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What felt clunky?
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Aug 16, 2018 13:16
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the main issues people have with dungeon world are 1. Hack and Slash doesn't really lead into the fiction since the effect is abstract damage 2. Defy Danger lets you put your best stat forwards most of the time 3. the basic playbooks aren't very interesting and are really oriented towards dungeon crawls I'm guessing it's something along those lines.
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Aug 16, 2018 13:30
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#1 can be solved by situational results of your roll. Total success puts you in a good position, partial success complicates things and throws the action to another party member, failure snowballs into difficulty. It doesn’t have to be just damage. #2 can be solved by simply not accepting attempts that don’t make sense, e.g. you can’t CHA your way past a falling wall. And if you want them to use a particular stat eg STR vs DEX, just make a harder move like the wall is already on them instead of actively falling. #3...I mean, it’s called Dungeon World. It’s a PbtA version of D&D. It’s geared towards over-and-underland adventuring.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:00
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I would prefer a system that does one thing and does it well to a system that tries to do, like, both dungeoneering and political intrigue at the same time. Though, there’s nothing stopping you from using two systems as long as they don’t step on each other’s toes...I think.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:09
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Pollyanna posted:#1 can be solved by situational results of your roll. Total success puts you in a good position, partial success complicates things and throws the action to another party member, failure snowballs into difficulty. It doesn’t have to be just damage. So #1 change the rules of the game #2 ignore the rules of the game (it's a dungeon crawl game, the obstacles of the genre can nigh-universally be equally dodged, absorbed, or outsmarted) #3 accept that it's a bad game
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Aug 16, 2018 14:15
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homullus posted:#1 change the rules of the game  It’s right in the general conceit of the game as well as the GM principles to make sure everything snowballs and results in a confluence of situational changes. That’s a major part of running the game well, even and especially RAW.quote:#2 ignore the rules of the game (it's a dungeon crawl game, the obstacles of the genre can nigh-universally be equally dodged, absorbed, or outsmarted) If you’ve established in your Dungeon World games that walls can be convinced to not fall on you and the mayor can be cowed into doing what you want by punching them real hard then the rules support that. If you’ve established that the previous is some real bullshit, then they simply can’t do it. Those assertions about obstacles in a dungeon crawl game are up to you, not the system, and you’re the GM - you’re the arbiter of what can and cannot happen, and how. You gotta put some work into it, just like you do for any system. quote:#3 accept that it's a bad game If you don’t like it then just don’t play it 
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Aug 16, 2018 14:26
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Pollyanna posted:You gotta put some work into it, just like you do for any system. It's not that you can't have a great game using DW. It's just that other games might make it easier or give the GM better advice/direction. FWIW, I've actually gotten a better experience out of simply using straight-up Apocalypse World with the playbooks re-skinned for a fantasy setting than I have from DW itself.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:16
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Yeah, a lot of this boils down to “read Apocalypse World”. (Which I should really do sometime.) It’s clear that PbtA games need that kind of background to get the buy-in. I still like Dungeon World, even though I’ve only played a handful of times. But hearing other people’s concerns gives me some pause. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Aug 16, 2018 |
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Aug 16, 2018 15:22
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Pollyanna posted:If you’ve established in your Dungeon World games that walls can be convinced to not fall on you and the mayor can be cowed into doing what you want by punching them real hard then the rules support that. If you’ve established that the previous is some real bullshit, then they simply can’t do it. Those assertions about obstacles in a dungeon crawl game are up to you, not the system, and you’re the GM - you’re the arbiter of what can and cannot happen, and how. You gotta put some work into it, just like you do for any system. Let's be real, ok? There are situations where you OBVIOUSLY, from the fiction, cannot use X stat, because it makes no sense. Further, there are cases where it's a GM judgment call -- no, the giant's club is coming down too hard and too directly for you to simply power through the hit or cleverly deflect it using the angle of your shield, you will die if you do that, you have to dodge it with your crap DEX. That said, most of the slings and arrows of outrageous adventuring are things people can dodge, deflect with something, power through, and/or outsmart by clever use of the environment and situation. Players may not always be able to steer toward their best stat, but they can usually steer away from their worst. I think it is either disingenuous or dumb of you to assert the contrary. You really should read Apocalypse World; DW's Defy Danger is garbage designed to be palatable to people who will only play things that look like D&D.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:39
