Ah, I see - thanks, two_fishes.  That makes more sense now.

It was "mind-blowing" as in "how the heck does that work and why would you need it".

Quote from: silva;505091Thats ok Ben. Im 32 years old. From Rio, Brazil.

Began playing with the old Fighting Fantasy books (here in Brazil called "Aventuras Fantásticas") "Wizard from Firetop Mountain", "City of Thieves" and "Citadel of Chaos". Then met AD&D, Shadowrun, Gurps and Vampire, in this order. And later met a whole lot of systems.

I know silva IRL (fala moleque! and he's about my age. Gaming-wise he's a child of the 1990s, like myself, so his notion of "traditional" harkens back to the age of AD&D 2e and the dawn of WW/oWoD, which coincided with the "big boom" of RPGs here in Brazil, rather than the 1980s.

This is a very pervasive attitude around these parts. I'm a funny one because I mostly stuck to BECMI/RC stuff instead of AD&D 2e, which featured an anemic supplement treadmill (it was all but impossible to find BECMI/RC D&D books around here back in the day) and definitely seemed to promote a less structured, more do-it-yourself attitude. I used to open the RC at the Mystara appendix, populate the towns and keeps with NPCs of my creation, and "entertain" the PCs between these places with wandering monster tables, which was as close to a hexcrawl as we could muster.

Many people in my group, when they GM, veer towards railroads. Some are even good at it, and can make for an entertaining ride. But me? I suck at scripting stuff. It requires extra prep time, something I don't have. I'm pretty good at improv, though, and I love it when PCs react in unforeseen ways with a scenario and force me to think on my feet.

So, while I'm in a different camp (I think), I totally get it where he's coming from.

I've played Apocalypse World; it's a great game. Post-apocalyptic is not my favorite genre, but you can do a lot with it aside from the standard Mad Max-style setting.

AW has proved eminently hackable, including the also-excellent old-school D&D-ish hack Dungeon World.

Conversation Rules
I like these rules a lot; they make social interactions tactical in the same way that combat is. Two Fishes is right about how they work; you roll whatever the relevant stat or skill is, and the better you roll, the more ability you have to ask the GM whether or not the NPC in question is lying, what their intentions are, etc.  

You still have to role-play the conversation, but these rules add a game layer on top of it that reflects your character's social ability. So you an build a "social" character that has legitimate in-game abilities.

Sex Rules
This seemed weird to me at first, although it doesn't upset me in the way that it upsets some people. I don't mind if there is sex in RPGs. That said, they came up only once in my game, and very much in passing (ie - it was a PC and an NPC, and we didn't actually role-play the encounter), so if you don't like them, you don't have to use them.

Quote from: Rincewind1;505043It's all fun and games, until you read fucking pretentious writings of the author

To this I really have to say, so fucking what. People around here act like being pretentious is right up there with killing babies or something, but really, it's not, and if someone is pretentious, who cares? When you get right down to it, there's nothing actually horrible about being pretentious, it just means you're kind of annoying. Big deal. You can be pretentious and still be a good writer, artist, or whatever. A significant portion of the best writers and writers in the world are insufferably pretentious. It doesn't mean i'm gonna swear off their work. You can probably even be pretentious and still be a good and decent person.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505197Last time i looked, i can't remember 'sexy moves' being a PA genre trope.

It isn't, and it's stupid in the context of the game itself.

Each class exists for a specific role, a far more strongly defined role than in D&D. Why not have a special move tailored for just that class's motivations and role?

When you do X social action, you get Y Bonus.

Hardholder = "Special bonus when you stave off a threat to your authority."

Whatever. Interact with NPC/PC socially, convince them to aid or advance your role, and you get a future bonus.

Maybe even define it as a special "MC" Move: Challenge Their Role. Make it harder for them to do what they do best. If they overcome the challenge, they get the special bonus.

That's a killer rule. And apt, for what the character is supposed to be. "There are other hardholders in the world, but you are the Hardholder."

