Quote from: Spike;641817Maybe I'm not picking up what you guys are putting down, so I'm reluctant to wade into a discussion/debate/arguement on this topic since I'm not at all clear what's actually going on.

The way this game works, the GM never rolls dice, and the players never call out a Move. If a player describes a simple attack against an armed enemy, the GM calls for a Move called "Hack and Slash". If the player rolls a high success, he deals his damage, or his damage +1d6 and his enemy also deals damage. If he rolls a median success, he deals his damage and the enemy deals theirs. However if this isn't an armed or capable enemy, or they could not reasonably defend themselves, they are simply slain and no hack and slash move is rolled.

The Move Fuck This Shit was a made up, which the game encourages GMs to do to sort out the key points of their adventures and flavor their games. Each move is like a tiny 3 result table that the GM can call for when he thinks it has been triggered. Otherwise the players and GM just describe everything their characters do without mechanics.

I've sometimes used (but not written up formally) the approach that there's an expected outcome, a better than average (for the players) outcome, and one worse (or simply more complicated) than average. This looks like some examples of that sort of assessment.

Quote from: KrakaJak;641838The way this game works, the GM never rolls dice, and the players never call out a Move. If a player describes a simple attack against an armed enemy, the GM calls for a Move called "Hack and Slash". If the player rolls a high success, he deals his damage, or his damage +1d6 and his enemy also deals damage. If he rolls a median success, he deals his damage and the enemy deals theirs. However if this isn't an armed or capable enemy, or they could not reasonably defend themselves, they are simply slain and no hack and slash move is rolled.

Nothing against Greentounge, but this was a lot more informative than his attempt (too much jargon!).

By itself that's fine. I've seen this sort of thing before, and I'm not entirely against it, though I do find that the more rigid interpretations (this appears to be a case...) do trigger a sort of WTF preemption.  I'm absolutely certain there are cases where NPCs should be 'acting' without 'Interacting', but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.  Certainly I like how reducing rolls can speed up game play and it make's the Drohelm example from early in the thread a little more relatable. It wasn't merely that he attacked and took damage, but that the resolution of the fight for that round was... balanced I guess you could say. Got it.

QuoteThe Move Fuck This Shit was a made up, which the game encourages GMs to do to sort out the key points of their adventures and flavor their games. Each move is like a tiny 3 result table that the GM can call for when he thinks it has been triggered. Otherwise the players and GM just describe everything their characters do without mechanics.

Yeah, see: I find this ridiculous nonsense on the face of it. Without actually reading the rules I'm reluctant to break out a point by point list of what I personally find wrong with it.  I'll more or less leave it at 'laziness masquerading as inventiveness'... much like the Skill List in Unknown Armies.

likewise: for a game that seems to be simplifying the play (single unopposed rolls that govern both sides of an opposed action), this does seem like needless 4E style power card complexity for its own sake.


I'm actually somewhat disappointed. While I was obviously questioning the game based on the AW sexual nonsense from a previous thread, I had thought that the game itself, as expressed in hacks like DW, might actually be appealing to me. I appear to have been mistaken.

Quote from: KrakaJak;641819It's very much a Storygame as I understand them. It gives a lot of the control of the narrative to the players, the GM has their own specific set of moves etc. I think it's confusing people because it's a Storygame set in a dungeon crawl setting. That and it calls it's action resolutions "Moves", which is a name that belies the very broad scope of action and resolution that the Moves cover.

Two of the key defining elements of a shared narrative game are the removal of surprise/randomness and a distance being put between players and characters, typically in the form of arbitrary NPC control or other control of the world/focus on narration. Moving away from the first person perspective in other words.

I haven't seen any of that in the mechanics so far - instead what you have are multiple choice skill results using dice with a slightly weird set of tradeoffs. In short a 1980s-era gamebook transformed into an RPG. There doesn't seem at first blush to be much that interferes with immersion, although again I haven't read the rules.

Do the rules speak about narration or story, stepping out of the first person at all?

Quote from: The Traveller;641891Do the rules speak about narration or story, stepping out of the first person at all?

No stepping out of the first person at all.

Quote from: Imperator;641900No stepping out of the first person at all.

Well that's the main box checked, is there anything to say stop the GM from having the Cardinal put out a hit on the group because they ran over his pet cat with a wagon while making their getaway from a haggling session gone terribly wrong, without them knowing it? Other than interpreting the results of moves, are there any restrictions on the GM basically?

Quote from: The Traveller;641923Well that's the main box checked, is there anything to say stop the GM from having the Cardinal put out a hit on the group because they ran over his pet cat with a wagon while making their getaway from a haggling session gone terribly wrong, without them knowing it? Other than interpreting the results of moves, are there any restrictions on the GM basically?

No, not at all.

If the PCs ran over the pet cat of the Cardinal and the Cardinal decides that they are to be killed, then the PCs will meet some nasty assassins and they will have to fight them using the normal rules. No restriction whatsoever.

Quote from: Imperator;641997If the PCs ran over the pet cat of the Cardinal and the Cardinal decides that they are to be killed, then the PCs will meet some nasty assassins and they will have to fight them using the normal rules. No restriction whatsoever.

Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

But is it an RPG, or a Storygame?

Quote from: Mistwell;642021But is it an RPG, or a Storygame?

Not to repeat myself but there don't appear to be any of the mechanics that make shared narrative games counterproductive to roleplaying, on the face of it. So yes, an RPG - the players don't have any more narrative control or interest than their characters would have. This is dependent on new information coming to light of course.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game.

The player's not narrating anything really, however the player does have some form of narrative control through the choices they make in the "succeed with complications" number range.  As I mentioned before with firing an arrow (the Volley move) a partial success means the player then decides whether he...

1. Actually hit with full damage, but had to fire several arrows to do it, thus reducing ammunition.
2. Actually hit with full damage, but had to reposition himself to do so, meaning the GM gets to put him in danger, possibly in front of charging orcs, or hanging off a balcony or whatever.
3. Score a weak hit that may do no damage whatsoever.

Now whether this is allowing a kind of retroactive world editing control after the die roll, or whether it is a form of mini-conflict resolution really depends on how the GM runs it, but traditional old school task resolution it ain't by any stretch of the imagination.

Best case scenario you get a variable time frame where one action could be one shot or several, could be aiming and firing or could include quite a bit of moving and then firing, depending on the players choice.

A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

Basically, the idea behind the X-world frame is to limit the players and GM to certain moves not in order to give players storytelling power, but to create a focused game that hits all the tropes of the genre.  A properly designed playbook can look to a more traditional RPer like a series of cards you have to play, but a properly designed playbook (which is what the X-world system calls a class, ie. a set of moves) will reinforce the genre and make it "feel" like you are playing a Post-Apocalyptic or Dungeon Crawling game.  In the case of Dungeon World, it's new school design applied to an old school genre.  As Justin said, describing it as old school is incorrect, if not downright unhelpful.

A similar thing existed in WFRP3 where certain classes like the Wardancer, Swordmaster, Trollslayer etc had certain cards they could play and had different tokens you had to manage which seemed very fiddly to read, but damned if a Wardancer didn't play like a Wardancer felt, with constant motion and shifting between offense and defense.  (If they'd laid off the narrative timing and relative distance crap and made use of maps as if it was a world you were adventuring in and not a Broadway Play, the line may have survived ).

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031As I mentioned before with firing an arrow (the Volley move) a partial success means the player then decides whether he...

1. Actually hit with full damage, but had to fire several arrows to do it, thus reducing ammunition.
2. Actually hit with full damage, but had to reposition himself to do so, meaning the GM gets to put him in danger, possibly in front of charging orcs, or hanging off a balcony or whatever.
3. Score a weak hit that may do no damage whatsoever.

I see what you're saying here, but to be honest that's just an elaboration on the binary one-zero success-fail of normal dice rolls. My own game allows retroactive moves, like Wild Dodge, declared after an attack, giving +4 on that dodge but -6 on all subsequent dodges instead of the standard -2, and my system is far from the only one that uses this method, albeit rarely. You know you're about to get damaged so you throw caution to the wind at the last instant. It's as legitimate as using fate or luck points really.

Further, most of the choices in moves are left up to the GM, or are framed as questions and as such are not disruptive to the raw mechanics. The GM can answer as he or she sees fit.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

Honestly I don't know why the GM uber alles contingent isn't all over this, the control over the setting combined with limited player moves seems very much up that alley.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031As Justin said, describing it as old school is incorrect, if not downright unhelpful.

Only if you don't consider gamebooks old school.

Quote from: Silverlion;640710Playing the game felt like a traditional RPG to me, it didn't pop up any "uncomfortable" elements that felt deprotaganizing, or "move your playing piece."

Quote from: Drohem;640723I agree that, for the most part, it played like a regular RPG session.

Quote from: Omnifray;640724I played a DW hack and also found it to be rather trad, as has been discussed elsewhere on these boards quite recently.

Quote from: Haffrung;640741I've read Dungeonworld, and it doesn't seem too far out there. I don't think my traditional-minded players would have a problem with it.

Quote from: mhensley;640758DW felt pretty traditional to me.

Quote from: Imperator;642046Yeah, its just codifying and putting a name to something that many of us have been doing for years, but it is completely trad.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

It seems like your opinion that those who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with it is not well supported by those here who have played the game.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

Yeah, its just codifying and putting a name to something that many of us have been doing for years, but it is completely trad.

And it's selling pretty well, AFAIK. He published his data and were good. Not Pathfinder-level good, but definitely a commercial success.

This seems to occupy a fuzzy area. On the one hand, it doesnt strike me as all that storygamie (though I dont think I understamd the mechanics all that well) but definitely different from most rpgs i have played. These mechanic do seem unusual to me, and they look kind of narrow and limiting imo, but its seems like an rpg. I think we are at a point where narrowing what an rpg is more and more, is just getting counter productive. The mechanics are design decisions I would never make. Looks like a game I probably wouldnt enjoy much (though would be happy to try). Is it an rpg? Sure. Just not one I have much interest in based on what I have seen.