Quote from: jeff37923;683960Look kid, I've played RPGs from one end of this planet to the other. Gimmicky rule mechanics are no replacement for a good GM and good Players at your table.


(Goddamn, I knew that some win would show up in this thread!)

Isn't that what I just said? Kid? I've been playing RPGs since the 80s.

Quote from: brettmb;683966Isn't that what I just said? Kid? I've been playing RPGs since the 80s.

Quote from: jeff37923;683960Look kid, I've played RPGs from one end of this planet to the other. Gimmicky rule mechanics are no replacement for a good GM and good Players at your table.


(Goddamn, I knew that some win would show up in this thread!)

Quote from: Skywalker;683949I'm pretty sure no sample here is going to be acknowledged as anything else but a blip, but I started RPGing in 1982 and I still play and run old school games. Admittedly, I enjoy RPGs with narrative elements, but I also enjoy those without.

Quote from: Noclue;683942I'm 45 and started gaming when I was 12. I played and ran tons of old school games.

I'm surprised Werther's Original hasn't yet contacted Pundit about advertisement here.

Quote from: brettmb;683966Isn't that what I just said? Kid? I've been playing RPGs since the 80s.

It's a straight Han Solo quote. "Kid" refers to Luke Skywalker, and I don't think was meant to mean you are a young RPGer.

Quote from: brettmb;683398Story Engine and Kult off the top of my head.

Thank you, silva. That helps.

Alternity did multiple levels of success/failure as well. They were even statted right there on your character sheet. My own Heaven's Shadow does a 'Success with bonus action/success/failure/failure with consequence' thing in the combat rules to emulate a certain style of counterattack and special move heavy combat.

And really, I don't see anything in those made up examples up thread of the 'difference' between the two games that's any different other than in one game there's a stupid mechanic where the DM is 'forced' to do a particular thing.

And I hate those sorts of mechanics.  Storygamers fucking love 'em though.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683959You say Dungeon World closely resembles the way you play old school games, and the decisions the players make are similar.  I say Dungeon World does not resemble the way I play old school games, in many cases the mindset the mechanics forces the player into are fundamentally different then an old school game.

Have you played it?  Do you have actual table experience with it?

Quote from: CRKrueger;683959Or, could it be...
We are both right, sane, and telling it straight?
How is that possible - very easily.

Yeah, it's very easy.  Subjective experience, and all that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683959When someone starts asking about DW, it's a lot more accurate to approach it rather like Noisms, who loves AW and DW, but recognizes the core narrative differences that make them not traditional or old school.

So... what makes DW narrative, here?  Specifically, not vague statements like "fourth wall breaking"?

I'm not trying to pixelbitch you with this.  I get things like bennies in SW, or Fate Points in Fate drawing that reaction (though, interestingly enough, GURPS has some mechanics similar to bennies via the Luck advantage, and that's pretty damn traditional...).  That's why when I posted a Fate thread I put it in Other Games.

I honestly don't see what in DW draws the same reaction.  There are some things that are more abstracted, yes, like using ammo on a failure.  Doing that instead of counting every shot is more abstract, granted, but the end result is pretty damn close to the same.

I haven't seen any mechanics in DW that allow players to authoritatively declare details in the world or the like.  If that's what you mean by "narrative", then I'd like to know what specifically you're talking about so that we can at least be discussing the same thing.

If you just mean things like "say yes, but" or the like, then I'm afraid I can't get behind that too much.  The fact that something is repeated on The Forge, or originated there, is pretty much irrelevant to me, both positive and negative.  I just don't give a shit.  I do care how the game plays.  That's what I care about.

If you mean the idea that you're mostly dealing with "the theater of the mind" and referring to the 'crunchy bits' when necessary (the whole "to do it, you have to do it" thing, etc.), then er, that's pretty old school.  Back in my day, whippersnapper, we didn't have all them fancy "Feats" and "Skills" and all that.  We had six attributes, an onion on our belts, and we liked it that way!  We described what we did, and the GM told us what to roll!  And we did it!  And sometimes he told us to roll a d12, or a d20, and one time he had me roll a goldfish, goldernit!

I exaggerate for comedic effect, but the emphasis on super-direct manipulation of the mechanics, and the emphasis on grid-based combat wasn't really a "thing" in my experience until 3e.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683959When you start saying that DW plays, is in the style of, has you doing the same things as old school games, etc, you have to realize that you probably weren't playing those games the same way as some others whether old school or new school, right?

