have to be sexual. The moment just has to be intimate and emotional.

To answer the broader topic:

_(Disclaimer: Different people have different takes on Apocalypse world. Here's mine, and only mine, but I do think it bears thinking about.)_

Interparty conflict is assumed. The rules do not assume you are a unified team working together for a common goal. In fact, quite the opposite, they make the assumption that the Player Characters have competing, and sometimes directly conflicting, goals and that is OK. *Interparty interaction and conflict is one of the main drivers of the action.*

That is not an easy intuitive leap for many D&D players.

It's also part of why there is less prep involved. You don't need a lot of prep when everything is reactive to what the players do, to each other and the world around them. Even the Worldbuilding is co-operative in session zero.


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## Umbran (Sep 27, 2021)

DemoMonkey said:


> The "sex moves" don't have to be sexual. The moment just has to be intimate and emotional.




It doesn't have to be, but it is generally phrased that way, as I recall it.  And just because it isn't graphic sex does not mean it is a thing one wants to play with just any GM.


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## BookTenTiger (Sep 27, 2021)

Umbran said:


> It doesn't have to be, but it is generally phrased that way, as I recall it.  And just because it isn't graphic sex does not mean it is a thing one wants to play with just any GM.



They should release an app that helps you find GMs you want to roleplay sex moves with.

PbtAr or something.


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## cmad1977 (Sep 27, 2021)

I’ve played it some and I played some games based on it. I had fun with all of them.


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## Umbran (Sep 27, 2021)

BookTenTiger said:


> PbtAr or something.




How the heck are people going to pronounce that?  "pub-tar?


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## Blue (Sep 27, 2021)

AW is a very different style of RPG.  Many of the conventions that D&D players hold dear - don't split the party, no interparty conflict that devolves into PvP, the DM is presenting us with an adventure and we need to follow it - not only don't exist, but are against the feel of it.

The DM doesn't prep like a D&D DM would, but there are Fronts that will cause problems.  The DM has specific rules to follow as well, and that the interaction between player moves and DM moves will have emergent action and plot.  Characters will have things that matter to them enshrined mechanically, and players are expected to be proactive.

I would recommend trying it - worst case it's not what you like but it's expanded your thoughts on how RPG can be done.  Best case you have a ton of fun and also learn more mental tools for improving the experience in any RPG you play/run.


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## DemoMonkey (Sep 27, 2021)

*PbtAr Move: *_*Seek and ye shall find*_

When trying to find a suitable MC for Sex Moves, roll +Hot

10-12:  Perfect Partner. The Move succeeds. Hold 2; each hold may be used to add +1 on any subsequent Sex Move
7-9: Partial Sexcess: The Sex Move is successful, but take -1 forward due to lingering awkwardness
2-6:  Fun Fiasco: The MC makes a Hard move, unless a Hard move is desirable. In that case they make a floppy Soft move.


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## Bird Of Play (Sep 27, 2021)

A problem I have with the manual: half of the time I have no friggin' idea what it's trying to say.


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## innerdude (Sep 27, 2021)

Never played Apocalypse World proper. However, I do have some experience with Dungeon World, which is a somewhat "direct" conversion, and a bit more experience with Ironsworn, which is more "PbtA adjacent," as it's a bit of a hybrid between PbtA and Blades in the Dark / Forged in the Dark.

Having tried to "grok" the PbtA principles first through Dungeon World, my recommendation would be to look at Ironsworn. It won't be exactly the same as Apocalypse World, but Ironsworn does an incredible job of describing and setting the tone for the basic rhythm of play: a player makes a declaration >> see if it fits a move >> make a check >> follow the success/success with consequence/failure.

With Dungeon World, it kinda/sorta made sense, but Ironsworn goes a dozen steps further in really helping players and GMs understand what a "fiction first" paradigm should look like.

Considering the Ironsworn PDF is completely free on DTRPG, it wouldn't hurt to take a look.

Personally, playing Ironsworn was a revelation, in the best sense of the word. It completely unlocked a new way of thinking about and playing RPGs. It's so, so good. All of my players commented on how different and interesting it was, and that the in-play dynamics were fresh and engaging.


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## DemoMonkey (Sep 27, 2021)

The most important thing about PbtA games, that is not well explained, is why the players would make moves in the first place. Because your moves WILL fail a lot of the time.

Here's the part that makes it work for me and my group.

As MC, you have to first establish what WILL happen *if the players do nothing*. Basically the negative environmental effect (which absolutely can include the actions of NPC) that will take place unless the actions of the players interrupt it. Because as MC, you never roll dice to take an action, all the dice rolls to drive the action take place by the players. 

You are just giving them the reason they need to roll the dice,


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## Ovinomancer (Sep 27, 2021)

Bird Of Play said:


> A problem I have with the manual: half of the time I have no friggin' idea what it's trying to say.



Because it doesn't play like D&D.  The absolute biggest thing to change is that PbtA games do not use the D&D style check system where a failure means you just don't do something.  A check is a test to see who gets to say what about the fiction -- if you succeed, you get to say what happens because you succeed at what you were trying to do.  If you fail, the GM gets to say what happens, and will make things worse for you.  At no point does the GM get a 'turn' in the way they do in D&D -- they set the scene, establish the immediate peril, and play moves forward with the players reacting.  This requires a great deal more from the players because you're not trying to get the GM to tell you more about the world or the situation or to figure out how you "solve" it, but rather you're making moves that then change what's going on in a major way.  Failed checks are the closest the GM gets to having a turn, in that they can then make a move that will complicate the situation or cause harm/consequence to the players.  And this harm is much more broad than losing hps, as the GM is supposed to put direct pressure on the things the PCs care about.  None of it is guided play like in D&D, though.


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## Tonguez (Sep 27, 2021)

Umbran said:


> It doesn't have to be, but it is generally phrased that way, as I recall it.  And just because it isn't graphic sex does not mean it is a thing one wants to play with just any GM.



Yeah, While I’m okay with the mechanics if they fit the genre/approach  the writers could have easily used  “_if you get intimate with another character_ …” rather than “i_f you have sex with another character_…” and applied the same mechanics without the same ickiness

Also have a look at Monsterhearts and how it used ‘Strings’ to represent the emotional ties. Of course that entire game is about protecting those Heartstrings …






Aldarc said:


> There are a LOT of RPGs built on the Apocalypse World game engine: i.e., Powered by the Apocalypse. I have not played Apocalypse World, but I have played several of these other games and their kin.
> 
> It's more accurate to say that the Master of Ceremonies (MC) does not prep storylines in advance. They may prep a scenario or scene framing, but not a plot or a story. It's a game engine that, on the whole, resists railroading. However, MCs do have what are called "Fronts," which are like linked background threats (e.g., factions, events, etc.) that the MC uses for the opposition for the PCs that may come into play. Like if this were D&D, then one front may be "a hobgoblin warlord assembling an army on the border of the kingdom," while another may be "hidden cultists of Orcus among the nobility," or "festering evil lurks in the Dark Forest."
> 
> ...



Yeah the Fronts and Frameworks of PbtA are a great tool and one I’ve adopted for use in other games including D&D - it succintly covers NPC motivation, plot milestones and setting flavour on a convenient A4 sheet


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## Randomthoughts (Sep 27, 2021)

Bird Of Play said:


> Has anybody tried that rpg?



I've read AW, but not played or ran it. I've ran a few sessions of PbtA games: Ironsworn and Zombie World, both of which (as someone else said) are AW-adjacent. That's probably why I like both of them (and I _really_ like Zombie World).

While I was not turned off from the sex moves of AW, I would only run it with the right group...which I haven't found yet tbh. But I highly recommend you try it (so long as you're not squicky about sex moves) since AW or PbtA rule set is so influential (as someone had stated).

Two recommendations for players (from an inexperienced PbtA MC):
1. Things are done with Moves, so it's something to get used to. I initially found it jarring since the step would be a player describing what he/she does, which translate to a Move (determined by the MC usually), a random element is used (ZW uses cards for example) and the MC describes what happens. You get used to it but I found that step unnecessary and sometimes confusing (as MC, i.e., what Move applies here? Why can't I just roll?).

2. As a player, try to be proactive. The set up establishes a lot of drama, conflict and dynamics. It shines when the players go with that, pursuing their goals that inevitably conflict with other PC goals.  When they sit back and wait for things to happen, it's harder on the MC (at least IME).

Which brings me to my final comment: I found both ZW and Ironsworn to be taxing on the MC (me) at the moment. I tried ZW especially to avoid prepping, and true to its word, you don't need to (besides knowing the rules). But I relied on A LOT of tropes and self-knowledge of the zombie genre to move things forward b/c (1) no one knew where things were going and (2) the players weren't that pro-active.

Anyway, good luck with the game!

EDIT: I'm definitely going to import the use of Fronts to ZW. One Front is kind of assumed (zombies, duh) but I didn't have that in mind initially. Fate cards are used to establish them.


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## Campbell (Sep 27, 2021)

I have run a lot of Apocalypse World. Sex moves are really only a thing if the fiction goes there. In my experience it can happen from time to time, but is not like a thing that permeates play.


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## Malmuria (Sep 27, 2021)

I have not played, but did read the book because it's so influential.  I found the style of writing to be off-putting in a try-hard edgy sort of way.  For example



> WHY TO PLAY
> 
> One: Because the characters are naughty word hot.
> 
> Two: Because hot as they are, the characters are best and hottest when you put them together. Lovers, rivals, friends, enemies, blood and sex—that’s the good naughty word.




Like, what is that?  Is that part of the post-apocalyptic genre?  I don't get it.


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## chaochou (Sep 27, 2021)

I've also run a lot of Apocalypse World and found the sex moves only end up in play if the players want to make that happen. It's not been a big deal in any of my games, and it also gives the post Apocalypse a flavour which wouldn't be there without them.

The main driver in Apocalypse World is scarcity. Everything is scarce - food, shelter, clothing, clean water, heat, refridgeration, companionship, electricity, weapons, ammunition, safety, duct tape, cigarettes, safety pins - whatever it is the player characters need, turns out not to be much of that about. 'Great story' comes from their struggle to build something they believe in against the relentlessness of that scarcity.


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## Grendel_Khan (Sep 27, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I have not played, but did read the book because it's so influential.  I found the style of writing to be off-putting in a try-hard edgy sort of way.  For example
> 
> 
> 
> Like, what is that?  Is that part of the post-apocalyptic genre?  I don't get it.



Try-hard edgy is exactly right. AW is just horribly, horribly written, and I keep hoping some other PbtA game will become the default first read for someone interested in what's probably the biggest shift in game design in decades. Maybe the Avatar RPG will fill that role once it's out? Because AW is just about the worst brand ambassador you could ask for.


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## Campbell (Sep 27, 2021)

Apocalypse World is at it's heart a game about survivors. It's about playing people like Max. People who have lived hard lives and become somewhat broken in the process. Prone to violence, suspicious of others, and likely to see relationships as transactional. It then asks us to see if they can come together, work together, and do more than just survive.

It's Mad Max, especially Fury Road. It also has notes of Last of Us, Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy to me.

It's one of my favorite games, but it's definitely not for everyone. Like Dogs in the Vineyard it's a game meant for looking at violence and human cruelty critically. It's not everyone's bag, but I think it's pretty cool.


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## chaochou (Sep 27, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I found the style of writing to be off-putting in a try-hard edgy sort of way.




I supposed if you're used to the bland, anodyne PG-rated nothingness of D&D then it might seem that way.


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## Malmuria (Sep 27, 2021)

chaochou said:


> I supposed if you're used to the bland, anodyne PG-rated nothingness of D&D then it might seem that way.



hey I played Vampire in the 90s; I know try-hard edgy when I see it


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## chaochou (Sep 27, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> hey I played Vampire in the 90s; I know try-hard edgy when I see it



Mostly when people say they don't like the tone of Apocalypse World, what they actually mean is they don't like the candour with which the game prevents them from railroading the PCs through their pre-made plot.

In this regard it _couldn't be more different_ from Vampire. That was fake edgy. AW definitely isn't.


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## niklinna (Sep 28, 2021)

chaochou said:


> Mostly when people say they don't like the tone of Apocalypse World, what they actually mean is they don't like the candour with which the game prevents them from railroading the PCs through their pre-made plot.
> 
> In this regard it _couldn't be more different_ from Vampire. That was fake edgy. AW definitely isn't.



Well, the game as such isn't fake try-hard edgy, but the prose style, yeah, it's really working that angle hard.


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## niklinna (Sep 28, 2021)

Oh and if you're looking for something in the lineage of Apocalypse World, but not specifically Powered by the Apocalypse, check out Blades in the Dark and its offshoots (known as Forged in the Dark, see what they did there?).


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## hawkeyefan (Sep 28, 2021)

I’ve only ever played two sessions of Apocalypse World, but I liked it quite a bit. It was a big part of me moving away from only playing traditional games. I’ve since played several games that are direct descendants of Apocalypse World.

It’s a foundational book for the hobby, I’d say, and I think anyone who’s interested in RPGs should grab a copy and at least read it.

It’s unapologetically R-rated. And yes, at times the tone can be a little over the top…but so what? I understand that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean it’s poorly written. The writing evokes the feel that the game is going for.

And aside from those moments of tonal indulgence by the Bakers, you also get some very clearly described processes. It also discusses RPGing in an interesting way, and offers specific principles to promote the kind of play the game is designed to deliver.

I think “seminal” is likely the most accurate word to describe it.


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## mythago (Sep 28, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Try-hard edgy is exactly right. AW is just horribly, horribly written, and I keep hoping some other PbtA game will become the default first read for someone interested in what's probably the biggest shift in game design in decades. Maybe the Avatar RPG will fill that role once it's out? Because AW is just about the worst brand ambassador you could ask for.



You mean like Masks, which not only takes the PbtA engine and runs with its strengths, but does so in a popular genre (superheroes) that still manages to work the 'relationship moves' mechanics in a less R-rated way?


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## Tun Kai Poh (Sep 28, 2021)

What's been said about tropes in PbtA is right on the ball. You don't have to prepare a specific scenario with lots of stats, NPCs and maps (although you can). You just need to know the tropes of the genre you're playing in. The players will help the GM (or MC) to make stuff up that fits the tropes. The moves will play into the tropes. And those playbooks will definitely play up those tropes.


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## J.Quondam (Sep 28, 2021)

Does someone have a recommended gaming stream/podcast that's an especially good example of how any of these PbtA games work mechanically?


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## Tun Kai Poh (Sep 28, 2021)

+1 Forward
					

iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/+1-forward/id1110623840 RSS:  http://1forward.libsyn.com/rss



					www.gauntlet-rpg.com


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## Tonguez (Sep 28, 2021)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> What's been said about tropes in PbtA is right on the ball. You don't have to prepare a specific scenario with lots of stats, NPCs and maps (although you can). You just need to know the tropes of the genre you're playing in. The players will help the GM (or MC) to make stuff up that fits the tropes. The moves will play into the tropes. And those playbooks will definitely play up those tropes.




While the narrative first approach is great I do find the Playbooks and the limited set of Moves to be restrictive, especially with the way some of them are worded. I prefer FATE Accelerated’s use of Approaches+Aspects across the standard Four Actions.

That said I do like City of Mists which has a few easy to understand basic moves and aspect-like Tags (instead of Playbook moves)


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## J.Quondam (Sep 28, 2021)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> +1 Forward
> 
> 
> iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/+1-forward/id1110623840 RSS:  http://1forward.libsyn.com/rss
> ...



Thanks! I'll check that out.


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## aramis erak (Sep 28, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I have not played, but did read the book because it's so influential.  I found the style of writing to be off-putting in a try-hard edgy sort of way.  For example
> 
> 
> 
> Like, what is that?  Is that part of the post-apocalyptic genre?  I don't get it.



It is in certain levels of budget for the movies. inexperienced but hottie types hired not for acting but for the ability to spur lust, and in a setting where their clothes are likely to get ripped.

In other budget levels, the locals may look like the casting director cleared out an NYC "shooting gallery" of its homeless addicts, but the mains (good and bad) will still be smoking hotties. The Karl Urban Judge Dread comes to mind, tho it's a little off genre for AW. Also Tank Girl, Road Warrior. 

So, it's not entirely off base for some parts of the PA genre...

Note that other forms of PA don't do that; it's rare in what PA fiction I have read for the characters to be described as attractive, let alone hotties.


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## Manbearcat (Sep 28, 2021)

Vincent Baker is not “try-hard edgy.”

Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World are written from the perspective of brutality and honesty. Honesty about the disposition of the setting and the members that occupy it. Brutality about what happens when you try to live out and enforce a creed amidst flock of weak souls or claw out a meager existence in a barren, broken world that is only concerned with telling you to go eff yourself.

In the former, you get a lot of “brother x” and “sister y” and “easy now” and “I cast you out.” It’s gun-toting Paladins hiding their fear and fragility under a veneer of formality and Faith.

In the latter you get a lot of Lords of the Flies performative cursing and swaggering (watch any collection of 10-13 year old boys and AW basically plays out before your eyes) variations of “go eff yourself” and “don’t sing it…bring it” and “it’ll cost you.” It’s kinetic, it’s feral, its hard and scared people posturing for their lives in a Jenga Tower one pull away from collapsing. This is not sanitized apocalyptica-ery (should there be such a thing?).


Play the game (right…and play it hard). If you don’t get the prose for Dogs or AW after running it, then the arena of conflicts in those games aren’t for you.

And I’ve run about 100 sessions of Apocalypse World. Sex moves are about relationships in a world that is scrambling to not be reduced to its constituent and rote biological parts. And they’re about power and connection and distraction (same as ever). They come into play as often as your group wants. Perhaps once a session. Perhaps every 2-4 sessions. It’s about what the sex means to the characters of the world and their conception of themselves and each other. It’s not erotica.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Vincent Baker is not “try-hard edgy.”
> 
> Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World are written from the perspective of brutality and honesty. Honesty about the disposition of the setting and the members that occupy it. Brutality about what happens when you try to live out and enforce a creed amidst flock of weak souls or claw out a meager existence in a barren, broken world that is only concerned with telling you to go eff yourself.
> 
> ...



I mean…you don’t hear how pretentious, try-hard, and edge-lord, that all sounds?


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## Manbearcat (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I mean…you don’t hear how pretentious, try-hard, and edge-lord, that all sounds?




Given that I’m not a pretentious or “edgy” person, if I did think any of things I wouldn’t have written it.

The games are provocative and harsh. The prose reflects that.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Given that I’m not a pretentious or “edgy” person, if I did think any of things I wouldn’t have written it.
> 
> The games are provocative and harsh. The prose reflects that.



The prose sells the game short by coming across as juvenile and like it’s presenting a game that is going to annoyingly push for needless shock BS for its own sake to appeal to people that never matured past their middle school days. Parts of it read like the “XTreme!” edgy nonsense with nothing to say from the 90’s.  

The fact that if you get past all that there is an innovative, nuanced, challenging, work that will change how the user thinks about roleplaying is buried under a lot of stuff that reads like it was written in a normal fashion the first time, and the author said, “needs more cussing”.  And I say that as someone who curses freely in daily life. 

The style is much more charming in Thirsty Sword Lesbians.  

The idea posited upthread that if you don’t like the prose the conflicts of the game aren’t for you is just BS pretentious gatekeeping of the most puerile, obnoxious, and absurd, order.  

AW is written in an attempt to come off like it is written by someone in a post apocalyptic movie, but it just does a mediocre job of it, and comes across try-hard and edgelord.


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## BookTenTiger (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I mean…you don’t hear how pretentious, try-hard, and edge-lord, that all sounds?



It's pretty demeaning to read someone's words about how much they like a system, obviously going above and beyond to describe it, and reduce it to saying they're being pretentious, try-hard, and edge-lord. You're not exactly creating a space where people are going to want to tell you what they like to play.

@Manbearcat I didn't realize the same person was behind Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World. I have limited experience with Dogs but I absolutely love it. The manual was NOT easy to read, but working through it I really wound up getting an understanding for the feel and language of the game.

He also has one of my favorite pieces of GMing advice. When the characters roll into town, don't have NPCs pretend everything is fine as you hope the characters will discover the secret threat... Have the first NPC they meet spill all the dirty laundry of the town, glad to finally have an outsider who hasn't already heard all the rumors!


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## hawkeyefan (Sep 28, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> It is in certain levels of budget for the movies. inexperienced but hottie types hired not for acting but for the ability to spur lust, and in a setting where their clothes are likely to get ripped.
> 
> In other budget levels, the locals may look like the casting director cleared out an NYC "shooting gallery" of its homeless addicts, but the mains (good and bad) will still be smoking hotties. The Karl Urban Judge Dread comes to mind, tho it's a little off genre for AW. Also Tank Girl, Road Warrior.
> 
> ...




I take the description of them being hot not necessarily as a physical descriptor that, as you put it, "they're hotties" so much as a state of being. They're hot in that they're charged up. They're full of emotion and energy. The world is crap and they don't know if they'll make it through tomorrow.....so they live accordingly.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

Tonguez said:


> While the narrative first approach is great I do find the Playbooks and the limited set of Moves to be restrictive, especially with the way some of them are worded. I prefer FATE Accelerated’s use of Approaches+Aspects across the standard Four Actions.
> 
> That said I do like City of Mists which has a few easy to understand basic moves and aspect-like Tags (instead of Playbook moves)



Yeah the moves are kinda odd. But like most things, the first iteration isn’t the best one, and a lot of games derived from AW (whether pbta or just adjacent) do moves better, in ways that don’t feel restrictive or as clunky.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

BookTenTiger said:


> It's pretty demeaning to read someone's words about how much they like a system, obviously going above and beyond to describe it, and reduce it to saying they're being pretentious, try-hard, and edge-lord. You're not exactly creating a space where people are going to want to tell you what they like to play.
> 
> @Manbearcat I didn't realize the same person was behind Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World. I have limited experience with Dogs but I absolutely love it. The manual was NOT easy to read, but working through it I really wound up getting an understanding for the feel and language of the game.
> 
> He also has one of my favorite pieces of GMing advice. When the characters roll into town, don't have NPCs pretend everything is fine as you hope the characters will discover the secret threat... Have the first NPC they meet spill all the dirty laundry of the town, glad to finally have an outsider who hasn't already heard all the rumors!



Fair point. @Manbearcat I apologize for how I put my criticism of the game. It wasn’t my intention to aim my critique at you.


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## Manbearcat (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The idea posited upthread that if you don’t like the prose the conflicts of the game aren’t for you is just BS pretentious gatekeeping of the most puerile, obnoxious, and absurd, order.




This is the sort of charged emotional response that would serve you well in Apocalypse World. That is exactly the kind of vitriol and vigor the game is looking for.

I think you’d do well as a player and like the game.


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## niklinna (Sep 28, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> This is the sort of charged emotional response that would serve you well in Apocalypse World. That is exactly the kind of vitriol and vigor the game is looking for.
> 
> I think you’d do well as a player and like the game.



Let's start one up!


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> This is the sort of charged emotional response that would serve you well in Apocalypse World. That is exactly the kind of vitriol and vigor the game is looking for.
> 
> I think you’d do well as a player and like the game.



I do like the game. Luckily I find the prose, though I genuinely don’t think it is good, vaguely charming in a campy sort of way, and gave it a try based partly on the effusive recommendations of folks around here, having played some pbta games, including two people’s homebrew pbta/fitd/whatever they came up with games.  

But even finding it somewhat charming, I have seen many people who would enjoy the game be turned off by rolling their eyes at the prose, and I don’t blame them.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

I will also say…a lot of the game’s assumptions are very “people are very bad, deep down, and only comfort and safety makes us think otherwise” which, while total nonsensical garbage as a belief about people, is certainly within genre.


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## Manbearcat (Sep 28, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Let's start one up!




I’ve got 4 games I’m running right now! But I’m starting up a Dogs or AW game when one of my groups finishes their Blades game. Maybe those folks would dig a fourth if you’re interested and have chemistry with them! 

PM me.


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## hawkeyefan (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I will also say…a lot of the game’s assumptions are very “people are very bad, deep down, and only comfort and safety makes us think otherwise” which, while total nonsensical garbage as a belief about people, is certainly within genre.




Not a fan of Lord of the Flies, eh?


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Not a fan of Lord of the Flies, eh?



It’s a fun read, but not remotely insightful about human nature or the human experience. Completely misses what is going on when groups of boys implode, when kids bully eachother, etc, but it is very quotable!


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## Campbell (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I will also say…a lot of the game’s assumptions are very “people are very bad, deep down, and only comfort and safety makes us think otherwise” which, while total nonsensical garbage as a belief about people, is certainly within genre.




I do not think the game's assumptions say that at all. I think they point towards that when you live in an environment where violence is the norm rather than the exception that breaking that cycle is much harder than surrendering to inertia. I also think that particular take shows a distinct lack of empathy towards people who commit acts of violence.


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## Tonguez (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> It’s a fun read, but not remotely insightful about human nature or the human experience. Completely misses what is going on when groups of boys implode, when kids bully eachother, etc, but it is very quotable!




Yeah, The story of the Tongan Castaways,  six boys between 13 and 16 who got stranded on a remote island in 1965 shows the exact opposite of Lord of the Flies. The boys formed a strong bond and despite deprivations and injuries kept themselves fit and healthy for 15 months.

It could show the huge cultural difference between Tongan and British youth, but a more charitable reading is that humans are a lot nicer and less selfish than Golding and western culture generally expects


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## aramis erak (Sep 28, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Given that I’m not a pretentious or “edgy” person, if I did think any of things I wouldn’t have written it.
> 
> The games are provocative and harsh. The prose reflects that.



The prose of AW loses a lot of potential users simply because it's too far from the common lexicon. 

Dogs was much easier to read and grasp.


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## Aldarc (Sep 28, 2021)

The post-apocalypstic genre isn't really my thing, apart from the weird science-fantasy variety (e.g., Thundarr, He-Man, Titansgrave, Numenera, etc.). I agree that the prose of Apocalypse World is a bit off-putting and obtrusive to the usual tone-neutral RPG rulebook reads, but it fit the tone and style I would have imagined for a hypothetical Mad Max RPG, so I do think it succeeds in that respect. The advice in AW is probably the most solid advice for understanding the PbtA system and its aims. Obviously other great advice can be found in Dungeon World, Masks, Ironsworn, Blades in the Dark, and the like, but often these authors recommend consulting the source (i.e., Apocalypse World) for a richer understanding, and I'm inclined to agree. Even with that harsh prose, it's downright inspirational. 



> “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band” - Brian Eno ​



This quote about the Velvet Underground could very well describe Vincent and Meguey Baker's _Apocalypse World_.


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## chaochou (Sep 28, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> This quote about the Velvet Underground could very well describe Vincent and Meguey Baker's _Apocalypse World_.



Yeah, I think of it much like the Sex Pistol's gig at Manchester Free Trade Hall - where about 40 people turned up. But amongst those 40 people who went to that gig and inspired by it went out and formed bands were... Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Ian Curtis and Peter Hook (Joy Division), Mark E Smith (The Fall), Tony Wilson (founded Factory Records and the Hacienda), Morrissey (The Smiths)...

I reckon a few more than 40 people bought an initial copy of AW in 2010 - but probably only hundreds as I don't think many more than that were printed!


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

Numidius said:


> Re Sex moves: just don't overthink about it. Take them as moments of intimacy that have a mechanical bit afterwords.



AW is still at the top of my list of games I want to run but haven't yet. With my group, I'd be inclined to substitute "intimacy" for sex. I think the nature of the intimacy isn't that material.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Try-hard edgy is exactly right. AW is just horribly, horribly written



I don't agree with this at all. The only other RPG I know of that competes with it for clarity of vision, as expressed by the author, is Burning Wheel. And OK, maybe Over the Edge.



Grendel_Khan said:


> I keep hoping some other PbtA game will become the default first read for someone interested in what's probably the biggest shift in game design in decades.



I don't think that AW is as novel as some other posters in this thread. Of course it's brilliant, and hugely influential and important. But it doesn't come from nowhere. The earliest game I know that supports, at least in a loose sense, being run PbtA-style is Classic Traveller. (Except in combat, which is a bit more wargame-y.)

At the heart of AW (and so in my mind of PbtA) is _if you do it, you do it_ - ie certain actions _mandate_ checks, and if those fail then the GM makes a move in response as hard as they like, that (i) follows from the fiction, and (ii) drives things forward.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

chaochou said:


> I supposed if you're used to the bland, anodyne PG-rated nothingness of D&D then it might seem that way.



If I was writing a set of RPG rules it wouldn't read like AW. It would read more like my posts - ie an academic essay tone but with too many dashes and _italics _used to introduce a vaguely spoken-word feeling.

But I think there' s no denying that AW is written clearly - it tells us how to play, whose job it is to do what (which is well ahead of all but a small number of published RPGs) and also establishes the tone of casual violence and the veneer (at least - maybe it can go deeper) of indifference that are features of the setting.

To be honest, I find a lot of D&D material overwritten and overwrought, but also a bit underdone when it actually comes to explaining the processes of play.



doctorbadwolf said:


> I have seen many people who would enjoy the game be turned off by rolling their eyes at the prose, and I don’t blame them.





aramis erak said:


> The prose of AW loses a lot of potential users simply because it's too far from the common lexicon.



I find it pretty clear as far as the processes of play are concerned.

And I think if people don't like the prose, that's really on them. Vincent Baker is clearly _extremely_ deliberate as a game designer, and I doubt that he wasn't equally deliberate in choosing how to write the rulebook. Sometimes the onus is on the audience to grapple with the work, if they want to engage with what it has to offer.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I will also say…a lot of the game’s assumptions are very “people are very bad, deep down, and only comfort and safety makes us think otherwise” which, while total nonsensical garbage as a belief about people, is certainly within genre.



I don't agree with this.

Here are three examples of play/resolution from the rulebook (pp 198, 142, 152-154):

Marie draws Roark a bath and joins him in it, with dandelion wine. She wants him to bring Joe’s Girl to her. She misses the roll [a seduce/manipulate throw], so I get to make as hard a move as I like, and I choose to *separate them*. “As soon as Joe’s Girl comes up in conversation, he sees what you’re up to,” I say. “He shoves you out of his way and stomps out of your rooms. He takes his shotgun with him but doesn’t even bother to get dressed. He’s muttering the whole way down the hall, like ‘f****n Marie, shoulda known, f***n trusted her, f**n Joe’s Girl…’”​​Maybe I just choose to *announce off-screen badness*: “Marie, when you see Isle that morning her face is a mess. Somebody cut her cheek open with a heated knife. She won’t say who.”​​Marie the brainer goes looking for Isle, to visit grief upon her, and finds her eating canned peaches on the roof of the car shed with her brother Mill and her lover Plover (all NPCs). . . .​“Okay. I do *direct-brain whisper projection* [a telepathic version of the Go Aggro move] on Isle.”​“Cool, what do you do?”​“Uh — we don’t have to interact, so I’m walking past under their feet where she can see me, and I whisper into her brain without looking up.” She rolls+weird and hits a 10+.​“What’s your whisper?”​“Follow me,” she says.​“Yeah,” I say. “She inches her butt forward to drop down behind you, but then tips her head like she’s thinking of something—”​“Don’t do it,” Marie’s player says.​“She forces your hand,” I say. “She takes 1-harm, right? Loud optional, right? So, loud or not?”​“Isle, god damn it. Not loud.”​“Sweet. Plover thinks she’s just leaning her head on his shoulder, but she’s bleeding out her ears and eventually he’ll notice his shirt sticking to his shoulder from her blood. Do you stick around?” I’m *telling possible consequences and asking*.​​To me, this isn't a picture of people who, deep down, are very bad. It's a picture of people who, deep down, crave intimacy but struggle to find it because of the world they find themselves in.

This is why the PCs have their special (sex) moves - at least that's what it looks like to me. Probably nothing brings that home harder than the Driver's special:

If you and another character have sex, roll+cool. On a 10+, it’s cool, no big deal. On a 7–9, give them +1 to their Hx with you on their sheet, but give yourself -1 to your Hx with them on yours. On a miss, you gotta go: take -1 ongoing, until you prove that it’s not like they _own_ you or nothing.​
I mean, to me it seems like that could come straight from a Hank Williams or Leadbelly song!

EDIT to add a further thought:

A key vehicle in AW for the GM to express their thoughts is the world's _psychic maelstrom_. How this is handled, and what sorts of images and information it provides, can drive home the nature of the world (natural and social) and ways in which it might be fundamentally hostile or fundamentally a home for the protagonists.


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## hawkeyefan (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> It’s a fun read, but not remotely insightful about human nature or the human experience. Completely misses what is going on when groups of boys implode, when kids bully eachother, etc, but it is very quotable!




Sure it does. I mean.....can people rise above adversity or not? That's a pretty foundational question about the human experience. I don't think there's only one answer, so I don't view Golding's novel as some kind of definitive answer to the question....but it is an answer, and it's a pretty compelling one. 

And I think that's part of the point of Apocalypse World. The environment is terrible.....how do people deal with that? Can they rise above or do they give in to their baser instincts? That's the question of the game. You seem to think that the game has answered that question before play begins; I'd say it's up to each group to answer that question through play.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I think that's part of the point of Apocalypse World. The environment is terrible.....how do people deal with that? Can they rise above or do they give in to their baser instincts? That's the question of the game. You seem to think that the game has answered that question before play begins; I'd say it's up to each group to answer that question through play.



You asked in another thread about whether and how a RPG might generate a "Han Solo" moment. I think AW is one answer to your question - here's how a RPG could make that possible!


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## chaochou (Sep 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> If I was writing a set of RPG rules it wouldn't read like AW. It would read more like my posts - ie an academic essay tone but with too many dashes and _italics _used to introduce a vaguely spoken-word feeling.




I've no doubt that your rules would read differently from Apocalypse World...! The word I would use for them is authentic. They are both clear and purposeful, but also joyous, vibrant and thematically on point.

I find people describing them as 'try-hard' or 'pretentious' are the ones sounding like pretentious try-hards.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

chaochou said:


> I've no doubt that your rules would read differently from Apocalypse World...! The word I would use for them is authentic. They are both clear and purposeful, but also joyous, vibrant and thematically on point.
> 
> I find people describing them as 'try-hard' or 'pretentious' are the ones sounding like pretentious try-hards.



Upthread I explained that I think AW is brilliant but not completely novel. Part of its brilliance is that it _brings to the surface_ ideas and approaches that have been implicit in (some) RPGing for a long time, and explains and celebrates them, and pushes them beyond previous limits and understandings.

It's as if Baker realised he needed new words to describe what he was doing, and what he was inviting us to do. And he melded that into his presentation of his imagined world and all these protagonists in it for whom this real affection, and sometimes pity, shines through - he doesn't read like an author who hates his characters!

Consider this example, of Uncle the Hardholder leading his gang who are under attack from Dremmer (it's on pp 169-70):

Uncle rolls+hard for *leadership* and hits with a 10+. “Great. We hold firm against a hard advance. It’s a hard advance, right?” . . .

With him as its strong, present leader, the gang will hold together just fine through this exchange, and through another one like it. The danger to this gang is that they’ll be massacred, not that they’ll break.

“Well, you hold firm,” I say. “Mifflin and Putrid go down— Putrid’s guts are all over you — and Pallor and a couple of others are badly hurt. You take a bullet yourself for 2-harm. Your gang badly wants to bug out, not endure another strike. As far as you can tell, you’ve done no damage at all to the attackers, you’ve just broken their momentum. They go to ground all over the place, you’re coming under fire from 3 directions. What do you do?”​
That shows us how the game works. And it shows us how the game puts humans, and their humanity, front-and-centre. Like I said upthread, the only RPGs I can think of that are anything like this are Burning Wheel and Over the Edge.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 28, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I do not think the game's assumptions say that at all. I think they point towards that when you live in an environment where violence is the norm rather than the exception that breaking that cycle is much harder than surrendering to inertia.



The assumptions about play, sure. The implied setting assumptions that underpin the game rely upon the assumption that in a failing world with limited resources and no centralized authority, people will largely resort to violence and resource hoarding, etc. Which like I said, is grimdark, but very true to genre.


Campbell said:


> I also think that particular take shows a distinct lack of empathy towards people who commit acts of violence.



And here ya go judging folks on a personal level because they don’t like a game as much as you do. Again. 


Tonguez said:


> Yeah, The story of the Tongan Castaways,  six boys between 13 and 16 who got stranded on a remote island in 1965 shows the exact opposite of Lord of the Flies. The boys formed a strong bond and despite deprivations and injuries kept themselves fit and healthy for 15 months.
> 
> It could show the huge cultural difference between Tongan and British youth, but a more charitable reading is that humans are a lot nicer and less selfish than Golding and western culture generally expects



Exactly. A D&D example of the same thinking is the writeup of Goliath, but that could be a whole thread by itself.


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## Grendel_Khan (Sep 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I don't agree with this at all. The only other RPG I know of that competes with it for clarity of vision, as expressed by the author, is Burning Wheel. And OK, maybe Over the Edge.




I agree with you here in the sense that AW very clearly lays out how to play AW, which, as you mentioned in a later post in this thread, is often pretty rare. So I should be more specific--the flourishes in the writing are, to me, just terrible and cringe inducing and even corny. If the goal is to get across the brutal, abrasive tone of the setting, the writing is doing too much telling and not enough showing. I get why that's happening, since it can't rely on setting details the way other games might. Pulling off that sort of tone carries a very high degree of difficulty, and, for me, in that respect, AW falls on its face. I hate reading it. Just hate to do it.



pemerton said:


> I don't think that AW is as novel as some other posters in this thread. Of course it's brilliant, and hugely influential and important. But it doesn't come from nowhere. The earliest game I know that supports, at least in a loose sense, being run PbtA-style is Classic Traveller. (Except in combat, which is a bit more wargame-y.)
> 
> At the heart of AW (and so in my mind of PbtA) is _if you do it, you do it_ - ie certain actions _mandate_ checks, and if those fail then the GM makes a move in response as hard as they like, that (i) follows from the fiction, and (ii) drives things forward.




Here I don't agree at all. I think PbtA is a seismic shift. The GM not rolling, the complete pivot away from simulating the world that the PCs inhabit and instead making everything a reflection of their actions, and the way it makes success with consequence/cost the default roll result...that stuff is remarkably hard for trad players to wrap their heads around, requiring a major cognitive reboot for many folks. And it speeds and recenters play in huge ways, codifying a low- or no-prep approach that other games just kinda mention as an option, but then punish in practice.

However, I've read and loved your posts on this forum and you're a damn TTRPG scholar--including when it comes to PbtA--so I suspect you have some great arguments to support your position. Not trolling here at all when I ask if you can elaborate a little. For example, I've played Classic Traveler a bunch and I don't get the connection you're making. Do you mean that old-school Traveler didn't have a ton of skills, so a lot of actions were purely within the fiction?

But also, I think the fact that combat in AW doesn't shift into that traditional wargame mode is exactly why it's so novel. It's not a separate set of subsystems (or, as in a lot of games, the core system, with all non-combat as subsystems), which ditches that sense that the stuff before and after combat is sort of suspense/filler/etc., because it's initiative and damage and all those fiddly rules and numbers that settle the narrative questions. Flattening combat and non-combat is where PbtA is still at its greatest and most divisive, I think, and setting aside diceless stuff like Amber, I don't recall anyone doing that before AW in a useful or influential way.


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## Gradine (Sep 28, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The assumptions about play, sure. The implied setting assumptions that underpin the game rely upon the assumption that in a failing world with limited resources and no centralized authority, people will largely resort to violence and resource hoarding, etc. Which like I said, is grimdark, but very true to genre.



Yeah, this is kind of the biggest problem with a lot of post-apocalyptic settings. The world doesn't get to the point that it does unless humans are fundamentally bastards. Which isn't true. When the chips are down, humanity is by-and-large a social creature. We are not likely to see very many cartoon villains when the dust clears, and they aren't likely going to be as successful as the genre tends to think they're going to be.


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## Blue (Sep 28, 2021)

Gradine said:


> Yeah, this is kind of the biggest problem with a lot of post-apocalyptic settings. The world doesn't get to the point that it does unless humans are fundamentally bastards. Which isn't true. When the chips are down, humanity is by-and-large a social creature. We are not likely to see very many cartoon villains when the dust clears, and they aren't likely going to be as successful as the genre tends to think they're going to be.



Post-Apocalyptic doesn't require humanity to be bastards.  It requires humanity to define "us vs. them", which we are very good at doing, and dehumanizing the other, which we also are.  Add in the definitely among those who are most willing to grab at power are those that shouldn't have it, and a trend in a lot to follow a strong leader who is bringing together and empowering _you and people like you_ and just the concept of authoritarianism. People will be kind and supportive and social animals - within their tribes - and none of that towards the outsiders who threaten their already scarce supplies and way of life.


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## Malmuria (Sep 28, 2021)

pemerton said:


> And I think if people don't like the prose, that's really on them. Vincent Baker is clearly _extremely_ deliberate as a game designer, and I doubt that he wasn't equally deliberate in choosing how to write the rulebook. Sometimes the onus is on the audience to grapple with the work, if they want to engage with what it has to offer.



Fair point!  Maybe I'll give it another read.


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## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I hate reading it. Just hate to do it.



I'll chalk this one up to _there's no accounting for taste_, if that's OK with you!



Grendel_Khan said:


> Here I don't agree at all. I think PbtA is a seismic shift. The GM not rolling, the complete pivot away from simulating the world that the PCs inhabit and instead making everything a reflection of their actions, and the way it makes success with consequence/cost the default roll result...that stuff is remarkably hard for trad players to wrap their heads around, requiring a major cognitive reboot for many folks. And it speeds and recenters play in huge ways, codifying a low- or no-prep approach that other games just kinda mention as an option, but then punish in practice.
> 
> However, I've read and loved your posts on this forum and you're a damn TTRPG scholar--including when it comes to PbtA--so I suspect you have some great arguments to support your position. Not trolling here at all when I ask if you can elaborate a little. For example, I've played Classic Traveler a bunch and I don't get the connection you're making. Do you mean that old-school Traveler didn't have a ton of skills, so a lot of actions were purely within the fiction?
> 
> But also, I think the fact that combat in AW doesn't shift into that traditional wargame mode is exactly why it's so novel. It's not a separate set of subsystems (or, as in a lot of games, the core system, with all non-combat as subsystems), which ditches that sense that the stuff before and after combat is sort of suspense/filler/etc., because it's initiative and damage and all those fiddly rules and numbers that settle the narrative questions. Flattening combat and non-combat is where PbtA is still at its greatest and most divisive, I think, and setting aside diceless stuff like Amber, I don't recall anyone doing that before AW in a useful or influential way.



There's a lot here!

Starting with the mechanics _not simulating the world_ - they don't (in, say, the RQ or RM sense) but also they do. Why is there a custom move when we try to shortcut through Dremmer's territory? Why do we have a move for _acting under fire_ but not for _climbing up a scree slope_ - so the latter may just trigger GM narration unless it _also_, for some _other _reason in the fiction, counts as _acting under fire_? These are all used to establish the setting.

Look at Classic Traveller, and reword the mechanics a bit. _When you try a non-ordinary manoeuvre in a vacc-suit, throw 10+ (+4 per level of vacc suit expertise)_. If you fail, the referee will tell you what sort of trouble you're in. _Throw 7+ to remedy the situation (-4 if no vacc suit expertise; +2 per level of vacc suit expertise)_. If you fail, the referee will tell you the consequence - and you won't like it!

Likewise _When you try to make contact for the purposes of obtaining information, hiring persons, purchasing contraband or stolen goods, etc, make a throw dictated by the referee (eg the name of an official willing to issue licenses without hassle = 5+, the location of high quality guns at a low price = 9+; -5 if no Streetwise expertise; +1 per level of Streetwise expertise). _Close-knit sub-cultures (such as some portions of the lower classes, and trade groups such as workers, the underworld, etc) generally reject contact with strangers or unknown elements; if you fail, the referee will tell you how they have rejected you.

_When you pilot your air/raft in a chase, throw 5+ (+1 per level of air/raft expertise)_; if you fail, the referee will tell you what mishap ensues._ When you jump out of a starsystem in your starship, make a throw [actual number required varies a bit between 1977 and 1981 versions) to avoid drive failure_.

I hope that gives the idea. I remember back in the 80s reading stuff in White Dwarf critiquing the lack of a general resolution framework in Traveller, and offering suggestions to make it more like RQ or RM (which do have such a framework). But looking at it now, and having played quite a bit of it (using the 1977 chassis) over the past few years, I see the various baroque subsystems as a strength: each is a little PbtA-style move that focuses on some bit of the action that _matters_ for science fiction adventure in the far future. It's not as elegant as PbtA - it doesn't exploit the 2d6 maths in the same way, and tends to lack the two steps forward/one step back aspect of the PbtA 7-9 results - but I think it's there in a proto-form. And is (in my view) very playable in that sort of fashion.

Trying to pick up on some of your other points:

The integration of combat and non-combat is found in earlier systems too: Prince Valiant to a significant extent; Maelstrom Storytelling; HeroWars/Quest; as an option in Burning Wheel (using intent and task, or Bloody Versus); and of course in Baker's earlier games like DitV and In A Wicked Age. I think the PbtA innovation in this respect is taking that approach out of the scene-framed context that looms large in those other systems, and instead locating it in an _if you do it, you do it _framework.

On prep: I think Burning Wheel is a low-prep game (unless you count "burning" NPCs and monsters; but it has no prep of plot or even events really) that strongly rewards play in its prescribed low-prep way, and it predates AW. Prince Valiant doesn't promote itself as low-prep, but can be run like that. And so can Classic Traveller, especially taking advantage of its content-generation tools (random patron encounters, random worlds, etc). In A Wicked Age doesn't require prep beyond a "game setup" phase (that is much quicker than what I understand Fate's to be!). I tend to see this as an area where AW is at the lower end of innovation, personally.

What I see as perhaps the greatest, or at least culturally most important, innovation in AW is _so clearly stating the principles that are meant to govern the GM's role_. That the GM will _announce future badness_ or _misdirect_ by _not speaking the name of the move they make _is not new, from the point of view of technique. But _spelling it out_ is a new thing.

Burning Wheel is very clear, by the standards of a RPG text, on how it is to be run. But its advice to the GM on how to narrate consequences of failure doesn't really go beyond _focus on the intent rather than the task_. (The Adventure Burner goes further.) Baker, on the other hand, really drills down into significant varieties of GM-fiction-introduction. One consequence in BW might be _taking away their stuff _(losing gear, having tools break, etc is clearly a part of the game), but Luke Crane doesn't actually come out and give you this thought-out list of consequences you might narrate on a failure.

Like I said upthread, I'm in no way wanting to deny the brilliance of AW as a game or Baker as a designer.


----------



## pemerton (Sep 28, 2021)

Another thought: Baker calls the GM in AW the MC. The chapter called "The Master of Ceremonies" doesn't deny that the MC is a GM, but emphasises (p 108) that while "[t]here are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular."

It reminds me a little bit of Christopher Kubasik's use of "Fifth Business" in his Interactive Toolkit series:

Let’s start with roleplaying’s GM (referee, Storyteller or whatever). This is usually the person who works out the plot, the world and everything that isn’t the players’. To a greater or lesser degree, she is above the other players in importance, depending on the group’s temperament. In a Story Entertainment, she is just another player. Distinctly different, but no more and no less than any other player. The terms GM and referee fail to convey this spirit of equality. The term Storyteller suggests that the players are passive listeners of her tale. So here’s another term for this participant – one that invokes the spirit of Story Entertainments – Fifth Business.

Fifth Business is a term that originates from European opera companies. A character from Robertson Davies’ novel _Fifth Business_ describes the’ term this way:

You cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business. You must have a Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero’s birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody’s death, if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without the Fifth Business!​
This certainly sounds a lot like a GM, but it also makes it clear that he’s part of the show, not the show itself.​
I'm pretty sure Vincent Baker will have read Kubasik, given his reading of Edwards who quotes Kubasik, including this passage.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 29, 2021)

Gradine said:


> Yeah, this is kind of the biggest problem with a lot of post-apocalyptic settings. The world doesn't get to the point that it does unless humans are fundamentally bastards. Which isn't true. When the chips are down, humanity is by-and-large a social creature. We are not likely to see very many cartoon villains when the dust clears, and they aren't likely going to be as successful as the genre tends to think they're going to be.



Yeah, agreed.


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## Gradine (Sep 29, 2021)

Blue said:


> Post-Apocalyptic doesn't require humanity to be bastards.  It requires humanity to define "us vs. them", which we are very good at doing, and dehumanizing the other, which we also are.  Add in the definitely among those who are most willing to grab at power are those that shouldn't have it, and a trend in a lot to follow a strong leader who is bringing together and empowering _you and people like you_ and just the concept of authoritarianism. People will be kind and supportive and social animals - within their tribes - and none of that towards the outsiders who threaten their already scarce supplies and way of life.



You're right, it doesn't. The scenarios you describe are actually interesting PA worlds, where the conflicts are interpersonal but relatable. The kinds of Post-Apocalypse where the biggest guy with the most spikes on his football pads gets to be King of Kentucky or whatever and rule it with an iron fist, while smaller groups of people with football pads with smaller spikes on them carve out smaller fiefdoms where they attack and kill everyone they meet... these are remarkably un-insightful and pretty well played out at this point.


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## Grendel_Khan (Sep 29, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Yeah, agreed.



Not sure which timeline you guys are currently living in, but in this one the notion that unity wins the day is already debunked. We're careening toward a climate apocalypse right now that people have known about for decades, and that no one is banding together to stop. Instead we have the most powerful people and organizations on the planet closing ranks to secure dominance in the bad times to come, or just burning cash and attention on rocket technology that's irrelevant to the actual threats that are currently wrecking societies and economies. That single case of the cuddly real-world version of Lord of the Flies gets tossed around a lot, like a bright shiny object we can focus on despite countless counter-examples of power protecting itself at all costs, the poor becoming poorer and more vulnerable, and no one coming to our rescue, including some miraculous sense of community triumphing over adversity.

I really wish I agreed, in other words, but look at anything that's happening right now on a national or international level. Look at how a sense of community could have stamped out COVID months ago, and instead many countries are right back in the thick of it. 

I'm all for being optimistic, really. But I think you also have to show your work.


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## DrunkonDuty (Sep 29, 2021)

I gotta be honest, the only real difference (between AW and DnD/etc) I'm seeing here is how much emphasis is placed by different systems on encouraging the players to be proactive instead of reactive. That is, how much encouragement to be proactive is actually written into the actual rule book.

I love a proactive player. But before you can have one of them you need a setting the player understands. They need to know the what's, where's, how's, and why's of the diegesis. But also the genre conventions. Even then, more often than not, the GM has gotta push them to be proactive. Having a ruleset that literally has "be proactive" written into it is defs gonna help. Assuming the players read it. But mostly, it comes down to the table. (Doesn't it always?)


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## Gradine (Sep 29, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Not sure which timeline you guys are currently living in ...



This one, it turns out...


Grendel_Khan said:


> I'm all for being optimistic, really. But I think you also have to show your work.



People Are Good, Actually

In fact, a lot of the studies that people point to that say people are bad, actually, have debunked. Stanford Prison was rigged, the actors in the electric shock experiment were not actually very good, Robber's Cave was a do-over, and many of these older experiments just aren't showing the same results when replicated using modern practices, such as actually representative and diverse samples.

Turns out, Rousseau was right after all


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## Gradine (Sep 29, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> We're careening toward a climate apocalypse right now that people have known about for decades, and that no one is banding together to stop. Instead we have the most powerful people and organizations on the planet closing ranks to secure dominance in the bad times to come, or just burning cash and attention on rocket technology that's irrelevant to the actual threats that are currently wrecking societies and economies.  ...despite countless counter-examples of power protecting itself at all costs, the poor becoming poorer and more vulnerable, and no one coming to our rescue, including some miraculous sense of community triumphing over adversity.



These are more complex examples that point to the intransigence of entrenched power structures built upon centuries (if not millenia) of legitimation. In a true post-apocalypse, few if any of those structures will survive; they involve symbols and tradition and not a lot of actual concrete power (one of the most typical tropes of the genre involve econonics; it turns out we've just been making money up for at least a century). When the chips are truly down, in matters of survival, we're actually pretty good at working together.


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## Manbearcat (Sep 29, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> I gotta be honest, the only real difference (between AW and DnD/etc) I'm seeing here is how much emphasis is placed by different systems on encouraging the players to be proactive instead of reactive. That is, how much encouragement to be proactive is actually written into the actual rule book.
> 
> I love a proactive player. But before you can have one of them you need a setting the player understands. They need to know the what's, where's, how's, and why's of the diegesis. But also the genre conventions. Even then, more often than not, the GM has gotta push them to be proactive. Having a ruleset that literally has "be proactive" written into it is defs gonna help. Assuming the players read it. But mostly, it comes down to the table. (Doesn't it always?)




The inference I'm drawing from the above is either (a) you haven't read Apocalypse World or (b) you're not putting together the integrated aspects of system (agenda + principles + resolution mechanics) that create the dynamic of aggressive protagonist (players) vs aggressive antagonism/obstacles (GM)?

Play to find out what happens 

+ 

fill their lives with danger (provacative framing that demands action and orbits around player-flagged PC dramatic needs and 

+ 

how this is done (ask questions and use the answers + Fronts + soft moves to provoke/portend + hard moves if there is no or insufficient uptake/response to the provocation/foretold danger + snowballing move resolution structure and maths + actual danger/cost/consequence to every move made or not made)

+ 

deeply thematic basic moves and playbooks and reward cycles/xp triggers


The game has teeth at every turn.  It will bite you if you don't respond.  It will bite you when you do respond.  As a GM, your job is to bite in a way the players have signaled is interesting and keep biting.  As a system, its job is to help the GM bark, then bite, and deftly manage their cognitive workload as they continuously bark and bite and be surprised at what shape play takes as teeth meet flesh.  As a player, your job is to signal your interests (continuously), decide where/how to take the bites, how you deal once bitten, bite the hell back, and how/if your character can withstand this both-ways nom-fest.

I don't know if that is written too "edge-lordy" or whatever, but that is pretty much the gist.  The system has enormous say on how this whole thing churns.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 29, 2021)

Gradine said:


> These are more complex examples that point to the intransigence of entrenched power structures built upon centuries (if not millenia) of legitimation. In a true post-apocalypse, few if any of those structures will survive; they involve symbols and tradition and not a lot of actual concrete power (one of the most typical tropes of the genre involve econonics; it turns out we've just been making money up for at least a century). When the chips are truly down, in matters of survival, we're actually pretty good at working together.



This. Also, while raiding was fairly common in pre-agricultural societies, trade was much more common.  

In a post-apocalypse, the survivors would have the advantage of more shared language, more shared experience, and having been raised to understand that other people are well, people.  

The idea that climate crisis exists because people are bad, rather than because people are ill equipped to even understand systems as complex as the ones that oppress them (the average person isn’t causing the inertia against climate action, states and mega corporations and industries are), much less formulate the means to dismantle them without armed revolt.


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## Campbell (Sep 29, 2021)

I submit that is both true that humans are highly social animals prone to maintaining social harmony / placing the tribe above the self and highly prone to proactive acts of aggression where we believe it will benefit our cultural subgroups. I recommend looking at this paper which discusses the hypothesis that humans are less prone to reactive violence than our closest primate cousins (chimpanzees and bonobos), but highly prone to proactive or committed violence, especially among outgroups. 









						Two types of aggression in human evolution
					

Two major types of aggression, proactive and reactive, are associated with contrasting expression, eliciting factors, neural pathways, development, and function. The distinction is useful for understanding the nature and evolution of human aggression. Compared with many primates, humans have a...




					www.pnas.org


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## Malmuria (Sep 29, 2021)

My impression of PbtA games is that they are good for genre emulation?  So that AW would be less about a simulation of what dystopia would look like and more about playing in the genre of post-apocalypse?


