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So, there's been some talk here about PbtA and how it compares to Trad Games. I feel that for the benefit of analysis, it makes sense to turn to examples of play in PbtA with some authority and compare them with the kind of RPGs many of us have grown up with. And what better examples to turn to than the freely available examples of play that come with Apocalypse World 1E and the Dungeon World guide? So let's hear it from the horse's mouth! If you got any more points to add, based on these two examples of play, anything I may have overlooked, please feel invited to do add to it.

• Gloss Over: This is, in part, not a difference in rules but in philosophy: Scenes aren't necessarily played out (from the AW example: "Do you stick around?" - "Fuck no." - "Where do you go?" - "I go home, I guess."), the siutation isn't simulated. In the above situation, for example, Plover does not get a chance to detect that Isle has been attacked. And in the DW example, the GM handwaves the damage of a "called shot" attack to the arm. While this may also happen in trad games, it's fairly safe to say that it's less common in games with any simulationist bent.
  
• Circumstances: This is a specific (and major) gloss-over: the lack of circumstantial modifiers to task (move) difficulty. The Dungeon World Guide even explicitly states: "Remember, Dungeon World isn't about difficulty, it's about consequences." Consequentially, a "called shot" attack to the arm in the DW example isn't more difficult than any other attack.
  
• GM generosity: Another ethos-level difference. In the AW example of play, the GM blindly accepts that Marie always has her violation glove on. In a simulationist approach, you'd probably give her a percent chance to have it on. But PbtA isn't about difficulty!
  
• Physics in general: Another specific form of gloss over is that physics are largely not handled in the crunch. Who can act when and for how long? How far can you move? All off-loaded to the GM's narration.
  
• Party Dynamics: The player characters don't hang out together (don't split the party?) - which is probably aided by the "gloss over" philosophy that is in support of ending scenes unceremoniously (as needed) and bridging time and space quickly for the next scene. Also, the players don't seem bent to support each other (Keeler's permission that Plover moves on Marie).
  

• Complications: In the DW example, a defeated golem threatens to collapse on one of the PCs. This is a dice-generated event, whereas in a trad game, the GM would decide such a thing capriciously. And since Moves snowball, these complications keep piling on - which might be too breathless for some gamers while exciting for others.
  
• Choice: Tied to complications, the players quite frequently get to choose which specific effect a (partially?) successful Move should have ("I'll choose to inlict terrible harm, and to impress, dismay, or frighten my enemy."). This is much less common in traditional RPGs, especially those with binary task resolution. Here, it's the GM who generally unilaterally decides on the exact outcome and narrates it to the players.
  
• Codification: AW/DW come each with playbooks representing stereotypical characters, each coming with a set of stereotypical Moves. These Moves stipulate the above mentioned Complications and Choices, depending on the result of a die roll.
  

So what does the above mean in total? PbtA codifies genre-typical events (mostly complications, think of how Indiana Jones stumbles from one calamity into the next one). By doing so, it addresses questions of dramaturgy in RPGs, with the underlying philosophy apparently being "Never a dull moment...".
The price for that is giving up on any pretense of world simulation. Discarding circumstantial modifiers and any rigid world physics are the most egregious examples of this gloss-over mentality when it comes to modeling a living world to play in.

What's the bottom line? As presented in the official examples of play, AW/DW simulate genre thorugh story elements. Moves are cascading ("snowballing") building blocks of typical story elements, strung together. So they might be classified as genre simulation RPGs.

How do they stack up to other genre simulation RPGs though? In comparison to AW/DW, the Knights of the Black Lily RPG*, for example, is derived from studying fiction (for example movie fight scenes) and deriving world rules ("physics") from them: for example, major heroes and/or villains usually die on the 2nd to 4th serious wound in cinematic combat. Or how many mooks does a hero kill in a 5 second timeframe? Think how cars tend to explode in the cinema world in Last Action Hero. This is more typical for traditional RPGs; they also may emulate genre - but they tend to emulate genre worlds... and dramaturgy tends to be just what happens, with dramaturgy mechanics being glossed over the way PbtA glosses over world mechanics. (KotBL tries to address the latter in part through Fortune Points.)

As a final observation then we can witness that one line between traditional games and more narrative games runs through genre simulation games: Trad Games are more genre world-emulation games whereas Narrative Games are more genre story-emulation games. This observation is perhaps not as surprising if we remind ourselves that in RPGs genre is composed of both common setting as well as plot elements of a given collection of genre fiction, lending itself to very different approaches to simulation.






*What has prompted this analysis was a German reviewer calling AW a fenre emulation game. And since it works so differently from KotBL, I decided to take a deeper look at it to see if that was a misnomer or if I was classifying my own game wrongly. Turns out that neither was the case.

Please explain the "gloss over" philosophy more. Trad games abstract lots and I'd like to understand the differences.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1097530Please explain the "gloss over" philosophy more. Trad games abstract lots and I'd like to understand the differences.

Basically,where a more traditional game will note exactly how far a PC can move per round, in an AW game this is done by a combination of GM fiat/common sense. Also each roll has 3 levels of success: fail, partial success (success with complication/ setback/ consequences), full success (no consequences etc.)

So basically:

PC: I jump across the chasm!

GM: Cool! roll Brave Danger! What do you get?

PC: A 9, damn! Partial success...

GM: You barley make it! you grab a root sticking out of the other side and are just holding on to the edge of the cliff!

More simulationist game:

PC: I jump across the chasm! My leap is good for 15 feet.

GM: Cool! roll your (insert skill/attribute whatever here) What do you get?

PC: A 9! Whew I made it! I keep running after him...

GM: Alrighty then! (turns to next payer) Bob what does Grognack the Slayer do...?


So AW games abstract a whole lot and rely on GM fiat (being done in a fair way of course...) as a core part of the resolution mechanic. Basically rules light play with codification of certain areas to push genre enforcement.

I've actually Gm'ed this system for 2-3 years now, including a single campaign that ran about a year. To present a review from direct experience, I'll compare your well-presented observations with what has happened at our table (for what it's worth).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525Gloss Over: This is, in part, not a difference in rules but in philosophy: Scenes aren't necessarily played out (from the AW example: "Do you stick around?" - "Fuck no." - "Where do you go?" - "I go home, I guess."), the siutation isn't simulated. In the above situation, for example, Plover does not get a chance to detect that Isle has been attacked. And in the DW example, the GM handwaves the damage of a "called shot" attack to the arm. While this may also happen in trad games, it's fairly safe to say that it's less common in games with any simulationist bent.
Circumstances: This is a specific (and major) gloss-over: the lack of circumstantial modifiers to task (move) difficulty. The Dungeon World Guide even explicitly states: "Remember, Dungeon World isn't about difficulty, it's about consequences." Consequentially, a "called shot" attack to the arm in the DW example isn't more difficult than any other attack.

True, though you can houserule difficulty in via Disad, if you wanted (roll 3d6, take the lowest 2). The GM could also not allow a roll, or allow the task to auto-succeed. Since DW isn't granular at all, my players didn't bother a **whole** lot with called shots and the like. They were quite creative in narrating what they wanted to do, which led to a great deal of tactical combat, since they would concentrate on using the environment and such. Plus, not being beholden to widgets like Feats, they felt free to attempt things they might not normally attempt, since they weren't compelled to tap specific powers and such. On the whole, your conclusion, "it's about consequences" really does sum it up, though. Make the called shot, but you might succeed with a complication, or fail. And, since it IS a called shot, a failure can really allow the GM to mess with you.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525GM generosity: Another ethos-level difference. In the AW example of play, the GM blindly accepts that Marie always has her violation glove on. In a simulationist approach, you'd probably give her a percent chance to have it on. But PbtA isn't about difficulty!

The GM doesn't have to accept anything, if it doesn't fit the "fiction." But, since it's primarily a "say yes" system, you often do, because quibbling over whether someone has something on them that they probably would seems nitpicky. As for difficulty, which you've mentioned twice now, I'd say that you have to think about difficulty as something other than a DC or Target Number. What makes a situation difficult is the situation itself. It's not numerical, though DW uses numbers to aid in adjudication (like any other system). Again, you go with the fiction, which is why a 16 HP Dragon can be a terrible foe, due to its tags, and assumed capabilities. I found it freeing, as a GM, because I didn't have to refer to blocks of text to inform me about what makes a foe dangerous. It might have the move, "Melt them," which means just what it says. A character fails to dodge, he gets melted! That's old school, by feel, at least. (though, to be honest, I hate the death mechanic in DW).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525Physics in general: Another specific form of gloss over is that physics are largely not handled in the crunch. Who can act when and for how long? How far can you move? All off-loaded to the GM's narration.

True. When: DW does not use initiative. It seems weird, but you get used to it. The flow of battle often determines what happens when. "Augusta, the Bandit leader takes one look at the symbol emblazoned on your shield and yells, 'Battle Priest! Take her out!' What do you do?" How long: There are some specified limitations, for example a spell might have the text, "You cannot cast another spell while this spell is active." How far: Yeah, that's left to the GM, as are most things in this system. One of the reasons I enjoy it.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525Party Dynamics: The player characters don't hang out together (don't split the party?) - which is probably aided by the "gloss over" philosophy that is in support of ending scenes unceremoniously (as needed) and bridging time and space quickly for the next scene. Also, the players don't seem bent to support each other (Keeler's permission that Plover moves on Marie).

My parties usually work together, but there have been situations where they split. As with your typical game system, the results weren't always good (and, in one case, pretty catastrophic). Splitting like this isn't a system feature, though. A vast majority of my various groups stayed together because of strength in numbers, and shared threats, just like any other game. I haven't found significant differences here, save for the speed of play, because you're encouraged to improvise and riff on player choices.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525Complications: In the DW example, a defeated golem threatens to collapse on one of the PCs. This is a dice-generated event, whereas in a trad game, the GM would decide such a thing capriciously. And since Moves snowball, these complications keep piling on - which might be too breathless for some gamers while exciting for others.

I'm not sure this really fits. I know it only somewhat fits with my own experiences with consequences. On that, tthe dice don't generate moves with any specificity. The threatened collapse is the GM introducing a complication, just as they might in another system. The difference here would be whether a move was called for, and the GM decided this was the one (not sure which one this would be--"show signs of an impending threat?" "Turn their move back on them?" No idea. Not sure about the "snowball" thing, as you aren't required to compound the threat, once it has been addressed. All my players had experience with trad games, and had no issues with pacing in this regard.

Quote[*Choice: Tied to complications, the players quite frequently get to choose which specific effect a (partially?) successful Move should have ("I'll choose to inlict terrible harm, and to impress, dismay, or frighten my enemy."). This is much less common in traditional RPGs, especially those with binary task resolution. Here, it's the GM who generally unilaterally decides on the exact outcome and narrates it to the players.

As GM, you can allow the players to narrate the specific effect of a successful move, whether it's hardwired into the Move. I've done that on a particularly spectacular result. Not all players are into narrating the effect, though. Most often, I end up doing that, because it's sorta my job to "make their lives fantastic."I would agree that more granular systems would be more likely to have the rules tell everyone what happens. Whether this is desirable depends, I think, on how much you trust your GM to be fair, or, more likely, how important rules mastery is to the players.

QuoteCodification: AW/DW come each with playbooks representing stereotypical characters, each coming with a set of stereotypical Moves. These Moves stipulate the above mentioned Complications and Choices, depending on the result of a die roll.
 