Yes.  By definition.  I'd assume that anything talking about subjective experience would implicitly include "in my opinion" or the like.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683959So, "for people who like or don't mind narrative mechanics or a narrative layer to their games", everything you said about DW was true.

Again, what "narrative layer" are you talking about in DW?  You're asserting there's one there, and I haven't seen it.

It's there in other games, which is why I don't make those arguments about things like Fate, or Cortex, or god forbid Fiasco.

So I guess there's two primary points of disconnect that we have (and strangely, I'm not convinced yet that "old school" is one of them).

1) What do you define as a narrative mechanic?
2) What narrative mechanics do you think exist in DW?

Quote from: Rincewind1;683967I'm surprised Werther's Original hasn't yet contacted Pundit about advertisement here.

:rotfl:

Quote from: Rincewind1;683967I'm surprised Werther's Original hasn't yet contacted Pundit about advertisement here.

You remember what it's like to walk down to the corner store and buy a cow?  Werther's Original remembers.

Do you remember a time when that cow followed you into that hole that killed all your friends?
Werther's Orginal knows where the bodies are buried.

Quote from: CRKrueger;683900Now you're spot on 100%.  Of the people on this site who have posted in support of Dungeon World at all, there is exactly ONE, Ramon, who has not shown from posting history a definite lean towards narrative aspects of roleplaying.  There is a reason DW appeals to those players and it isn't the old school aspect.

Old School Player: Blech, DW is too narrative, storygamey, whatever.
Narrative Player: This is what D&D should have been, but wasn't!

Speaking as one of these supposed "narrative-leaning" players, I don't give a shit what D&D is or isn't, as it relates to Dungeon World, because it literally doesn't matter. DW's a fun fantasy adventure game that I like running and playing, and I'm playing it instead of D&D (Or instead of any other fantasy adventure game, really) because there were some others players who wanted to play it. That's all. That's as deep as the agenda goes; play something we want to play.

Quote from: Ladybird;684017Speaking as one of these supposed "narrative-leaning" players, I don't give a shit what D&D is or isn't, as it relates to Dungeon World, because it literally doesn't matter. DW's a fun fantasy adventure game that I like running and playing, and I'm playing it instead of D&D (Or instead of any other fantasy adventure game, really) because there were some others players who wanted to play it. That's all. That's as deep as the agenda goes; play something we want to play.

There does seem to be some confusion over 'right way to play an rpg' and 'personal preference'

If it works for you and your group, I don't see a problem.

Well that was a whole lot of animus following my inquiry... I doubt I'll get any more insight into its distinguishing features now.

Quote from: robiswrong;6839821) What do you define as a narrative mechanic?
2) What narrative mechanics do you think exist in DW?

ATM, all I can do is a TL;DR outline.

1. Mechanics are either IC or OOC, based on whether the player is making the decision as a character or a player.
2. If a mechanic is OOC, it is done for a reason, tactical, social, narrative, etc.
3. "Narrative mechanics" means OOC metagame mechanics concerned with giving a player control, authorship, etc of a character not from the point of view of the character, but from outside.
4. Giving a player control of things outside the character, yet still about or concerning the character is a common OOC narrative metagame mechanic.

When I mean some people play any game with a narrative layer, I mean they automatically include "things outside my character but about my character" as being part of "roleplaying the character".  As such, they don't even realize that what they consider roleplaying is actually two things 1 - roleplaying as the character, 2 - limited authorship of things about the character.  That narrative layer is just natural to them.  

If you can't look at DW and see what I mean now, the rest will have to wait until I can text to look at (and yes I've played it, and yes it was quite different then the normal roleplaying experience).

BTW, answer Opa's question too, would ya?

Quote from: brettmb;683966Isn't that what I just said? Kid? I've been playing RPGs since the 80s.

AND you made me appreciate a post by jeff37923.  So, you're double punished!

Quote from: CRKrueger;6840923. "Narrative mechanics" means OOC metagame mechanics concerned with giving a player control, authorship, etc of a character not from the point of view of the character, but from outside.
4. Giving a player control of things outside the character, yet still about or concerning the character is a common OOC narrative metagame mechanic.

So, to use a term some people will probably hate, but I think sums it up neatly, stepping outside Actor stance?  I'm sure there are edge cases where you'd consider something to be in Actor stance, but still "narrative", but is that pretty accurate for painting in broad strokes?

Quote from: CRKrueger;684092If you can't look at DW and see what I mean now, the rest will have to wait until I can text to look at (and yes I've played it, and yes it was quite different then the normal roleplaying experience).

