Quote from: Benoist;669281I agree that since we're fundamentally speaking of a spectrum people will identify different components of games to categorize them. Personally, I consider the primary purpose of the game to be a critical component helping me to understand what the game is designed to achieve.

A game like O/AD&D is specifically designed in order to emulate a functioning campaign milieu which then the players' characters will explore. James Bond 007 is specifically designed to emulate the world of the James Bond. A game like RuneQuest is designed to emulate a world where magic and myth are part of its multiple cultural fabrics. A game like Warhammer has a purpose to emulate a world, its own universe made of Skaven and Chaos worshippers and pseudo-late-Middle-Ages Europe trappings. A game like Call of Cthulhu emulates a world where the Mythos exists and is a positive force moving behind the scenes. Vampire runs its mouth with "storytelling", but what its rules and game components actually accomplish is emulating a world where vampires actually exist, and emulate the City by Night thereof (this is this schizophrenic design Ron Edwards was confronting when he talked about people playing WW games being brain-damaged). All these are role playing games.

Dungeon World has a purpose to build a collaborative narrative. There is no actual world that is being emulated at all, its components only existing as narrative devices to serve the primary purpose of the game: to tell an entertaining story, "find out what happens next", to use the jargon of the game. The dungeon for instance does not positively exist in an emulated world, since vast areas are purposefully left blank in order to serve the narrative first, to be able to fill in those blanks in the most entertaining and drama-oriented manner possible. The purpose of "Fronts" is contained in the name: to serve as fronts, as antagonists in the narrative being opposed against the protagonists and producing drama; and only matter to the game as such. These elements have a sole purpose to serve as decor, as color, as tools serving and being supplanted by the overriding needs of the narrative. Building a story/narrative together is the primary purpose of the game. Hence, not a role playing game, to me.

I can definitely see where you are coming from, and FWIW, I agree that by the author's intentions (both Baker and Sage) the narrative aspect is king and is the focus, however, authorship is meant to happen from a character-focused perspective.  As Baker himself agreed with Zak, the player creates things outside the character yet about the character.  It's world-editing no doubt, especially in AW, but it is character-focused and limited, which is why it passes muster for Ramon, Tim, Tristam, people who don't really play Storygames.

I agree that if your criteria are Traditional RPGs and Other, then DW is without a doubt an other, there is no question since if the focus is storytelling and the roleplaying is simply the vehicle to storytelling, then while it obviously has to contain roleplaying, that's not the focus.

For that same reason, I would put D&D4e tip-toeing right on that line.  By design, the tactical wargame of the combat is king, the primary design goal, to the point of not even bothering to associate many of the powers in the game world (as has been discussed to death).  A computer and console 4e tactical game that you could have played against other people and had Clans for, etc, WotC would have had a crazy hit that would have raised even Hasbro's eyebrows.  As a RPG, well, we all know how that went.

I agree that D&D4 is definitely tipping towards the line of the hybrid, much like other, similar games like Cadwallon.

Now, just like you can put in the "story first" and narrativism into a role playing game on your own without any support from the rules, and in essence play a story game using RPG mechanics, just like you can use a MB HeroQuest board and minis and rules and bring in characterization and immersion ex nihilo to in essence play an RPG with this board game, or play Squad Leader and pretend you're the leader of the squad in that blue tank chit and do the same, you can use OD&D rules to in essence play a modern story game, or use Dungeon World, bring in world emulation ex nihilo, ignore much of the GM's rules and pillars of play, including "make moves", "follow the rules", "find out what happens next" and so on, consider moves as "optional" and play a role playing game using Dungeon World, a story game. But that's not what the game is primarily built to achieve.

Quote from: Benoist;669256The difference is that the Pundit is saying the GM in a trad RPG is explicitly above the rules and can override them on the spot, declaring "you're dead", whereas in DW you are explicitly told the GM SHOULD use a move. It is not innocuous, but one the three main mantras of "GMing" in DW: "Follow the Rules."