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## Aldarc (Sep 29, 2021)

Gradine said:


> This one, it turns out...
> 
> People Are Good, Actually
> 
> ...



He was horny, so he dropped him. Man is evil!


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> My impression of PbtA games is that they are good for genre emulation?  So that AW would be less about a simulation of what dystopia would look like and more about playing in the genre of post-apocalypse?



What's our comparison class?

If we're saying that AW is a genre-work when compared to (say) The Seventh Seal or Nomadland (to pick two pretty different films), I can buy that.

If we're saying that AW is a genre work _compared to some other RPG_, then I would be pretty sceptical unless someone is pointing me to a pretty atypical RPG!

Upthread, @Grendel_Khan suggested that AW isn't about simulating the fictional world, and I replied that it both is and isn't. I would say the same about genre.

Consider the AW playbooks. The driver, the chopper, the hardholder, are obvious post-apocalyptic types. The brainer and angel and hocus and gunlugger look to me more like ways of taking well-known RPG character types (enchanter/telepath, healer, cleric/cult-leader, warrior) and locating them within a post-apocalyptic context. Then we have the operator and skinner giving us two versions of the "face"; the battlebabe is a quirkier warrior type; and the savvyhead mixes the post-apocalyptic mechanic/tech-type with a hint of RPG-style alchemist.

To some extent, the AW moves reflect genre: eg _no-sh*t driver_. But some seem pretty portable: _cool under fire_ or _leadership_ might fit just as well in a military game as in a post-apocalyptic one. And _read a situation _or _read a person_ would fit the spy/thriller genre pretty well, I think.

In combination, the basic moves plus the playbooks give a pretty clear picture of _what sorts of people and events_ are going to figure in the fiction. At that level of functional abstraction, I see them as similar to the lifepaths in Burning Wheel; and even to some approaches to _class_ in D&D (less so in those versions like late 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e where class is less determinative of a character's role in the game).

I don't see the agenda and principles as distinctively genre-focused either, taken as a whole.

To me, the following principles seem to fit broadly under the agenda item _Make Apocalypse World seem real_:

• Address yourself to the characters, not the players.
• Make your move, but misdirect.
• Make your move, but never speak its name.
• Name everyone, make everyone human.
• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
• Think offscreen too.
• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.​
These are portable across a very wide range of RPGs. To me, they are primarily approaches, or techniques, for (i) establishing fiction as the GM, and (ii) presenting that fiction to the players.

The following principles, which seem to fit broadly under the agenda item _Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring_, seem to me more narrowly focused (except for the first, which is pretty portable I think):

• Be a fan of the players’ characters.
• Barf forth apocalyptica.
• Look through crosshairs.
• Respond with f****ry and intermittent rewards (also restated as "Put your bloody fingerprints all over everything you touch").​
Those last three to introduce more of a sense of genre, but I think they could speak eg to a Cthulhu-esque game as much as a post-apocalyptic one. They would be out of place, obviously, in a LotR-esque or typical superhero game.

When you combine these more focused principles with the playbooks and moves, the distinctive post-apocalyptic genre starts to emerge. But I don't think you need to change much to get what will still be a pretty tight game dealing with some other genre (military, perhaps a la Apocalypse Now or even All Quiet on the Western Front, or weird war, seem to me the most obvious, but that probably says more about me than anything about the range of nearby possibilities).

I think this helps explain why PbtA has turned out to be so flexible and portable as a RPG design framework.


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2021)

Gradine said:


> This one, it turns out...
> 
> People Are Good, Actually



From that article:

they found that the relationship between processing speed (that is, intuition) and cooperation only existed for those who reported having primarily cooperative interactions in daily life. This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—that human “goodness” may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.​
And that's before we get into (what in my view are) very genuine questions about what can be extrapolated from the highly artificial context of experimental philosophy/behaviour economics contexts to actual social life.

I don't have any strong view on whether people are "naturally" good or evil - I'm not 100% sure what that would mean, unless posed as a question in theology - but I do live in a country which has had mandatory detention of unauthorised onshore arrivals for around 30 years now, and which has a policy of using its navy to intercept asylum seeker boats and put the intercepted persons on islands in the Pacific which are financially dependent former colonies. And this policy seems to be incredibly popular with the electorate - no major party opposes it.

So I find the idea of hardholders who violently protect their holds from the bikie gangs and others who want to enter them to share in their bounty pretty plausible. (I find the flavour text for the hardholder pretty compelling: "When hardholders ruled whole continents, when they waged war on the other side of the world instead of with the hold across the burn-flat, when their armies numbered in the hundreds of thousands and they had f*****g _boats_ to hold their f*****g _airplanes_ on, that was the golden age of legend.")


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## pemerton (Sep 29, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> I gotta be honest, the only real difference (between AW and DnD/etc) I'm seeing here is how much emphasis is placed by different systems on encouraging the players to be proactive instead of reactive. That is, how much encouragement to be proactive is actually written into the actual rule book.



@Manbearcat gave a fairly detailed response to this. I basically agree with him, but will explain in a different fashion.

Here are two basic moves from AW:

*Seduce or Manipulate*
When you* try to seduce or manipulate someone*, tell them what you want and roll+hot. For NPCs: on a hit, they ask you to promise something first, and do it if you promise. On a 10+, whether you keep your promise is up to you, later. On a 7–9, they need some concrete assurance right now.

*Read a Sitch*
When you *read a charged situation*, roll+sharp. On a hit, you can ask the MC questions. Whenever you act on one of the MC’s answers, take +1. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7–9, ask 1:
• where’s my best escape route / way in / way past?
• which enemy is most vulnerable to me?
• which enemy is the biggest threat?
• what should I be on the lookout for?
• what’s my enemy’s true position?
• who’s in control here?​
I've chosen these not because they're especially unique, but because they're very clear, in the following respect: they give a player the power to generate binding fiction.

_Seduce/manipulate_ let's a player oblige the GM to come up with something a NPC wants, which - if given - obliges that NPC to do what the player (via the play of their PC) wants them to.

_Read a sitch_ let's a player oblige the GM to establish elements of the situation - presumably ones the player cares about - and "lock them in", with a bonus for acting on that information.

D&D 5e, played as presented in its core play loop and its rules for adjudicating ability checks, lacks this sort of thing. The players have no power - no matter how proactive - to oblige the GM to "lock in" binding fiction. What distinguishes AW, then, is not just its advocacy of player proactivity but its allocation of authority across the game participants. That's what makes it a work of RPGing genius.


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## Manbearcat (Sep 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> D&D 5e, played as presented in its core play loop and its rules for adjudicating ability checks, lacks this sort of thing. The players have no power - no matter how proactive - to oblige the GM to "lock in" binding fiction. What distinguishes AW, then, is not just its advocacy of player proactivity but its allocation of authority across the game participants. That's what makes it a work of RPGing genius.




To add to this, I would also say:

* How it hyper-functionally structures conversation and deftly reduces GM cognitive load (including distributed authority via “ask questions and use the answers”).

* How “the system’s say” works with that to ensure a play experience that is terrifically volatile such that it’s surprising to all participants.

EDIT - fixed deranged quote


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 29, 2021)

pemerton said:


> From that article:
> 
> they found that the relationship between processing speed (that is, intuition) and cooperation only existed for those who reported having primarily cooperative interactions in daily life. This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—that human “goodness” may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.​
> And that's before we get into (what in my view are) very genuine questions about what can be extrapolated from the highly artificial context of experimental philosophy/behaviour economics contexts to actual social life.
> ...



I think looking at much smaller communities in less technologically advanced eras suggests strongly that this sort of behavior and indifference to actions done nominally in one’s name _requires_ the level of distance and “buck-passing” that comes with a large bureaucratic system like a modern industrialized nation. 

The assumption that these practices are popular because no major party opposes it is easily debunked, just by looking at the same population’s attitude toward universal healthcare. Rather a lot of policies and practices in my country have an enormous disconnect between major party attitude and majority opinion in the populace. 

But in smaller communities, we know that trade has always been more common than raiding, and that neighboring communities have pretty much always helped eachother when they can, and banded together to track down and murder the crap out of outlaw bandit gangs, when possible.  

Regardless of all of this, though, I don’t think there is any rational argument that a less brutally pessimistic take would not also be plausible, so I’m not sure why some of y’all keep trying to tell me that I’m wrong in what I actually said.  

Again, the assumptions of AW, which are the normal assumptions of the genre, are grimdark assumptions made to push worldbuilding toward genre appropriate landscapes.  They aren’t necessary to tell a believable story set after the fall of civilization, they’re just there to promote a focused genre experience in gameplay.


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## Ovinomancer (Sep 29, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> To add to this, I would also say:
> 
> * How it hyper-functionally structures conversation and deftly reduces GM cognitive load (including distributed authority via “ask questions and use the answers”).
> 
> ...



What did you find deranged about @pemerton's quote that needed fixing?


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## Gradine (Sep 29, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Again, the assumptions of AW, which are the normal assumptions of the genre, are grimdark assumptions made to push worldbuilding toward genre appropriate landscapes.  They aren’t necessary to tell a believable story set after the fall of civilization, they’re just there to promote a focused genre experience in gameplay.



This I think is the salient (and on-topic) point. They are tropes of a certain kind of genre that, believability aside, has been played out to death a hundred times before. They were old hat in 2010 when AW was published.

The point raised up-thread (sorry I can't seem to find it again...) is that AW created a toolkit that is incredibly well-suited to telling niche genre stories. The tighter the focus the better, generally speaking. Female Russian World War II fighter pilots? Check. Superheroes who are also teenagers grappling with their identities and the complicated legacies they are carrying on? You betcha. Sexually charged and confused teenage werewolves and vampires? Yuuuuuup.

The best broader genre hack is Monster of the Week, which is itself a fairly a narrow and specific genre of its own.

One last point is that I also find AW _incredibly well-written_. The subject matter and genre trappings bore me to death, but the prose is evocative and excellent. Adding sex as a risk-and-reward mechanic was pretty gutsy and I think help sells the tone and vibe of the stories VB was looking to enable with AW.

I just don't like it, personally. It does not particular well-suit the types of post-apocaltypic stories I'm most interested in.

I would say that I like PbtA as a toolkit way more than I like AW as a game.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 29, 2021)

Gradine said:


> This I think is the salient (and on-topic) point. They are tropes of a certain kind of genre that, believability aside, has been played out to death a hundred times before. They were old hat in 2010 when AW was published.
> 
> The point raised up-thread (sorry I can't seem to find it again...) is that AW created a toolkit that is incredibly well-suited to telling niche genre stories. The tighter the focus the better, generally speaking. Female Russian World War II fighter pilots? Check. Superheroes who are also teenagers grappling with their identities and the complicated legacies they are carrying on? You betcha. Sexually charged and confused teenage werewolves and vampires? Yuuuuuup.
> 
> ...



I can dig all of that. 

Tangentially, I think Monster of The Week can be used pretty easily to tell most any kind of Modern Urban Fantasy story. Most of the work would be on the MC side of things, like monsters and such, and rethinking how MC moves are used to better suit a different subgenre or tone, but shouldn't be hard.


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## Marc_C (Sep 29, 2021)

What happened to the OP? His user name is strike through.


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## Ovinomancer (Sep 29, 2021)

Marc_C said:


> What happened to the OP? His user name is strike through.



At least temp banned from another thread.


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## chaochou (Sep 29, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> I will also say…a lot of the game’s assumptions are very “people are very bad, deep down, and only comfort and safety makes us think otherwise” which, while total nonsensical garbage as a belief about people, is certainly within genre.



It is total nonsensical garbage. Thankfully, it was written by _you_ on the internet, not by Vincent Baker and it's nowhere to be found within Apocalypse World. 

Here's what it actually says: "It's your job to create a fractured, tilting landscape of inequalities, incompatible interests, untenable arrangements. A dynamic situation, not a status quo you have to put your shoulder against and shift, like pushing a futon up a ladder. No: an unstable mass, charged with potential energy and ready to split and slide."

None of that says 'people are very bad'. It says, people are trying to survive in a landscape of competing interests. the actual tone of each game and the world each is set in (and those of us who play it know this) is a product as much of the players as of the MC.

It's created as a group, not as a dictatorial vision (unlike in D&D-land). There's none of this 'my world, my rules' crap in here. It's a game of collective creativity, not setting tourism and empty cosplay.

Those of us who know and play the game do wish people wouldn't pollute conversation about it with such ill-informed nonsense.


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## chaochou (Sep 30, 2021)

doctorbadwolf said:


> But in smaller communities, we know that trade has always been more common than raiding, and that neighboring communities have pretty much always helped eachother when they can, and banded together to track down and murder the crap out of outlaw bandit gangs, when possible.



What? How can you possibly make this statement without qualifying it with a time and place in history? It doesn't make sense. And the fact that you're willing to assert it, without even trying to place it in time and history suggests to me that you won't have much of an evidence base.

So what does 'trade has always been more common than raiding' mean? Are you saying that the value of goods traded between France and Austria in 1805 was greater than the value of the conquest of Austria by France in 1805?

Are you saying that Rome _traded _its way to its empire. That Alexander the Great ended up conquering the known world through _trade_? That the wealth of either empire was based on something other than conquest?

And which 'neighbouring communities' living in peace and harmony in Dark Ages Europe banded together to track down and 'murder the crap out of' which 'outlaw bandit gangs'? It's so far removed from reality it's hilarious.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 30, 2021)

Yeah not gonna engage with that level of empty, flailingly angry, melodrama.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

Ooh, did somebody just roll a miss on their Win Friends & Influence People move? 

Meanwhile, on the very broad topics of community size, resources, and trade (among many others), some of you folks might be interested in this – Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

There's also Tomás Pueyo's new gig. (He's the guy who wrote The Hammer and the Dance back at the beginning of our ongoing pandemic.)


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

@chaochou, I imagine you might be currently embroiled in the UK fuel crisis?


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## DrunkonDuty (Sep 30, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> The inference I'm drawing from the above is either (a) you haven't read Apocalypse World or (b) you're not putting together the integrated aspects of system (agenda + principles + resolution mechanics) that create the dynamic of aggressive protagonist (players) vs aggressive antagonism/obstacles (GM)?




I'm drawing all my inferences about AW from this thread. Because I haven't read AW I'll stay neutral on the edginess or not of its prose style.  



Manbearcat said:


> Play to find out what happens
> 
> +




Ummm... I can only assume this means that one* should put forward plot points based on what has come before in previous scenes/acts/episodes/story arcs. As opposed to simply sticking to some pre-planned series of events. Now basing next events on previous events is great and I'm all for that. But this is the intermediate level of RPGs. 

*whoever puts forward the plot ideas, which I gather can be players & GMs



Manbearcat said:


> fill their lives with danger (provacative framing that demands action and orbits around player-flagged PC dramatic needs and




Well... this really does sound like basic RPG. Whether its dungeon crawling or seducing your way thru a Vampire LARP. Yeah, in a dungeon crawl the dramatic needs are "moar monsters/loot/XP" rather than the high melodrama of Vampire but who's to say one is better than the other?



Manbearcat said:


> +
> 
> 
> how this is done (ask questions and use the answers + Fronts + soft moves to provoke/portend + hard moves if there is no or insufficient uptake/response to the provocation/foretold danger + snowballing move resolution structure and maths + actual danger/cost/consequence to every move made or not made)
> ...




The GM asking "what do you do?" and then resolving the proposed situation with game mechanics is, again, basic RPG. As is deciding consequences for the failure/success of those actions.



Manbearcat said:


> deeply thematic basic moves and playbooks and reward cycles/xp triggers




Sounds to me like specific game mechanics intended to give a particular feel to the game. Seriously - what, apart from "genre feel," is the difference between a player in a DnD game saying "my bard is gonna seduce that barman with the great buns" or "my hard holder is gonna put a soft sex move on that barman with the great buns?"  



Manbearcat said:


> The game has teeth at every turn.  It will bite you if you don't respond.  It will bite you when you do respond.  As a GM, your job is to bite in a way the players have signaled is interesting and keep biting.  As a system, its job is to help the GM bark, then bite, and deftly manage their cognitive workload as they continuously bark and bite and be surprised at what shape play takes as teeth meet flesh.  As a player, your job is to signal your interests (continuously), decide where/how to take the bites, how you deal once bitten, bite the hell back, and how/if your character can withstand this both-ways nom-fest.




This is good GMing advice. It can be applied to any game. And I think it's great that AW (and other games) put all this advice front and centre. But it's still there in (almost?) all other RPGs. It may not be said explicitly, turning up the heat may take different forms in different games, but it's there.

I'll say again - I'm glad that AW and other games put this sort of advice front and centre, AND have mechanics to back it up. I'm firmly of the belief that having rules for X in a gamebook leads to more X in the actual play. And when I like the X, as I like all the things mentioned above, then viva la apocalypse.



Manbearcat said:


> I don't know if that is written too "edge-lordy" or whatever, but that is pretty much the gist.  The system has enormous say on how this whole thing churns.




Okay, look, I said I was gonna stay neutral on the cringiness of the writing of AW. But a "soft sex move?" That's just pushing rope.


----------



## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> The GM asking "what do you do?" and then resolving the proposed situation with game mechanics is, again, basic RPG. As is deciding consequences for the failure/success of those actions.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> what, apart from "genre feel," is the difference between a player in a DnD game saying "my bard is gonna seduce that barman with the great buns" or "my hard holder is gonna put a soft sex move on that barman with the great buns?"



Have a look at my reply to you upthread and you'll see. To borrow @Manbearcat's phrase, the AW mechanics have _teeth_.

Whereas in 5e D&D (for instance) there is no system (as best I know) that permits a player to oblige the GM to narrate a certain response from a NPC. Hence, among other things, the GM is never playing to find out - unless the game shifts into combat.


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## Umbran (Sep 30, 2021)

chaochou said:


> It is total nonsensical garbage. Thankfully, it was written by _you_ on the internet...






chaochou said:


> It's so far removed from reality it's hilarious.




*Mod Note:*
Please dial it down several notches.  If your entry into the conversation is head-butting, the conversation is apt to end for you quite quickly.

And @doctorbadwolf - please avoid using the laughing reaction in ways that might be construed as mocking, _especially_ when you say you aren't going to engage.  Because the reaction emojis _are_ engagement.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

Yes, one of the things I like about Apocalypse World/Blades in the Dark and their progeny is that when you miss a die roll, something interesting usually happens, rather then it merely being a whiff.


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## doctorbadwolf (Sep 30, 2021)

Umbran said:


> *Mod Note:*
> Please dial it down several notches.  If your entry into the conversation is head-butting, the conversation is apt to end for you quite quickly.
> 
> And @doctorbadwolf - please avoid using the laughing reaction in ways that might be construed as mocking, _especially_ when you say you aren't going to engage.  Because the reaction emojis _are_ engagement.



Very fair. Apologies. I sometimes fail to recall the thin line between incredulity and mockery.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Yes, one of the things I like about Apocalypse World/Blades in the Dark and their progeny is that when you miss a die roll, something interesting usually happens, rather then it merely being a whiff.



Now this is where this thread gets into interesting territory!

_When is a check called for? _In AW, there is no "say 'yes'" rule: _if you do it, you do it_. So certain sorts of choices by players - to act under pressure/duress/fire, to try and intimidate others, to try and grab things or people, etc - _mandate _a check, and hence create this possibility of failure which obliges the GM to make a move that follows from the fiction and is as hard as they like.

Which means that the action resolution mechanics are _also_ the pacing mechanic and the complication mechanic.

This is a big difference from more wargaming-based and classic skill system designs (eg AD&D, 5e D&D, RQ), where action resolution may have no connection at all to pacing or complication-introduction; and also from scene-framing designs (eg HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, 4e D&D) where action resolution often feeds into complications, but there is a distinct layer of scene-framing and implicit (sometimes explicit) stakes-setting. Scene-framed play needs a "say 'yes' rule" to avoid boring scenes and cut to the action.

I think the AW approach is perhaps _less _different from the more classic approach than scene-framing play - because it doesn't introduce that distinct layer and doesn't need a "say 'yes'" rule - but it requires the GM to be ready to understand the established fiction as binding. I think that last thing can be a big deal for some RPGers whose mechanical framework is essentially "classic" but whose play ethos is more like late-80s/90s "storyteller" or the more recent but in some ways comparable "adventure path".


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Now this is where this thread gets into interesting territory!
> 
> _When is a check called for? _In AW, there is no "say 'yes'" rule: _if you do it, you do it_. So certain sorts of choices by players - to act under pressure/duress/fire, to try and intimidate others, to try and grab things or people, etc - _mandate _a check, and hence create this possibility of failure which obliges the GM to make a move that follows from the fiction and is as hard as they like.
> 
> Which means that the action resolution mechanics are _also_ the pacing mechanic and the complication mechanic.



Yes yes, you bust out the dice not merely when success is uncertain, but when failure will also have consequences.

How much do you think consequential failure is dependent on other system elements, such as only players making rolls, and such?


----------



## DrunkonDuty (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Have a look at my reply to you upthread and you'll see. To borrow @Manbearcat's phrase, the AW mechanics have _teeth_.






pemerton said:


> Whereas in 5e D&D (for instance) there is no system (as best I know) that permits a player to oblige the GM to narrate a certain response from a NPC. Hence, among other things, the GM is never playing to find out - unless the game shifts into combat.



Your seduction example (from the post you refer to) is, numbers aside, pretty universal.

Player:
"I attempt to seduce the barman with the hot buns so he'll give me
a free drink
a place to sleep
another notch on my bedpost
a place to play a gig
the name of the person selling drugs in the back room
extra rations from the dwindling supply of soylent green."

GM: <weighs up difficulty/assigns target number, possibly considers results of failure>
"Go for it." 

This looks to me like the player is offering to the table a particular scene with a particular outcome. The GM (and the rest of the table) agree to it.*

Now, as you have said, AW has specific advice on what to do for a "near miss." DnD** does not have rules for a near miss with seduction attempts. (But does for jumping attempts.) But that's not to say that a group can't have guidelines for a near miss on a seduction, possibly inspired by the jumping rules or just, wider gamer culture, or even AW.

So possibly the GM sees the near miss and decides to let the player get away with it anyway, but with a caveat of their own. Possibly the player suggests additional, erm, favours to get themself over the finish line. Another player suggests something else, something probably very disturbing. The fiction continues to play out with contributions from player(s) and GM.

The Read a Sitch example is just (again DnD** parlance) PER and Sense Motive rolls. Or maybe a <shudder> skill challenge.

So once again: AW is putting these things front and centre. By giving this sort of thing space in the rule book, giving language, mechanics, and examples of what the players can do to be more proactive, it really encourages proactive players. Yay!

But any and all of it can be found in other systems, some very old systems, or broader gamer culture.


*Or don't agree to it because everyone else hates sexytimes in RPG. Or do with caveats, such as "Hey, I saw the barman's buns first!"
**I haven't read a set of DnD rules since PF1e. I'm not actually trying to make a case for any particular system. Is just an example.


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## Campbell (Sep 30, 2021)

My experience from Modiphius' 2d20 games is that success with consequences can get a little weird when NPCs act independently. It still mostly works, but a little less smoothly than in Apocalypse World or Blades.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> GM: <weighs up difficulty/assigns target number, possibly considers results of failure>
> "Go for it."



I'll come back to the rest of your post later when I have a chance. But just focus on this: what you post here is part of the 5e D&D action resolution framework, _but is not part of the AW resolution framework_. That's probably the most important difference.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

niklinna said:


> How much do you think consequential failure is dependent on other system elements, such as only players making rolls, and such?



I don't know the 2d20 system @Campbell mentioned (except by barest of reputation).

4e skill challenges are a scene-framing approach rather than a PbtA-style approach, but do have players rolling all the dice. Which _forces_ the GM to narrate consequences, in order for something to happen which obliges the players to declare more checks (assuming that the challenge hasn't been resolved yet).

Burning Wheel uses GM-side as well as player-side dice rolls, but generally only to set opposition for the players' checks. Likewise Prince Valiant. Both support consequential/meaningful failure, but in a scene-framing paradigm rather than the PbtA approach.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

I have a general idea what you mean by "scene-framing paradigm", but I haven't played any of the games you use as references. Although it sounds like establishing Effect & Consequences in Blades in the Dark, which can be done by negotiation, rather than the GM just saying "roll, and I'll decide what hammer drops if you don't get a clear success".


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

niklinna said:


> I have a general idea what you mean by "scene-framing paradigm", but I haven't played any of the games you use as references. Although it sounds like establishing Effect & Consequences in Blades in the Dark, which can be done by negotiation, rather than the GM just saying "roll, and I'll decide what hammer drops if you don't get a clear success".



Snap! I don't know BitD well enough to compare it to what I have in mind.

I'll try and post something fuller soon.


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## DrunkonDuty (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I'll come back to the rest of your post later when I have a chance. But just focus on this: what you post here is part of the 5e D&D action resolution framework, _but is not part of the AW resolution framework_. That's probably the most important difference.




So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?


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## Campbell (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?




Not at all. You just will not be assessing difficulty. There are no target numbers to set in Apocalypse World.

Generally on a 6- players are told to expect the worst and the GM has the opportunity to make as hard of a move as they like. You should be considering consequences although they should be fairly obvious if you are making your soft moves / telegraphing like you should be.

This post provides a more detailed explanation.






						Picking the Right GM Move in PbtA: Part One | Magpie Games
					






					magpiegames.com
				




John Harper is more succinct though.


			The Mighty Atom


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?



I'd say that's generally not the case in Apocalypse World, but in my Blades in the Dark game, the GM will sometimes tell us ahead of the roll what failure will entail, and sometimes will ask us what, negotiating if what we offer isn't a serious or interesting consequence.


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## DrunkonDuty (Sep 30, 2021)

Firstly, thanks for the replies, I am honestly struggling to see what significant differences AW/PbtA has to... well most rpgs. I appreciate y'all taking the time to talk it through. 

So... I am uncertain as to whether AW has target numbers or not. Ya see, in @pemerton's post above (#86) he definitely mentions target numbers. Is it that there are target numbers hard coded into the rules rather than set by the GM? If so they're still target numbers. If not, what were those numbers?

6's are bad. Again, sounding like target numbers. 

I've got more, well not specific questions, but a nebulous feeling that I have more to ask. But I have to cut it short for now.

Cheers.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

In Apocalypse World, target numbers are always the same:

6 or lower – that's a miss, and the GM gets to hit you hard
7–9 – a qualified success; you get some or all of what you want, often with some negative consequence
10+ – full success; you get (more or all of) what you want, in the context of the move
Particular moves may give lists of the kinds of success effects you can claim. For example, "Read a Person" lets you ask 1 question from a general list on a dice roll of 7–9, or 3 on a 10+.

Some of those effects can be things that _don't_ happen. For example, the chopper move (special ability) "pack alpha", for when you try to coerce your gang to do something they're not cool with, gives this list:

they do what you want
they don't fight back over it
you don't have to make an example of a gang member
On a 10+, you get all three, on a 7–9, you get only one of those, and on a miss, someone in the gang tries to usurp you. So, on a 7–9, maybe they do it, but you have to fight them _and_ make a particular example of one gang member. Those can both be handled by simple narration or further dice rolls. Or, you could say they don't revolt, but they don't do what you want, and you have to make an example of somebody to keep them in line. Pack alpha is a risky move that way!

Hope that helps.


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## Tonguez (Sep 30, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Not at all. You just will not be assessing difficulty. There are no target numbers to set in Apocalypse World.
> 
> John Harper is more succinct though.
> 
> ...



What do you mean no target numbers?
The rules clearly state to roll 2 dice add stat. If the sum total is 6 or less, that’s a miss. If it’s 7 or more, it’s a hit. 7–9 is a weak hit, 10+ is a strong hit.
All the moves list what should happen on a hit, 7–9 or 10+, so follow them.

Sure they’re fixed but what makes you think 6, 7-9 and 10+ arent target numbers that a player has to roll to succeed on a move?


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## Tonguez (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I'll come back to the rest of your post later when I have a chance. But just focus on this: what you post here is part of the 5e D&D action resolution framework, _but is not part of the AW resolution framework_. That's probably the most important difference.



I think the main difference between the two approaches is that AW style Moves focus on the outcomes and consequences of a scene rather than D&D focus on players taking actions (which eventually build to an outcome).

the change from RPG as a series of player actions and DM reponses and RPG as agreed Narrative scenes makes for a different play style.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

niklinna said:


> I have a general idea what you mean by "scene-framing paradigm", but I haven't played any of the games you use as references. Although it sounds like establishing Effect & Consequences in Blades in the Dark, which can be done by negotiation, rather than the GM just saying "roll, and I'll decide what hammer drops if you don't get a clear success".



I turns out there is another active thread where some of these same topics are coming up. Here is something I just posted on that thread about scene-framing, which might help.



pemerton said:


> 4e modules are, on the whole, awful. Some people like some of the later ones; they may speak up in this thread.
> 
> The essence of scene-framed play is this: situation (normally authored, at least to a significant extent and in 4e D&D to a great extent, by the GM) that responds to the players' evinced interests/hooks/thematic concerns (ie while the GM is the one who frames the scene, it is the players who implicitly or explicitly set the stakes); action declarations from the players for their PCs that engage the situation (which they should be able to do by just playing their PCs, assuming the GM has done his/her job properly at the framing stage); typically there is some sort of back-and-forth of success and failure and emerging consequences (this is the rising action); then there is the resolution and pay-off of the scene, which may do any or all of the following: lead to a change in the characters (eg one of my players decided that his dead human wizard, when raised, would return in his "true" form as a deva invoker - but not all changes need be as big as that); lead to a change in the setting (eg now the hags are allies of the PCs rather than enemies; now the djinni are reconciled with the gods rather than getting ready to fight against them in the Dusk War); lead to some new conflict or challenge (eg now that you've defeated Torog, there is no one holding back the Elemental Chaos - oh, and you sealed the Abyss too? So now all that chaotic energy and matter is not getting siphoned down into that well of nothingness, it's just overflowing into the world!)
> 
> ...



And from the same thread, a post I also just made contrasting scene-framing with Dungeon World/PbtA:



pemerton said:


> Here's one way the difference plays out in the 4e vs DW context:
> 
> DW relies on _each check _to be a possible source of complication - and the pacing considerations of success vs failure are managed via the use of the 6- equal "the GM may make as hard and direct a move as they like" together with the 7-9, which is a success but normally also licences the GM to make some sort of move, which may be quite hard (eg deal damage) though from a constrained list.
> 
> ...



Sorry to recycle replies, but hopefully those help make the ideas I was using a bit clearer.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> So, from reading your and niklinna's posts above, should I assume that the player gets to declare what the results will be should they fail?



No.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Tonguez said:


> I think the main difference between the two approaches is that AW style Moves focus on the outcomes and consequences of a scene rather than D&D focus on players taking actions (which eventually build to an outcome).



I dunno. I think _I point my gun at her and ask her if she's changed her mind about sharing her canteen_ (which would trigger Go Aggro) seems like a pretty concrete action. And all the examples that Vincent Baker gives in the rulebook seem pretty concrete.



Tonguez said:


> the change from RPG as a series of player actions and DM reponses and RPG as agreed Narrative scenes makes for a different play style.



I don't think _agreed narrative scenes _are a big part of AW. The rulebook doesn't talk about them. Maybe in some other PbtA games they figure more prominently?


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Firstly, thanks for the replies, I am honestly struggling to see what significant differences AW/PbtA has to... well most rpgs. I appreciate y'all taking the time to talk it through.
> 
> So... I am uncertain as to whether AW has target numbers or not. Ya see, in @pemerton's post above (#86) he definitely mentions target numbers.



Well, I just double-checked and I don't use that phrase.



DrunkonDuty said:


> Is it that there are target numbers hard coded into the rules rather than set by the GM? If so they're still target numbers. If not, what were those numbers?



You've already had replies on this from @niklinna and @Tonguez so I don't need to repeat what they've said.



DrunkonDuty said:


> I've got more, well not specific questions, but a nebulous feeling that I have more to ask. But I have to cut it short for now.



I've got some time, so let's go back to this move:

*Seduce or Manipulate*
When you* try to seduce or manipulate someone*, tell them what you want and roll+hot. For NPCs: on a hit, they ask you to promise something first, and do it if you promise. On a 10+, whether you keep your promise is up to you, later. On a 7–9, they need some concrete assurance right now.​
As I said, the most striking difference from D&D is that there is not step of the sort you mentioned upthread: GM: <weighs up difficulty/assigns target number, possibly considers results of failure>

There is no GM mediation. The GM does not have anything to decide until we know the result of the player's roll+ hot (a stat that every PC has). At that point, the GM also knows what they have to decide. If the roll was 7+, the GM has to decide _what the NPC asks the PC to promise_. If the throw was also less than 10, the GM has to decide what sort of concrete assurance the NPC wants right now.

If the throw is 6 or less, then the GM can make as hard and direct a move, that follows from the fiction, as they like.

In 5e D&D, at least to the extent I am familiar with it, there is no process whereby a player can declare as an action that their PC asks a NPC for something by offering something in return _and then_ make a throw _and then_ on the basis of that throw oblige the GM to have a NPC do something in exchange for a promise.

In 5e D&D there is a process whereby the player can declare as an action that their PC asks a PC for something by offereing something in return. But at that point everything shifts to the GM, who has unfettered decision-making power as to whether and how the NPC responds. That power includes calling for a check, and deciding what if anything happens for any given result of that check.

That is a big difference between the two games. In my view it's fundamental.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

Vincent Baker on AW's structure: 

Apocalypse World is designed in concentric layers, like an onion.

The innermost core is the structured conversation: you say what your characters do. The MC, following their agenda and principles, says what happens, and asks you what your characters do next. The next layer out builds on the conversation by adding core systems: stats, dice, basic moves, harm, improvement, MC moves, maybe some setting elements like the world’s psychic maelstrom. The next layer elaborates on the core systems by adding playbooks, with all their character moves, gear, and additional systems; and threats, with their types, impulses, moves, fronts, and maps. The outermost layer is even optional: it’s for your custom moves, your non-core playbooks, your MC experiments, stuff that doesn’t even appear in the book. 

A crucial feature of Apocalypse World’s design is that these layers are designed to collapse gracefully inward:

Forget the peripheral harm moves? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but the rules for harm have got you covered. Forget the rules for harm? that’s cool. You’re missing out, but the basic moves have got you covered. Just describe the splattering blood and let the moves handle the rest. Forget the basic moves? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but just remember that 10+ = hooray, 7-9 = mixed, and 6- = something worse happens.Don’t even feel like rolling the dice? Fair enough. You’re missing out, but the conversational structure still works. 

Or:

Don’t want to make custom moves and countdowns for your threats all the time? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but the threat types, impulses, and threat moves have got you covered. Don’t want to even write up your fronts and threats? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but your MC moves have got you covered. Forget your MC moves? That’s cool. You’re missing out, but as long as you remember your agenda and most of your principles and what to always say, you’ll be okay. 







						Powered by the Apocalypse, part 1 – lumpley games
					






					lumpley.games


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

So, the game could potentially proceed as a conversation where players declare what pcs do and gm/mc says what happens


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## heretic888 (Sep 30, 2021)

Numidius said:


> So, the game could potentially proceed as a conversation where players declare what pcs do and gm/mc says what happens



Provided that what the GM says is constrained by the agenda and principles. In PbtA games the agenda and principles are just as much rules as the player-facing moves are.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

heretic888 said:


> Provided that what the GM says is constrained by the agenda and principles. In PbtA games the agenda and principles are just as much rules as the player-facing moves are.



Correct, as Baker explained in the part I just posted above


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Numidius said:


> So, the game could potentially proceed as a conversation where players declare what pcs do and gm/mc says what happens



Though I think this would be quite a different experience, because the players would no longer have a device - ie player-side moves - for obliging the GM to narrate certain bits of fiction.


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## heretic888 (Sep 30, 2021)

Numidius said:


> Correct, as Baker explained in the part I just posted above



Yup. Just wanted to clarify as a lot of posters are used to "empower the DM!" games where the only conversational constraint is Whatever The Lord God Dungeon Master Feels Like.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Though I think this would be quite a different experience, because the players would no longer have a device - ie player-side moves - for obliging the GM to narrate certain bits of fiction.



Yeah, but assuming good faith and following agenda & principles, it should't be so dissimilar. 

What I find interesting is that Baker acknowledge this possibility. Principled freeform is a term he coined, I guess


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Numidius said:


> Yeah, but assuming good faith and following agenda & principles, it should't be so dissimilar.



I'm not sure about that. I think that the use of dice adds something different from just _saying what honesty demands._



Numidius said:


> What I find interesting is that Baker acknowledge this possibility. Principled freeform is a term he coined, I guess



Well, it's consistent with his own background in freeform RPGing, and his discussion of various theoretical systems (of resolution mechanics, PC sheets, etc) on his blog.


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## Marc_C (Sep 30, 2021)

I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure about that. I think that the use of dice adds something different from just _saying what honesty demands._




I agree. 
Anyway it is doable, even just fewer dice rolls than usual. 
I wonder if also handing all rolls to the gm if a player wants a full immersion experience, might be a thing.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

Marc_C said:


> I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.



Well, once I had this GM that, after making characters and background, started the session in a completely different situation than what emerged before. 
That become soon the last session he ran with us.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Marc_C said:


> I participated in a convention game of Dungeon World. We spent a good amount of time setting up our characters, origins and backgrounds, then we played. Honestly, maybe the GM didn't understand DW, but I felt like he was obsessed with his 'framing the scene' role, cut us when we talked and pretty much 'directed' the session. Seems like everything was pre-determined (railroad). I didn't feel the 'story now' vibe at all.



The word "scene" appears once in the DW rulebook, on p 171:

A hard application of this move [introduce a faction or a type of creature] will snowball directly into a combat scene or ambush.​
It's not a scene-framing game.

As you describe it, the person who GMed your session wasn't doing what the book tells him to do.


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## Aldarc (Sep 30, 2021)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Firstly, thanks for the replies, I am honestly struggling to see what significant differences AW/PbtA has to... well most rpgs. I appreciate y'all taking the time to talk it through.
> 
> So... I am uncertain as to whether AW has target numbers or not. Ya see, in @pemerton's post above (#86) he definitely mentions target numbers. Is it that there are target numbers hard coded into the rules rather than set by the GM? If so they're still target numbers. If not, what were those numbers?
> 
> 6's are bad. Again, sounding like target numbers.



IMO, when starting out it can be difficult to wrap your head around what rolls represent in the PbtA engine. Because I agree that they do sound like target numbers of success and failure, but PbtA is not all that interested in atomic or discrete actions of success/failure that represent the character's skill or training in a thing. PbtA is primarily interested in 7-9 on a roll. The dice resolution system is designed to generate complications that push the narrative forward in ways that generate further complications for the characters. The dice resolution system for PbtA is akin to a Rube Goldberg machine where there are patches of smooth flowing action, but also often involves one action in the fiction triggering another which triggers another and then another.


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## Gradine (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> The word "scene" appears once in the DW rulebook, on p 171:
> 
> A hard application of this move [introduce a faction or a type of creature] will snowball directly into a combat scene or ambush.​
> It's not a scene-framing game.
> ...



To be fair, DW is also garbage


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> To be fair, DW is also garbage



In what sense?


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## Gradine (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> In what sense?



In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.

I mean, a ton of people seem to like, so it's obviously _somebody's _jam_. _But instead of being a perfect blend of my favorite genre and my favorite system I instead got an old-school dungeon crawler straight-jacketed by a system much better suited to telling more fluid stories. It feels like a square peg in a round hole which is, in my personal opinion, poor game design.


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## Marc_C (Sep 30, 2021)

Is there a good YouTube PtbA channel I could watch to see it in action?


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.



Personally, in reading and in my (admittedly limited) play experience I've never got the least bit of OSR vibe from Dungeon World.


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## dragoner (Sep 30, 2021)

The moves in the playbooks can make it restrictive, everyone plays towards that; which in turn, when playing a more trad game, players are like, "what do I do?" Which is also kind of weird, so it is like "I don't know, what do you do?" Sort of that PbtA was designed to close the open loop, which is fine if one is looking for a more focused game, in years long campaigns, I don't know how it would do.


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## Gradine (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Personally, in reading and in my (admittedly limited) play experience I've never got the least bit of OSR vibe from Dungeon World.



That might be my own biases, honestly. I tend to conflate "old-school dungeon crawling" with "OSR", but I can appreciate it if those two are not entirely synonymous.


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> That might be my own biases, honestly. I tend to conflate "old-school dungeon crawling" with "OSR", but I can appreciate it if those two are not entirely synonymous.



Well another way to put it would be that I've never got an old-school dungeon crawling vibe from it. I guess there are a few moves that make some assumption of that sort, like the thief's trap-related move (can't recall the name at present and don't have my PDF handy). But I haven't had a general impression of dungeon-crawling.


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## Numidius (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> That might be my own biases, honestly. I tend to conflate "old-school dungeon crawling" with "OSR", but I can appreciate it if those two are not entirely synonymous.



At my table DW produced a very high kind of fantasy. Definitely not the game for an old school dungeon crawl. IME/O


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## Helpful NPC Thom (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> To be fair, DW is also garbage



Alright, that's a little harsh. Dungeon World is an early hack of Apocalypse World. Dungeon World stands as a decent introduction to PbtA games, but the overall PbtA hack/design space has advanced since its publication. World of Dungeons is a better option for the OSR-by-way-of-PbtA gameplay, in my opinion, and you'd perhaps be better to play Apocalypse World with a D&D skin on it if you're looking for Apocalypse World-style gaming. A few playbooks and classes reflavored would like as not do the trick.


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## chaochou (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.




I'm not sure about the OSR hack, but that's a secondary issue. I think there's long been an acceptance that standards of PbtA games now vary quite widely.

When Dungeon World first appeared (initially just as a short pdf of playbooks and a few basic moves) it was obvious that one needed to have played and understood Apocalypse World to make it work.

Sadly, what I think this led to was a lot of weakly written PbtA games. Games which assumed a familiarity with the original and so got away with a lack of vibrancy in the writing, less considered move construction, less courage of their conviction in their principles. Games which were solid if you already understood Apocalypse World, but which didn't do enough to really explain what was required as a standalone product.

For me, Dungeon World fell into this category - a lacklustre extension, rather than a fresh and vibrant reimagining, of the original.

There are now _so many_ PbtA games, that I'm not sure it's much more useful as a descriptor than d20.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I turns out there is another active thread where some of these same topics are coming up. Here is something I just posted on that thread about scene-framing, which might help.



Thanks for the reposts! It's funny to me, what you describe is just what I would call some good GMing principles, but I can see the ways that 4e (which I actually did play, lo these many years ago) supports it.


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## Gradine (Sep 30, 2021)

chaochou said:


> There are now _so many_ PbtA games, that I'm not sure it's much more useful as a descriptor than d20.



I mean, I agree with this statement, just probably not in the way you're intending, in that I find both to be incredibly useful descriptors. The PbtA family tree has grown many, many branches, but I generally know what kind of experience I'm going to be in for until we start getting into the more distant branches (such as Forged in the Dark or No Dice No Masters)


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

One other curious thing, for me, about PbtA/FitD games, is that I'll happily grab a playbook and make up a character, whereas D&D classes have always irked me. Maybe it's that playbooks—which many think of as classes—are pretty minimal compared to D&D classes, which fill in a lot of stuff I would rather do, meaning I'm either shoehorning my concept or doing extra work to reflavor (which isn't even always possible).


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## pemerton (Sep 30, 2021)

niklinna said:


> One other curious thing, for me, about PbtA/FitD games, is that I'll happily grab a playbook and make up a character, whereas D&D classes have always irked me. Maybe it's that playbooks—which many think of as classes—are pretty minimal compared to D&D classes, which fill in a lot of stuff I would rather do, meaning I'm either shoehorning my concept or doing extra work to reflavor (which isn't even always possible).



What I'm about to post is conjecture. Not utterly wild, random conjecture; but not grounded in systematic study of the full range of cases.

I think there is a tenable argument that the D&D class system peaked somewhere in the mid- to late 70s. At that point, and as Gygax said in his PHB, choice of class reflected a players' choice as to _how they think they can best meet the challenges posed by the game_. Classes were suites of abilities coupled with limitations, perhaps severe ones (if playing a cleric or MU or similar class) or else were an (unfortunately weak) utility kit for dungeon exploration (if a thief) or a degree of survivability that then made play-via-fictional-positioning possible (if a fighter).

_But why can't my class be a crafter? _Because making swords and/or pottery isn't a way of meeting the challenges posed by the game!

The orientation of a lot of D&D play has changed pretty dramatically since then - "story" or characterisation seem to be widely valued - but the legacy of those classes lives on. In some cases it even rebounds back to infect or shape the underlying fiction, which is just the pits!

(I think 4e is something of a successful reversion back to Gygax but without dumping the theme stuff. But that's another story.)

In the case of a PbtA playbook, on the other hand, unless it's at the weaker end of the spectrum @chaochou has described, it should plug you right into the core play of the game. If you build your PC using the playbook but still feel stranded or ill-shaped vis-a-vis the setting or starting situation, then you know you picked up one of the duds!


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

I would say that fits my experience in role-playing, yeah. D&D classes feel like a poor fit for what I want to do in D&D, whereas PbtA playbooks, as you say, plug right in. (It still doesn't hurt that PbtA playbooks give you 1–2 defining moves, and don't dictate your character's future career—particularly variants that let you freely choose other playbook moves as you gain XP.)


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## darkbard (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> In the sense that it completely failed my expectations, at the very least. I wanted a PbtA approach to D&D-esque fantasy; what I got was an OSR hack with awkwardly shoe-horned in PbtA mechanics.
> 
> I mean, a ton of people seem to like, so it's obviously _somebody's _jam_. _But instead of being a perfect blend of my favorite genre and my favorite system I instead got an old-school dungeon crawler straight-jacketed by a system much better suited to telling more fluid stories. It feels like a square peg in a round hole which is, in my personal opinion, poor game design.



I venture respectfully that perhaps your GM and group didn't fully grok the possibilities of the system, or went in with a desire specifically to run an old-school dungeon crawl? @Manbearcat ran my wife and me through a full ten-level game of DW that ended a few months back, and I can recall now only two episodes that involved anything like crawling through dungeons: one being when my wife's character leapt down into a well housing a dragon ostuary to reclaim her lightning wand while the rest of us (my PC and a gaggle of NPCs) battled a dracolich on the surface, and the other being a full session battling another dragon in return for a giant's aid in repairing and weaving magic into some armor that was damaged in the previously described scene. The existence of the giant's forge was essentially player-authored via a successful Spout Lore roll, and the short foray into the dragon well was similarly player-driven. Short of that, all our play revolved around social encounters in a frontier town and secluded monastery-like library, conflicts with hags and bandits and the ghosts of vengeful spirits while traveling the perilous wilds, and battles against perytons, wyvern, and the landscape of a cruel, glacial mountaintop itself in our quest to undo the life-draining menace of an ancient necromancer. Trope-y stuff, to be sure, but nary a dungeon crawl among it!


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## Manbearcat (Sep 30, 2021)

darkbard said:


> I venture respectfully that perhaps your GM and group didn't fully grok the possibilities of the system, or went in with a desire specifically to run an old-school dungeon crawl? @Manbearcat ran my wife and me through a full ten-level game of DW that ended a few months back, and I can recall now only two episodes that involved anything like crawling through dungeons: one being when my wife's character leapt down into a well housing a dragon ostuary to reclaim her lightning wand while the rest of us (my PC and a gaggle of NPCs) battled a dracolich on the surface, and the other being a full session battling another dragon in return for a giant's aid in repairing and weaving magic into some armor that was damaged in the previously described scene. The existence of the giant's forge was essentially player-authored via a successful Spout Lore roll, and the short foray into the dragon well was similarly player-driven. Short of that, all our play revolved around social encounters in a frontier town and secluded monastery-like library, conflicts with hags and bandits and the ghosts of vengeful spirits while traveling the perilous wilds, and battles against perytons, wyvern, and the landscape of a cruel, glacial mountaintop itself in our quest to undo the life-draining menace of an ancient necromancer. Trope-y stuff, to be sure, but nary a dungeon crawl among it!




Yeah.  

I don't understand the OSR feel from a read of the text nor the xp triggers nor the playbooks (outside of a few very specific moves).  It looks like and runs like thematically, tropey high fantasy (playbook/bond/alignment-statement dependent).  Basically 4e type conflicts/themes.

Including your game and @prabe 's game, I've run probably 20 games (of varying length).  Maybe 1000 hours of GMing?

I've not run a single dungeon crawl (and by dungeon crawl I'm talking about Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer) nor can I imagine doing so or being inspired to do so by the ruleset.


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## Gradine (Sep 30, 2021)

I will have to give it a re-read, then. It is very well likely that my first impressions were marred or skewed in some way.


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## niklinna (Sep 30, 2021)

Gradine said:


> I will have to give it a re-read, then. It is very well likely that my first impressions were marred or skewed in some way.



I've never actually read Dungeon World, now you've got me curious to take a look.


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## aramis erak (Sep 30, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Yeah.
> 
> I don't understand the OSR feel from a read of the text nor the xp triggers nor the playbooks (outside of a few very specific moves).  It looks like and runs like thematically, tropey high fantasy (playbook/bond/alignment-statement dependent).  Basically 4e type conflicts/themes.



Because you misunderstand/mis-equate OSR to one specific subset



Manbearcat said:


> Including your game and @prabe 's game, I've run probably 20 games (of varying length).  Maybe 1000 hours of GMing?
> 
> I've not run a single dungeon crawl (and by dungeon crawl I'm talking about Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer) nor can I imagine doing so or being inspired to do so by the ruleset.



See, right there? That's the fundamental disconnect. You're equating OSR=Dungeon Crawl. And that's a false equivalence.

While many people play dungeons with old rulesets, that's a subset. The staunchest OSR advocates are using D&D in the same way Pemerton is using Classic Traveller, and in ways similar to how AW is intended to be used: anything not covered by the rules is "Say yes"... In OSR-D&D, that's mostly combat and exploration in rules, but many OSR GM's aren't doing dungeons at all, and may or may not even be using wandering monsters in the wilderness. 

One of the fundamental problems with the OSR label is that it applies to a lot of different things that are only related in "Let's grab (Moldvay-Cook/Homes/Original) and modify it for ___"... It's not a unified whole.  The largest trend is sandbox GMing. And AW as written is pretty close to sandbox.

It's also worth noting that Pemerton's approach to CT is a not uncommon Old School Renaissance Traveller GM approach. But it's not the approach of ANY Traveller GM I've played with (Invalidly small sample of about 4), and is a rare approach on COTI. In part because those special cases are inconsistent mechanically. Pemerton's quite right that Traveller implies only rolling for exceptional cases... but makes a bunch of procedural rolls, too. THinking about it, tho', those are pretty abnormal situations for most players. EG: Few traveller players will be cargo brokers nor pursers, for example, but those procedures are included to create troubles.


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## pemerton (Oct 1, 2021)

niklinna said:


> I've never actually read Dungeon World, now you've got me curious to take a look.



My (pdf) version is over 400 pages lone. I feel there's probably scope for a bit of an edit! (Maybe that's unfair? But it does seem long.)


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## darkbard (Oct 1, 2021)

pemerton said:


> My (pdf) version is over 400 pages lone. I feel there's probably scope for a bit of an edit! (Maybe that's unfair? But it does seem long.)



There's A LOT of white space. The publisher didn't do itself any favors with, in my opinion, lackluster art and layout. Blades in the Dark is so much more compelling as a physical artifact, once again in my opinion.


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## Tonguez (Oct 1, 2021)

darkbard said:


> There's A LOT of white space. The publisher didn't do itself any favors with, in my opinion, lackluster art and layout. Blades in the Dark is so much more compelling as a physical artifact, once again in my opinion.



Yeah lots of whaite space And lots of lists.
 Each Class takes up about 6 pages each + spells when relevant.
Then there is the section of Steadings and GM advice, plus Monsters and Magic Items also take up page count


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## DrunkonDuty (Oct 1, 2021)

Thanks one and all who took the time to answer my questions. I now have a much clearer idea of AW/PbtA. 

Cheers and happy gaming.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 1, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> Because you misunderstand/mis-equate OSR to one specific subset
> 
> 
> See, right there? That's the fundamental disconnect. You're equating OSR=Dungeon Crawl. And that's a false equivalence.
> ...



Um, I think you took two separate thoughts there, mashed them together, and unfairly tarred MBC.  I don't get anything OSR from DW, and, separately, I don't see it strongly tilted towards dungeon crawling, either.  Neither statement relies on the other, for me at least. I dunno, maybe @Manbearcat means it exactly as you read him, but that's not at all what I got from him.


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## pemerton (Oct 1, 2021)

darkbard said:


> There's A LOT of white space. The publisher didn't do itself any favors with, in my opinion, lackluster art and layout. Blades in the Dark is so much more compelling as a physical artifact, once again in my opinion.



John Harper to the rescue? Agon 2nd ed is a thing of beauty. And _not _410 pages - it can be read in an afternoon.


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## darkbard (Oct 1, 2021)

pemerton said:


> John Harper to the rescue? Agon 2nd ed is a thing of beauty. And _not _410 pages - it can be read in an afternoon.



I mean, the guy _is_ a super talented graphic artist as well as a world-class game designer. No doubt, the aesthetic appeal of the artifact affects my initial reaction to a game, for better or worse. Luckily, both DW and BitD are amazing games, despite the discrepancy in physical presentation.


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## Aldarc (Oct 1, 2021)

I do think that Dungeon World has an OSR vibe to it. I don't think that it plays like OSR, but it clearly was designed with OSR in mind. OSR was in full swing at the time of its making. Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel definitely dabbled in the OSR space to various degrees. I believe that Adam Koebel has even said that some design decisions (e.g., race restrictions in playbooks) was written to evoke these older, pre-WotC editions of D&D. So it may be more accurate, at least from my perspective, to say that DW was inspired by old school nostalgia.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 1, 2021)

Gradine said:


> This one, it turns out...
> 
> People Are Good, Actually
> 
> ...



I truly don't understand this urge to prove humanity's inherent goodness through isolated experiments using incredibly small groups of subjects, when history and current events offer exponentially more and better evidence of what people actually do when things get bad...or even when they simply pretend or imagine that things are getting bad. Those kinds of experiments don't account for different cultures, unexpected events that serve as flashpoints, or the general messiness of humans.

I'm not saying those experiments shouldn't be done, but I'm fully saying that they aren't done in order to provide cherry-picked evidence that, Um, Actually, things will be better than the naysayers think, or other expressions of optimism that sound (to me) suspiciously like contrarianism for the sake of being contrarian, in proud defiance of the historical record. Try telling people in countries around the world that, see, those warlords might be robbing you and committing genocide and other atrocities, with no one stopping or even slowing them down, but at _some_ point everyone will realize that's just terribly irrational and people will band together and start doing the smart thing. Even better, once that veil of reason descends upon the land, there'll never be further spasms of irrational mayhem that decimate whole communities, because humans always act in their long-term best interests and never give into disordered and self-destructive urges.

I'm not arguing that when things fall apart everyone becomes either the marauder or the victim. I am arguing that carnage meted out by the idiotic and the powerful (usually the same thing) is not inherently and heroically resisted by the social contract, and doesn't care about anyone's sense of progress through community. When society falls apart the jerks sweep through like locusts. If someone was telling a story set 1000 years after an apocalypse, sure, there might be a new social order in place and communities that are thriving. But I think most post-apocalyptic stories are set when chaos still reigns, and when dismissing the notion of raiders and warlords with a knowing academic chuckle ignores all the times in our own history when selfish, brutish might has made right, and no one, no matter how smart or forward-looking, can stop it.

EDIT: I had meant to add that being tired of Road Warrior tropes is completely understandable. Gaming and geek culture in general is full of corny old tropes that many of us would rather abandon or reinvent. But I don't think it's necessary to comb through pop science writing to justify feeling like most post-apocalyptic settings are played out.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 1, 2021)

Apparently someone should write Kumbaya World!