Okay, cool, we're both talking experience.  That makes me happy - it's certainly more useful than experience vs. how someone imagines it will play by reading a book.

And no, I don't really see many things in DW that force you out of Actor stance.  There are some of the "pick 2" mechanics that could conceivably be in that range, if that's what you're talking about.

Quote from: CRKrueger;684092BTW, answer Opa's question too, would ya?

This one?

Quote from: Opaopajr;683948Engaging the Theater of the Mind is what I've been doing with old school games since the beginning. The mechanics come after description of what I, my PC, is doing. I never had a problem with veterans in "just a cave of kobolds" because Tucker Kobolds put engaging setting over system mechanics. This DW setting engagement is not a novel state of play, as if like one offered but unfulfilled by D&D promises due to its mechanical nature.

No, it's not a "novel" state of play.  As you've pointed out, you can certainly do just about anything that DW does with D&D, especially B/X (though I think DW is much "faster").

Quote from: Opaopajr;683948The only big difference DW offers, that I can see, is a predominance of pre-fab DoS structures that supersede GM fiat during "yes, but" resolution. Now I believe people can convey just about everything through description. So instead of "you just have to play it," I want to hear a breakdown of Moves, Principles, and Agendas in what it is new they are providing. This shouldn't be hard; if I can struggle playing INS/MV in French and appreciate its mix of madness, though not really like it compared to its American conversion, then I can grok this too.

What I see the big differences of DW as are:

1) Minimizes bookkeeping and excess looking up of things in a number of ways.  I can detail these out further if you'd like and give examples.  Again, any one of these is not significant, but taken together, the effect is pretty big.

2) Provides play rules that guides GMs more towards "good GMing".  Most of the principles and agendas are just what's generally been good GM advice that have been reified into rules.  The structure of moves themselves is much the same - there's nothing in there really that a good GM couldn't do before, but having them laid out serves as both a mechanical guide and reminder.

3) Focuses on "theater of the mind" at a rule level.  The nature of triggering moves via describing what your character does, as well as other things, is a *mechanical* push towards staying in character that doesn't exist in many other games that I know of.

So these things may have differing levels of value.  For different groups.

1) The cost of this streamlined nature, in some cases, is complexity (though I can get into how I define "complexity" vs. "depth").  Many things just speed up the game, but in some cases there's a flexibility cost.  I think that for *most* groups, the speedup is probably a net positive, unless you just really like hard crunch.

I think the overall 'crunch level' of the game is probably closest to B/X, but with some additional flexibility (so it's not a one-to-one match by any means).  If you're into the whole charop game, etc., then it's not there and you may find the simplification too much.

2) There's nothing here that a good GM isn't doing already.  There's some value in having the rules there to remind you and to help you keep some of those 'best practices' kinds of things going, but there's also some level of restriction due to the 'pre-baked' nature of the DoS stuff.  For newer GMs, I think this is awesome.  For more experienced GMs, it's something of a tradeoff, and they may fall on either side of it.

3) Again, if your players already do play mostly in "the fiction/TotM", then this isn't a big deal, and is essentially irrelevant - it won't cost you anything, but it won't gain you anything, either.  It'll be invisible.  I find that for most players, I end up having to nudge them with "okay, but what do you *do*" semi-frequently at first, my observation is that due to this nature and the overall flow of the game, that players generally stay more "in the fiction" than they do in many other games.

You may be picking up from this that this is a great game for beginner or even moderately experienced GMs to run - and I'd agree with that.  If this site didn't have such a general bias *against* games like DW, "run DW" would have been the advice I'd have given in the thread about making GMs better.

It sounds like what everybody is getting excited about with Dungeon World is playing the way I've always played D&D with my group. Fast, rules-light, in-character, theatre of the mind, big-picture, lots of discretion. I guess it just took a new ruleset and indie buzz to show people they can play that way.

Quote from: Haffrung;684156It sounds like what everybody is getting excited about with Dungeon World is playing the way I've always played D&D with my group. Fast, rules-light, in-character, theatre of the mind, big-picture, lots of discretion. I guess it just took a new ruleset and indie buzz to show people they can play that way.

Basically.  But I do think that the rules in this case make playing that type of game a lot easier, and can help people maintain it.

But for a group operating at a high level of mastery, the big thing that it really offers is some of the rule streamlining - no initiative, attacks between attackers resolving in a single roll (well, plus damage), and a bunch of other minor things really work to speed up the game.