And your counter-argument is... to show a move the "GM" can use to do massive damage. *shakes head*

Well, what is so bad about following the rules? Genuine question, here.

I mean, I am running SW D6 (my write-up of the last session is due, I know) and I follow the rulres to the letter. I don't change them and I do not fudge rolls. Of course, I may have to adjudicate a rule on the spot because something is not covered, but then I write it down on my master doc of the rules and it becomes a rule.

Quote from: CRKrueger;669293I can definitely see where you are coming from, and FWIW, I agree that by the author's intentions (both Baker and Sage) the narrative aspect is king and is the focus, however, authorship is meant to happen from a character-focused perspective.  As Baker himself agreed with Zak, the player creates things outside the character yet about the character.  It's world-editing no doubt, especially in AW, but it is character-focused and limited, which is why it passes muster for Ramon, Tim, Tristam, people who don't really play Storygames.

Yeah, that and the fact that, in actual play, it didn't feel that different from any other RPG. So my players will call it an RPG, even if they acknowledge that is not the exact same experience than playin CoC, for example. They can see it as a different type of RPG, but an RPG nonetheless.

Quote from: Imperator;669301Well, what is so bad about following the rules? Genuine question, here.

It's not a question of "good" or "bad". Can Dungeon World be an entertaining game to play? Sure, just like playing HeroQuest can be awesome. I actually found it very well designed for what it is, and I have no doubt I could have a good time playing it with a "GM" who knows what he's doing, following the rules, playing to find out what happens next, yaddi yadda.

It's about a fundamental difference between a role playing game with a primary purpose of emulating a world and putting the GM as the main emulating force behind the screen using the rules, changing them, discarding them in order to effectively concentrate on the substance of the game, which is the milieu and the characters living in it, versus creating a structure of play you have to follow to build a narrative and engage in collaborative story-building time, the confinement of these parameters of play being a primary reason for the game to exist in the first place.

These are two radically different activities we are talking about. It's not about "good" or "bad", though story games generally will make for piss poor RPGs and RPGs for piss poor story telling games as Ron Edwards himself noted in his famous "brain-damage" comment. Just like playing an RPG with say HeroQuest or Squad Leader might be functional at first glance, but suboptimal compared to say, using an actual role playing game to do so.

Quote from: Benoist;669281Vampire runs its mouth with "storytelling", but what its rules and game components actually accomplish is emulating a world where vampires actually exist, and emulate the City by Night thereof (this is this schizophrenic design Ron Edwards was confronting when he talked about people playing WW games being brain-damaged). All these are role playing games.

Dungeon World has a purpose to build a collaborative narrative. There is no actual world that is being emulated at all, its components only existing as narrative devices to serve the primary purpose of the game: to tell an entertaining story, "find out what happens next", to use the jargon of the game. The dungeon for instance does not positively exist in an emulated world, since vast areas are purposefully left blank in order to serve the narrative first, to be able to fill in those blanks in the most entertaining and drama-oriented manner possible.

It's curious that for Vampire, you ignore the stated purpose of the rules and instead judge by what it accomplishes.  However, for Dungeon World you talk only about what the purpose of the rules are - not what they accomplish.  There are a lot of older RPGs that actively encourage improvising parts of the world and/or leaving blanks in the world design.  It's not just Vampire and other White Wolf games -  Over The Edge, Toon, Paranoia, Feng Shui, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many others state this as their ideal quite clearly.  Many official adventure modules for a variety of games have a storyline or sequence of scenes rather than just a set of maps to explore.  

Yes, you can ignore the books and use, say, the Vampire mechanics to emulate a world without storytelling.  You can do this with the Dungeon World mechanics too, though.  This doesn't change that GMing in a storytelling style has been part of the RPG tradition for many decades.  

Apocalypse World and its derived games have a few mechanical distinctions, but they are clearly within the spectrum of games played prior to 2000.

Quote from: jhkim;669324It's curious that for Vampire, you ignore the stated purpose of the rules and instead judge by what it accomplishes.  However, for Dungeon World you talk only about what the purpose of the rules are - not what they accomplish.