If by stereotypical, you mean, "Fighters have fighty moves. Wizards have Wizardy moves." then, yes, I guess this would be about right. Some of these Moves modify the base moves, for example, "Veteran's Eye: when you DISCERN REALITIES while observing or preparing for a battle, you can always ask one question from the list, even if you fail." Some of the moves have specific complications (Hack-n-Slash, for example). Others, not so much. On the whole, I'd say that, yes the move lists, general or class-specific, or typical things you'd see done in a trad game. They're just given names for the purpose of driving the action.

QuoteSo what does the above mean in total? PbtA codifies genre-typical events (mostly complications, think of how Indiana Jones stumbles from one calamity into the next one). By doing so, it addresses questions of dramaturgy in RPGs, with the underlying philosophy apparently being "Never a dull moment...".
The price for that is giving up on any pretense of world simulation. Discarding circumstantial modifiers and any rigid world physics are the most egregious examples of this gloss-over mentality when it comes to modeling a living world to play in.

True. And if you don't want to simulate, this is fine.

QuoteWhat's the bottom line? As presented in the official examples of play, AW/DW simulate genre thorugh story elements. Moves are cascading ("snowballing") building blocks of typical story elements, strung together. So they might be classified as genre simulation RPGs.

How do they stack up to other genre simulation RPGs though? In comparison to AW/DW, the Knights of the Black Lily RPG*, for example, is derived from studying fiction (for example movie fight scenes) and deriving world rules ("physics") from them: for example, major heroes and/or villains usually die on the 2nd to 4th serious wound in cinematic combat. Or how many mooks does a hero kill in a 5 second timeframe? Think how cars tend to explode in the cinema world in Last Action Hero. This is more typical for traditional RPGs; they also may emulate genre - but they tend to emulate genre worlds... and dramaturgy tends to be just what happens, with dramaturgy mechanics being glossed over the way PbtA glosses over world mechanics. (KotBL tries to address the latter in part through Fortune Points.)

As a final observation then we can witness that one line between traditional games and more narrative games runs through genre simulation games: Trad Games are more genre world-emulation games whereas Narrative Games are more genre story-emulation games. This observation is perhaps not as surprising if we remind ourselves that in RPGs genre is composed of both common setting as well as plot elements of a given collection of genre fiction, lending itself to very different approaches to simulation.

Reasonable conclusion.

On the whole, I'm much more sold on DW than current D&D, because it does try to simulate an old school fantasy "feel." It's also very quick and easy to run, though it is heavily GM dependent, so a novice might have a hell of a time running it at first. It does encourage player input, which I find extremely helpful and useful. Plus, the players feel more involved. All that said, it certainly isn't for everybody. It is, however, solid enough, that I've looked at other PbtA games, including AW, and would likely run them, if I ever switch genres. My issue now is that I really don't care for any of the attempts at AW superhero games, which, if I could find one, I'd love to run it.

**Apologies for the formatting issues here**

I just use the 2d6 resolution mechanic sometimes, as a fun and simple way of running the game.

Quote from: Jaeger;1097541Basically,where a more traditional game will note exactly how far a PC can move per round, in an AW game this is done by a combination of GM fiat/common sense. Also each roll has 3 levels of success: fail, partial success (success with complication/ setback/ consequences), full success (no consequences etc.)

Actually even some standard RPGs do that. BX D&D comes to mind right off. Can you junk the chasm? Make a stat or percentile check with the chance of success being estimated by the DM based on what is known. AD&D does this as well and even 5e allows for exceeding the limits with a stat check. Other RPGs have as well to some degree.

Quote from: Jaeger;1097541Also each roll has 3 levels of success: fail, partial success (success with complication/ setback/ consequences), full success (no consequences etc.)

The small press company BETTER GAMES had that as their house system back in the 80s.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/13327/Better-Games

Quote from: Jaeger;1097541Basically,where a more traditional game will note exactly how far a PC can move per round, in an AW game this is done by a combination of GM fiat/common sense. Also each roll has 3 levels of success: fail, partial success (success with complication/ setback/ consequences), full success (no consequences etc.)

Quote from: Omega;1097548Actually even some standard RPGs do that. BX D&D comes to mind right off. Can you junk the chasm? Make a stat or percentile check with the chance of success being estimated by the DM based on what is known. AD&D does this as well and even 5e allows for exceeding the limits with a stat check. Other RPGs have as well to some degree.

Agreed that this happens some in traditional RPGs, but it's generally not the default.

A clarification about difficulty -- Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games don't have roll modifiers, but the GM does specify the result of success. So some tasks can be automatic, some might require just a single roll, while some could require multiple rolls to complete, and some might just be impossible. As a simple example, there are special weapons that give you higher damage in combat, but no weapons give you a bonus to hit. So the modifier is to the result of success, not to the roll.

That's extremely granular, and it can be clunky in some circumstances. But most of the time it's workable.

Great analysis, Alexander!

Let me add another important distinction (IMO) between AW and more traditional games: AW is all about following the PC's personal goals, dramas and issues in detriment to any central "quest" or "campaign" brought by the GM or otherwise. The game really sings when it's each PC on it's own, pushing for their goals while stepping on each other toes and sometimes - just sometimes - teaming up to save their asses from some external threat (to break up again immediatelly after). In this sense, AW is the culmination of the old Forgite "Narrativism/Story Now!" concept - agressive scene-framing, pushing for what's really important to PCs, and presenting hard moral choices about that. And this may be the starkest contrast between AW and traditional games: adventuring parties do not work here. The biggest (no, the only) actual challenge to a PC is another PC.

(And, weirdly, Dungeon World is nothing like that. DW is super traditional in this regard)

What the hell happened with the format?! Weird.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1097530Please explain the "gloss over" philosophy more. Trad games abstract lots and I'd like to understand the differences.

Sure. Let's take the example of play this bullet point is directly in response too. In the AW example, the player character hurts a female NPC telepathically. While leaning against the shoulder of her boyfriend next to her, that NPC takes damage and starts to bleed out of her ears. In the AW example, the GM announces that her bf will eventually notice and asks the player of the PC: "Do you stick around?" - "Fuck no." - "Where do you go?" - "I go home, I guess."

In a trad game with a simulationist bent it would have never played out like that because you're simulating the situation. And in that situation the NPC boyfriend should have a chance to detect that something bad just happened to his gf next to him. The blood, her body going limp or whatever. So in a simulationist game the NPC boyfriend would have had a chance to detect something was off - probably a perception roll.

In a trad game with more gamist bent this might also have been the case as part of the challenge of the scene. But the GM might also have just glossed over the chance for the boyfriend to notice it, if he didn't want to play out this challenge. Still chances are good that it would not have been that easy for the PC as in the AW example.

And then there is the other gloss over parts mentioned elsewhere like initiative order, movement rates, etc. If you want to delve into that as well, let me know.

Quote from: cranebump;1097542I've actually Gm'ed this system for 2-3 years now, including a single campaign that ran about a year. To present a review from direct experience, I'll compare your well-presented observations with what has happened at our table (for what it's worth).

I appreciate it - I just want to quickly point out that the reason I have been drawing on the AW 1E rulebook and the DW Guide to begin with is that then nobody can come up and say with a straight face: "Ah, but that's not how you play these games." No, these are downloaded from the designer's websites respectively - they come with a stamp of approval. This is how it's to be played.

Not saying I am doubting your experience, just saying that the examples of play referenced come with authority.

Quote from: cranebump;1097542On that, tthe dice don't generate moves with any specificity. The threatened collapse is the GM introducing a complication, just as they might in another system.

I don't think I said that the dice generate Moves? Yes, the dice generate complications, which in turn require action by the PCs which in turn translate into Moves. That's how one Move leads to some other, as a cascade, causing the snowballing effect.

Quote from: cranebump;1097542As GM, you can allow the players to narrate the specific effect of a successful move, whether it's hardwired into the Move. I've done that on a particularly spectacular result. Not all players are into narrating the effect, though. Most often, I end up doing that, because it's sorta my job to "make their lives fantastic."I would agree that more granular systems would be more likely to have the rules tell everyone what happens. Whether this is desirable depends, I think, on how much you trust your GM to be fair, or, more likely, how important rules mastery is to the players.

I mean - when you Seize by Force, you can select 1 or 2 effects out of a list of 4. This kind of choice is typical for AW moves but fairly uncommon for Trad Games. It's also how players in AW have more agency over the developing story than in Trad Games.

Quote from: cranebump;1097542Others, not so much. On the whole, I'd say that, yes the move lists, general or class-specific, or typical things you'd see done in a trad game. They're just given names for the purpose of driving the action.

Let's look at the Chopper playbook in AW, specifically the Move "Pack alpha". So you're trying to impose your will on your gang. If you roll 7-9 only, however (a partial success) you have to choose 1 from the following list:
• They do what you want (otherwise, they refuse)
• They don't fight back over it (otherwise, they do fight back)
• You don't have to make an example of one of them (otherwise, you must)
If you roll less than 7, someone from the gang challenges you for leadership.

All of this leads to genre-typical situations! And it's codified straight into the crunch.

Quote from: Itachi;1097578Great analysis, Alexander!

Let me add another important distinction (IMO) between AW and more traditional games: AW is all about following the PC's personal goals, dramas and issues in detriment to any central "quest" or "campaign" brought by the GM or otherwise. The game really sings when it's each PC on it's own, pushing for their goals while stepping on each other toes and sometimes - just sometimes - teaming up to save their asses from some external threat (to break up again immediatelly after). In this sense, AW is the culmination of the old Forgite "Narrativism/Story Now!" concept - agressive scene-framing, pushing for what's really important to PCs, and presenting hard moral choices about that. And this may be the starkest contrast between AW and traditional games: adventuring parties do not work here. The biggest (no, the only) actual challenge to a PC is another PC.

(And, weirdly, Dungeon World is nothing like that. DW is super traditional in this regard)

Agreed. And this is exactly why I replied to Mr. Pundit in the other thread that he was only half-right. AW is not as freely narrativist as other games of that kind because it has so many genre elements hard-coded in. But it is nonetheless a stark divergence from Trad Games. DW, on the other hand, is a substantial backtrack - a big, deliberate step back towards D&D-style games (actually towards D&D itself). There's still a difference since in DW "difficulty doesn't matter, only consequences" - but I can see why the RPGPundit could consider that pbtA game a narrativist admission of failure.

I don't think it's true for AW though. AW is different, more true to the roots.

I have to admit I'm much less familiar with AW, so apologies for certain assumptions I have made regarding moves and such. My direct experience is with DW, which is similar, but obviously not the same. I appreciate that you actually looked into the system and attempted a real analysis. Wish more people would do that.

Storygaming as we know it is pure railroad. It's the fledgling writer trying to run a tabletop rpg that fails at being a tabletop rpg.

Storygames are not tabletop rpgs. Never could be.

A tabletop gamer could only break a storygamer's game because of CHOICE. There's no real choice in Storygames --- just the illusion.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1098036Storygaming as we know it is pure railroad. It's the fledgling writer trying to run a tabletop rpg that fails at being a tabletop rpg.

Storygames are not tabletop rpgs. Never could be.

A tabletop gamer could only break a storygamer's game because of CHOICE. There's no real choice in Storygames --- just the illusion.

First, define "Storygames".
Second, as a descendant of the old Forge ideas, Apocalypse World is explicitly against railroads. One of it's GM principles being "do NOT prep plots".
And third, player choice is at the heart of the Moves structure upon which AW operate, so saying there's no real choice in it is bizarre at least.

