Quote from: Ladybird;810768For a game that people say restricts the MC, it puts a lot of faith in them to know their stuff and make sensible calls, without mechanics to fall back on.

As much as I like the game it seems there's at least one thing in there to annoy everyone!

I can't tell you how many times I've seen people ask for help because their players never miss so their monsters don't ever get a chance to do anything. They are so locked into the prescriptive mechanics of Hack & Slash that they ignore all of the rules and advice about GM moves.

I will readily admit that I don't have a lot of patience for "powerless GMs".

Quote from: Ladybird;810768For a game that people say restricts the MC, it puts a lot of faith in them to know their stuff and make sensible calls, without mechanics to fall back on. I'd say it's less restrictive than other games.

It doesn't sound less restrictive. It sounds like it has different restrictions.

Quote from: Ladybird;810768I'd agree that narrative games and *W games probably have a higher learning curve than most games, though, due to their approaches being slightly different to other games.

I never said they had a higher learning curve, I said some people don't like the rules that curve leads to, or the process by which you get there, or the way that process is described.

Personally I think what the OP ran into was this:  Traditional Old School task resolution games relied on rules filtered through GM fiat to provide adjudications.  So most games went like:
GM: What do you do?
Player: Announce action (possibly with questions before)
GM: Based on the rules either narrates outcome to player or asks player to roll dice.
Player: Rolls dice
GM: Based on the outcome of the role GM determines success or failure and narrates outcome to player.

Dungeon World flows for the most part exactly like this with two exceptions.
1. The natural gaming flow experienced Player's and GM's do innately is broken down into specific Moves.  This can come across as either limiting or completely pointless.

2. The partial success or "How as a player do you want your character to get a complication along with the success" seems like with some moves narrative authority. (and please don't fucking start with denying this again, even Sage agreed that Volley was written pretty weird).

In other words, the non-traditional elements of task resolution combined with adding jargon of "Moves" on to what might seem a natural gaming process made the OP's and his group's teeth itch.  He hasn't been All Along the Narrative Front the past 4 years so might not be familiar with the lingo and terms and might not know that what he encountered is a fairly common occurrence.

Quote from: CRKrueger;810781Dungeon World flows for the most part exactly like this with two exceptions.
1. The natural gaming flow experienced Player's and GM's do innately is broken down into specific Moves.  This can come across as either limiting or completely pointless.

It was the OP's comments about this that seemed most weird to me.

In my experience, players don't have anything to do with Moves. Dealing with Moves happens inside the GM's head.

From the player's point of view, it usually goes like one of the following three:

ONE
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

TWO
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, roll [Stat].

Player: An 8

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

THREE
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, roll [Stat]

Player: An 8.

GM: Ok, do you want [A, B, or C]?

Player: C

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

DW is training wheels for a GM to learn to play old school.

And this thread should have ended in the second post with someone linking to the giant thread from a year ago.

Quote from: Enlightened;810787It was the OP's comments about this that seemed most weird to me.

In my experience, players don't have anything to do with Moves. Dealing with Moves happens inside the GM's head.

From the player's point of view, it usually goes like one of the following three:

ONE
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

TWO
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, roll [Stat].

Player: An 8

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

THREE
Player: [Character's name] [Does Thing]

GM: Ok, roll [Stat]

Player: An 8.

GM: Ok, do you want [A, B, or C]?

Player: C

GM: Ok, [Thing Happens]

To be fair, the rulebook in the examples section does.have.conversations between GM and player with players announcing moves or the GM converting action to moves.out loud.  It makes for a more conversational tone,  it doesn't do too good a job of stressing the "moves only exist as a framework inside the GM's head", but I agree, that is the intent for.the most part.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;810760We've had this discussion here before: This isn't some newfangled definition of the word "fiction". It's literally the primary definition of the word: "Imaginary shit." The specific meaning of "literature which deals with fictional stuff" is self-evidently derivative.