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 1, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Apparently someone should write Kumbaya World!



Nope. There's no inherent conflict there! I'll show myself out...


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## Gradine (Oct 1, 2021)

There is a difference between interpersonal and inter- and intratribal conflict and the King of Kentucky with his motorcycle cavalry and slaves and what have you. Humans are pro-social but not necessarily conflict averse.

You can tell interesting stories in post-apocalypses born out of realistic stress-born human social structures, and stories demand conflict, which can very easily come from without or within.

Also, consider that what I'm describing as a sort ideal pro-social structure is born from (and potentiality only possible through) an apocalypse that has entirely dismantled the systems and structures of power responsible for the vast majority of human suffering and environmental degradation in the world. Consider that this makes me more pessimistic than you might think.


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## niklinna (Oct 1, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I truly don't understand this urge to prove humanity's inherent goodness through isolated experiments using incredibly small groups of subjects, when history and current events offer exponentially more and better evidence of what people actually do when things get bad...or even when they simply pretend or imagine that things are getting bad. Those kinds of experiments don't account for different cultures, unexpected events that serve as flashpoints, or the general messiness of humans.



It's an example of casting something in context- and time-free absolutes. People are more likely to behave certain ways under certain conditions, and more likely to behave in other ways under other conditions, and more likey to behave in yet other ways under certain _changing_ conditions.


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## Aldarc (Oct 1, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I do think that Dungeon World has an OSR vibe to it. I don't think that it plays like OSR, but it clearly was designed with OSR in mind. OSR was in full swing at the time of its making. Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel definitely dabbled in the OSR space to various degrees. I believe that Adam Koebel has even said that some design decisions (e.g., race restrictions in playbooks) was written to evoke these older, pre-WotC editions of D&D. So it may be more accurate, at least from my perspective, to say that DW was inspired by old school nostalgia.



Now that I have a bit more time, as a bit of an addendum to my post here as well as picking up something that @Malmuria was asking in regards to comparing 4e to DW:

While DW does have a bit of an "OSR vibe," there has also been something quite appealing about DW for 4e fans. I don't exactly think it's some grand coincidence that DW (to one extent or another) has been picked up by a fair number of 4e enthusiasts on the forums: e.g., @EzekielRaiden, @AbdulAlhazred, @Manbearcat, myself, and others. I also don't think that it's a coincidence that some of the creators and modders for Dungeon World - _A Sundered World*_ by Awful Good Games and _Stonetop_** by Jeremy Strandberg - also came out of 4e.

* _A Sundered World_ essentially imagines if the gods lost the Dawn War.
** The Marshall playbook is a reskinned Warlord. The deities of Stonetop hybridize real world gods with Dawn War gods: e.g., Tor (Thor + Kord), Helior (Helios + Pelor), Danu (Danu + Melora), and Aratis (Athena + Erathis).

I would personally love a fantasy PbtA or FitD game that leaned heavily into the themes of 4e, the Dawn War, and the World Axis mythos (with the serial numbers filed off, of course).



Marc_C said:


> Is there a good YouTube PtbA channel I could watch to see it in action?



Reading back through this, I'm not sure if anyone answered you. 

Your question is a bit like asking whether there was a good channel for seeing OSR in action. The Gauntlet talks a lot about PbtA, and they do podcasts for their plays, but I'm not sure if you can "see it in action" on their channel. 

It would probably help if you pick a game that interests you. It will make it easier to narrow down the range of possible channels or streams. Avatar Legends (Avatar the Last Airbender), Masks (teen superhero), Stonetop (a Dungeon World hack for iron age "hearth fantasy" where the village gets a playbook), Monster of the Week (supernatural monster-hunting), Urban Shadows (PbtA's Vampire the Masquerade sorta) are all pretty good games to look for on YouTube for getting a grasp on PbtA.


----------



## Grendel_Khan (Oct 1, 2021)

Gradine said:


> There is a difference between interpersonal and inter- and intratribal conflict and the King of Kentucky with his motorcycle cavalry and slaves and what have you. Humans are pro-social but not necessarily conflict averse.
> 
> You can tell interesting stories in post-apocalypses born out of realistic stress-born human social structures, and stories demand conflict, which can very easily come from without or within.
> 
> Also, consider that what I'm describing as a sort ideal pro-social structure is born from (and potentiality only possible through) an apocalypse that has entirely dismantled the systems and structures of power responsible for the vast majority of human suffering and environmental degradation in the world. Consider that this makes me more pessimistic than you might think.




I'm probably overly focused these days on the climate collapse, and all of the attendant horrors already bearing down on us, so I have a hard time imagining an apocalypse that we recover from, rather than survive, in a diminished sense, and then just sorta watch get worse over time. The idea of bouncing back now seems about as likely to me as achieving FTL.

But fiction is fiction, right? And yes, in theory, the idea of a society reimagining itself for the better after a grand sweeping aside of past structures can be interesting to consider, in a Fifth Season or what-happens-after-Fight-Club way. But I'd propose that once you set a story long enough after an apocalypse that people have settled into any new sense of stability, with new structures, and the focus isn't still on fighting for survival against the odds and without with the weight of that apocalypse still shaping how people interact, maybe that's no longer a post-apocalyptic story. It's something else, maybe something very cool, but to me it feels like that would tip into other genres.


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## Numidius (Oct 1, 2021)

Ready for my next campaign? It's gonna be post apocalyptic Mwa ha ha ha!! 

A world of scarcity and violence!?

Not really. Farmers. Small communities goin' along quite nicely. 

Oh. But they have a lot of sex, don't they!? 

Love. 

Excuse me?

Platonic love. Mostly. Occasionally moments of intimacy. 

...as you do.


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## pemerton (Oct 1, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I believe that Adam Koebel has even said that some design decisions (e.g., race restrictions in playbooks) was written to evoke these older, pre-WotC editions of D&D.



I guess this is where different perceptions of what classic D&D was about come into conflict.

Because if someone asked me what is distinctive about Moldvay Basic vs (say) 4e D&D, the fact that all the elves are fighter-MUs would not really be at the top of my list! You can change that trivially - eg by drifting to some version of AD&D or a mix of the two (like I and my friends did in the early 80s) - but on its own that won't change very much about the play experience.

(For clarity: I'm not suggesting that my perceptions conflict with your, or even with Adam Koebel's; but that they do conflict with some RPGers who see these surface-level minutiae as definitive of various eras of D&D play.)


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## doctorbadwolf (Oct 1, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Try telling people in countries around the world that, see, those warlords might be robbing you and committing genocide and other atrocities, with no one stopping or even slowing them down, but at _some_ point everyone will realize that's just terribly irrational and people will band together and start doing the smart thing. Even better, once that veil of reason descends upon the land, there'll never be further spasms of irrational mayhem that decimate whole communities, because humans always act in their long-term best interests and never give into disordered and self-destructive urges.



First, someone would have to be trying to tell anyone, anywhere, ever, which…isn’t the case.


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## Marc_C (Oct 1, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Reading back through this, I'm not sure if anyone answered you.
> 
> Your question is a bit like asking whether there was a good channel for seeing OSR in action. The Gauntlet talks a lot about PbtA, and they do podcasts for their plays, but I'm not sure if you can "see it in action" on their channel.
> 
> It would probably help if you pick a game that interests you. It will make it easier to narrow down the range of possible channels or streams. Avatar Legends (Avatar the Last Airbender), Masks (teen superhero), Stonetop (a Dungeon World hack for iron age "hearth fantasy" where the village gets a playbook), Monster of the Week (supernatural monster-hunting), Urban Shadows (PbtA's Vampire the Masquerade sorta) are all pretty good games to look for on YouTube for getting a grasp on PbtA.



Thanks!
I started another thread and got some answers. So far I've listened to the first 20 minutes of Gauntlet's Midnight Run session. I find it hard to watch other people play rpgs - more so when one participant slows everything down by supplying uninspired and vague answers to the questions. I'll continue tomorrow.


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## Malmuria (Oct 1, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I do think that Dungeon World has an OSR vibe to it. I don't think that it plays like OSR, but it clearly was designed with OSR in mind. OSR was in full swing at the time of its making. Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel definitely dabbled in the OSR space to various degrees. I believe that Adam Koebel has even said that some design decisions (e.g., race restrictions in playbooks) was written to evoke these older, pre-WotC editions of D&D. So it may be more accurate, at least from my perspective, to say that DW was inspired by old school nostalgia.



In one interview I saw, the way he described it was what it was like to play dnd as a kid where you didn't know or bother to look up all the rules.  That is, it's really meant for the players especially to stay within the fiction as much as possible.  I think it shares this with the OSR and its ever-more minimalist character sheets.

I do feel like what the player and dm needs to have in front of them (or in their head) is a good way of figuring out what's important to a game and how that game plays.   For example, Matt Colvile's contention regarding 4e is that it is very very helpful to set up a VTT to automate a lot of the math in the game, vs trying to track it on paper.  That's kind of a barrier to play for me, mostly because I end up tracking things not for myself but for half the table that can't figure out the rules.  Along those lines, I tried to watch Colvile's 4e game on youtube, and, yeah, it's kinda just him messing around with software for two hours?  Maybe it will pick up later.


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## niklinna (Oct 1, 2021)

Numidius said:


> Ready for my next campaign? It's gonna be post apocalyptic Mwa ha ha ha!!
> 
> A world of scarcity and violence!?
> 
> ...



Actually sounds interesting to me. Lots you could do with that.


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## Numidius (Oct 1, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Actually sounds interesting to me. Lots you could do with that.



Check out the new game by Vincent & Meguey Baker, Under Hollow Hills


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## niklinna (Oct 1, 2021)

Numidius said:


> Check out the new game by Vincent & Meguey Baker, Under Hollow Hills



Ooh. The setup is very specific, but the hooks are many, and _juicy_.


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> In one interview I saw, the way he described it was what it was like to play dnd as a kid where you didn't know or bother to look up all the rules.  That is, it's really meant for the players especially to stay within the fiction as much as possible.  I think it shares this with the OSR and its ever-more minimalist character sheets.



I can kinda make sense of that. Just for myself, I don't see that as going OSR - because those classic D&Ders were bringing a lot of wargaming experience to the table!


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## Malmuria (Oct 2, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I can kinda make sense of that. Just for myself, I don't see that as going OSR - because those classic D&Ders were bringing a lot of wargaming experience to the table!



That's maybe why I think it's right to say that the reconstructed play style of the OSR is not the same as the Classic play style (and then you can go further and say there was no one "classic" playstyle.  This interview with Jon Peterson is interesting that regard).


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## aramis erak (Oct 2, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I can kinda make sense of that. Just for myself, I don't see that as going OSR - because those classic D&Ders were bringing a lot of wargaming experience to the table!



That assumes a LOT of facts not in evidence...  
(bit of a rant...)
We hear a lot about it in print - because early D&D discussions were largely in wargaming magazines and local fanzines; the latter mostly don't survive.  But we also see in Dragon a lot of questions that show that, by 1976, a lot of D&D players were not experienced wargamers. And then there are folks like Liz Danforth, Bear Peters, and Michael Stackpole... who, thanks to Ken St. Andre, started "D&D" with a totally different ruleset, since Ken St. Andre (a wargame designer) disliked the OE rules and rewrote them... largely without reference to wargames mechanics.
Did some come in as experienced wargamers? Oh, hell yes! Me included... but I was introduced to D&D by guys whose only wargames wee Risk, Stratego, and Chess. (unless you count checkers and chinese checkers; but I count those as abstracts, and chess is a painted on theme...) Me? I'd played Avalon Hill's _1776_ and _Outdoor Survival_, and _Tactics II_, plus all of the above "family-game wargames"... but that's also summer of 1981.

And most of the guys I met thereafter playing, even if they started before I did, had no prior wargaming. I'd estimate about 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 had any minis-gaming or counters-on-map gaming experience, tho about 3 in 4 had experience with those 3 "family game" war-themed games... Chess, Risk, and Stratego.

We need to avoid typcasting the 1974-1977 era as "mostly wargamers" because there is a _known preservation bias_ for the commercial wargaming magazines. We know that  the first sales are in wargame conventions... but within the year, a few stories of accidental hobby-shop buys by non-wargamers start.  And also recruiting of non-gaming friends into D&D without wargames first also start to show up in the available historical information. And the first variants without intent for wargaming experience (EG: Tunnels and Trolls).

At best, we legitimately can say wargamers were the _intended audience_. (Various statements over the years by Gygax, initial sales at wargaming conventions, and my own correspondence with Mr. Arneson.)


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## Aldarc (Oct 2, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I do feel like what the player and dm needs to have in front of them (or in their head) is a good way of figuring out what's important to a game and how that game plays.   For example, Matt Colvile's contention regarding 4e is that it is very very helpful to set up a VTT to automate a lot of the math in the game, vs trying to track it on paper.  That's kind of a barrier to play for me, mostly because I end up tracking things not for myself but for half the table that can't figure out the rules.  Along those lines, I tried to watch Colvile's 4e game on youtube, and, yeah, it's kinda just him messing around with software for two hours?  Maybe it will pick up later.



The first video is basically the players learning the virtual tabletop. They previously did exclusively in-person gaming. So it's also something of a learning curve: i.e., new system + new software, etc. It does pick up.


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> We need to avoid typcasting the 1974-1977 era as "mostly wargamers:



Fair enough, but then it's not clear that there's such a thing as _classic D&D_.


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## aramis erak (Oct 2, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Fair enough, but then it's not clear that there's such a thing as _classic D&D_.



And, from the people I've known, that's the fundamental truth at hand. The advice to make the rules ones own were taken to heart...

 Ken St Andre was doing Theater of the Mind by early 1975. EPT scenarios at Cons were still using minis, rulers and terrain in late 1976 - just look at Strategic Review. 

Some of the guys I've gamed with in the 80's and 90's were in the USN in the mid 1970s... their games were, they claimed, mostly theater of the mind from when they started D&D, tho' one was using cardboard counters on maps (I've seen his counters - 1cm square, on cereal box).  Some were using the alternate combat system, some the chainmail ones (chainmail's actually three games in one...). This was due largely due to the needs of shipboard life.

Some switched to T&T (or Monsters Monsters) after it hit actual commercial sales in ,ate 1976... same time as 3th ed T&T and 1st ed _Monsters! Monsters!_ ... (M! M! being T&T from the monster point of view. Originally adapted by Steve Jackson {US})...


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2021)

@aramis erak 

Do you count T&T as free kriegsspiel or free kriegsspiel adjacent?

Personally I wouldn't because it has a clear combat system and a clear save system which covers the bulk of everything else exploratory-related (a bit like _defy danger_ in DW). But maybe you see it differently?


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## aramis erak (Oct 2, 2021)

pemerton said:


> @aramis erak
> 
> Do you count T&T as free kriegsspiel or free kriegsspiel adjacent?
> 
> Personally I wouldn't because it has a clear combat system and a clear save system which covers the bulk of everything else exploratory-related (a bit like _defy danger_ in DW). But maybe you see it differently?



Adjacent. Especially in solo use. It can put toes into FK in GM-run mode
It's worth noting that the save system also includes default damage for failure: 1 per 2 points under TN. And it's for almost any "Are you (ability)  enough to do (action)" and not just exploration. Had a player make a Cha SR 3 to convince a bull to attack the orcs ... PC did speak bovine, so it was indeed convincing, and not driving/intimidating.

Also, there's the XP issue...  SRs are a primary source of XP (For others:SR's  open ended 2d6 roll vs TN of 15+(level×5); Attribute reduces the TN, not increases the roll, because due to XP, those are no longer equal.  XP is total roll times SR Level.) A GM not assigning them often is slowing experience, often by as much as half.


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## Tun Kai Poh (Oct 2, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Apparently someone should write Kumbaya World!



I think it's been done - this is a solarpunk RPG about communities working together to overcome a rapidly mutating environment. The emphasis is on nonviolence... Arcology World by BasiliskOnline


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> It's worth noting that the save system also includes default damage for failure: 1 per 2 points under TN.



This is not in 5th ed is it? (Which is the version I have.)


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## Faolyn (Oct 2, 2021)

Tun Kai Poh said:


> What's been said about tropes in PbtA is right on the ball. You don't have to prepare a specific scenario with lots of stats, NPCs and maps (although you can). You just need to know the tropes of the genre you're playing in. The players will help the GM (or MC) to make stuff up that fits the tropes. The moves will play into the tropes. And those playbooks will definitely play up those tropes.



I'm late to the thread, and I haven't played any PbtA games. In reading through the section on MC moves and looking at the threat map (think they could have picked a _less _legible font for the samples?), I'm still confused. It seems like it provides the same sort of info that any other method of prepping does, just in a different format. There's still "monster statblocks" to write up, they just don't have hit points and stuff like that. What's the actual difference? Note: this is a serious question, not a gotcha or anything. I've heard a lot of good things about the system, but I just can't get it.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 2, 2021)

The difference is that you prep no 'story'. No outcomes, no answers to mysteries, none of that. It all emerges in play. You have threats, and the players respond to those threats, but nothing is pre-scripted.


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## niklinna (Oct 2, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> The difference is that you prep no 'story'. No outcomes, no answers to mysteries, none of that. It all emerges in play. You have threats, and the players respond to those threats, but nothing is pre-scripted.



Yes, that is a big part of the principles of the game. I would add that functionally/mechanically, dice rolls always have consequences: You succeed, you succeed at some cost, or something bad happens—as opposed to nothing happening on a failure. Your sword doesn't just swing past the orc's head; you lose your balance and fall, or your foot gets pinned in a crack in the ground. You don't just fail to pick the lock; maybe you jam the mechanism, or break a tool.

This, as somebody said elsewhere, means Apocalypse World has _teeth_ at a fundamental level, and makes moment-to-moment conflict _much_ more interesting (to me).


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 2, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Yes, that is a big part of the principles of the game. I would add that functionally/mechanically, dice rolls always have consequences: You succeed, you succeed at some cost, or something bad happens—as opposed to nothing happening on a failure. Your sword doesn't just swing past the orc's head; you lose your balance and fall, or your foot gets pinned in a crack in the ground. You don't just fail to pick the lock; maybe you jam the mechanism, or break a tool.
> 
> This, as somebody said elsewhere, means Apocalypse World has _teeth_ at a fundamental level, and makes moment-to-moment conflict _much_ more interesting (to me).



That sounds correct to me. The 'teeth' you're talking about are also why I like the game so much.


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## Faolyn (Oct 2, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> The difference is that you prep no 'story'. No outcomes, no answers to mysteries, none of that. It all emerges in play. You have threats, and the players respond to those threats, but nothing is pre-scripted.



Ah, so it would actually suck for me, personally, then, since I like to at least have an outline of what can or will happen because I'll completely forget otherwise. And because I mostly run horror, which has a _lot _of mystery and setting design that (for me) needs to be established ahead of time.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 2, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Ah, so it would actually suck for me, personally, then, since I like to at least have an outline of what can or will happen because I'll completely forget otherwise. And because I mostly run horror, which has a _lot _of mystery and setting design that (for me) needs to be established ahead of time.



Some my best horror, even in D&D, has been spur of the moment.  I've certainly had some pretty horrific moments in games that eschew prep.  Not to knock your preference, which is fine, just pointing out that prep isn't actually necessary for horror.


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## Faolyn (Oct 2, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Some my best horror, even in D&D, has been spur of the moment.  I've certainly had some pretty horrific moments in games that eschew prep.  Not to knock your preference, which is fine, just pointing out that prep isn't actually necessary for horror.



Yeah, I can do some as spur-of-the-moment, but I need more prep in general.


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## niklinna (Oct 2, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Yeah, I can do some as spur-of-the-moment, but I need more prep in general.



Apocalypse World (and offspring) don't _exclude_ prepped material, but they _embrace_ emergent story and minimal prep, and even asking your players to declare details about the game world. Even so, having your players figure out your intricate mystery is quite different from weaving & solving the threads of an intricate mystery with your players as you go. Quite different play styles.


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## Faolyn (Oct 2, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Apocalypse World (and offspring) don't _exclude_ prepped material, but they _embrace_ emergent story and minimal prep, and even asking your players to declare details about the game world. Even so, having your players figure out your intricate mystery is quite different from weaving & solving the threads of an intricate mystery with your players as you go. Quite different play styles.



True. It just might not be fore me.


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## aramis erak (Oct 2, 2021)

pemerton said:


> This is not in 5th ed is it? (Which is the version I have.)



I forgot - that's in one of the solos, not the core. It's such a good baseline that I use it in my GM'd games. It also was in Ken's House Rules as the default baseline in the 90's. I can't find my 5.5 to find out if it was added to the additions; the online PDF is a 5.0 tan-cover, like is in my black boxed set from the 80's.

Interesting side note: SR levels were dungeon level as base difficulty in 1E, and SR AP were roll × dungeon level. Also, 1E says _every_ trap must have a method of avoidance or bypass... which may require a SR... Just looked it up in the 2013 reprint PDF.


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## aramis erak (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Yeah, I can do some as spur-of-the-moment, but I need more prep in general.



Horror and prep do not go hand in hand. Prep often gets in the way of actually putting fear for their characters into play. If the super-intelligent baddy is smarter than the GM, then prep just hinders making him a full threat... 

While I harp on the idea of meaningful choices¹ as my primary metric for good GMing, sometimes illusionism² is essential to tone. (Note also: I don't like GMing a story I wrote - I just create encounters that are likely, and see if the players head for them. ) The trick is to not let the illusionism take away the meaningfulness of their choices.

Note that I said _tone_ and not _story_.  Horror is about tone. 

Mysteries, too. One of my dirty secrets in running L5R Magistrate games is that I set up 3 NPCs as potential doers, and it's up to them to decide which one did it. I don't know, and until the needed roll, neither do they. I don't pick. This also means my tells don't actually tell them whodunnit. Again, tone, not story. I can't lead them to the right or wrong choice, because, until they get a confession, it's not decided. This has had some seriously interesting in character RP at the table.

A mystery in an AW style game can be the same way. The prep is a list of suspects, and clues to narrow it downm but the final decision? make the accusation and see if it elicits a confession or not. Clues can point to two or more targets. 

-=-=-=-
1: Meaningful Choices: players have enough information to know whether each of the clear options is risky or not, and some idea of the potential consequences, and the odds thereof, and the outcomes are different.
2: The appearance of player impact without actually having impact, or of something having been a fixed fact, despite not having crossed the GM's mind prior to the topic being discussed by players


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> True. It just might not be fore me.



And that's cool.   What's really hard to grasp from a traditional viewpoint - and I had trouble with this myself - is just how differently these games actually work.  They help you do this stuff on the fly and they actively prevent prep outside of very loose stuff from working.  They're built to follow along and produce story.  If you're trying to imagine a D&D game where you just make it up as you go, then, yeah, that's sounds bad.  I still run 5e, and I do not do this in 5e. It doesn't make a lot of sense for the system, and if that's what you're used to, then the idea itself isn't going to make much sense within your experience set.  I also play these other games, and run them, and it's a very different thing I do when I run Blades than when I'm running 5e.  And the systems work differently, and aid the different approaches.  It's an interesting thing.  I'd recommend picking up one of these games -- Ironsworn is both free and based on PbtA and a great and awesome game that does a pretty good job of explaining how it works so differently.  On your part, when you read (if you read), start with the premise that these rules create a fun and rewarding game and try to figure out how that works with just what they say -- not with your experience from D&D.  Maybe it clicks, maybe it doesn't, or maybe you find out you just don't like it. Or, like me, you find a great other way to play that you can also enjoy.


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## niklinna (Oct 3, 2021)

I picked up Ironsworn based on a prior recommendation here. It looks pretty cool and I'd love to play a few sessions of it. Maybe some folks here who haven't tried PbtA games would like to give it a spin?


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## Aldarc (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Ah, so it would actually suck for me, personally, then, since I like to at least have an outline of what can or will happen because I'll completely forget otherwise. And because I mostly run horror, which has a _lot _of mystery and setting design that (for me) needs to be established ahead of time.



It depends on how you set up your fronts. If your front involves a "haunted house" or "supernatural serial killer," then your moves can help set these things. Some of the soft moves in PbtA may involve forecasting an impending threat. The hard move consequence of a failed roll may even involve the PCs finding the body of a victim.


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## pemerton (Oct 3, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> And it's for almost any "Are you (ability)  enough to do (action)" and not just exploration. Had a player make a Cha SR 3 to convince a bull to attack the orcs ... PC did speak bovine, so it was indeed convincing, and not driving/intimidating.



Another question about this: do you use the CHA SR in place of the reaction table (which from memory is an optional rule in 5th ed)?


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## pemerton (Oct 3, 2021)

I've never run PbtA horror, but I've run Cthulhu Dark with no prep beyond reading the 4 pages of rules. It worked well.

So I think PbtA horror should be doable, I would think along the lines @Aldarc describes not far upthread.


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## aramis erak (Oct 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Another question about this: do you use the CHA SR in place of the reaction table (which from memory is an optional rule in 5th ed)?



No. But I use it if a player wants to _change_ the reaction.... 
From last sunday: player who speaks bovine notes the orcs had captured Farmer Braun's prize bull. He's tied up in the kitchen. The bull's reaction was neutral. He decided to convince the bull to go rampage through the Orcs. (I assumed a big prize bull was worth 100MR, but didn't tell the player.) I set the difficulty at SR L2 CHR. He made exactly the needed TN. So, the bull changed from fear of to anger at  the orcs. PC didn't get to roll for attacks (he was a room away from the melee) , but he got to roll the bull's 10d6+50 ¹ instead... Also note that I'm using essentially 7.5 but with 5e leveling. Which adds a few types (Leader, Ranger, Specialist Wizard, Citizen), and the simple talent system (it's a label, and a rating rolled on 1d6. Each level adds a new talent at 1d6, or adds 1d6 to an existing talent. When a talent applies, it gets added to the attribute. It also adds a squeaked by zone - a fail of less than level below TN adds level to the dice roll...


-=-=-=-=-
1: It should have been 11d6+50, but I screwed up, forgetting that the first die is free...


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## Faolyn (Oct 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> It depends on how you set up your fronts. If your front involves a "haunted house" or "supernatural serial killer," then your moves can help set these things. Some of the soft moves in PbtA may involve forecasting an impending threat. The hard move consequence of a failed roll may even involve the PCs finding the body of a victim.



I just like being able to imagine the horror ahead of time. Saying that there's a haunted house doesn't do much if I can't actually imagine what horrors await in each room and figure out how to describe that image for the PCs. Sometimes I can do that on the fly, but most times my "on the fly" image is very raw or too cliche. 

I may like _playing _a PbtA game (although not one with a sex move*), but I don't think it's the right game for me to _run._

* Although I've played characters with a wide variety of sexual orientations, and I've played characters in relationships, both with other PCs and with NPCs, those things were also all planned out in advance. In real life, I'm an aromantic asexual _and _I've got a fun helping of Asperger's as well. I BSoD with even mild unplanned flirting, let along actual sex. I can't just go "OK, my character and Bob's character go off to have sex" without freezing and feeling panicky, even if that was the entirety of that encounter.


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## niklinna (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I just like being able to imagine the horror ahead of time. Saying that there's a haunted house doesn't do much if I can't actually imagine what horrors await in each room and figure out how to describe that image for the PCs. Sometimes I can do that on the fly, but most times my "on the fly" image is very raw or too cliche.



Ah, what you are describing is an environment with horrific things in it, not a story that has to be scripted in detail. PbtA games can handle that just fine, and you can leave a few things unplanned to have some room for ideas that come to mind mid-play (from your _or_ from the players! "What's the more horrible thing you could imagine being in this room?").


Faolyn said:


> I may like _playing _a PbtA game (although not one with a sex move*), but I don't think it's the right game for me to _run._



Sex moves are particular to _some_ PbtA games, by no means all. Ironsworn has Bonds, for example. It's a bit of a shame that the original had such a hot-button feature. Blades in the Dark doesn't even have a formal relationships-between-PCs thing.


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## Aldarc (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I just like being able to imagine the horror ahead of time. Saying that there's a haunted house doesn't do much if I can't actually imagine what horrors await in each room and figure out how to describe that image for the PCs. Sometimes I can do that on the fly, but most times my "on the fly" image is very raw or too cliche.



You could certainly write notes about what sort of things might be in your haunted house as part of your Front and establish a countdown clock for when badness escalates, but PbtA games don't want GMs to script plots. It's unsurprisingly similar to the Alexandrian's whole "prep situations, not plots" line of thinking.* 

* insert the usual bit about how both OSR and story games represent two divergent counter-responses to traditionalist gaming and GM-curated stories with similar interests in emergent stories. 



Faolyn said:


> I may like _playing _a PbtA game (although not one with a sex move*), but I don't think it's the right game for me to _run._



That's fair. PbtA can be demanding in how it expects the GM in the moment to generate appropriate consequences that flows from the fiction. It takes practice to hone as a skill. 



niklinna said:


> Ah, what you are describing is an environment with horrific things in it, not a story that has to be scripted in detail. PbtA games can handle that just fine, and you can leave a few things unplanned to have some room for ideas that come to mind mid-play (from your _or_ from the players! "What's the more horrible thing you could imagine being in this room?").



Agreed. 



niklinna said:


> Sex moves are particular to _some_ PbtA games, by no means all. Ironsworn has Bonds, for example. It's a bit of a shame that the original had such a hot-button feature. Blades in the Dark doesn't even have a formal relationships-between-PCs thing.



Sex moves in Avatar the Last Airbender would be odd and out of place, and I doubt Nickelodeon would have been fans of it either.


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## Faolyn (Oct 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> You could certainly write notes about what sort of things might be in your haunted house as part of your Front and establish a countdown clock for when badness escalates, but PbtA games don't want GMs to script plots. It's unsurprisingly similar to the Alexandrian's whole "prep situations, not plots" line of thinking.*



That might be a good way for me to do horror (I definitely follow the situations, not plots idea--if only because plots have so many moving pieces I tend to forget them!). Which PbtA game would be best for that, though? IIRC Dungeon World--and correct me if I'm wrong--leans heavily into restricting race and class, or uses race-as-class, both of which are things I hate with the power of a thousand suns. Even though I run a mostly-human-only Ravenloft, the idea that those restrictions are built into the game anyway bothers me enough to not want to spend money on the system.



Aldarc said:


> That's fair. PbtA can be demanding in how it expects the GM in the moment to generate appropriate consequences that flows from the fiction. It takes practice to hone as a skill.



Yeah. I'm not adverse to trying it at all. I just think I need more (preferably written) examples, and specifically with notes as to why things were done that way. The AW book's examples are... lacking. They seem to be written for those who immediately get the idea, not for those who are struggling with the differences.

I have a few other issues with AW. It creates _just enough _of an implied universe, what with the psychic maelstrom, to make me kind of have to play in it, but not enough to truly paint a picture of what it's like (compare to a game like Troika!--which I also haven't played yet, sadly--where I can just _see _the golden barges sailing through the hump-backed sky in my mind). The examples in the "Barf the Apocalypse" section don't cause me to imagine what the world as a whole is like. 

But the PbtA system itself makes me want to figure it out.



niklinna said:


> Sex moves are particular to _some_ PbtA games, by no means all. Ironsworn has Bonds, for example. It's a bit of a shame that the original had such a hot-button feature. Blades in the Dark doesn't even have a formal relationships-between-PCs thing.



Blades in the Dark is another thing I have issues with. Such a beautiful, amazing setting, perhaps one of the most unusual and interesting post-apocalyses I've ever seen... and they're wasting it on _heists. _Heists are great, but I can do that anywhere. In a setting where the sun is _broken_, I want to explore the world and deal with the consequences of that, not just steal things and create gangs.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> That might be a good way for me to do horror (I definitely follow the situations, not plots idea--if only because plots have so many moving pieces I tend to forget them!). Which PbtA game would be best for that, though? IIRC Dungeon World--and correct me if I'm wrong--leans heavily into restricting race and class, or uses race-as-class, both of which are things I hate with the power of a thousand suns. Even though I run a mostly-human-only Ravenloft, the idea that those restrictions are built into the game anyway bothers me enough to not want to spend money on the system.



This doesn't even make sense within the system.  There's no restrictions, because there's nothing to restrict.  What DW does is have playbooks, where aren't quite analogous to a class (more an collection of moves for an archetype).  You can mix and match moves between playbooks, even.  Races aren't really defined, with the idea that the players will define what the race is in relation to the game world for that game.  So, if you pick dwarf, then you get to defined what being a dwarf means in this game, which doesn't have to be the same in the next game.


Faolyn said:


> Yeah. I'm not adverse to trying it at all. I just think I need more (preferably written) examples, and specifically with notes as to why things were done that way. The AW book's examples are... lacking. They seem to be written for those who immediately get the idea, not for those who are struggling with the differences.
> 
> I have a few other issues with AW. It creates _just enough _of an implied universe, what with the psychic maelstrom, to make me kind of have to play in it, but not enough to truly paint a picture of what it's like (compare to a game like Troika!--which I also haven't played yet, sadly--where I can just _see _the golden barges sailing through the hump-backed sky in my mind). The examples in the "Barf the Apocalypse" section don't cause me to imagine what the world as a whole is like.
> 
> But the PbtA system itself makes me want to figure it out.



That's because you're suppose to define your game world at the table, with the players.  This is core in the concept of ask questions and use the answers -- you create what this apocalypse looks like when you sit down and create characters and establish the initial state of the game.  You leave big spaces blank, and fill them in as you need to, often relying on the players to help do this work.  The setting is implied enough to give some kind of initial genre push, but the details are up to your table for each game.  The setting is specific to the game, which is an inversion of how D&D usually does things, where setting is often agnostic to the game.


Faolyn said:


> Blades in the Dark is another thing I have issues with. Such a beautiful, amazing setting, perhaps one of the most unusual and interesting post-apocalyses I've ever seen... and they're wasting it on _heists. _Heists are great, but I can do that anywhere. In a setting where the sun is _broken_, I want to explore the world and deal with the consequences of that, not just steal things and create gangs.



Cool, play a different game, then and use the setting.  Blades isn't about exploring the setting -- that's just some nice backdrop to what the game is about.  In other words, to me, all of that setting stuff is superfluous to the point of the game, not vice versa.  I don't play Blades for the setting, I play it for the game, and the setting is neat.  The setting is there to give the backdrop that this is how horrible it is, not as a puzzle to be solved in the game.  Admittedly, if you're coming from D&D where such a setting detail is a clear hook to go investigate the GM's story idea (or the setting author, if published), then this is where you expect it to lead and it's disappointing it doesn't.


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## niklinna (Oct 3, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Blades in the Dark is another thing I have issues with. Such a beautiful, amazing setting, perhaps one of the most unusual and interesting post-apocalyses I've ever seen... and they're wasting it on _heists. _Heists are great, but I can do that anywhere. In a setting where the sun is _broken_, I want to explore the world and deal with the consequences of that, not just steal things and create gangs.



Well, the folks who wrote and play Blades in the Dark are quite happy to waste their time on heists.  There are many Forged in the Dark (and Apocalypse World) offshoots with different settings & premises, some of them incredibly specific, a trend I don't particularly get into myself—so I can appreciate why you would feel heists are a waste—but there it is.

Anyhow! The activity rules cover just about anything you might want to do pretty well, so nothing prevents you from taking Blades in the Dark and structuring the activity of your group sessions differently. The book describes free play, engagement, score, and downtime as formal phases, and crew playbooks as gangs of criminals. You can rename those phases and crew playbooks, repurpose them, replace them, or ditch them entirely. A score/heist is really just a quest with the assumption that the PCs are criminals after all, and most of the base playbooks would be fine for heroic questing in the cities or wilderness of the Shattered Isles. There's a set of playbooks to play vigilantes, and another for officers of the law. There was a jam on itch.io that produced 100 playbooks of all kinds—check it out!


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## Faolyn (Oct 3, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> This doesn't even make sense within the system.  There's no restrictions, because there's nothing to restrict.  What DW does is have playbooks, where aren't quite analogous to a class (more an collection of moves for an archetype).  You can mix and match moves between playbooks, even.  Races aren't really defined, with the idea that the players will define what the race is in relation to the game world for that game.  So, if you pick dwarf, then you get to defined what being a dwarf means in this game, which doesn't have to be the same in the next game.



Maybe I read the wrong thing, then. But on the Dungeon World SRD, if I click on the Bard entry, I get a choice of racial Moves--and my choices are Elf and Human. If I click on Fighter, my racial Moves are Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human. If I click on Paladin, I get one option: Human. If I do a search on DriveThruRPG on Dungeon World Playbooks, most of them are new classes (some of which sound rather interesting), but there's also "The Orc" and "The Fae" and other such racial classes. What this means is, I _don't _get to define what dwarf means in my game, because the game has already done so, using a race/class restriction that I hate. I know that this OSR-style restriction is popular among some, and that's absolutely fine, but I hate it.

Do the DW books say or imply I can just make up new Moves if I want dwarf bards or elf paladins? If so, are there rules for that, or does "balance" not matter in this game? If the books _don't _suggest I can make new Moves, then what does it mean for my game?



Ovinomancer said:


> That's because you're suppose to define your game world at the table, with the players.  This is core in the concept of ask questions and use the answers -- you create what this apocalypse looks like when you sit down and create characters and establish the initial state of the game.  You leave big spaces blank, and fill them in as you need to, often relying on the players to help do this work.  The setting is implied enough to give some kind of initial genre push, but the details are up to your table for each game.  The setting is specific to the game, which is an inversion of how D&D usually does things, where setting is often agnostic to the game.



Yeah, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the book itself doesn't really inspire me. And I can--and have--defined the game world with my players using other systems, including D&D, Fate, and GURPS. So with Apocalypse World, I'm left with a meh setting and a ruleset that I find, quite frankly, confusing, counterintuitive, and strangely limited.

I'll give you an example. I'm looking at the Moves Snowball, which gives an example of play and maybe you can explain what I'm not getting. We have a situation where the PC Marie is going to "give grief" to an NPC, Isle, and her brother Mill and lover Plover are there as well.


> “I _*read the situation*_,” her player says.
> “You do? It’s charged?” I say.
> “It is now.”



Between this and the description for Read Sitch, I learn that it's supposed to be used in scenarios where there's potential danger, either on your part or the part of the NPCs. Does this mean I _can't _use it in any situation that isn't charged? I can't go into a room where people are just hanging out innocuously and where I have no intention of starting trouble and try to read the room? In comparison to any other game that has an Insight/Psychology/Sense Motive-type skill, this seems seriously limited. Does the game assume that nobody would use this ability unless there currently is or will soon be danger? Or does the game assume that there's _always _a potential for danger, no matter how peaceful the situation seems? The MC's response here--"You do? It's charged"--certainly indicates that you're not supposed to use this ability outside of potentially threatening situations. Anyway, Marie's roll succeeds and she wants to know who the most dangerous person in the area is:


> “Plover,” I say. “No doubt. He’s out of his armor, but he has a little gun in his boot and he’s a hard %@#^. Mill’s just 12 and he’s not a violent kid. Isle’s tougher, but not like Plover.” (See me _*misdirect*_! I just chose one capriciously, then pointed to fictional details as though they’d made the decision. We’ve never even seen Mill onscreen before, I just now made up that he’s 12 and not violent.)



So I look up Misdirect.


> However, _*misdirect:*_ pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead.



But... this is basically what nearly every practiced GM does. It _looks _like the point of this Move is to say "go after Plover," but it fails, because the PC attacks Isle instead. Does the MC's failure mean anything? Assuming I'm even correct as to the point of the Move, because the MC doesn't actually say.

Also, I don't know why this is called misdirection, since you're (edit: not) trying to feint or lie here. The MC here is being very clear here and in later dialogue about the fact that Plover is a big bad mofo, and there's nothing to indicate that in reality, either Isle or Mill are secretly the most dangerous one and the PC hasn't found that out yet.

Later on, we get this:


> “Cool. Keeler—” turning to Keeler’s player “—you’re passing by your armory and you hear some of your gang people in there. It’s Plover, Church Head and Pellet, arming themselves. What do you do?” I’m *announcing future badness.*



What? How does Keeler know this? Did the MC here take over Keeler and force him to enter the armory in order to witness this? Does Keeler have X-ray vision and super-hearing? Are his gang members talking really loudly and narrating their actions? Are we to assume a third-person omniscient eye? I kind of hate this. If this were a TV show, I'd be rolling my eyes so hard right about now. Keeler's player should have to go into the armory to know what's going on, and if that means that that Keeler misses out on info if she doesn't, then oh well.

Later on, Keeler's gang decides to attack Marie because she attacked Isle (I _guess _Plover knows that Marie is a psychic and was able to put two and two together when Isle started bleeding out her ear). The gang cuts open the top of her door at home and drop a grenade in.


> I hold up my fist for the grenade and slap it with my other hand, like whacking a croquet ball.
> “I dive for—”
> Sorry, I’m still making my hard move. This is all _*misdirection*_.
> “Nope. They cooked it off and it goes off practically at your feet. Let’s see … 4-harm area messy, a grenade. You have armor?



What? How is this misdirection? Is this game GM v. Players, but wants you to restrict your GM attacks to what makes sense in-game? It really looks like what this game calls misdirection is what every other game calls "describing what happens." Which would naturally be an explosion if someone drops a grenade at your feet.

So what am I missing? Again, this is a serious question, not a gotcha or anything. I am _literally _not getting this.



Ovinomancer said:


> Cool, play a different game, then and use the setting.  Blades isn't about exploring the setting -- that's just some nice backdrop to what the game is about.  In other words, to me, all of that setting stuff is superfluous to the point of the game, not vice versa.



Yeah, and that's why I don't want to play Blades. To me, the setting is so important because it defines most of what makes my character tick. It's a major disconnect between the setting and the rules, and it makes me wonder why Evil Hat even included the setting in the first place. Why not make it setting agnostic, or make an implied setting, or set it in a more standard location? It feels to me like they had the setting and and the game and decided to combine the two.



Ovinomancer said:


> I don't play Blades for the setting, I play it for the game, and the setting is neat.  The setting is there to give the backdrop that this is how horrible it is, not as a puzzle to be solved in the game.  Admittedly, if you're coming from D&D where such a setting detail is a clear hook to go investigate the GM's story idea (or the setting author, if published), then this is where you expect it to lead and it's disappointing it doesn't.



It's not that I would expect PCs to go investigate. It's that I'd use this setting for a completely different type of game. The world outside the city is a crumbling nightmare. It's your job to explore it. Demons and ghosts haunt the dark streets. It's your job to protect the commoners. Things like that.


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## Blue (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Blades in the Dark is another thing I have issues with. Such a beautiful, amazing setting, perhaps one of the most unusual and interesting post-apocalyses I've ever seen... and they're wasting it on _heists. _Heists are great, but I can do that anywhere. In a setting where the sun is _broken_, I want to explore the world and deal with the consequences of that, not just steal things and create gangs.



So your complaint about a system designed to strongly support heist and gang fiction and action is that "the setting is too good"?  That then need to desaturate the world and make it uninteresting except where if would impact a heist?

Not every game needs to be a big tent game where you can do anything.  And it's okay that other games have interesting settings - just like a short story implies a much bigger deal than just what you read, so can a directed game have a grand vision around it.


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## Faolyn (Oct 4, 2021)

Blue said:


> So your complaint about a system designed to strongly support heist and gang fiction and action is that "the setting is too good"?



Kind of? I mean, it's a totally personal complaint, but the last thing I want to do in that setting is plan a heist or form a gang.


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## dragoner (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Kind of? I mean, it's a totally personal complaint, but the last thing I want to do in that setting is plan a heist or form a gang.



It is similar to my feeling about a lot of pbta games, they handle a narrow focus well, outside of that it's best to switch to something else.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Kind of? I mean, it's a totally personal complaint, but the last thing I want to do in that setting is plan a heist or form a gang.



So do something else. They've published rules for playing vigilantes in that setting, as well as rules for revolutionaries, or even, if you really must, for cops:





__





						Blades in the Dark
					

“Blades in the Dark cuts right to the action of doing dirty deeds, then keeps cutting to the bone.”— Sean Nittner, playtester Since my first game at Nerdly, I knew I […]




					seannittner.com
				




But you can also take a page out of the various Forged in the Dark games and just tweak things to make a different sort of campaign that works better for you. Play soldiers like in Band of Blades. Adapt Beam Saber's rules to steampunk mechs for high-octane Leviathan hunting or mech-on-mech warfare. Blades/Forged in the Dark is super hackable and flexible.


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## Blue (Oct 4, 2021)

dragoner said:


> It is similar to my feeling about a lot of pbta games, they handle a narrow focus well, outside of that it's best to switch to something else.



Yes, that's is an intentional point.  They are quite focused, and provide a ton of mechanical support for that focus.  They are not big tent games like D&D.

Butr for all that said, it's very easy to tweak to a different "small tent" that you want.  Look at the proliferation of PbtA and FitD games.  They still will not be everything to everyone, but they can be definitely tweaked.


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## dragoner (Oct 4, 2021)

Blue said:


> Look at the proliferation of PbtA and FitD games.  They still will not be everything to everyone, but they can be definitely tweaked.



Yes, there are a lot out there, so if one is looking for a certain genre, there is a chance someone has made it.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 4, 2021)

Barely paying attention to ENWorld right now (this thread or others), but just seeing this "Blades just does heists."

Holy mother of god is that a misunderstanding of the profound breadth of conflicts that the game supports (and by supports I don't mean bubblegum and paperclips and GM Force...I mean the action resolution mechanics + conflict resolution mechanics + principles + all of the various feedback loops and reward cycles).

I'm running a Smugglers game and a Cult game right now.  Between those two Crews, you could name 10 D&Desque conflicts and those 2 Crews have likely run 8 out of 10 as a Score + they've run several other conflict archetypes that most D&D couldn't dream of resolving (through actual resolution mechanics...again, not bubblegum and paperclips and GM Force).  

My advice to people who have not run games or played games is to dial up the curiosity and dial back the boldly asserted takes that can't be substantiated (and are empirically not true).  

If someone wants to sit in on one of my Blades games...please...just PM me.  I'll gladly get you hooked up with the DIscord and you can see what the game entails when played by experienced participants.


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## niklinna (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Maybe I read the wrong thing, then. But on the Dungeon World SRD, if I click on the Bard entry, I get a choice of racial Moves--and my choices are Elf and Human. If I click on Fighter, my racial Moves are Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human. If I click on Paladin, I get one option: Human. If I do a search on DriveThruRPG on Dungeon World Playbooks, most of them are new classes (some of which sound rather interesting), but there's also "The Orc" and "The Fae" and other such racial classes. What this means is, I _don't _get to define what dwarf means in my game, because the game has already done so, using a race/class restriction that I hate. I know that this OSR-style restriction is popular among some, and that's absolutely fine, but I hate it.





Faolyn said:


> Do the DW books say or imply I can just make up new Moves if I want dwarf bards or elf paladins? If so, are there rules for that, or does "balance" not matter in this game? If the books _don't _suggest I can make new Moves, then what does it mean for my game?



I don't get Dungeon World's presentation of limited race choices for certain classes either, but, it's good to keep in mind that in all PbtA games (that I've seen), playbooks are _starting points_, not _full & restrictive definitions_. So the authors say only humans get to be paladins, or only human and elf rangers get special moves. Chuck it! Be a dwarf paladin, make up a special move dwarf paladins get. I think they could have been much clearer about that, but it's just something in the air if you plug in to the community.


Faolyn said:


> Yeah, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the book itself doesn't really inspire me. And I can--and have--defined the game world with my players using other systems, including D&D, Fate, and GURPS. So with Apocalypse World, I'm left with a meh setting and a ruleset that I find, quite frankly, confusing, counterintuitive, and strangely limited.



Well, I can't argue that. Apocalypse World makes a _very_ loose sketch of the world and leaves your group to fill in the other 98%. Blades in the Dark has a much more detailed setting—for the one city. If Apocalypse World doesn't get your juices flowing, drop it and move on.


Faolyn said:


> I'll give you an example. I'm looking at the Moves Snowball, which gives an example of play and maybe you can explain what I'm not getting. We have a situation where the PC Marie is going to "give grief" to an NPC, Isle, and her brother Mill and lover Plover are there as well.
> 
> Between this and the description for Read Sitch, I learn that it's supposed to be used in scenarios where there's potential danger, either on your part or the part of the NPCs. Does this mean I _can't _use it in any situation that isn't charged?



No, it means _there's no point using it_ in a situation that isn't charged. If nothing bad could happen, there's no need to roll the dice and the GM will just flat-out tell you what the situation is. Player moves are always about doing something _when failure will have consequences_. If failure won't have consequences, it's not worth fussing over.


Faolyn said:


> I can't go into a room where people are just hanging out innocuously and where I have no intention of starting trouble and try to read the room? In comparison to any other game that has an Insight/Psychology/Sense Motive-type skill, this seems seriously limited. Does the game assume that nobody would use this ability unless there currently is or will soon be danger? Or does the game assume that there's _always _a potential for danger, no matter how peaceful the situation seems? The MC's response here--"You do? It's charged"--certainly indicates that you're not supposed to use this ability outside of potentially threatening situations. Anyway, Marie's roll succeeds and she wants to know who the most dangerous person in the area is:



This is something I do feel the author's prose fails in. A *move* is something your character does that is risky. Anything else is just your character doing stuff, even if it looks like using an ability or named move. But absent that risk of failure, it isn't a mechanical, technical, move. So yes, you can read the room without trying to start trouble, and if the situation isn't charged, the GM will just tell you what the deal is. But if there's a chance the tough guy who has everybody under his thumb can tell you're figuring that out, and will come at you, that's when you roll the bones.


Faolyn said:


> So I look up Misdirect.
> 
> But... this is basically what nearly every practiced GM does. It _looks _like the point of this Move is to say "go after Plover," but it fails, because the PC attacks Isle instead. Does the MC's failure mean anything? Assuming I'm even correct as to the point of the Move, because the MC doesn't actually say.



Another point of confusion. GM moves are different from player moves, and in some ways I feel they are training wheels for newer GMs. They are formalizing something experienced GMs just know how to do.


Faolyn said:


> Later on, we get this:
> 
> What? How does Keeler know this? Did the MC here take over Keeler and force him to enter the armory in order to witness this? Does Keeler have X-ray vision and super-hearing? Are his gang members talking really loudly and narrating their actions? Are we to assume a third-person omniscient eye? I kind of hate this. If this were a TV show, I'd be rolling my eyes so hard right about now. Keeler's player should have to go into the armory to know what's going on, and if that means that that Keeler misses out on info if she doesn't, then oh well.



(Sure wish I could figure out how to do nested quotes here.) It's just the GM tossing in a "you happened to hear this while walking around". It's taking control of the PCs in a sense, but I'd say it's safe to assume PCs walk around their home bases. If a player's not cool with that, the GM can find another way to bring that information around—say somebody comes to report that they heard the info while walking around.

I'm starting to get the impression that you haven't accepted some of the central premises of the game, but keep on poking at it because without doing that, things don't make sense and/or bug you. One of the central premises of the game is that the GM & players together are building a story through actions, and not waiting for anybody to stumble on clues or do the particular thing necessary to get the ball rolling. You just kick the ball! Whether you're the GM or a player, you just kick the ball. You don't have to like it, but that's a foundational principle of PbtA gaming.


Faolyn said:


> Later on, Keeler's gang decides to attack Marie because she attacked Isle (I _guess _Plover knows that Marie is a psychic and was able to put two and two together when Isle started bleeding out her ear). The gang cuts open the top of her door at home and drop a grenade in.
> 
> What? How is this misdirection? Is this game GM v. Players, but wants you to restrict your GM attacks to what makes sense in-game? It really looks like what this game calls misdirection is what every other game calls "describing what happens." Which would naturally be an explosion if someone drops a grenade at your feet.



About this particular bit, I can't comment. Based on what you've quoted, I'd say the GM is being a jerk. Maybe more context would give me something to go on.


Faolyn said:


> So what am I missing? Again, this is a serious question, not a gotcha or anything. I am _literally _not getting this.



At this point, all I can say is, if you want to answer that question, get in on a game as a player/auditor with a GM who will be happy to lift the curtain and explain what they're doing. You are clearly not getting it by reading.


Faolyn said:


> Yeah, and that's why I don't want to play Blades. To me, the setting is so important because it defines most of what makes my character tick. It's a major disconnect between the setting and the rules, and it makes me wonder why Evil Hat even included the setting in the first place. Why not make it setting agnostic, or make an implied setting, or set it in a more standard location? It feels to me like they had the setting and and the game and decided to combine the two.



I've told you about several options for using the setting in different ways, so you do have options.


Faolyn said:


> It's not that I would expect PCs to go investigate. It's that I'd use this setting for a completely different type of game. The world outside the city is a crumbling nightmare. It's your job to explore it. Demons and ghosts haunt the dark streets. It's your job to protect the commoners. Things like that.



You have the freedom to do that very thing, so have at! It's a cool setting, by all means grab it and run a game in it with whatever system you like.


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## chaochou (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> It's not that I would expect PCs to go investigate. It's that I'd use this setting for a completely different type of game. The world outside the city is a crumbling nightmare. It's your job to explore it. Demons and ghosts haunt the dark streets. It's your job to protect the commoners. Things like that.




This is not what PbtA is for - it's not for the MC to tell the players the 'job' of their characters and for the characters to be meekly led into accepting the MCs version of things. It's not for the MC to provide 'hooks' which create the basis for the characters becoming protagonists. The _players _get to decide what to do and what interests them and what they want to change - not the MC. The MC is just there to put pressure on what the players decide to do, not to give them things to do.

This is the fundamental structure of Story Now play, whereas what you're describing is GM-controlled play. That's fundamentally why you're having such a hard time with PbtA. The design fights against full on railroad play and also against GMs who want to protagonise the characters (by telling them their 'job') while pretending its the players doing so (illusionism) or with passively complicit players (participationism).


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## pemerton (Oct 4, 2021)

This post is prompted mostly by @Faolyn's posts.

My views on AW are probably a bit idiosyncratic. They are not shaped primarily by comparison to 3E or 5e D&D. They are shaped by comparison to scene-framing games like Burning Wheel, 4e D&D and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic; to high-sim "task resolution" games like Rolemaster; and to Classic Traveller, which has one foot in the RM high-sim camp but also has a lot of discrete subsystems which (roughly, and as per my post upthread) take the form _if you try this thing, then make this throw to succeed or else the referee will tell you what bad thing happens_.

I've also read a lot of Vincent Baker's design thoughts on his blog, and I think a fair bit of those thoughts is reflected in AW's design.

To quote Baker,

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players _and_ GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it.​
The essence of the _player_ role in a RPG, since the hobby's invention, is that the player takes on the role of an imagined person in a fictional situation, and says what it is that their character does. More formally, that is _action declaration_. The essence of the _GM _role is to describe that fictional situation - to provide both _background _and also more immediate _framing_. And once a player declares an action for their character, we then need a way to work out _what happens next_.

What makes AW distinct, as a RPG, is how it tells the participants how to do these things. For many action declarations, the GM just says what happens next. In doing so, the GM should be guided by the game's agenda and principles. So suppose a player says _I leave home and walk across the compound to see if Isle is hanging around_ (a bit like Marie the Brainer in the "Moves Snowball" example of play). In that example (p 152), the GM tells Marie's player that she finds Isle with Plover and Mill (all NPCs): Baker doesn't tell us what GM move this is, but we can identify it as _offering an opportunity_. But the GM isn't obliged to make that move. Instead, for instance, the GM could _announce offscreen badness_:

You stroll over to the car shed where you know Isle hangs out, but the shed's been broken into and the car's not there. Isle's not there either: you can see her cap lying in the dust on the ground; and the tyre marks look like someone drove out of there in a hurry!​
In some ways, this is like GMing the introductory or framing parts of a D&D module. But not identical: the principles, and the GM moves used in accordance with them, will tend to drive towards conflict more quickly, and harder, than D&D by default. Less exploration, more drama.