Are you sure you're not confusing things here?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097525

• Complications: In the DW example, a defeated golem threatens to collapse on one of the PCs. This is a dice-generated event, whereas in a trad game, the GM would decide such a thing capriciously. And since Moves snowball, these complications keep piling on - which might be too breathless for some gamers while exciting for others.

A golem falling on one of the PCs is not a "dice-generated event". This is a choice between having the GM add complications on his own and having the GM add complications only when a random roll occurs. Except trad games give the GM the authority to do so when the event fits into the pacing of the currently situation.

Quote from: Jaeger;1097541PC: I jump across the chasm!

GM: Cool! roll Brave Danger! What do you get?

PC: A 9, damn! Partial success...

GM: You barley make it! you grab a root sticking out of the other side and are just holding on to the edge of the cliff!

More simulationist game:

PC: I jump across the chasm! My leap is good for 15 feet.

GM: Cool! roll your (insert skill/attribute whatever here) What do you get?

PC: A 9! Whew I made it! I keep running after him...

GM: Alrighty then! (turns to next payer) Bob what does Grognack the Slayer do...?

Other than some meaningless narration, I don't see a difference here.

Is there a PbtA Monster Manual? How do we compare PCs to monsters?

This thread would have benefited enormously from you knowing anything about traditional RPGs.

Some reading material prior to your next disaster:
Some basic pointers and tips (https://grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf)
A foundation of old school thinking (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4238/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-rulings) (Just keep reading)

Read and learn. Maybe run a few hexcrawls. Then come on back and make some game theory posts.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098242This is a choice between having the GM add complications on his own and having the GM add complications only when a random roll occurs.

That's exactly what I said. The complication is the event and the random roll is the "dice-generated" part. From purely a game perspective, the latter is stronger as it is rules-mandated, not GM-mandated.
There's other aspects to evaluate it from, such as pacing issues you mentioned, but I suppose people who like PbtA want the dice to dictate the pacing.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098242Except trad games give the GM the authority to do so when the event fits into the pacing of the currently situation.

In practice, I have seen Trad Game GMs roll d12 to determine the direction of the fall and it had nothing to do with controlling pacing - it was purely simulationist.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098242Other than some meaningless narration, I don't see a difference here.

You don't see a difference between not making the jump and being forced to struggle for your life versus completing the jump and picking up the chase immediately?

Quote from: Azraele;1098269This thread would have benefited enormously from you knowing anything about traditional RPGs.

The OSR is merely a subset of Trad Games. It also includes the more simulationist New School (tm) of the 90s.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098287That's exactly what I said. The complication is the event and the random roll is the "dice-generated" part. From purely a game perspective, the latter is stronger as it is rules-mandated, not GM-mandated.
There's other aspects to evaluate it from, such as pacing issues you mentioned, but I suppose people who like PbtA want the dice to dictate the pacing.

My main issue with the dice-generated nature of complications in DW (and in the similar rule in FFG's SW games) is that the probability of those added complications is based on the character's probability of success.

Consider a DW party with two fighters, one with a +2 STR and one with a +1 STR, that encounters a monster that needs to be defeated. The character with a +2 STR will be more likely to damage the monster, less likely to take damage (and, thus, use up heals), and less likely to generate a complication which might hinder the entire party. In this case, the optimal Move for the +1 STR character is to do nothing. For the player of that character to sit quietly so as to not generate any Moves. Just let the +2 character take as many Moves as needed to defeat the monster. All the +1 character accomplishes by using the H&S Move is to increase the overall damage done to the party.

And this is true for the entire game. It is a game where only the most highly optimized character for each situation should be acting. Everyone else should be watching from the sidelines.

In a Trad game, the monster would only attack once per round, so there is no downside for the less proficient character to be participating in the action; the monster doesn't do any extra damage and nothing bad will happen from a failure. DW is a game designed to punish players for taking risky actions or for playing characters that are sub-optimal. Which is the exact opposite of what it should be doing (at least IMO).

QuoteYou don't see a difference between not making the jump and being forced to struggle for your life versus completing the jump and picking up the chase immediately?

The character in the DW example didn't really "struggle for his life", the GM simply added some partial success narration. The end result, both players alive on the other side of the chasm, was the same in each case. This is the downside of dice-generated narration.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098287The OSR is merely a subset of Trad Games. It also includes the more simulationist New School (tm) of the 90s.

Two things about this:
1) I've yet to see a consistent definition of "simulationist" and as far as I can tell, it's gibberish. I'd really appreciate a definition of what you mean when you say it
2) "Two things that aren't alike are the same!" I'm sorry, what? You can't start with the premise of 90's hyper-realistic games and old-school games being radically different, then lump them together under the same umbrella. You need to define your terms man, I want to tell you you're wrong properly

Quote from: HedgehobbitIn a Trad game, the monster would only attack once per round, so there is no downside for the less proficient character to be participating in the action; the monster doesn't do any extra damage and nothing bad will happen from a failure.

...which also leads to a problem: no matter how bad a teammate is at fighting, he never hinders the team. Realistically, someone non-proficient in a proficient team leads to complications. Ever had a trained rock band or basketball team or something and tried letting someone untrained participate? Trad games are bad at depicting this because they are notoriously forgivable with failures.

So yeah, PbtA exaggerates on the complications aspect, but Trad games exaggerates in it's forgiveness for non-proficiency. Pick your poison.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098308The character in the DW example didn't really "struggle for his life", the GM simply added some partial success narration. The end result, both players alive on the other side of the chasm, was the same in each case. This is the downside of dice-generated narration.

I am no PbtA expert by any means but I think it depends on how the GM runs it. In both cases (2 PCs vs monster, partial success jump), the GM may call for a Defy Danger move (of the PCs/the PC).

Quote from: Azraele;1098314I want to tell you you're wrong properly

Which makes me doubt more than a little that you're asking in good faith. I am not sure I have time for this.

Quote from: Itachi;1098341...which also leads to a problem: no matter how bad a teammate is at fighting, he never hinders the team.

How coordinated are fantasy parties though? If we look at fiction - aren't plenty of them "everybody for themselves" for the most part?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098357How coordinated are fantasy parties though? If we look at fiction - aren't plenty of them "everybody for themselves" for the most part?  

Depends on the game/premise. Shadowrun/Cyberpunk assumes trained teams. Don't know about dungeon crawlers.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098357Which makes me doubt more than a little that you're asking in good faith. I am not sure I have time for this.

Hey man, you're wrong whether or not I mock you for it. But, if you actually want to share with the class what you're talking about, you may learn something from that mockery.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098308My main issue with the dice-generated nature of complications in DW (and in the similar rule in FFG's SW games) is that the probability of those added complications is based on the character's probability of success.
...

And this is true for the entire game. It is a game where only the most highly optimized character for each situation should be acting. Everyone else should be watching from the sidelines.
....

This is true. (having played in several AW based campaigns).

My impression that I get from reading various rules-sets, and some of various authors comments online, is that players should not be so precious about their characters. But in actual play I have found that most players try to optimize very fast.

This is due to the built in: Failed roll=Consequences! default GM action. Because the GM never rolls dice.

This is an artifact IMHO of the lengths that the game goes to for rules light/low prep play.

In a more traditional-rules game, a player with low combat scores can give something a try because they can mitigate the potential consequences of a failure if they pick their shot.

In DW/AW style games... Roll a miss? Fuck you. Consequences!

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098308The character in the DW example didn't really "struggle for his life", the GM simply added some partial success narration. The end result, both players alive on the other side of the chasm, was the same in each case. This is the downside of dice-generated narration.

The difference is that the non-DW player knew exactly how far he could jump, his PC's ability and the distance to be jumped was something explicitly quantified in the game system. If the distance to jump was too great for his PC, he would not even have bothered to try the jump. And generally in more traditional-rules game the rolls are pass/fail. with no option for the complication in the DW example.

In  DW/AW -such things like how far a PC can jump at any given point and time are are all basically GM fiat. Now the AW style games try to codify how the GM fiat should work so that it is done consistently. But at it's core it replaces a lot of what other games would explicitly quantify with a kind of Codified / Descriptive GM fiat.

I don't view the AW style games as narrative - The word I would use would be Descriptive. They are hyper focused rules light genre emulators with exception based mechanics. Where you pick the mechanic/result that best describes what you are doing/done.

What Jaeger said.

Also: from experience, the GM going hard on 6- rolls is necessary otherwise shit gets too easy. In PbtA players by default have more power over the fiction (including NPCs lives) than in Trad games. See the Battlebabe's Visions of Death (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9cu0IVYfHtiMktMV0RPVUN0ZHM) for e.g..

Quote from: Itachi;1098341...which also leads to a problem: no matter how bad a teammate is at fighting, he never hinders the team. Realistically, someone non-proficient in a proficient team leads to complications. Ever had a trained rock band or basketball team or something and tried letting someone untrained participate? Trad games are bad at depicting this because they are notoriously forgivable with failures.

So yeah, PbtA exaggerates on the complications aspect, but Trad games exaggerates in it's forgiveness for non-proficiency. Pick your poison.

Not really.  If everyone needs to make a stealth roll to pass a guard, who cares if the stealth masters make it, the klutz ruins it for everyone.  Someone who isn't a good fighter in a traditional game usually isn't very good at dealing or avoiding damage.  That person stands to the front of the line straight ahead of the ogre, they're getting pasted.  They should try and position themselves to get a better chance to hit and hopefully not be attacked directly.  DW makes that non-fighter a total liability to everyone if they ever roll.

"Forgiveness" is a really weird thing to hear someone claim about traditional games.  Usually people are wailing and gnashing their teeth about how brutal they can be. :D

But that's the whole point.  Even DW is written from the same perspective as most PbtA, from roleplaying within and narrating a story, with a big emphasis on generating dramatic events.

What's the likely outcome of Mr. Nonfighter fighting?  He might contribute to the monster's defeat if he hangs around the edges.  If he's a caster or an archer he might have an opening to do something really effective.

That, however, isn't Dramatically Interesting, so the player has his character "follow the fiction" and attack, which is Dramatically Interesting and since he sucks at it, will create more Dramatically Interesting problems due to Complications, rinse repeat until they win or the Consequence Spiral gets everyone killed.

Baker wasn't interested in creating a World in Motion for people to game in, he was interested in creating a game system for people who play with an eye towards Story and Narration that wouldn't drown them in obscure meta-mechanics that have nothing to do with what's happening.

All the narrative control is baked into the Moves, which only occur based on character action.  That's the brilliance of the design, but is still quite different from a traditional game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1098537That, however, isn't Dramatically Interesting, so the player has his character "follow the fiction" and attack, which is Dramatically Interesting and since he sucks at it, will create more Dramatically Interesting problems due to Complications, rinse repeat until they win or the Consequence Spiral gets everyone killed...

In actual play I have found that most players, myself included, tend to err on the side of survival over: Fiction Now!

Because: fuck consequences, if at all possible.

Most 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.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1098537All the narrative control is baked into the Moves, which only occur based on character action.  That's the brilliance of the design, but is still quite different from a traditional game.

I don't see how you can call the design brilliant when, by your own admission, the game mechanics actively discourage the players from doing what the game expects them to do.

This is where I see a similarity between DW and storygames, in that there is an assumption that the players are not supposed to be trying to have their characters succeed in whatever goals they have assigned their characters. That, along with the idea that characters failing is automatically more interesting than character succeeding.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1098547I don't see how you can call the design brilliant when, by your own admission, the game mechanics actively discourage the players from doing what the game expects them to do..

Only in DW. In AW, Monsterhearts, Masks, etc. playbooks moves are so powerflul that complications feel like a fair tradeoff, so players don't get intimidated to try stuff.

