It's possible that some people may not like the collaborative world building aspect of Dungeon World. From the srd: When a player says, "Who is the King of Torsea," say, "I don't know. Who is it? What is he like?"

If the players aren't in to collaborative world building, then a GM response as suggested by DungeonWorld might be described in a complaint on a message board as: 'story created as you go along'. It's a perfectly reasonable play preference to want the world your character is inhabiting to have been pre-constructed by your GM. I'd say the lion's share of traditional D&D games are done that way.

Likewise, while the Dungeon World rules suggest that you should start play in the action (from the srd: Start the session with a group of player characters (maybe all of them) in a tense situation. Use anything that demands action: outside the entrance to a dungeon, ambushed in a fetid swamp, peeking through the crack in a door at the orc guards, or being sentenced before King Levus.), it is a perfectly reasonable play preference to want to play a bit in the world beforehand, and then having the characters decide what they want to do rather than having this first decision thrust upon them by the GM and the rules of the game.

All that being said, not liking aspects of Dungeon World and then using that to bash all indie games is a heck of a leap.

Whenever I see threads like this I notice this odd thing. The OP says their group played game X and hated it. Lots of fans of game X post add nasueum that the OP must have played game X wrong because reasons. Usually I reckon those people want to defend a game they like and don't want people to dismiss it out of hand based on a bad description and be open to trying game X. Yet almost every time, I am left with such a negative impression by the fanatics that I don't want to try game X because I'm afraid it will be a game session with fanatics. I find this negative impression much harder to dismiss than the OP's original rant.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;810660It's possible that some people may not like the collaborative world building aspect of Dungeon World. From the srd: When a player says, "Who is the King of Torsea," say, "I don't know. Who is it? What is he like?"

Much of that happening would bug me. I prefer the world seem real. This to me makes it seem like the world is a series of flats on a studio lot with nothing behind the door to the general store but desert and tumbleweeds.

One other thing that seems odd to me from the descriptions of DW play. As I understand it, the rules lay out some "moves" that have clear mechanics for the GM to use. But the players aren't supposed to reference the moves. They are supposed to use some other language that the GM then tries to match to a move. To me DW is inserting an unnecessary translation step with the risk that what I think I was doing (mechanically) and what the GM thinks I was doing (mechanically) end up being two different things because we didn't parse the natural language translation the same way.

Quote from: Bren;810667I find this negative impression much harder to dismiss than the OP's original rant.

Really? All I needed to know is that the OP is in his mid-to-late thirties and thought Dungeon Turd was actually clever enough to post.

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;810660It's possible that some people may not like the collaborative world building aspect of Dungeon World. From the srd: When a player says, "Who is the King of Torsea," say, "I don't know. Who is it? What is he like?"

Sorry, but this seems like an "if I play it in a way that isn't fun, I won't have fun" complaint. If you don't like those things... don't do them.

(That said, there are some areas where player authorship is compulsory - the Barbarian, for example, is rewarded for telling people about their homeland, and someone playing one would be legitimately aggrieved if the MC didn't let them do so. But there's not much of that, and it can be done on a micro level, "what's it like to live as a barbarian", than a macro "here is the history of barbarians in the world" level.)

Quote from: Bren;810668To me DW is inserting an unnecessary translation step with the risk that what I think I was doing (mechanically) and what the GM thinks I was doing (mechanically) end up being two different things because we didn't parse the natural language translation the same way.

But how is that different to any other game?

Quote from: ArtemisAlpha;810660It's possible that some people may not like the collaborative world building aspect of Dungeon World. From the srd: When a player says, "Who is the King of Torsea," say, "I don't know. Who is it? What is he like?"

If the players aren't in to collaborative world building, then a GM response as suggested by DungeonWorld might be described in a complaint on a message board as: 'story created as you go along'. It's a perfectly reasonable play preference to want the world your character is inhabiting to have been pre-constructed by your GM. I'd say the lion's share of traditional D&D games are done that way.

Likewise, while the Dungeon World rules suggest that you should start play in the action (from the srd: Start the session with a group of player characters (maybe all of them) in a tense situation. Use anything that demands action: outside the entrance to a dungeon, ambushed in a fetid swamp, peeking through the crack in a door at the orc guards, or being sentenced before King Levus.), it is a perfectly reasonable play preference to want to play a bit in the world beforehand, and then having the characters decide what they want to do rather than having this first decision thrust upon them by the GM and the rules of the game.

All that being said, not liking aspects of Dungeon World and then using that to bash all indie games is a heck of a leap.

All of what you say here is essentially true, but it's worth noting that it all comes from the GM-ing advice for a first session, and that first session is recommended to be a "jump start" to get the game going quickly. Even in that section it says "Their characters are their responsibility and the world is yours".

Regardless, your point is solid, but what you describe is no different than what can happen when a GM for any system tries to run a game in a style that the players don't like. How frustrated do sandbox players get with railroady GMs, or vice versa?

This all sounds like a classic GM/player disconnect, with a healthy dash of 1st-time-GM/no-time-player running a game that is notoriously newbie-GM unfriendly.