And some action declarations are _player-side moves_. The basic rule here is that, _if you do it, you do it_ (pp 12, 152; the flip side is _to do it, (you have to) do it_). Now the next sentence cannot be emphasised enough, and @Faolyn provides the full answer to your question about how _read a (charged) situation_ compares to making an Insight check in D&D: _because the game is super-tight and super-coherent in its design_, the "free narration" parts of play - like the examples above - will naturally lead to players making these action declarations. And when they do, then the dice have to be rolled. And the outcome of the roll tells us who gets to add the next bit to the fiction, and how.

For instance, in my example _the situation is charged _because that's what the GM has narrated: the shed's broken into, the car's missing, it looks like Isle's been taken to. If the player has their PC look around the shed, trying to work out what's gone on and what's happened to Isle, _they are reading a charged situation and have to make a throw_. And if they succeed, they get to ask questions which oblige the GM to introduce more elements of background and framing. As the rulebooks says (p 199),

As MC, sometimes you’ll already know the answers to these and sometimes you won’t. Either way, you do have to commit to the answers when you give them.​
It doesn't matter to the dynamic of the game whether the GM has already made something up (_Dremmer's gang broke in and stole the car and kidnapped Isle!_) or is making it up now. The GM will always say _what their prep demands _and _what the principles demand _(p 109) and the principles will point towards things to say even if there is no prep (it took me only a minute or so to think up my variant on the Isle scenario). And because the GM will always say _what honesty demands_ (p 109), further narration will snowball off those initial answers. And because after every move the GM asks, "What do you do now?" (p 116), the player will declare more actions for their PC and the cycle of creating the fiction will continue.

And suppose the attempt to read a charged situation fails: then the GM can make as hard and direct a move as they like. And the principles govern here, too. Let's r_espond with f*****y_ - "As you step into the shed, you're struck from behind and fall unconscious. When you wake up, you're lying tied up in the boot of a car. You can hear Dremmer talking outside and above you." Ie, the GM has _captured someone_.

If the prep has been light, then the difference between passing and failing on that _read a sitch_ check could be more than just a sore head! The framing is different. The likely action declarations are different. But the backstory might be pretty different too: to me, that failure result looks more likely than the success result to be leading to a revelation that Isle _conspired_ with Dremmer to capture the PC.

I think looking at this system starting from the premise _but why can I only use Insight if the situation is charged _is getting things backwards: that's already assuming that _every action declaration is the same _as a prompt to the GM to introduce new framing or reveal new backstory. The distinctive character, and brilliance, of AW is that it's not. I hope this post has helped explain that in a bit more detail.


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## pemerton (Oct 4, 2021)

chaochou said:


> This is not what PbtA is for - it't not for the MC to tell the players the 'job' of their characters and for the characters to be meekly led into accepting the MCs version of things.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The _players _get to decide what to do and what interests them and what they want to change - not the MC. The MC is just there to put pressure on what the players decide to do, not to give them things to do.



In my post just upthread, and just below this one, I've tried to spell out - with reference to the moves and principles - how the allocation of authority to establish fiction works in AW.

The same thing can be done to spell out what @chaochou says here,

So part of PC gen - including but not limited to the Hx phase - establishes background. So when the GM engages in framing early on, _honesty demands_ that the framing follow from that established background. There's no "Four strangers - a cleric, a fighter, a thief and a wizard - meet in an inn."

And the principles include _asking provocative questions and building on the answers _and also _being a fan of the players' characters_. So it is the players, via their PCs and their answers to provocative questions, who are expected to provide the trajectory for play. But the GM will be _putting their bloody fingerprints all over everything they touch _(p 113). That's the _pressure_ that chaochou refers to.

The same notions can be seen by drilling down even more finely. Consider _seduce/manipulate_, that I also posted about upthread. A player who succeeds on their throw for this move, and commits as required by the degree of success, _can require the GM to have a NPC give the player's PC what they want_. There's no GM move that allows the GM to tell a player what their PC chooses to do.

Or consider _seize by force_: a player who succeeds on this move can have their PC _take definite hold of something_. And this "binds" the GM in the sense that the GM is a _fan of the players' characters _and is expected to _respond with intermittent rewards_. But the players are under no requirement to be fans of the NPCs, to pause and ask what they do, nor to provide them with intermittent rewards! So the combination of principles and player-side moves establishes an asymmetry in this respect, which Baker notes towards the end of the "Moves snowball" play example (p 156):

A subtle thing just happened. I’ve been saying what they do and then asking Marie’s player what Marie does, but here she’s seized initiative from me. It isn’t mechanically significant, we’ll still both just keep making our moves in turn. It’s just worth noticing.​
What I'm trying to show in this post, and the previous one, is that the difference from GM-driven play, and from some typical D&D play, isn't just a matter of _ethos_. Of course ethos is part of it (that's what an agenda and principles are, at their core) but the ethos is spelled out in detail, and it interacts with the technical rules for action resolution in particular ways that combine to yield the overall play experience.

To even think about replicating this in D&D play, you'd first have to ask_ how would I implement *seduce/manipulate*, or *seize by force *(beyond just inflicting hp of damage)_? I don't think that's a trivial question. As far as I know the only version of D&D to come close to doing this is 4e, via skill challenges; and skill challenges are scene-based resolution and so quite different from AW's _if you do it, you do it._


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## Manbearcat (Oct 4, 2021)

pemerton said:


> This post is prompted mostly by @Faolyn's posts.
> 
> My views on AW are probably a bit idiosyncratic. They are not shaped primarily by comparison to 3E or 5e D&D. They are shaped by comparison to scene-framing games like Burning Wheel, 4e D&D and Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic; to high-sim "task resolution" games like Rolemaster; and to Classic Traveller, which has one foot in the RM high-sim camp but also has a lot of discrete subsystems which (roughly, and as per my post upthread) take the form _if you try this thing, then make this throw to succeed or else the referee will tell you what bad thing happens_.
> 
> ...




Great post.

Put another way, an Apocalypse World GM (MC) is _nearly always putting forth a charged situation that can be read_.  The conversation of play is probably 90 % dedicated to conflict-charged situations with an intervening 10 % of exchanges related to transitions/gear & crap (or clarifying exchanges in the meta channel)!  The impetus for them doing so will always be the same (its right there in the Agenda and Principles; play to find out, make their lives not boring, follow the rules, ask provocative questions and use the answers, be a fan of the characters, look through crosshairs, et al).  However, what will change is (a) the gamestate/state of the fiction leading up to the soft move that the GM is making to establish the situation (the fiction established through play and fronts that they're following) and (b) the nature of the soft move made (and therefore the orientation of the fiction to the PCs and the orientation of the players' PCs to the fiction).

What the player is saying when they want to _read a charged situation/interaction_ is:

* I'm interested.

* I (and my PC) want to know more...I (and my PC) want to be prepared for what is to come...and I'm willing (or wanting) to risk things getting worse by my 2d6+sharp result gone bad.

* And I _know _you (the MC) want to know more (because that is your job and we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place if you didn't want to know more!).


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## Aldarc (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> That might be a good way for me to do horror (I definitely follow the situations, not plots idea--if only because plots have so many moving pieces I tend to forget them!). Which PbtA game would be best for that, though? IIRC Dungeon World--and correct me if I'm wrong--leans heavily into restricting race and class, or uses race-as-class, both of which are things I hate with the power of a thousand suns. Even though I run a mostly-human-only Ravenloft, the idea that those restrictions are built into the game anyway bothers me enough to not want to spend money on the system.





Faolyn said:


> Maybe I read the wrong thing, then. But on the Dungeon World SRD, if I click on the Bard entry, I get a choice of racial Moves--and my choices are Elf and Human. If I click on Fighter, my racial Moves are Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Human. If I click on Paladin, I get one option: Human. If I do a search on DriveThruRPG on Dungeon World Playbooks, most of them are new classes (some of which sound rather interesting), but there's also "The Orc" and "The Fae" and other such racial classes. What this means is, I _don't _get to define what dwarf means in my game, because the game has already done so, using a race/class restriction that I hate. I know that this OSR-style restriction is popular among some, and that's absolutely fine, but I hate it.
> 
> Do the DW books say or imply I can just make up new Moves if I want dwarf bards or elf paladins? If so, are there rules for that, or does "balance" not matter in this game? If the books _don't _suggest I can make new Moves, then what does it mean for my game?



I think you are being a little too "legalistic" here. The writers of Dungeon World sought to evoke older editions of D&D with its race/class "restrictions," but that doesn't somehow mean that you are solemnly bound to them so that you can't make Dwarf Bards. Write 'Dwarf' at the top of your Bard sheet, pick whichever racial move you prefer (or make up your own), and you're done. No need to overcomplicate or fret over the little things.

Some people choose to make playbooks that are based on the principle of race as class. It doesn't mean that you can't define the Orc or Dwarf. What that means is that people have modded the game to create fan and 3pp content, and you can do likewise. There is not one "the Warlock" playbook created for Dungeon World. There are at least five on this *mega-listing of Dungeon World playbooks* people have created.

If you are still worried about spending money on Dungeon World, there are a TON of free mods and variations of Dungeon World that are typically more open about these sort of things. For example, here is Jeremy Strandberg's *Homebrew World*, which provides the option of simply listing whichever race beyond the standard set (i.e., human, dwarf, elf, halfling) you are and supplying more generic backgrounds for each playbook. It also modifies the playbooks so that they are a little more balanced, interesting, and quicker for convention play. It also replaces Alignment with Drives.



Faolyn said:


> Yeah. I'm not adverse to trying it at all. I just think I need more (preferably written) examples, and specifically with notes as to why things were done that way. The AW book's examples are... lacking. They seem to be written for those who immediately get the idea, not for those who are struggling with the differences.
> 
> I have a few other issues with AW. It creates _just enough _of an implied universe, what with the psychic maelstrom, to make me kind of have to play in it, but not enough to truly paint a picture of what it's like (compare to a game like Troika!--which I also haven't played yet, sadly--where I can just _see _the golden barges sailing through the hump-backed sky in my mind). The examples in the "Barf the Apocalypse" section don't cause me to imagine what the world as a whole is like.
> 
> But the PbtA system itself makes me want to figure it out.



I don't think that you are being adverse or difficult in our interactions about PbtA. (It reminds me a bit of me trying to get my head wrapped around Fate for the first time after mostly playing games structured like D&D.)

I honestly doubt that if Apocalypse World was my introduction to PbtA that I would have quite understood it. I only "got" Apocalypse World after going back to it later in my PbtA journeys when I already understood what it was trying to say and accomplish. This is why I would potentially recommend you can check out other games, possibly in genres that inspire you more readily than the Mad Maxian post-apocalyptic world of well... Apocalypse World. (I know, for example, that games like Troika and Mork Borg don't inspire me in the slightest.)

Iron Sworn (which is free) has already been recommended as a good distillation of PbtA style gaming. Magpie Games also is good at explaining PbtA at this point with their games: e.g., Masks, Monster Hearts, Urban Shadows, Avatar Legends, etc. If you like supernatural horror, I suspect that you may like Urban Shadows from Magpie Games, though it's more urban fantasy (with horror). Maybe that would inspire you. There should be a Quick Start primer for Urban Shadows (2nd Edition) and Avatar Legends as well.



Faolyn said:


> Blades in the Dark is another thing I have issues with. Such a beautiful, amazing setting, perhaps one of the most unusual and interesting post-apocalyses I've ever seen... and they're wasting it on _heists. _Heists are great, but I can do that anywhere. In a setting where the sun is _broken_, I want to explore the world and deal with the consequences of that, not just steal things and create gangs.





Faolyn said:


> Yeah, and that's why I don't want to play Blades. To me, the setting is so important because it defines most of what makes my character tick. It's a major disconnect between the setting and the rules, and it makes me wonder why Evil Hat even included the setting in the first place. Why not make it setting agnostic, or make an implied setting, or set it in a more standard location? It feels to me like they had the setting and and the game and decided to combine the two.



Just because how you would approach the setting differs from the default doesn't mean that there is a disconnect between the setting and rules. That said, the setting outside of Duskvol is mainly a backdrop for why the characters can't just leave the city or "take the money and run" when things get too hot for them. The city is meant to serve as a crucible and the self-contained sandbox for the characters. It's designed to keep players in the city while things increasingly heat up inside of the crucible. What will come through the other side? Play and find out.

The setting is important for understanding how the characters tick, but the game does approach tackling it from a particular angle: street gangs. This is not much different from how D&D generally presumes that you are approaching their settings of Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Planescape from the perspective of "hardy, combat-capable adventurers" (often heroic) and not the myriad of other ways one could engage these settings. (It reminds me of how liberating it felt the first time that I played 7th Sea, and I realized that I could create my character as a mundane traveling merchant who sucked at combat rather than forcing any given D&D class through that same square hole.) Why do you adventure in the worlds of D&D? (Because you will engage in adventure in some capacity.)

Gangs may not be what you want to explore in such a setting, but complaining about this would be a bit like complaining how despite having such interesting settings games like _Thief_ or _Dishonored_ and books like _Fafhrd and the Gray Mouse_ or _The Lies of Locke Lamora_ force us to approach them from the perspective of criminals, thieves, and outsiders. Out of all the things that could be explored about New York between 1945 and 1955, why does The Godfather focus on the mafia? It just does. You're presumably picking up these titles for either gameplay or viewing/reading experience based on that premise. The game does not exist for supporting the setting; the setting exists for supporting the game.

In the case of Blades in the Dark, that's playing a gang of criminals in Duskvol. It's not your job as a GM to tell either players or PCs what their jobs in this world are. It's your job to listen as they tell you what their jobs are, what they plan on doing, and for you to then respond accordingly in a way in the fiction that respects their choices. If you are playing Blades in the Dark (and not some other supplement), then the game is asking you how your criminal got involved in crime in such a setting. Why are you a criminal in the world of Blades in the Dark?

In a number of play-thrus I have watched, it's not uncommon that the characters are down-on-their-luck people (e.g., merchants, "whalers," ex-watchmen, nobles, etc.) who have been forced into crime either as a last resort or because they have nowhere else to turn because society failed them. The entire premise of Breaking Bad is essentially predicated on the broken health care system in the United States, which pushes a high school chemistry teacher into a world of crime.

And Duskvol is in a much worse state of affairs. The nobility and cops are corrupt, and the vigilantes are privileged rich billionaires with dead parent issues who are investing their tremendous wealth in ridiculous bat costumes, martial arts and magic camp, high tech gadgets, endangering his teenage wards, and a private space satellite for his vigilante friends rather than either seeking professional therapy or solving the systemic issues that keeps Duskvol a hell-hole... oh wait a tick. Anyway, is it any wonder that your character is a criminal?



Faolyn said:


> It's not that I would expect PCs to go investigate. It's that I'd use this setting for a completely different type of game. The world outside the city is a crumbling nightmare. It's your job to explore it. Demons and ghosts haunt the dark streets. It's your job to protect the commoners. Things like that.



There are *supplements* that focus on playing revoltuionaries, vigilantes, or even cops, if that's your thing. These supplements are even from Sean Nitter of Evil Hat Games who helped work on Blades in the Dark.


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## Faolyn (Oct 4, 2021)

niklinna said:


> I don't get Dungeon World's presentation of limited race choices for certain classes either, but, it's good to keep in mind that in all PbtA games (that I've seen), playbooks are _starting points_, not _full & restrictive definitions_. So the authors say only humans get to be paladins, or only human and elf rangers get special moves. Chuck it! Be a dwarf paladin, make up a special move dwarf paladins get. I think they could have been much clearer about that, but it's just something in the air if you plug in to the community.



Honestly, it I have to do extensive homebrewing just to get it to a point that feels playable to me, I might as well stick with a system I already know well. And I already have at least three or four other systems with D&D-like abilities _other _than D&D.



niklinna said:


> Well, I can't argue that. Apocalypse World makes a _very_ loose sketch of the world and leaves your group to fill in the other 98%. Blades in the Dark has a much more detailed setting—for the one city. If Apocalypse World doesn't get your juices flowing, drop it and move on.



It's just that I've heard _so much _that's good with the system. I mean, I'm sure there's another PbtA game I could more easily get into--I bought Thirsty Sword Lesbians which is amusing, even if I think I'd have a hard time RPing _thirsty. _

But sadly, I don't think anyone else at my table is interested in running the system and I don't feel comfortable gaming with people I don't know, so if I want to experience the game for myself, I'd have to run it. I could _maybe _listen to a podcast or watch a liveplay, if there were good ones, but I sometimes find it hard to get into those.



niklinna said:


> No, it means _there's no point using it_ in a situation that isn't charged. If nothing bad could happen, there's no need to roll the dice and the GM will just flat-out tell you what the situation is. Player moves are always about doing something _when failure will have consequences_. If failure won't have consequences, it's not worth fussing over.



OK, I'll accept that. I still think that there's times when there would be consequences for failure even if there weren't actual danger in the air, but OK. I have no problem with just giving the PCs this info.



niklinna said:


> Another point of confusion. GM moves are different from player moves, and in some ways I feel they are training wheels for newer GMs. They are formalizing something experienced GMs just know how to do.



OK, that's good. I don't have to worry about following the exactly as written, then.



niklinna said:


> (Sure wish I could figure out how to do nested quotes here.) It's just the GM tossing in a "you happened to hear this while walking around". It's taking control of the PCs in a sense, but I'd say it's safe to assume PCs walk around their home bases. If a player's not cool with that, the GM can find another way to bring that information around—say somebody comes to report that they heard the info while walking around.



Select the text, and in the List option, select Indent. It's about as close as you can get.



niklinna said:


> I'm starting to get the impression that you haven't accepted some of the central premises of the game, but keep on poking at it because without doing that, things don't make sense and/or bug you. One of the central premises of the game is that the GM & players together are building a story through actions, and not waiting for anybody to stumble on clues or do the particular thing necessary to get the ball rolling. You just kick the ball! Whether you're the GM or a player, you just kick the ball. You don't have to like it, but that's a foundational principle of PbtA gaming.



It's just this is one of the central premises of Fate as well, and that game doesn't have these weirdly semi-railroady moments. I mean, if this is just the case of this MC not being very good at revealing info in ways I'd consider plausible, then fine, I can fully accept that. I could run the game and say "You're passing by your armory and hear noises coming from within, what do you do?" I do that all the time right now in D&D. 

But if the game _actually _wants you to say "Meanwhile, across town in their secret hideout, the Hell Bunnies Gang are arming themselves and will be heading out to cause mayhem at your favorite dive bar, what do you do?" because that'll get the ball rolling, then I just find that _silly. _



niklinna said:


> About this particular bit, I can't comment. Based on what you've quoted, I'd say the GM is being a jerk. Maybe more context would give me something to go on.



There's not that much, I think. The MC declares how much damage the grenade (3-harm) does and the PC rolls the harm move and decides that she falls over. The PC pretty much deserved the actual attack.

But it's the use of the term _misdirection_ that bugs me. OK, this is a word probably meant for new GMs, but it's such an _odd _choice of words that I feel like I'm missing something.


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## doctorbadwolf (Oct 4, 2021)

niklinna said:


> Well, the folks who wrote and play Blades in the Dark are quite happy to waste their time on heists.  There are many Forged in the Dark (and Apocalypse World) offshoots with different settings & premises, some of them incredibly specific, a trend I don't particularly get into myself—so I can appreciate why you would feel heists are a waste—but there it is.
> 
> Anyhow! The activity rules cover just about anything you might want to do pretty well, so nothing prevents you from taking Blades in the Dark and structuring the activity of your group sessions differently. The book describes free play, engagement, score, and downtime as formal phases, and crew playbooks as gangs of criminals. You can rename those phases and crew playbooks, repurpose them, replace them, or ditch them entirely. A score/heist is really just a quest with the assumption that the PCs are criminals after all, and most of the base playbooks would be fine for heroic questing in the cities or wilderness of the Shattered Isles. There's a set of playbooks to play vigilantes, and another for officers of the law. There was a jam on itch.io that produced 100 playbooks of all kinds—check it out!



a Blades hack that focused on investigating supernatural phenomenon and figuring out the nature of the world, perhaps with conspiracies to uncover as well, could be really fun, and since the powers of the city don't want these questions answered, a lot of the assumptions of the game would stay the same, I'd think.


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## Faolyn (Oct 4, 2021)

chaochou said:


> This is not what PbtA is for - it's not for the MC to tell the players the 'job' of their characters and for the characters to be meekly led into accepting the MCs version of things. It's not for the MC to provide 'hooks' which create the basis for the characters becoming protagonists. The _players _get to decide what to do and what interests them and what they want to change - not the MC. The MC is just there to put pressure on what the players decide to do, not to give them things to do.



First off, I object to the idea that the PCs are being "meekly led" into accepting anything. I don't know what type of non-PbtA games you've played, but every game I've played has had the players _and _GMs deciding what to do. Often it starts with the GM saying "I have an idea for a game," but the players have as much input as the GM on the direction it will take.

Secondly, I'd also say you're wrong because Blades _does _tell the players what their job is--they have to pick one of these playbooks, and all of the playbooks are for criminals. And it doesn't even let two people pick the same playbook! One of my current D&D games has two warlocks, and the two of them have such different personalities that it makes for a lot of fun for the party. They couldn't do that in Blades.



chaochou said:


> This is the fundamental structure of Story Now play, whereas what you're describing is GM-controlled play. That's fundamentally why you're having such a hard time with PbtA. The design fights against full on railroad play and also against GMs who want to protagonise the characters (by telling them their 'job') while pretending its the players doing so (illusionism) or with passively complicit players (participationism).



Wow, hostile much?

I fail to see how saying 

"You're playing criminals who go on heists and run gangs (only you don't actually _plan _the heists; instead, you have to go on them and retroactively decide what your plans were), also, you all have to pick different types of criminals, what do you want to do?" 

is _less _railroady than 

"You're playing scholars and explorers who are trying to determine why the sun broke, how do you want to go about doing this?" 

or 

"You're in a Victorian-style city, and since the sun broke there's been a sharp rise in crime and gang activity, demon activity, ghosts, cults, and other weird $#!^. Meanwhile, there are constant shortages of food and other necessities, so scholars try to figure out what caused the problem and how to continue to survive while nobles continue to parties and have their noble intrigues. What type of characters do you want to play?" 

Please enlighten me.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 4, 2021)

Question for @pemerton , based on the example you were using of reading a charged situation, though I'd truly love to hear from anybody/everybody about this.

So I fully get the notion of a failed roll in that situation (looking into what's clearly a kidnapping) resulting in the PC getting attacked/captured/etc.

What I'm still less clear on--and this applies to PbtA as well as FitD--is what a success with consequence might look like in that situation. I'm asking because those partial successes are obviously and by design the most common results, but also because I'm properly trained to GM what a failure or a success looks like...but not those mixtures of the two.

Would an example of a success w/ consequence for that action be spotting blood spatter, meaning that, in the fiction, we've now established that the kidnapping victim was also hurt? Or in this situation should the consequence really be directed at the PC doing the action?


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## Aldarc (Oct 4, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Secondly, I'd also say you're wrong because Blades _does _tell the players what their job is--they have to pick one of these playbooks, and all of the playbooks are for criminals.



If I may, I think that the point is that the players are picking up the game knowing that they will be playing criminals. The premise is on the box, so to speak. However, the GM is not the one who dictating what their jobs will be (in a more figurative sense), what the characters will do next, or how they are meant to go about their business in this setting. That's ultimately up to the players to decide. The GM may want the players to explore the deeper mysteries of the setting outside the bounds of the city, but that's not their job to push the players to explore those themes that the GM wants the players to explore. The GM doesn't pick the players' Crew Sheet: the PC players do. The GM doesn't decide the PCs' next heist: the PC players do. 



Faolyn said:


> And it doesn't even let two people pick the same playbook! One of my current D&D games has two warlocks, and the two of them have such different personalities that it makes for a lot of fun for the party. They couldn't do that in Blades.



The fact that only one person can play a given playbook is a feature of the game and not a flaw. Imagine, if you would, that you are watching a television series with a small cast of characters. Let's say it's a heist show like Leverage. There are likely not three characters who are hackers. There is THE Hacker. There is THE Face. There is THE Heavy. There is THE Mastermind. There is the THIEF. And so on. It's also similar to board games. If we were playing Pandemic, there can only be one person who plays the Scientist or one person who plays the Paramedic or one person to play the Researcher. PbtA and FitD approaches playbooks in a similar fashion. You are playing THE stock character of this archetype for this game. This is not better or worse than with D&D; it's simply different because of how PbtA/FitD approach the game in terms of genre simulation. 

I hope that helps.


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## Campbell (Oct 4, 2021)

@Grendel_Khan 

It's going to depend on the specific move in question (the move will tell you). For read a charged situation a 7-9 let's you ask a single question from the list instead of 10+'s 3 questions.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> It's going to depend on the specific move in question (the move will tell you). For read a charged situation a 7-9 let's you ask a single question from the list instead of 10+'s 3 questions.




That makes sense. But what about a similar action in a Forged in the Dark game, where most moves aren't laid out like that. So let's say it's Scum and Villainy and you're using Study to figure out that same situation (scene of an apparent kidnapping), which the GM might say is a controlled action with limited effect. Rolling a 4-5 would mean a success with consequence. The list of potential consequences for any action is:

Reduced Effect
Complication
Lost Opportunity
Worse Position
Harm

What you're describing would basically be Reduced Effect. And I could imagine Lost Opportunity (player accidentally steps on clues, preventing them and others from trying to study them). But would a Complication or Harm ever make sense for a success with consequence result in that situation? Or would you really save those for an actual failed roll?


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## Aldarc (Oct 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Question for @pemerton , based on the example you were using of reading a charged situation, though I'd truly love to hear from anybody/everybody about this.
> 
> So I fully get the notion of a failed roll in that situation (looking into what's clearly a kidnapping) resulting in the PC getting attacked/captured/etc.
> 
> ...



Imagine we were playing Dungeon World.

PC: "I run charging with my weapon drawn into the band of orcs, going for the big one with the eye patch, who I think is the leader."

GM: "It's a swarm of orcs who all have their weapons drawn, so it's a tricky situation."

PC: "I don't care. I just want to charge against them head-on."

GM: "It sounds like you are trying to 'Defy Danger.' Could you give me a roll. How about using Strength since you are using your melee weapon?"

PC: "Cool. I roll an 8 in total."

GM: "You have successfully hit the orc, but now the other orcs begin to encircle you and have cut you off from your teammates."

"You have successfully hit the orc, but the orc (or several orcs) is also able to get a hit on you in the melee." 

"You have successfully hit the orc, but that wasn't their boss. Their actual boss comes out from the throng of orcs and begins walking towards you."

Etc.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 4, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Imagine we were playing Dungeon World.
> 
> PC: "I run charging with my weapon drawn into the band of orcs, going for the big one with the eye patch, who I think is the leader."
> 
> ...




Those are great examples. However, I should have clarified: What I'm confused about is how to apply a success with consequence in a situation that's more passive, like when you're analyzing clues, or really anything where there are no obvious hostile NPCs or environmental perils around. Pemerton's example of a failure leading to some unseen scoundrel knocking you out as you nose around is a really interesting one for a failed investigative roll. Moves the fiction in exciting ways, and is a million times better than "Welp, you don't see anything!" But navigating those successes-with-consequences in non-adversarial situations is what's giving me cold feet as a new PbtA/FitD GM.


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## niklinna (Oct 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> That makes sense. But what about a similar action in a Forged in the Dark game, where most moves aren't laid out like that. So let's say it's Scum and Villainy and you're using Study to figure out that same situation (scene of an apparent kidnapping), which the GM might say is a controlled action with limited effect. Rolling a 4-5 would mean a success with consequence. The list of potential consequences for any action is:
> 
> Reduced Effect
> Complication
> ...



Oh, sure. Compications/Harm could include:

An enemy sees you snooping around and reports you to their boss. This could be someone affiliated with the kidnappers or  somebody else who doesn't like you.
You trip on something that got scattered in the scuffle and land on something hard.
Somebody sees you there and assumes _you_ trashed the place.
But, the reason there's several categories of consequences is so you don't have to force such things.


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## chaochou (Oct 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> What I'm confused about is how to apply a success with consequence in a situation that's more passive, like when you're analyzing clues, or really anything where there are no obvious hostile NPCs or environmental perils around. Pemerton's example of a failure leading to some unseen scoundrel knocking you out as you nose around is a really interesting one for a failed investigative roll. Moves the fiction in exciting ways, and is a million times better than "Welp, you don't see anything!" But navigating those successes-with-consequences in non-adversarial situations is what's giving me cold feet as a new PbtA/FitD GM.




These are interesting questions. They're interesting, in my mind, because they drive at something fundamental, which I've mentioned in other posts in this thread.

And it comes down to whether it is the player, or the MC, who has determined the purpose of the player character.

If the player has done so ("I need to find my missing sister") then there's really no such thing as a 'passive' roll. Let's say they're searching her last known location looking for clues to her whereabouts - on a failed roll, the MC can make as hard move a move as they like. And it doesn't have to be they don't find a clue - they can find a whopping great obvious sign which doesn't reveal something welcome:
"Uh oh, looks like she's been taken straight to hell!" or
"Oh no, she's to be sacrificed at midnight by the Lord Lieutenant" or
anything else which *appropriately challenges *the *player-authored concept.*
If it's a player-authored goal, the options are - literally - limitless, but at the same time bounded by, and dependent on, the player's intent.

It's when the GM has determined the purpose of the player character ("You've been hired to find the missing villagers") then these rolls become passive - because the whole exercise serves no purpose. Looking for 'clues' is a euphamism for 'the GM has already decided where you have to go and what you have to do next'. The player is trying to learn what the GM is going to tell them to do next. It's a waste of everyone's time not telling them but for some reason it gets gated behind a roll and now the roll isn't great and the GM is wondering how they invent something new for the character to do out of thin air, and the player is wondering why we can't just fudge round this thing that just happened so we can get on with rescuing the damn villagers. Awkward. But revealing of the core conceits of play.

So my advice would be to re-evaluate the set-up and premise of character creation, the processes which are being used to create the situations each PC finds themself in, and ask yourself if it's the players who generated the purpose and goals of the PCs. If you have strong characters with clear player-generated goals and obligations and drama around them, you shouldn't get passive moves (although there are too many PbTA games for me to speak for more than a handful).


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 4, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> If I may, I think that the point is that the players are picking up the game knowing that they will be playing criminals. The premise is on the box, so to speak. However, the GM is not the one who dictating what their jobs will be (in a more figurative sense), what the characters will do next, or how they are meant to go about their business in this setting. That's ultimately up to the players to decide. The GM may want the players to explore the deeper mysteries of the setting outside the bounds of the city, but that's not their job to push the players to explore those themes that the GM wants the players to explore. The GM doesn't pick the players' Crew Sheet: the PC players do. The GM doesn't decide the PCs' next heist: the PC players do.
> 
> 
> The fact that only one person can play a given playbook is a feature of the game and not a flaw. Imagine, if you would, that you are watching a television series with a small cast of characters. Let's say it's a heist show like Leverage. There are likely not three characters who are hackers. There is THE Hacker. There is THE Face. There is THE Heavy. There is THE Mastermind. There is the THIEF. And so on. It's also similar to board games. If we were playing Pandemic, there can only be one person who plays the Scientist or one person who plays the Paramedic or one person to play the Researcher. PbtA and FitD approaches playbooks in a similar fashion. You are playing THE stock character of this archetype for this game. This is not better or worse than with D&D; it's simply different because of how PbtA/FitD approach the game in terms of genre simulation.
> ...



There's no limitation on selecting the same playbook in BitD.  There is in DW, but that's a feature of that ruleset -- it's a bit of intentional design.  In Blades, the entire crew can be cutters, frex, but there's still so much most to choose that they can all feel very different, and grow very differently.  Playbooks are just the initial ability and action distribution in Blades.


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## Aldarc (Oct 4, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> There's no limitation on selecting the same playbook in BitD.  There is in DW, but that's a feature of that ruleset -- it's a bit of intentional design.  In Blades, the entire crew can be cutters, frex, but there's still so much most to choose that they can all feel very different, and grow very differently.  Playbooks are just the initial ability and action distribution in Blades.



Good point. I forgot that Blades in the Dark takes a different approach to this than most other PbtA games.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 4, 2021)

chaochou said:


> Looking for 'clues' is a euphamism for 'the GM has already decided where you have to go and what you have to do next'. The player is trying to learn what the GM is going to tell them to do next. It's a waste of everyone's time not telling them but for some reason it gets gated behind a roll and now the roll isn't great and the GM is wondering how they invent something new for the character to do out of thin air, and the player is wondering why we can't just fudge round this thing that just happened so we can get on with rescuing the damn villagers. Awkward. But revealing of the core conceits of play.



It isn't terribly useful comparing PbtA to the worst possible GM running a bad D&D investigative module. I have played literally hundreds of investigative games such as Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents and various Fate games that are nothing like that. The whole "roll skill and if you fail the adventure grinds to a halt" and "the investigative module is a linear path defined by the GM" argument is absolutely nothing like what is happening nowadays.

Your example is literally one that modern games call out to say "don't do this". For example, from the GUMSHOE SRD:

*


			https://gumshoe-srd.com/5-DesigningScenarios/
		

*_You’re constructing one way to move through the story to another core clue, not the only way. In play, you may find yourself placing the core clue from one scene in another, improvised scene inspired by the logical actions undertaken by the players. The scene structure guarantees that there’s at least one way to navigate the story, but should not preclude other scene orders. By following the structure you also ensure that you’re creating a branching narrative driven by player choices. This avoids the syndrome of the story driven by the actions of supporting characters, which the players observe more or less passively._

I'm interested in PbtA, but not in comparing it to a stereotypically bad version of a traditional dungeon crawl-focused game. And @Grendel_Khan's comment is one I have struggled with also -- I have played maybe 8 or so PbtA sessions, and while the system has been pretty good for 'active opposition' scenes, it really has felt very turgid and limiting when faced with  passive opposition. Almost invariably it has degenerated into players making moves that result in "ask X questions about Y", and choosing one or more of the suggested menu of pre-built options. It has felt formulaic and very meta-gamey to me. And it was clear that other players felt the same.

Let's take a specific example -- I am investigating a room where a crime has taken place and the criminal has fled. My goal is to find information that will help me follow the criminal. Looking at AW, it looks like READ A SITCH is the best option:

*READ A SITCH*
When you read a charged situation, roll+sharp. On a hit, you can ask the MC questions. Whenever you act on one of the MC’s answers, take +1. On a 10+, ask 3. On a 7–9, ask 1:
• where’s my best escape route / way in / way past?
• which enemy is most vulnerable to me? • which enemy is the biggest threat?
• what should I be on the lookout for?
• what’s my enemy’s true position?
• who’s in control here?
On a miss, ask 1 anyway, but be prepared for the worst.

So I guess I ask one question like "what’s my enemy’s true position?" or "where’s my best escape way past" -- already I'm in meta-mode, trying to match the answer I want to the menu of suggestions. And if I do really well ... I don't care -- I just want the answer to one question, not three.

So for me, it's hard to look at this example and compare to, say, Fate, where I'd make a skill roll (or a _Smarts_ roll in _FA_) and if I succeed (equivalent of 7-9) simply get the answer I need without going through the hassle of mapping it to a move menu. If I succeed with style (equiv. 10+) then the GM will either volunteer extra info or ask me what more I want from the success. And on a fail I can always get the answer with a consequence (equivalent to "be prepared for the worst"). 

Now, I am 100% OK with "Don't use PbtA for investigative games" -- I choose specific games for genres, and my current thinking is that PbtA just plain isn't a great fit for investigative games or ones with lots of passive opposition. But I've only played a handful of Apocalypse games, so if anyone can give an example of how PbtA gives a fun, but different experience to what a modern game like Fate does in this genre, I'm very interested.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 4, 2021)

If you add a bespoke myatery mechanic it does just fine. The Between is an excellent example.


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## niklinna (Oct 4, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Let's take a specific example -- I am investigating a room where a crime has taken place and the criminal has fled. My goal is to find information that will help me follow the criminal. Looking at AW, it looks like READ A SITCH is the best option: [...]
> 
> So I guess I ask one question like "what’s my enemy’s true position?" or "where’s my best escape way past" -- already I'm in meta-mode, trying to match the answer I want to the menu of suggestions. And if I do really well ... I don't care -- I just want the answer to one question, not three.



Once again, unless there can be negative consequences to some activity, in PbtA, you generally don't bother rolling—you just narrate the outcome (or sumarize or even skip it!). So in this case, you don't use READ A SITCH (which is a formal move involving a dice roll). If your search for clues could result in an accident, being noticed snooping around, or being confronted by someone/something dangerous, then you use the READ A SITCH move and roll the dice. Just because a move's description involves particular activities, doesn't mean you have to use the move for those particular activities. It's the activity _in a context of risk_ that calls for a move.

You could argue that not finding anything is a negative consequence, but really it's just a null—a dead end, at worst leaving you stuck, at best a minor waste of time. A mystery writer probably wouldn't spend pages on such a thing, and, I think, neither should a role-playing game.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 4, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> There's no limitation on selecting the same playbook in BitD.  There is in DW, but that's a feature of that ruleset -- it's a bit of intentional design.  In Blades, the entire crew can be cutters, frex, but there's still so much most to choose that they can all feel very different, and grow very differently.  Playbooks are just the initial ability and action distribution in Blades.




I would say that, given the way veteran advances work, it's even more about the XP trigger than anything else. That main XP trigger is the defining feature of a Blades playbook.


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## chaochou (Oct 4, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Let's take a specific example -- I am investigating a room where a crime has taken place and the criminal has fled. My goal is to find information that will help me follow the criminal. Looking at AW, it looks like READ A SITCH is the best option:



Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?

Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?

The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.


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## Campbell (Oct 4, 2021)

In Apocalypse World whenever the players look to the MC to find out what happens the MC makes a move. That's true regardless of if a basic move is triggered. 

You can totally do things not covered by the basic moves. It happens all the time when I run Apocalypse World. In those cases the system does not have anything to say so the MC just says what happens based on the fiction and their principles. Not everything requires rolling dice.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Those are great examples. However, I should have clarified: What I'm confused about is how to apply a success with consequence in a situation that's more passive, like when you're analyzing clues, or really anything where there are no obvious hostile NPCs or environmental perils around. Pemerton's example of a failure leading to some unseen scoundrel knocking you out as you nose around is a really interesting one for a failed investigative roll. Moves the fiction in exciting ways, and is a million times better than "Welp, you don't see anything!" But navigating those successes-with-consequences in non-adversarial situations is what's giving me cold feet as a new PbtA/FitD GM.



There's a category error here -- there are not checks in "more passive" contexts.  A check is going to occur because this moment is dramatically important -- not passive.  The very nature of the game pushes everything to dramatic moments.  A search for clues, say, just doesn't happen -- you might look for clues here, but the nature of that looking will be under some dramatic question or tension and that's what drives the consequence space.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 4, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I would say that, given the way veteran advances work, it's even more about the XP trigger than anything else. That main XP trigger is the defining feature of a Blades playbook.



Yup, this.  As a slide, my XP trigger is dealing with a situation with deception or influence.  A cutter's is dealing with a situation with violence.  This is really the biggest differentiator between playbooks, because it will have the largest impact on play.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

chaochou said:


> Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?
> 
> Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?
> 
> The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.



OK, let's say that the PCs decided they were going investigate a crime scene. What would you do?


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> OK, let's say that the PCs decided they were going investigate a crime scene. What would you do?



Why are they investigating a crime scene?  What's the tension here, what do they hope to get form this, why is it important to them?

ETA:  These aren't empty questions, they're required ones for this approach to play.  You're asking how these systems adjudicate situations that are part and parcel of an entirely different approach to play and have no place in the one under discussion.


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## niklinna (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> OK, let's say that the PCs decided they were going investigate a crime scene. What would you do?



You literally just took @chaochou's post and ignored its central point to toss out the same anemic question about PCs contextlessly doing some contextless thing of no particular consequence. Apocalypse World is ALL ABOUT CONSEQUENTIAL ACTION IN A CONCRETE CONTEXT. How many times, and in how many ways, do we have to repeat this?


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## Campbell (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> OK, let's say that the PCs decided they were going investigate a crime scene. What would you do?




Same thing you do if they go out for tea and scones. Treat it like a gift. Bloody well bring it. Make some damn moves.

This is a perfect opportunity to put an NPC in the crosshairs and capitalize PC/NPC/PC triangles.



Spoiler: Example



Rorik : I turn the body over.

MC: Sh---. It's Plover. They have beat the ever living piss out of him. This is a tough spot for you buddy. You and him never got along much and you were the one to find his body? What are you going to do now Rorik?



Something like that. Just keep running Apocalypse World. Apply the principles and bring it. Not going to turn the game into a police procedural no more than they would on an episode of Sons of Anarchy. Keep things personal. Be mindful of your fronts. Make moves that fit your principles. It's that simple.


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> First off, I object to the idea that the PCs are being "meekly led" into accepting anything. I don't know what type of non-PbtA games you've played, but every game I've played has had the players _and _GMs deciding what to do. Often it starts with the GM saying "I have an idea for a game," but the players have as much input as the GM on the direction it will take.
> 
> Secondly, I'd also say you're wrong because Blades _does _tell the players what their job is--they have to pick one of these playbooks, and all of the playbooks are for criminals.
> 
> ...



Telling the players they are going to play a criminal gang isn't telling them _what they will do_ or _what their goals are_. It's a genre specification.

The second thing sets a goal for the player's action declarations. And seems also to suggest that a big chunk of play will be learning hitherto-unrevealed backstory.

They're very different games, to my eye. And the second looks to me like it will default to highly GM-driven.



Faolyn said:


> Honestly, it I have to do extensive homebrewing just to get it to a point that feels playable to me, I might as well stick with a system I already know well. And I already have at least three or four other systems with D&D-like abilities _other _than D&D.
> 
> 
> It's just that I've heard _so much _that's good with the system.



I think this issue of PC race in Dungeon World is of pretty minor importance to the system overall. Comparisons are tricky to make: it's a slightly bigger deal than whether or not the gear list from some edition/version of D&D has _candles_ or _needle and thread_ on it. It's probably closer, in D&D terms, to what is on the weapon list or the spell list.

I personally wouldn't count these as issues of_ extensive homebrewing_. But in any event, just as someone wouldn't normally choose what version of D&D to use based on the spell list - that's not where most of the action is across different versions of the game - so I would say the same for DW. If you're interested in it because of the system, it's pretty trivial to add whatever new race option will suit your table. If you're not, I don't think tinkering with the race options would be a reason to change your mind on that.



Faolyn said:


> And it doesn't even let two people pick the same playbook! One of my current D&D games has two warlocks, and the two of them have such different personalities that it makes for a lot of fun for the party. They couldn't do that in Blades.



Here's Vincent Baker on this point:

You know the rule in Apocalypse World that everyone has to choose a different playbook? You might be interested to know, as a point of trivia, that the reason for this isn’t niche protection or whatever, it’s just so the MC doesn’t have to show up to the first session with multiple copies of every playbook.​
Like the race/class issue, I don't think this is a very big deal.



Faolyn said:


> I mean, if this is just the case of this MC not being very good at revealing info in ways I'd consider plausible, then fine, I can fully accept that. I could run the game and say "You're passing by your armory and hear noises coming from within, what do you do?" I do that all the time right now in D&D.
> 
> But if the game _actually _wants you to say "Meanwhile, across town in their secret hideout, the Hell Bunnies Gang are arming themselves and will be heading out to cause mayhem at your favorite dive bar, what do you do?" because that'll get the ball rolling, then I just find that _silly. _





Faolyn said:


> How does Keeler know this? Did the MC here take over Keeler and force him to enter the armory in order to witness this? Does Keeler have X-ray vision and super-hearing? Are his gang members talking really loudly and narrating their actions? Are we to assume a third-person omniscient eye? I kind of hate this. If this were a TV show, I'd be rolling my eyes so hard right about now. Keeler's player should have to go into the armory to know what's going on, and if that means that that Keeler misses out on info if she doesn't, then oh well.



I think you've misread or misunderstood the example. From AW pp 154-55:

“Cool. Keeler—” turning to Keeler’s player “—you’re passing by your armory and you hear people in there. It’s Plover, Church Head and Whackoff, arming themselves. What do you do?” I’m *announcing future badness*.

“Hey, what’s up?” Keeler’s player says.​
So here we learn _how Keeler knows it - _the GM establishes framing (ie that Keeler is passing by her armoury and hears her three gang members in there, arming themselves) - and then Keeler's player asks them what's going on. That's not an action declaration that triggers a move, so the GM responds with free narration in accordance with the principles: in this case, the GM continues to announce future badness consistently with what prep and honesty demand:

“Marie attacked Isle,” I say, in Plover’s blunt, heavy voice. And in my own: “he stops what he’s doing and looks square at you, he’s still got a shotgun in his hand. Church Head and Whackoff, you know they’re going to back him up.”

Here’s my big plan, by the way. Isle’s listed in the cast for a threat called Isle’s family, which is a brute: family (naturally enough). Its impulse, accordingly, is to *close ranks and protect their own*. What’s most fun is that I’m acting on that impulse but I’m using Plover, Church Head and Whackoff — members of Keeler’s gang! — as Isle’s family’s weapon. It’s just like when Keeler uses them to go aggro or seize by force, only I’m the one doing it.

If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about *imposing her will upon her gang* to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it.

Finally, instead, “knock yourself out,” she says.

Marie’s player: “damn it, Keeler.”​
So we have two PCs - Marie and Keeler - and a group of NPCs - Isle's family. Those NPCs are related to the PCs in two different ways - for Keeler, they're part of her gang, which is an element of her PC build (in the playbooks, _Keeler_ is listed as a name for a gunlugger; and one advancement option for a gunlugger is to get a gang and the pack alpha move, like a chopper); for Marie, they're the people she's pissed off by brain-fragging Isle (as per the earlier part of the example). The GM is interweaving the lives of the two PCs by cutting from what Marie is doing - brain-fragging isle, then going back home - to what is happening over at Keeler's place. Keeler's player could intervene - by _imposing her will upon her gang _(which is the trigger for the chopper's _pack alpha_ move) - but chooses not too. Which prompts Marie's player to curse her ("damn it, Keeler").

That sort of interweaving of the action is pretty central to any GMing of a non-party-based game. In my own case, it's a technique that I've used in Cthuhu Dark and Wuthering Heights one-shots, and use fairly often in my Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel campaigns.



Faolyn said:


> I still think that there's times when there would be consequences for failure even if there weren't actual danger in the air



Compare to the PC race thing or the duplicate playbook thing, _this is a big deal_. It suggests you haven't quite followed the fundamental dynamic of AW play. If a player (as their PC) looks around, and for whatever reason the situation is not a charged one, then they haven't tried to read a charged situation, and the GM's correct response is simply to make a move. This is a special case of the general principle: if a player's action declaration doesn't trigger a move, then the game just proceeds by way of conversation - "free narration" or "free roleplaying". There's no occasion to throw the dice.

Thinking of this in terms of "consequences of failure" is imposing an assumption - something like _that the PCs' actions take place in an "indeterminate" space, with an indeterminate range of possible outcomes, and we use the dice to resolve the uncertainty_. That is not how AW works. And I don't think it's how DW works either. (I'm more familiar with AW than DW in this respect, but I think the latter is pretty closely modelled on the former.) The purpose of the throw, in AW, is to _settle the question of who gets to establish the fiction_ in certain sorts of circumstances, namely, the ones that the game cares about given the sort of play experience it aims to create.

So if a player has their PC look around in circumstances that are not charged (so it's not _read a (charged) sitch_); or has their PC try and jump a chasm in circumstances where they're not under any sort of pressure (so it's not _acting under fire_); or has their PC ask a NPC for a favour without offering anything in return (so it's not an attempt to _seduce or manipulate_); then we have "free narration" and the game just proceeds by the back-and-forth of talking. The rulebook expressly canvasses the last of the three items in my list, on pp 192-93:

Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. . . . Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.​
I would add that this would be an example of saying _what honesty and prep demand_.

When the GM responds in free roleplaying, the response should generally be a soft move, as per the following advice (AW p 117):

Generally, limit yourself to a move that’ll (a) set you up for a future harder move, and (b) give the players’ characters some opportunity to act and react. A start to the action, not its conclusion.​​However, when a player’s character hands you the perfect opportunity on a golden plate, make as hard and direct a move as you like. It’s not the meaner the better, although mean is often good. Best is: make it irrevocable.​
What would count as a perfect opportunity on a golden plate, in the context of a PC looking around in a non-charged situation? I don't think it's easy to come up with an example out of context. But suppose that the PC is visiting their savvyhead friend's workshop, and their friend (as established by some prior fiction) isn't home, and the player describes their PC poking around while they wait, and the GM described a few things including the metal box with complicated wiring sitting on the workbench - this is the _psychic maelstrom distillation machine_ that the savvyhead has been working on - and the player of the visiting PC says _I stick my head inside the box! _The situation isn't charged. The player (as their PC) isn't hoping for anything. The GM hasn't established any hint of threat or adversity. As far as the various sorts of approach to establishing fiction in a RPG are concerned, we're in the freest of free narration. But I think that player _has handed the GM the perfect opportunity on a golden plate_. If I was GMing that, I think my next move might be to ask the savvyhead's player what happens! And then building on the answer to that, we might have anything from _inflicting harm_ (some combination of electricity and psychic malice) to _taking away their stuff_ (uh oh - the PC's interference with the delicate machinery seems to have shorted out the flux capacitor!) to _announcing some offscreen badness that the player (as their PC) really didn't want to be the case _(the machine plugs the PC straight into the maelstrom, and they see and hear the "echoes" of Isle's death at the hands of Dremmer's executioner).



Faolyn said:


> it's the use of the term _misdirection_ that bugs me. OK, this is a word probably meant for new GMs, but it's such an _odd _choice of words that I feel like I'm missing something.



The previous few paragraphs of my post hopefully have brought out what you've missed.

When you have posted _that there might be a consequence of failure even if the situation the PC is examining is not charged with potential danger_ you have failed to misdirect yourself! You've supposed that the function of the dice roll is to model some "possibility space" within the fiction. But it's not. Here's the explanation from the AW rulebook (pp 110-11):

Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. . . . Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible. . . .

The truth is that you’ve chosen a move and made it. Pretend, though, that there’s a fictional cause; pretend that it has a fictional effect.​
AW has no random determination of the fiction. At every point someone has the job of deciding what the fiction is: either a player is saying what their PC does, or the GM is announcing backstory, or framing, or consequences. The dice only come in because at certain points - ie the ones that the game cares about - the dice are used to decide _who_ gets to make the decision, and _what the parameters are_ within which they are obliged to choose. Even on a successful attempt to seduce or manipulate, there is a moment of choice - the player has to actually have their PC make the promise; and of course on a 7-9 also has to follow through in some fashion, now, if they want the NPC to comply.

The point of _misdirection_ is that the GM is not to speak in the (real world) language of decision-making. They are to speak in the fictional language of (imaginary) cause-and-effect.

I'll compare and contrast with Classic Traveller. In Traveller, if a PC is fictionally positioned appropriately (eg is across a room from someone else, with a gun drawn) and the player declares _I shoot them_, then a resolution procedure is triggered: first a throw to hit has to be made (modified by weapon expertise, armour, etc); if the shot hits, then a damage roll is made; then a roll is made to see which stat(s) the damage is applied to (for Traveller fans - in this example the shot is the _first shot_ of the exchange, and so doesn't allow any choice as to where the damage is allocated); and then if one or more stats drop to zero the rules tell us whether the victim is unconscious or dead. In this process of resolution, the AW notion of _misdirection_ has no work to do.

In Traveller, if a PC is wearing a vacc suit or similar environmental protection suit, and the player declares some non-ordinary action such as _jumping_, then the rules call for a throw (modified by vacc suit expertise). And if the throw is failed, the PC finds themself in a dangerous situation, which can be remedied only by a further successful throw (normally a more difficult one, especially for those without vacc suit expertise). This is a case where _misdirection_ applies: the real reason that the referee is narrating a dangerous situation is because someone said something and rolled something and now the rules tell the referee they have to narrate something. But the GM needs to set out a fictional cause-and-effect (I've used snagged oxygen tubes, a suit caught on a rocky protrusion, seal failures that become evident when the suit is put under stress, etc). Unlike in the shooting case, this means establishing additional features of the situation (eg the protrusion, the seal failures, etc) that hadn't been specified earlier.

The places where a RPG obliges a GM to do this sort of thing help tell us what the RPG cares about. (Classic Traveller cares about doing tricky manoeuvres in space suits. It doesn't really care about charged situations, though, unless they're about to explode into violence, and so while it does have encounter surprise and evasion rules, it doesn't have any subsystem comparable to _read a (charged) sitch_.) And whether a GM can do this well or poorly is often what marks the difference between a good or a less-good RPGing experience.


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Question for @pemerton , based on the example you were using of reading a charged situation, though I'd truly love to hear from anybody/everybody about this.
> 
> So I fully get the notion of a failed roll in that situation (looking into what's clearly a kidnapping) resulting in the PC getting attacked/captured/etc.
> 
> ...





Grendel_Khan said:


> That makes sense. But what about a similar action in a Forged in the Dark game, where most moves aren't laid out like that. So let's say it's Scum and Villainy and you're using Study to figure out that same situation (scene of an apparent kidnapping), which the GM might say is a controlled action with limited effect. Rolling a 4-5 would mean a success with consequence. The list of potential consequences for any action is:
> 
> Reduced Effect
> Complication
> ...





Grendel_Khan said:


> Those are great examples. However, I should have clarified: What I'm confused about is how to apply a success with consequence in a situation that's more passive, like when you're analyzing clues, or really anything where there are no obvious hostile NPCs or environmental perils around. Pemerton's example of a failure leading to some unseen scoundrel knocking you out as you nose around is a really interesting one for a failed investigative roll. Moves the fiction in exciting ways, and is a million times better than "Welp, you don't see anything!" But navigating those successes-with-consequences in non-adversarial situations is what's giving me cold feet as a new PbtA/FitD GM.



I'm still catching up on this thread, and haven't got past @chaochou's reply to you on this.

I've never read or played BitD so can't comment on it with the same sort of familiarity as AW (which I've read closely, _not _played - my play experience is DW - but have drawn on quite a bit for my Classic Traveller GMing as per upthread).

But going on what you've said in your second post, I think of _lost opportunity_ and _harm_ as good ones. In both of what follows, I'm imaging the GM has told the players something useful that follows from the "success" part of the "success with complication" result. Lost opportunity: _while you're poking around in the shed, you hear an engine start up: by the time you get outside, all you can see is the dust!_ Now I don't know how BitD specifies "lost opportunity", but the way I'm interpreting it here is as a form of hard move: it establishes some state of the fiction which puts something the players (as their PCs) wanted _beyond their grasp_ in some sense that is, at least for the moment, irrevocable. The burglars/kidnappers having escaped in their car looks like it fits that bill.

Harm: _you're poking around in the shed, trying to work out what happened, when a shot rings out - you feel a sting in your side, and then realise your shirt is damp. _I don't know BitD well enough to know exactly how this might then unfold, how harm is handled, etc - but hopefully I've conveyed a general idea.

Are these examples making sense?


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> I'm interested in PbtA, but not in comparing it to a stereotypically bad version of a traditional dungeon crawl-focused game. And @Grendel_Khan's comment is one I have struggled with also -- I have played maybe 8 or so PbtA sessions, and while the system has been pretty good for 'active opposition' scenes, it really has felt very turgid and limiting when faced with  passive opposition. Almost invariably it has degenerated into players making moves that result in "ask X questions about Y", and choosing one or more of the suggested menu of pre-built options. It has felt formulaic and very meta-gamey to me. And it was clear that other players felt the same.
> 
> Let's take a specific example -- I am investigating a room where a crime has taken place and the criminal has fled. My goal is to find information that will help me follow the criminal. Looking at AW, it looks like READ A SITCH is the best option:
> 
> ...