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I think part of the issue is generally that people who hack the system have already read AW and absorbed/internalized a lot of its nuance in the process. Then, when making their own hacks, they tend to either assume that their readers are also familiar with AW, or the author has internalized the lessons of AW so well that these things seem obvious to them, both of which lead to them totally forgetting to, you know, explain their poo poo from the ground up. There are some hacks that (as written) are virtually loving unplayable unless you have a firm grounding in AW.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:41
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Pollyanna posted:I still like Dungeon World, even though I’ve only played a handful of times. But hearing other people’s concerns gives me some pause.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:46
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I do think peoples issues with defy danger letting you put your best stay forward are more theoretical than something that players tend to do., at least in my experience.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:42
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Hmm. I should get AW2e and read through it, then. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around the controversy over Defy Danger...and I wonder if there’s house hacks to put in place to help it succeed.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:44
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Demon_Corsair posted:Ran my first night of dungeon world in a long time and after playing a bunch of blades, a lot of it felt super clunky. You could try Fellowship. Finish Them and Threat to the World will bring to mind certain things about clocks and skilled opposition from Blades. Defy Danger could learn a little from position and effect in practice, too.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:58
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The bigger problem with Defy Danger is that it often gets used as a permission barrier to do the cool thing the player actually wants to do, or is directly triggered by a GM move, without the player actually doing anything. It's very reactive and PbtA moves should be active, at least in their standard application. It also becomes too much of a catch all for parts of DW that should have more discrete moves of their own - Defy Danger gets used way too much and as a result has too little built in narrative of its own. All of that is made worse by using D&D stats, which have never really been well defined and overlap in a way that has an especially big impact on PbtA. It puts the GM in a tough spot when the player describes a clear, concise narrative of what they're doing... and then it will fit two or more stats quite naturally.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:04
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Defy Danger looks to me like the biggest problem with it is that it's so vague and lossy that almost everything that doesn't have a strict mechanical effect can default to Defy Danger, making it feel like a necessary chore stringing together the actually interesting stuff. Spirit of 77 has the same problem because its stats are mostly just refluffed D&D stats and Keep Your Cool is the same move as Defy Danger. But then, I'm one of the people that likes the more specifically defined moves and sub-moves in AW2e.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:23
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To be fair, even AW's act under fire has some element of "catch-all" to it. It is the go-to move for doing things where success is not guaranteed and the consequences are interesting. In the move's section in AW2, Vincent says, "Call for this move whenever someone does something requiring unusual discipline, resolve, endurance or care." And also: "Whenever a character does something that obviously demands a roll, but you don’t quite see how to deal with it, double check first whether it counts as doing something under fire. Come here first." So it casts a pretty wide net. But because it is tied to a particular stat (unless you take a stat-substitution move like spooky-intense), I feel like it is more clearly delineated than Defy Danger.
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Aug 16, 2018 18:26
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So if Dungeon World didn’t have D&D-style/component stats (as opposed to functional stats) and only one thing governed defying danger, that’d help fix the problem?
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Aug 16, 2018 19:11
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Demon_Corsair posted:Ran my first night of dungeon world in a long time and after playing a bunch of blades, a lot of it felt super clunky. There's a PDF available for the beta of Blades Against Darkness that looks pretty drat good.