The Hardholder should get a special bonus for overcoming a threat to their being a Hardholder. The Angel should get a bonus for convincing someone to assist them in their Angel duties. And so forth.

Sex as a universal source of a special bonus for everyone is out of character for Post-Apocalyptic fiction. It's out of character for the characters. It's out of character for the game.

It's not just the squick factor, but the utter bizarreness of the mechanic. It was a poorly explained mechanical "WTF?", just thrown in.

It could have been done better, and should have been integrated better.

GM Move = challenge to your role.
Player overcoming challenge = gain special bonus.

Pow.

EDIT: As a previous poster said, this mechanic became an excuse to casually announce sex had been had, just to get the benefit.

That's what game mechanical bonuses do: encourage the players to engage in certain behaviors (or have their characters do so). So why not a mechanic to encourage players to be a better Hardholder or whomever?

Vince missed an opportunity for strengthening the characters' roles, in preference to encouraging declarations of meaningless, commodity sex. It was a mistake, from a strictly game design perspective.

Quote from: Rincewind1;505071You are free to choose wrong, stupid and pretentious GMing advice if you prefer. I will however at least try and warn people about it - because putting "Do not change the rules" is pretty much the Deadly Sin of RPGs. I've devoted 20 pages of arguing about this already, so I'll just link:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?607636-Systems-and-Genre-Missidentification

Happy reading. At least Peregrin you have enough class to not go full ad hominem on me after I "diss" the storygaming bollocks, like most of story crowd. I'm not some "anti - storey" crusader, but storygames are indeed a bastion of pretentious and transgressive content that disguises poor game design.

No class in trolling, no class indeed.

I think the issue here is that if you view RPG systems as serving a certain purpose (integrating with the GM's own "game design" and other plans) rather than existing as discrete methods of producing certain table dynamics, it won't work for you.  If you've ever listened to Crane and Sorenson's "Game Design is Mind Control" talk, you'll know what I'm talking about.  I saw their panel at PAX East 11, and it finally helped me understand why folks like Crane are so adamant about people playing their games RAW before attempting to modify them -- they view systems in a very different light than other people.

The rules are in place in a certain way for the reason.  Justin's statement about the GM moves "channeling" is I think very important.

However, if you prefer to modify your games to fit the social dynamic or "needs" of your own group, then I can see why it might bother you.

I decided against going deep into how fucked up I think the "railroads and GM-handling is traditional" take on role playing games is, because that is going to automatically lead to yet another debate about story gaming which frankly I don't think we need at this point.

What I'm going to do instead is post about stuff like "how to make a Cthulhu adventure that isn't a railroad" at some point. It's much better to talk about actual practice in RPGs anyway. All the discussion of theory gives me a bad taste in the mouth lately, like we're missing the fucking point of RPGs in the first place.

Quote from: Rincewind1;505159Also Alexander - learn  to read between the lines then. I'm not going to do the job that elementary school teacher should've done for you. You pretty much prove my point with that channelling the GM's power bollocks. It's about as much channelling as those liar - pyramids are channelling life's energy. Baker is the bloody Archbishop of RAWtenbury.

Like I said: There is an entire chapter of the book dedicated to giving advice to the GM on how to modify and change the rules. Trying to "read between the lines" to conclude that there's a secret "thou must obey the RAW" lurking behind all that "here's how you can change and modify the RAW to work for you" is nothing more you having your head stuck eight feet up your own ass.

It's like claiming that all the rules in OD&D about running and pacing a dungeon crawl is trying to castrate the GM. No, dumbass: It's providing a default game structure.

QuoteBut if someone tells me that I absolutely need AW to deliver this to my players, then I will ridicule such a person.

Just a reminder: Rincewind is talking about some random person on some other site that somehow implied that AW was the Holy Grail. This upset Rincewind so much that he's incapable of actually reading, playing, or even thinking about AW without becoming obsessed with this random, irrelevant bloke.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505197Last time i looked, i can't remember 'sexy moves' being a PA genre trope.