I think I've already addressed this in my post upthread with the example of Isle missing from her car shed, probably kidnapped; and in my post just upthread replying to @Faolyn.

And there have also been cogent replies from @chaochou, @niklinna, @Ovinomancer and @Campbell.

But to add a few more thoughts:

The "menu of questions" is not arbitrary. It's deliberate. It establishes _what the game cares about_. (And by changing the list of questions, you change the game. Classic D&D has wands of metal and mineral detection, and potions of treasure finding, but not wands of fancy hat detection or potions of flower finding. Those latter things might fit well in The Dying Earth, though.)

The rulebook specifically addresses players asking, as their PCs, what other sorts of stuff they might no or can see (AW, p 200):

He stops at a safe spot and reads the way forward, and hits with a 10. “Cool. What should I be on the lookout for?” “Dremmer sends patrols through here, of course,” I say. “You should be on the lookout for a patrol.” “Makes sense. How far will I have to go exposed?” “A few hundred yards, it looks like,” I say. “Okay,” he says. “Question 3—” “Oh no, no,” I say. “That didn’t use up any of your hold, I was just telling you what you see.” “Oh! Great. How often do the patrols come through?” I shake my head. “You don’t know. Could be whenever.” “But can’t I make that my question, so you have to answer it?” “Nope!” I say. “You can spend your hold to make me answer questions from the list. Other questions don’t use up your hold, but I get to answer them or not, depending on whatever.” “Okay, I get it,” he says. “So I’m on question 2 still? What’s my enemy’s true position?”​
From the perspective of "meta-mode" the point of asking the question isn't to _find out what is in the GM's notes_ (though the GM might answer based on prep, saying what prep demands). The point is to _establish some fiction - the sort of fiction that AW is concerned with - that is binding on all participants_.

My view is that it would be pretty straightforward for investigation to figure prominently in an AW game: go aggro, seduce/manipulate, read a sitch, read a person - those have got Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and other noir stories written all over them! But to echo @Campbell, it wouldn't be much like Law & Order or Poirot.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Same thing you do if they go out for tea and scones. Treat it like a gift. Bloody well bring it. Make some damn moves.



Now can you explain in plain words? Treat _what _like a gift how? What is the It that should be brought? What moves should or could be made? I literally am not understanding what you mean here, and using slang doesn't help.



Campbell said:


> Something like that. Just keep running Apocalypse World. Apply the principles and bring it. Not going to turn the game into a police procedural no more than they would on an episode of Sons of Anarchy. Keep things personal. Be mindful of your fronts. Make moves that fit your principles. It's that simple.



And how would I be mindful of my fronts in this situation? How would giving clues make things impersonal? What moves fit my principles, and are you talking about my principles as a player or as an MC? What if Rorik wants to look for clues to find out who actually killed Plover? Do I just give him a bunch of clues, or does he have to roll, and if so, _what _does he roll--since apparently it's not Read Sitch and there's no basic investigation skill.

If the answer is "this game isn't cut out for people who actually want to look for clues and figure things out," then OK.

(I have literally never seen Sons of Anarchy and have no clue what it's about or what goes on in an episode. It could actually _be _an ironically-named police procedural as far as I know.)


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

niklinna said:


> You literally just took @chaochou's post and ignored its central point to toss out the same anemic question about PCs contextlessly doing some contextless thing of no particular consequence. Apocalypse World is ALL ABOUT CONSEQUENTIAL ACTION IN A CONCRETE CONTEXT. How many times, and in how many ways, do we have to repeat this?



When you actually explain it in a way that makes sense.

For instance: it makes no sense that you would consider looking for clues to be contextless or of no particular consequence. I have to assume that this game is more than just having sex with or killing people in a post-apocalyptic setting. Because right now, you're basically telling me that trying to use this game to do anything other than those things is playing it wrong. So how about you stop screaming and give me some concrete context that explains it?


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Why are they investigating a crime scene?  What's the tension here, what do they hope to get form this, why is it important to them?
> 
> ETA:  These aren't empty questions, they're required ones for this approach to play.  You're asking how these systems adjudicate situations that are part and parcel of an entirely different approach to play and have no place in the one under discussion.



Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.

At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this? 

Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.
> 
> At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this?
> 
> Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.



Okay, sure, and the fact that when I start playing Monopoly I can't invade Australia with my armies is a glaring omission and a point against the system as well.  Or that I can't use that $1000 Monopoly bill to buy all the armies in Risk so I can take over Baltic Avenue!  You're talking about different games, and saying that it's an omission that one doesn't play like the other.  Seems to be a rampant problem in the world of games, so I'm not sure how to put any weight in the concern at all.


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## Arilyn (Oct 5, 2021)

I've never played Apocalypse World but have played Dungeon World. I hope I can help a little. In a lot of games, characters pop into my head and then I use the game's character generation system to craft them. Don't do this in PbtA because then the playbooks will seem limiting. Pick a playbook that seems fun at the time.

PbtA games play differently, as there is minimal prep. The GM is putting on the heat and challenging the players hard, while still remaining a fan. The result is a game that does feel more intense at the table and somehow more immediate. One of the main themes is "playing to find out what happens next" and that includes the GM.

It's not a game that is suited for puttery downtime. I've never tried it with a mystery but I'm sure there are PbtA mystery versions out there. I'd think the game would lean into the dramatic end. Like in Gumshoe games, finding the clues is assumed. Rolling well in Gumshoe gives extra knowledge. In PbtA I'm thinking the roll would further the story along in a dramatic way. Players might have to lose something or tumble into danger or just maybe get what they want without personal consequence. But whatever happens, the story is moving forward.

I really like the system but I don't think it'll ever be my default. Definitely worth giving it a try. It's interesting because the play experience is different from a lot of more traditional games.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> OK, let's say that the PCs decided they were going investigate a crime scene. What would you do?






Ovinomancer said:


> Why are they investigating a crime scene?  What's the tension here, what do they hope to get form this, why is it important to them?
> 
> ETA:  These aren't empty questions, they're required ones for this approach to play.  You're asking how these systems adjudicate situations that are part and parcel of an entirely different approach to play and have no place in the one under discussion.




The last time this happened in a game I ran it was in a prior Blades in the Dark game where @hawkeyefan was in Barrowcleft investigating a shut down of the ward (this is the breadbasket of Duskvol) because someone had killed a large number of people (a serial killer...a terrorist attack...unclear) and the Spirit Wardens and their Deathseeker Crows weren't able to get the job done of locating and securing all the corpses in time to electroplasmically cremate them in the Bellweather Crematorium (thus, the spirits overwhelmed Barrowcleft).  

So hawkeyefan's PC (a Leech) investigated the now haunted and cordoned off ward while @Fenris-77 worked the kill pool in the gambling den and played "the man in the chair" via a runner to and from he ward (kind of a "coms" scenario).  To answer @Ovinomancer 's questions:

_Why are they investigating a crime scene?  What's the tension here, what do they hope to get form this, why is it important to them?_

1)  The players rolled a Demonic Notice Entanglement related to this (A demon approaches the crew with a dark offer. Accept their bargain, hide until it loses interest (forfeit 3 rep), or deal with it another way).

2)  The PCs were in debt to a dangerous individual (a Faction Clock) and they had to figure out a way to pay him back.  They (a) arranged for a "Prop Bet Pool" in a gambling hall and for several Crews to have representatives go into the haunted ward and find out who the killer(s) was/were among other bets.  They then (b) used the dangerous individual's muscle to give him credit for the win and arrange for him to make a killing in the prop bet pools.  

3)  There was an NPC that had family die in this that hawkeyefan's PC was somehow involved with (whether it was sympathy or friend of a friend or whatever, I can't recall).  He was able to secure the ghost of this person from one of the two (there were two...a union hall and a grain silo) sites of carnage.

4)  They earned no Rep or Coin on this Score (the Coin all went to the dangerous dude and the setup of him winning the pool meant they couldn't earn the Rep for the job because his Crew got the credit), but they resolved their Demonic Notice Entanglement, their dangerous Clock, gained assets, gained helpful Faction (Spirit Warden tech for a Longterm Project and a Contact with the Sparkwrights - engineers), and ensured no bad Faction with the Dimmer Sisters (who are dangerous and Tier 3 while this Crew was only Tier 1).



These are the sort of things that players have to initiate before even taking up or getting into the "what do you do" portion of a mystery in a Story Now game like Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark.  There is "System's Say" and "Player's Say" before there is any "GM's Say."

Going into uncovering the Barrowcleft Mystery Score I had no hard & fast idea of (a) whodunnit, (b) why, (c) or how.  If this was a game of Clue, there was nothing in the envelope.  It was stitched together through play (System Say meeting Player Say and obliging GM's Say).


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Telling the players they are going to play a criminal gang isn't telling them _what they will do_ or _what their goals are_. It's a genre specification.



Right. Same with investigators or occultists or explorers or nobles.

Since AW indicates that the MC sets up things like groups of opposition, rival gangs, and other stuff like that in a sandbox-y type of way, I would imagine that it would be perfectly in-game for me to say "this noble is having a masquerade tomorrow night, there's been a rash of muggings on this other street, there's been reports of demons on such-and-such a street, the glow-in-the-dark fungus farms are mysteriously failing, and you all have personal issues you said you want to deal with--so what do you want to do now?"



pemerton said:


> The second thing sets a goal for the player's action declarations. And seems also to suggest that a big chunk of play will be learning hitherto-unrevealed backstory.
> 
> They're very different games, to my eye. And the second looks to me like it will default to highly GM-driven.



I'm having a hard time seeing this. Unless you're saying that the GM doesn't actually set up _anything_, including the area's NPCs, until the players decide they exist? If otherwise, then AW should just _say _that it's a sandbox game.



pemerton said:


> Here's Vincent Baker on this point:
> 
> You know the rule in Apocalypse World that everyone has to choose a different playbook? You might be interested to know, as a point of trivia, that the reason for this isn’t niche protection or whatever, it’s just so the MC doesn’t have to show up to the first session with multiple copies of every playbook.​



OK, well that's good to know. If that's in the book, I missed it.



pemerton said:


> Like the race/class issue, I don't think this is a very big deal.



I like options. I like knowing that I can play what I want to play. To me, having race/class limitations _written on the character sheet _and saying that everyone has to have a different playbook are both unnecessary out-of-setting restrictions. If race doesn't matter, then each class should be open to all races. The game is making it so it does matter, if only as a homage to Gygax who wanted D&D to be humanocentric.

This is why I also hate how these games list names and physical appearances on the sheet, and in Blades there's a list of who you know, pick one, and they're all named. I am fully aware I can ignore those and make my own, but their appearance on the sheet feels _wrong _to me.



pemerton said:


> So here we learn _how Keeler knows it - _the GM establishes framing (ie that Keeler is passing by her armoury and hears her three gang members in there, arming themselves) - and then Keeler's player asks them what's going on. That's not an action declaration that triggers a move, so the GM responds with free narration in accordance with the principles: in this case, the GM continues to announce future badness consistently with what prep and honesty demand:



It looks to me like the MC is railroading this: Keeler _will _walk by the armory and she _will _not only hear people in there but will automatically go inside and find out what they're doing. Now, this could very well be shorthand, because the writer didn't want to spend 4+ sentences establishing that Keeler said she wanted to walk to the armory, have the MC say she hears noises, have Keeler say she wants to go in, and have the MC describe the scene, when one sentence would do for the example. If that's the case, that's absolutely fine, no prob. 

But if the MC is actually expected to just tell PCs where they're going, what they're doing, and also that they know info that they couldn't possibly know, because this allows the MC to ramp up the tension, then I think they're doing it wrong. Or at least in a way that discourages me from wanting to play.



pemerton said:


> If Keeler lets me, that is. Keeler thinks about *imposing her will upon her gang* to stop them, her player thinks about it too. She twists her mouth around, thinking about it.​



I'm also a bit confused about this line, because it's making it sound like Keeler has an existence independent of her player. But I'm going to chalk this up to unclear writing. Maybe this is a "it's what my character would do" moment, but as I said, unclear.



pemerton said:


> That sort of interweaving of the action is pretty central to any GMing of a non-party-based game. In my own case, it's a technique that I've used in Cthuhu Dark and Wuthering Heights one-shots, and use fairly often in my Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel campaigns.



Yeah, that might be another issue as well. Not a huge fan of inter-party conflict, or TV shows where everyone is backstabbing each other.



pemerton said:


> Asking someone straight to do something isn’t trying to seduce or manipulate them. . . . Absent leverage, they’re just talking, and you should have your NPCs agree or accede, decline or refuse, according to their own self-interests.



And that line there _really _makes me not want to play AW. The only options that require roles are both manipulative (and one of them I am not interested in doing at all), and the lack of a persuasion-type move makes everything both arbitrary and dependent on aggressive activity. If the MC decides one thing, then there's nothing the player can try to accomplish peacefully.



pemerton said:


> What would count as a perfect opportunity on a golden plate, in the context of a PC looking around in a non-charged situation? I don't think it's easy to come up with an example out of context. But suppose that the PC is visiting their savvyhead friend's workshop, and their friend (as established by some prior fiction)



That's another bit that's confusing. It's an RPG. _Everything _is fiction. Why not say "as established in a previous session"?



pemerton said:


> When you have posted _that there might be a consequence of failure even if the situation the PC is examining is not charged with potential danger_ you have failed to misdirect yourself! You've supposed that the function of the dice roll is to model some "possibility space" within the fiction. But it's not. Here's the explanation from the AW rulebook (pp 110-11):
> 
> Of course the real reason why you choose a move exists in the real world. Somebody has her character go someplace new, somebody misses a roll, somebody hits a roll that calls for you to answer, everybody’s looking to you to say something, so you choose a move to make. Real-world reasons. However, misdirect: pretend that you’re making your move for reasons entirely within the game’s fiction instead. . . . Make like it’s the game’s fiction that chooses your move for you, and so correspondingly always choose a move that the game’s fiction makes possible. . . .​



Yeah, I read that. It makes it sound very GM vs. PC to me. "I want to hurt the PCs, but I'm not allowed to do it unless I have a good in-game reason." I'm sure that's not what's intended, but the writing is so unclear that's what's coming across.



pemerton said:


> AW has no random determination of the fiction. At every point someone has the job of deciding what the fiction is: either a player is saying what their PC does, or the GM is announcing backstory, or framing, or consequences.



OK, so how is this different from a typical RPG?



pemerton said:


> The point of _misdirection_ is that the GM is not to speak in the (real world) language of decision-making. They are to speak in the fictional language of (imaginary) cause-and-effect.



Which is weird, because all of the examples the game provides are _filled _with game terminology. So if the goal is to ditch real-world language, it fails.



pemerton said:


> The places where a RPG obliges a GM to do this sort of thing help tell us what the RPG cares about. (Classic Traveller cares about doing tricky manoeuvres in space suits. It doesn't really care about charged situations, though, unless they're about to explode into violence, and so while it does have encounter surprise and evasion rules, it doesn't have any subsystem comparable to _read a (charged) sitch_.)



I haven't played Traveller so I can't speak to that (although I looked it up and the SRD lists Carouse, Investigation, Streetwise, Social Sciences (Psychology), and Tactics, all of which could be used to read a situation). _And _it has a Diplomat and Persuasion skill.

But I know that other games _do _have rules that let you read a situation. If I'm running D&D, the player can ask "what's the general mood like" or "who's the baddest mofo in the room," and I can tell them to roll Insight. Or I can tell them to roll Insight as soon as they enter, or just use passive Insight. If the player asks if there are any exits, I can have them roll Perception, use passive Per, or for that matter, simply tell them there's another exit as soon as they need to escape out of one. Or if one of them says "Is there a back door? If there is, I'm going out it," then I can either say there is one, say no, or invent a back door right there and then. Ditto for GURPS, Fate, Cypher, and other systems I've played.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, sure, and the fact that when I start playing Monopoly I can't invade Australia with my armies is a glaring omission and a point against the system as well.  Or that I can't use that $1000 Monopoly bill to buy all the armies in Risk so I can take over Baltic Avenue!  You're talking about different games, and saying that it's an omission that one doesn't play like the other.  Seems to be a rampant problem in the world of games, so I'm not sure how to put any weight in the concern at all.



So... this doesn't really answer my question, and I'm getting rather unnerved by how _defensive_ people are getting when I ask them to explain it to me.

So what you're saying is that PbtA is _not _capable of handling investigation, problem-solving, or stuff like that. So what do you think PbtA is _best _at doing?


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> So... this doesn't really answer my question, and I'm getting rather unnerved by how _defensive_ people are getting when I ask them to explain it to me.



I'm not defensive at all.  I'm pointing out that your statement makes no sense in the way that storming Australia makes not sense when you're playing Monopoly.  As such, the charge that it's a glaring omission is, well, without any weight.  I'm not getting my back up, I'm pointing out that you're coming in from left field and making statements that don't really make any sense.


Faolyn said:


> So what you're saying is that PbtA is _not _capable of handling investigation, problem-solving, or stuff like that. So what do you think PbtA is _best _at doing?



Nope.  I'm saying that passively investigating a murder scene where there's no dramatic interest pressing on the play is not something that PbtA even cares about.  @Manbearcat presented a situation from Blades, which using PbtA as a strong influence, that occurred in actual play and was an investigation, so it's pretty clear it can do investigations.  The problem is that you're still looking at games as a task resolution system, when players are prompting the GM to tell them more about the world or situation and not a game where the players are driving the game and the GM is being obligated by what the players are doing.  I don't have an answer to your question of how PbtA could do what reads like an anodyne police-procedural because that's just not what the system cares about in the same way that D&D doesn't care about what it's like to be a teenaged werewolf exploring your sexuality and finding out you're deeply attracted to a same-sex vampire even though you're dating the super hot opposite sex succubus cheerleader.   This seems like a glaring omission in D&D, yes?

ETA: look, I had a lot of trouble with this concept, asking similar questions and not getting it.  I bounced off of Burning Wheel when it was released -- bounced hard.  Couldn't fathom at all how it was supposed to work.  It really took me realizing that people were saying that these things worked, and that they seemed like pretty reasonable people (except for that) and were pretty consistent in what they were saying, so I tried out starting with assuming, "ok, let's just accept it works that way, can I move my understanding around to make that work?"  And, click, it locked in and I got it.  I still play 5e, and don't bother with this approach at all when I do, because 5e isn't a game that supports this.  I'm currently playing Aliens, and the GM running it is doing it using principles similar to PbtA, and I think it's working okay, but my read on that game is that it should be played out in much more of a classic approach -- keyed scenario type stuff.  We'll find out.  I also play/run Blades, and there I absolutely embrace the concepts here and a straight up murder scene investigation just won't happen in that game, because the only what that can happen is to have the GM push it into the game.  Otherwise, the system's going to be generating way more charged situations -- like the thief pretending to be an inspector casing the scene at high risk of being caught just to pick up a bit of evidence as a setup for a later score to incriminate someone.  Or to reduce the heat on their crew.  Or something else equally charged.  Why?  Because Blades drives this situations and doesn't drive mundane investigations where the players search for the clues the GM has placed.  Just different games with different intents, goals, and procedures.  I absolutely do these investigation things in my 5e games.


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## Campbell (Oct 5, 2021)

I will not speak for Powered by the Apocalypse as a whole. There are games like The Sprawl and Monster of the Week that focus on procedural storytelling, but those games are not like my bag. The PbtA games I personally have enjoyed playing/running are Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Masks, Apocalypse Keys, and The Veil. The thing they all excel at is interpersonal drama, particularly among PCs. The GM's role in these games is about applying pressure in order to see how well the player characters can hold together or if they even will. Sometimes like in Apocalypse Keys or Masks there will be procedural elements, but they are mostly there as a backdrop for the interpersonal stuff.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 5, 2021)

@Faolyn I think @Ovinomancer and @Campbell have provided some clarity in their most recent posts, but as someone who at one point struggled with following discussions of these games, I wanted to add something that may help, based on what you said in the quote below.



Faolyn said:


> Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.
> 
> At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this?
> 
> Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.




The thing with this is that the motivation absolutely matters. So do other elements like who is involved with this investigation and why, and what the potential consequences can be. The GM should be considering all those things as this scenario takes place, and he shoudl be using those elements to inform the moves he makes, or the consequences that he inflicts.

So to take one of your examples and run with it....let's say the PCs are actively trying to determine a culprit because an ally of theirs has been arrested for a crime. Even something as fundamental to this situation as "did the ally actually commit the crime" is likely unknown when play begins. The ultimate outcome is determined through play, and how the rolls go and what they lead to; it's not decided ahead of time. 

So it can go either way......perhaps the ally was framed, perhaps they committed the crime. You'll see the phrase "Play to find out" and that applies to the GM, too. 

That's one of the first steps to getting a better handle on these games. Or at least, it was for me.


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## Blue (Oct 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> In Apocalypse World whenever the players look to the MC to find out what happens the MC makes a move. That's true regardless of if a basic move is triggered.
> 
> You can totally do things not covered by the basic moves. It happens all the time when I run Apocalypse World. In those cases the system does not have anything to say so the MC just says what happens based on the fiction and their principles. Not everything requires rolling dice.



One additional thing - there often is a move, you just need to think of how to apply it. Because the move should force you to set up a dramatic situation.  There's a great example for Dungeon World, about asking for something nicely instead of using the Parlay move which specifically is for when you have leverage.  For example, asking a local knight if they can purchase his magic sword.

From: How to ask nicely in Dungeon World


> The problem here isn't on the player side. The GM is cheating. Accidentally, but still cheating.
> 
> GM Cheating in Dungeon World​The GM cheats in Dungeon World when they speak without following their Agenda, Principles, and Moves.
> 
> ...


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## GrahamWills (Oct 5, 2021)

chaochou said:


> Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?
> 
> Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?
> 
> The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.



Rather than just insult, could you please try and address the question. I’m happy to be told to use another move, or that AW doesn’t support this style of activity, only ones with active risk (as another poster stated), but simply insulting me isn’t terribly helpful. Feel free to imagine any answer to your questions. But at the moment you seem determined to use jargon and insults to avoid debate. I actively want to enjoy PbtA games, but I have some issues I’d like help with. Seriously, if you don’t want to be helpful, just chill and leave it to others who do.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> So to take one of your examples and run with it....let's say the PCs are actively trying to determine a culprit because an ally of theirs has been arrested for a crime. Even something as fundamental to this situation as "did the ally actually commit the crime" is likely unknown when play begins. The ultimate outcome is determined through play, and how the rolls go and what they lead to; it's not decided ahead of time.



Thank you, @hawkeyefan, that helps my understanding. I know the style of investigation where there is no pre-existing puzzle and the group comes up with a solution is a way of running investigation, and I can see that PbtA can handle that. For me and my group, that always feels a little illusionistic — you are going to solve the problem eventually because you will generate a solution. But more importantly puzzle-solving is core part of RPGs heritage, so it’s helpful to know that PbtA is just not going to be the best tool for such a game.

I’ve most enjoyed PbtA in highly railroaded settings (Bluebeard‘s Bride) and also in sandbox-y settings where there is opposition that need to be overcome in imaginative ways, but not by trying to figure out clues. I can’t imagine effectively using PbtA to run the Call of Cthulhu games I played at Origins last week, but I would also be unenthusiastic about trying a caper action scenario using BRP. I’ve played MONSTER OF THE WEEK a couple of times — would it be fair to call it the closest PbtA version for investigatIve roleplaying, or is there any other implementation I should look at?


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## chaochou (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Rather than just insult, could you please try and address the question. I’m happy to be told to use another move, or that AW doesn’t support this style of activity, only ones with active risk (as another poster stated), but simply insulting me isn’t terribly helpful. Feel free to imagine any answer to your questions. But at the moment you seem determined to use jargon and insults to avoid debate. I actively want to enjoy PbtA games, but I have some issues I’d like help with. Seriously, if you don’t want to be helpful, just chill and leave it to others who do.




I had already answered your question in my post which you quoted.



			
				chaochou said:
			
		

> So my advice would be to re-evaluate the set-up and premise of character creation, the processes which are being used to create the situations each PC finds themself in, and ask yourself if it's the players who generated the purpose and goals of the PCs. If you have strong characters with clear player-generated goals and obligations and drama around them, you shouldn't get passive moves.




And then, when you completely ignored this, I reitereated it:



			
				chaochou said:
			
		

> Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?




Are you going to ignore all this again?

Until you take me - from the beginning - through the processes being used to establish why there's a crime, and how the characters are related to that crime, and why each character cares - and of utmost importance who has authored every one of those aspects of the situation - then there are no answers as to how Apocalypse World (or indeed any Story Now game) will 'handle' your empty 'investigate a room' proposition.

Who has authored what room you're in? Why you are there? What sort of thing you might expect to find? Why do you believe that's the case? Who at the table is creating all this content?

The presumption in your line of questioning is that in all cases the GM has decided that a crime has happened, that the GM gets to task the players to investigate the crime, that certain information (clues) have been pre-written by the GM to allow the perpetrator of the crime to be revealed, and that gameplay will involve players making action declarations gated behind rolls which will dole out parcels of information until they have all the jigsaw pieces to 'solve' the mystery.

Until you discard this entire paradigm there is no point answering questions about any specific instance of play.


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## Aldarc (Oct 5, 2021)

chaochou said:


> Have you missed the point, or just conveniently ignored it?
> 
> Who authored the need to catch the criminal? Who authored the crime? What's your character's stake in any of this?
> 
> The fact that you're badly misusing 'read a sitch' simply tells me that you've not bothered to read and understand either my post or Apocalypse World.



I think that Graham Willis is approaching this from a position of good faith and conversation has been incredibly amiable (at least compared to past conversations about these games), so maybe lay off a bit? There was nothing about his tone or content in his post that required escalating the hostility.

I would personally appreciate showing a little more patience for Graham Willis, Faolyn, and others when it comes to PbtA and FitD. It took me awhile to grapple with what Fate was asking me to approach the game differently as a player and GM. Same with PbtA and FitD. Furthermore, not everyone will have smooth sailing when it comes to these games. There are bound to be bumps, hurdles, misunderstandings, and old habits to work through.



pemerton said:


> I think this issue of PC race in Dungeon World is of pretty minor importance to the system overall. Comparisons are tricky to make: it's a slightly bigger deal than whether or not the gear list from some edition/version of D&D has _candles_ or _needle and thread_ on it. It's probably closer, in D&D terms, to what is on the weapon list or the spell list.
> 
> I personally wouldn't count these as issues of_ extensive homebrewing_. But in any event, just as someone wouldn't normally choose what version of D&D to use based on the spell list - that's not where most of the action is across different versions of the game - so I would say the same for DW. If you're interested in it because of the system, it's pretty trivial to add whatever new race option will suit your table. If you're not, I don't think tinkering with the race options would be a reason to change your mind on that.



The amount of homebrewing I have done in Dungeon World on account of "race" is practically non-existent. In comparison, the amount of homebrewing I have done in D&D - where I am told explicitly through fluff and mechanics what it means to be a 'dwarf' or an 'orc' - has where I have arguably spent some of my greatest time and effort homebrewing for my games.

I would also say that by this point there is Dungeon World as it existed in that particulary point in time and there is Dungeon World as played and modded by the community now. I think that the latter of which doesn't care in the slightest about the old racial restrictions of the core game. The game has basically moved beyond Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra.



Faolyn said:


> Because someone they loved was killed, because they think they know who did it but need proof, because someone has been arrested but the PCs are sure that the person is innocent, because the murderer used the PC's favorite gun and the PC wants it back, because the murderer has killed before and will kill again unless the PCs stop them, because they're professional detectives.
> 
> At this point, the motivation doesn't even matter: for a reason, they're there, investigating a crime scene. How do we go about doing this?
> 
> Again, if PtbA games aren't built for this, then that's fine. I think it's a glaring omission and a point against the system, though.



As a concrete example, here is the move "Investigate a Mystery" from _Monster of the Week_:


> *Investigate A Mystery*
> When you investigate a mystery, roll +Sharp. On a 10+ hold 2, and on a 7-9 hold 1. One hold can be spent to ask the Keeper one of the following questions:
> • What happened here?
> • What sort of creature is it?
> ...




And the example explaining Hold also involves Investigate a Mystery:


> *Hold*
> When you get a hold, you’ll get a number of points. Each point can be spent one-for-one to get a specific effect. The move will list the effects you can spend your hold on.
> 
> For example, you are interviewing the witnesses to a monster attack and you make an *investigate a mystery* roll. Your result gives you 3 hold. You can spend your hold to ask the Keeper questions from the list in the investigate a mystery move.
> ...




Here I would also point out that one of the general Keeper moves is "Make [the PCs] Investigate." In other words:


> *Make them investigate* keeps the game moving. In each mystery the hunters need to find clues until they know enough to face the monster behind it all. If the hunters get stumped, ask them what they look for next. If they ask you for information, ask them how they find it out, then get them to make the investigate a mystery move. The
> answers from investigating depend on what the hunter did: by asking a witness questions they will learn different things than when they analyse samples in a lab. If the hunters ask a question and you can’t see how they could discover that, ask them to explain how.




As one might imagine from a game called "Monster of the Week," the mystery in question is presumed to pertain to a creature. So Investigating a Mystery is framed in terms of the creature. But hopefully one could see how this framework could be applied to other types of investigative scenes.

But the game Monster of the Week also wants to stress something about its game too:


> *It's About the Hunters, Not The Mystery*
> Another thing to remember is that although in each game of Monster of the Week the hunters have a mystery to solve, this isn’t really a game about solving mysteries. We want to see the hunters being awesome, and that requires that they solve the mystery and find out your secrets about what’s going on in the wider world. Then we see what they do with the answers.
> 
> We play for the times when the hunters realise they need to do something terrible, or put themselves in danger, or pull out all the stops. When the hunters make those decisions, and we play out all the consequences, that’s what this game is about.



This is not to say that Scooby-Doo doesn't involve solving mysteries, but, instead, that we watch Scooby-Doo because we are interested and invested in seeing Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo do it.


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> So to take one of your examples and run with it....let's say the PCs are actively trying to determine a culprit because an ally of theirs has been arrested for a crime. Even something as fundamental to this situation as "did the ally actually commit the crime" is likely unknown when play begins. The ultimate outcome is determined through play, and how the rolls go and what they lead to; it's not decided ahead of time.
> 
> So it can go either way......perhaps the ally was framed, perhaps they committed the crime. You'll see the phrase "Play to find out" and that applies to the GM, too.



Right. I gave the imagined example, upthread, of the PC going to Isle's car shed only to find that she's not there, but her cap is lying on the ground and the car is missing.

Has Isle been kidnappd? Has she eloped? _Maybe_ the GM knows, and has even set up a _countdown till the kidnappers kill Isle_ clock. Maybe the GM doesn't know. It makes no difference to the application of player-side moves. And the only difference it makes to the GM is that instead of simply saying what honesty demands s/he also has to say what prep demands.



Blue said:


> One additional thing - there often is a move, you just need to think of how to apply it. Because the move should force you to set up a dramatic situation.



Right. I posted about this in detail not too far upthread.

Vincent Baker calls out most of the moves in his Moves Snowball example of play, but not all of them. Eg when he narrates to Marie's player that she finds Isle and friends sitting on the roof of the car shed, this is _offering an opportunity_. But the example doesn't call that out. I riffed off this in my own Isle example (post 223) by imaging that the GM move is, instead, to _announce offscreen badness_ by narrating that Isle is not there, the car is gone, and her cap is lying on the ground.

@Faolyn, I feel that you are not really taking seriously the notion that _everything the GM says is a move, made in accordance with the principles_. And that those moves - because they involve concepts like _badness_ and _opportunity with a cost_ and _their stuff's downside_ and _consequences_ but also can be opportunities without a cost - require a value framework. Is it good or bad that Isle should be missing? In @Campbell's example, is Rorik finding the dead body an instance of _badness_ ("there's a killer on the loose") or an opportunity ("cool, now I've got the corpse and recently-living brain I need for my workspace!")? We can't tell what is bad and what is a cost and what is a downside and what is a (meaningful) consequence until we have a framework for evaluation. That framework is provided primarily by the players. Which goes back to @chaochou's remark about the players setting their own agenda.



Faolyn said:


> Treat _what _like a gift how? What is the It that should be brought? What moves should or could be made? I literally am not understanding what you mean here, and using slang doesn't help.



@Campbell is using the word "gift" in the same way that Vincent Baker refers to a player providing an opportunity on a golden plate - the GM is expected to respond by making an appropriate move, consistent with the agenda and principles, as I and @Blue have explained in our posts.



Faolyn said:


> And how would I be mindful of my fronts in this situation? How would giving clues make things impersonal? What moves fit my principles, and are you talking about my principles as a player or as an MC? What if Rorik wants to look for clues to find out who actually killed Plover? Do I just give him a bunch of clues, or does he have to roll, and if so, _what _does he roll--since apparently it's not Read Sitch and there's no basic investigation skill.



I think these questions show that you are not taking seriously what the AW rulebook says.

Your questions suggests that you are envisaging play very similar to trad CoC play - the GM has all the backstory worked out (who did what to whom when) and then the players, via their PCs, are identifying clues that will reveal that backstory. But AW does not approach RPGing in that fashion. _There is not a single AW principle or move that talks about clues_, so we can't use that as an analytic category to explain AW play. But there are moves that talk about _announcing badnes_, be that future badness or offscreen badness. I showed, in a post above, how that move could be used to frame a situation in response to a player's action declaration that does not trigger a player-side move: ie the player declares that their PC goes to find Isle at the car-shed, and the GM responds by telling the player that Isle's not there but they (ie their PC) can see that the shed has been broken into, the car is missing, and Isle's favourite cap is lying on the ground.

I also explained how, if the player were now to have their PC look around, _that would be reading a charged situation_ and I talked a bit about how the GM might make moves in response to the results of a read-a-sitch roll.

But making any of those moves requires knowing what would be _bad_, or an _opportunity_, for this (these) PC(s) in this context. Which is why the play of the game is inherently _personal_.



Faolyn said:


> If I'm running D&D, the player can ask "what's the general mood like" or "who's the baddest mofo in the room," and I can tell them to roll Insight. Or I can tell them to roll Insight as soon as they enter, or just use passive Insight. If the player asks if there are any exits, I can have them roll Perception, use passive Per, or for that matter, simply tell them there's another exit as soon as they need to escape out of one. Or if one of them says "Is there a back door? If there is, I'm going out it," then I can either say there is one, say no, or invent a back door right there and then. Ditto for GURPS, Fate, Cypher, and other systems I've played.



I quoted the rulebook discussion of this (p 200) upthread. And it is rehearsed above in this post, and also in Blue's post.

A player in AW can ask "What's the general mood like?" Assuming the situation is not charged, this does not trigger a player-side move. So the GM responds by making a move, as the agenda and principles dictate. Because I don't know anything about your player, and your fiction, I can't in this post speculate as to what an appropriate move would be. But I've given many examples in my posts upthread of what such moves might look like.



Faolyn said:


> Since AW indicates that the MC sets up things like groups of opposition, rival gangs, and other stuff like that in a sandbox-y type of way, I would imagine that it would be perfectly in-game for me to say "this noble is having a masquerade tomorrow night, there's been a rash of muggings on this other street, there's been reports of demons on such-and-such a street, the glow-in-the-dark fungus farms are mysteriously failing, and you all have personal issues you said you want to deal with--so what do you want to do now?"



No. What you have described here is not a MC move.



Faolyn said:


> Unless you're saying that the GM doesn't actually set up _anything_, including the area's NPCs, until the players decide they exist? If otherwise, then AW should just _say _that it's a sandbox game.



I don't think we can profitably discuss how fronts are authored and used at this point of the conversation. At this stage you're still not taking seriously that the MC makes moves in accordance with the principles.



Faolyn said:


> It makes it sound very GM vs. PC to me. "I want to hurt the PCs, but I'm not allowed to do it unless I have a good in-game reason." I'm sure that's not what's intended, but the writing is so unclear that's what's coming across.



I've got no view on whether or not you should play Apocalypse World. But if you want to _understand_ the play of the game, I encourage you to stop thinking about "how it sounds" and read it _literally_ having regard to the principles. None of the principles says _hurt the PCs_. But the principles do say to (inter alia) _respond with f*****y and intermitten rewards_. And the way this is done is by making moves. The only move that (literally) hurts the PCs is to _inflict harm_, which a GM would do if the dynamic of play warranted a hard move (as per my quote upthread about the dynamic of soft and hard/irrevocable moves) and if that followed from the fiction - eg it was established in the fiction that the PC is being targetted by a sniper, or is being beaten up by a thug, or whatever.



Faolyn said:


> The only options that require roles are both manipulative (and one of them I am not interested in doing at all), and the lack of a persuasion-type move makes everything both arbitrary and dependent on aggressive activity. If the MC decides one thing, then there's nothing the player can try to accomplish peacefully.



I honestly don't understand what you're describing here. There are too persuasion-type player-side moves: one based on the threat of violence (go aggro) and one based on the offer of a quid quo pro (seduce/manipulate). If the player declares some other action, like just a simple request of an NPC, then - as per what I posted and Blue posted - the GM makes an appropriate move in response, where _appropriate_ means in accordance with the principles.

Some further responses, to other parts of your post:



Faolyn said:


> It looks to me like the MC is railroading this: Keeler _will _walk by the armory and she _will _not only hear people in there but will automatically go inside and find out what they're doing.



This is not _railroading_. It's framing - the GM is telling Keeler's player where Keeler is and what she notices. It's exactly the same as the D&D GM saying, "OK, so when you all meet back at the inn . . . ". 

If there is some reason why Keeler's player thinks that Keeler would not be at the armoury, now would be the time for her to explain that - similar to the discussion that the example sets out of the GM and Marie's player discussing where Marie is. But for what I think are understandable reasons, Vincent Baker has skipped over such a possibility.



Faolyn said:


> But if the MC is actually expected to just tell PCs where they're going, what they're doing, and also that they know info that they couldn't possibly know, because this allows the MC to ramp up the tension, then I think they're doing it wrong. Or at least in a way that discourages me from wanting to play.



I think Baker's thought is that describing to Keeler what she hears from her gang members as she wanders past her armoury is no more controversial than - for instance - a CoC GM telling the players what letters their PCs received in the morning mail. That assumes that the PCs in fact went out and checked their mailbox, but normally that assumption would not be controversial.



Faolyn said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Here are some examples of random determination of fiction, chosen from various RPGs:

* In AD&D, a failed roll to pick locks means that the thief failed to pick the lock.

* In 3E D&D, a certain degree of failure on a climb check means that the character falls.

* In Rolemaster, there are many many crit results (far too many to spell out in a post) that dictate what injury is suffered by the victim of violence.

* In classic D&D, a wandering monster roll determines who/what the PCs encounter.

* In 5e D&D, a failed save against a Charm Person spell tells us that the target of the spell has been ensorcelled by the caster.​
These examples could very easily be multiplied. There is nothing like this in AW. All the fiction is deliberately authored; but there are rules that establish who gets to author it when, under what constraints.


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I haven't played Traveller so I can't speak to that (although I looked it up and the SRD lists Carouse, Investigation, Streetwise, Social Sciences (Psychology), and Tactics, all of which could be used to read a situation). _And _it has a Diplomat and Persuasion skill.



I'm replying to this in a separate post, because it is only tangentially relevant to Apocalypse World.

In Classic Traveller, the list of social skills is Admin, Streetwise, Bribery, Broker, Gambling, Steward, Carousing, Liaison, Leadership, Recruiting, Instruction and Interrogation. But that doesn't mean there is a sub-system for Reading a Situation. I can assure that there is not.

There are various subsystems for encounters, and for determining reactions. There is a set of interlocking rules (set out at various places in Books 1 and 3) for determining whether and when PCs find themselves interacting with officials, and whether those officials harass them or inspect their documents closely, and whether bribe attempts will work and whether forged documents will be picked up.

There is a system (found in Book 4) for recruiting mercenaries, and Recruiting skill factors into that. Leadership is a factor in morale and surprise.

I think you are tending to look at all RPGs through the paradigm: the player sets what their PC does; the GM asks for a check modified by some appropriate stat or skill bonus; and depending on that result and the GM's view of the fictional situation, the GM decides what happens next. But that is not how Apocalypse World or Classic Traveller works.


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## chaochou (Oct 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> There was nothing about his tone or content in his post that required escalating the hostility.



There's no hostility!

But there is frankness, and there is also some frustration when answers are already there but are completely blanked if they don't fit preconceptions.

Good faith has to include genuine open-mindedness, including to ideas such as:
_There's no need in 'mystery' play for one participant to have pre-written an answer (or answers) to the mystery. Fantastic play can stem from situations which are a mystery to everyone playing, including the MC._


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

Something to keep firmly in mind here as we slide back and forth between AW specifically and PbtA more generally is that the design choices made for those games are not all the same. The decision about, for example, what moves to include is a direct design choice based on what kind of conflict the designer wants to be the focus of the game. Baker makes this pretty clear is his series of blog posts on the AW engine as a design tool. So for AW, the kinds of conflict Baker wanted the game to focus on is not at all mystery solving, and so the moves available reflect that. What Baker did want the game to focus on is interpersonal conflict (among other things), and the moves again reflect that design choice. He describes moves, as an idea in Powered by the Apocalypse, thusly:

_I also said that the basic moves give structure and a certain order to the players’ conversations: who asks questions and who answers them, what you should say yourself and how you should treat the things that the other players say. I called it “permission and expectations.”_

Anyway, my point was that with different design choices come different ways the 'conversation' of the game is shaped.  PbtA certainly can do things like persuade and some of the less aggro social interaction type things when that's something the designer wants it to do. Even then, the focus is still going to be about conflict though. In terms of what that looks like for a police procedural I think it's helpful to think about a show like Castle, or really any decent investigative show. What moves the narrative along (the conversation of the game for our purposes) is interaction between the characters as they bounce off each other, and conflicts that arise in the course of solving the mystery. Pretty much any example of an episode will feature rising stakes and snowballing complications. These conflicts sometimes take the form of tension with superiors (like in X-Files, say) or could be direct conflict with a bad guy (too many examples to mention). Even when the characters find clues, there are stakes. Will they find the killer in time? Will side character X get got? How many rules will be broken and what will happen as a result? And so on and so forth. PbtA can do all those things just fine, and in a game specifically designed to spotlight them would do extremely well.

That's my two cents anyway, and I hope my explanation is cogent. I haven't had my coffee yet, so no promises.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 5, 2021)

chaochou said:


> _There's no need in 'mystery' play for one participant to have pre-written an answer (or answers) to the mystery. Fantastic play can stem from situations which are a mystery to everyone playing, including the MC._



Glad you have finally realized that this is what I have been looking for and others have indicated. PbtA has been fun in a lot of situations, but, even with fantastic GMs (of which I have had several) it doesn’t work as well in the situation where there is an established fact that a character needs to discover.



Aldarc said:


> This is not to say that Scooby-Doo doesn't involve solving mysteries, but, instead, that we watch Scooby-Doo because we are interested and invested in seeing Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo do it.




I only quoted this part, but I strongly appreciate your long description of Monster of the Week plays; I have not read the rules book, only played it, so it was very illuminating.

Maybe I should explain why I’m spending time on this convo; I’ve played and run a lot of systems; probably 30+ or so that I’ve had at least mini-campaigns with, from Rolemaster and AD&D to DitV, Fate, Tri-stat, Doctor Who, Kids on Bikes, and Everway. PbtA games look absolutely excellent to me; I love the presentation, the base concepts and the compactness and ease of getting started. Specific sub-systems I have lifted for other games I run. So I have been continually surprised when my play experiences have not been as much fun as I would expect. I’m not in the camp that likes to run one system for all genres — I used Savage Worlds for my Flash Gordon campaign even though I think it’s a bit of a clunky system in general, because it fits the pulp sci-if genre so well. So my goal is to work out when I should consider PbtA.

And this thread has been helpful. I think the quote from @Aldarc might be a good summary — it occurs to me that one-shot investigations, which are typically more about enjoying the mystery and less about the characters might be less good a showcase for PbtA than a campaign, which is typically character-focused (at least for our group).

But I still wish Magpie had picked a different system for Avatar …


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Thank you, @hawkeyefan, that helps my understanding. I know the style of investigation where there is no pre-existing puzzle and the group comes up with a solution is a way of running investigation, and I can see that PbtA can handle that. For me and my group, that always feels a little illusionistic — you are going to solve the problem eventually because you will generate a solution. But more importantly puzzle-solving is core part of RPGs heritage, so it’s helpful to know that PbtA is just not going to be the best tool for such a game.




I don't think "solving the problem" is a certainty. The resolution of the situation (in this case, the revelation of who done it) is going to come about as a result of play, but that doesn't mean that it will go the way the players want. Far from it. 

If the entire point of the scenario is a murder mystery style whodunit, then it may not be such a good match. But it depends on which specific game you're playing, and a lot of other factors. 

So just to kind of offer an example that's not an RPG......there's an old show called "Columbo" and it's about a detective solving a mystery. But it's different than many detective shows because the show starts by showing you exactly who did the deed. Who did it is never in doubt; instead, the show is about how Columbo pieces things together in order to figure it out. 

That's very different from your classic detective scenario where the entirety of the fiction is building toward the revelation of who's guilty. It approaches the idea of detective fiction from a different angle than what's typical. 

So I think you have to approach a PbtA game similarly. The point is less about who did it than it is about the fallout of the whole event, so you should proceed with that in mind.



GrahamWills said:


> I’ve most enjoyed PbtA in highly railroaded settings (Bluebeard‘s Bride) and also in sandbox-y settings where there is opposition that need to be overcome in imaginative ways, but not by trying to figure out clues. I can’t imagine effectively using PbtA to run the Call of Cthulhu games I played at Origins last week, but I would also be unenthusiastic about trying a caper action scenario using BRP. I’ve played MONSTER OF THE WEEK a couple of times — would it be fair to call it the closest PbtA version for investigatIve roleplaying, or is there any other implementation I should look at?




I couldn't say for sure, honestly. There are so many PbtA games now that it's possible there are some that tackle mysteries in a more direct manner. I know Monster of the Week by reputation only; I've never played it and only read a bit of it. My understanding is that there are moves about uncovering facts and lore that you may expect in this genre (I'm thinking of the show Supernatural and the like, where the protagonists need to learn of the monster's vulnerability or some such in order to prevail). 

I can say that I ran a Blades in the Dark campaign that deviated from the norm in that it used the Bluecoat and Inspector playbooks (which are the Cops and Detectives of that setting) rather than the standard Scoundrel playbooks, and that took some different approaches to play and GMing. I'd say that campaign was very much a learning process for me as it forced me to come at police procedural elements in a different way in order to make them interesting as a game. 

The Between is a new take on PbtA and it incorporates rules on how to implement mysteries which is in turn lifted from the Brindlewood Bay game (which is basically Murder She Wrote meets Cthulhu). I haven't run that game yet, but its approach to mysteries may be what you're looking for. @Fenris-77 is pretty familiar with those rules, so he may have more to offer about that game specifically.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 5, 2021)

Thanks @pemerton for humoring me with that FitD question that I directed at you. I think your example of seeing the culprits driving away is a great Lost Opportunity consequence.

But if @Manbearcat and @Ovinomancer and whoever else might be a Blades/Forged in the Dark veteran can humor me further, here are some situations that came up in the test session I ran last night of Scum and Villainy in a Star Wars setting. I fully believe that I was GMing a ton of stuff wrong, given the FitD system/approach, so I'm not looking for attaboys or reinforcement. 

Some quick context: 

-Scum and Villainy differs from Blades in that you have a ship instead of a crew, and so you aren't generally tied to a given area. It's not a bounded sandbox, like wth Duskvol. If anything it's the opposite, making it (in theory) a good fit for Star Wars, where you have lots of interstellar mobility. This changes a lot of things, including making something like that very compelling setup that Manbearcat laid out less possible, imo. You take jobs because someone is paying you, and those could be in lots of places.

-For this test session I may have broken the premise without realizing it--my main interest was to get practice with the core mechanics, and I wound up having my solo player, who chose a new Jedi for his character, and his more experienced Jedi partner NPC assigned to hunt down a supposed terrorist. Did kicking things off unrelated to PC contacts and faction relationships make everything that following invalid or at least clumsy? Maybe so. 

I'm not (I hope) doing the dreaded listen-to-my-session thing, but here are the specific moments/decisions I'm curious about:


1) Based on a roll to learn the terrorist's whereabouts from local criminals--the player rolled a success with consequence on a risky Command action to intimidate them--I figured they were now being led into a trap. So they took a boat to another area of the city where the target was supposedly staying. This being a one-shot test session, in which I very much wanted a noir-ish moment where the newbie's more experienced partner gets killed, I figured the trap would start big, with an A-Wing attacking the boat from far above--a kind of sniper situation. I said that they could hear a high-pitched keening sound during the boat trip, but my player did nothing (he's also new to playing FitD, though not reading it). When he stepped off the boat I triggered the attack.

At this point I suddenly didn't know what to do, because in theory the Attune action specifically notes that you can use the Way (aka the Force) to "sense unseen danger or killing intent." But the player didn't initiate that action upon hearing the suspicious noise. So we awkwardly decided he could use Attune now to sense the attack and try to get himself and his partner off the boat in time. He rolled a critical success (two sixes) so he decided to pull the boat's driver off as well.

Everything about how I handled this seemed wrong, and in the moment we were left with the sense that if the player just kind of waits out a situation instead of taking action, maybe that's on them, because, as discussed in this thread, passive actions--especially the sort of passive Perception rolls that are almost constant in many trad games--just don't make sense in FitD. But what do you guys think? Was this just a hopelessly trad and off-base encounter from the start? And how do you handle stuff like danger sense or similar unnatural/enhanced perception in FitD, if it seems like an ambush has become part of the story?


2) The player and NPC decided to get to a rooftop to deal with the A-Wing assassin, and here, again, I may have defaulted to a trad situation. I said that as they were running into a building and about to get into the stairwell, a pair of guys entered from the street and immediately pulled blasters and opened fire--evidence that the trap was bigger/worse than expected. The resolution for this was simple and fast and great. But was having these two shooters pop up (to show the escalating danger and stakes) sort of a game-breaking trad intrusion, because it wasn't based on another, post-A-Wing-attack player roll and related consequence? This was, in other words, a GM-first piece of fiction, which would miss the point of FitD, right? Or am I just in my head with this one?


3) Finally, toward the end of the scene/session, the PC and NPC realized they were stuck, with the A-Wing loitering above the roof and a large group of people running up the stairs. How this situation was resolved was, again, very cool to me, and pushed me even harder toward wanting to do lots more FitD. But as with the earlier appearance of the two shooters, this horde of dudes did not appear based on a subsequent player roll or suggestion. Does that once again break the core FitD approach, and make the game about PCs reacting to GM-determined fiction, instead of the other way around? Or am I looking at this in a way that's too zoomed in, and really the whole situation is just flowing from the player's chosen approach for how to find their target, and the consequences that followed?


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

OK, a quick(-ish) precis of the _Brindlewood Bay_ mystery mechanics, which are pretty much ported directly to _The Between,_ which is otherwise mostly PbtA in terms of design ethos and mechanics. I'll use the verbiage from _The Between_ because that's the iteration I'm most familiar with.

So, every threat in _The Between_ (think of a threat as similar to a monster in MotW) has 20 clues written for it as well as several questions (the answers to which 'solve' parts of the mystery, and are called _Opportunities_) and which have a complexity of (mostly) 2-8 and also the aforementioned associated _Opportunity_.

The clues are evocatively and specifically written to scaffold and enhance whatever the theme of that particular threat is. So a threat based on a fire-starting ghost would have a lot of smoke, flame and whatnot sorts of clues. Finding clues is a product of several moves in the game but primarily the _Information _move (a pretty standard 2d6 PbtA roll with the 6-/7-9 and 10+ results). There is another move called _Answer a Question_ where the players have a freewheeling conversation about how the clues they have might fit together and posit a theory about a question from the threat, at which point they roll (standard 2d6 again), adding the number of clues they have found and subtracting the complexity of the question. On a 10+ their theory is correct, on 7-9 its correct but with added danger or complications, and on a 6 or less it's incorrect and more clues must be gathered.

The mystery in this system comes from the interplay of evocative places and people, and how the characters chose to approach the mystery at hand. The clues aren't tied to locations, but are given as the result of a successful roll, so what's important there is the framing of both the investigation and the clue in terms of fictional positioning (the Gm decides _that clue would make sense/be awesome here_). As you can see there is no pre-determined answer for the players to find, just a series of questions that help frame the mystery rather than solve it.  When they answer a question successfully they get to frame the opportunity, which answers part of the mystery and then move on to the next question. Most threats have two or three questions, so this isn't an interminable process.

This can all seem a little nebulous without an exemplar, and I have a couple of threats lying around I can show as examples if anyone's interested. _The Between _a very cool system and I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Jason Cordova, the author.


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## chaochou (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I fully believe that I was GMing a ton of stuff wrong, given the FitD system/approach, so I'm not looking for attaboys or reinforcement.



Caveat: I don't know _Blades _well and I don't know _Scum & Villainy_ at all, except by reputation. I don't own it and haven't played it.

But I had an overall impression, reading your play notes which wasn't to do with the GMing but the sense of fairly passive play which in turn led you to try and move things forward.

It sounded like a player who didn't quite trust that they were actually meant to be making things happen and so was waiting for you to. Your instinct that you should be _responding _to the player character is correct in principle, and passivity is one of the toughest things to deal with.

I went through this exact problem with my group and it was a headache because you can't force people to be pro-active - it's an oxymoron.  Being proactive can take a while to click for players.

But it's also why game set-up, character and setting creation, the establishing of situations which fire the imagination of the player(s) and the immediacy and urgency of player goals are so important. The better you can do that as a group, the less chance you have of players waiting for the MC to drive play.


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## Aldarc (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> I only quoted this part, but I strongly appreciate your long description of Monster of the Week plays; I have not read the rules book, only played it, so it was very illuminating.



Glad to help. As the conversation drifted to running investigations, this seemed like a potentially good illustrative example. 



GrahamWills said:


> Maybe I should explain why I’m spending time on this convo; I’ve played and run a lot of systems; probably 30+ or so that I’ve had at least mini-campaigns with, from Rolemaster and AD&D to DitV, Fate, Tri-stat, Doctor Who, Kids on Bikes, and Everway. PbtA games look absolutely excellent to me; I love the presentation, the base concepts and the compactness and ease of getting started. Specific sub-systems I have lifted for other games I run. So I have been continually surprised when my play experiences have not been as much fun as I would expect. I’m not in the camp that likes to run one system for all genres — I used Savage Worlds for my Flash Gordon campaign even though I think it’s a bit of a clunky system in general, because it fits the pulp sci-if genre so well. *So my goal is to work out when I should consider PbtA.*



I think that the goal in bold is an incredibly interesting issue that doesn't always get discussed in "system matters." It's not just a matter of how or whether system matters, but also _when_ should one consider one system over another for play purposes, in this case PbtA. I don't have an answer on hand for when one should consider PbtA, but I will definitely be mulling this over. 



GrahamWills said:


> And this thread has been helpful. I think the quote from @Aldarc might be a good summary — it occurs to me that one-shot investigations, which are typically more about enjoying the mystery and less about the characters might be less good a showcase for PbtA than a campaign, which is typically character-focused (at least for our group).



I have had a similar issue with trying to find the "right system" for a back-burner game that I have wanted to run, which incidentally involves a supernatural investigative society in 1840s Vienna. So I have looked into a variety of potential investigative or urban fantasy games for those purposes: e.g., Call of Cthulhu (Berlin), Gumshoe, Fria Ligan's Vaesen, Dresden Files Accelerated, Monster of the Week, etc. 

