Quote from: RPGPundit;674804The very use of the term, however (as opposed to "game world" or "in character") has a kind of alienating effect.  One hears "fiction" and it instantly creates a barrier to Immersion, you are viewing your character not as a living virtual person, but as a piece of fiction.  It seems to me that its very purpose is to remind you that "its not real" or something like that, to intentionally alienating you from immersing in your character or in the setting.

RPGPundit

I get that. I just know for myself, I am reminded that my character is not real when I see his name written on a character sheet, or move a miniature pewter version of him around on the table, or cast dice, or any of a hundred other things. I'm fine with this, but I can certainly appreciate other people's tolerance being lower.

I must admit though, "living virtual person" does strike me as a bit of a funny oxymoron. (Only just.)

And let's not ignore either the "game" in game world, or the "character" of in-character. Both words with fairly strong ties to unreal-ness, play-acting, etc. I think "fiction" just chafes more because it's unfamiliar.

In DW, a "just a miss" would be the GM move "use up their resources" (time is a resource, often a very important one). Its a pretty soft move, I tend to be meaner on a miss.

"game world" gets a little complex in a game called Dungeon World. Which is a good argument for calling the game something else, but the way we developed the game (pitting everything out there as we went) meant there wasn't much turning back. We also have an entire section on "the world," which is GM tools for realm management basically.

"in character" is a tough one to write for, since it can also mean "talking as your character." "Moves trigger based on what's happening in-character" doesn't seem as clear to me.

Not claiming "fiction" is perfect, just that we didn't find anything better. It's"purpose" isn't to remind anyone of anything. Its to refer, in one word, to the place all the characters are in which doesn't actually exist.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;674781He can do a "you miss, who's next" if he really wants to.  There's nothing preventing him from doing that.  Dungeon World merely offers a handful of tools for GMs to do more than that if they so desire.

TSR era AD&D offered more than a handful.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;674708Bold are examples of my own making.

Yeah, I see that as something that in typical rpgs might be written up as a list of suggestions or a random chart for "fumbles" ( easily the most common house rule I've encountered, meaning every role playing group across five states and 3 provinces I've talked to or played with interpret a roll of 1 or 01 as 'especially bad'. Unless a rule called for rolling low, 1 generally meant 'the GM isn't going to pull any punches, Gawd I hope he's not feeling "creative" '.).

In other words I can't see those as the constraints on GM's ability to GM any more than I would the random encounters charts in the DMG. I really don't think its a story game, it just approached writing an RPG with the (I can only presume) intention of completely discarding the hobby's long-standing approach to explaining games in a a mixture of lingo and jargon established by gygax, and pretty much universally adopted except for those rpgs that tried to be novels.

And Nobilis. But we don't talk about Nobilis. 'Hollyhock Gods' indeed B to M. The first, IMO, story game that identified as an RPG, Baron M_, lampooned this rather amusingly.

Instead, Dw ( possibly Aw? I've never read it), created its own jargon and assumed a new audience (or tried to emphasize or portray certain ideas obscured in the classic approach?). But I think a) that's perfectly valid, because b) all the new terms are easily identifiable with their concepts in plain English and standard board game language.

All that said, I maintain that the amount of guidance for gms codified is what I would call 'GM training wheels' and you could effectively present the game with every rule for the GM ommited, and just a chapter ( or more if you've had bad karma or you like crunch) of general advice. And yes, I acknowledge that the unfortunate attempted indoctrination of roleplayers by the industry to only understanding RAW-play and to disbelieve that gms can be trusted could lead to a 4venger or two dozen throwing a for during a game that the GM 'isn't playing by the ruuuuuuules!'. But I don't think that's DWs fault, anymore than I blame d&d because it attracted a gaggle of neckbearders that the public currently identifies our hobby by.