Regardless, 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.

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.

I'm going to push back a bit. AW might say "make the world feel real" but most of the PBTA advice (in and outside the book) is to constantly build stuff by "turning questions back on players" - so players are at the table constantly making everything up that they're then interacting with. This is not a recipe for feeling like you're in a world you didn't just create 2 seconds ago.

True, but only for the First Session, which is a kind of "session 0" where players brainstorm their slice of the world collaboratively. Once the ball starts rolling, there's no "the world was created 2 seconds ago" anymore. It's all on the GMs hands.

Are you sure? On "Fear of a Black Dragon" and other podcasts, along with one of the listed GM moves of Apocalypse World, is "turn questions back on the players." When I played Masks with the creator it was 99% us having to invent stuff that we then dealt with.

Why is it so fucking hard for people to admit storygames aren't rpgs?

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1099115Are you sure? On "Fear of a Black Dragon" and other podcasts, along with one of the listed GM moves of Apocalypse World, is "turn questions back on the players." When I played Masks with the creator it was 99% us having to invent stuff that we then dealt with.

The principle you want is "Ask provocative questions and build on the answers", which purpose is to fill out each PC slice of the world, background, activities or feels etc. So this is good:

Hey Fighter, where did you get that sword? Is it a heirloom? How did you learn to use it? Who taught you? Did you make any rivals in the process? Where are they now? How is this land that you came from? Where is it on the map? Tell us some quirks of it's people? Did you use to raid trader caravans then? Do those caravans routes stilk exist? Can you point them on the map? Etc.

But this is not good:

Ok Fighter, you succeed in breaking the door down, what's behind it? Or, hey Rogue you succeed in sneaking behind the guards chatting about a safe, why don't you tell us where the safe is? Oh, right below Jerry on the floor? Cool.

In other words, the process is not really different from what lots of groups have been doing since ever for collaboratively creating a world together ( I know I did it in GURPS and Runequest well before AW even existed ). It's usually done in the first sessions of arcs or campaigns and is great for providing interesting stuff/hooks/seeds for the group to tap later on, make the world more vivid and colorful, and to provoke player investment (since they're creating it themselves). It's not intended to turn things into some improvising story-telling world-editing game where you create things to change "2 seconds later" or something. This isn't Fiasco or Baron Munchausen. Otherwise it would contradict it's very agenda of "make the world feel real" as you said.

Of course, every group will set these dials to their preferences. Some will prefer asking those questions only at the first session, as instructed in AW text, while others will do it with greater frequency (and in the case of one-shots specifically this may feel more blatant since there isn't a "First session" to brainstorm stuff). But again, there's nothing new here for a group that played in their own collaboratively created worlds before.

Quote from: Itachi;1099148The principle you want is "Ask provocative questions and build on the answers", which purpose is to fill out each PC slice of the world, background, activities or feels etc. So this is good:

Hey Fighter, where did you get that sword? Is it a heirloom? How did you learn to use it? Who taught you? Did you make any rivals in the process? Where are they now? How is this land that you came from? Where is it on the map? Tell us some quirks of it's people? Did you use to raid trader caravans then? Do those caravans routes stilk exist? Can you point them on the map? Etc.

Let's please stick to the subject.

So how would this look like in a trad game? The direct equivalent is background generation for characters in a trad game. There are some difference however, let's have a look:

"Hey Fighter, where did you get that sword? Is it a heirloom?" - This is something that would most likely be determined between chargen and start of play by the player. (Or glossed over.)
"How did you learn to use it? Who taught you? Did you make any rivals in the process?" - Dito.
"Where are they now?" - Now this is something that typically the GM would determine as the PC probably would have no knowledge where they are, only when they saw that rival last.
"How is this land that you came from? Where is it on the map? Tell us some quirks of it's people?" - Again, in a trad game, it's the GM's job to deliver fresh world content for the players to discover and interface with in actual play.
"Did you use to raid trader caravans then?" - This is one of the normal background generation items.
"Do those caravans routes stilk exist? Can you point them on the map?" - And this is back to world generation that normally is the purview of the GM (or game designer).

This is a shift that naturally not every role-player will like. Plenty of us want to discover an alien world, not make it up ourselves, except for minor elements like a rival. It's simply less adventurous to do so.

So you're saying shared world creation is not a trad thing. Interesting, I will have to look into my Ars Magica, Gurps and Runequest/BRP books, because we do that since ever in those games, and I doubt we invented the concept.

Anyway, Fate Core, Smallville, Mutant Y0/Tales from the Loop, Ryuutama and Beyond the Wall are other recent games that do that, so even if it isn't a traditional practice, it's far from being exclusive to Apocalypse World. (EDIT: they could have been influenced by AW though, I don't know, would have to check their release dates and authors notes to find out)

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;1099034Without 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?

Didn't read the new edition yet, but heard good things about it. PbtA is usually good at pushing play towards the game's central themes, and considering the original rules are notorious bad at that, it seems a clear advantage. OTOH, PbtA is far from transparent or unobtrusive: it will make itself felt at the table and in a acute way (just like D&D really). So if it bothers you at some level you probably won't grok it.

Quote from: Itachi;1099166So you're saying shared world creation is not a trad thing. Interesting, I will have to look into my Ars Magica, Gurps and Runequest/BRP books, because we do that since ever in those games, and I doubt we invented the concept.

Anyway, Fate Core, Smallville, Mutant Y0/Tales from the Loop, Ryuutama and Beyond the Wall are other recent games that do that, so even if it isn't a traditional practice, it's far from being exclusive to Apocalypse World. (EDIT: they could have been influenced by AW though, I don't know, would have to check their release dates and authors notes to find out)

The assertion is not that it can never happen in trad games. The statement is that it's not typical for trad games. For details as to why, I'll refer you over to the first part of that blogpost here (http://www.knightsoftheblacklily.com/2018/05/rpg-theory-with-rigor-part-2/).

Quote from: Itachi;1099148The principle you want is "Ask provocative questions and build on the answers", which purpose is to fill out each PC slice of the world, background, activities or feels etc. So this is good:

Back in the late 80s I would agree that this is ideal that everybody should strive for. I now know it is a preference. A lot of players perhaps most players are not interested in this level of detail, find it boring as hell, and more seriously making them deal with it lessen the enjoyment of the game.

Quote from: Itachi;1099148Of course, every group will set these dials to their preferences. Some will prefer asking those questions only at the first session, as instructed in AW text, while others will do it with greater frequency (and in the case of one-shots specifically this may feel more blatant since there isn't a "First session" to brainstorm stuff). But again, there's nothing new here for a group that played in their own collaboratively created worlds before.

Same here since I started referee circa 1979, I was always open to the input of players about what "ought" to be or adding details so something what we are doing. The problem occurred when I started mandating this kind of stuff. The whole shared worldbuilding thing is a variation of the issue surrounding writing character backgrounds. And experience as shown me that only a minority like writing character backgrounds. A substantial minority to be sure. But most just want to describe things in a couple of sentences, if that, and get on with the game.

Which is why RPGs that enshrine this as a central mechanics will be remain in a niche.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099168The assertion is not that it can never happen in trad games. The statement is that it's not typical for trad games. For details as to why, I'll refer you over to the first part of that blogpost here (http://www.knightsoftheblacklily.com/2018/05/rpg-theory-with-rigor-part-2/).

It typical it just not handled formally in the mechanics.

Trad games usually come with a fixed setting for the players to explore. Shadowrun, CoC, Harn, MERP, Cyberpunk 2020,TORG, RIFTS, Vampire, Dark Albion, you name it.
So, yeah, shared world creation other than the limited stuff for character background that I outlined above seems to be atypical for trad games. And I submit that the ire that this draws from a lot of trad gamers as evidence in support of the assertion.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099194Trad games usually come with a fixed setting for the players to explore. Shadowrun, CoC, Harn, MERP, Cyberpunk 2020,TORG, RIFTS, Vampire, Dark Albion, you name it.
So, yeah, shared world creation other than the limited stuff for character background that I outlined above seems to be atypical for trad games. And I submit that the ire that this draws from a lot of trad gamers as evidence in support of the assertion.

I think this post pretty much proves you've never actually played an RPG before. The only "ire" being expressed is by people who think you're just disingenuous about how they play their games.

The only thing that is being demonstrated is your launching another ad hominem argument. If you got anything worthwhile to say though, let's hear it.

I don't think Alexander meant to offend or diminish anyone with that comment, but simply point out that some those practices and styles are.. sensitive, to some folks around here (which is true IMO). Mr. Kalinowski has been a gentleman so far.

Let's not spoil this fine discussion, folks.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099206The only thing that is being demonstrated is your launching another ad hominem argument. If you got anything worthwhile to say though, let's hear it.

How is it an ad hominem to point out your statements objectively reveal your utter lack of understanding of the subject? You're making blanket statements that are demonstrably false; any evidence to the contrary is considered anecdotal, yet you have no counter-evidence except your own experience. So, either you have little to no experience playing RPGs, you're purposefully being obtuse to strengthen your argument, or you're simply lying to promote your preferred gaming style. I picked the first one, which is the least "ad hominem" I can come up with: you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

Quote from: Itachi;1099211I don't think Alexander meant to offend or diminish anyone with that comment, but simply point out that some those practices and styles are.. sensitive, to some folks around here (which is true IMO). Mr. Kalinowski has been a gentleman so far.

I disagree; he knows exactly what he's doing.

Quote from: Brad;1099238How is it an ad hominem to point out your statements objectively reveal your utter lack of understanding of the subject?

Because you're clearly attacking the person, not the argument.

Quote from: Brad;1099238You're making blanket statements that are demonstrably false;.

Even if true, you've done nothing, zero effort, to demonstrate that.

Quote from: Brad;1099238any evidence to the contrary is considered anecdotal, yet you have no counter-evidence except your own experience.

Which evidence exactly is anecdotal and where is the opposing evidence that is NOT anecdotal? Pretty much everything in RPG forums is based on personal experience as there is very little hard data out there about the subject at hand. But if you have any evidence that is not anecdotal, bring it forth please. Let's hear it.

Quote from: Brad;1099238So, either you have little to no experience playing RPGs, you're purposefully being obtuse to strengthen your argument, or you're simply lying to promote your preferred gaming style. I picked the first one, which is the least "ad hominem" I can come up with: you simply have no idea what you're talking about.

Let me repeat it: you didn't address the issue at all. You did exactly nothing to prove your point but instead switched immediately, off-the-bat, to a personal level and made it about my alleged lack of credibility. See, I could speculate now, as you have done, about your motives for doing so - but it would be beside the point. It would be a detraction from the issue.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099194Trad games usually come with a fixed setting for the players to explore. Shadowrun, CoC, Harn, MERP, Cyberpunk 2020,TORG, RIFTS, Vampire, Dark Albion, you name it.
So, yeah, shared world creation other than the limited stuff for character background that I outlined above seems to be atypical for trad games. And I submit that the ire that this draws from a lot of trad gamers as evidence in support of the assertion.

Looking at this list, I see several kinds of RPG in regards to setting. One that don't specify any, ones that have a setting but it is an example, historical/legendary RPG (some narrow, some broad), and ones that have a specific setting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_tabletop_role-playing_games

It not as typical as you are asserting. Nor it is different compared to the situation today.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099255Because you're clearly attacking the person, not the argument.



Even if true, you've done nothing, zero effort, to demonstrate that.