*Edit:* This thread has also now made me aware of The Between, so... crap... the list grows. 



GrahamWills said:


> But I still wish Magpie had picked a different system for Avatar …



PbtA is really their system of choice and Magpie Games know it inside and out, so it's little surprise that they convinced Nickelodeon that this system would fit their IP. It seems like an incredibly appropriate system for Avatar, especially after Magpie proved themselves at handling young adult fiction with Masks. 

The only other systems I probably would have considered for Avatar would have been *Fate *(which includes games like _*Do: Fate of the Flying Temple*_ and a Korra-like _*Jadepunk*_ and it even uses a mock Avatar character in its Accelerated book) and *Cortex Prime* (see _The Dragon Prince: Tales of Xadia_), or possibly something like *Kids on Bikes/Brooms *and that's pretty much it.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

_The Between_ is specifically about a supernatural investigative society in 1880's London, so it's going to be pretty close in a lot of ways, either to use or just steal bits from. It's worth a read at the very least given your goals there. _The Between_ also really shines in terms of making Victorian London and it's people really come alive as a setting (without a lot of setting detail to memorize either) so if that's something you're looking for it's again worth a look.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 5, 2021)

I hope you don't mind me jumping in to offer a take on this. I'm sure others will have more/different/better advice on this, but a couple of bits jumped out at me. I've not played Scum & Villainy yet, but I do own it, and I've played lots of Blades and several other Forged in the Dark Systems.



Grendel_Khan said:


> 1) Based on a roll to learn the terrorist's whereabouts from local criminals--the player rolled a success with consequence on a risky Command action to intimidate them--I figured they were now being led into a trap.




So the success was that the PC learned the location of the terrorists from the local criminals, right? And the complication was that they were heading into a trap?

Was this consequence known to the player? To the character? 

I think the consequences have to be known in some way. Either they are immediate and become part of the fiction, or else you start a clock and let the players know about it. And the clock need not be so specific if the situation doesn't call for it. So you had a trap in mind as the consequence, so I would have started a clock called "Trouble with the locals" or similar, and set a total (probably 6 by default) and I would have ticked it a number of times. 

Then, that clock is in place, and you can use it for additional consequences on future rolls. 

Having it out in the open means the player is aware of the consequences from failed or success with consequence results.



Grendel_Khan said:


> So they took a boat to another area of the city where the target was supposedly staying. This being a one-shot test session, in which I very much wanted a noir-ish moment where the newbie's more experienced partner gets killed, I figured the trap would start big, with an A-Wing attacking the boat from far above--a kind of sniper situation. I said that they could hear a high-pitched keening sound during the boat trip, but my player did nothing (he's also new to playing FitD, though not reading it). When he stepped off the boat I triggered the attack.




I think having a specific goal in mind....like the death of a mentor/ally....is not the best approach. Certainly the older jedi's death as a possible consequence should be on the table, but I don't think actively pushing toward that is really in line with the principles of GMing Forged in the Dark.



Grendel_Khan said:


> At this point I suddenly didn't know what to do, because in theory the Attune action specifically notes that you can use the Way (aka the Force) to "sense unseen danger or killing intent." But the player didn't initiate that action upon hearing the suspicious noise. So we awkwardly decided he could use Attune now to sense the attack and try to get himself and his partner off the boat in time. He rolled a critical success (two sixes) so he decided to pull the boat's driver off as well.
> 
> Everything about how I handled this seemed wrong, and in the moment we were left with the sense that if the player just kind of waits out a situation instead of taking action, maybe that's on them, because, as discussed in this thread, passive actions--especially the sort of passive Perception rolls that are almost constant in many trad games--just don't make sense in FitD. But what do you guys think? Was this just a hopelessly trad and off-base encounter from the start? And how do you handle stuff like danger sense or similar unnatural/enhanced perception in FitD, if it seems like an ambush has become part of the story?




As @chaochou has commented, this is where the game may take some time to click with the players so that they'll start to be more proactive rather than reactive. Early on in the learning process, I don't think it's wrong at all to prompt them or to remind them of the abilities/actions at their disposal. So when you introduced the keening sound of the looming a-wing (establishing a threat of some kind) you could say to the player "Do you want to use the way to determine if this sound is a threat? Do you want to take cover? Do you want to do something else?"




Grendel_Khan said:


> 2) The player and NPC decided to get to a rooftop to deal with the A-Wing assassin, and here, again, I may have defaulted to a trad situation. I said that as they were running into a building and about to get into the stairwell, a pair of guys entered from the street and immediately pulled blasters and opened fire--evidence that the trap was bigger/worse than expected. The resolution for this was simple and fast and great. But was having these two shooters pop up (to show the escalating danger and stakes) sort of a game-breaking trad intrusion, because it wasn't based on another, post-A-Wing-attack player roll and related consequence? This was, in other words, a GM-first piece of fiction, which would miss the point of FitD, right? Or am I just in my head with this one?




I don't think this was really a misstep. If the crew is working toward their goal (in this case, I believe it is to locate the terrorists), the GM is meant to present obstacles. Now, this also depends on how you handled earlier actions and consequences. For example, if you'd established a clock as I mentioned above, perhaps these guys don't immediately open fire. Give the crew a chance to address this obstacle in more than one way. However, if the "Trouble with the locals" clock as been filled, then sure, have them barge in guns blazing. 

Generally speaking, it's okay to introduce new obstacles and threats as needed.



Grendel_Khan said:


> 3) Finally, toward the end of the scene/session, the PC and NPC realized they were stuck, with the A-Wing loitering above the roof and a large group of people running up the stairs. How this situation was resolved was, again, very cool to me, and pushed me even harder toward wanting to do lots more FitD. But as with the earlier appearance of the two shooters, this horde of dudes did not appear based on a subsequent player roll or suggestion. Does that once again break the core FitD approach, and make the game about PCs reacting to GM-determined fiction, instead of the other way around? Or am I looking at this in a way that's too zoomed in, and really the whole situation is just flowing from the player's chosen approach for how to find their target, and the consequences that followed?




Yeah, I think all this depends on how the whole session has been handled. But again, generally speaking, I think it's fine to add a new complication to the mix such as the reinforcements coming from below if it makes sense to do so. Even if the jedi crew was able to dispatch the initial guards and the a-wing with nothing but full successes, if they did it with a lot of blaster fire and light-sabering involved, then having reinforcements notice and come makes sense. If they were stealthy and quiet about it then reinforcements may not make sense. 

I think you're probably okay in this area; I think as long as you look to the fiction as a guide, you're likely in good shape. Results can come from the fiction without being specifically a consequence of a roll.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

To build a little on my post above about PbtA design principles, I found the following quote from Vincent Baker that may help some people grasp what it means to change the moves and thus 'direction' of the game:



> Here’s Ursula K. LeGuin: “_Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing._“
> 
> What would it mean to start with PbtA, but to swap out Apocalypse World’s model of conflict and replace it with…
> 
> ...


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## Aldarc (Oct 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> _The Between_ is specifically about a supernatural investigative society in 1880's London, so it's going to be pretty close in a lot of ways, either to use or just steal bits from. It's worth a read at the very least given your goals there. _The Between_ also really shines in terms of making Victorian London and it's people really come alive as a setting (without a lot of setting detail to memorize either) so if that's something you're looking for it's again worth a look.



It looks interesting, though some of the playbook descriptions feel a bit too oddly specific for what I'm necessarily going for.


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## GrahamWills (Oct 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> OK, a quick(-ish) precis of the _Brindlewood Bay_ mystery mechanics, which are pretty much ported directly to _The Between,_ which is otherwise mostly PbtA in terms of design ethos and mechanics.
> ...
> _The Between _a very cool system and I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Jason Cordova, the author.




Exactly the sort of thing I was looking for -- puchased!


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> It looks interesting, though some of the playbook descriptions feel a bit too oddly specific for what I'm necessarily going for.



I get that. The playbooks are _very_ keyed to _Penny Dreadful_. There are another three coming out I believe, and it's not hard to tweak playbooks, especially in terms of making them a little less specific in this case.

There are also a bunch of solid fan-written playbooks (and hacks) available on the Gauntlet Publishing Discord.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Exactly the sort of thing I was looking for -- puchased!



They just ran a threat writing contest for _The Between_ so there are something like 30 really cool threats available for free if you pop onto the Discord and check out the Writing Contest channel (including two of my threats but I can't say which ones because the judging isn't finalized yet).

Who doesn't want great free resources?


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Glad you have finally realized that this is what I have been looking for and others have indicated. PbtA has been fun in a lot of situations, but, even with fantastic GMs (of which I have had several) it doesn’t work as well in the situation where there is an established fact that a character needs to discover.



Okay?  This is like, after explaining how Monopoly plays, being asked, "sure, but how do I invade Australia?"  The answer to this is that this isn't something that's a thing in this game.  To me, this statement is essentially asking "how do I use this new system to play the same way I play now."  The answer is you don't.  It's not meant for that, so don't try it.


GrahamWills said:


> I only quoted this part, but I strongly appreciate your long description of Monster of the Week plays; I have not read the rules book, only played it, so it was very illuminating.
> 
> Maybe I should explain why I’m spending time on this convo; I’ve played and run a lot of systems; probably 30+ or so that I’ve had at least mini-campaigns with, from Rolemaster and AD&D to DitV, Fate, Tri-stat, Doctor Who, Kids on Bikes, and Everway.



If you've successfully run DitV, then there really should be little mystery (heh) to PbtA.  Dogs has the same structure, with a premise that's explored and developed through play -- you cannot script a Dogs game and play it as it is presented.  You can only prep the town and some of the issues there, but play's going to quickly go in unexpected directions due to the nature of resolution and fallout.  It's the same conceptual framework PbtA rests on.


GrahamWills said:


> PbtA games look absolutely excellent to me; I love the presentation, the base concepts and the compactness and ease of getting started. Specific sub-systems I have lifted for other games I run. So I have been continually surprised when my play experiences have not been as much fun as I would expect. I’m not in the camp that likes to run one system for all genres — I used Savage Worlds for my Flash Gordon campaign even though I think it’s a bit of a clunky system in general, because it fits the pulp sci-if genre so well. So my goal is to work out when I should consider PbtA.
> 
> And this thread has been helpful. I think the quote from @Aldarc might be a good summary — it occurs to me that one-shot investigations, which are typically more about enjoying the mystery and less about the characters might be less good a showcase for PbtA than a campaign, which is typically character-focused (at least for our group).



Yes, you should not use PbtA for a scripted game where the primary point of play is getting the GM to reveal more information about the plot.  That's not a dig at that play, by the way, it's exactly how I play 5e so I'm not adverse to it at all.


GrahamWills said:


> But I still wish Magpie had picked a different system for Avatar …



Why?  PbtA seems excellently positioned to tell the stories one expects from Avatar.  Avatar is entirely about the characters and their struggles and not about procedurally solving mysteries.  The only difference is if you want a specific plot for the players to follow, then, yeah, PbtA isn't going to support that at all.


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## Gradine (Oct 5, 2021)

Magpie made _Masks _which is a near perfect match, thematically if not genre-wise, for _Avatar. _And _Masks _is damn near the best designed RPG I've ever read.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not defensive at all.  I'm pointing out that your statement makes no sense in the way that storming Australia makes not sense when you're playing Monopoly.  As such, the charge that it's a glaring omission is, well, without any weight.  I'm not getting my back up, I'm pointing out that you're coming in from left field and making statements that don't really make any sense.



I asked a question, you went into a mini-rant about Monopoly and Risk. I'd call that at least a bit defensive.



Ovinomancer said:


> Nope.  I'm saying that passively investigating a murder scene where there's no dramatic interest pressing on the play is not something that PbtA even cares about.



I played GURPS for a while. That system, bless it's papery heart, _tries _to include rules for wildly cinematic games, but honestly that's not a genre the system "cares about." It's really a system that wants math, not crazy stunts and high power levels. But GURPS still has rules for cinematic games, as clumsy as they are.

So: _does _PbtA have rules (even if they're clumsy) that would allow for investigation, or not? And if so, what are they? 

(And why would you consider investigation to be only passive? Because all of those examples I gave you have dramatic interest in them. There would be a real driving need to solve the crime before it's too late, especially if it directly affected you in some way (a loved one was killed or is a suspect; the killer has made it personal; the killer will strike again unless you stop it and you don't want any more blood on your hands).

I'm guessing that by what you continue to say, the answer is _no. _



Ovinomancer said:


> in the same way that D&D doesn't care about what it's like to be a teenaged werewolf exploring your sexuality and finding out you're deeply attracted to a same-sex vampire even though you're dating the super hot opposite sex succubus cheerleader.   This seems like a glaring omission in D&D, yes?



And yet, I can actually play that out in D&D. I don't even _need _rules for that sort of situation--that's pure roleplaying--but if I did want rules, D&D still has skills, subsystems, and other abilities that could be used, with a little creativity. ("I cast _augury. _Will I be able to resolve my feelings for the vampire?" The spell says _weal._ "Is my relationship with the succubus a healthy one?" The spell says _woe._) You want a high school drama? There's the Renown and Loyaly subsystems, right there in the DMG. Both of those would useful for high school, and the upcoming Strixhaven book likely has more such rules _and _it's a school-based environment.



Ovinomancer said:


> "ok, let's just accept it works that way, can I move my understanding around to make that work?"



Unfortunately, I can't just "accept." I need to know the whys and hows. What can I say? My parents raised me to question authority. 

If the answer is, no you _can't _do investigations with PbtA games unless you do it as pure RP with no mechanics, then just say that. Saying that the game "doesn't care" about it is a non-answer to me, because it's a game; it _can't _"care" about anything. It either has a rule for it, or it doesn't, or it has a rule that can be used for it even though it's not the rule's primary purpose. Like the _augury _I mentioned above. It's not _supposed _to be used to divine one's sex life, but I'd allow it, and I'm pretty sure all of my players would as well, if they were in the GM's chair.



Ovinomancer said:


> And, click, it locked in and I got it.  I still play 5e, and don't bother with this approach at all when I do, because 5e isn't a game that supports this.



Maybe your D&D games are lacking because you haven't tried it.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Thanks @pemerton for humoring me with that FitD question that I directed at you. I think your example of seeing the culprits driving away is a great Lost Opportunity consequence.
> 
> But if @Manbearcat and @Ovinomancer and whoever else might be a Blades/Forged in the Dark veteran can humor me further, here are some situations that came up in the test session I ran last night of Scum and Villainy in a Star Wars setting. I fully believe that I was GMing a ton of stuff wrong, given the FitD system/approach, so I'm not looking for attaboys or reinforcement.
> 
> ...



This isn't exactly true.  The city in Blades is there so that you can't just murder and the hobo away from it -- you have to deal with it.  S&V appears to offer more movement freedom, but you still can't run from problems as they can easily still find and track and engage with you because your problems can move as easily as you.  The faction game works the same, really.


Grendel_Khan said:


> -For this test session I may have broken the premise without realizing it--my main interest was to get practice with the core mechanics, and I wound up having my solo player, who chose a new Jedi for his character, and his more experienced Jedi partner NPC assigned to hunt down a supposed terrorist. Did kicking things off unrelated to PC contacts and faction relationships make everything that following invalid or at least clumsy? Maybe so.
> 
> I'm not (I hope) doing the dreaded listen-to-my-session thing, but here are the specific moments/decisions I'm curious about:
> 
> ...



@hawkeyefan touched on this, but the "it's a trap" bit should have been explicit at the table.  You find out where the target is, but also that the target is aware you're looking for him and is ready for it!  That's the better move in this game's context.  One thing to remember in these games is that there is no secret GM backstory -- ie, bits of fiction the GM has written that are the truth of the game but aren't known to the players.  If there's a complication, it's one that's either hitting right now, so everyone knows it, or that you're immediately foreshadowing in an open way.  This is what drives the snowball.  If you announce the upcoming badness, and the PCs ignore it, then you just hit them with it as hard as you want.

The foreshadowing in the boat wasn't in line with the game, either, because it wasn't clear it was a threat or something to be dealt with.  What happened here is that it appears you defaulted to D&D-esque play and so did your player, who was waiting for you to reveal more about the scene because that's what you do in D&D.  You need to frame these things immediately and hard -- I'd have started at or near the docks, probably by announcing the A-wing coming in low and hard for a fast fly-by, with the pilot visible looking at the PCs, then roaring off and circling for what looks like an attack run -- this frames an immediate threat that has to be reacted to, and is the core ideal of how you kick things off.

I'm going to step back a moment here and ask where this sits in the context of the score?  The initial scene looking for the bad guy seems like freeplay/information gathering, and so should probably be running on a fortune mechanic -- although the outcomes there align either way, a 4-5 is some good some bad news.  But, after that, there should have been a score announced and an engagement roll made, which would have set up exactly how you should be looking to frame the initial ambush.  I'm unclear where we are in the game structure here.

I think that S&V calls scores "jobs"?  Been a hot minute.


Grendel_Khan said:


> At this point I suddenly didn't know what to do, because in theory the Attune action specifically notes that you can use the Way (aka the Force) to "sense unseen danger or killing intent." But the player didn't initiate that action upon hearing the suspicious noise. So we awkwardly decided he could use Attune now to sense the attack and try to get himself and his partner off the boat in time. He rolled a critical success (two sixes) so he decided to pull the boat's driver off as well.



So, in light of my discussion above about how the threat should have been more obviously framed, this part is moot.  However, it needs to be noted that actions like this are not reactionary, they are intentional.  Meaning for Attune to be used this way, the player needs to be declaring an action to determine this.  A tense standoff, with blasters drawn, is a good moment, where a player is using Attune to tell if the other side plans to shoot first.  It's not really a passive perception stand-in.  Nothing in S&V has a passive score corollary, except resistance rolls if viewed through a squint.


Grendel_Khan said:


> Everything about how I handled this seemed wrong, and in the moment we were left with the sense that if the player just kind of waits out a situation instead of taking action, maybe that's on them, because, as discussed in this thread, passive actions--especially the sort of passive Perception rolls that are almost constant in many trad games--just don't make sense in FitD. But what do you guys think? Was this just a hopelessly trad and off-base encounter from the start? And how do you handle stuff like danger sense or similar unnatural/enhanced perception in FitD, if it seems like an ambush has become part of the story?



Yeah, I don't disagree with this.  You need to put the danger/obstacle front and center and clear, and not hide what a consequence is.  These things have to be table facing at all times.  The only things "secret" would be any prep for possible ideas of complications or an NPC that haven't been used yet, and these need to be held lightly (ie, not things that will be used but that might be used and maybe not as originally intended -- prep is more like brainstorming so play aides in S&V/Blades than pre-story like in D&D).


Grendel_Khan said:


> 2) The player and NPC decided to get to a rooftop to deal with the A-Wing assassin, and here, again, I may have defaulted to a trad situation. I said that as they were running into a building and about to get into the stairwell, a pair of guys entered from the street and immediately pulled blasters and opened fire--evidence that the trap was bigger/worse than expected. The resolution for this was simple and fast and great. But was having these two shooters pop up (to show the escalating danger and stakes) sort of a game-breaking trad intrusion, because it wasn't based on another, post-A-Wing-attack player roll and related consequence? This was, in other words, a GM-first piece of fiction, which would miss the point of FitD, right? Or am I just in my head with this one?



Yeah, you should have called for a check here -- how is the PC getting to the roof?  Carefully or running full tilt or using Force jumps?  Anything the PCs are doing under pressure or threat needs to be a check.  Remember, it's not the plan you have that drives the game, but the result of the PC's actions that drive the game. 


Grendel_Khan said:


> 3) Finally, toward the end of the scene/session, the PC and NPC realized they were stuck, with the A-Wing loitering above the roof and a large group of people running up the stairs. How this situation was resolved was, again, very cool to me, and pushed me even harder toward wanting to do lots more FitD. But as with the earlier appearance of the two shooters, this horde of dudes did not appear based on a subsequent player roll or suggestion. Does that once again break the core FitD approach, and make the game about PCs reacting to GM-determined fiction, instead of the other way around? Or am I looking at this in a way that's too zoomed in, and really the whole situation is just flowing from the player's chosen approach for how to find their target, and the consequences that followed?



Again, introducing more threats needs to be because of actions.  The nature of the game will generate all the drama you need, if you trust it and let it.  Putting a finger on the scales, like adding further complications that aren't from checks, needs to be heavily scrutinized and only rarely done.  I'm leaving that like this because there may be a good point somewhere for doing so, but I'd be extremely hesitant to do this.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I asked a question, you went into a mini-rant about Monopoly and Risk. I'd call that at least a bit defensive.



Oh.  What you mean is that you're assuming I'm defensive, and so I'm defensive, and I don't get to have a say about my own mental state? I guess that's a take one could have.  I'd prefer you just take my word for it.  Also, if you read my statements about Monopoly and Risk as a rant, perhaps go back, assume a tone that's intended to explain rather than rant, and read it again.   


Faolyn said:


> I played GURPS for a while. That system, bless it's papery heart, _tries _to include rules for wildly cinematic games, but honestly that's not a genre the system "cares about." It's really a system that wants math, not crazy stunts and high power levels. But GURPS still has rules for cinematic games, as clumsy as they are.
> 
> So: _does _PbtA have rules (even if they're clumsy) that would allow for investigation, or not? And if so, what are they?
> 
> (And why would you consider investigation to be only passive? Because all of those examples I gave you have dramatic interest in them. There would be a real driving need to solve the crime before it's too late, especially if it directly affected you in some way (a loved one was killed or is a suspect; the killer has made it personal; the killer will strike again unless you stop it and you don't want any more blood on your hands).



It's passive because it's the players asking the GM to tell them more story/plot/setting details.  It's not driving the story, it's looking for the story.  Again, there's nothing wrong with this, it's exactly how I run and expect to play 5e and a number of other games (like most CoC).  I'd say it's a lot less passive that reading a book or watching a movie, and maybe on par with some very good video games, but it's definitely more passive than driving the story forward on a new path.  Really this is about how much is expected from the player.  Asking the GM questions to hear more story doesn't really expect a lot, but having to declare actions that are of dramatic import to the PC and risking quite  a lot on those answers is more demanding of the players.  Sometimes I love the demand, sometimes I'd rather something less demanding.  This really determines what I want to play.

As for GURPs somehow setting an expected standard because it has rules for things that don't work well but at least it has rules -- okay.  I really don't care or agree this sets an expectation that should be met.  PbtA does do investigations, they just don't look a thing like how investigations look in CoC or D&D.  They do it differently.  So, looking for bad rules in PbtA on how you do CoC style investigations is something I'm glad doesn't exist -- much like I'm fairly happy that Monopoly doesn't have rules for how to invade Australia.



Faolyn said:


> I'm guessing that by what you continue to say, the answer is _no. _



The answer is actually not a number.  It's not a question that makes much sense.  Like asking how to invade Australia while playing Monopoly.


Faolyn said:


> And yet, I can actually play that out in D&D. I don't even _need _rules for that sort of situation--that's pure roleplaying--but if I did want rules, D&D still has skills, subsystems, and other abilities that could be used, with a little creativity. ("I cast _augury. _Will I be able to resolve my feelings for the vampire?" The spell says _weal._ "Is my relationship with the succubus a healthy one?" The spell says _woe._) You want a high school drama? There's the Renown and Loyaly subsystems, right there in the DMG. Both of those would useful for high school, and the upcoming Strixhaven book likely has more such rules _and _it's a school-based environment.



Yeah, none of those actually do any work here.  Augury, for instance, just tells you what the GM's plot is, it doesn't resolve anything about what the character wants.  Renown and Loyalty?  Not even close, as neither of those address anything about what the character wants but are, instead, scores as to how well you align you play to what the GM expects.  You haven't touched the core conflict here at all -- what does this mean for the character as a character?  What are they going to do?  Instead, you've just shifted to outside metrics which are all just a stand in for "what does the GM think should happen."


Faolyn said:


> Unfortunately, I can't just "accept." I need to know the whys and hows. What can I say? My parents raised me to question authority.



Strangely, though, you're adhering to the authority of "how I understand games to work" and not questioning that at all.  I'm inviting you to question that and look at a different paradigm.  


Faolyn said:


> If the answer is, no you _can't _do investigations with PbtA games unless you do it as pure RP with no mechanics, then just say that. Saying that the game "doesn't care" about it is a non-answer to me, because it's a game; it _can't _"care" about anything. It either has a rule for it, or it doesn't, or it has a rule that can be used for it even though it's not the rule's primary purpose. Like the _augury _I mentioned above. It's not _supposed _to be used to divine one's sex life, but I'd allow it, and I'm pretty sure all of my players would as well, if they were in the GM's chair.



No, investigations in PbtA games are not about discovering the clues the GM has written down.  They are about what happens when characters enter into charged situations and what results from those choices.  I can't tell you how an investigation works in PbtA because it will work entirely differently depending on the inputs and what the PCs do.  Hence the statements that motives and intents and actions matter.  You call this authority, but it's like saying that the ingredients in cooking are an authority -- if you change the ingredients and do different things you get different food.  You're saying "how do I make a chocolate cake" and we're saying, "what are your ingredients?"


Faolyn said:


> Maybe your D&D games are lacking because you haven't tried it.



Oh, no, my D&D games are not lacking at all, thank you very much.  However, let's look at which of us is throwing out insults -- you've accused me of being defensive despite my statements otherwise, and now you're saying my games are lacking without any knowledge whatsoever of those games.  I'll thank you to not to continue doing this.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I hope you don't mind me jumping in to offer a take on this. I'm sure others will have more/different/better advice on this, but a couple of bits jumped out at me. I've not played Scum & Villainy yet, but I do own it, and I've played lots of Blades and several other Forged in the Dark Systems.



I knew I was forgetting at least one person in my tags! This is wonderful feedback, and much appreciated.



hawkeyefan said:


> I think having a specific goal in mind....like the death of a mentor/ally....is not the best approach. Certainly the older jedi's death as a possible consequence should be on the table, but I don't think actively pushing toward that is really in line with the principles of GMing Forged in the Dark.



Totally agree here. What's interesting (to me, at least) is that my player moved heaven and earth to save this NPC three times, so my clearly over-the-line--and out of character for me as a GM--determination to kill him wound up pushing the drama and story in ways I hadn't expected. But I get why it's sort of heretical to the FitD mindset.

It was a good reminder, though, of one of my favorite things about that system, which is that the consequences of player actions/rolls can be inflicted on friendly NPCs, in a way that's much cleaner and more interesting than in a lot of trad games.


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## Aldarc (Oct 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> I get that. The playbooks are _very_ keyed to _Penny Dreadful_. There are another three coming out I believe, and it's not hard to tweak playbooks, especially in terms of making them a little less specific in this case.
> 
> There are also a bunch of solid fan-written playbooks (and hacks) available on the Gauntlet Publishing Discord.



It definitely looks fun to play. The playbooks for the Vessel and the American sound right-up my crooked Victorian alley.

Although it would depend on what sort of supernatural investigation game my players wanted to play, I'm personally looking less for the player characters to be the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the monstrous cast of Penny Dreadful. Maybe they could become supernatural, magical, or cursed themselves with time or are somewhat magical at the start, but I do enjoy the trope of mundanes being increasingly drawn into the supernatural world that is "behind the scenes," in this case of 1840s socio-political unrest.



Faolyn said:


> So: _does _PbtA have rules (even if they're clumsy) that would allow for investigation, or not? And if so, what are they?



PbtA? No. Some PbtA games? Yes. Some of which have already been listed with examples of play.



Faolyn said:


> Unfortunately, I can't just "accept." I need to know the whys and hows. *What can I say? My parents raised me to question authority.*



And yet you enjoy playing in a game like D&D that invests a lot of autocratic authority in the GM?  Sorry. I jest. 



Faolyn said:


> If the answer is, no you _can't _do investigations with PbtA games unless you do it as pure RP with no mechanics, then just say that. Saying that the game "doesn't care" about it is a non-answer to me, because it's a game; it _can't _"care" about anything. It either has a rule for it, or it doesn't, or it has a rule that can be used for it even though it's not the rule's primary purpose. Like the _augury _I mentioned above. It's not _supposed _to be used to divine one's sex life, but I'd allow it, and I'm pretty sure all of my players would as well, if they were in the GM's chair.



I feel a bit in this part like you are treating PbtA less as a family of games that share game design principles and more like a generic system, toolkit, or even a concrete system like 5e D&D. It's about like asking whether OSR has a rule for investigations. PbtA is not something that in itself has a concrete rule for running investigations, because it depends heavily on which game we are talking about and how they do it. This doesn't mean that PbtA games can or can't do investigations. It means that we need to talk concretely about specific PbtA games and their rules. Not every PbtA will care about Investigations. PbtA is not claiming or trying to be an omni-system in the way that D&D does for fantasy adventure games with rules for everything.

FYI, here is what "Powered by the Apocalypse" means according to Vincent Baker:


> "Powered by the Apocalypse" isn't the name of a category of games, a set of games' features, or the thrust of any games' design. It's the name of Meg's and my policy concerning others' use of our intellectual property and creative work.
> 
> _If you've created a game inspired by Apocalypse World, and would like to publish it, please do. If you're using our words, you need our permission, per copyright law. If you aren't using our words, you don't need our permission, although of course we'd love to hear from you. Instead, we consider it appropriate and sufficient for you to mention Apocalypse World in your thanks, notes, or credits section.
> 
> ...



And that's all it takes for a game to be PbtA.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 5, 2021)

@Ovinomancer Thanks for the detailed reply. The point that you and @hawkeyefan fan made about not having hidden information is something I completely forgot, and I see now how that helps keep players in an active mode.

I don't know if I'll ever manage to put all of my cards on the table, in terms of prepping the overall narrative and opposing NPCs--as loose beats or ideas, not as scripted events--but defaulting to revealing looming threats is obviously crucial. And having the A-Wing do a pass first is exactly right for the mechanics and the setting.

Thanks again.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 5, 2021)

@Grendel_Khan

I don't have a ton to add beyond what you've already been given by others.  Just a few things:

* Players (especially players new to indie games) should read the Best Practices + Position/Effect + Action/Consequence sections of the game at a minimum (preferably the touchstones and rules for Teamwork/Stress/Flashbacks/Loadout/Gambits/Heat/Payoff/Downtime etc as well).

* With passive players (particularly players who are passive because of a long history of D&D), the best panacea is "ask (provocative) questions and use the answers."  This is the best way to (a) train their cognitive framework to reorient to an active state, (b) help them understand that their answers are the momentum for the trajectory of play, (c) help you understand more clearly what their thematic interests are. 

* The game should be entirely table-facing, nothing covert, the meta channel open.

* Encourage players to understand the rules.  Talk about teamwork (Group Move...anybody want to Assist/Setup etc).  Tell them the consequences and ask (what they do...if they want to resist...do they want a Devil's Bargain...maybe ask them about their orientation/approach to this obstacle and the potential consequence...ask them about a pressure point that you may squeeze downstream of this).

* Start a Clock and Tick it as a Consequence.  Telegraph and follow through.  Your job is to follow the fiction, put thematic/provocative/sensical obstacles in front of the Crew and react after moves are made and dice come up the way they come up.  You need to understand how Factors impact Effect (Scale - how much ground do you have to cover in this cargo hold as you sprint through the laser traps...its huge...alright, Limited Effect and we're setting a 4 Tick Clock to get across...) and manage that well and convey it very clearly to your players.  If you don't manage this well and/or don't communicate it well, their decision-points will be arrested by lack of clarity/understanding of what the situation is and how the rules intersect with that and what the stakes are and what resources they should marshal to help themselves (and if they should negotiate Position for Effect, Group move, Setup, Push, Assist, use Gambits, ask for a DB, deploy Gear, use a Flashback, etc).

* Reading your excerpt, there are several things that aren't clear to me.  Post-mortems are enormously helpful (to yourself and others), but when you write them for FitD games where you're looking for feedback, try to convey information like this:

PRIOR FICTION/SETTING - x, y, z happened that are consequential to this play loop.

INFORMATION GATHERING - x, y, z happened that impacted the Engagement Roll (which ended up as a 1-3, or 4/5, or 6) and affected the Job thusly.

JOB- The gamestate is thus (Job objective, what has transpired to this point in the Job, Clocks in play, what just happened mechanically and the attendant fiction, what questions I asked and what answers I got, how many Gambits in the pool, who the PC's Rival/Friends are and Crew Contacts, PC Vice/Heritage).




All of this stuff is interconnected and flows downstream/upstream from each other so providing/having clarity on these things is important when doing a post-mortem on your S&V game.

EDIT - The other thing I would do is watch people who are proficient run/play the game.  That should help a lot.  The players in my game are starting to feel like exhibitionists because I keep inviting people to watch us play so they can understand how these games are played!


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> @Ovinomancer Thanks for the detailed reply. The point that you and @hawkeyefan fan made about not having hidden information is something I completely forgot, and I see now how that helps keep players in an active mode.
> 
> I don't know if I'll ever manage to put all of my cards on the table, in terms of prepping the overall narrative and opposing NPCs--as loose beats or ideas, not as scripted events--but defaulting to revealing looming threats is obviously crucial. And having the A-Wing do a pass first is exactly right for the mechanics and the setting.
> 
> Thanks again.



Try it.  Just go with it and don't hold anything at all back.  Say everything.  And lean hard on the system and let it do the work.  One of things I find interesting about FitD systems is that they take less overall work from the GM.  You don't have to prep, or make sure the plot is online, or worry about pacing.  You just react.  Yes, that's a muscle that might not be in shape, but if you lean on the system, do some prep of possible consequences so you have a pool to draw on (I'd recommend staying generic and and filling in the details as needed), this gets easier and easier.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> OK, a quick(-ish) precis of the _Brindlewood Bay_ mystery mechanics, which are pretty much ported directly to _The Between,_ which is otherwise mostly PbtA in terms of design ethos and mechanics. I'll use the verbiage from _The Between_ because that's the iteration I'm most familiar with.



I had not put together that Cordova wrote both Brindlewood Bay (maybe the all-around coolest, most compelling game I've read in years) and The Between. Really _really_ need to check that out now. I sometimes wonder whether, in 10 years, Brindlewood's investigation mechanics will just be everywhere in TTRPGs. It's so damn fun.


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## Campbell (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I had not put together that Cordova wrote both Brindlewood Bay (maybe the all-around coolest, most compelling game I've read in years) and The Between. Really _really_ need to check that out now. I sometimes wonder whether, in 10 years, Brindlewood's investigation mechanics will just be everywhere in TTRPGs. It's so damn fun.




Apocalypse Keys (a Hellboy inspired game of monsters working together to stop Apocalypses) uses a similar mechanic. It felt a little weird at first, but I really ended up enjoying running it when mysteries generally are not my thing.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Oh.  What you mean is that you're assuming I'm defensive, and so I'm defensive, and I don't get to have a say about my own mental state? I guess that's a take one could have.  I'd prefer you just take my word for it.  Also, if you read my statements about Monopoly and Risk as a rant, perhaps go back, assume a tone that's intended to explain rather than rant, and read it again.



I'm sorry, but to me, you sound defensive. Especially when I keep asking for what the rules would be and you keep bring up Monopoly and Austria, as if they have anything to do with the question I have.

I mean, seriously, if there are no mechanics for such a thing in AW, then just say so. Say "you can investigate a crime scene, but there's no Moves for it. Instead, it's pure roleplay between you and the MC. Other PbtA games have Moves for it, though," I would fully accept that. But as it is, it feels like you don't want to say this.

As it turns out, because of what other people have said, _no_, you can't do an investigation in AW. @Aldarc pointed out that there _was _such a rule in MotW.



Ovinomancer said:


> Yeah, none of those actually do any work here.  Augury, for instance, just tells you what the GM's plot is, it doesn't resolve anything about what the character wants.  Renown and Loyalty?  Not even close, as neither of those address anything about what the character wants but are, instead, scores as to how well you align you play to what the GM expects.



Not at all. Renown scores how well you're known to others _based on your actions. _Loyalty determines how loyal people are to you _based on your actions. _None of those have anything to do with how well you align your play to what I "expect," and instead work in much the same way the Hx ability seems to work, only with organizations and NPCs instead of other PCs.



Ovinomancer said:


> You haven't touched the core conflict here at all -- what does this mean for the character as a character?  What are they going to do?  Instead, you've just shifted to outside metrics which are all just a stand in for "what does the GM think should happen."



No, I haven't. I think you have a very skewed idea of how other games are supposed to work.

I've given several examples already of what an investigation means for the character. Here they area again: a loved one was killed or is a suspect; the killer has made it personal; the killer will strike again unless you stop it and you don't want any more blood on your hands. Can you explain to me why these would have no meaning for a character?

For that matter, can you explain what _would _have meaning for a character? Because I'm still not getting what you mean.

Go with this: one or more people have died. At least one of those people was known to and cared about by a PC. There's some evidence that the killer murdered this person to rile up the PC. Investigation--whether through talking to people, doing research, or examining the crime scene--will point the PC to the likely identity of the killer (there are multiple ways the PC can find this info). If the PCs take too long, the killer will either murder someone else or disappear (depending on GM whim), leaving the murder unsolved and the victims without justice/revenge.

Again, these is a legitimately serious question here: Is this plot, such as it is, bad or wrong for AW? If it's not a good plot for the game, why? What _would _be better for the game?



Ovinomancer said:


> Strangely, though, you're adhering to the authority of "how I understand games to work" and not questioning that at all.  I'm inviting you to question that and look at a different paradigm.



No, I am literally asking questions so I can understand how this game works. That's literally the opposite of assuming I know how they work. You aren't explaining it in a way that I can understand, though. Because every time I ask for a simple explanation--what would I roll/what Move would I take/what would I do" in this circumstance, you go off on a completely different tangent.



Ovinomancer said:


> Oh, no, my D&D games are not lacking at all, thank you very much.  However, let's look at which of us is throwing out insults -- you've accused me of being defensive despite my statements otherwise, and now you're saying my games are lacking without any knowledge whatsoever of those games.  I'll thank you to not to continue doing this.



Well, how do you know they're not lacking? Maybe if you used that approach when you played D&D you'd find that the games are a lot more fun. As it is, it seems like you're limiting how you play D&D because you don't think you're supposed to play it in a certain way, or that the game is made for it. For instance, you seem to be under the impression that D&D is _supposed_ to be played in such a way that the players meet the DM's expectations. I have no idea where you got this idea, expect possibly from having less-than-stellar DMs in the past. But you get crappy GMs regardless of system. Maybe if you stopped playing D&D like that, it might be more fun for you.


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## doctorbadwolf (Oct 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> In my post just upthread, and just below this one, I've tried to spell out - with reference to the moves and principles - how the allocation of authority to establish fiction works in AW.
> 
> The same thing can be done to spell out what @chaochou says here,
> 
> ...



I think the answer is a great example of what is unsatisfying and/or limiting about DnD 5e for some, and satsifying and/or a boon to versatility for others. Because how you'd implement either of those moves is simply by _allowing them as DM, and making it clear ahead of time that when the PCs do something it will be honored and used to move forward, whether they succeed or fail._ You don't create mechanics for it, unless you really want to or just have a fun idea for mechanics for it, you just do it, you play the game that way. 

If that works for you, then 5e is going to be a versatile game engine from which you make your own DnD. If it doesn't, 5e is likely to either be unsatisfying in general, or only useful for the things it explicitly and directly does with specific mechanics. 

OTOH, if you have been in a dnd game run in a player-driven manner where actions are always taken as real and honored by using them to drive the game forward, where the players can take actions that then obligate the DM to do something appropriate to the action as it relates to established fiction, but you don't like the nearly free-form improvisational manner in which DnD 5e play can accommodate that, pbta games are probably going to be really good for you.


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## innerdude (Oct 5, 2021)

Tossing my hat back in the ring for as second --- 

Quick note for @Faolyn -- Powered by the Apocalypse / Forged in the Dark games didn't fully make sense to me until I played Ironsworn.

Honestly, if you want to really get a feel for what it _should_ feel like, pick up the free Ironsworn PDF and try running a solo adventure just for yourself using the basic premises, principles, and the "oracles" provided. It's completely designed to handle a game where you are playing solo by yourself, with no GM. Or try it with one other player using the "No GM" mode together.

If you can do that for 1.5-3 hours and find the results to be engaging and compelling, you're on the right track. 

For me, that's exactly what I did before I presented Ironsworn to my players. And it completely unlocked the mindset for me of the way it should be played. 

What @chaochou and @Ovinomancer are saying is that there's an approach and mindset to PbtA / FitD play that isn't always readily apparent from reading the rules. You can read/hear/comprehend the principles and approaches, and have a relatively good notion of what play _should_ look like, but it was the actual play of Ironsworn where I was finally able to grasp _what the mindset of play looks like in the moment._

You have to have the ability to frame a situation in your mind based on the fiction that has preceded the current moment, derive possible outcomes and path branches, and then _fully commit to bringing the fiction back in line _with the outcomes of your choices, moves, and fate (dice). You cannot hold to any preconceived idea of what "was" or what "should be." There is only the inevitable "what is now", being informed by the entire cycle of play.

If that sounds too "meta" compared to what you're used to, it's because, as mentioned, the in-the-moment mindset during play bears almost no resemblance to the mindset during a game of D&D.

And that can be good or bad, depending on your preferences!

In context of a "mystery" / investigation scenario, they're exactly right --- in PbtA, key components of the entire scenario may change and change drastically as the result of any number inputs based on adhering to the principles of play. _And there are reasons for that to be the case_. As a GM you have to be willing to completely withhold judgment / keep ideas hanging in the balance until scenes and moves play out in front of you. Only then can you fully put the transpiring events back into context and shape the fiction to fit the new reality of what is happening to your character _now_.

It really is hard to explain in words. Like I said, for me, playing Ironsworn solo is what unlocked the appropriate mental state / approach in ways that had never happened previously with Dungeon World.

A mystery/investigation in a PbtA game has almost nothing to do with the "sussing out what actually happened and feeling awesome about what great detectives we are," a la Hercule Poirot. It's more about, "what does the outcome and influence of the events that transpired during this investigation have to do with who my character is, what is challenging his/her core beliefs and place in the world, and what will it drive him/her to do next?"

Obviously Ironsworn has differences in presentation and mechanics compared to "stock" Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, but the overall approaches and mindset should carry over ~95% directly to other PbtA / FitD systems. However, if you're the type of player that finds typical "GM procedural investigations + players in actor stance" gameplay to be the ultimate realization of RPG greatness, truthfully you'll probably bounce off of PbtA / FitD pretty hard.

One final note --- be careful poking @Ovinomancer and @chaochou (and @pemerton and @Manbearcat for that matter) about how much they do or don't understand about running "D&D". They probably understand better than most just exactly what D&D's strengths and weaknesses are. Assessing their comments about D&D and coming to the conclusion that "Well, they probably just had crappy GMs" is well-meaningly misguided at best, and laughably uninformed at worst. But let that pass!

TL;DR -- Try Ironsworn, if you like it, you'll probably find PbtA games to your liking.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I'm sorry, but to me, you sound defensive. Especially when I keep asking for what the rules would be and you keep bring up Monopoly and Austria, as if they have anything to do with the question I have.



Okay, I guess I can't stop you. 


Faolyn said:


> I mean, seriously, if there are no mechanics for such a thing in AW, then just say so. Say "you can investigate a crime scene, but there's no Moves for it. Instead, it's pure roleplay between you and the MC. Other PbtA games have Moves for it, though," I would fully accept that. But as it is, it feels like you don't want to say this.
> 
> As it turns out, because of what other people have said, _no_, you can't do an investigation in AW. @Aldarc pointed out that there _was _such a rule in MotW.



Of course you can do investigations in AW.  They just don't look anything like what you're trying to insist an investigation looks like.  People investigate things in AW all the time.  It's not a calm examination of a crime scene looking for ways to get the GM to tell you clues, though.  Which is why I keep bringing up Monopoly and Risk -- you can't play Risk with Monopoly rules.  This is so obvious that it seems a very silly thing to say, but here we are.


Faolyn said:


> Not at all. Renown scores how well you're known to others _based on your actions. _Loyalty determines how loyal people are to you _based on your actions. _None of those have anything to do with how well you align your play to what I "expect," and instead work in much the same way the Hx ability seems to work, only with organizations and NPCs instead of other PCs.



No, renown scores how well the GM thinks NPCs react to your actions.  There are no others, here, just the GM.  Let's get down to brass tacks about how these systems work in 5e -- they exist as substitutes for alignment that are entirely dependent on the GM's take on things.  This can be made perfectly obvious by asking if players can increase their renown score on their own, because they think it should go up.  Of course they cannot, only the GM grants renown points.


Faolyn said:


> No, I haven't. I think you have a very skewed idea of how other games are supposed to work.



Okay.  I mean, we're in a discussion where I'm trying to explain how AW works to you, and I have decades of experience with D&D and similar systems (like CoC).  I talk about how games work quite a lot.  I think the difference here is that you're quite used to games where the GM retains almost all of the authority in the system and so don't really question it because it's the normal.  I did that for quite some time as well.  Now I can tell when systems are gated by GM says.  I still like quite a few of them, so I don't view it as a detriment, just how it works.


Faolyn said:


> I've given several examples already of what an investigation means for the character. Here they area again: a loved one was killed or is a suspect; the killer has made it personal; the killer will strike again unless you stop it and you don't want any more blood on your hands. Can you explain to me why these would have no meaning for a character?



Clearly they would, but this isn't sufficient for finding out how it would play in a given PbtA system because these are pretty much at the level of background interest a game like D&D or CoC has -- it's interesting, perhaps a reasonable explanation for PC involvement, but it doesn't work to drive a dramatic tension.  These are relationships to the deceased, not to the investigation.  So, a good start, but we need more.


Faolyn said:


> For that matter, can you explain what _would _have meaning for a character? Because I'm still not getting what you mean.



No, because I'm not arguing what has meaning for a character, I'm saying you haven't provided a sufficient level of meaning for a AW scene.  You need a dramatic conflict.  Looking for the GM to tell you about clues to what the GM's notes say about the murder is both insufficient and also like trying to invade Australia from Park Place -- it doesn't make a lick of sense in the context of what the game is about.


Faolyn said:


> Go with this: one or more people have died. At least one of those people was known to and cared about by a PC. There's some evidence that the killer murdered this person to rile up the PC. Investigation--whether through talking to people, doing research, or examining the crime scene--will point the PC to the likely identity of the killer (there are multiple ways the PC can find this info). If the PCs take too long, the killer will either murder someone else or disappear (depending on GM whim), leaving the murder unsolved and the victims without justice/revenge.



Okay, how would you invade Australia from Park Place?  This isn't being defensive, or a rant, or anything other than pointing out that you've entirely missed the point when you keep asking these questions.  I get that you want to stake the claim that AW (or PbtA in general) don't do a thing, but it's just like complaining that Risk isn't Monopoly.  You seem to think that a given scenario common in one kind of play means that it's common or expected in all kinds of play.  This is the error, and this is what I'm trying to get you to see -- that situation could not even occur in an AW game, so not having rules to adjudicate it isn't a failing just like not having rules on how to invade Australia from Park Place in Monopoly isn't a failing.  It's a category error on your part.

I'll say it again, for clarity:  the situation you've describe above could not even occur in an AW game.  The premise of the scene and the expected outcomes are alien to the conceptual basis of the game.  Dead people?  Interest in whodunnit?  Consequences for dawdling?  Sure, that can happen, just not at all the way you've presented.




Faolyn said:


> Again, these is a legitimately serious question here: Is this plot, such as it is, bad or wrong for AW? If it's not a good plot for the game, why? What _would _be better for the game?



It's bad.  It's bad because AW doesn't like plots.  You can't run a plot in AW.  It fights you, and if you force it, the system will be disappointing and confusing to both the GM and the players because you'll be trying to reconcile what it's telling you to do with what you're forcing on it and that won't reconcile.


Faolyn said:


> No, I am literally asking questions so I can understand how this game works. That's literally the opposite of assuming I know how they work. You aren't explaining it in a way that I can understand, though. Because every time I ask for a simple explanation--what would I roll/what Move would I take/what would I do" in this circumstance, you go off on a completely different tangent.



I didn't say you were assuming you know how it works.  I'm saying I'm not the authority here to be questioned -- that's your assumption about how it should work.  I'm actually inviting you to consider a new way to think about it, and, so far, you keep asking how to do things that make sense in one but not in the other and resisting every single time you're told it doesn't make sense in the other.  I'm sorry my explanations are doing it for you -- it requires you to make the leap of faith at some point.  It did for me, and I understand your frustration -- I felt it to for years.  Stop and assume that I'm not being defensive, that what I'm saying actually works, and see if you can work around to it that way.  This was how I got it, maybe it works for you?


Faolyn said:


> Well, how do you know they're not lacking? Maybe if you used that approach when you played D&D you'd find that the games are a lot more fun. As it is, it seems like you're limiting how you play D&D because you don't think you're supposed to play it in a certain way, or that the game is made for it. For instance, you seem to be under the impression that D&D is _supposed_ to be played in such a way that the players meet the DM's expectations. I have no idea where you got this idea, expect possibly from having less-than-stellar DMs in the past. But you get crappy GMs regardless of system. Maybe if you stopped playing D&D like that, it might be more fun for you.



Because I've tried it.  D&D fights back.  System matters.  I am absolutely limiting how I play D&D, just like I'm absolutely limiting how I play Blades in the Dark.  This is normal.  I'm not suppose to try to play Monopoly like it's Risk, and RPGs aren't different in kind this way.  I play D&D in a way that I have, through trial, error, and long thought, found the game works best with the least additional effort on my part to try to "fix" things.  I play Blades with the same approach.  I'm playing Aliens with the same approach.  I'm playing Kids on Bikes with the same approach (and I've had the most fun creating characters in KoB that I've had with any other game).  Limiting how you play a game is extremely normal and should be expected.  D&D works best when the GM is in charge, and deploys Force in reasonable amounts to maintain a fun experience for everyone.  It doesn't do deep introspective dives on characters, or provide a game framework where you can really explore characters, but it does provide a framework where you can author and express your character for the entertainment of others.  You'll never be challenged or have to risk who your character is in D&D, because it's not that type of game.  If you are, then you're outside of D&D and winging it.  Which is fine, just don't credit D&D for your work.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

innerdude said:


> Tossing my hat back in the ring for as second ---
> 
> Quick note for @Faolyn -- Powered by the Apocalypse / Forged in the Dark games didn't fully make sense to me until I played Ironsworn.
> 
> ...



Great stuff.


innerdude said:


> One final note --- be careful poking @Ovinomancer and @chaochou (and @pemerton and @Manbearcat for that matter) about how much they do or don't understand about running "D&D". They probably understand better than most just exactly what D&D's strengths and weaknesses are. Assessing their comments about D&D and coming to the conclusion that "Well, they probably just had crappy GMs" is well-meaningly misguided at best, and laughably uninformed at worst. But let that pass!



Thanks.  I don't consider myself to be exceptional at D&D (or any game), but I do try to say exactly what I mean and take the game as it is rather than an idealized version that doesn't actually exist. 


innerdude said:


> TL;DR -- Try Ironsworn, if you like it, you'll probably find PbtA games to your liking.



Again, closing with great stuff!


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## Campbell (Oct 5, 2021)

@Faolyn

I feel like you are trying to understand Apocalypse World based on the player facing side of the game. That's like trying to read tea leaves. The core of the game is in the MC chapter. The core process of how to make GM Moves, what prep looks like, your agenda and principles. That's the fundamental stuff. Apocalypse World has a GM ethos it depends on. If you have access to the text I recommend reading that first. Some people will say it's what good GMs already do naturally. Some GMs run other games in a similar manner, but it's far from the norm in my experience.

This might help as well.





						Picking the Right GM Move in PbtA: Part One | Magpie Games
					






					magpiegames.com


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## chaochou (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Go with this: one or more people have died. At least one of those people was known to and cared about by a PC. There's some evidence that the killer murdered this person to rile up the PC. Investigation--whether through talking to people, doing research, or examining the crime scene--will point the PC to the likely identity of the killer (there are multiple ways the PC can find this info). If the PCs take too long, the killer will either murder someone else or disappear (depending on GM whim), leaving the murder unsolved and the victims without justice/revenge.
> 
> Again, these is a legitimately serious question here: Is this plot, such as it is, bad or wrong for AW? If it's not a good plot for the game, why? What _would _be better for the game?




So in the spirit of constructive conversation, let’s say this:

If I was MC and in the course of play - maybe because of provocative questions or maybe during setup - a player said their Hocus was having a hard time because people they knew were being killed, that would be really cool and interesting and would lead to crazy stuff, no question. And we‘d see what was up with that as a group.

But if I, as MC, imposed it on the Hocus and expected them to solve it, that would suck hard.

Who gets to say is at least as important as what is said. It’s central to play. Don’t assume the MC has authority to do what you’re saying they can. I don’t see anything which lets the MC write and impose the plot you describe.

But again - it’s not bad by virtue of the concept itself (murderer on the loose). It’s the conception of it by a player which makes it work, or not.


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Of course you can do investigations in AW.  They just don't look anything like what you're trying to insist an investigation looks like.



I am not trying to insist an investigation looks like anything. I'm trying to find out how AW does it.



Ovinomancer said:


> People investigate things in AW all the time.  It's not a calm examination of a crime scene looking for ways to get the GM to tell you clues, though.  Which is why I keep bringing up Monopoly and Risk -- you can't play Risk with Monopoly rules.  This is so obvious that it seems a very silly thing to say, but here we are.



So why won't you tell me how they're run? How do people look for clues in AW? Do the PCs make the clues up? You keep bringing up Monopoly and Risk, but what I really want you to bring up is *how you do it. *This'd be, what, the fourth time I've asked? Is there a reason you won't answer? You say "people investigate things in AW all the time." _*How?*_

When you break the limits of how a game is "supposed" to be played, I find it becomes more fun. Which is probably why somebody on Reddit invented Riskopoly. (And someone else invented Settlers of Riskopoly.)



Ovinomancer said:


> No, renown scores how well the GM thinks NPCs react to your actions.  There are no others, here, just the GM.  Let's get down to brass tacks about how these systems work in 5e -- they exist as substitutes for alignment that are entirely dependent on the GM's take on things.  This can be made perfectly obvious by asking if players can increase their renown score on their own, because they think it should go up.  Of course they cannot, only the GM grants renown points.



From what I can tell, in AW, the _book _tells you how NPCs react to your actions. The only difference is that you get to pick from a list of reactions, right? One of this is you roll 7-9, or 3 if you roll 10+. How is this actually different in the long run? You may get to choose from a list of options, but it all boils down to how well you rolled. Does this mean you'd be happy if D&D had a rule where if you roll above a certain DC, you get +1 renown?

In probably most games, the player can and will say "I'm going to try to intimidate him so he'll move out of the way/give me the thing/tell me what I want to know/tell his friends I'm really scary."

I dunno. Maybe all the other games you've played have been, the GM tells you what's up and only lets you do certain actions when it's your turn. But that's certainly not how I've ever played it.



Ovinomancer said:


> Okay.  I mean, we're in a discussion where I'm trying to explain how AW works to you, and I have decades of experience with D&D and similar systems (like CoC).  I talk about how games work quite a lot.  I think the difference here is that you're quite used to games where the GM retains almost all of the authority in the system and so don't really question it because it's the normal.  I did that for quite some time as well.  Now I can tell when systems are gated by GM says.  I still like quite a few of them, so I don't view it as a detriment, just how it works.



That's so weird. The only time I've played in games where the GM was the sole authority was in this one Changeling: the Dreaming game where the Storyteller was a terrible railroader (because of which, the game lasted one session). Two or three sessions ago in _my _current D&D game, the players went on a completely different path than _anything _I prepared for. I certainly didn't stop them. They took authority there. I had to improvise like mad to keep up, but I went with _them_. As a DM, I tell my players what the world is like and let them do what they want with it.

