Player-Character?  What kind of bullshit jargon is that? What, you can't make up your mind which one you want to be?  If you're sitting at a table, you're a PLAYER, dumbass, not a 'character' in some kind of story?  
"Oooh, look at me, I'm a special snowflake character! I'm an important person that the events of the story hinge on.  Laa dee daaa."

God, I hate that pretentious shit.

Quote from: 3rik;736680Of course, if you want to stick to the "Triggering of Moves" and "expressing everything through Teh Fiction" you're also going to need to explain each and every thing specifically, because none of that is a particularly obvious way of stating the obvious.

As Ladybird's post shows, the issue you are raising isn't solved by rewording the description. I can write "When you do something that requires agility, roll 2d6 + Dex," but that won't answer the question of what to do if the cliff is really tough. And I can write "Describe things in the game world" but that won't fix anything either. You still won't know how to deal with a steeper cliff when they roll their 2D6.

Wording isn't the issue, design is. The game does not use mechanics to simulate different difficulties, but relies on the GM's ability to follow set of principles. Once you make that choice, you really do have to put some specific examples in the book for things that would be a simple matter of adding a +1 difficulty modifier in other games. But, I don't think being the simplest answer, or the easiest to describe, in all cases was a design goal.

So, if you said that telling GMs how to run the game would be easier if you were describing a different one, I guess I'd agree.

Quote from: 3rik;736680Of course, if you want to stick to the "Triggering of Moves" and "expressing everything through Teh Fiction" you're also going to need to explain each and every thing specifically, because none of that is a particularly obvious way of stating the obvious.

There are few games of any sort that don't have their own terminology, and the roleplaying scene is lousy with it. You've absorbed these terms as part of your hobby, but that doesn't make them any less impenetrable to an outsider.

Fiction may or may not be a new term to roleplaying games, but it definitely isn't a new word to the english language. It's not an abbreviation or using some esoteric interpretation. It's using a common definition for the word.

fiction
fic·tion  [fik-shuhn]
noun
1. the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, especially in prose form.
2. works of this class, as novels or short stories: detective fiction.
3. something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story: We've all heard the fiction of her being in delicate health.
4. the act of feigning, inventing, or imagining.
5. an imaginary thing or event, postulated for the purposes of argument or explanation.

In contrast, type "Game world" into an online dictionay. then type it into google. Then, type "Game world RPG" into google. If none of those give you a clear definition of this term, type in the question "What does game world mean" and click on the top result.

First, Game World redirects to a page called Fictional Universe. That esoteric, pretentious word doesn't seem all that far removed from the term you're used to after all, as far as the average person is concerned.

Second, Fictional Universe and Game World really only describes the settings, locations, history, etc of the imaginary stuff the group is talking about, it doesn't directly include in a clear way "What is happening right now in the imaginary world with the characters" Fiction covers that in a simple, common english word with a definition understood by the average person.

Dungeon World's choice of language and explicit descriptions of play and systems seems to express a desire for anyone, including those not steeped in tabletop RPG culture, to be able to pick up the book and start playing. I appreciate that, since it makes it a lot easier to introduce friends to roleplaying without giving them a lot of complex, alien elements to contend with.

I also really like that the examples of play for each bit of rules has an example of the GM or a player making a mistake, and the group discussing it and revising what happens. It's a great way of showing how the game plays, and how to resolve differences at the table.

Quote from: Ladybird;736655So, a climbing kit (Rope, pitons);
* Lets you scale surfaces that you couldn't without one
* Is probably going to slow your ascent compared to free climbing
* Would probably make climbing some surfaces simple enough to not bother rolling Defy Danger for, you can just do it (...which means you can't fail, unless you want to try SPEED CLIMBING or something)
* Is going to let you leave pitons to assist your party members
* Is probably going to leave more marks in the wall for people to spot
* Will mean that, if you fail a "climbing" roll (Likely Defy Dangerm but it could vary), you're probably just stuck or dangling from your last piton, rather than falling to your death

But it doesn't just give you a +1 Climb Check bonus, because that's boring and meaningless.

That's a good principle to my mind. Some of it can be specified in a way that gets similar results from a +X Climb Check Bonus; which might please people in the "rules, not rulings" camp who also want less complexity than that sometimes produces.

Dungeon World seems likely to spawn further branches of development, just as it sprouted from the *World lineage.