Which evidence exactly is anecdotal and where is the opposing evidence that is NOT anecdotal? Pretty much everything in RPG forums is based on personal experience as there is very little hard data out there about the subject at hand. But if you have any evidence that is not anecdotal, bring it forth please. Let's hear it.



Let me repeat it: you didn't address the issue at all. You did exactly nothing to prove your point but instead switched immediately, off-the-bat, to a personal level and made it about my alleged lack of credibility. See, I could speculate now, as you have done, about your motives for doing so - but it would be beside the point. It would be a detraction from the issue.

Whatever, didn't read.

Quote from: Brad;1099281Whatever, didn't read.

Making a ton of fans around here with this "state my ideas as fact then throw a tantrum when people call me uninformed" strategy, eh Alexander?

Gee I wonder who called it.

Seriously dude, stop pretending to be an expert and start asking questions. We are so, so willing to tell you about the kind of gaming we do. We even made a whole forum for it and everything.

Quote from: Azraele;1099297Making a ton of fans around here with this "state my ideas as fact then throw a tantrum when people call me uninformed" strategy, eh Alexander?

Gee I wonder who called it.

Seriously dude, stop pretending to be an expert and start asking questions. We are so, so willing to tell you about the kind of gaming we do. We even made a whole forum for it and everything.

The entire premise of his argument is that old school RPGs are much more rigid than storygames.

Location: Germany

Why am I not at all surprised he'd say something like this? It's like the rulebook is some sort of manifesto for this dude, and ANYTHING not explicitly stated in the book is verboten. So, yeah, I'm just annoyed with the endless pretentious posts filled with disingenuous arguments. The biggest issue I have is the notion that there is zero collaborative effort in old school RPGs. Like, what the literal fuck...half the fucking spells in AD&D are named after dudes from the original Greyhawk campaign. The characters from that game shaped the world just as much as the other way around. So, to repeat, this dude has either never played an RPG or he's just lying.

Quote from: Itachi;1099148In other words, the process is not really different from what lots of groups have been doing since ever for collaboratively creating a world together ( I know I did it in GURPS and Runequest well before AW even existed ). It's usually done in the first sessions of arcs or campaigns and is great for providing interesting stuff/hooks/seeds for the group to tap later on, make the world more vivid and colorful, and to provoke player investment (since they're creating it themselves). It's not intended to turn things into some improvising story-telling world-editing game where you create things to change "2 seconds later" or something. This isn't Fiasco or Baron Munchausen. Otherwise it would contradict it's very agenda of "make the world feel real" as you said.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099194Trad games usually come with a fixed setting for the players to explore. Shadowrun, CoC, Harn, MERP, Cyberpunk 2020,TORG, RIFTS, Vampire, Dark Albion, you name it.
So, yeah, shared world creation other than the limited stuff for character background that I outlined above seems to be atypical for trad games. And I submit that the ire that this draws from a lot of trad gamers as evidence in support of the assertion.

This seems like not much of an actual difference of opinion. Shared world building certainly happens within traditional games, and it is even codified in a few semi-traditional games -- notably Ars Magica and Prince Valiant, which had assumed rotating GMs. But it is also very atypical, as Alexander says. Even in games that don't have a predefined background (like GURPS), it is usual that the GM creates the setting - rather than it being a shared creation. That's the assumption of the rules.

My earliest shared-world games were with Ars Magica and Theatrix in the 1990s, which were pretty non-traditional. Our style their was mostly troupe-style, with multiple people collaborating on creation during down time, but a single GM during play time. Ars Magica and Theatrix are more explicit about troupe style than Apocalypse World or more AW-powered games.

Quote from: estar;1099280It not as typical as you are asserting.

Which implies that it's typical after all. But let me continue: DSA/TDE, Paranoia, Bushido, Aliens, Warhammer FRP/40K, Dark Conspiracy, Marvel Superheroes, Recon, Pendragon, Judge Dredd, Legend of the 5 Rings, Star Wars. And so on.
Apart from that, I don't think I specified the degree of how typical coming with a setting is or how atypical coming without a setting is. Much less shared world-building, which is yet another issue.

Quote from: jhkim;1099315This seems like not much of an actual difference of opinion.

I agree. And in the blogpost I have linked I explain why I think it's usually useless to find some attribute that is true for all (no exception!) RPGs or RPGs of a specific type. It makes more sense to talk about what the typical attributes are that set them apart from other games.

Quote from: jhkim;1099315Shared world building certainly happens within traditional games, and it is even codified in a few semi-traditional games -- notably Ars Magica and Prince Valiant, which had assumed rotating GMs. But it is also very atypical, as Alexander says. Even in games that don't have a predefined background (like GURPS), it is usual that the GM creates the setting - rather than it being a shared creation. That's the assumption of the rules.

I mean the argument could be made that the biggest RPG of all doesn't come with one fixed setting and one could even argue that if only part of the playerbase engages in shared worldbuilding this would outweigh much of the smaller games in numbers. But this is a line of argument that I can't accept readily, even if there was a big shared world-building community within D&D (which I somewhat doubt) because... then everything is about what D&D or the D&D community does. So, no, that argument doesn't work for me either, as I think we need to ignore to D&D's market share and community size to have a meaningful discussion of the wider hobby.

Ok, you guys convinced me. Specially the part of Ars Magica not really being conventional in a sense. Shared world building always existed, but it's not typical.

I stand corrected.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099357Apart from that, I don't think I specified the degree of how typical coming with a setting is or how atypical coming without a setting is. Much less shared world-building, which is yet another issue.

You were making a statement about the state of what you call traditional RPGs that wasn't accurate. Yes many of them come with a defined setting and are about roleplaying in that setting. However the situation more nuanced than you make it out to be.

Which weakens your points about shared worldbuilding in traditional RPGs. Which also demonstrates you have gaps in your knowledge about what has been published.

For example are you aware of blue booking as described in Aaron's Allston Strike Force for Champions? Or that Strike Force was released in 1988?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3727[/ATTACH]

It was liked well enough that they had entire sessions that was handled solely through blue booking.

Look, I get you like theorizing about RPGs and the state of things. But you need to realize that while there may be trends and concepts that are widespread throughout the hobby and industry there are no effective way of determining what they are in any objective way. All you can speak accurately about it what influences you and why you do the things you do. Lessons I had to learn while popularizing sandbox campaigns and hexcrawl formatted settings.

So when you make statements about how things are in the industry and hobby, you are going to get pushback from people like myself.

Quote from: estar;1099375You were making a statement about the state of what you call traditional RPGs that wasn't accurate.

Fine, but then it's incumbent to you to demonstrate that.

Quote from: estar;1099375Yes many of them come with a defined setting and are about roleplaying in that setting. However the situation more nuanced than you make it out to be.

So, this is where you're losing me. If I don't even qualify how typical or how atypical either approach to dealing with setting is, then how can I not be nuanced enough?
Even worse: if I am flat-out wrong, as you suggest above (aka shared worldbuilding is not atypical), then it's again not a matter of nuance. It's a matter of simply being wrong.

Quote from: estar;1099375Which weakens your points about shared worldbuilding in traditional RPGs. Which also demonstrates you have gaps in your knowledge about what has been published.

For example are you aware of blue booking as described in Aaron's Allston Strike Force for Champions? Or that Strike Force was released in 1988?

IMG

It was liked well enough that they had entire sessions that was handled solely through blue booking.

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6b/0e/a9/6b0ea9d0b0331b664ce7e0647063be5a.jpg)

Quote from: estar;1099375Look, I get you like theorizing about RPGs and the state of things. But you need to realize that while there may be trends and concepts that are widespread throughout the hobby and industry there are no effective way of determining what they are in any objective way. All you can speak accurately about it what influences you and why you do the things you do. Lessons I had to learn while popularizing sandbox campaigns and hexcrawl formatted settings.

So when you make statements about how things are in the industry and hobby, you are going to get pushback from people like myself.

That's fine. So let me summarize what just happened from my perspective: I made a claim that a particular technique is atypical for trad games. Instead of countering this claim, which you believe to be wrong, by providing evidence of a preponderance (or at least significant use) of the technique in relation to the trad game segment of the RPG hobby, you're drawing up another (even though related) technique, which you must consider obscure enough that you had to post an image for explanation, so that readers, including me, would understand what you're talking about.

So, in other words: you didn't address the issue head-on but dragged out another item, something at least somewhat obscure, in the hopes of, once more, establishing your superior gaming credentials to me. It's yet another appeal to authority fallacy, Rob. When we're talking RPGs, Rob, it's always about you trying to humble me, instead of ignoring me as a person but talking about the actual issue. And your method of doing so is, apparently, touting your own gaming credentials. Quite conveniently so, if I may add.

I mean it would also have been fine if you just said: this is not my impression of the hobby because I have made these and that experiences and have observed that regarding play, including bluebooking. And then we could have exchanged more observations. And after that we would have gone our separate ways.

But it's not about that particular issue for you, is it?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099387Fine, but then it's incumbent to you to demonstrate that.

I do appreciate your trolling, but this is a bit over the top.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099387Fine, but then it's incumbent to you to demonstrate that.

No.  On the off chance that this is a language barrier, I'll spell it out:  You made the initial claim.  It is incumbent on you to provide the evidence.  You have provided none.  Therefore a flat contradiction of your point is sufficient until that changes.

Let's be practical here: what Traditional games present "shared world creation" as the default, intended mode of play?

If we can't find at least a dozen ones, then Alexander's point is spot on.

Quote from: Itachi;1099391Let's be practical here: what Traditional games present "shared world creation" as the default, intended mode of play?

If we can't find at least a dozen ones, then Alexander's point is spot on.

Unless your campaign is a full-on railroad, "shared world creation" is the de facto default, intended mode of traditional RPGs. Characters have autonomy, the do stuff, make friends and enemies, raid castles, build castles, raise armies, create magic items, create spells. And on and on. All of which happens in the game world, and is part and parcel of "world creation".

Drawing an arbitrary line between PC actions and every other action in the world, and designating the latter only as "world creation", is just plain circular.

Quote from: Zalman;1099393Unless your campaign is a full-on railroad, "shared world creation" is the de facto default, intended mode of traditional RPGs.

No, it's not:

- D&D's default mode of play is using one of it's official pre-existing settings, or a GM-created one.  
- Vampire's default mode of play is using the official pre-existing setting that comes in the book.
- Warhammer FRP's idem
- Runequest idem
- GURPS idem
etc

The only Traditional game cited so far to use a formal process of shared world creation is Beyond the Wall, and even this is arguably not very traditional.

Otherwise, please Zalman, cite Traditional games that use shared world creation as the default mode of play.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1099390No.  On the off chance that this is a language barrier, I'll spell it out:  You made the initial claim.  It is incumbent on you to provide the evidence.  You have provided none.

Untrue. I provided a somewhat sizeable amount of pretty popular trad games that come with built-in settings, which serves at least as weak indication that my claim is true.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1099390Therefore a flat contradiction of your point is sufficient until that changes.

Sufficient for what though? Scientific dispute? Or a conversation on an internet hobbyist forum? What's the proper standard here and to what end? If neither party can prove their viewpoints, why is exchanging those viewpoints and exchanging experiences not enough?

Quote from: Itachi;1099391Let's be practical here: what Traditional games present "shared world creation" as the default, intended mode of play?

If we can't find at least a dozen ones, then Alexander's point is spot on.

I'd like to add another argument: was Ars Magica's setting-handling a Unique Selling Point (USP) for the game? I think it was. Certainly not the only one, I bought it back then to study what it's doing with magic, but it probably was. A way to differentiate yourself from competitors.