You can say "don't credit D&D with your work," but that sounds like you're saying that if I ran a good game with AW, I shouldn't credit _that _system either. If I'm a good GM, then it's not because of the rules I'm using. It's because I'm making a good world to play in and having good players who engage.



Ovinomancer said:


> No, because I'm not arguing what has meaning for a character, I'm saying you haven't provided a sufficient level of meaning for a AW scene.  You need a dramatic conflict.  Looking for the GM to tell you about clues to what the GM's notes say about the murder is both insufficient and also like trying to invade Australia from Park Place -- it doesn't make a lick of sense in the context of what the game is about.



So basically, don't do anything unless there's action. No background stuff, nothing to indicate a bigger world unless it directly affects the PCs, no trying to figure out what's going on, no having anything that the players actually have to figure out on their own, no letting characters just talk to each other unless there's a possibility they'll roll dice at each other. It has to be conflict conflict conflict all the time. 



Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, how would you invade Australia from Park Place?



See, this is really pissing me off. Instead of just answering my questions, you're telling me "no." Just flat-out no. And when I ask why not, you say "because." You aren't providing me with examples of proper ways to play. You aren't even telling me what sort of adventure would be best for AW.

This is not how you convince someone to play AW.

It is, however, how you convince me _not _to try to play AW, and to think twice about playing other PbtA games.


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## Helpful NPC Thom (Oct 5, 2021)

"I've only played D&D and D&D-alikes, I don't plan to play RPGs outside of D&D and D&D-alikes, and I have certainly never played this particular RPG but am going to critique it anyway." @Ovinomancer, why do you do this to yourself?


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## Faolyn (Oct 5, 2021)

chaochou said:


> So in the spirit of constructive conversation, let’s say this:
> 
> If I was MC and in the course of play - maybe because of provocative questions or maybe during setup - a player said their Hocus was having a hard time because people they knew were being killed, that would be really cool and interesting and would lead to crazy stuff, no question. And we‘d see what was up with that as a group.
> 
> ...



Thank you. 

However, another question. The book has "Threat Maps" and "Countdown Clocks", says that the MC has absolute control over the NPCs, and encourages the MC to make changes to the threat map between games.

So if I put a murder in one part of the map and say that another murder is going to take place at 9:00, that's OK, right? And the closer I put the murder to the PCs on the threat map, the more closer it should be to those PCs, yes?

If I'm correct here, this is what I've been talking about this whole time. I honestly don't know why everyone is assuming I'm saying "there's a murder; Bob, you must solve it."


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> See, this is really pissing me off. Instead of just answering my questions, you're telling me "no." Just flat-out no. And when I ask why not, you say "because." You aren't providing me with examples of proper ways to play. You aren't even telling me what sort of adventure would be best for AW.
> 
> This is not how you convince someone to play AW.
> 
> It is, however, how you convince me _not _to try to play AW, and to think twice about playing other PbtA games.




I mean...maybe you shouldn't? It's no one's job here to wrestle you into trying something you seem less interested in trying than challenging.  Every so often you drop in a question that you present as being sincere, but a lot of what you've written in this thread has read as pretty confrontational to me, like you want people to prove to you that AW actually is a different approach, and that it has merit. It comes across as a kind of attempted debunking of PbtA as unique. But then when it's explained in detail to you what, in fact, is very different from trad games, including by people who are clearly very knowledgeable about and experienced with both trad and story now games, you alternate between pushing back aggressively and proclaiming that you just don't get it.

I'm not saying that you're communicating in bad faith, but I'm not sure what else there is to say, or how anyone would have the patience to keep discussing this with you, given the tone you set early on, and that you're still contributing to.

And we all know by now that Ovinomancer loves a scrap. At this point, that seems like the main thing you're looking for, too.


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## pemerton (Oct 5, 2021)

@GrahamWills

I don't see why AW couldn't be used to approach a mystery in which the GM has already set up a clock - eg as per my post upthread, a _countdown until the kidnappers execute Isle_ clock.

Here is p 143 of the AW rulebook:

Countdown Clocks​A countdown clock is a reminder to you as MC that your threats have impulse, direction, plans, intentions, the will to sustain action and to respond coherently to others’.​​When you create a threat, if you have a vision of its future, give it a countdown clock. You can also add countdown clocks to threats you’ve already created.​​Around the clock, note some things that’ll happen:​​• Before 9:00, that thing’s coming, but preventable. What are the clues? What are the triggers? What are the steps?​​• Between 9:00 and 12:00, that thing is inevitable, but there’s still time to brace for impact. What signifies it?​​• At 12:00, the threat gets its full, active expression. What is it?​​As you play, advance the clocks, each at their own pace, by marking their segments.​​Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out.​​For the most part, list things that are beyond the players’ characters’ control: NPCs’ decisions and actions, conditions in a population or a landscape, off-screen relations between rival compounds, the instability of a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom. When you list something within the players’ characters’ control, always list it with an “if,” implied or explicit: “_if _Bish goes out into the ruins,” not “Bish goes out into the ruins.” Prep circumstances, pressures, developing NPC actions, not (and again, I’m not f*****g around here) NOT future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.​
This then feeds into the making of moves by the GM in the usual way: _say what honesty and your prep demand_.

The use of a countdown clock won't change the dynamics of AW - the principles remain what they are; and the player-side moves remain what they are. So because there is no move _when you wait patiently to see what turns up _but there is a move _when you go aggro on someone_, I still think it is going to play out more like The Maltese Falcon and less like Poirot.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I am not trying to insist an investigation looks like anything. I'm trying to find out how AW does it.
> 
> 
> So why won't you tell me how they're run? How do people look for clues in AW? Do the PCs make the clues up? You keep bringing up Monopoly and Risk, but what I really want you to bring up is *how you do it. *This'd be, what, the fourth time I've asked? Is there a reason you won't answer? You say "people investigate things in AW all the time." _*How?*_



 I think this has been explained.  You have a scene with a threat or obstacle prominent, the player declares what their PC does, this usually triggers a move, you resolve the move, and iterate.  If this tells the story of an investigation, it's an investigation.  There's no one way this happens.


Faolyn said:


> When you break the limits of how a game is "supposed" to be played, I find it becomes more fun. Which is probably why somebody on Reddit invented Riskopoly. (And someone else invented Settlers of Riskopoly.)



Okay.  You seem to be putting a lot more effort into finding a way around the example rather than paying attention to the point it's trying to make.


Faolyn said:


> From what I can tell, in AW, the _book _tells you how NPCs react to your actions. The only difference is that you get to pick from a list of reactions, right? One of this is you roll 7-9, or 3 if you roll 10+. How is this actually different in the long run? You may get to choose from a list of options, but it all boils down to how well you rolled. Does this mean you'd be happy if D&D had a rule where if you roll above a certain DC, you get +1 renown?



I have no idea what move you're talking about, here.  In AW, you have Go Aggro, where you make threats of violence.  On a 10+ the NPC or PC can either go along with you or force your hand and suck up the result.  On a 7-10, there's a list of possible actions, two of which are the 10+ ones.  On a miss, well, it's not going your way.  For the move Seduce/Manipulate, you have to give a reason for the to do the thing you want, and the roll determines if they buy it or not and to what degree.  These don't work like picking a reaction from a list, they involve the PC risking something (either having to do violence or provide a good reason) and the results are either great, okay, or suck.

Your comparison to a mechanic where you roll for renown is not remotely similar.  Nothing is risked, there's no action involved, and there's no consequence for failure.


Faolyn said:


> In probably most games, the player can and will say "I'm going to try to intimidate him so he'll move out of the way/give me the thing/tell me what I want to know/tell his friends I'm really scary."



Yeah, you can do this in AW, it's the move "go aggro."  What most games do if you fail this move (and by most games I'm assuming D&D here) is, well nothing.  If you succeed, it's up the GM as to what actually happens -- it might fail anyway because the GM has in the notes this NPC can't be intimidated (see the Burgermaster in Vallaki).  In AW, though, when you go aggro, something is going to happen that involves you commuting violence because that's what's been offered.   Maybe the guy backs down, maybe they force your hand, or maybe you have to make an example to get the point across, or maybe you start a fight that's risky for you and not what you want.  Whatever the result on the die, the result in the fiction is going to be felt.

This is a big point of difference in games like AW from D&D -- actions change things, there and then, and create new fictions.  The spread is such that your chance of outright success is pretty low, so you'll rarely straight out succeed (unlike D&D games) and complications and issues begin to accrue which then drive play further afield.  You can't prep this, you have to roll with it.


Faolyn said:


> I dunno. Maybe all the other games you've played have been, the GM tells you what's up and only lets you do certain actions when it's your turn. But that's certainly not how I've ever played it.



I assure you this is highly incorrect.  It's not even correct for D&D, by the rules or how I play it (which is mostly by the rules).


Faolyn said:


> That's so weird. The only time I've played in games where the GM was the sole authority was in this one Changeling: the Dreaming game where the Storyteller was a terrible railroader (because of which, the game lasted one session). Two or three sessions ago in _my _current D&D game, the players went on a completely different path than _anything _I prepared for. I certainly didn't stop them. They took authority there. I had to improvise like mad to keep up, but I went with _them_. As a DM, I tell my players what the world is like and let them do what they want with it.



Nope.  5e features the GM as the sole authority over everything in the game except some character related choices and the ability to declare thoughts, feelings, and actions for PCs.  It's right there in the rules.  CoC is the same.  At no point do players have any authority over framing, setting, or outcomes unless granted by the GM (and equally revocable).  The GM retains the final veto and is not actually bound by any rule or player declaration in any way.  This is what a game where the GM retains almost all authority looks like.  Most people that GM these games are pretty good at sharing, but it's important to note that this sharing is GM to player and exists as sharing because it's in the GM's authority to do so, not the players.

Being open and honest about authority distribution in games is a crucial step to understanding how a different distribution can result in a different game.  4e had a different distribution, as did 3e (at least as played, by the rules the GM still did have explicit rule 0).  These games play differently from 5e because of this.  And yet, these are all still pretty similar (well, 4e if played with certain principles of play did deviate strongly, but a lot of people played it like older editions anyway).  When you get to really different distributions, games are notably different.  If you're trying to understand a game like AW while holding on to the idea that the GM is suppose to prep things or have a plan for play and the players are mostly taking actions to uncover that, you're going to find yourself deeply confused about what the game is trying to do.  And that's because it's not trying to do anything like that at all.


Faolyn said:


> You can say "don't credit D&D with your work," but that sounds like you're saying that if I ran a good game with AW, I shouldn't credit _that _system either. If I'm a good GM, then it's not because of the rules I'm using. It's because I'm making a good world to play in and having good players who engage.



No, I'm saying don't credit D&D for work you have to do to come up with new rules or patches or whatever.  D&D didn't create your houseruled way to deal with interpersonal affairs, you did.  If you're playing 5e by the book, credit should go to 5e.  The issue I see is that people take the work they do to houserule the game into a shape they prefer and then say it's D&D.  It's not, it's your game, take pride.


Faolyn said:


> So basically, don't do anything unless there's action. No background stuff, nothing to indicate a bigger world unless it directly affects the PCs, no trying to figure out what's going on, no having anything that the players actually have to figure out on their own, no letting characters just talk to each other unless there's a possibility they'll roll dice at each other. It has to be conflict conflict conflict all the time.



Yes, actually.  And no.  The bigger world is expressed through the complications and moves the GM makes.  Fronts are there to express this, and you advance Fronts when it makes sense to or as part of a complication or consequence.  I get where you're trying to go here -- it's not an uncommon opinion that if the GM isn't doing solo play with the setting and revealing that to the players that the setting lacks depth and doesn't feel full.  This isn't true, and anyone that's grokked these games will refute this statement strongly.  So, again, we're at a point where a leap of faith is required -- either we're all stupid and/or lying or it actually does work.  I can't help you make this choice.


Faolyn said:


> See, this is really pissing me off. Instead of just answering my questions, you're telling me "no." Just flat-out no. And when I ask why not, you say "because." You aren't providing me with examples of proper ways to play. You aren't even telling me what sort of adventure would be best for AW.



Because there's millions of possible permutations.  And there's no sort of adventure that would be best for AW, because "adventure" implies prepped plots or paths, both of which are counterindicated.

In the Blades game I'm playing in right now, we've done smuggling, confronted horrors in the deathlands, released a elder God, fought a vampire cult in a secret war, stolen experimental weapons and sold them back to their rightful owners, taken over a distillery and run it as a business, convinced the paper that we weren't a criminal smuggling organization but instead champions for the downtrodden fighting against a corrupt management class that used gangs to enforce their wants through violent suppression, actually been champions for the downtrodden fighting against a corrupt management class that used gangs to enforce their wants through violent suppression while at the same time being a criminal smuggling organization, dealt with a possessed inspector that was controlling a city council member through sex and was blackmailing us, and a few other things.  That's in, what, about 12 sessions?  And in the game you stated was just about heists.


Faolyn said:


> This is not how you convince someone to play AW.



I don't care to convince to you play AW.  I'm happy to talk about how it works, and help understanding grow for interested people (look at my exchanges with @Grendel_Khan).  But convince you to play it?  No.  


Faolyn said:


> It is, however, how you convince me _not _to try to play AW, and to think twice about playing other PbtA games.



I can't help that, really.  You've been told a number of times by lots of posters how it's supposed to work, but keep circling back to this one example and insisting that we explain how it does this one thing.  It doesn't do it like you're asking.  I've said how it does do it, others have said, but you don't think we have.  Okay.  I'll be happy to try more, but I think you might need to adjust your approach, because it seems confrontational and expecting us to explain it to you in a way you expect rather than how it is.  I'll be happy to continue if you're interested, or ask of any of the other posters that have expressed such an interest.  It doesn't have to be me.

But, in retrospect, let's note that it's been you that's accused me of being defensive, that you've said my game must be lacking, and that you've questioned my ability to run D&D or even other games.  I've done none of these things toward you.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Helpful NPC Thom said:


> "I've only played D&D and D&D-alikes, I don't plan to play RPGs outside of D&D and D&D-alikes, and I have certainly never played this particular RPG but am going to critique it anyway." @Ovinomancer, why do you do this to yourself?



I am ever hopeful, as I once belonged to that crowd and made those arguments myself.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I mean...maybe you shouldn't? It's no one's job here to wrestle you into trying something you seem less interested in trying than challenging.  Every so often you drop in a question that you present as being sincere, but a lot of what you've written in this thread has read as pretty confrontational to me, like you want people to prove to you that AW actually is a different approach, and that it has merit. It comes across as a kind of attempted debunking of PbtA as unique. But then when it's explained in detail to you what, in fact, is very different from trad games, including by people who are clearly very knowledgeable about and experienced with both trad and story now games, you alternate between pushing back aggressively and proclaiming that you just don't get it.
> 
> I'm not saying that you're communicating in bad faith, but I'm not sure what else there is to say, or how anyone would have the patience to keep discussing this with you, given the tone you set early on, and that you're still contributing to.
> 
> And we all know by now that Ovinomancer loves a scrap. At this point, that seems like the main thing you're looking for, too.



Fair.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> So: _does _PbtA have rules (even if they're clumsy) that would allow for investigation, or not? And if so, what are they?



Out of curiosity - are you reading my replies to you? Which have addressed this in detail, with some worked examples of how a mystery might work in Apocalypse World?


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

Helpful NPC Thom said:


> "I've only played D&D and D&D-alikes, I don't plan to play RPGs outside of D&D and D&D-alikes, and I have certainly never played this particular RPG but am going to critique it anyway." @Ovinomancer, why do you do this to yourself?



I assume you're talking about me. I guess that me playing and GMing Fate, Cypher, GURPS, TOON, oWoD, CoC, d6 system games, homebrew games, and probably dozens of other systems over the course of 30+ years count as "not planning on playing RPGs outside of D&D"?

I asked Ovinomancer questions because I wanted to understand how to play this game. For whatever reason, they refused to answer me, refused to say what about my assumptions were wrong (just that they were), or to show me what the correct methods are. I must have asked _how do I do this?_ half a dozen times. They didn't even bother to link me to a site that explains it!

What, is the AW rulebook holy writ that must never be questioned? Is this a cult? Are you told to shun those who don't immediately see the light? What's going on here?


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Out of curiosity - are you reading my replies to you? Which have addressed this in detail, with some worked examples of how a mystery might work in Apocalypse World?



They likely got buried among the people yelling at me for not instantly understanding the game. I'll go back and check them out.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Go with this: one or more people have died. At least one of those people was known to and cared about by a PC. There's some evidence that the killer murdered this person to rile up the PC. Investigation--whether through talking to people, doing research, or examining the crime scene--will point the PC to the likely identity of the killer (there are multiple ways the PC can find this info). If the PCs take too long, the killer will either murder someone else or disappear (depending on GM whim), leaving the murder unsolved and the victims without justice/revenge.
> 
> Again, these is a legitimately serious question here: Is this plot, such as it is, bad or wrong for AW? If it's not a good plot for the game, why? What _would _be better for the game?



I'm going to ignore your reference to _plot_ - given that in multiple places the AW rulebook tells the GM not to pre-author a plot (eg pp 108-9, 143).

So first, _how is it being established that one or more people have died? _You seem to be envisaging that the GM is making this part of the fiction: what move are they performing? In what context? Is the GM providing information following _success_ on an attempt of a PC to _open their brain to the world's psychic maelstrom_? Or is this a hard move - the GM, _looking through crosshairs_, is telling a player that a NPC has died? (In front of them here-and-now? As a vision following a failed _opening of the brain_? Some other context?) Or is the GM _announcing offscreen badness _like my example of Isle not being where the PC hoped to meet her?

Next, _how does the evidence that the killer murdered the person to rile up the PC_ get introduced? Is the GM _announcing future badness _(eg pinned to the body is a half-torn sheet of paper with _You're next, Marie!_ written in blood)? Or is this a case of the GM asking a provocative question and building on the answer: GM: _Why do you think they kidnapped Isle? _Marie's player: _To get at me?_

Next, _investigation_. AW has no _when you investigate_ move. No _when you work the streets, putting out the word and pumping your sources _move. So what action declarations are you envisaging? To me, the most obvious - as I've already posted - are _go aggro _and _seduce/manipulate_. AW is at its core a game of interpersonal interaction and conflict, and these are moves that foreground that. The GM will respond to these action declarations as the rules dictate and in accordance with the principles. Eg if a PC goes aggro on one of Dremmer's thugs and asks _where's Isle?_ while waving a shotgun about, and succeeds, then the GM gets to decide what the thug does _from the appropriate list of options_. This can include answering the PC's question.

If a player declares actions that don't trigger a move, then - as I've posted upthread - the GM follows the agenda and principles and makes appropriate moves - typically soft, but hard if the PC provides an opportunity on a golden plate. I've given examples upthread already in reply to you.

Having the killer kill again is something the GM might do, as an appropriate move (eg more announcement of offscreen badness), perhaps based on a countdown clock. If the GM has established such a clock, then they can't just act "on a whim" - they must say _what that prep demands_. And the GM can't just have the killer disappear on a whim, either, without regard to the actual rules and principles that govern the play of the game.

I hope that the above is reasonably clear. It's probably also relevant to @GrahamWills's questions upthread.


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I mean...maybe you shouldn't? It's no one's job here to wrestle you into trying something you seem less interested in trying than challenging.  Every so often you drop in a question that you present as being sincere, but a lot of what you've written in this thread has read as pretty confrontational to me, like you want people to prove to you that AW actually is a different approach, and that it has merit. It comes across as a kind of attempted debunking of PbtA as unique. But then when it's explained in detail to you what, in fact, is very different from trad games, including by people who are clearly very knowledgeable about and experienced with both trad and story now games, you alternate between pushing back aggressively and proclaiming that you just don't get it.



I am literally asking how the rules work. I am fully aware that this isn't a "traditional" RPG, and thus I want to find out what the differences are and how they're played. But everyone is treating me as if I'm some sort of idiot for not immediately understanding the rules.

If I'm pushing back, it's because Ovinomancer and others seem to me to have this mentality that "other games" are somehow _lesser _because they don't work like PbtA games are. Like when Helpful NPC Thorn said I must only have experience playing D&D. That may not be their intent, but that's how I'm reading what they're writing. 

And I would have loved to have stayed on-topic--which is "I don't understand this game, please explain it to me"--but every time I do, I get chided because everyone assumes that I must be some sort of railroading D&D GM who forces players to solve mysteries. I've even been told that my preference for prepping games is bad for running my preferred genre!


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I'm going to ignore your reference to _plot_ - given that in multiple places the AW rulebook tells the GM not to pre-author a plot (eg pp 108-9, 143).
> 
> So first, _how is it being established that one or more people have died? _You seem to be envisaging that the GM is making this part of the fiction: what move are they performing? In what context? Is the GM providing information following _success_ on an attempt of a PC to _open their brain to the world's psychic maelstrom_? Or is this a hard move - the GM, _looking through crosshairs_, is telling a player that a NPC has died? (In front of them here-and-now? As a vision following a failed _opening of the brain_? Some other context?) Or is the GM _announcing offscreen badness _like my example of Isle not being where the PC hoped to meet her?



Maybe they hear people talking about it. Maybe they come across a body. Maybe someone sends them a head in the mail. Maybe they hear that their loved one has been arrested. Maybe, yes, a PC decided to open their brain and learns that way.



pemerton said:


> Next, _how does the evidence that the killer murdered the person to rile up the PC_ get introduced? Is the GM _announcing future badness _(eg pinned to the body is a half-torn sheet of paper with _You're next, Marie!_ written in blood)? Or is this a case of the GM asking a provocative question and building on the answer: GM: _Why do you think they kidnapped Isle? _Marie's player: _To get at me?_



That would depend entirely on how the PCs act and who the killer is and, well, how I want the story to go down. _You're next, Marie_ makes for one type of game. A head in the mail or a body put in the PC's bed is another type. 

Could I ask the PC why think this happened? Yes, of course, but "_to get at me" _is kind of cliched. To get at you _why? _Should the PC _really _be able to know what the killer's motives were right away?



pemerton said:


> Next, _investigation_. AW has no _when you investigate_ move. No _when you work the streets, putting out the word and pumping your sources _move. So what action declarations are you envisaging? To me, the most obvious - as I've already posted - are _go aggro _and _seduce/manipulate_. AW is at its core a game of interpersonal interaction and conflict, and these are moves that foreground that.



I find it bothersome that there's no other options here. No just _talking _to people. No _putting out the word _move--presumably, pumping your sources would be going aggro. 

I appreciate these questions and I find them helpful. Thanks!


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Based on a roll to learn the terrorist's whereabouts from local criminals--the player rolled a success with consequence on a risky Command action to intimidate them--I figured they were now being led into a trap. So they took a boat to another area of the city where the target was supposedly staying. This being a one-shot test session, in which I very much wanted a noir-ish moment where the newbie's more experienced partner gets killed, I figured the trap would start big, with an A-Wing attacking the boat from far above--a kind of sniper situation. I said that they could hear a high-pitched keening sound during the boat trip, but my player did nothing (he's also new to playing FitD, though not reading it). When he stepped off the boat I triggered the attack.
> 
> At this point I suddenly didn't know what to do, because in theory the Attune action specifically notes that you can use the Way (aka the Force) to "sense unseen danger or killing intent." But the player didn't initiate that action upon hearing the suspicious noise. So we awkwardly decided he could use Attune now to sense the attack and try to get himself and his partner off the boat in time. He rolled a critical success (two sixes) so he decided to pull the boat's driver off as well.
> 
> Everything about how I handled this seemed wrong, and in the moment we were left with the sense that if the player just kind of waits out a situation instead of taking action, maybe that's on them, because, as discussed in this thread, passive actions--especially the sort of passive Perception rolls that are almost constant in many trad games--just don't make sense in FitD. But what do you guys think? Was this just a hopelessly trad and off-base encounter from the start? And how do you handle stuff like danger sense or similar unnatural/enhanced perception in FitD, if it seems like an ambush has become part of the story?



You've had some good replies to this from people who know the system.

Similar to some of those other posters, when I read this, my first thought was _how did you convey to the player that the characters were being led into a trap?_.

Thinking in AW rather than FitD terms, it seems that the high-pitched keening was an _announcement of future badness_. Which the player ignored - which sounds like a perfect opportunity on a golden plate - so then rather than calling for the Attune action (because _if they didn't do it, then they didn't do it!_) it seems like making a hard move was in order - eg _A powerful blast rips the back off your vessel. Looking up into the sky you can see the A-Wing that's been following you and has chosen this moment to attack. What's left of your boat is crashing down to the ground. What do you do?_ The hard move could even have included killing the offsider NPC.

(Is the "boat" a flying vessel as I've assumed? If not, and it's a waterborne vessel, then imagine my suggestion has been appropriately adapated.)

Building on @chaochou's reply, I think the real risk in what I've suggested - and I get the feeling from your post that you were aware of this risk in the moment of play - is that the player will think you're being unfair. Where's the saving throw? Or roll to hit, or whatever? Where's their Passive Perception? I've got nothing very useful to say about how to overcome that feeling. It was an issue for me when I started GMing Burning Wheel, and to be honest I think as a GM I sometimes held back too much, afraid of being seen to be unfair. My friend who GMs me is better than me at being as brutal as the rules require!

Last year I GMed each of my daughters (early teens) in a solo Classic Traveller session. For both there was a bit of an issue of proactivity,  and for one it was a big issue. I just followed through on the fiction I'd created, but tried to ensure that - even if everything around them was going to hell in a handbasket - there was at least one obvious way forward for the PC. And I made some suggestions too - like _You've got Mechanical-1, so you could probably break into and hotwire the car if you want_.

There's obviously a fine line between framing+ suggesting vs just narrating a story; and the proper approach to a fellow adult and experienced RPGer is different from parent-child. Still, my tentative suggestion is that it's probably better to make the moves and then be very forthright with _what do you do?_ than to hold back from implementing the basic structure of the game.



Grendel_Khan said:


> The player and NPC decided to get to a rooftop to deal with the A-Wing assassin, and here, again, I may have defaulted to a trad situation. I said that as they were running into a building and about to get into the stairwell, a pair of guys entered from the street and immediately pulled blasters and opened fire
> 
> <snip>
> 
> toward the end of the scene/session, the PC and NPC realized they were stuck, with the A-Wing loitering above the roof and a large group of people running up the stairs. How this situation was resolved was, again, very cool to me, and pushed me even harder toward wanting to do lots more FitD. But as with the earlier appearance of the two shooters, this horde of dudes did not appear based on a subsequent player roll or suggestion.



So in both cases this looks like an announcement of future badness - a soft move. Was it warranted at either point? As you know, I don't know enough about the details of FitD to be sure about what it was telling you to do at this point. But I _think_ - or at least hope - that I'm asking the right question here.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I am literally asking how the rules work. I am fully aware that this isn't a "traditional" RPG, and thus I want to find out what the differences are and how they're played. But everyone is treating me as if I'm some sort of idiot for not immediately understanding the rules.
> 
> If I'm pushing back, it's because Ovinomancer and others seem to me to have this mentality that "other games" are somehow _lesser _because they don't work like PbtA games are. Like when Helpful NPC Thorn said I must only have experience playing D&D. That may not be their intent, but that's how I'm reading what they're writing.
> 
> And I would have loved to have stayed on-topic--which is "I don't understand this game, please explain it to me"--but every time I do, I get chided because everyone assumes that I must be some sort of railroading D&D GM who forces players to solve mysteries. I've even been told that my preference for prepping games is bad for running my preferred genre!



Um, if I thought that 5e was lesser than PbtA, why would I spend the majority (well, recently no, but usually and without scheduling oddities) of my gaming time playing it?

I've said I rather like 5e, and enjoy playing it.  Why must people insist that I must be lying when I say things like this.  5e provides a very different thing from other games I enjoy.  There's no "more" or "less."


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> So in both cases this looks like an announcement of future badness - a soft move. Was it warranted at either point? As you know, I don't know enough about the details of FitD to be sure about what it was telling you to do at this point. But I _think_ - or at least hope - that I'm asking the right question here.



This is very useful. One of things I'm picking up is that, given how open-ended some aspects of FitD (and by extension, PbtA) are, different people will of course have different takes on what the "right" approach to a given sequence or scene might be. I was leaning toward the approach you presented--that a bit of warning could be followed up by events that just happen in the fiction, PbtA-like, even if FitD doesn't have GM moves in that sense. But I think what others have responded with is important, which is that consequences (as a result of action rolls, whether they're failures or successes with consequence) are basically the FitD equivalent of GM moves. So by not directly and obviously tying these consequences to those rolls I was sort of inherently slowing (or killing outright) the roll-consequence-roll action loop.

It's possible that pulling off a FitD Star Wars game will mean reeling back some of the story now principles just a tiny bit. Maybe it'll never be a perfect fit. But from what little I played it seemed to work so well that I want to keep at it (even if a FitD purist might ultimately--and reasonably--balk at the slightly trad end-result).

However I'll no doubt be back on these boards with more questions once I get more testing in, especially when I get a full group going, and more edge cases to deal with.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> Maybe they hear people talking about it. Maybe they come across a body. Maybe someone sends them a head in the mail. Maybe they hear that their loved one has been arrested. Maybe, yes, a PC decided to open their brain and learns that way.



@Faolyn, I think you would make more progress if you framed your remarks in terms of _the play at the table._

I mean, you say _maybe they hear people talking about it_. I assume the "they" there is the PCs. So _how are you envisaging that this bit of fiction is established at the table?_ Who do you imagine is saying what. Is it _a player _saying it? Perhaps in response to the GM asking the question _So, what did you hear when you were in the marketplace this morning?_ @chaochou gave an example of this upthread - the player of a Hocus responds to a question from the GM by saying that people they know (maybe their cult followers?) are being killed.

Or are you imagining that the GM is saying it? Well, then, in what context? What aspect of game play prompted the GM to tell the players that their PCs hear this thing? (Upthread you complained about the GM taking it as uncontroversial that Keeler would be walking by her armoury paying attention to what her gang members are doing? What assumption are you making about the PCs' behaviour such that they hear "people" - which people? - talking about something?)



Faolyn said:


> That would depend entirely on how the PCs act and who the killer is and, well, how I want the story to go down.



I'm not entirely sure what you mean by _how I want the story to go down_. That sounds like a pre-authored plot. AW has no systems or principles to support that - something like CoC or Gumshoe or even Fate might work better if that's what you're looking for.



Faolyn said:


> Could I ask the PC why think this happened? Yes, of course, but "_to get at me" _is kind of cliched. To get at you _why? _Should the PC _really _be able to know what the killer's motives were right away?



I don't know - you tell me! I mean, you're asking how AW works and I'm telling you. Mostly by reciting salient bits of the rulebook and providing a few imagined examples.

If you don't want to _ask provocative questions and build on the answer_, then you'll need to make a different move.



Faolyn said:


> I find it bothersome that there's no other options here. No just _talking _to people. No _putting out the word _move--presumably, pumping your sources would be going aggro.



As I've posted several times now in reply to you, not every action declaration triggers a player-side move. If the player describes their PC _talking to someone _but with no threat (ie not going aggro) and no offer (ie not seducing or manipulating) then there is no player-side move triggered. And the GM's job is simply to make a move - typically a soft move, but maybe a hard move if the player provides a perfect opportunity on a golden plate. The relevant pages of the rulebook for these purposes are pp 117 and 198-99.

AW is not the only RPG in which not every action declaration triggers a player side move. Eg imagine, in D&D, a character sleeping in an upstairs inn room. The GM tells the player that it's morning and the PC wakes up. The player says _OK, I walk downstairs to see what's happening in the common room_. In D&D, unless something unusual is going on, that does not require any sort of check. The GM just responds by saying what happens next.

So if the AW PC just wanders around talking to people but making neither threats nor offers then the GM responds by saying what happens next. The difference from D&D is that the AW GM is doing that in accordance with the principles (including saying _what honesty and prep demand_) and is making moves - some obvious ones in this case being _announcing badness_, either offscreen or future, and _offering opportunities with a cost_. It's likely that those moves will then prompt further action declarations from the player. And at a certain point, if the GM is making moves in accordance with the principles, it is likely that conflict will break out because eventually the player will try and stop some threatened badness, or will try and seize an opportunity. At which point a player-side move will be triggered and the dice will be rolled.


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> I think this has been explained.  You have a scene with a threat or obstacle prominent, the player declares what their PC does, this usually triggers a move, you resolve the move, and iterate.  If this tells the story of an investigation, it's an investigation.  There's no one way this happens.



But it hasn't been explained in a way that makes sense to me, and at this point I don't think it ever will be.

I only picked "investigate a crime scene" because I had a question about "Read Sitch." To whit, can it be used in a non-charged situation and if not, what do I do instead. People _sort of _answered me by suggesting I could just tell the PCs what they want to know, no rolls needed, but then people _also _said I shouldn't be having situations that weren't charged and nobody should ever have to read the situation unless it was charged or they wanted to make it charged. 

When people wanted to know what sort of non-charged situation there could be, the idea of a crime scene came up. It's important to the story (maybe not a PbtA story, but to most games it would be important), and it's not charged because nobody is possibly going to be hurt.



Ovinomancer said:


> Your comparison to a mechanic where you roll for renown is not remotely similar.  Nothing is risked, there's no action involved, and there's no consequence for failure.



And I have no idea why you would say this. If there's a roll, there's always a chance for a failure. You're trying to give a speech to rouse the morale of the troops. Make a Persuasion or Performance roll or whatever. The troops do well at war or anything, your renown might very well go up because it was your speech that urged them to fight harder.



Ovinomancer said:


> This is a big point of difference in games like AW from D&D -- actions change things, there and then, and create new fictions.  The spread is such that your chance of outright success is pretty low, so you'll rarely straight out succeed (unlike D&D games) and complications and issues begin to accrue which then drive play further afield.  You can't prep this, you have to roll with it.



I literally _don't _see how this is any different than other games. (Successful) actions change events in the world no matter what the game. I don't know why you're saying that they wouldn't in a non-AW game.



Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, actually.  And no.  The bigger world is expressed through the complications and moves the GM makes.  Fronts are there to express this, and you advance Fronts when it makes sense to or as part of a complication or consequence.  I get where you're trying to go here -- it's not an uncommon opinion that if the GM isn't doing solo play with the setting and revealing that to the players that the setting lacks depth and doesn't feel full.  This isn't true, and anyone that's grokked these games will refute this statement strongly.  So, again, we're at a point where a leap of faith is required -- either we're all stupid and/or lying or it actually does work.  I can't help you make this choice.



I'm not calling you stupid or liars, and I'm upset that you think I was. I am saying that _I don't understand. _You're doing a _better _job of explaining stuff to me, and I appreciate it, but you're still saying "PbtA/AW can do this stuff that no other game can, when the stuff you're talking about looks exactly like the kind of things that go on in the non-PbtA games I run and play in.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I assume you're talking about me. I guess that me playing and GMing Fate, Cypher, GURPS, TOON, oWoD, CoC, d6 system games, homebrew games, and probably dozens of other systems over the course of 30+ years count as "not planning on playing RPGs outside of D&D"?
> 
> I asked Ovinomancer questions because I wanted to understand how to play this game. For whatever reason, they refused to answer me, refused to say what about my assumptions were wrong (just that they were), or to show me what the correct methods are. I must have asked _how do I do this?_ half a dozen times. They didn't even bother to link me to a site that explains it!
> 
> What, is the AW rulebook holy writ that must never be questioned? Is this a cult? Are you told to shun those who don't immediately see the light? What's going on here?



Not to pick on you, but D&D, GURPS, oWoD, CoC, most d6 games (I assume you mean WEG here) all feature roughly the same authority distribution as D&D.  These expect the GM to come with prep that the players play to discover*.  Pretty much exclusively, unless you're making big efforts to confront the system and do it differently.  And there's nothing wrong with this -- it's how I run 5e after all and I like it fine.

FATE's a game I have issues with specifically because it doesn't provide guidance on how to lean into what it can offer, but instead is wishy-washy and lets you run in in the same authority distribution style.  So, not really a clear cut example without more detail.  Cypher system I'm only vaguely familiar with as to it's core mechanics, but I can't say how it distributes authorities or how hard it is to play with a strong GM authority core.

PbtA games have a very different authority distribution to the games you've presented, and that makes a big difference.  Of course, it's possible you played FATE in this manner, but then it shouldn't be very hard to leverage that experience with FATE into understanding how AW does things.  You aren't, you aren't even mentioning FATE in relation to the current discussion, so perhaps you did play FATE with GM prep and players playing to find out what that is.

*To further expand on this -- this is a shorthand and blunt version of the play of many games where the GM has prep and play goes with that prep.  It's exemplified by both B/X dungeon crawls and by modern AP products -- there's a good deal of prep and play is about learning of it and navigating it.  B/X differs from AP in that there's not plot prepped, just a confined location, and play is more about defeating the challenge of the map and key rather that looking for a plot (it's very story after), but it holds true as a heavy GM authority game.

There's nothing wrong with these approaches, I'm just calling them out clearly because it's a big difference in approach and play.  I very much do enjoy these kinds of games, as they tend to scratch one of my gaming itches.  I'm finding my play of Aliens with one of my away groups lends to this style of authority distribution and play as well, and I'm hella excited to run some Aliens for my home crew when we get to a break with the D&D campaign. (My home group is a bunch of friends I've been gaming with f2f, some for 20 years, while my "away" groups are new friends but aren't part of my home crew.  I have 2 away groups right now, one Blades and the other Aliens.)


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## Faolyn (Oct 6, 2021)

I'll be bowing out of this thread now. It's clear this is not the game for me. I'll play it, if someone else offers to run it, but I won't run it myself.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I am literally asking how the rules work. I am fully aware that this isn't a "traditional" RPG, and thus I want to find out what the differences are and how they're played. But everyone is treating me as if I'm some sort of idiot for not immediately understanding the rules.



There are limits though. I don't remember the last time I've seen something explained in so many ways. At some point, you have to just try it. That's the only way this stuff started to click for me.



Faolyn said:


> If I'm pushing back, it's because Ovinomancer and others seem to me to have this mentality that "other games" are somehow _lesser _because they don't work like PbtA games are.



And this, I think, is the problem. Ovinomancer certainly wasn't pushing that. They're just part of a minority of ENWorld posters who talk about games other than D&D. If someone daring to present the virtues of a given game and how it differs from other games (D&D included) comes across to you as trashing those other games, you might need to interrogate why that's your takeaway.

But again, why not just try it out?


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> This is very useful. One of things I'm picking up is that, given how open-ended some aspects of FitD (and by extension, PbtA) are, different people will of course have different takes on what the "right" approach to a given sequence or scene might be. I was leaning toward the approach you presented--that a bit of warning could be followed up by events that just happen in the fiction, PbtA-like, even if FitD doesn't have GM moves in that sense. But I think what others have responded with is important, which is that consequences (as a result of action rolls, whether they're failures or successes with consequence) are basically the FitD equivalent of GM moves. So by not directly and obviously tying these consequences to those rolls I was sort of inherently slowing (or killing outright) the roll-consequence-roll action loop.



Interesting. I just learned something new about FitD!

I think the right balance between _framing _and _establishing consequences in accordance with the game's rules and principles_ on the one hand, and _railroading_ or just plain _ballsing it up _on the other, is very contextual. And can be hard to convey, especially to posters with fixed mindsets.

I remember posting years ago now about a 4e episode where I described a rock formation early on in a fight in the Underdark (the PCs were upper paragon tier), and in response the player of the invoker/wizard declared a Perception check. The check succeeded and so I narrated that he had spotted a roper before it could get the drop on him! Until that point I hadn't had a roper on my encounter roster, but now I added it.

Many ENworlders responded to that with outrage: "gotcha" GMing, railroading, blah blah blah. But from my point of view I was rewarding the player by (in AW terms) _providing an opportunity _(admittedly with a cost!). At the table it didn't cause any issues, and the player felt gratified that his proactivity had put him (in the fiction) in a position of advantage vis-a-vis the roper - even though I'm pretty sure he knew, at the table, that but for the check there would have been no roper. (And maybe at the table there were even groans from the others of _"_N____, what did you do that for!" - I can't remember now but it's entirely possible.)

Now in 4e the opportunity is to earn XP, _and_ to show off in the ensuing combat. If the game I was GMing was AD&D, or even maybe 3E (I don't have a good handle on that one), of course I'd handle it differently because introducing a roper into the combat isn't an opportunity at all, it's just a hosing. So there's an interplay of mechanics plus principles plus overall point/logic of play plus the mood of the table at any given moment, which make some calls reasonable or even excellent for some games in some contexts, but terrible for other games in other contexts.

That digressed a bit from the scheduled topic, so I'll stop now!


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I'll be bowing out of this thread now. It's clear this is not the game for me. I'll play it, if someone else offers to run it, but I won't run it myself.



That's of course entirely up to you, and I hope you find plenty of enjoyment in your gaming.  I would, as a takeaway, reiterate the earlier recommendation of grabbing the free game Ironsworn (link) and giving a solo game a try using those rules.  It should take about an hour to digest the rules to the point you can start your game, and you can always revisit rules as you need to.  This may very much help understand the approach to play (Ironsworn is an offshoot of PbtA and FitD).

Happy gaming!


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I remember posting years ago now about a 4e episode where I described a rock formation early on in a fight in the Underdark (the PCs were upper paragon tier), and in response the player of the invoker/wizard declared a Perception check. The check succeeded and so I narrated that he had spotted a roper before it could get the drop on him! Until that point I hadn't had a roper on my encounter roster, but now I added it.
> 
> Many ENworlders responded to that with outrage: "gotcha" GMing, railroading,



Hi, I was one of those ENWorlders.  Ah, the before times.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I'll be bowing out of this thread now. It's clear this is not the game for me. I'll play it, if someone else offers to run it, but I won't run it myself.



I feel a bit like I've been trolled. You asked questions, and I poster multiple detailed replies with many references to the relevant pages of the rulebook. You seem to have ignored those posts, while continuing to ask the same questions and complaining that no one is answering you.

Hopefully some others might find my replies helpful.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Hi, I was one of those ENWorlders.  Ah, the before times.



I think there's only one particular name I could remember. Not yours.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think there's only one particular name I could remember. Not yours.



Not sure if I should be offended.....


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## Manbearcat (Oct 6, 2021)

@Grendel_Khan 

Here is the order of operations/cognitive workspace for GMing a Job/Score situation after the initial Engagement Roll obstacle:

*1)  Regarding the Job/Score:*

* What is the Plan (Assault, Deception, Infiltration, Mystic, Social, Transport)?  

* What is the Goal?

* Who is the primary antagonists (relevant threat level, nature, assets) and any secondary antagonists?

*2)  The setting/situation for this moment of the Job/Score:*

* Where are we?

* What relevant factors impact the type of obstacles/consequences we can see within this space/time?

* What fiction predated things in total and what immediately predated this moment of the Job/Score?

* What is the present gamestate (Position prior to this and how that interacts with the immediately prior Action Roll outcome...any Clocks out there and where are they at relative to going off?)?

*3)  The obstacle for this moment of the Job/Score:*

* How does it come between the players and their goal (this is extremely important for Consequence handling)?

* Can I use any of the player's thematic material (a particular PC Rival, Vice, Heritage or an established Enemy Faction that is Allied with the antagonist of this Score)?

*4)  Ask Questions > Use the Answers > Clarify/Focus player Action Roll (s):*

* Determine if Position needs some modification based on Action Roll (getting in the face of the Rancor Monster).

* Assess Factors (Potency < > Quality/Tier < > Scale) of Action Roll.

* Keep meta channel open about prospective Consequences.

* Do they want to trade Position for Effect and how? 

* Offer a Devil's Bargain (particularly if they're stuck/consternated).

*5)  Resolve the Action Roll:*

* Handle Position/Effect results correctly, consult the Principles and Best Practices, consider all of 1-3 above.

* 2 lesser Consequences are almost always better than 1 single big Consequence (change the situation more dynamically and give them more inputs to the changing situation, Resistance Roll considerations, and subsequent Action Rolls to resolve the new situation).  HOWEVER, sometimes Harm 3 or 3 Ticks on the Clock in Desperate is just plainly the right move.  If its the right move...just make it.  You'll know it when it is.


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## innerdude (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I am not trying to insist an investigation looks like anything. I'm trying to find out how AW does it.






Faolyn said:


> So why won't you tell me how they're run? How do people look for clues in AW? Do the PCs make the clues up? You keep bringing up Monopoly and Risk, but what I really want you to bring up is *how you do it. *This'd be, what, the fourth time I've asked? Is there a reason you won't answer? You say "people investigate things in AW all the time." _*How?*_




Heh, I'm chuckling at myself now, because much like the other participants in the conversation, I'm trying to figure out how to actually explain the principles of play in a way that makes sense without just saying, "Play the game and find out." 

So I mentioned playing Ironsworn solo earlier, because it's a great way to demonstrate the overall principles when playing PbtA with a group or when you're the GM. 

So let's take your scenario you proposed earlier: 



> "One or more people have died. At least one of those people was known to and cared about by a PC. There's some evidence that the killer murdered this person to rile up the PC. Investigation--whether through talking to people, doing research, or examining the crime scene--will point the PC to the likely identity of the killer (there are multiple ways the PC can find this info). If the PCs take too long, the killer will either murder someone else or disappear (depending on GM whim), leaving the murder unsolved and the victims without justice/revenge.
> 
> "Again, these is a legitimately serious question here: Is this plot, such as it is, bad or wrong for AW? If it's not a good plot for the game, why? What _would _be better for the game?"




So imagine you're playing Ironsworn solo. So you're both the player and GM and the same time . . . but you're playing in a principled manner, and you're using the Ironsworn "Oracles" tables to guide decision points that are uncertain, helping you discover what's happening in the game world right along with your character. 

So think for a minute about how you would run a mystery like this. 

The existence of a situation around "one or more people have died, likely murdered", wouldn't have been preconceived in anything but the most general terms by you, the player/GM beforehand. Why would you even bother coming up with an elaborate plot your character is going to uncover when playing solo, when the "GM half" of your mind already knows exactly what happened and who's responsible? 

Answer is, you wouldn't. It would be boring. 

More likely, in Ironsworn, the situation you describe would have arisen as one of many possibilities from a failed roll, or a partial success roll with complications. In the moment, you'd be thinking of complications, obstacles that might arise from the current fictional situation. You made a move earlier, and are adhering to the consequences described. 

So maybe you or the Oracle tables present a situationally relevant complication that is now in front of you and your character --- "Some people have died, and it's entirely possible they've been murdered." 

Cool, awesome! Something to explore. But the underlying context _cannot be pre-authored ahead of time for it to be meaningful to you in play_. It can't pre-exist as a GM-authored situation for it to be fun.  

Okay, so, next your character goes out and looks for information. Along the way you invoke moves specific to your search, in the appropriate contexts. As a result of the success/partial success with complication/failure, you _in the very moment of resolving those moves_ create contextually appropriate, relevant clues --- oral histories provided by witnesses, blood samples, tattered piece of a cloak, footprints, whatever.

But since _you are literally authoring this simultaneously as you are playing_, the discoveries follow from the context, the fiction, the moves being invoked, and the principles of play associated with those moves individually and the general ethos/spirit of Ironsworn generally. And depending on how a set of moves play out, some of the relevant context from earlier moves only becomes fully clear as you progress. 

_Hmmm, why was there a set of hoofprints next to the river, but no sign of tack or offal anywhere? Hmmm, does that mean maybe a local was involved? Ah, that would explain why someone at the stable was so anxious to get me away from there yesterday morning. What was his name? Oh yeah, it was Gregor, right? _(And maybe right up until that very moment, there was no character named Gregor in the town, manning the stables, but because it now fits the other moves and clues, it is now part of the fiction).  

These are things that arise through your own authoring experience, as you explore the situation and come to conclusions---with the help of the Oracles---that are fully grounded in the fiction, your character's situation, and how those situations apply to your character's understanding of the world.

Now, if that doesn't sound like a satisfying way to run a mystery scenario, fair enough. If you don't think you and your players are disciplined enough or creative enough or fair-minded enough to really let the story emerge this way, hey, it's understandable. It takes a very firm mindset (especially in solo play) to not just author immediate solutions for your character to get everything (s)he wants, when (s)he wants it. 

So, now imagine needing to apply that same level of principled play to a GM-led scenario. The only difference when you switch from Ironsworn solo play to GM-led play is that the GM can, at their discretion, occasionally set up some additional flavor, context, and obstacles _in the moment during play_ that should resonate with the players, rather than wholly relying on the Oracles tables.

But this in no way should assume that the GM is creating huge swaths of backstory (more on that below). 





Faolyn said:


> From what I can tell, in AW, the _book _tells you how NPCs react to your actions. The only difference is that you get to pick from a list of reactions, right? One of this is you roll 7-9, or 3 if you roll 10+. How is this actually different in the long run? You may get to choose from a list of options, but it all boils down to how well you rolled. Does this mean you'd be happy if D&D had a rule where if you roll above a certain DC, you get +1 renown?
> 
> In probably most games, the player can and will say "I'm going to try to intimidate him so he'll move out of the way/give me the thing/tell me what I want to know/tell his friends I'm really scary."
> 
> I dunno. Maybe all the other games you've played have been, the GM tells you what's up and only lets you do certain actions when it's your turn. But that's certainly not how I've ever played it.




Again, it's less about the mechanics and more about the principles involved. For social encounters In PbtA, 1) the level of stakes must rise to being worthy of a check even being made at all, and 2) there are constraints imposed on the GM when you get certain levels of success in your move checks. The GM MUST provide a certain quality of information / interaction / context / value. If (s)he does not provide the appropriate quality of response based on your check, (s)he is violating the principles of the game. In a very real way, if the GM is behaving against these principles, _by rules as written _(s)he is sabotaging the game.

I don't think that ethos exists at all in D&D. In D&D, it's technically impossible for the GM to do so. GMs are welcome to provide as little or as much information as they desire on any successful information gathering check. 




Faolyn said:


> So basically, don't do anything unless there's action. No background stuff, nothing to indicate a bigger world unless it directly affects the PCs, no trying to figure out what's going on, no having anything that the players actually have to figure out on their own, no letting characters just talk to each other unless there's a possibility they'll roll dice at each other. It has to be conflict conflict conflict all the time.




Well, no. But yes. But no. But yes, mostly . . . . 

In Ironsworn, the whole "what's going on" isn't really authored beforehand. The whole point is that the _GM hasn't even bothered to create most of this backstory beforehand_, because the game neither requires it, nor even _wants it_ in the first place.

If there's any "hidden GM backstory" involved at all, it should be largely sweeping generalities, with a few "fronts" that are currently in play that may impact what happens to the characters. The goal is that the GM and players should in 90%+ of cases collaborate on key backstory elements, especially in areas that are germaine to the character's goals and drives.

Again, it's a flipping of the script from traditional D&D / other "trad" games. The goal is to explore what really matters to the character, _in this moment_, _in this context_, right now. Backstory only becomes important as it intersects with that principle of play. Until then, it should be left in the shadows, vague and unseen, until such point in time that a critical moment, a critical decision, brings it into the light --- at which point the players and GM work together to hammer down its importance, relevance, and adjacency to the action happening _right now_.

Hopefully you can see, if this is the assumed play model, that creating huge swaths of detailed backstory beforehand is not helpful. Backstory elements should remain fluid as long as possible---but once they are nailed down, _they are nailed down_. They are now just as much a part of the fictional framing as anything else.

When I ran Ironsworn with a group, my basic premise was that the PCs were living out their own version of the Vinland Saga in Guy Gavriel Kay's "alternate historical world" of his novels _The Last Light of the Sun _and _The Lions of Al-Rassan. _But that was really just to give enough color and baseline "grounding" into what kind of world it was. At no point did I expect any of the characters to have any notion or conception of the events of the novels, nor would they have any interaction with any of the places or characters within the novels. 

Other than that basic background, all I set up was a couple of key fronts, an inciting incident, and detailed maybe 5 or 6 NPCs that lived in the immediate dwelling where the game started. That's it.


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## Arilyn (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I'll be bowing out of this thread now. It's clear this is not the game for me. I'll play it, if someone else offers to run it, but I won't run it myself.



PbTA games really need to be played in order to understand them. I know I was surprised how immersive my first experiences were and how deep the world felt, although very little prep was done by the GM.

The games feel like they'd be awkward and artificial until you play. Players and the GM need to fully engage, however. Nobody at the table can be there just to roll dice and eat Doritos. I hope you'll give it a chance.


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## innerdude (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> That would depend entirely on how the PCs act and who the killer is and, well, *how I want the story to go down*.




See that bolded part, right there? This is the problem. You MUST let that impulse go in PbtA play. 

If you can't let it go, you're not going to like it. 100%, you'll end up fighting the system the whole way.


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## prabe (Oct 6, 2021)

innerdude said:


> See that bolded part, right there? This is the problem. You MUST let that impulse go in PbtA play.
> 
> If you can't let it go, you're not going to like it. 100%, you'll end up fighting the system the whole way.



IMO, "how I want the story to go down" isn't great GMing in D&D-alikes, either.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> But it hasn't been explained in a way that makes sense to me, and at this point I don't think it ever will be.
> 
> I only picked "investigate a crime scene" because I had a question about "Read Sitch." To whit, can it be used in a non-charged situation and if not, what do I do instead. People _sort of _answered me by suggesting I could just tell the PCs what they want to know, no rolls needed, but then people _also _said I shouldn't be having situations that weren't charged and nobody should ever have to read the situation unless it was charged or they wanted to make it charged.
> 
> When people wanted to know what sort of non-charged situation there could be, the idea of a crime scene came up. It's important to the story (maybe not a PbtA story, but to most games it would be important), and it's not charged because nobody is possibly going to be hurt.




There are two ways to unpack what "charged" means when Vincent Baker uses it:

1)  The generic way which is shorthand for "charged with conflict."  You will find this in Dogs in the Vineyard.  This just mean that someone wants something out of this situation and some other one or some thing is out to deny them it.  What does a climber want?  They want to ascend.  What does the peak want?  It wants the climber to fail...and maybe to send a message to future climbers.  Same thing in any other matrix.  What does the addict really want?  To quit the habit.  What does the habit want?  To maintain the status quo (another drink/hit won't hurt!).

2)  The Apocalypse World specific way:

_AW 97
Oversee character creation. Answer questions. Open this book to the character creation chapter but put bookmarks in the characters’ moves
and crap chapters.

Go around for introductions, do the Hx thing, highlight stats.

Then I’d just say it outright to your players: “your setup’s easy and now you’ve already done it. Mine’s harder so I’m going to take this whole
session to do it. So no high-tension kick off from me, let’s follow the characters around for a day and get to know them. Cool?”

A couple of you groaned, I could hear you from way over here. Oh great, getting to know the characters, that’s a recipe for will anything ever
happen? Following the characters around for a day and getting to know them, it could mean establishing a whole unwieldy mass of status quo, right?

*It could mean that but it doesn’t. Say it with me: there are no status quos in Apocalypse World.*_

_*What it means instead: it’s your job to create a fractured, tilting landscape of inequalities, incompatible interests, PC-NPC-PC triangles, untenable arrangements. A dynamic opening situation, not a status quo you’re going to have to put your shoulder against and somehow shift, like pushing a futon up a ladder. No: an unstable mass, already charged with potential energy and ready to split and slide, not a mass at rest.*_


What should your takeaway be from that?

THE FIRST RULE OF APOCALYPSE WORLD IS THERE ARE NO STATUS QUOS IN APOCALYPSE WORLD.  

If you're spending any real, consequential table time on a thing, it should be charged (with conflict); unstable, dynamic, not at rest.  

Someone wants something and someone or some thing doesn't want to give that thing up.  

So a PC wants something out of investigating this "crime" scene (maybe a PC came to a garage and its an important parley to resolve an evergrowing powderkeg...but its a bloody mess like in Reservoir Dogs).  