Does it cause widespread confusion and problems? Yes? Then it's the wrong word.

Quote from: apparition13;810852Does it cause widespread confusion and problems? Yes? Then it's the wrong word.

Not among the game's target audience. If one already plays or knows how to play old school, DW seems to baffle them. Considering the overwhelming bias of this forum's population towards old school play, I cant see a reason this game need even be discussed on this forum, other than as a stepping stone for new players who up to this point had only been exposed to modern storygames.

Quote from: TristramEvans;810725No, it was the OP's insane descriptions of the game that bear no resemblance to the game as written that convinced people he played it wrong.:rolleyes:

"I sure hate bicycles. They suck. When you have to insert the ovometer into your mouth and the wheels tickle your spine, I don't like that at all!"

"Sounds like you werent riding the bicycle correctly"

Jeff: "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!"

I like how everyone is ignoring this post, because it doesn't fit the narrative of the big bad DW Fanatics.

Seriously, the opening post sounds nothing like a DW game at all.

Also, still can't get over the Turd/World thing. Is there an accent where they would rhyme? Its just such a bad play on words. It bugs me so much. Like, come on, he could have said something like "This game made me so sick I Dungeon Hurled".

Quote from: TristramEvans;810855Not among the game's target audience. If one already plays or knows how to play old school, DW seems to baffle them. Considering the overwhelming bias of this forum's population towards old school play, I cant see a reason this game need even be discussed on this forum, other than as a stepping stone for new players who up to this point had only been exposed to modern storygames.

Meh.  Except for the combat system, DW plays so much like OD&D it's not funny.

Quote from: TristramEvans;810788DW is training wheels for a GM to learn to play old school.

I'm wholly unashamed to admit that this is actually very true for me.

The GM moves are just a nice little mental tool that I kind of apply to any roleplaying game that I run now.

Quote from: CRKrueger;810811To be fair, the rulebook in the examples section does.have.conversations between GM and player with players announcing moves or the GM converting action to moves.out loud.  It makes for a more conversational tone,  it doesn't do too good a job of stressing the "moves only exist as a framework inside the GM's head", but I agree, that is the intent for.the most part.

Well, you could argue that the book is inconsistent by a) claiming that no player needs to know the moves while b) explicitly naming the moves in the example dialogues.
But then, what are the examples trying to show? A typical dialogue at the game table? Or how a GM applies moves to in-game situations?

Most of the moves are written on the character sheets. So the GM simply has to announce the move so that the player knows how and where to find the result of his roll.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;810762I don't care for the GM-doesn't-roll-dice thing, and I gnore that myself.  The PC / NPC asymmetry is off the charts, and there's just no getting around that. A skilled GM can veil that from the players, but it's always there for the GM. That's been one of the biggest deal-breakers for folks, in my experience.

Isn't that how every NPC gets handled in most games?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;810895Well, you could argue that the book is inconsistent by a) claiming that no player needs to know the moves while b) explicitly naming the moves in the example dialogues.

GM moves and player moves are different things.

You say the names of player moves. They're everywhere.

You don't say the name of GM moves, because GM moves are a lens through which you view the fictional world the game is taking place in. A roll of the dice or the players' choices have told you something probably goes wrong, the GM moves are a way of finding what that exact thing is. But since what you're looking for is the exact thing (not the way you got to that exact thing) there's no reason to say it, and saying it will just bog down the game.



And yes, calling both moves can be confusing, but we had reasons for it at the time. If we'd known we were making a hit game that would be read by so many people we might have phrased things differently, but we had no clue. Then again, if we had phrased it differently, would it have been so successful? I have no idea.

And, FWIW, "Dungeon Turd" is totally going on a list of names we have to use sooner or later. Magic item made of fossilized dung from some magical beast? The leavings of some dungeon-specific monster like a gelatinous cube?

Hating DW is fine. There are probably a lot of things in the game that could be better. There are probably a lot of things that don't work well for any given group. I may even be shit, I have no idea.