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Aug 16, 2018 20:07
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Actually, yeah, does Do Something Under Fire cover anything that’s actively menacing you? A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? It seems to specifically imply gunfire, but I dunno if that’s true. Edit: Reading through AW2e, interesting observation: read a situation and read a person are distinct moves with distinct questions. Also, the implication is that you are under some sort of pressure. Open your brain is it’s own move too. On the other hand, discern realities is all three with read a sitch’s questions. That’s really generic, and explains some of the problems I have with that move. DW also doesn’t explain the round-robin method of Hx/Bonds. It’s kinda sad, but Apocalypse World might be required reading for playing a PbtA game or any of its offshoots. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Aug 16, 2018 |
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Aug 16, 2018 21:11
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Pollyanna posted:Actually, yeah, does Do Something Under Fire cover anything that’s actively menacing you? A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? It seems to specifically imply gunfire, but I dunno if that’s true. The idea is that "keeping your cool and acting decisively when something scary and dangerous is happening" is the quality that allows you to keep your cool and act decisively when that stuff happens, not being strong or nimble or smart. If you don't have that quality, all the smarts or muscles you can squeeze into your body don't matter.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:22
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Halloween Jack posted:Defy Danger looks to me like the biggest problem with it is that it's so vague and lossy that almost everything that doesn't have a strict mechanical effect can default to Defy Danger, making it feel like a necessary chore stringing together the actually interesting stuff. Spirit of 77 has the same problem because its stats are mostly just refluffed D&D stats and Keep Your Cool is the same move as Defy Danger.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:24
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Pollyanna posted:Actually, yeah, does Do Something Under Fire cover anything that’s actively menacing you? A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? It seems to specifically imply gunfire, but I dunno if that’s true. Tying Act Under Fire to +Cool also creates narrative roles and spaces in a way that Defy Danger doesn't. The Battlebabe and the Driver are great at navigating dangerous situations, but the Battlebabe is explicitly not baddest rear end and better at getting into trouble than out of it.
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Aug 16, 2018 22:07
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Discern Realities is DW's attempt to mimic the D&D-style "perception check" or "notice roll" and put it into a PbtA context. But in AW, there's no such thing as a notice roll, as most of that functionality is covered in the MC's agenda and principles (the biggest ones being "always say what honesty demands," "be a fan of the characters," and "make the characters' lives not boring"). So when a player asks, "are there any secret doors?" the answer is simply "yes" (if you've decided there are) or "no" (if you've decided there aren't). Why is it done this way in AW? Because perception/notice rolls act as gate-keepers to plot/story. If you can't find the secret door, you're pretty much guaranteed to miss out on whatever is behind it. Where's the fun in that? Your job as an Apocalypse World MC is to be very free with information. So you say, "Yeah, absolutely, pulling on the torch sconce opens a hidden panel in the wall, which leads to a spiral staircase down. The fetid air within smells faintly of sulfur." And of course: "Do you take it?" That's not to say that finding a secret door can't be the natural result of read a sitch; it totally can. If the PC is sneaking around the fortress and trying not to get caught while casing the joint (remember, the situation must be charged), it's totally cool to answer "what's my best way in?" with something like, "Ebb tide tonight is pretty low, and while quietly crawling across the rocks near the shore, you see what initially looks like a small sea-cave. But after cursory investigation, it appears to be the outlet of an escape tunnel, and its obvious that it leads somewhere inside the castle." As for the requirement for a charged situation, it's because charged situations naturally lend themselves to consequences. Asking if your friend is telling the truth when he says he'll be right back is hard to pin consequences on. Asking if a guy with a gun trained on you is telling the truth when he says he'll blow your brains out if you don't get the gently caress off his front porch right-the-gently caress-now is much easier/clearer when interpreting the results of the roll. In other words, you only make the roll when the consequences are interesting. Absent the potential of those consequences, moves like read a person don't even trigger. This is an important distinction, and one that people coming from trad games like D&D often miss. Newbie MCs treating read a sitch as a vanilla perception roll is one of the more common horror stories you hear about peoples' bad experiences with AW and its descendants. And unfortunately, DW essentially enables this misunderstanding by couching Discern Realities in that context.
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Aug 16, 2018 22:08
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Demon_Corsair posted:Ran my first night of dungeon world in a long time and after playing a bunch of blades, a lot of it felt super clunky. Gonna take this opportunity to plug this thing I've been working on. A more fluid, less clunky Dungeon World is the explicit design goal, so I've been running it like D&D with a dash of Isekai. Its not done, but it's in a state where I've been able to teach it to a range of players from total RPG noobs to Pathfinder-playing borderline grogs and have a fun one-shot.