Quote from: RPGPundit;674804The very use of the term, however (as opposed to "game world" or "in character") has a kind of alienating effect.  One hears "fiction" and it instantly creates a barrier to Immersion, you are viewing your character not as a living virtual person, but as a piece of fiction.  It seems to me that its very purpose is to remind you that "its not real" or something like that, to intentionally alienating you from immersing in your character or in the setting.

RPGPundit

Yeah, again, I think that's only because your viewing it through the lens of classic RPG terminology. I think that if you replaced the words like "fiction" or "moves" with "game world/setting/icc" and "rolls/system/chart", you'd find the underlying concepts pretty much no different than the rules of any classic RPG.

Quote from: TristramEvans;674822In other words I can't see those as the constraints on GM's ability to GM any more than I would the random encounters charts in the DMG.

All that said, I maintain that the amount of guidance for gms codified is what I would call 'GM training wheels' and you could effectively present the game with every rule for the GM ommited, and just a chapter ( or more if you've had bad karma or you like crunch) of general advice. And yes, I acknowledge that the unfortunate attempted indoctrination of roleplayers by the industry to only understanding RAW-play and to disbelieve that gms can be trusted could lead to a 4venger or two dozen throwing a for during a game that the GM 'isn't playing by the ruuuuuuules!'. But I don't think that's DWs fault, anymore than I blame d&d because it attracted a gaggle of neckbearders that the public currently identifies our hobby by.

Codified or structured is exactly how I see the DW or AW GM's section. The rules given for the GM to follow, as has been said before, are mostly just codification of good GM practice or things GMs already do. For the new or inexperienced GM they're very handy; I hadn't run a game in decades before I ran a few sessions of my AW hack for my local group. Having some structure for what you say when everyone is looking at you is a big confidence boost. Likewise, the Fronts mechanic is very useful GM tool. If you've done your Fronts right, any time you want to advance your plot ("Always say what your prep demands", AW PDF pp109, yes you can do prep and have a plot in mind) you just pull off the next portent and make it happen in the fiction. If you're already a good GM, most or all of this will already be second nature.

What I find interesting about the * World games is that the player has less structure, but the GM has more than in traditional games. If you look at a PC for a lot of popular systems, they feature lists of special abilities, spells, powers, feats, and actions that they can do on any given round. Too often players will look at their power list, pick one, and that's their turn. DW removes that crutch. Even if you want to use a specific power that is represented by a class move, you still have to say how you're doing it instead of just saying "I use $POWER, I roll damage..." [sic] The player is encouraged by the rule not to just invoke a move but to find a creative application of their abilities. As a player in this sort of system this frees me up to be more involved in play than if I were just going through the tactical minutia of many other systems.

Conversely, the GM has a list of moves to choose from. Even if you never say "I'll Portent Danger, storm clouds start crowding the sky, and they're an ugly color..." there is a list to choose from. In addition to the standard GM moves there are also dungeon moves and monster moves to use. Fronts are another handy source of things to say that fit the GM moves. Oddly, all this structure makes me feel freer as a DM. I have so many things I could do that picking the one that stands out as fitting the already established fiction best is easy.

Freeing players by removing the menu of choices while freeing GMs by providing one is weird but in a good way. That it works is a strong sign that the GM rules in AW and DW are just guides towards good GMing and not an abhorrent restriction on the power of the GM. I'll go so far as to say that they're one of the few sets of rules that I think could teach a new GM the ropes from just the core book.

Can I mention again I'm having fun with Dungeon World?
You can say it isn't an RPG, it has no feelings to hurt

Quote from: TristramEvans;674822Instead, Dw ( possibly Aw? I've never read it), created its own jargon and assumed a new audience (or tried to emphasize or portray certain ideas obscured in the classic approach?). But I think a) that's perfectly valid, because b) all the new terms are easily identifiable with their concepts in plain English and standard board game language.

I can say that from my own perspective & play experience, ApocalypseWorld sits much closer to feeling like a sandbox storygame. Dunno if I'd say it fits entirely in that circle, but there's overlap at least.