What does the crime scene want?  It doesn't want to give up its secrets (that is what crime scenes want)!

What does the possible causal agents of this mess want?  No witnesses?  Maybe they wanted everyone who was supposed to attend the meeting dead (oops...the PC showed up late)?

What does the guy on the floor who is mostly dead want?  To live?  To pass on the secret of what happened to someone else before they breathe their last breath?

What does the pool of gasoline on the floor want?  It wants to ignite by way of the precariously hanging, sparking light fixture that is ready to fall to the floor after the calamity.

What does the picture on the dead girl's hand want?  It wants to be reunited with the family of this stranger so the ghost can rest.  And maybe the family has a relevant dark secret to tell...the picture wants that dark secret told.




Fill the scene with charged conflict and awesome stuff.  People want stuff.  Other people/things don't want them to have the stuff.  Play to find out how this whole scene fits together and then wildly blows apart...as_you_play.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

innerdude said:


> For social encounters In PbtA, 1) the level of stakes must rise to being worthy of a check even being made at all



I just wanted to chime in on this point: obviously I don't know the full gamut of PbtA games. In fact I know only a tiny slice of that gamut. But in AW it's not the case that the stakes must have risen to a certain level in order to make a check. The rule for player-side moves is _if you do it, you do it_. So if I threaten someone with a gun, I'm _going aggro_ whether what I'm after is the key to the vault, or a bite from their sandwich.

This is why - at least it seems to me - the design of move triggers is so important. Because those move triggers are the things that will lead to rolls that in turn destabilise the "default" conversation of the game, and the distribution of authority that is part of that default conversation.

It contrasts with a scene-framed, "say 'yes' or roll the dice" game. In BW or Prince Valiant (at least most of the time - some subsystems create exceptions); or 4e D&D (at least outside of combat) we don't need the concept of a _fictional trigger _for (say) a Persuasion check or a Riding check. The players just say what their PCs are doing, and then when the stakes get to a point where the GM doesn't just say _'yes'_ we work out what the intent is, and what the task is, and we frame the check in light of that.

In this sense, at least, AW is more of a "fiction first" game than those scene-framing systems, because the move from fiction to resolution is not mediated by a notion of "stakes" or "intent".

Realising this was, for me, a breakthrough in working out how I could come back to Classic Traveller after 20-odd years of nostalgic pining and actually make it work!


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 6, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Here is the order of operations/cognitive workspace for GMing a Job/Score situation after the initial Engagement Roll obstacle:




Well look at this list. Extremely useful stuff here!! One question, though about the bit below (I think):



Manbearcat said:


> * What is the present gamestate (Position prior to this and how that interacts with the immediately prior Action Roll outcome...any Clocks out there and where are they at relative to going off?)?




So let's say there's a situation where multiple characters would be acting at once, presumably each making a different action roll, like in a combat situation. Would you typically have everyone declare, or at least float, their actions before resolving each one, therefore having various actions impact the position and effect of others? Or would you discuss and resolve each action one by one, with subsequent actions impacted by ones that came directly before?

Seems like the obvious choice would be the latter, in part because otherwise it'd be awfully chaotic. But just wondering if that's the case. 

To be more specific, let's say a detection clock fills up, and the group is discovered by security droids. One player might want to open fire while another dives for cover, and a third tries to splice the security system to temporarily call off or power down the droids. 

Would it make sense in that case to consider all of those actions, and then, for example, say that the character shooting at the droids is doing a desperate action, because he's a clear hostile and drawing their fire, which in turn means the position for the ones diving for cover and splicing a panel are lower than they might otherwise be, given the droids' attention on the shooter? Or is it more sensible for the system to resolve the shooter's action first, and then the others.




Manbearcat said:


> * 2 lesser Consequences are almost always better than 1 single big Consequence (change the situation more dynamically and give them more inputs to the changing situation, Resistance Roll considerations, and subsequent Action Rolls to resolve the new situation).  HOWEVER, sometimes Harm 3 or 3 Ticks on the Clock in Desperate is just plainly the right move.  If its the right move...just make it.  You'll know it when it is.




This point about two lesser consequences being preferable to a single big one is really really interesting. Makes total sense, and coming up with lots of consequences is the biggest challenge for me as a new FitD GM (particularly for all those 4-5 rolls), so this is a good reminder that I need to focus on building that muscle.


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## Campbell (Oct 6, 2021)

@Grendel_Khan 

I would almost always address a single player generally by their character's name. Shining that narrative spotlight and letting that individual player feel the tension of the moment is generally more important than simulating the flow of the scene. Think in terms of how we would experience this as an audience if it were a TV show or movie.


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## Blue (Oct 6, 2021)

I was thinking about the investigation example.  I don't know how many people are familiar with an older TV show called The West Wing.  Generally, it's about a bunch of staffers at the White House and the President they serve, shown 1999-2006.  If you're not familiar with the show, just skip this.

Now, you can make a RPG that deals with politics of running a nation.  Diplomancy, sanctions, defense, infighting, you have it.  It could be a lot of fun for the right audience.  I'd have a blast playing it.

It wouldn't produce an episode of The West Wing.

A PbtA RPG of the same thing would focus on what the relations between the staffers, the various factions of power, the personal connections and the strengths and weaknesses and connections and abilities of the individual characters (moves from their playbooks) for overcoming (or not) the various craziness that comes up.  The characters wouldn't alway be aligned, wouldn't always win, and wouldn't rest before the denouement because they are propelled from one charged action to the next, flowing organically out of what they attempt to do.

That could easily be an episode of The West Wing.  And I'd have a blast playing that as well.

And for the two, I'd given my druthers I'd probably collect different RPG friends who are looking for those experiences to form the group.  Some overlap, but each group gung-ho for the type of game they are playing.

This is like the difference between a investigative procedural murder investigation, perhaps done in D&D 5e or maybe something like Gumshoe, and a PbtA murder scene.


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## Blue (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Thinking in AW rather than FitD terms, it seems that the high-pitched keening was an _announcement of future badness_. Which the player ignored - which sounds like a perfect opportunity on a golden plate - so then rather than calling for the Attune action (because _if they didn't do it, then they didn't do it!_) it seems like making a hard move was in order - eg _A powerful blast rips the back off your vessel. Looking up into the sky you can see the A-Wing that's been following you and has chosen this moment to attack. What's left of your boat is crashing down to the ground. What do you do?_ The hard move could even have included killing the offsider NPC.
> 
> (Is the "boat" a flying vessel as I've assumed? If not, and it's a waterborne vessel, then imagine my suggestion has been appropriately adapated.)
> 
> Building on @chaochou's reply, I think the real risk in what I've suggested - and I get the feeling from your post that you were aware of this risk in the moment of play - is that the player will think you're being unfair. Where's the saving throw? Or roll to hit, or whatever? Where's their Passive Perception? I've got nothing very useful to say about how to overcome that feeling. It was an issue for me when I started GMing Burning Wheel, and to be honest I think as a GM I sometimes held back too much, afraid of being seen to be unfair. My friend who GMs me is better than me at being as brutal as the rules require!




I'm no expert, but my understanding is that "saving throw" was the soft move you made first.  It was _announcing future badness_, and at that point the characters could have "saved" by reacting and doing something about it. That you then followed up with a hard move with real consequences or complications is the natural progression, no more or less offsetting than a failed save vs. web will entangle a character.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> So let's say there's a situation where multiple characters would be acting at once, presumably each making a different action roll, like in a combat situation. Would you typically have everyone declare, or at least float, their actions before resolving each one, therefore having various actions impact the position and effect of others? Or would you discuss and resolve each action one by one, with subsequent actions impacted by ones that came directly before?
> 
> Seems like the obvious choice would be the latter, in part because otherwise it'd be awfully chaotic. But just wondering if that's the case.
> 
> ...




I'm going to address your situation in the last two paragraphs and write out a blurb of what this handling might look like:

*GM*: Jess, you're right out there in the open when the blast doors lift. You're about to get a face full of blasters. These 3 are dangerous (S&V NPC Threat Levels page 204). They aren't just mooks. They take the initiative and fire the moment the have a shot. What are you doing? Jack, I know you've got your blaster out, but you've got a little distance and some obstacles between you and the 3 dangerous droids. You see this whole thing go down when Burgley's Hack failed (this triggered this deal...Burgley failed a Desperate/Great Hack and this is the Consequence). Instead of the door opening to the bay where your ship is, this damn door with the welcoming committee opened!

*Jess*: Well, hell...I'm hauling out of there to cover. This room is a Hold so its pretty big. I'm far from Jack and Burgley but can I dive behind the cargo that isn't too far away? 

*Jack*:  Yeah, I'll help her with some covering fire!

*GM*: Jack, is this an attempt to actually do damage to the droids? Its going to be Controlled Position but Limited Effect due to all of the obstructing stuff. If you're going to actually fire at the Droids, you aren't going to do much. But you can trade Position for Effect if you want to step out in the open and get a clear shot. But if this is just a Setup move for covering fire, then Limited is good enough. Which is it?

Jess, you're Desperate/Standard.  There is some cargo nearby to get cover behind, but you're going to need Great Effect to get all the way over to Jack and Burgley.  Its just too far.  

*Jack*: Just a Setup move for covering fire. I'm going to buy her time and give her increased Effect so she can get all the way to us so she doesn't have to Scramble with worse Effect again to GTFO when Burgley gets the stupid ship bay doors open. I got a 5 on my Scrap. <GM tells Jack the Controlled Complication...Jack elects to Resist it because he has a lot of Stress left to risk and doesn't love the complication>.

*Jess*:  Awesome.  So Desperate/Great with Jack's covering fire.  I'm hunkering down (that is what people reflexively do in this situation right?) and just hold onto my helmet as I hustle over to Jack and Burgley!  Alright...Never Tell Me the Odds produces a Gambit on a Desperate Roll so here is a Gambit for you Burgley!  Daredevil also gives me +1d for Desperate Action Rolls and I'm going to spend 2 Stress to push for another +1d.  Got a 6 with on my Scramble!  I'm with my mates!  Get us the hell out of here Burgley!

*GM*:  Alright Burgley, you're 2/4 in your effort in your Override the Security System Clock so you can open the bay door.  Its been an effort to hack this system and the high Tier base (+1 above Crew) has pulled out some of its countermeasures.  You've got Standard Effect because of your Fine Hacking Rig + your Crew upgrade for these kinds of implements.  2 Ticks will finish off the Clock and get the door open.

*Burgley*:  Wait a minute boss.  My Analyst Special Ability gave me the info on the owner of this system in my last Hack attempt (like a 6 was rolled in Gather Info).  Doesn't that give me some protection here against its countermeasures?  Better Position; Risky/Standard?  

GM:  My bad.  That's right.  You know all about the recent software bugs of this system.  You can have Position or Effect so if you want Position, then take it.

*Burgley*:  Awesome.  Alright, I'm spending the Gambit that Jess just earned us.  I don't have the Stress to Push.  How about a Devil's Bargain <GM gives Burgley a DB with something about Burgley's rival; a 2/6 Tick Clock starts that will have to be addressed during downtime or something computer-ey will happen>.  Alright, I've got 5d6; a Crit!  

*GM*:  With blaster fire bearing down on you guys, bouncing off walls leaving melted steel behind...the security system gives way with triuphant doot-dee-doot noises and the bay door whooshes up!  Do you guys all exalt or is it all business?

Burgley, you want to clear a Stress or a boon <the boon is the egress to the ship has increased Position because Burgley's hack effed with the pursuing droids as well>?




That is a hypothetical of how it would go down in a S&V game I'm GMing.  Hopefully that is all clear.  If you have any questions, fire away.


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## Blue (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> And I have no idea why you would say this. If there's a roll, there's always a chance for a failure. You're trying to give a speech to rouse the morale of the troops. Make a Persuasion or Performance roll or whatever. The troops do well at war or anything, your renown might very well go up because it was your speech that urged them to fight harder.



I think this is a vocabulary issue.  The two of you are using different meaning of "failure".

Say you can attempt to pick a lock, and if you do not succeed nothing happens.  It's a null, no change in state.  You can try again.  This I believe is how Faolyn means failure, but not how Ovinomancer was using failure.

Say you can attempt to pick a lock, but if you fail a poison gas will fill the room.  There is no null state.  If you roll 6-, poison gas.  If you roll 10+, the lock opens and you can grab what's in the chest.  7-9, maybe both - gas is filling th eroom, do you wnat to blindly grab what's in the chest or get out?  That's failure in PbtA terms.  Not a simple lack of success, but a consequence.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Blue said:


> I'm no expert, but my understanding is that "saving throw" was the soft move you made first.  It was _announcing future badness_, and at that point the characters could have "saved" by reacting and doing something about it. That you then followed up with a hard move with real consequences or complications is the natural progression, no more or less offsetting than a failed save vs. web will entangle a character.



Fully agreed. But for players used to structures with mechanical buffers like saving throws or passive perception, having the buffer be _fictional_ rather than _mechanical_ can generate the sense of unfairness. I'm not interested in asking whether it's _really_ unfair - to me that seems a dead-end inquiry. I'm thinking more about the practical issue of how to get someone whose main play experience is with recent versions of D&D (or similar RPGs) into the required "headspace" for the sort of game @Grendel_Khan wants to run.


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## Aldarc (Oct 6, 2021)

Faolyn said:


> I assume you're talking about me. I guess that me playing and GMing Fate, Cypher, GURPS, TOON, oWoD, CoC, d6 system games, homebrew games, and probably dozens of other systems over the course of 30+ years count as "not planning on playing RPGs outside of D&D"?
> 
> I asked Ovinomancer questions because I wanted to understand how to play this game. For whatever reason, they refused to answer me, refused to say what about my assumptions were wrong (just that they were), or to show me what the correct methods are. I must have asked _how do I do this?_ half a dozen times. They didn't even bother to link me to a site that explains it!
> 
> What, is the AW rulebook holy writ that must never be questioned? Is this a cult? Are you told to shun those who don't immediately see the light? What's going on here?



Ovinomancer is not the only person here you can engage on this matter. You don't have to turn your thread engagements into walls of quote arguments. Others are more than capable of answering your queries about PbtA, and they have tried to do so. You do have the option to engage others about this. I'm not entirely sure why I and others have mostly been ignored when it came to understanding the game. But should you be interested in continuing the discussion with me or others, then I am okay with that too. If not, then this thread will still exist and you can read at your leisure through our replies explaining things.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 6, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> That is a hypothetical of how it would go down in a S&V game I'm GMing.  Hopefully that is all clear.  If you have any questions, fire away.



Holy crap. That is a master class right there. Incredible rundown of all the possible angles and rules interactions, especially passing Gambits along and doing Setup actions, and how those are incorporated into the sequence of actions 

My only question, because it's still my biggest source of anxiety, is what you might pick in the moment for the complication you mention here:

*"Jack*: Just a Setup move for covering fire. I'm going to buy her time and give her increased Effect so she can get all the way to us so she doesn't have to Scramble with worse Effect again to GTFO when Burgley gets the stupid ship bay doors open. I got a 5 on my Scrap. <GM tells Jack the Controlled Complication...Jack elects to Resist it because he has a lot of Stress left to risk and doesn't love the complication>."

I'm guessing you wouldn't do reduced effect, since that would kill the success entirely. There are obviously lots of possibilities, but I'm still wrapping my head around appropriate combat-related consequences that aren't in the standard critical failure mode (which doesn't seem appropriate here).


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## Helpful NPC Thom (Oct 6, 2021)

@Faolyn:

Betwixt you and @Ovinomancer, there is a fundamental miscommunication about the terminology. Prime example is the disconnect between your conception of GM authority and his conception. Even in your examples where the players are "leading the story" and you're improvising, you, as GM, maintain all narrative authority. In Apocalypse World, the GM's authority is constrained, and the players share authorship over the story. When a character goes aggro (intimdate) in Apocalypse World, the NPC _must _react in a way prescribed by the mechanics. The player can say, "I'm going to shoot this fella if he doesn't give me all his gold," and if he rolls a 10+, the NPC must either give the PC the gold _or _let the PC do what he's threatened, which might include shooting him and doing damage without involving the fight mechanics. The GM can't say, "No, you can't shoot him, he ducks out of the way" if the PC rolls a 10+. It's off the table. By using the go aggro mechanic, the player is taking partial ownership over the narrative and saying, "This scene is going to play out this way."

If you're really interested in knowing more about Apocalypse World, shoot me questions and I'll answer them. But I'll give you the long and short of Apocalypse World play:

The GM has a list of threats and moves at his disposal.
The players roleplay as you would in a typical RPG, though there may be more narrative distance between what "I" would do as my character and what my character would do in a story.
In response to those actions, the GM uses his threats and moves to escalate tension. It is job to "push" the players into acting by bringing danger to their doorstep.
The players respond to escalating tension through conversation (roleplay) until the climax of a scene is reached.
Moves are utilized.
Conflict is resolved. Tension falls back to baseline.
Repeat. It's basic story structure but mechanized.

In the Apocalypse World lexicon, soft moves are distinguished from hard moves. Soft moves are things the players can react to, whereas hard moves are things that the GM does and can't be negated. Typically, hard moves are in response to a bad roll (rolling a 6 or less) whereas soft moves are used to escalate a scene. Example using D&D tropes:


*GM:* The orc charges at you, swinging his mighty orc axe. What do you do? (Soft move.)
*Player: *I duck under the attack to get in close and gut him with my sword. (Player acts.)
*GM: *_Opts to invoke mechanics, at his option there may not be a roll involved. Dice come out. Player rolls and scores a 6-._
*GM: *The axe thunks into your shield, splintering it and knocking you to the ground. (Hard move.)

Couple of notes: A hard move doesn't mean do damage, and Apocalypse World typically resolves a scene in one or two rolls, and there are special mechanics for getting hurt, so everything spirals differently than in D&D. Getting into a fight in Apocalypse World is very different than in D&D because (a) even taking a tiny bit of damage has the potential to take you out of a scene entirely, and (b) allow a threat to advance. In response to a failed roll, the orc gang might slaughter the town's garrison, kill or endanger a loved one, etc.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Fully agreed. But for players used to structures with mechanical buffers like saving throws or passive perception, having the buffer be _fictional_ rather than _mechanical_ can generate the sense of unfairness. I'm not interested in asking whether it's _really_ unfair - to me that seems a dead-end inquiry. I'm thinking more about the practical issue of how to get someone whose main play experience is with recent versions of D&D (or similar RPGs) into the required "headspace" for the sort of game @Grendel_Khan wants to run.




One of the interesting things about how Blades in the Dark functions is that you can inflict consequences on the PC much as you would with a hard move in AW, but in Blades the player will have the option to resist the consequence after it’s been described.

It may cost some stress to do so, and it may only reduce the consequence rather than eliminate it, but that element of the game really gives the player a lot of say about what happens to their PC.

And it kind of absolves the GM from having to feel guilty about hitting them with a harsh consequence (something I know you’ve struggles with at times @pemerton ).

All of this to say that @Grendel_Khan (or anyone else new to running Blades or S&V) shouldn’t shy away from inflicting consequences. Let those chips fall where they may and put it on the player to decide if they’ll resist or not.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 6, 2021)

To tack a notion on to @hawkeyefan 's great post above, the willingness to hit players hard with consequences in FitD is also a key element in getting the stress and gambit play loops really humming along like they should.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Holy crap. That is a master class right there. Incredible rundown of all the possible angles and rules interactions, especially passing Gambits along and doing Setup actions, and how those are incorporated into the sequence of actions
> 
> My only question, because it's still my biggest source of anxiety, is what you might pick in the moment for the complication you mention here:
> 
> ...




Controlled Consequence for a Muscle in that situation might be:

* Oh no your pouch for your Mystic Ammo box got clipped when you swung your blaster around to fire.  Its spilled and the Ammo is all over the floor around you.  You're going to have to make a move to recover it or spend a DTA to get more.

* +1 Heat; the restaurant upstairs in the spaceport can absolutely hear the blaster fire bounding off the metallic ceiling/walls.

* 1 Harm (burned hand - affecting future moves with this hand); blaster quirk caused it to overheat from the effort.

* Krieger blaster goes from Fine to Normal until it gets fixed by a DTA (something went wrong mechanically or it got hit by fire or shrapnel in the exchange).

* +1 to a Faction Clock; you get a closer look at the droids and they bear the logo of x (a clear sign that they're nearly ascending...lets say this Faction is an enemy of yours and they're nearly going to Tier up with this Faction Clock).

* You get a crackling call on your com from the pilot droid in your ship to hurry the hell up.  They've just gotten a signature that the spaceport is initiating the protocols to start the Tractor Beam system (1/4 Clock "Tractor Beam").


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## chaochou (Oct 6, 2021)

To continue the discussion of 'mystery' and 'investigation' in Apocalypse World and whether it 'does them', here are some more ideas.

Let's say Dust, our Hocus, says while being asked what's up with her followers that a couple of them have been killed recently. Let's say it's Zeal and Crater that got aced somehow. Great - we have something of a mystery. How did they get themselves killed? Is it coincidence, plain bad luck, a vendetta?

So we can ask Dust some provocative questions about the circumstances? Were they both killed in the junkyard? Were they lovers? Had they made you angry recently? Were they close? What was the last thing Zeal said to you?

We immediately let the player establish all kinds of additional elements about this mystery before we do anything. We establish the player's fears and suspicions, their connection, their attachment.

This is the foundation of mystery in Apocalypse World. You care enough about the player characters to ask them what matters to them and what the boundaries of their knowledge are.

Okay, we've asked our MC questions and maybe Dust is now intrigued enough just by what came out of that to get proactive to sort this situation out. They go and see Francois, the Maestro D and offer fancy candles for their place if Francois will bring in the killer. And Francois agrees, as long as there's a case of whiskey in it too, and now Dust owes Francois a set of fancy candles and a case of whiskey and Francois has Fingers in every Pie and hits the roll and two days later the head of the killer arrives in a box.

And maybe now we're done with that.

Or maybe someone hands me the MC a golden opportunity, like upon seeing the head Dust says 'Anyone know this guy?'

And so maybe I make a soft move like 'This old timer everyone calls Bleach hobbles over and says 'Sure. He runs with that badass assassin crew out of the old clocktower.' Like, I'm announcing future badness and we have a new mystery as to why this crew are killing off Dust's followers.

Or maybe Francois misses the Fingers in Every Pie roll and now it just got real for Dust _and _Francois.

Or maybe instead of all of that, Dust just goes to Crater's place and opens their brain to the maelstrom and sees their death happen.

Or maybe in their answers to my provocative questions they said someone brought them a bullet, or axe, or lawnmower blade which killed Zeal and they take that to Leone the Savvyhead and he can make stuff speak to him and he learns stuff that way, maybe clear stuff or cryptic stuff, and we get our mystery expand and deepen that way.

Or maybe none of the above happens, and instead the player does nothing. But when they miss their next Frenzy roll we know why their followers turn on them - cos Dust didn't protect Zeal and Crater and now they're afraid and angry, and Dust better make amends right now...

So I hope it's clear that mystery and the unknown can easily form a really central element of Apocalypse World play (and hopefully its also clear they usually do in my games).

And I hope it's equally clear that what we're not doing is railroad investigation into stuff the MC has written for the players to 'find out'. Pre-scripted, pre-determined, zero-agency 'learn what's in my notes' play. Jumping through hoops finding scripted 'clues'. There are plenty of games to do that with if you enjoy it - and Apocalypse World isn't one of them.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 6, 2021)

chaochou said:


> To continue the discussion of 'mystery' and 'investigation' in Apocalypse World and whether it 'does them', here are some more ideas.
> 
> Let's say Dust, our Hocus, says while being asked what's up with her followers that a couple of them have been killed recently. Let's say it's Zeal and Crater that got aced somehow. Great - we have something of a mystery. How did they get themselves killed? Is it coincidence, plain bad luck, a vendetta?
> 
> ...



Not railroady enough in my opinion.

How do we get the bad guy to do the thing in the place with the people in your fangled scenario, HUH?! Didn’t think a that did ya?!

Too table facing.

How am I going to get in-character when I don’t have to ask the GM “do I know x, y, and z?” How do you expect me to not focus on the rules to the detriment of the fiction and optimize the game into oblivion when I know the rules and can interact with them? Didn’t think of that did ya?!

Where the hell is the strudel-baking, the drunken singing at the tavern, the existential musing and brooding for 45 minutes over campfire?

Terrible.

YOU LOSE

GOOD DAY SIR


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 6, 2021)

To be fair, AW's version of 'investigate a mystery' is pretty, um, IDK, maybe aggressive is the right word, because the game indexes that kind of play. What AW doesn't do is more contemplative investigation (a phrase that's at least close to what I mean). Perhaps that second case might also be indexed as 'clue focused' (setting aside the scriptedness of those clues). However, the fact that AW doesn't do the second should surprise no one since that kind, or style, or manner of play wasn't the goal of AW's design.

The post above (@chaochou ) illustrates nicely, IMO, that mystery can indeed work just fine within AW's design, and also should serve as an excellent index to how well the PbtA design philosophy could accommodate that same style of play when the design choices are made more specifically to support it.

The take home here is that PbtA design in many cases is as much about types of conflict as it is anything else. There's nothing one way or another in that which obviates the idea of a mystery, with one exception. As mentioned above, if you want a _scripted_ mystery, one where the clues and solution are all prepped and set by the GM prior to play, then you will inevitably be disappointed. That said, I think it's important not to conflate that one kind of investigative play with investigative play more generally, or, worse, talk on as if that kind of play is somehow the pure goods while everything else is a muddled reflection. What we're really talking about with, just to pick an example, CoC investigative play is that the mystery is entirely within the agency of the GM. In even a straight PbtA adaptation of CoC (see Mythos World) that agency gets shifted. Not everyone is happy to let go of being in charge of all the fiddly bits.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 6, 2021)

A small addendum to my post above. We often talk about investigation or mystery in terms of TV, movies and books. In all three of those cases there is a script in play - one that dictates the outcome of the mystery in advance. However, I think it's worth at least considering whether or not that notion actually means anything in terms of whether the show/movie/book was any good or not. What do we want out of those media? We want an exciting or interesting story (read series of imagined events if 'story' rubs your rhubarb wrong) and a satisfying conclusion. Neither of those things, in RPG terms, bears any particular connection to the scriptedness of the set pieces involved. I only mention this because in a couple of places above the idea of pre-scripted set pieces has been set as equivalent to the presence of 'mystery', an idea that doesn't really hold up under examination.


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## Grendel_Khan (Oct 6, 2021)

I could be off-target here, but my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.

Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.


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## Fenris-77 (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I could be off-target here, but my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.
> 
> Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.



Well, sort of? PbtA and FitD don't script set dressing. There's no "the duke's diary is in the third drawer of his wardrobe" sort of clue salting. The framing of clues is a direct consequence of the players' actions and the fictional positioning. So if the players actually search the Duke's bedroom successfully, you can then feel free to have a diary with some useful content appear because it makes sense that it could be so. Less true if they search a random apple cart in the market. This does indeed obviate the dead end issues experienced in some games, but only as a by product of being interested in other things (like the conflict you mention)

Edit: to clarify, and now I'm talking about my own personal running of PbtA games, if the Duke is a key figure in a threat, I might have noted down that correspondence of his misdeeds exists, but I likely wouldn't have been any more specific than that. Mostly a reminder to myself that incriminating documents could be a thing at some point.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> I could be off-target here, but my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.
> 
> Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.




If you mean that in a more traditional game, where the GM has already predetermined who did it and what the clues are that may be discovered that will point the players to the culprit, and then the players for whatever reason are spending their time chasing info in a location that has nothing to do with anything.....then yeah, that should not be happening in a PbtA/FitD type game. 

A traditional game doesn't care why the players are searching the billiard room instead of the kitchen or the conservatory, all the traditional game cares about is that there are no clues to be found in the billiard room..they're all in the kitchen and conservatory! I've played and run scenes where the players are just spinning their wheels trying to find something that isn't there. Eventually, once all the possible actions have been attempted and rolls made, the players will decide there's nothing there and move on. Or perhaps the GM may actually say "After exhausting all efforts, you realize that there is nothing to be found in the billiard room". 

Which then may make you wonder why the GM didn't just say that at the start......and I think that's a good question. It's the kind of thing about traditional games that would frustrate me, and ultimately led me to looking at other games. Think about this.....the end result of searching the billiard room if you succeed at every roll is exactly the same as if you fail at every roll. Literally nothing has changed, and who knows how much time may have been spent on this. Different GMs may speed this up, others may let it play out as long as it takes....but either way, this seems to be a failing of that kind of system. Why waste all that time on something that won't matter?

In a PbtA/FitD type game, the GM is meant to ask the players why the PCs are investigating the billiard room, and then shape what happens based on those answers and on the results of the rolls. So they may still wind up finding nothing of use in the billiard room if the rolls don't go their way....but something will happen. The system will produce outcomes by prompting the GM to make moves or to inflict consequences. And if the rolls go well, then there will be progress of some kind, usually based on fiction that's already been established or by the players' stated intent of their actions. 

In this way, I've found that it kind of works opposite from the traditional approach. Instead of the GM determining details ahead of time, and kind of determining what skill and what result may be needed to learn the information, instead the player makes a move or chooses an action with a stated goal, and then the GM determines the details based on the chosen move/action and the result of the roll. 

Now, I don't think that the GM cannot have any possible ideas about how things will go ahead of time. He may have a feeling for who the culprit may be (based on previously established fiction, mostly). And so he may fold that into the results in some way if it makes sense to do so. This last part is a subtle but significant distinction, I think. @Fenris-77 hints at this kind of thing above with his comments on the duke and his diary. 

All of which is a long rambly way of saying yes.....get to the conflict already is a deliberate element of these games.


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## pemerton (Oct 6, 2021)

Warning: long, analytical post incoming!



chaochou said:


> To continue the discussion of 'mystery' and 'investigation' in Apocalypse World and whether it 'does them', here are some more ideas.
> 
> <snip nice examples of Dusk and friends>
> 
> ...



This post drives home that a RPG is more than just a rule for how to generate random numbers as part of the action resolution process.

The contrary, but mistaken, thought was found in a post upthread by @Faolyn - I stated that Classic Traveller has no _read a situation_ subsystem, and Faolyn replied by pointing out that it has various social skills. The premise of that reply is that what defines Traveller as a rpg is simply its list of potential modifiers to checks - but that we _already know _what the process of resolution looks like (ie roll a die/dice of the size and number specified by the rules when the GM tells you too; add the bonus from the appropriate list as specified by the rules and/or the GM; compare that to a target number specified by the rules and/or the GM that the player may or may not know; have the GM tell you something about the fiction as the result and/or the rules prompt them to).

With that mistaken assumption in place, the question about _how does AW do mysteries?_ is equivalent to the question _what list of bonuses does the game offer to add to rolls_, and _what sorts of things does the game prompt the GM to tell players after they have made the rolls that the GM calls for_. Which then prompts the complaints _But why is there no general "investigation" ability?_ (Ie why is the list of bonuses constrained in a certain way?) And _Why can the GM not call for a roll when the situation is not charged?_

Whereas probably the most important features of a RPG are its rules for _who gets to say what, when, and make it part of the shared fiction_. Now it's true that between the early 1980s and the late 1990s almost no RPGs actually stated their rules about this (I choose those cut-off dates because there are earlier RPGs that are clear about this: I think Moldvay Basic and Gygax's AD&D are tolerably clear although the latter is a bit convoluted about it, as is well known; Classic Traveller is clear in places; and then there are late 90s/early 2000s RPGs that are clear like Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars, Sorcerer I assume without actually having read it, Burning Wheel, In a Wicked Age, etc). They just assumed that everyone knows that RPGs work as described in the second paragraph of this post.

That's a way to play a RPG, if that's what someone wants. But obviously it puts nearly everything about the shared fiction into the hands of the GM, unless some sort of ad hoc understandings or protocols emerge at the table.

I think the easiest way to bring out how AW is different - and its there in @chaochou's post that I've quoted, and in some of my posts upthread - is to ask _how is this bit of content being established as part of the shared fiction?_ _By whom? In accordance with what rule or principle?_ Because AW is so crystal clear on who gets to say what when, answering those questions in a way that is consistent with what AW says will quickly reveal that the mystery is _not _going to look or play like a typical CoC module.



Fenris-77 said:


> We often talk about investigation or mystery in terms of TV, movies and books. In all three of those cases there is a script in play - one that dictates the outcome of the mystery in advance. However, I think it's worth at least considering whether or not that notion actually means anything in terms of whether the show/movie/book was any good or not..



Like you, I think it's easy to exaggerate the importance of pre-authorship. I've certainly heard (is it still accepted fact?) that the script for Casablanca was still being finalised while filming was taking place. And then there's the notorious observation that even Raymond Chandler himself didn't know who had committed one of the killing in the film version of The Big Sleep.

When I've played Cthulhu Dark there have been "loose ends" like that - ie events that certainly took place (because they were part of the shared fiction established in play) and that definitely propelled things forward, but no one at the table has known exactly who caused them or what their precise rationale was. They don't impede the play of the mystery. (And think about playing a typical CoC module: there will be stuff in the module that the _players _never learn. So for them the experience is always of loose or not fully resolved threads. My experience is that it makes no difference to the sense of mystery if this is true for the GM also. In the CoC case, the players may suppose that the module author tied it all together in what they wrote. In the Cthulhu Dark case I'm describing, everyone knows that we could tie it all together if we wanted to, by writing the additional fiction that would link it all up. But do we need to?)



Grendel_Khan said:


> I could be off-target here, but my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.
> 
> Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.





Fenris-77 said:


> PbtA and FitD don't script set dressing. There's no "the duke's diary is in the third drawer of his wardrobe" sort of clue salting. The framing of clues is a direct consequence of the players' actions and the fictional positioning. So if the players actually search the Duke's bedroom successfully, you can then feel free to have a diary with some useful content appear because it makes sense that it could be so. Less true if they search a random apple cart in the market. This does indeed obviate the dead end issues experienced in some games, but only as a by product of being interested in other things (like the conflict you mention)





hawkeyefan said:


> If you mean that in a more traditional game, where the GM has already predetermined who did it and what the clues are that may be discovered that will point the players to the culprit, and then the players for whatever reason are spending their time chasing info in a location that has nothing to do with anything.....then yeah, that should not be happening in a PbtA/FitD type game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In a PbtA/FitD type game, the GM is meant to ask the players why the PCs are investigating the billiard room, and then shape what happens based on those answers and on the results of the rolls. So they may still wind up finding nothing of use in the billiard room if the rolls don't go their way....but something will happen.



I'm responding to this through the lens of AW in particular. (I think DW is close enough in its principles and GM-side moves that it might make sense for DW too.)

Building on what I've said just above, I think the key issue here is _what does the GM say when? _I think there's no formal objection to the GM preparing a threat clock which includes _if such-and-such a thing happens, then the Duke gets his factotum to hide his diary in the billiard room cupboard. _I also think there's no formal objection to the GM writing a custom move for the billiard room. Baker gives the example of a custom move (AW p 144):

When you *go into Dremmer’s territory*, roll+sharp. On a 10+, you can spot and avoid ambush. On a 7–9, you spot the ambush in time to prepare or flee. On a miss, you blunder into it.​
So speaking purely from a formal point of view, the following seems an acceptable custom move:

When you *search the billiard room*, roll+sharp. On a 10+, you find whatever others have hidden there; the MC will tell you what this is. On a 7-9, you locate something interesting before the Duke's help arrives: you can re-hide it just before they come in, or you can grab it as they enter (they'll see you taking it!). On a miss, you've been caught red handed!​
Moving from the formal to the substantive, though, we have to ask: what would the point of such a custom move be? It rests on a premise that _the billiard room_ and its hidden stuff has the same sort of significance, for play, as does _Dremmer's territory _and his ambushers. So how would that happen? Well, one of the basic principles is _say what prep demands_. And one of the GM moves is _make a threat move_. So if the GM has authored a front and threat in such a way that the billiard room is significant, _that should emerge in play _via the GM's moves; so that when the PCs are searching the billiard room, the custom move makes sense.

So where I'm heading with these ruminations is here: AW doesn't object to prep. But it has clear principles about who says what when.

Consistently with those principles - and assuming now that there is _not_ a custom move for searching the billiard room - the GM might even say that _a search of the billiard room reveals nothing_. But that wouldn't be _all _that the GM says, because that's not a move. So let's suppose that a player has their PC go off to search the billiard room. And (for whatever reason) it's not a charged situation, and there's no one there to interact with. So no player-side move has been triggered, and the GM just makes a move as normal. And that move could be _your search of the billiard room reveals nothing; but when you come back home, you find that someone took advantage of your absence to really turn over your place! What do you think they might have found that you'd rather they didn't?_ (To some extent I'm taking my cue here from the Moves Snowball example of play, where Marie goes back home after Isle collapses.)

Whether what I've just described would be fair play, or crappy (even "gotcha") play, would depend on all the surrounding context. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's helpful to say that AW can or can't do _fictional situation of such-and-such a sort_. Putting to one side basic questions of genre (like maybe we should really be talking about car sheds rather than billiard rooms) I don't think AW puts any limits on the possible fiction.

The key question is always _who is getting to establish it, when, in accordance with what rules and principles_?


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## Aldarc (Oct 7, 2021)

@hawkeyefan's most recent comment has me thinking about broadly be considered "families" of games. Although PbtA and FitD diverge in terms of their design, in some respects, they are commonly regarded as "kin" in terms of their design principles. Likewise, Cortex and Fate diverge considerably in their design architecture, but they share a number of design principles and ideas, so much that there have been Cortex-Fate hybrids. And while BRP and D&D also have different systems, how they distribute authority between the GM and players are fairly similar. So I guess I would potentially be interested in exploring, possibly in another thread, about the different family of games out there, considering not only their "system" but also by their principles.


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## chaochou (Oct 7, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> ...my overly brief sense of the main difference between investigation in many (most) trad games and investigation in something like PbtA or FitD is that the latter are not interested in dead ends. They either skip right past them or mechanically turn what might be a dead-end scene in another game into a surprise plot twist or revelation.
> 
> Does that sound right? In a sense, it seems like that's a main, overarching feature of Story Now games--get to the conflict already.




I think the essence here is correct. The way I look at it, is that if the game truly reacts to the player characters' decisions, choices and actions then there can't be such a thing as a 'dead end'. If we follow them, and they keep moving, we have to end up somewhere.

So in my previous example, what happens if Killzone the Gunlugger suddenly thinks 'How come old man Bleach knows about the assassins at the Clocktower? Let's break into his place and see if he's setting this all up...'

In that case the game goes to a different place, somewhere totally new that no-one considered before. But the key thing is to enjoy that we're seeing something new and interesting about Killzone.

It's the MCs job to be a fan of the characters - which is to say, to be really into the choices they make and ideas they have, the connections they create. It's not just about whether they live or die, succeed or fail, it's about respecting and endorsing how they are being portrayed, and in doing so making that interesting and vivid for them and everyone else.


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## pemerton (Oct 7, 2021)

chaochou said:


> The way I look at it, is that if the game truly reacts to the player characters' decisions, choices and actions then there can't be such a thing as a 'dead end'. *If we follow them, and they keep moving, we have to end up somewhere.*
> 
> So in my previous example, what happens if Killzone the Gunlugger suddenly thinks 'How come old man Bleach knows about the assassins at the Clocktower? Let's break into his place and see if he's setting this all up...'
> 
> In that case the game goes to a different place, somewhere totally new that no-one considered before. But the key thing is to enjoy that we're seeing something new and interesting about Killzone.



The bit I've bolded seems especially important. If the GM is doing their job of making moves as they should, there is always something happening - a character separated or captured; or some badness announced; etc - and so _dead end_ just has no salience.

The _dead end_ is a byproduct of RPGs where the GM's move include _Nothing happens. What do you do now?_ That's not a move in AW.


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## Manbearcat (Oct 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> The _dead end_ is a byproduct of RPGs where the GM's move include _Nothing happens. What do you do now?_ That's not a move in AW.




And it’s explicitly called out as _improper GMing and we get the “why” of that too._

We’re now getting into overlap with the FKR thread:

_Do agenda, principles, and best practices count as rules and/or do they actually inform play?_

The answer to that (in my mind) is simple.

_If the incentive structures align with promoting healthy, coherent, functional play…*then how could they not?*_

This is when something like “promote fun” becomes controversial when put under the microscope. That is because “promote fun” is nearly the equivalent of “breathe oxygen” for games as the latter is for things that require respirating to “stay online.” Taxonomically, it’s shared with pretty much all other games and it’s in no way tethered to coherent and functional _in playing this particular game_ in a way that is in the least bit informative (therefore what purchase can it have in promoting or binding behavior at the table?).

“Honey, when you’re walking to school today, make sure to continuously inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide!”

“…ok…thanks mom…”


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## GrahamWills (Oct 8, 2021)

chaochou said:


> I think the essence here is correct. The way I look at it, is that if the game truly reacts to the player characters' decisions, choices and actions then there can't be such a thing as a 'dead end'. If we follow them, and they keep moving, we have to end up somewhere.



And I think, for some people, this is a problem with the system. Dead ends are a staple of the mystery genre — it’s hard to find a movie where the protagonist always finds something worth pursuing in every scene. Dead ends are a natural downbeat, and without them a mystery doesn’t really feel like it’s a mystery. 

Another issue with the lack of a simple failure is that it rewards ‘loud‘ players; a typical case would be where there are two approaches to an obstacle, and PtbA seems to reward the player who acts first — because their action will not lead to a dead end, the player with the other approach likely never gets a chance to do their thing. Because nothing truly fails, the spotlight goes to whoever acts first. Maybe it‘s a better plan to bribe the guards, but because Jo attempted to sneak past them, that scene generates a complication and the bribery will never be attempted.

A final issue I noted is that it can be tiring for the players never to have things finished. A few times in games I’ve seen players who just want their characters to check one minor thing out before heading to what they consider the main scene. They just wanted to see if there were footprints outside the window before heading to meet up with the rest of the team, and so a simple “you fail to find any useful info” is absolutely fine; a dead end is expected and much preferable to complicating the scene,

So, for me, the lack of dead ends is not a great selling point. It does guard against pointless searches and expenditure of game time, but honestly, if you have a GM happy to let you roll dice and spend 15 minutes doing something pointless, your issue is not with the system. Systems like GUMSHOE guarantee that you don’t waste time like this, but even in more traditional games, competent GMs make sure scenes that go nowhere finish fast.

Summary: Dead ends can be OK


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Dead ends are a staple of the mystery genre — it’s hard to find a movie where the protagonist always finds something worth pursuing in every scene.



As far as Apocalypse World is concerned, this is a non-sequitur.

To quote myself:


pemerton said:


> Consistently with those principles - and assuming now that there is _not_ a custom move for searching the billiard room - the GM might even say that _a search of the billiard room reveals nothing_. But that wouldn't be _all _that the GM says, because that's not a move. So let's suppose that a player has their PC go off to search the billiard room. And (for whatever reason) it's not a charged situation, and there's no one there to interact with. So no player-side move has been triggered, and the GM just makes a move as normal. And that move could be _your search of the billiard room reveals nothing; but when you come back home, you find that someone took advantage of your absence to really turn over your place! What do you think they might have found that you'd rather they didn't?_ (To some extent I'm taking my cue here from the Moves Snowball example of play, where Marie goes back home after Isle collapses.)
> 
> Whether what I've just described would be fair play, or crappy (even "gotcha") play, would depend on all the surrounding context. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's helpful to say that AW can or can't do _fictional situation of such-and-such a sort_. Putting to one side basic questions of genre (like maybe we should really be talking about car sheds rather than billiard rooms) I don't think AW puts any limits on the possible fiction.
> 
> The key question is always _who is getting to establish it, when, in accordance with what rules and principles_?


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## GrahamWills (Oct 8, 2021)

pemerton said:


> > Dead ends are a staple of the mystery genre
> 
> 
> 
> As far as Apocalypse World is concerned, this is a non-sequitur.



Well, no. ”non-sequitur” means a statement that is unconnected to the previous argument. Since the previous statement was “AW doesn’t have dead ends” it directly is connected to that and it’s actually about as sequitur as you can get!

If what you mean to say is that it’s not applicable — that AW is inappropriate for mystery genres and that any discussion of the mystery genre and AW is silly, then, well — yes, that was my point, or at least a stronger statement of it.


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> Well, no. ”non-sequitur” means a statement that is unconnected to the previous argument. Since the previous statement was “AW doesn’t have dead ends” it directly is connected to that and it’s actually about as sequitur as you can get!
> 
> If what you mean to say is that it’s not applicable — that AW is inappropriate for mystery genres and that any discussion of the mystery genre and AW is silly, then, well — yes, that was my point, or at least a stronger statement of it.



Here is what you posted that I quoted:


GrahamWills said:


> Dead ends are a staple of the mystery genre — it’s hard to find a movie where the protagonist always finds something worth pursuing in every scene.



And this is what I said is a non-sequitur. That is to say, the right-hand side of the dash has nothing to do with whether or not AW yields dead ends in play.

Once again, I will repost myself:


pemerton said:


> Consistently with those principles - and assuming now that there is _not_ a custom move for searching the billiard room - the GM might even say that _a search of the billiard room reveals nothing_. But that wouldn't be _all _that the GM says, because that's not a move. So let's suppose that a player has their PC go off to search the billiard room. And (for whatever reason) it's not a charged situation, and there's no one there to interact with. So no player-side move has been triggered, and the GM just makes a move as normal. And that move could be _your search of the billiard room reveals nothing; but when you come back home, you find that someone took advantage of your absence to really turn over your place! What do you think they might have found that you'd rather they didn't?_ (To some extent I'm taking my cue here from the Moves Snowball example of play, where Marie goes back home after Isle collapses.)
> 
> Whether what I've just described would be fair play, or crappy (even "gotcha") play, would depend on all the surrounding context. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it's helpful to say that AW can or can't do _fictional situation of such-and-such a sort_. Putting to one side basic questions of genre (like maybe we should really be talking about car sheds rather than billiard rooms) I don't think AW puts any limits on the possible fiction.
> 
> The key question is always _who is getting to establish it, when, in accordance with what rules and principles_?



Nothing about Apocalypse World means that _the protagonist always finds something worth pursuing in every scene_. But there will never be dead ends in the play of the game, because _nothing happens - what do you do? _is not a GM move.

EDIT: Let me put it another way: it's not the case that the only way to avoid dead ends in play is to avoid dead ends in the investigation by having the protagonists find something worth pursuing in every scene.


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## prabe (Oct 8, 2021)

What I think @GrahamWills is saying (and I'm inclined to agree with him, so maybe it's easier for me to see it) is this:

There are TRPG scenarios in which a dead end (you don't see/hear/find/learn anything useful/interesting) is acceptable/expected.

Apocalypse World is designed not to generate dead ends.

Apocalypse World is incompatible with scenarios with dead ends.

If you're running Apocalypse World, don't run scenarios where you need/want dead ends; if you want to run scenarios with dead ends, don't run Apocalypse World.

@pemerton  I don't *think* that's incompatible with what you're saying, but I don't always understand you as well as I would prefer.


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 8, 2021)

prabe said:


> What I think @GrahamWills is saying (and I'm inclined to agree with him, so maybe it's easier for me to see it) is this:
> 
> There are TRPG scenarios in which a dead end (you don't see/hear/find/learn anything useful/interesting) is acceptable/expected.
> 
> ...



There's a difference between a dead end in a mystery -- ie, finding out that the path you've been pursuing bears no fruit -- and a dead end in gameplay.  AW doesn't do the latter.  The former is up for grabs.

Games where the outcome of a check is "you don't find the important clue due to this failed roll" are presenting both -- a dead end in game play because play has stopped and you cannot progress the mystery.  This is often addressed by things like the rule of three (there are three ways to get this important clue) but that's doesn't sidestep the fact that the game hit a dead end and requires that backtracking.  AW never does this -- you might find out that what you thought was happening wasn't (mystery dead end) but play is moving forward from that point anyway -- no backtracking or restarting.

That's what I see as the point @pemerton is making.


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 8, 2021)

GrahamWills said:


> And I think, for some people, this is a problem with the system. Dead ends are a staple of the mystery genre — it’s hard to find a movie where the protagonist always finds something worth pursuing in every scene. Dead ends are a natural downbeat, and without them a mystery doesn’t really feel like it’s a mystery.
> 
> Another issue with the lack of a simple failure is that it rewards ‘loud‘ players; a typical case would be where there are two approaches to an obstacle, and PtbA seems to reward the player who acts first — because their action will not lead to a dead end, the player with the other approach likely never gets a chance to do their thing. Because nothing truly fails, the spotlight goes to whoever acts first. Maybe it‘s a better plan to bribe the guards, but because Jo attempted to sneak past them, that scene generates a complication and the bribery will never be attempted.
> 
> ...




There are two ways of looking at it, as I think @pemerton has pointed out. A dead end in the fictional investigation/mission/job that the PCs are engaged with, and a dead end in play. The former may happen, but the latter shouldn’t.

You mention dead ends as a staple of the mystery genre…but is that really true? Sure false leads and failures occur….but most scenes in fiction will serve some purpose, even if it is not directly connected to the investigation.

I’ve played and run scenes in D&D where the players were searching for information in the wrong location or using the wrong means or whatever. As I said in my last post, there’s no difference in success or failure in this situation. Nothing actually happens. That’s a dead end of play, as well as a dead end in the investigation.

So, when the PCs in a more Story Now game head to a location, the outcome of what will happen there is not predetermined. Maybe they will find something useful to their goals, maybe they’ll find nothing. Maybe they’ll find something but also suffer some setback or complication. Whatever the result, it will he based on the actions taken by the PCs, their intent, and the results of their rolls. The process of play will produce results of some sort.

I think this is a pretty key distinction.


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## Campbell (Oct 8, 2021)

The loud players thing feels weird to me because it relies on all sorts of assumptions that are not true of Apocalypse World

That player characters are part of a unified group or party
That they declare actions to overcome obstacles or challenges as like the point of play
That the GM is addressing the whole group instead of individual characters.
None of that is a feature of playing the game as the text instructs as to. That's smuggling in procedures from other games.

When running Apocalypse World the MC addresses individual players by their characters' names. It's *Rurik, What do you do?* and not *amorphous group what do you do?*

The spotlight gets shared because the MC spreads it around by asking different players what their character does.

In Apocalypse World it's your job to play your character with integrity, not to overcome some challenge or find out what the plot is. It's also not your job to have some group pow-wow. When it's your turn to speak you speak for your character.

Apocalypse World is a game about individual characters pursuing their individual goals. They often have to work together, but often also do not work in tandem. The fundamental long term tension in the game is about those relationships between player characters.

I know this probably is not encouraging to folks like @GrahamWills . It does not have to be. People should play Apocalypse World because it sounds cool and they want to play it. Monster of the Week might be a better fit for folks like him.


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2021)

prabe said:


> What I think @GrahamWills is saying (and I'm inclined to agree with him, so maybe it's easier for me to see it) is this:
> 
> There are TRPG scenarios in which a dead end (you don't see/hear/find/learn anything useful/interesting) is acceptable/expected.
> 
> Apocalypse World is designed not to generate dead ends.



@hawkeyefan and @Ovinomancer have said most of what there is to be said in reply to this.

When I watch a mystery film, and the detective reaches an _investigative _dead end, that doesn't meant that the film just stops, that frame stuck in the projector for the next half-hour. The story continues.

I have posted, now, three times an example of a completely feasible narration, in accordance with the rules and principles of Apocalypse World, of a PC investigator _finding nothing in the billiard room_. But I have also pointed out that that would not be the totality of the narration, because _nothing happens . . . what do you do?_ is not a GM move in AW.

The example I gave was of the PC coming back home and finding that their room has been turned over. Now imagine one possible action declaration in response to that: the chopper rounds up their gang, everyone else hops into the driver's car, and the PCs move out! The GM can handle that - they just make a move, probably a soft move, like the rulebook tells them to. Maybe the mystery that prompted the investigation of the billiard room, and maybe the mystery of who turned over the PC's room, never get solved! That's OK. The game will just keep rolling.

This claim that AW can't do mysteries, or that AW can't do unsolved mysteries, or that the answer to mysteries in AW is that the players just stipulate the answers that their PCs discover, is nonsense. It has no foundation in the text - whether rules, principle, or examples. And I've posted, now four times, the imaginary example that illustrates this point.

AW puts no limits on possible topics of fiction. But it does put limits on who can say what when. And it doesn't allow the GM to simply say _nothing happens . . . what do you do?_


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## Ovinomancer (Oct 8, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> There are two ways of looking at it, as I think @pemerton has pointed out. A dead end in the fictional investigation/mission/job that the PCs are engaged with, and a dead end in play. The former may happen, but the latter shouldn’t.
> 
> You mention dead ends as a staple of the mystery genre…but is that really true? Sure false leads and failures occur….but most scenes in fiction will serve some purpose, even if it is not directly connected to the investigation.
> 
> ...



I beat you by 2 whole minutes!


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## hawkeyefan (Oct 8, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> I beat you by 2 whole minutes!




Curse my fat thumbs!!!


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## Aldarc (Oct 8, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Curse my fat thumbs!!!


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## aramis erak (Oct 14, 2021)

niklinna said:


> I don't get Dungeon World's presentation of limited race choices for certain classes either, but, it's good to keep in mind that in all PbtA games (that I've seen), playbooks are _starting points_, not _full & restrictive definitions_. So the authors say only humans get to be paladins, or only human and elf rangers get special moves. Chuck it! Be a dwarf paladin, make up a special move dwarf paladins get. I think they could have been much clearer about that, but it's just something in the air if you plug in to the community.



Those choices are emulations of AD&D. 
D&D 3.x removed a lot of limitations in the core, and told GM's they could impose restrictions if they wanted for their worlds, but the rulebooks no longer would.
From discussions seen when it was being developed, it was OSR fans doing the adaptation.


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## aramis erak (Oct 14, 2021)

Arilyn said:


> PbTA games really need to be played in order to understand them. I know I was surprised how immersive my first experiences were and how deep the world felt, although very little prep was done by the GM.
> 
> The games feel like they'd be awkward and artificial until you play. Players and the GM need to fully engage, however. Nobody at the table can be there just to roll dice and eat Doritos. I hope you'll give it a chance.



The same is true for Sentinel Comics - it's also move driven - but it's also a bit more trad than most of the AWE/PBTA derived families.
THe GM has regular turns for his NPCs, and there is a GM plotline, but in-scene it's move based, and doesn't even have a normal risk of failure.
It has the narrate it to have your character do it, it's move based, and it has 5 basic and 2 special moves; all the various special abilities are combinations of one of those 8 moves. (Special moves require an enabling special ability.)
The SC moves being Attack, Defend, Boost, Hinder, Overcome; the special moves are Heal, and build/summon. Unlike AWE, failure isn't a possibility most of the time; Overcomes can fail, all others simply have quality of success A & D from 0 to 16, B & H having a range from 0 to 4, and overcome has 5 levels that aren't numeric... Fail+Complication (roll<=0), player choice simple fail or success+major complication (Roll 1-3),  Success+Minor Complication (roll 4-7), simple success (roll 8-11), Success plus bonus (roll >=12). Not that the ranges on Boost or hinder map to the same ranges.

I found the AWE/PBTA mechanics much more comprehensible after running SCRPG... and there's a reason: SC is strongly influenced by both AW and Cortex Plus. (It's mentioned in the starter kit credits.)
If one needs a way to ease into AWE styles of play, SC can be that first stepping stone... it still has a GM and the GM frames the scene, and it has a victory condition for every scene, and is mission based. But in scene, players narrate until they hit one of the moves, or trigger a special ability they have; if they get to the ability, they can stop narrating and roll the dice; if instead they describe a move but don't see it, the GM can interrupt to have them resolve it. 

It's not in the same space as any of the AWE/PBTA games, but it's a big step in the direction, but also only one of several such steps distance.


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