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Aug 17, 2018 00:53
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Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jun 14, 2019 |
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Aug 17, 2018 02:33
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Pollyanna posted:Actually, yeah, does Do Something Under Fire cover anything that’s actively menacing you? A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? It seems to specifically imply gunfire, but I dunno if that’s true. Yeah, it doesn't have to be gunfire. But also it doesn't have to be reactive or something menacing you. You can do things which might be covered under the move actively as well. "I get inside his guard, dodging and juking her shots so that I can get this knife to her throat" would be Doing Something Under Fire. "I upend the table and grab the weapon he has attached to the underside" or "I run around the gang, using the tables that have fallen over as cover and jump out the window to escape the bar" would be examples of doing something active as well.
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Aug 17, 2018 02:47
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The other biggest problem for me with DW is the damage rolls - they're super swingy and can lead to drawn-out anticlimatic fights if you roll a lot of 1s and especially if the opponents have armor. Rolling 10+ to hack and slash and then 1 damage gets really old fast. Sure you can go creative and bypass hp etc but it would be nice if the base 'fight monsters with weapons' move was smoother. It's basically just imported D&D hit roll granularity into a game engine that would much prefer you resolved fighter-vs-orc with a single roll and then had a different move for drawn out boss fights.
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Aug 17, 2018 04:13
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Pollyanna posted:A falling brick, a charging boar, a poison dart? Also, while these are valid examples, keep in mind that it's called acting under fire. AW's not really a game of people triggering traps and rolling to dodge the needle; you (as the GM) can say "hey bricks are falling on you, AUF or take 1-harm" like it's a D&D saving throw, but that's not really what it's for, if you ask me. I'd say it's more like this: "Okay, the temple is falling apart. What's your plan?" "I'm gonna go knife that guy!" "With the place collapsing around you?" "Hell yes!" "Okay, AUF with the fire being poo poo falling on you." The player rolls it when they want to do a thing, but the thing is dangerous or risky for whatever reason. That's why the stat it uses is called cool; if a Battlebabe decides she wants to stab your rear end, and that means dashing across a frayed zipline over a pit of alligators in the face of automatic gunfire, she's gonna fuckin' do it.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:05
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If there’s anything to take away from this discussion, it’s that battlebabes rule
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Aug 17, 2018 05:25
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Comrade Gorbash posted:All of that is made worse by using D&D stats, which have never really been well defined and overlap in a way that has an especially big impact on PbtA. It puts the GM in a tough spot when the player describes a clear, concise narrative of what they're doing... and then it will fit two or more stats quite naturally. I actually think that DW defines its stats better than D&D does. A 2e of DW should actually say this, but your three "soft" stats; INT, WIS, CHA are obvious when you look at the basic moves. INT is for stuff inside your head, like figuring things out or knowing stuff (that the player just totally made up). WIS is for stuff outside your head like the divine or just plain perception. CHA is for stuff going on inside other people's heads like persuade or intimidate. I also like the elegance of DW's basic moves; one move for each stat plus a move that can potentially use any of them. That has a lovely symmetry to it. It isn't the only way basic moves make sense, but elegance should always be a design goal. For reference, the last hack I was working on used Bang, Boom, Charm, Sharp, Slick, and Tough as stats. You play PMC agents specializing in Executive Protection for the 0.1%. fake edit: battle babes do indeed rule.
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Aug 17, 2018 05:55
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is it weird that I think the MtG colors could be used as stats for a PbtA-type game? White for protecting/defending/healing, Blue for Intuiting/Avoiding, Black for Bargaining/Sneaking, Red for Destroying, and Green for Physicality/Mana stuff. Idk wtf one would do for Playbooks other than maybe Spirit of '77 style two part Playbooks or some sort of modular mini-playbooks that could be continuously stacked on each other in some way.