Part of the labeling issue I have is that I tend to think of "storygame" as just a more precise subset of "RPG", not something wholly separate. The label I'd put on a lot of the canonical RPGs on this forum is just "traditional RPG". But anyway: I haven't run AW, only played, but the GM/MC advice it gives seems much more directed toward the interests/agenda of a storygame. DW moves back along the spectrum a ways toward the trad end of things; a lot of its language is much more familiar & universal than AW, which is full of quirks meant to evoke/suggest its setting.

Quote from: TristramEvans;674822All that said, I maintain that the amount of guidance for gms codified is what I would call 'GM training wheels' and you could effectively present the game with every rule for the GM ommited, and just a chapter ( or more if you've had bad karma or you like crunch) of general advice. And yes, I acknowledge that the unfortunate attempted indoctrination of roleplayers by the industry to only understanding RAW-play and to disbelieve that gms can be trusted could lead to a 4venger or two dozen throwing a for during a game that the GM 'isn't playing by the ruuuuuuules!'. But I don't think that's DWs fault, anymore than I blame d&d because it attracted a gaggle of neckbearders that the public currently identifies our hobby by.

So when it comes to RAW play, I know I push myself to stick inside the game rules as GM in order to see what happens when I do. Sometimes, the rules are guiding me toward a different experience than I assumed they would, that I might have missed otherwise. Sometimes they're just rules. But even then I like them sometimes, because as someone said early in this thread (Silva I think), this just creates a little subgame I get to play while GMing.

I'm a big fan of Magic: the Gathering & like reading about how that game gets made. One of the things the lead creative designer is always saying about game design is that "Restrictions breed creativity," and I've found it to be really true in RPGs, too. It might annoy others, but I like the challenge of seeing what will fit between the bars on a window, testing how far the bars will bend, twisting them into new shapes, finding out how big of a thing I can squeeze through before shit starts breaking, etc. I mean, I could totally just tear out the bars completely and move my hands around in total freedom, but where's the sport in that?

Speaking of sport, there's something I feel I'm missing when I go through some of the earlier posts in this thread. When I read quotes like this...

Quote from: Brad;667407It's only a game in the loosest sense, considering the goal is not to overcome obstacles, but only to have obstacles out in front of the characters and see what happens. Failure is just as valuable as success if it brings about something interesting. Again, that's a fine goal for a novel, but pretty awful for a game.

Quote from: Brad;667551To use a more concrete example, when watching an improv group, there's a story that unfolds, typically with input from the audience. The goal is to create an interesting scenario for entertainment purposes. There might even be a moderator. It is not an RPG, though, nor is it a game. It is improv theatre. Dungeon World is exactly like an improv group because the goal is not to overcome obstacles, but to arrive at a story, shared and produced mutually.

(Emphasis mine) ...these arguments sounds strange to me. What it sounds like to me is something that's still a game, but with differing Agendas for each role. Instead of improv, let's use the example of football in the NFL. Because we can also say of football, "when watching a game, there's a story that unfolds." But as Brad himself mentioned:

Quote from: Brad;667613The story is what you talk about when the game is over; when you're playing the actual game, there is no story.

(which, interestingly, matches almost exactly to something I heard the big bad persona non grata himself Luke Crane say about "storytelling" in RPGs in a panel at PAX)

This isn't the case to an audience, though. Football is pretty explicitly a game, yet to an unbiased spectator, the aphorism that "failure is just as valuable as success if it brings about something interesting" is totally true. Unless you're rooting for one team in particular, your Agenda in the audience is probably to be entertained. Which is more interesting? An offsides foul that stops the action before it starts, or the QB fumbling a live ball that leads to a turnover? A dropped pass that's ruled incomplete, or the QB throwing a pick to the fastest player on the other team? And to tie this back to RPGs for a moment, there are lots of situations where a GM is like an "unbiased spectator" as well, making this equally true for that role, sometimes.

