Quote from: Jaeger;1098544Most AW players learn early on that you can consequence spiral yourself to death real quick if you try to do much beyond your niche early in the game.

This is not directed at Jaeger but a comment on AW and its type of mechanics.

The above is one of the reasons why I dislike these type of games and why I don't view of them as particularly innovative compared to other types of RPGs.

Namely the mechanics influenced what you do as a character that has nothing to do what would happen had player actually been there as the character. In this case choices were made because of the consequence spiral.

AW and other games similar design philosophies just amount to creative interpretation of dice. A step or two removed from creatively interpreting a monopoly game. Because of how the mechanics work you often wind up playing the dice game rather than playing the character.

Quote from: Itachi;1098588Regardless, what Jaeger said above still applies (even for DW): it's a philosophy that assumes players taking risks is good and desirable because it makes stories exciting. If you don't agree to that premise, don't play the games.

It's not the premise that I have a problem with, just the implementation. Even something like the wild die in the d6 SW game would be better as the odds of a complication are consistent regardless of skill and there always a 1/6 chance of something great happening. You could have all the benefits of complications with the added bonus that it encourages players to take risks.

There are dozens of board games that use a push-your-luck mechanic. Certainly there's some way to create a game similar to DW, with cascading complications, but that also mechanically encourages players to "follow the fiction" and act in a genre-appropriate way.

I feel odd defending PbtA (or at least AW) but it seems to me that this is not a system problem but a GMing problem. The GM determines the stakes in case of failure, no? That includes the stakes for failing to support your fighter PC ally. Here the GM doesn't punish unskillful behaviour by slapping on modifiers but by adjusting the ensuing complications. If you don't support your fighter guy but he succeeds, everything is fine. But if he fails, you're screwed for not supporting him.

Quote from: estar;1098590Namely the mechanics influenced what you do as a character that has nothing to do what would happen had player actually been there as the character. In this case choices were made because of the consequence spiral.

AW and other games similar design philosophies just amount to creative interpretation of dice. A step or two removed from creatively interpreting a monopoly game. Because of how the mechanics work you often wind up playing the dice game rather than playing the character.

The basic philosophy of AW is explicitly NOT to impose an exact replica of the fluff challenges within the crunch. Yes, it is a game of creatively interpreting dice results - but for people who want that this is a feature, not a bug. As for Monopoly, it might be only one or two steps but these are important steps.
PbtA does not concern itself with difficulty, ergo it CANNOT recreate situation. It does not even want to. It's a story-spinning mechanism with the cascading Moves as building blocks of story.

In trad games, story is emergent from actions in the setting. In PbtA, setting is emergent from actions in the story. I think it's radically different.

My problem with PbtA is that I want situation, not story. It's not enough to read the match report in the morning after. I want to witness the football match live. Be in the moment.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098642The basic philosophy of AW is explicitly NOT to impose an exact replica of the fluff challenges within the crunch.

You are missing my point. Even resolving an entire combat encounter with an opposed role is tied to something concrete as long as the modifiers reflect what you would consider as if you were there.

The AW dice game that leads to the consequence spiral does not. It is a dice game with creative interpretation tacked on top of it surrounded by the advice and support one would find in a RPG. Thus lead to artifical result like players trying to avoid doing the things that trigger the consequence spiral even when it doesn't make sense in terms of what the character would be doing if they were actually there.

Furthermore I contend it doesn't even make narrative sense as it leads characters doing things that they wouldn't be doing if they were in a novel. All to avoid a negative outcome in the dice game that forms the heart of AW RPGs.

 
Yes, it is a game of creatively interpreting dice results - but for people who want that this is a feature, not a bug. As for Monopoly, it might be only one or two steps but these are important steps.

PbtA does not concern itself with difficulty, ergo it CANNOT recreate situation. It does not even want to. It's a story-spinning mechanism with the cascading Moves as building blocks of story.

Except the mechanic make it own thing, it doesn't even emulate a story very well. I could get the same result from rolling  2d6 and interpreting a 12 one way and a 2 another with the rest in between results.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098642In trad games, story is emergent from actions in the setting. In PbtA, setting is emergent from actions in the story. I think it's radically different.

That may be but still doesn't matter that the players are doing things that character in a story wouldn't do just above a negative consequence of the dice game used as the primary mechanic. In short they are acting the same way as wargamer and boardgamer do. Which destroys any sense that you are a character in a setting or a story.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098642My problem with PbtA is that I want situation, not story. It's not enough to read the match report in the morning after. I want to witness the football match live. Be in the moment.

Sure, despite my criticisms, I can see how AW works for some. Creativity is fickle and there often no telling what inspires a specific individual. But in general people are not stupid, they see how mechanics (not just AW) work and will avoid negative modifiers or getting shifted into negative side of any rule procedures. The natural instinct is to succeed not to accept failure.