Quote from: JonWake;736694Player-Character?  What kind of bullshit jargon is that? What, you can't make up your mind which one you want to be?  If you're sitting at a table, you're a PLAYER, dumbass, not a 'character' in some kind of story?  
"Oooh, look at me, I'm a special snowflake character! I'm an important person that the events of the story hinge on.  Laa dee daaa."

God, I hate that pretentious shit.

I can't tell if you are serious or using humor. So assume I am clueless and elaborate; what exactly is pretentious in this example?

I feel like I am missing your point.

Quote from: Bill;737026I can't tell if you are serious or using humor. So assume I am clueless and elaborate; what exactly is pretentious in this example?

I feel like I am missing your point.

He's basically showing that finding the world "fiction" to be pretentious is 100% on the reader's end and that words that have been part of the RPG tradition since the beginning can be cast that way as well.

Quote from: NathanIW;737062He's basically showing that finding the world "fiction" to be pretentious is 100% on the reader's end and that words that have been part of the RPG tradition since the beginning can be cast that way as well.

Thanks, at least I have a clue what that post meant now.

I am not seeing how pretentiousness is really relevant.

I thought the debate was about fiction as a goal vs playing a character to see what happens.

Are people really twisting the meaning of these terms?

Or is it just innocent confusion?

Quote from: Bill;737070Are people really twisting the meaning of these terms?

Or is it just innocent confusion?

I think there is a subtle twisting of the term going on in some circles... whether that was intentional or not depends how how much you believe the claims/denials of the folks who wrote it.

Quote from: Bill;737070I am not seeing how pretentiousness is really relevant.

I thought the debate was about fiction as a goal vs playing a character to see what happens.

Are people really twisting the meaning of these terms?

Or is it just innocent confusion?

It's intentional twisting.  Some have developed an us-vs-them mindset where everything connected with certain publishers, game designers or even imagined factions of players must be seen in the worst possible light.  And when the game is not the usual type they like to criticize, all that's left is to say that you find the phrase "the fiction" to be pretentious.

As for Dungeon World, it's definitely a "play to see what happens" game.  People who play in a very old school approach find themselves quite at home with it and find nothing about it innovative or new.  Those that might get the most from it though, are those who's game experience is primarily with games published in the last 15 years or so.  There are lots of gamers out there who only have experience with games where playing the system rather than describe what your character does is supported by the game.  Dungeon World can be a great tool for re-introducing an approach to the hobby that might be largely missing from a lot of current game products.

It's a strange thing that people object to a book explaining the basics of what you actually do at the table as "roleplaying for retards."  I guess it's the result of people only seeing themselves and their own experiences as the possible target audience for a given game.

Quote from: Bill;737070Thanks, at least I have a clue what that post meant now.

I am not seeing how pretentiousness is really relevant.

I thought the debate was about fiction as a goal vs playing a character to see what happens.

Are people really twisting the meaning of these terms?

Or is it just innocent confusion?

Pretentiousness of game terms was brought up by other posters in the thread, saying that fiction is a pretentious word for describing all the imaginary bullshit roleplaying games center around.

Fiction isn't a goal of the game, playing to find out what happens in the fictional world, and how the fictional characters react to it is. Fiction is used in the sense that the people, things, places, and events the players are talking about are imaginary and not real.

The only differences between fiction and terms like "game world", "Campaign", "scene", or "milieu" is that fiction can include all of those things and more, and that you may be more familiar with some of them than you are fiction. Those other terms may have been used in reference to roleplaying games for a lot longer than fiction, but fiction has been used in the English language, in the way it's used in Dungeon World, for a lot longer than roleplaying games have existed.

But these are just the reasons why I don't find the word fiction pretentious, and that's my opinion. If others have different opinions, well, that's life.

Quote from: Adric;737133all the imaginary bullshit

Well, if we do someday revise DW and change the term, I think we just found the winner.

Quote from: sage_again;737138Well, if we do someday revise DW and change the term, I think we just found the winner.

Heh.

Around here I usually use "the shit we're imagining in our heads" as opposed to "the shit on the table".

Quote from: sage_again;737138Well, if we do someday revise DW and change the term, I think we just found the winner.

Quote from: robiswrong;737139Heh.

Around here I usually use "the shit we're imagining in our heads" as opposed to "the shit on the table".

Dude. :eek:

No dump on the table, please!

A post from a discussion of the revised edition in the future:

Look at this Dungeon World game.  They talk about the game world as "imaginary bullshit."  Why are they always trying to pretend to be so edgy?  It's so pretentious.