Now to the players on the field, obviously the "interestingness" is totally besides the point for the purposes of their primary Agenda, and the offsides penalties and dropped passes have pretty close to equal gameplay value as the turnovers & interceptions, even if they're not as flashy. Because the Player Agenda is totally different: win. Win above all, overcome all obstacles, and stop the other side from gaining any ground.

But if you changed football so that offsides penalties didn't exist, and dropped balls were always live, it'd still be a game, right? People could & would argue over if it was still football, but it's definitely still a game. A rules body, like the NFL, decides it wants to create a "more interesting" game. It has an Agenda to produce a worthwhile game, but one to create entertaining events, too. For the sake of this analogy, we'll call this game Football Lite. The game's rules have been artificially changed to (hopefully) increase interesting outcomes, but it's still a game.

And when you consider a referee who moves from football to Football Lite, their Referee Agenda hasn't changed much if at all between games. The biggest piece is still "Enforce the rules & make rulings/judgment calls on the field". The rules of Football Lite itself just preclude some game situations from ever needing addressing.

The GM of an RPG tends to manage a lot of Agendas at once, so the analogy is muddier here, I'll admit. (Plus, in a some RPGs the GM is often both Referee and Audience, which can go for the Players too. Or the GM is Referee in-game, players are Players, and everyone is Audience after.) Now, to get back to DW, "Create a more interesting game" is an implicit Agenda due to the GM principles & whatnot ("Fill the characters' life with adventure" fits the bill more explicitly), but the game rules themselves for triggering GM moves on a player's miss, etc., are what are really doing most of the heavy lifting.

As for the argument that "Dungeon World is exactly like an improv group because the goal is not to overcome obstacles, but to arrive at a story, shared and produced mutually," I think that's mixing up some Agendas & roles. I can say from watching it happen, that the Agenda of the players as Players is absolutely to overcome obstacles, and they fight tooth & nail to do it.

It's true that in the players' other capacity as Audience, they can appreciate the drama of the Big Fail that they just created & that the GM picked up & smashed them with. But the same is true for football players, too: their goal is still to overcome those obstacles, but it doesn't mean they can't appreciate an impressive turn of events for what it is as a kind of Audience member, too. Either in-game or after it. Neither of these situations stops football (or Football Lite, or Dungeon World) from being a game.

Quote from: _nthdegree;674797"Fiction first" does NOT mean "consider the needs of the fictional tale we are collaboratively generating first," as the phrase might suggest, and as might be true of a narrative game or story-game.

The "fiction" mentioned is the in-game fiction of the world, the fiction that it is real, that it exists, that it has rules and obeys them. "The fiction" is shorthand for "the artificial construct in which we place the actions of this game" to get all fancy about it.

There's already a commonly used term for this (strange to me) use of the term "fiction": "the setting": the artificial world created by the GM (or by some purchased setting pack in combination with the GM) where the events of the campaign take place. "Setting" has been used for this in tabletop RPGs for many years -- since the late 1970s. Unlike "the fiction," "the setting" isn't likely to make people hearing the term think one is talking about "the story". I do not see any reason to replace a clear term like "the setting" with one that you seem to admit is likely to confuse people about what the term is actually referring to.

Quote"Fiction first" means to have the specified rules of that shared artificial construct in the forefront of our minds for every proposed action (god, even I hate writing it out this way like a half-assed college paper).

I've never used the phrase "setting first" and I don't think I ever would as I think "not being fun for GM/players" trumps setting. However, since the days when "corporate Gary" was writing those silly columns in The Dragon magazine where he tried to convince people that using anything but "official TSR" rules and products would ruin your game, I've said "Setting trumps Rules" -- shorthand for "the needs of the GM's campaign setting always override any rules requirements/issues if there is a conflict." So, in my world if something is not fun for the players and the GM in the setting or in the rules, change the setting and/or the rules as needed -- and if some in the setting violates the rules of the game, change the rules to match the setting.