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Aug 17, 2018 15:31
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I still like and want to run Dungeon World games, I find them fun. I’ll see if I can’t put together a list of improvements to make while GMing, though: - Make Defy Danger more specific - Call for Discern Realities only when it would be interesting or consequential, otherwise tell the truth (or make a move) - Make the results of Hack and Slash dynamic and not just flat damage Does that sound about right?
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Aug 17, 2018 15:48
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Pollyanna posted:I still like and want to run Dungeon World games, I find them fun. I’ll see if I can’t put together a list of improvements to make while GMing, though: You're changing some key elements about Dungeon World there (for the better, obviously). I am inferring that the things you like about Dungeon World are not the things you're changing. What are "Dungeon World games" to you?
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Aug 17, 2018 16:03
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mllaneza posted:I actually think that DW defines its stats better than D&D does. A 2e of DW should actually say this, but your three "soft" stats; INT, WIS, CHA are obvious when you look at the basic moves. INT is for stuff inside your head, like figuring things out or knowing stuff (that the player just totally made up). WIS is for stuff outside your head like the divine or just plain perception. CHA is for stuff going on inside other people's heads like persuade or intimidate.
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Aug 17, 2018 16:32
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I don't agree with this assessment, narratively I don't think the distinctions are at all clear in far too many situations. If I say I notice a pattern in the attacks of an opponent and use that to dodge the next one, which stat is that? WIS to notice the pattern at the risk of getting hurt.
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Aug 17, 2018 16:47
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homullus posted:You're changing some key elements about Dungeon World there (for the better, obviously). I am inferring that the things you like about Dungeon World are not the things you're changing. What are "Dungeon World games" to you? I like fantasy, I like fun and interactive stories, and I enjoy PbtA’s approach to generating such a story. I find PbtA a lot less scary to GM than something like D&D, where I have to keep track of all sorts of stat blocks and character options and battlefield positioning and minutiae that spends time that could be used for fun stuff, so for a game where we delve into dungeons and slay dragons I find it very promising. It’s the closest I could potentially get to a Zelda-like TTRPG, with its focus on overland and underland adventuring. This means that Dungeon World games have low overhead, are flexible, and promote an engaging experience for both GM and players. Dungeon World games are otherwise typical D&D, which I don’t mind at all. Most PbtA or AW-inspired games are scifi or capes or some sort of cinematic genre (horror, post-apocalypse, heist, etc.), and while I don’t hate them - hell, I’m totally up for running Blades in the Dark - I’m not as interested. My opinions might also change on the future cuz I’m fickle.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:14
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I don't agree with this assessment, narratively I don't think the distinctions are at all clear in far too many situations. If I say I notice a pattern in the attacks of an opponent and use that to dodge the next one, which stat is that? Trying to carefully study your opponent’s attacks, synthesize that information into a pattern you can exploit, and dodge out of the way of the next attack is at least three distinct actions. That’s too much at once - I’d interpret this as trying to exercise your perceptive abilities under pressure and call for +Wisdom. Then, depending on that, you might be able to understand what happens and get a chance at moving out of the way. tl;dr: That action’s too big. I’d break it up.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:17
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Pollyanna posted:I like fantasy, I like fun and interactive stories, and I enjoy PbtA’s approach to generating such a story. I find PbtA a lot less scary to GM than something like D&D, where I have to keep track of all sorts of stat blocks and character options and battlefield positioning and minutiae that spends time that could be used for fun stuff, so for a game where we delve into dungeons and slay dragons I find it very promising. It’s the closest I could potentially get to a Zelda-like TTRPG, with its focus on overland and underland adventuring. Have you considered Fellowship or is that not as Flexible as you'd like?
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Aug 17, 2018 17:18
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Xelkelvos posted:Have you considered Fellowship or is that not as Flexible as you'd like? Oh, Fellowship is absolutely on my list. I want to get a group at work to play it sometime. But it’s like a story about a JRPG (which is a good thing), and there’s just something I like about Dungeon World and its relatively gritty, more dungeon-y sandbox-y nature. Scratches a different itch.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:21
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