Quote from: Wrath of God on February 19, 2023, 06:15:12 PMAnd I generally agree with others skepticism in terms of railroading - GM who wanna railroad will just ignore those rules that forbid him to do it, and houserule to do his own shit.
Just like they always did.

For real? I'm skeptical about such a thing really happening.

See, in the case of PbtA, just like the storygaming culture where it emerged, the rules can't be ignored as the book(s) makes it clear they're not GM advice, but explicit rules. So any player who knows this fact - and "don't prep plots" and "play to find" and agenda & principles - is eligible to call bullshit on a GM going against them.

I suspect that being invited to play PbtA and then see the GM railroading the group through a pre-written narrative would feel considerably awkward, and as out of place as being invited to play OD&D and finding a diceless cosplay LARPing session. Expect discrete WTF looks between players and probably some excuse to go home early. The only scenario I could see that working would be with a group of people who don't know PbtA yet (or OD&D).

QuoteSee, in the case of PbtA, just like the storygaming culture where it emerged, the rules can't be ignored as the book(s) makes it clear they're not GM advice, but explicit rules. So any player who knows this fact - and "don't prep plots" and "play to find" and agenda & principles - is eligible to call bullshit on a GM going against them.

Yeah but this will work only on newbie groups who started with storygame RPGs and whole dropping golden rule schtick. Problem is - biggest RPG is still DnD, and 5e promotes golden rule like no DnD before to mask serious lacking procedures for GMs.

And still GM has massive power over fiction by implementing consequences of SwC and fails. And defining position and effect.
Not to mention - what actually I forced my GM to do - most of players will be kinda reactive, and wanting specific situation not vague find out bullshit.

QuoteI suspect that being invited to play PbtA and then see the GM railroading the group through a pre-written narrative would feel considerably awkward, and as out of place as being invited to play OD&D and finding a diceless cosplay LARPing session. Expect discrete WTF looks between players and probably some excuse to go home early. The only scenario I could see that working would be with a group of people who don't know PbtA yet (or OD&D).

Or you know people playing whatever team/DM wants because it's their group.

Quote from: Wrath of God on February 20, 2023, 05:34:59 PM

QuoteSee, in the case of PbtA, just like the storygaming culture where it emerged, the rules can't be ignored as the book(s) makes it clear they're not GM advice, but explicit rules. So any player who knows this fact - and "don't prep plots" and "play to find" and agenda & principles - is eligible to call bullshit on a GM going against them.

Yeah but this will work only on newbie groups who started with storygame RPGs and whole dropping golden rule schtick. Problem is - biggest RPG is still DnD, and 5e promotes golden rule like no DnD before to mask serious lacking procedures for GMs.

The two groups I play with nowadays never heard of storygames for a long time into their roleplaying lives, and still play them by the rules. So I would say this is a group thing, where groups who approach new games with their cup full of other games baggage will probably ignore it, while groups that actually read each game texts in isolation and try to follow their instructions will do things differently.

QuoteAnd still GM has massive power over fiction by implementing consequences of SwC and fails. And defining position and effect.
Not to mention - what actually I forced my GM to do - most of players will be kinda reactive, and wanting specific situation not vague find out bullshit.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. You forced your GM to be reactive? What is "vague find out bullshit"?

My biggest issue with PbtA and Genesys is the dice forcing the narrative often feels... forced. Sort of the game dictating "get creative" on the whim of dice, rather than when you're feeling creative. Fate Core using a meta-currency or actions(create advantage), seems to me to work better in that you can pick and choose when you want to get creative. With the exception that as Fate got more popular it really began feel like a religion of "narrative first" began to take control away from a player going "I want to create advantage to rack up a +2, let's say I feint with my sword to Create an Opening, let's roll to see if it happens/I get a free tag on it". That became "wrong" and you needed to "narrate" what you did, then pick the action that matched it. 

Other games, like Cypher, also share and solve the problem. You frequently see GMs grasp at straws to explain a nat 1 on d20 "intrusion", often times just giving up and ignoring a nat 1, while choice intrusions of giving the players an XP for popping one in when the GM sees a natural opening(the women you were hitting on in the bar is the mayor's wife! here's an XP) flows much more naturally at tables.