Quote from: Zalman;1099393Unless your campaign is a full-on railroad, "shared world creation" is the de facto default, intended mode of traditional RPGs. Characters have autonomy, the do stuff, make friends and enemies, raid castles, build castles, raise armies, create magic items, create spells. And on and on. All of which happens in the game world, and is part and parcel of "world creation".

Drawing an arbitrary line between PC actions and every other action in the world, and designating the latter only as "world creation", is just plain circular.

That is not what I was referring to though. If you look further up in the thread you will find that I affirmed that as part of background generation, players might make up, for example, a rival PC in a trad game. It's a background element that the PC would already know. What is more unusual, though, is shared world creation that you find in story games, where the GM elicits setting elements that the PCs may have not encountered yet or have no knowledge of, especially whole regions (which in a lot of trad games would be defined by the built-in setting anyway, compare "How is this land that you came from? Where is it on the map? Tell us some quirks of it's people?" further above).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099398I'd like to add another argument: was Ars Magica's setting-handling a Unique Selling Point (USP) for the game? I think it was. Certainly not the only one, I bought it back then to study what it's doing with magic, but it probably was. A way to differentiate yourself from competitors.

Makes sense. If I remember right it's setting-creation comes from Covenant creation, which comes from Troupe Play(TM).

Quote from: Itachi;1099394No, it's not:

- D&D's default mode of play is using one of it's official pre-existing settings, or a GM-created one.  
- Vampire's default mode of play is using the official pre-existing setting that comes in the book.
- Warhammer FRP's idem
- Runequest idem
- GURPS idem
etc

The only Traditional game cited so far to use a formal process of shared world creation is Beyond the Wall, and even this is arguably not very traditional.

Otherwise, please Zalman, cite Traditional games that use shared world creation as the default mode of play.

If you believe that the world is only "created" prior to game play, then we will not find common ground. In my experience, game worlds are living entities created both before and during the game, with the latter aspect making much more difference to the state of the "world" as it is experienced by the players, and driven primarily by player choices.

Just because a "pre-existing" setting is used as a starting point, doesn't mean that players aren't intended to help create the game world. Every RPG I've ever played includes player choice as a core concept, and every choice a player makes shapes the world.

Quote from: Zalman;1099406If you believe that the world is only "created" prior to game play, then we will not find common ground. In my experience, game worlds are living entities created both before and during the game, with the latter aspect making much more difference to the state of the "world" as it is experienced by the players, and driven primarily by player choices.

Just because a "pre-existing" setting is used as a starting point, doesn't mean that players aren't intended to help create the game world. Every RPG I've ever played includes player choice as a core concept, and every choice a player makes shapes the world.

Again, there has been no disagreement about the fact that it's fairly frequent for players in trad games to make up limited setting content. See #51 (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?40936-A-comparative-analysis-of-Trad-Games-and-AW-DW&p=1099162&viewfull=1#post1099162). That is not the controversy. I am challenging whether it's typical for players, for example, to make up a country and its culture. A nearby country at that, to which the campaign might shift. That is the type of shared world creation we have been talking about since #51 and #52. That is the context.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099407I am challenging whether it's typical for players, for example, to make up a country and its culture. A nearby country at that, to which the campaign might shift. That is the type of shared world creation we have been talking about since #51 and #52. That is the context.

If for you "shared world creation" refers only to "making up a country", then I feel like the term is being disingenuously applied to make your point, and seems a completely arbitrary place to draw that line.

That said, even early versions of D&D stressed the creation of "territories" by the PCs, with Gygax noting in the DMG:
 

QuoteThe real benefit of having player characters develop territory is the addition to your milieu.

Of course, if your objection here is that a "territory" is smaller than a "country", or that it doesn't have a "king" or whatever, then the line you're drawing is even more arbitrary than I thought.

Of course, Gygax also stressed the characters' development as being integral to the game world:

QuoteThe fame (or infamy) of certain characters gives lustre to the campaign and enjoyment to player and DM alike as the parts grow and are entwined to become a fantastic history of a never-was world where all of us would wish to live if we could.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099398Untrue. I provided a somewhat sizeable amount of pretty popular trad games that come with built-in settings, which serves at least as weak indication that my claim is true.

No, you seem to be confused on the distinctions between assertion, argument, and evidence.  This makes the "logic" of your points difficult to take seriously.

Zalman,

Yep, that's what we meant: creating a world together to be played (instead of affecting/changing a pre-existing one through play). Do you think it's a more popular practice than using pre-existing settings or GM-created ones? I honestly can't see that based on games I know.

Also, can you describe more of that Gygax passage? Does he gives more instructions related to that? Thanks in advance.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1099422No, you seem to be confused on the distinctions between assertion, argument, and evidence.  This makes the "logic" of your points difficult to take seriously.

English isn't my native language, feel free to enlighten me please.

Quote from: Zalman;1099410If for you "shared world creation" refers only to "making up a country", then I feel like the term is being disingenuously applied to make your point, and seems a completely arbitrary place to draw that line.

I presume before implying I might be using the term disingeniously you did double-check that I was the one who introduced the term into this debate? Anyway, I didn't (and don't) object to the terminology because anyone who did follow the conversation would clearly understand the context in which we have been using it here.

Quote from: Zalman;1099410That said, even early versions of D&D stressed the creation of "territories" by the PCs, with Gygax noting in the DMG:
  Of course, if your objection here is that a "territory" is smaller than a "country", or that it doesn't have a "king" or whatever, then the line you're drawing is even more arbitrary than I thought.

Of course, Gygax also stressed the characters' development as being integral to the game world:

No, no. Early D&D, as far as I have read about it, especially the first Blackmoor campaigns, featured plenty of shared world-building. I just doubt that it's typical for what followed.
But I don't know if this is a useful conversation to continue. I was never bent on "proving my point", as that is impossible, and I kinda doubt that those who believe this kind of shared world building hasn't been atypical for trad games overall can prove their point. But if I anyone wants to give it a try, you have my attention.
Otherwise, we're just exchanging perspectives.

Quote from: Itachi;1099423Zalman,

Yep, that's what we meant: creating a world together to be played (instead of affecting/changing a pre-existing one through play). Do you think it's a more popular practice than using pre-existing settings or GM-created ones? I honestly can't see that based on games I know.

Also, can you describe more of that Gygax passage? Does he gives more instructions related to that? Thanks in advance.

Sorry, I'm still not buying the distinction between "pre-existing" and "one through play". Maybe you do it differently, but personally I don't create a brand new world for every game session, nor do I create a brand new world for every new group, campaign, or joining player. The game world we use was started by me, the DM, and then evolved though player actions. It's been alive for years, and when a new player joins the group, or a new campaign begins, it starts with the world as built primarily through game play.

Do you think it's more popular to use a brand new fresh game world for every session? Every campaign? That certainly hasn't been the case in my experience. As others have pointed out, 1e's "pre-existing" (according to you) game world is chock-full of spells, locales, and personas created by players, during the game. So is my game world. So is every other game world I've ever played in. I am very skeptical that creating new worlds for each new group of players is "more popular".

As to Gygax, those quotes come from the 1e DMG's section devoted to PCs establishing keeps, territory, political affiliations, etc., and generally becoming influential figures in the game world. Perhaps you consider powerful personas in your "pre-existing" setting to be somehow different than powerful personas that get added to it along the way, but that sounds to me a lot like another completely arbitrary distinction born of confirmation bias.

Quote from: Zalman;1099497... but that sounds to me a lot like another completely arbitrary distinction born of confirmation bias.

Well, at least it is on topic then.  

You win the thread. :)

Quote from: Zalman;1099410That said, even early versions of D&D stressed the creation of "territories" by the PCs, with Gygax noting in the DMG

Umm, Gygax is talking about Player CHARACTERS actually creating territories or even countries by taking land in game and ruling it, not Agthar the barbarian deciding he comes from Agtharistan, which then becomes a retroactively existing country in your campaign.

Quote from: Zalman;1099497that sounds to me a lot like another completely arbitrary distinction born of confirmation bias.

More like born of the difference between In-Character and Out of Character.

Quote from: Zalman;1099393Unless your campaign is a full-on railroad, "shared world creation" is the de facto default, intended mode of traditional RPGs.

This is the biggest load of bullshit I've seen in this thread, and that's saying something.

Shared-World Creation, as is seen in many games coming from the Forge/Narrative side of design, is Players, Out of Character,  sharing the role of the GM and helping create the setting, it's major themes, major enemies, how the players will interact with all that, etc.

That has NOTHING to do with In-Character play, where the PCs, while playing the game, create spells, save towns, build cities, prop up some Kings, while bringing down others, etc. etc.

Two different things.  The difference between IC play and OOC design.

Someone saying that is Common in Traditional Play is flat out lying or completely ignorant.  A couple of outliers or a single designers optional advice dating from the 80s does not make something Common.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1099542Shared-World Creation, as is seen in many games coming from the Forge/Narrative side of design, is Players, Out of Character,  sharing the role of the GM and helping create the setting, it's major themes, major enemies, how the players will interact with all that, etc.

In fact, I submit this as further indication - that shared world creation, in the sense it was used here in this thread, has been part of the "player empowerment" pushed by exactly that group of gamers; and why push something that had already been a typical thing?

Quote from: Zalman;1099497Sorry, I'm still not buying the distinction between "pre-existing" and "one through play". Maybe you do it differently, but personally I don't create a brand new world for every game session, nor do I create a brand new world for every new group, campaign, or joining player. The game world we use was started by me, the DM, and then evolved though player actions. It's been alive for years, and when a new player joins the group, or a new campaign begins, it starts with the world as built primarily through game play.

Do you think it's more popular to use a brand new fresh game world for every session? Every campaign? That certainly hasn't been the case in my experience. As others have pointed out, 1e's "pre-existing" (according to you) game world is chock-full of spells, locales, and personas created by players, during the game. So is my game world. So is every other game world I've ever played in. I am very skeptical that creating new worlds for each new group of players is "more popular".

In all my years of gaming, I've seen just the opposite.  I can count on one hand, and have fingers left over, the number of GMs/groups I've run into that have a living world that they just keep adding to.

Every time I start a new campaign it's a new world.  New map with new locations and new NPCs.  The only thing you may be able to rely on being the same is anything that comes directly from the core book.  Even that isn't a guarantee.

Quote from: rgalex;1099625In all my years of gaming, I've seen just the opposite.  I can count on one hand, and have fingers left over, the number of GMs/groups I've run into that have a living world that they just keep adding to.

Every time I start a new campaign it's a new world.  New map with new locations and new NPCs.  The only thing you may be able to rely on being the same is anything that comes directly from the core book.  Even that isn't a guarantee.

I agree your situation is more common than referees who run living worlds. However have you ever answered in a positive way when the players said "Wouldn't it makes sense that X would be here?" or "Wouldn't it be neat if Y was as here as well?" With X and Y being a number of things ranging from small scale stuff like items in a room to things with larger scope like NPC organizations or perhaps a whole country.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1099541More like born of the difference between In-Character and Out of Character.

I agree that the real distinction being made is one between in-character play and out-of-character play. I don't agree this makes a world "shared" or "unshared": in both cases players are contributing to the ongoing milieu that is experienced by every other player in the future. In my opinion, conclusions drawn from the notion of the world being "shared" or not on this basis are unfounded.

Just stumbled with this blog post from 2004 by the Apocaylpse World author. It explains a big part of the philosophy behind PbtA:

(taken from http://lumpley.com/hardcore.html )

Spoiler

A Small Thing About Suspense

I have no criticism cred to back this up. Just amatuer observations. So kick my butt if you gotta.

Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.

I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on the edge of our seats! What's up with that?

Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.

What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't know what it will cost.

Everybody with me still? If you're not, give it a try: watch a movie. Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to buy victory, it's as straightforward as that. That's why the payoff at the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we're like ah, finally.

What about RPGs?

Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I'm not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that's the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.

So here's a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.

Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. But what will it cost them?

My game Chalk Outlines was a stab at this, and Otherkind was a better stab, but where it's really coming home is in Dogs in the Vineyard and the Good Knights.

3-22-04

Of course, this was made way before Apocalypse World was written. I guess nowadays his best "stab" at this philosophy is Apocalypse World.

Quote from: Itachi;1099638"Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it."

There's a lot of chatter in this thread that talks past this point: there are exactly two final camps. Those who agree with the above sentence, and those who disagree.

I disagree.

And that's really all I can say on the matter. What's everything else but pontification?

Yep, not everyone will agree with that. But it helps to understand PbtA and the divide between it and more traditional games.

Quote from: Itachi;1099644Yep, not everyone will agree with that. But it helps to understand PbtA and the divide between it and more traditional games.

Yes, it absolutely clarifies things.

And don't get me backwards; I am in no way condemning that style of play.

But I object to it at my table. And a vehemently object to confusing it as "what we're all doing, anyway", which is what I routinely see when it crops up online.

I am not seeing how that idea works in a practical sense. To much of what happens in a campaign is anything but inevitable. Movies and other scripted/written entertainment can use the technique because the author or team know the end point they trying to reach. They can play with various elements, like pacing to achieve the desired emotional response like suspense.

But in a tabletop RPG campaign you have each player having their own goal and motivations. Since time scrying is not a real things there is just no way to predict or influence the actions of each players in the way scripted/written entertainment.

That post is describing something that doesn't work in reality. Instead it describes a style of play focused on wish fulfillment.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1099075THIS 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.

Depends on the LARP? Quite a few have defined rules and even GMs to moderate or explain what the players may be seeing when its not actually represented by a prop. So yes. Some LARPS are RPGs. Others are barely LARPs and more like stage plays or some weird experimental group play.

Quote from: estar;1099280Looking at this list, I see several kinds of RPG in regards to setting. One that don't specify any, ones that have a setting but it is an example, historical/legendary RPG (some narrow, some broad), and ones that have a specific setting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_tabletop_role-playing_games

It not as typical as you are asserting. Nor it is different compared to the situation today.

Keep in mind that a few years ago storygamers/forge cultists/swine were caught editing the wikipedia pages on RPGs to better suit their "narrative" of what an RPG is.

Quote from: Azraele;1099641There's a lot of chatter in this thread that talks past this point: there are exactly two final camps. Those who agree with the above sentence, and those who disagree.

I disagree.

And that's really all I can say on the matter. What's everything else but pontification?

It's more complicated than that. Even among the "The PCs MAY not win" crowd, there's a huge variety - what does not-winning even mean? The PCs can't die but they may not beat the scenario? Or: the PCs can die but the likelihood is so close to 0, that is almost impossible to distinguish? Or: the PCs may die, but only in certain situations (like boss battles), whereas they are largely invulnerable, due to plot armor, during the run of the scenario. And there's of course gamers (OR GAMES), where TPKs are an omnipresent potential threat. Anyway, I believe the PCs can always die when the players just dick around enough with the GM.

Quote from: estar;1099671I am not seeing how that idea works in a practical sense. To much of what happens in a campaign is anything but inevitable. Movies and other scripted/written entertainment can use the technique because the author or team know the end point they trying to reach. They can play with various elements, like pacing to achieve the desired emotional response like suspense.

But in a tabletop RPG campaign you have each player having their own goal and motivations. Since time scrying is not a real things there is just no way to predict or influence the actions of each players in the way scripted/written entertainment.

That post is describing something that doesn't work in reality. Instead it describes a style of play focused on wish fulfillment.

I happen to disagree. First of all, I have been in too many trad games where they PCs couldn't die - because it was quite apparent that the GM was fudging dice behind the screen. Secondly, Vincent Baker is a smart guy and he's not completely wrong here: when you watch an Indiana Jones movie, you never feel for even a moment that Indy could die. Not even once. Still, the first three movies are suspenseful. This is clear indication that human beings can be thrilled by stories in which they know the protagonist's life isn't under threat. (Nor the ultimate success of the mission.)

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099398That is not what I was referring to though. If you look further up in the thread you will find that I affirmed that as part of background generation, players might make up, for example, a rival PC in a trad game. It's a background element that the PC would already know.

What is more unusual, though, is shared world creation that you find in story games, where the GM elicits setting elements that the PCs may have not encountered yet or have no knowledge of, especially whole regions (which in a lot of trad games would be defined by the built-in setting anyway, compare "How is this land that you came from? Where is it on the map? Tell us some quirks of it's people?" further above).

1a: That is relatively common in D&D and some other traditional RPGs.

1b: BX and Thunder Rift were pretty much made for that as was Gamma World and Star Frontiers. You had a map and a few place names. And that was about it. The DM could flesh it out themselves, or develop lands based on player input and/or backgrounds. Varying degrees of shared world creation. I am pretty sure there are even one or two articles in Dragon touching on the subject and various ways to approach it.

And D20 Gamma World had player created base towns that the players statted out, chose skills for, and managed. The town was essentially a shared creation. There are probably others like that. 4e D&D GW allowed players to pretty much make up their own races and equipment during chargen. They even give an example where the PC could instead of being a swarm of rats that cluster into a humanoid shape, instead its a swarm of kittens. Your medium ranged weapon could be a crossbow, a lazer gun, a bee shooter, whatever. Mekton may be another example as it is very freeform during geargen. YMMV on that. But there are some other freeform/toolbox RPGs that allow players to customize a little or alot.

Quote from: Zalman;1099410That said, even early versions of D&D stressed the creation of "territories" by the PCs, with Gygax noting in the DMG:
  Of course, if your objection here is that a "territory" is smaller than a "country", or that it doesn't have a "king" or whatever, then the line you're drawing is even more arbitrary than I thought.

Of course, Gygax also stressed the characters' development as being integral to the game world:

I recall something similar. Not sure if it was in Dragon or what. But the concept was each player created a region and the DM wove these together to form the land the players would adventure in?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099732It's more complicated than that. Even among the "The PCs MAY not win" crowd, there's a huge variety - what does not-winning even mean? The PCs can't die but they may not beat the scenario? Or: the PCs can die but the likelihood is so close to 0, that is almost impossible to distinguish? Or: the PCs may die, but only in certain situations (like boss battles), whereas they are largely invulnerable, due to plot armor, during the run of the scenario. And there's of course gamers (OR GAMES), where TPKs are an omnipresent potential threat. Anyway, I believe the PCs can always die when the players just dick around enough with the GM.

I'll grant this wrinkle, but note that the topic has shifted from system to style.

I feel like before we untangle the Gordian knot of comparative game system analysis, we have to address the root philosophical divergence we've uncovered here.

And yes, "Rocks fall, everyone dies" is an inarguable bedrock truth of all RPGs since their birth.

Quote from: Azraele;1099756I'll grant this wrinkle, but note that the topic has shifted from system to style.

I feel like before we untangle the Gordian knot of comparative game system analysis, we have to address the root philosophical divergence we've uncovered here.

Valid points. I'm having a few questions here though:

• Is this really a clear-cut trad versus PbtA thing? Or even trad versus narrativist thing?
• If the same mentality has existed in a fair number of trad games behind the scenes - is Vincent Baker's approach just more honest? Making it explicit? And does he bring more suspense into it, since now there is a cost attached to failure other than the GM having to fudge die rolls again (which is kinda just a price the GM has to pay)? We could say that retrieving the grail was never really in doubt for Indy - only the survival of his father and of Elsa, perhaps.
• What are the different game styles that different people are prefering anyway? Does it relate to genre and if so - how?
• Can we address this issue without even taking a wider look at risk management in RPGs (trad or otherwise)?

Quote from: Omega;1099752I recall something similar. Not sure if it was in Dragon or what. But the concept was each player created a region and the DM wove these together to form the land the players would adventure in?

In the campaigns I've participated in, it was -- in theory -- that the characters carved out ownership of some pre-existing place (which some on this thread would have us believe means "without contributing to the existence or details of that place"). In practice, those locations were more typically invented, as you suggest, by the players (with DM input and/or collaboration) at the time they were ready to assume that ownership, and then added to the world-so-far. It may be that Gary Gygax, who essentially did this for a living, had all sorts of spots pre-primed for "takeover". But all the DMs I've played with, including myself, rarely have time for that level of preparation.

No matter the details though, it's pretty clear to me that in some for or another, the players were encouraged to contribute to the world-building. Spells of course are another example ... creating a spell is something a player does -- writes the spell, proposes it to the DM, hashes out the details through negotiation, and only then retrofits a very vague character-based explanation ("Marveau the Wizard has been sequestered for 3 months researching this new spell, and here it is ...").

Quote from: Zalman;1099772(which some on this thread would have us believe means "without contributing to the existence or details of that place"). In practice, those locations were more typically invented, as you suggest, by the players (with DM input and/or collaboration)

If you're referring to me, I'm gonna need a citation. Also, as a reminder, the controversy is not about whether it existed, the question is whether shared world-building, as outlined further above, has been typical for trad games. Nothing you said, or anyone else prior, have managed to convince me that it hasn't been atypical, more uncommon than common.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099770Valid points. I'm having a few questions here though:

• Is this really a clear-cut trad versus PbtA thing? Or even trad versus narrativist thing?  

Here we're broching yet another subject; authorial intent. I think we can operate on the assumption that the rules as written were intended to be used as such. When this is explicitly contradicted in the text, we should use that exception as our assumed intent.

 

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099770*]If the same mentality has existed in a fair number of trad games behind the scenes - is Vincent Baker's approach just more honest? Making it explicit? And does he bring more suspense into it, since now there is a cost attached to failure other than the GM having to fudge die rolls again (which is kinda just a price the GM has to pay)? We could say that retrieving the grail was never really in doubt for Indy - only the survival of his father and of Elsa, perhaps  

.

You're assuming here that)
1) Trad games (a nebulous term) had the clear intent to ignore their own mechanics to allow character success
2) The codification of this assumption into mechanics is merely a formalizing of this intent
3) There is no success-at-cost prior to the codification of the notion as mechanic outside of GM whim

That's a pretty far branch when you examine it

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099770*]What are the different game styles that different people are prefering anyway? Does it relate to genre and if so - how?  

For the purposes of focusing this discussion, there are broadly two: those who feel character success is inevitable (with varying degrees of "drama") and those who feel that there is no guarantee of success.

These attitudes can persist irrespective of genre.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099770*]Can we address this issue without even taking a wider look at risk management in RPGs (trad or otherwise)?

I think it's fertile ground for discussion, but unecessary for the purpose of your analysis. We have a clear binary; we muddle the waters by hoisting in countless caveats. Focus.

[/LIST]

Quote from: Azraele;1099799You're assuming here that)
1) Trad games (a nebulous term) had the clear intent to ignore their own mechanics to allow character success

Clear enough for the runners of the website to have an Other Games forum, for non-traditional (storytelling) RPGs, among others. So, I feel pretty safe in using it on the RPGsite.

Quote from: Azraele;10997993) There is no success-at-cost prior to the codification of the notion as mechanic outside of GM whim

That's a pretty far branch when you examine it

It's again a question of what's typical. So, let me ask for clarification: not only shared world-building, of the type discussed previously, is not atypical for traditional RPGs but also success-at-a-cost mechanics?