However, there is seldom a need for anyone but the GM to think about how the setting works in my games. The players only need to think about playing their character "right" in the setting -- keeping the setting "right" is the GM's worry.  OOC concerns like setting and rules are kept to the GM as much as possible.

Quote from: RandallS;675003There's already a commonly used term for this (strange to me) use of the term "fiction": "the setting": the artificial world created by the GM (or by some purchased setting pack in combination with the GM) where the events of the campaign take place. "Setting" has been used for this in tabletop RPGs for many years -- since the late 1970s. Unlike "the fiction," "the setting" isn't likely to make people hearing the term think one is talking about "the story". I do not see any reason to replace a clear term like "the setting" with one that you seem to admit is likely to confuse people about what the term is actually referring to.

Yeah, but there are many settings. If I started talking about "what's happening in the setting" that wouldn't be much like current usage, I think. There's the setting, which is this place that the GM came up with (or learned about), but at least the way I'm used to talking about it "the setting" is a place, not the current state of an entire world.

We didn't just pull something out of the air, we thought about this, and felt like "fiction" was our best option. Dragons are often referred to as "fictional beasts." A fiction is something that doesn't actually exist, and that's what we're talking about.

Quote from: RandallS;675003I've said "Setting trumps Rules" -- shorthand for "the needs of the GM's campaign setting always override any rules requirements/issues if there is a conflict." So, in my world if something is not fun for the players and the GM in the setting or in the rules, change the setting and/or the rules as needed -- and if some in the setting violates the rules of the game, change the rules to match the setting.

However, there is seldom a need for anyone but the GM to think about how the setting works in my games. The players only need to think about playing their character "right" in the setting -- keeping the setting "right" is the GM's worry.  OOC concerns like setting and rules are kept to the GM as much as possible.

This is usually my approach too. And it's why there are various DW-based setting/hacks that change rules to fit a specific setting, and lots of people doing that day to day at their tables, and an entire section of the book on it. That section is aimed squarely at the GM.

Ok. I've now read Dungeon World, and am ready to come to a final ruling.

There's no question whatsoever that DW is up to its arse in Storygaming pretentiousness: it borrows their jargon in many places and their style of creating jargon in others. The verbiage it uses is undoubtedly inspired by the Forge, not regular RPGs.  But how pretentious you sound doesn't affect whether or not you're an RPG, or else Vampire and Nobilis wouldn't be RPGs, but they are.  So what matters is how those terms are applied.

The only thing that matters is whether this setting falls within or outside the Landmarks of regular RPG play.  I think it is very tricky, because its very clearly an intentional attempt to really really straddle the margin, as part of a storygames effort to infiltrate RPGs.  What I've been trying to work out in all this time is whether its a Storygame that puts on a veneer of RPG-like play, or whether its an RPG that is loaded to the gills with Storygame concepts.

And I find myself forced to conclude that its probably the latter.

A) The text of the book certainly talks about creating a world, and that this world has things in it, and that the world itself (those parts that are known and defined of it) are not supposed to be malleable except "in game" (or I guess they'd say "in the fiction").  It is, in other words, an attempt at emulative.  Whether it does it badly or not is another story.

B) It certainly has players playing their characters, and while some of the nature of the text works against Immersion, other parts seem to try to encourage players to immerse in their characters.  Certainly, using concepts and details from Storygames means the game is working against its own goal here, you could even call it "incoherent" in that sense if one wished to hoist them with their own petard, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that Immersion is a) possible and b) not just possible as a reading against-the-grain of the game (because of course immersion would be theoretically possible in any number of storygames, or monopoly, or hungry hungry hippos, but in all of these would be counter to the stated nature of the game).

C) It has a GM. And while some of the mechanics do try to limit the game more than you'd see in OSR D&D, the way the game is written (plus the statements the author has made on this very forum) confirm that the GM is not in fact a hostage to either the players or the rules. He can change the rules or add new ones. He could, in fact, make a new "GM Move" called "Rocks fall, everyone dies".