Yes, because there is a difference between the stated purpose of the rules, and what the rules actually do. The difference in this case is that what Vampire says it's built for is not what its actual rules do (which again, is exactly what Ron had against WW games to begin with), whereas what Dungeon World says it's built for is actually what its rules do (which would make Ron very proud, because it's "coherent" design).

Quote from: Benoist;669326Yes, because there is a difference between the stated purpose of the rules, and what the rules actually do. The difference in this case is that what Vampire says it's built for is not what its actual rules do (which again, is exactly what Ron had against WW games to begin with), whereas what Dungeon World says it's built for is actually what its rules do (which would make Ron very proud, because it's "coherent" design).

I agree with the sentiment, but not with the evaluation of what the rules actually do. The rules don't give players the opportunity to 'take narrative control from the GM, they don't influence whether a player adopts an immersive or author stance, and they don't give any powers associated with being the GM to the players during the game. The only real change from an old school d&d rules hack is in regards to the DM.

Quote from: TristramEvans;669333I agree with the sentiment, but not with the evaluation of what the rules actually do. The rules don't give players the opportunity to 'take narrative control from the GM, they don't influence whether a player adopts an immersive or author stance, and they don't give any powers associated with being the GM to the players during the game. The only real change from an old school d&d rules hack is in regards to the DM.

The rules take control away from the GM because it is explicitly stated that the GM must follow the rules and manage the game using moves. The entire point of DW as a game is predicated on that notion, and the entire point of the game as a whole is to build a narrative and "find out what happens next". Everything, from partially blank maps to fronts to everything, is geared towards that single goal. Sure, you could ignore moves and consider them optional and whatnot, you could ignore the explicit advice of DW and grab a complete map and introduce some form of world emulation after the fact, ex nihilo, but then, you're not really playing DW, you're playing some other type of game (maybe an RPG, maybe not) using some of the mechanics of DW in the process, like you could conceivable play an RPG with say, HeroQuest, or Once Upon A Time, or Squad Leader.

Quote from: RPGPundit;669175That's one of many factors that involve the differences between a storygame and an RPG, sure.
In an RPG, it works like this:
Player: I want to do X
GM: Explain what you would like X to look like, and what you are doing to attempt this?
Player: "like this..."
GM: Ok, you succeed. (or fail, or some third condition thereof)

You'll note that the Player doesn't get to control reality AFTER the fact of his successful roll; he's not rolling to "be in control of the story".  Nor does he obviously get to control reality before either; rather, in an RPG (as opposed to a storygame) the player is not at any point expressing what actually HAPPENS (only the GM may do that), he's rather expressing what he would like to ATTEMPT.

?

This is how lots of storygames work as well. For example, Other Worlds.

Quote from: RPGPundit;669179I challenge the Swine to send me a review copy and I will review it (a challenge they will no doubt refuse to accept because they know, shit, we ALL know, what the truth is about DW!).

Exactly. People aren't giving you free stuff because they are AFRAID OF THE TRUTH

My own response is that there is actually multiple things going on here, and without unpacking them, the arguments only partially make sense whilst also partially causing disagreement.

Narrative RPGs
The first part is the use of OOC mechanics that allow the player to contribute direct on a narrative level.

I think that allowing players to contribute direct to the narrative has been a part of RPGs since their inception. Whether it be a GM who asks their players to create a part of the setting, a player writing a character backstory, or just players talking to their GM about what they wanted to see in the game. You didn't need to have it this to be RPGing, but doing so didn't suddenly stop it being RPGing.

As early as the early 1980s, this concept started to appear in actual mechanics. This created disagreement even way back when, with RPGers strongly having preferences one way or the other. On saying that, I didn't ever recall it culminating with an argument that players having mechanics granting them narrative power somehow wasn't RPGing as RPGs with such mechanics were still focussed on players playing characters, and the GM being the primary creator/driver of story.