Spoiler

Cue-in someone bringing up a handful of examples for success-at-a-cost mechanics in trad games that don't indicate at all that the mechanic is anywhere near as common in those games as it is in AW/DW.

Quote from: Azraele;1099799For the purposes of focusing this discussion, there are broadly two: those who feel character success is inevitable (with varying degrees of "drama") and those who feel that there is no guarantee of success.

No, this is a discussion is about trad games vs AW/DW. If PCs can die in AW (and they can; they can even get murdered by fellow PCs), then that question of "philosophical divergence" does not apply. Maybe worthy of its own thread but still off-topic.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099862Clear enough for the runners of the website to have an Other Games forum, for non-traditional (storytelling) RPGs, among others. So, I feel pretty safe in using it on the RPGsite.



It's again a question of what's typical. So, let me ask for clarification: not only shared world-building, of the type discussed previously, is not atypical for traditional RPGs but also success-at-a-cost mechanics?

Spoiler

Cue-in someone bringing up a handful of examples for success-at-a-cost mechanics in trad games that don't indicate at all that the mechanic is anywhere near as common in those games as it is in AW/DW.

No, this is a discussion is about trad games vs AW/DW. If PCs can die in AW (and they can; they can even get murdered by fellow PCs), then that question of "philosophical divergence" does not apply. Maybe worthy of its own thread but still off-topic.

Since we're deciding to focus on success at cost and shared world building, let me propose this notion from my own experience:

You can succeed at a cost without any mechanics at all.

If you ask: "can my character climb this cliff"
And the gms response entails a cost ("it will take you one hour and ten pitons")
Then you succeed at your goal of scaling the cliff, for the cost they name.

Where does this fit in to your broader analysis?

Quote from: AzraeleSince we're deciding to focus on success at cost and shared world building, let me propose this notion from my own experience:

You can succeed at a cost without any mechanics at all.

If you ask: "can my character climb this cliff"
And the gms response entails a cost ("it will take you one hour and ten pitons")
Then you succeed at your goal of scaling the cliff, for the cost they name.

Where does this fit in to your broader analysis?

I would say there's an important difference between letting the matter to GM fiat and enforcing it through rules. Because letting it to fiat, chances are lots of GMs would say "Ok, you climb the the cliff. Now what?" instead of presenting costs.

The far-reaching consequence of that is something like Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition, where the blurb said "Personal Horror" but as the rules never really enforced that, the game was used in a myriad ways across different tables from goth-ninjas to sopranos by night to being dropped altogether due to vagueness. Resulting in the authors whining at some point that nobody played the game as they have envisioned it.

So, it's a big difference in my book.

We're doing system comparison in this thread, right? Between traditional systems versus DW/AW. DW/AW have clearly success-at-a-cost built in on a massive scale. I think traditional systems generally don't, especially not on that scale. So that's a difference. The conversation further above that I was trying to get to was about arriving at a judgement call regarding this difference - is this good thing or is this a bad thing?

My personal stance is that success-at-a-cost is a GM tool that has its place, particularly since I am in favor of a limited amount of railroading. Just sometimes, in certain spots, you know. However, having success-at-a-cost hardcoded into the system at a massive scale only makes sense if you want to do genre story emulation (as opposed to genre world emulation, see the thread starting post) - because you need the string of cascading complications ("Moves snowball") to drive the story forwards.

Thus, my own game has only a limited amount of success-at-a-cost built into it: it strikes only when you succeed with the narrowest possible margin on a d100 roll. Similarly, failing forward only happens when you roll too high by exactly 1 on a test. Other than that, either is shifted to GM's fiat - in part because of the Fortune Point rules, which help creating stakes lower than PC death, which in turn makes it easier for the GM to just let the party fail whenever it does.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099904We're doing system comparison in this thread, right? Between traditional systems versus DW/AW. DW/AW have clearly success-at-a-cost built in on a massive scale. I think traditional systems generally don't, especially not on that scale. So that's a difference. The conversation further above that I was trying to get to was about arriving at a judgement call regarding this difference - is this good thing or is this a bad thing?

We're discussing more than bare mechanics though; you have to. Bare mechanics don't tell the entire story of how traditional games are played; the role of the GM is vital, and their judgment in running the living, shared imaged universe is crucial to upholding the integrity of those games. If you're mono-focusing on mechanics, you're ignoring the lion's share of what happens at a trad game table.

This point, by the way, is the one I keep harping on you for failing to understand: this is why you're wrong, in so many words. This is what you need to learn, at a fundamental level, to do any kind meaningful analysis between traditional RPGs and something like Apocalypse World.

I already linked you to some reading material on this. I again urge you to read it; it will enlighten you as to this point that you're so thoroughly missing.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099904My personal stance is that success-at-a-cost is a GM tool that has its place, particularly since I am in favor of a limited amount of railroading. Just sometimes, in certain spots, you know. However, having success-at-a-cost hardcoded into the system at a massive scale only makes sense if you want to do genre story emulation (as opposed to genre world emulation, see the thread starting post) - because you need the string of cascading complications ("Moves snowball") to drive the story forwards.

Yes... You're proposing a style of gaming which is as far removed from traditional roleplaying games as those games are from board games. Traditional games do not have a "story"; they're games, conclusions about the outcomes aren't considered beforehand. This is why the notion that we should "assume the heroes will triumph" is a laughable statement in traditional games; that assumption is like playing a video game with some cheat that prevents you from losing lives or taking damage. It essentially robs you of the experience of the game.

The solution of "adding in success at cost" is trying to solve a problem that's introduced when you de-fang the game around player success in the first place. If there's real danger of a player dying to a goblin's stray arrow, they play cautiously and take threats like that seriously.

This, by the way, is not mere conjecture; if you'd taken my advice and asked any of the myriad gorgnards on this forum about their experience playing trad games, this is the style of response you would have gotten: one rooted in their valuable at-the table-experience.

I'm getting the impression you're not here to actually evaluate the differences between Apocalypse World and trad games, however. It's my suspicion that you're not being intellectually honest here, hence my various callouts, insults and dismissals.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1099904Thus, my own game has only a limited amount of success-at-a-cost built into it: it strikes only when you succeed with the narrowest possible margin on a d100 roll. Similarly, failing forward only happens when you roll too high by exactly 1 on a test. Other than that, either is shifted to GM's fiat - in part because of the Fortune Point rules, which help creating stakes lower than PC death, which in turn makes it easier for the GM to just let the party fail whenever it does.

Aaaaand suspicion confirmed. You're here to peddle your game's design. You're not interested in a genuine analysis, and not only do you not know the first thing about trad games, you have the audacity to come to a forum filled with those who do and insult them when they call you on just how egregiously you don't comprehend them.

Pathetic.

When you start a thread with a question instead of some moronic assertion, I'll be more than happy to.... How did you put it.... "Engage honestly" with the subject. But you need to be willing to extend that olive branch bucko, because this flismy wall of ill-tempered, argumentative and intellectually deceitful tripe ain't gonna fly on these forums.

Get gud at rhetoric, n00b.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943We're discussing more than bare mechanics though; you have to. Bare mechanics don't tell the entire story of how traditional games are played;

Sure and you will find that the thread starter didn't just discuss mechanics, just primarily so as this is more tangible than underlying philosophy.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943I again urge you to read it; it will enlighten you as to this point that you're so thoroughly missing.

I have to point out that you haven't been sticking to the issue but switched to a personal level.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943Traditional games do not have a "story"; they're games, conclusions about the outcomes aren't considered beforehand. This is why the notion that we should "assume the heroes will triumph" is a laughable statement in traditional games;

You obviously have never watched Critical Role. Modern D&D in particular seems to be about leveling your PC all the way up to level 20 and that is the expectation of a fair number of players. I have zero interest in starting another debate on what technique or philosophy is how prevalent though, as we have, once more, no way to settle the issue.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943The solution of "adding in success at cost" is trying to solve a problem that's introduced when you de-fang the game around player success in the first place. If there's real danger of a player dying to a goblin's stray arrow, they play cautiously and take threats like that seriously.

Yeah but the idea that the PCs are meant to be heroes in the crunch as well is in turn a reaction to early RPGs in which the PCs didn't have that level of protection and it just wasn't fun enough for a lot of us. That's part of why old-school games became old school and metacurrency was introduced: it's a rejection of that philosophy of gaming. It has not been made out of unfamiliarity with that philosophy; quite to the contrary. It was a conscious reaction. One of the first times we used metacurrency in our games was in the 90s, when a friend ran a Rolemaster campaign and the system is just so brutal that he gave each PC 3 lifetime rerolls. That was way before the Forge.

So, yeah, success-at-a-cost is solving a problem that got introduced solely by fixing the problems of earlier games. But if anyone thinks that gamers with merely a different taste are straight-up ignorant of what they're missing out, they're deceiving themselves. Very much so. The people who design games that have metacurrency or fail forward or success-at-a-cost, they're more-or-less all familair with the games some in here are championing - and still found them wanting.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943one rooted in their valuable at-the table-experience.

The implication being that it's not a matter of taste but that I (and the people who designed those foolish metacurrency games) "just don't have enough valuable at-the-table experience". LOL. I get it. You're free to believe that.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943Aaaaand suspicion confirmed. You're here to peddle your game's design.

Ah, one more thing: I mentioned my game in the thread starter, so your observation is beside the point.
Not to mention that it also lacks the insight that I am clever enough to realize that "peddling my game" this way on this forum alone would not be an efficient use of my time. This is not an effective method of shilling at all.
Not to mention that if I wanted to "peddle my game", I'd damn well do anything I could to stay out of any controversy, so as to not alienate any otherwise interested people.

Quote from: Azraele;1099943Get gud at rhetoric, n00b.

I figured out his schtick after the first thread he made. It's always the same pattern...posit a bunch of stuff with assumptions that are demonstrably false, insist anyone who disagrees needs to provide evidence (while he provides none at all), then act like he's under attack for daring to disagree with anyone who gets agitated about his blanket statements condemning RPGs that aren't played how he likes.

Transparent and boring.

Quote from: Brad;1100019I figured out his scht

You're being off-topic.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1100027You're being off-topic.

Nahh, I actually make post about roleplaying games, not storygames.

Another point of distinction between AW and more traditional games, I think, is "story-steering", in that a +1 Hot in stat do not necessarily relates to a competent charmer but as a way for the player to dictate that the story goes to directions related to charming, persuasion, etc. The game never offer explicit explanations on what someone with +1 in Hot can do, like a more simulatuonist one would do. Such a reality grounding is irrelevant in AW. This is also seen in the XP mechanic, which awards players to explore things related to "highlighted" stats by other players.

In practice/during actual play things may work very similar  between AW and a Trad game, but the motivations behind some mechanics have important differences.

I read it more as multi-faceted character exploration but I suppose triggering quite different moves to get XP for this session amounts to story-steering as well, especially from the MC's perspective.

I am pretty sure I have seen advancement based on using specific skills or attributes in a trad game but I struggle to remember which; in any case I don't think it's typical for them either. What's more common is XP or advancement for playing your character but that tends to lead to 1-dimensional play, playing up to pre-established cliches... at least it did so back in the days. Nuanced character exploration requires deviation from cliche (like a cleric who harbors some doubt) and occasional spontaneous introduction of deviation. When a player breaks pre-established character definitions, how is the GM supposed to know if this good roleplaying (nuance) or bad roleplaying (randumb variation or, worse, metagaming)?