In play, we found that using the sex moves made the game feel a lot like an HBO show: Lots of "sexposition" (a la Game of Thrones).

With that being said, the sex moves are pretty much non-essential. You don't even really need to swap them out with something else: You can just ignore them.

Meh. I could troll you by going "Say Justin, when you channel your inert GM energies, do you use special crystals, like lightsabers, or just the mechanics of the game and smoke of black lotus? I just use, well, words to channel my "GMing energies", but I am always open for new information", but I don't feel like it.

The greatest trick someone call pull is to take the freedom of choice away, then persuade you you never needed it.  I'll take my own and others advice, and not give a fuck, concentrating rather on actual gaming stuff. Then again, if I do not understand indie RPGs and play them "wrong", I am apparently damaged like child that suffered from sexual harassment.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0

Re: restricts GM's or not.

Let's cut out all the back and forth and just go to the damn text. Even if we disagree on interpretations, these are real quotes from the real game.

Page 1 of the GM chapter:

QuoteThat’s you, the MC, Apocalypse World’s GM.

There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these as rules. The whole rest of the game is built upon this.

AGENDA
• Make Apocalypse World seem real.
• Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.
• Play to find out what happens.

Everything you say, you should do it to accomplish these three, and no other. It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them, or to get them through your pre-planned storyline (DO NOT pre-plan a storyline, and I’m not fucking around).

It’s not your job to put their characters in double-binds or dead ends, or to yank the rug out from under their feet. Go chasing after any of those, you’ll wind up with a boring game that makes Apocalypse World seem contrived,

Does that seem constraining? Your choice as to what you believe. Let's grab a couple of more quotes.

QuotePlay to find out: there’s a certain discipline you need in order to MC Apocalypse World. You have to commit yourself to the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters. You have to open yourself to caring what happens, but when it comes time to say what happens, you have to set what you hope for aside.

The reward for MCing, for this kind of GMing, comes with the discipline. When you find something you genuinely care about — a question about what will happen that you genuinely want to find out — letting the game’s fiction decide it is uniquely satisfying.

And from another page in the GM section:

QuoteThe game’s rules will tell you things to say. When a player’s character goes aggro on someone and the player rolls 7–9, for instance, the rules give you a list of things to choose from. Choose one of them, and that’s what you say.

Have your own opinion. That's good. But base it on the stuff actually in the game, is all I'm saying.

The above are. Read them and make a decision.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;505262Vince missed an opportunity for strengthening the characters' roles, in preference to encouraging declarations of meaningless, commodity sex. It was a mistake, from a strictly game design perspective.

Totally. The rest of the world sees it as a mistake from a game design perspective. Sadly, given Mr. Baker's philosophy, he doesn't. System matters, dude. If it's in there, it is meant to drive play.

Draw your own conclusions from that.

Not so sure... the sex moves drove play a lot in the campaign I ran. Perhaps they are not great examples of post apocalyptic genre tropes, but they firmly established some character concepts for us.

Quote from: One Horse Town;505374Totally. The rest of the world sees it as a mistake from a game design perspective. Sadly, given Mr. Baker's philosophy, he doesn't. System matters, dude. If it's in there, it is meant to drive play.

Draw your own conclusions from that.

I'd say that it is certainly designed to drive play. It's every user's choice if you will use a part of mechanic, or not.

Except that AW is one of the many members of the Cult of RAW that plague the storygames. Thank goodness InSpectres doesn't have it.

Interesting point too - "Let's make a game about character interaction. What's one of the most intimate human interaction? Sexual intercourse. Hm. Let's make it meaningless by making it a mechanical flick.

*tap tap tap as it is keyed into Word.*

Genius."

Thank you for resting my case.

Apocalypse World has a very high level of metagame mechanics.  All the interpersonal mechanics are there in typical Forge fashion to give you in-game bonuses for roleplaying.  It's not a Storygame, but it's definitely not traditional from a sense of "immersing your character in a world", you simply spend too much time making decisions as a player.