Story-Games
The second part is the development of the story game in the late 1990s. These games introduced a new concept of making the story creation into an actual game itself. It necessarily required that the rules provide a level playing field so players could compete. This in turn necessitated a restriction on the GM's ultimate authority.

For whatever reason, possibly the change in play style or more likely the designers and fandom surrounding the new play style, a lot of RPGers did not like story gaming and some even felt offended by it. Leaving that aside, I think that this shift was significant enough that it became possible to distinguish a story-game (like My Life With Master or Baron Munchhausen) from RPGs, much like RPGs had from wargames in the 1970s. The desire to do so and the ability to do so, leads us to this exercise.

Modern Design
However, there is a third part. Story-game development did focus on the re-examination of the role of rules. This was necessary for story-gaming to achieve the player competition that that kind of game requires. However, this re-examination was also done in RPGs around the same time, which makes sense given that they are obviously related in terms of development.

TBH I don't know if this re-examination started in RPGs or story-games, but I don't think it matters. Designers of RPGs started looking more closely at ways of communicating and engaging more directly with players through the mechanics than ever before. This is seen in games such as D&D3e, D&D4e, WFRP3e, The One Ring and the *World, where OOC engagement is high on a number of fronts including both narrative and tactical.

Again, I think people have some valid issues with the approach of modern design. Can you improve roleplaying through mechanics has been an long discussed topic. However, again, I don't think that the modern design approach prevents an RPG from being an RPG.

Dungeon World
What does that mean for Dungeon World?

First, it does have mechanics that allow the player to make narrative contributions. As said, a group of RPGers doesn't think this distinguishes it from narrative RPGs that have been around in some form for three decades, and arguably longer.

Second, it is not a story-game as there is no contest between the players to create story. The players are focussed on playing their characters. The GM is the primary creator/driver of story. There is flexibility to shift the balance just like it is in any RPG, but as written it can play as an RPG.

Third, it does have a modern presentation of rules. The mechanics are written to engage the player direct. This is causing some people to have an adverse reaction as they see that language as necessarily leading to a player competitive story game style that limits the GM. This is not the case. It does make parts of the RPGing experience more explicit, but part of the *World's success in its design is that it does that without changing how many people have been RPGing (admittedly through narrative RPGs) for a long time.

Overall, I am not surprised that Dungeon World will be disliked by some RPGers, and the paranoid may even see it as some kind of story-game infiltrator. But I still object to the idea that Dungeon World is somehow not an RPG on the grounds being given.

Quote from: Benoist;669326Yes, because there is a difference between the stated purpose of the rules, and what the rules actually do. The difference in this case is that what Vampire says it's built for is not what its actual rules do (which again, is exactly what Ron had against WW games to begin with), whereas what Dungeon World says it's built for is actually what its rules do (which would make Ron very proud, because it's "coherent" design).

Quote from: Benoist;669334Sure, you could ignore moves and consider them optional and whatnot, you could ignore the explicit advice of DW and grab a complete map and introduce some form of world emulation after the fact, ex nihilo, but then, you're not really playing DW, you're playing some other type of game (maybe an RPG, maybe not) using some of the mechanics of DW in the process, like you could conceivable play an RPG with say, HeroQuest, or Once Upon A Time, or Squad Leader.

The latter is fine in itself - but you claim that the explicit advice of Vampire is irrelevant and doesn't matter.  i.e. Vampire is still traditional even though all of the GM material is about chronicle and storytelling.  And this is even more true for other earlier RPGs like Toon, Ghostbusters, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and many others - which explicitly advice the GM to make stuff up on the fly to enhance the story.

Quote from: Benoist;669256The difference is that the Pundit is saying the GM in a trad RPG is explicitly above the rules and can override them on the spot, declaring "you're dead", whereas in DW you are explicitly told the GM SHOULD use a move. It is not innocuous, but one the main mantras of "GMing" in DW: "Follow the Rules."

And your counter-argument is... to show a move the "GM" can use to do massive damage. *shakes head*

So, if a Move embraces everything a GM could do in a traditional RPG and says that a GM should make Moves, your objection is based solely on the title given.