D) There are a couple of areas that hint at players getting to decide things about the world inasmuch as the DM wants them to. There is also the infamous "choose whether you fired extra shots after you roll" thing. But I find myself forced to agree that while some of these details come very very close to playing with the boundaries, it is still within the limits (albeit the absolute limits) of the landmarks.  There's no egregious case in the game where a player can choose to radically alter the reality of the setting suspending all emulation, and with no justification.

E) The final and big question, the one that matters above all else: does this game put Story over Emulation/Immersion (what some term versimilitude)?  When push comes to shove, will the sense of being a real world with real people win out over trying to make the best story, or will trying to make the best story win out over creating a virtual world?
And to my surprise, the answer clearly seems to be that for all of its talk of "the Fiction" and of storytelling and that the game is about "seeing what happens", etc. etc., there is in fact nothing in Dungeon World that seems to let the group put the story above and beyond the emulation.  You can absolutely be shot in the head by a goblin at 1st level and die, without being part of any bigger story.
Now, you might argue that this is in fact the "story" that DW is trying to tell, that its a Storygame about a group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons, and not actually a real game of "dungeons and dragons". But if the abstraction has become so flawless that in fact you can collapse it completely and with the same rules you are really just playing (a really weird version of) "dungeons and dragons", then does it matter from our point of view?

In a way, its like the Storygamers have become too clever for their own good. Its like if you send in a deep-cover agent to infiltrate the enemy, and you want him to be perfect so you brainwash him so intensely he completely forgets who he used to be, only the result is he ends up really working for the other side!  
It also creates the irony that Storygames have, with Dungeon World, come full circle: the Forge/Storygames movement came out of a furious rejection of White Wolf's games that were full of pretentious jargon about "storytelling" and delusions of sophistication but didn't actually mechanically back that up; they then spent an entire decade creating games no one wanted to play that tried to really be about "creating story", only to end up with Dungeon World, probably the most popular game to have come out of the whole Forge/Storygame movement, be a game that's full of pretentious jargon about telling a story that doesn't actually back it up.

Dungeon World isn't a storygame; its like if the Soviet Union declared the "ultimate victory of communism" by calling elections and opening a Moscow Disneyland. Its the Boris Yeltsin to Ron Edwards' Lenin.

And here I was, Cold Warrior that I am, thinking that this game was some kind of trick, when its really about the utter collapse of Storygaming as a threat.  In fact, if anything, Dungeon World proves their failure.
It addresses the question "What does a Storygame have to do to be a mainstream success?" with the answer "it has to become an RPG".

Not that there won't still be Storygaming Swine making games that are still really Storygames, sure; or trying to infiltrate storygame concepts and mechanics into regular RPGs by trick or by force.   That will probably go on for a long time.  But I think DW proves to me that as a separate movement, Storygames is spent. Their biggest fanatics, the ones who despise RPGs to the point where no surrender is possible, will have moved on; many of them have already into making Pseudo-Activism their new method. If being the soviets (complete with the red star of the "Indie Press Revolution") and seeking to remake the hobby through "Theory" didn't work for them, they'll try to become the Taliban, or the Tipper Gore Moral Defense League, or whatever you want to call it, and seek to remake the hobby that way.

So in any case, I find myself to my own amusement obliged to say sure, Dungeon World is in fact an RPG. Post about it in the main forum of theRPGsite if you like. Why on earth would I want to suppress the capstone on the grave of Forge Theory, the testament of the Storygame Swine selling themselves out and crossing back over the Landmarks into the Regular RPG hobby after realizing there's no market for the 'revolution' they were pushing?

RPGPundit

Color me pleasantly surprised.

Quote from: theRPGPunditSo in any case, I find myself to my own amusement obliged to say sure, Dungeon World is in fact an RPG.