Which is one reason why Fate and its Fate Point system are a niche taste.

Quote from: estar;1098663Thus lead to artifical result like players trying to avoid doing the things that trigger the consequence spiral even when it doesn't make sense in terms of what the character would be doing if they were actually there.

And in trad games, including D&D, players attempt to game the system with different strategies, depending on the game system, plenty of them being unrealistic. It's only so much a rules questions. At some point the GM has to step in and keep the game on track. Why isn't there a crisis at hand here that compels the player to trigger the consequence spiral for fear of the ramifications of inaction?

Quote from: estar;1098663Except the mechanic make it own thing, it doesn't even emulate a story very well. I could get the same result from rolling  2d6 and interpreting a 12 one way and a 2 another with the rest in between results.

I suppose the ratio between moves that lead to more complications, moves that end complications successfully and moves that put you in real trouble matters. You probably want to keep cascading complications for a while before things are resolved one way or other. The mechanic you suggest here will probably lead to overly long strings of complications before resolution. Completely different pacing.

Quote from: estar;1098663That may be but still doesn't matter that the players are doing things that character in a story wouldn't do just above a negative consequence of the dice game used as the primary mechanic. In short they are acting the same way as wargamer and boardgamer do. Which destroys any sense that you are a character in a setting or a story.

Rules can protect you only so much from being gamed. In the end, the GM must keep the game on track.

Quote from: estar;1098663Sure, despite my criticisms, I can see how AW works for some. Creativity is fickle and there often no telling what inspires a specific individual. But in general people are not stupid, they see how mechanics (not just AW) work and will avoid negative modifiers or getting shifted into negative side of any rule procedures. The natural instinct is to succeed not to accept failure.

Which is one reason why Fate and its Fate Point system are a niche taste.

I still don't get this. Again: let's say you send your strongest warrior against the cyborg from hell. Alone. The GM can't adjust difficulty in AW but he can adjust severity of failure. By doing so he can compel players into reconsidering if it might not be the smarter choice to support your ally directly in combat. You just need to make the potential price of inaction steep enough.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098642I feel odd defending PbtA (or at least AW) but it seems to me that this is not a system problem but a GMing problem. The GM determines the stakes in case of failure, no? That includes the stakes for failing to support your fighter PC ally. Here the GM doesn't punish unskillful behaviour by slapping on modifiers but by adjusting the ensuing complications. If you don't support your fighter guy but he succeeds, everything is fine. But if he fails, you're screwed for not supporting him.

I think we can all agree that a good GM can mitigate any rules flaw, no matter how severe. But there are really two different things at play here. Firstly, that low skilled characters are more likely to trigger bad outcomes that negatively affect the party, but also, because DW removed the round structure, the case cannot be made that just because a player is inactive (to avoid low odds rolls) automatically means that his character is inactive.

The game is designed that intention leads to actions (i.e. the player saying he does something leads to the Move triggering). Thus when one player is silent so the other player can make his higher odds Moves, that could just represent the acting player acting more rapidly. It does not mean that the active player lacks support, nor does it mean that the active player is fighting alone. Thus it isn't fair to apply a greater consequence for the acting player just because the inactive player isn't speaking at the moment. [I hope that makes sense]

Again, all of this goes away if they simply redesigned their die roll system to avoid punishing low odds actions.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098594It's not the premise that I have a problem with, just the implementation.

As I said, this behavior is probably an artifact of Dungeon World. There's a reason it's one of the most criticized hacks by PbtA purists after all. I didn't play it enough personally, but I can see where you're coming from.

Have you tried reading/playing the original Apocalypse World or one of it's more related siblings, like Monsterhearts or Masks? I suspect it could give you a different perspective on the engine.

I would like to pick up again on what I said to estar: Moves snowball. How long they snowball depends on the ratios between

• a hard fail
• a success with complications
• a complete success

I think that is why PbtA largely does not include difficulty modifiers - if you have on average higher or lower modifiers than as-is PbtA, then you're probably making the chain of complications/Moves shorter.
It doesn't matter so much if you're a foot soldier of the Lannisters or Jaime Lannister himself - you're supposed to go through cascading complications in your story.
I mean, look at the staggering amount of successes with ensuing complications in this famous sequence from 1:37 onwards:

[video=youtube;mC1ikwQ5Zgc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC1ikwQ5Zgc[/youtube]


Remember that you're not simulating a world in PbtA. You're creating stories with such twists and turns. Solving one calamity leads to the next.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098778I think we can all agree that a good GM can mitigate any rules flaw, no matter how severe.

And all systems are flawed, including my own. The question is how much effort it is to wallpaper over a flaw.  