Quote from: CRKrueger;669271In other words, it's specifically trying NOT to be the type of Story-Game, where the game is literally about who controls the Story.

At the same time, it's specifically trying NOT to be a immersive RPG, because it gives the players mechanics to narratively control their character as a player.  That narrative layer is omnipresent and fundamental to the rules and the design.

That the game works for narrative players, and works for roleplayers who don't mind narrative control is testament to the design.  That genre-based focus works.

However, despite the fact that you like it or love it, despite the fact that the narrative aspects don't bother you, despite the fact that you are capable of roleplaying and having fun with the game - it does indeed contain player-facing narrative control mechanics that allow decisions outside the character.

Does that make it a Storygame? Sorry Pundit, but No.  Your definition of Storygame is outdated.

Does that make it not an RPG?  Obviously depends upon your definition, but for me, No, it is a type of RPG, with RPG in this case having as broad a definition as "Motion Picture" or "Automobile".

So what is it?  A Narrative RPG. A Hybrid RPG. It's really something new.  It's definitely not a traditional RPG by any definition that isn't deliberately misapplied.  It's totally Modern design, with the focus on seeing roleplaying as a way to interactively storytell.

It's what WW said they were doing, but provided no real mechanical support for.  It's interactive storytelling through roleplaying.

Well said. I agree with this.

As I mentioned above, I think there needs to be more examination of the modern design ethic of RPGs more broadly and not just in terms of the narrative rules. In many ways, the same criticisms laid against D&D4e's modern design approach to its tactical rules is the same as Dungeon World's modern design approach to its narrative rules.

Quote from: Benoist;669334The rules take control away from the GM because it is explicitly stated that the GM must follow the rules and manage the game using moves.

Indeed, several restrictions are placed on the GM insofar that the game codifies the mechanics of the game within the context of moves, one money represeting the method of task resolution for a variety of contexts. It does have those training wheels in place as written. But it doesn't in turn redistribute any of the GM's power to the players,  which is what I think is the crucial distinction.

QuoteThe entire point of DW as a game is predicated on that notion, and the entire point of the game as a whole is to build a narrative and "find out what happens next". Everything, from partially blank maps to fronts to everything, is geared towards that single goal. Sure, you could ignore moves and consider them optional and whatnot, you could ignore the explicit advice of DW and grab a complete map and introduce some form of world emulation after the fact,

This part confuses me, as the phrase 'build a narrative'  is quite similar to how I think of traditional rpgs rather than story games; the 'story' is being discovered during play, its how you describe everything that happens in the gameafter the fact. During the game there is no story, because your living in the 'present' as your role, making choices from the POV of your character. After the game you have a story (with the caveat that's is very unlikely to be a story anyone who didn't 'live thru it' will have any interest in whatsoever).

I have similar feelings about the phrase "find out what happens next", which again is a very good description of one of the distinctions I make between traditional rpgs and story games, in that I don't want to plan out what's going to happen ahead of time, I dont want to jump thru the hoops of a pre-plotted 'choose your own adventure', and I don't want to view my PC from an authorial perspective. I want to see what happens next. Heck, I'd say that's a good summary of the entire reason rpgs use dice.

As for the 'complete map and world emulation' comment, well on the one hand I'm empathetic in that I gravitate towards 'culture games'. I like world building nd what Tolkien called 'subcreation'. I want to be immersed in my character's culture and for our imaginary worlds to be heavy with a sense of history and feel that there's things taking place outside of the 'PC Spotlight'. But the minimalist approach where world details are filled in as the come up cannot be a way of distinguishing an RPG from a storygame, as that describes for the majority of players the standard experience of playing D&D. Sure, there were some lovely settings published...eventually...but that just sounds like, well, an atypical dungeoncrawl. Moreover it seems to mirror exactly the approach Arneson took to Blackmoor.


As for your last point about removing the moves but it being a different game, this seems to contradict pundit's definition of story games as applied to Fate.