I like the idea of Dungeon World trying to create a randomized story with unpredictability, but I mostly feel like older D&D with its encounter rolls, surprise rolls, reaction rolls and morale rolls did it better. And it's a shame that those concepts have been mostly abandoned by modern RPG design.

Quote from: Dracones on February 22, 2023, 03:28:52 PM
My biggest issue with PbtA and Genesys is the dice forcing the narrative often feels... forced. Sort of the game dictating "get creative" on the whim of dice, rather than when you're feeling creative.

I see this over and over again here.  I'm not sure I get what you mean by forcing you to get creative.  Most of the 7-9 succeed but results already have the but spelled out.  Sometimes you get a choice, but with very few exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are you making something up completely. 

Hack and Slash says the monster gets to attack you.  Volley gives the choice of changing you position, doing less damage or using more ammo.  Defy Danger is probably one of the only ones that asks the GM to come up with something because it's a general catch-all move and therefore have a wide variety of possible outcomes.

Now, if you mean having to come up with stuff on a <6 fail roll, it's not much different than other GMing situations.  The PC fails an attack, the monster gets to make a counter attack.  They fail to climb a wall, when they fall they take some damage or break their lantern.  There is a nice set of GM moves that are pretty much consequences most games would levy against the player anyway.

Genesys has an escape valve: gain strain on threat, lose strain on advantage.  If a result involving threat or advantage comes into play and there's no good narrative thing to have as part of the result, you can always fall back on, "You succeed but it was tiring."  Combat of course has big tables of threat/advantage results that can be applied to take the load off of a GM or player to come up with something creative on the spot, but if someone's fixing a flat tire or whatever and pops up a couple threats and it's not really relevant to the game to say, "You get the new tire on but ominous things may happen." you can just slap strain on the character and keep going.

Quote from: rgalex on February 22, 2023, 04:04:30 PM
I see this over and over again here.  I'm not sure I get what you mean by forcing you to get creative.  Most of the 7-9 succeed but results already have the but spelled out.  Sometimes you get a choice, but with very few exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are you making something up completely. 

Hack and Slash says the monster gets to attack you.  Volley gives the choice of changing you position, doing less damage or using more ammo.  Defy Danger is probably one of the only ones that asks the GM to come up with something because it's a general catch-all move and therefore have a wide variety of possible outcomes.

The Hack and Slack monster attacks you can vary a lot. Do they do damage? Do they activate a special quality? What happens on an attack is pretty much GM fiat much more so than D&D. A ghoul's "gnaws off limbs" is like, when do they gnaw limbs off? First hack and slash response? Second, third? In D&D a vorpal sword tells you it's a nat 20 roll.

Volley's moving to be placed in danger. You slip and fall off a cliff? Just stumble near? Does a monster move to attack you, or just notice you? Wide open to GM fiat.

Discern Realities is a large mess of "think up something on the spot".

Spout Lore: "I pick up a stick off the ground and spout lore. So tell me GM what is interesting and useful about this stick?"

The above is picking on Dungeon World a bit. Something like Freebooters 2E cleans up the above moves a lot. But it still feels like trying to force every peg into a round hole no matter what shape it is.

Quote from: Valatar on February 22, 2023, 04:45:14 PM
Genesys has an escape valve: gain strain on threat, lose strain on advantage.  If a result involving threat or advantage comes into play and there's no good narrative thing to have as part of the result, you can always fall back on, "You succeed but it was tiring."

The Genesys escape valve, yeah I missed that. That sounds like a nice hack to help with the issue. It was nice to see this system get picked up by another company after FFG dropped it.

I can see where the "forcing the GM to get creative" argument comes from, as I've had times where the constant "..at a cost" from Defy Danger/Act Under Fire (or the 4-5 roll from Blades) made me struggle too. But you can usually fall back to "take damage/stress/condition tag" (whatever that game's main sthick is) when on a dry spell, so there's that.

About the "Gnaw off limbs", in most PbtA that would be considered a hard move. Hard moves must be telegraphed by the GM, so the players have a sense for what's coming up, and know it's not trivial.