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098778But there are really two different things at play here. Firstly, that low skilled characters are more likely to trigger bad outcomes that negatively affect the party, but also, because DW removed the round structure, the case cannot be made that just because a player is inactive (to avoid low odds rolls) automatically means that his character is inactive.

The game is designed that intention leads to actions (i.e. the player saying he does something leads to the Move triggering). Thus when one player is silent so the other player can make his higher odds Moves, that could just represent the acting player acting more rapidly. It does not mean that the active player lacks support, nor does it mean that the active player is fighting alone. Thus it isn't fair to apply a greater consequence for the acting player just because the inactive player isn't speaking at the moment. [I hope that makes sense]

Again, all of this goes away if they simply redesigned their die roll system to avoid punishing low odds actions.

So, I don't want this to be a PbtA thread. Let's keep it related to trad games because I don't want the thread moved to the Other Games section. I would like to explore the differences.
That being said, while I get your point I would like you to come up with a concrete example of play in which a player would be punished for inaction. And THEN we can assess how difficult it is for the GM to avoid complete inaction of the inept.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098800I think that is why PbtA largely does not include difficulty modifiers - if you have on average higher or lower modifiers than as-is PbtA, then you're probably making the chain of complications/Moves shorter.
It doesn't matter so much if you're a foot soldier of the Lannisters or Jaime Lannister himself - you're supposed to go through cascading complications in your story.

Yup, seems a good assessment to me. If you include situational modifiers you fuck up the playstyle the author advocates, which is dependent on complications hapenning and moves "snowballing" from each other. Which, in other words, is simply guaranteeing most rolls fall into the 7-9 range.


P.S: do you know Dogs in the Vineyard? It's a previous game by same author which have lots of similarities: success with complications, play to find what happens/prep situations not stories, moves snowballing, etc. It seems like he has this specific playstyle in mind that he finds fun, and all his games are cristalizations of it. It reminds me of Hidetaka Miyazaki with the Dark Souls series in a way - in that you have a bunch of distinct titles (Demons Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) but all them are experimentations on the same, base concept.

Quote from: Itachi;1098865P.S: do you know Dogs in the Vineyard? It's a previous game by same author which have lots of similarities: success with complications, play to find what happens/prep situations not stories, moves snowballing, etc. It seems like he has this specific playstyle in mind that he finds fun, and all his games are cristalizations of it.

I have glanced at it and looked at the How we Roll video with Vincent Baker - but I'm not a narrativist, so I merely wanted to get a rough sense of the game and its mechanics. It's been a while though. Only thing I remember is that the bidding and resolution process took way too much time. Didn't see anything I could adapt.

Without derailing the discussion, and as it is PbtA related: Kult. Is it worth picking up the new edition or should I stick with the one I have from the 90s (and use a separate system to run it maybe)?

Apart from the new pretty pictures what does PbtA offer/do rhat I couldn't with a nWoD/ST or CoC/BRP port?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098800Remember that you're not simulating a world in PbtA. You're creating stories with such twists and turns. Solving one calamity leads to the next.

THIS is the major difference between RPGs and storygames.

THIS is what separates them as different game genres.

LARPS are not RPGs, even though you're playing a character in both and both are games with rules. Nobody is demanding we call LARPS RPGs.

Nah that's bullshit. One of Apocalypse World principles is make the world feel real, and another is to follow (coherently) from the fiction. Which in practice means the world feel as verossimile as in any other game. In fact, given some hacks have very realistic/down to earth premises (Sagas, Cartel, Malandros, Night Witches, etc) it can feel even more verossimile than your average RPG that's full of magic and fantasy races.

Let me rephrase that:

Remember that you're not simulating a world through the rules of PbtA. You're creating stories with such twists and turns. Solving one calamity leads to the next.

That's better, Alexander.

I would add that you're not simulating the real world in PbtA, but the world as seen through the genres of films, literature, etc. So you could throw a car as a super teen in Masks, and the 7-9 complication is not "more calamity" but you becoming insecure or afraid or full of anger because you're an emotionally unstable brat like seen in the genre; or you can "tempt fate" in Sagas and the 7-9 consequence is not "more calamity" but get indebted to the gods (and they will make you pay it later); or you may attempt something in Monsterhearts and the 7-9 complication is exposing a vulnerability or weakness and now another character has strings on you, because the game is about manipulative egothistic high-schooler monsters; etc.

In other words, "more calamity" is the default complication In the original Apocalypse World because the game is about calamity! But other games explore different effects, behaviors and color according to their target genre or themes. And notice that gritty or realism can be present if that's what a game aims for (Sagas is pretty lethal, for eg).

P.S: by the way, I didn't intend to be offensive there but just contest the affirmation. I apologize if it sounded like that.