The players may also hate DW regardless of how its run. We'll probably never know.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;810443Not trying to troll, nobody around here plays it, so I'm only aware of it from it's vague reputation as a sort of D&D for people who hate D&D.

I thought that was Exalted!

Quote from: Ladybird;810671But how is that different to any other game?

Because not all games do that. When I use the parry and riposte manuevers in Honor+Intrigue I don't need to make up new ways to say, "I parry and then riposte." Nor do the game rules explicitly tell me to make up new words to describe the maneuvers.

Quote from: Bren;810668One other thing that seems odd to me from the descriptions of DW play. As I understand it, the rules lay out some "moves" that have clear mechanics for the GM to use. But the players aren't supposed to reference the moves. They are supposed to use some other language that the GM then tries to match to a move. To me DW is inserting an unnecessary translation step with the risk that what I think I was doing (mechanically) and what the GM thinks I was doing (mechanically) end up being two different things because we didn't parse the natural language translation the same way.

This is a common misconception. The proscription in the game is against the GM naming their moves as they are used. Players can say "Hack & Slash" or "Defy Danger" all day long, but the trigger still has to happen in the game for the move to occur. In some cases this is trivial (e.g. "I Hack & Slash the orc") and in others requires more info (e.g. "I defy Danger" - "I need to know more about how you intend to dodge the heat death of the universe").


For the record, I'm a fan of DW, but I'm more interested in clearing the air about game mechanics than convincing anybody else they should like the game.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;810677This is a common misconception. The proscription in the game is against the GM naming their moves as they are used. Players can say "Hack & Slash" or "Defy Danger" all day long, but the trigger still has to happen in the game for the move to occur. In some cases this is trivial (e.g. "I Hack & Slash the orc") and in others requires more info (e.g. "I defy Danger" - "I need to know more about how you intend to dodge the heat death of the universe").


For the record, I'm a fan of DW, but I'm more interested in clearing the air about game mechanics than convincing anybody else they should like the game.

Ah, thanks. That sounds more reasonable/interesting/acceptable.

Quote from: Enlightened;810622I offered the possibility that they still wouldn't like it even if they had done it right.

My main point was that, at this point, the OP can't really know whether he likes Dungeon World or not, because so far all they have played is a hacked version of it.

And that is not a case of No True Scotsman.

No True Scotsman would be me saying "You'd like it if only you would play it right", which isn't what I said.

They would simply finally be in a position to know whether they like it or not if they would play it right*. All they know right now is that they don't like their GM's hacked version of it.

*Hell, or even just read the book, which I don't get the impression that the OP has.

The No True Scotsman fallacy would be if people bring forth better and better run DW campaigns that people just didn't like, and you insist that all of them were broken -- it's not a true Scotsman if rebuts my point; it's not a properly run DW campaign unless the people involved liked it.

Here we have only one instance, which lasted "the past few Saturdays" (two? three?) so it didn't get much beyond character generation, and we only have the report of someone who agrees that it's not the kind of game his group would like and who has no further experience of it, and probably in a "few" weeks would not be inclined or able to absorb a 400 page rule book, especially if he already had a bias against that kind of game (or the kind of game he thought it is/was).

I stand by my opinion that we can't know for sure whether it was a hacked version of Dungeon World (steak made of old condoms), or whether it was played correctly but ruined by some failing of the GM (badly overcooked) or of the players (drowned it in condiments they knew they don't like), or whether it was an acceptable instance described as bad by someone who didn't value its positive attributes (eww! it was like there was blood coming out of my steak! and they said it was rare for that to happen!). I don't think you can insist that it could only be the first case, but I don't think it's a No True Scotsman thing (unless I myself am engaging in the No True "No True Scotsman Fallacy" Fallacy).

Massive number 3 going on in this thread.

This thread lost me with its title. I haven't played or read Dungeon World, so I can't weigh in on its quality. But somehow the use of 'turd' in the title makes me more sympathetic to DW than to the OP.

Quote from: robiswrong;810594Well, I won't disagree with you about most of what you write, but a minor point on one thing...



"Fiction" in DW (or most AW games, really) doesn't generally mean "the story," and especially not "the predetermined story".  It means "the shit we're imagining".  The point is that you engage in the rules by describing what you're doing, not by directly referencing the rules.  So you don't say "I hack 'n' slash".  You say something like "I advance on the orc, swinging my blade in a rapid flurry," which the GM then interprets as the move Hack 'n' Slash.

Yet another example of why you're better off coining a new word or using existing and established terminology than redefining an existing word in a non-intuitive way and expect people to get it and not object to the redefinition. See also: narrative, privilege.  

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;810619Whenever I read a thread about DW I just wish that someone would take that monster of a book and reword it in "real" (trad) language.

We'd have less misunderstandings and fights about whether it's a real RPG or not.

Bonus: It would fit the old 64 page booklet format of the games it tries to emulate.

Something like this would help.

Quote from: apparition13;810690Yet another example of why you're better off coining a new word or using existing and established terminology than redefining an existing word in a non-intuitive way and expect people to get it and not object to the redefinition. See also: narrative, privilege.

I'm not going to argue with that.  That caught me a few times (conflating "fiction" with DragonLance type pre-defined story) when first learning more narrative games.

I can't really think of a better term, though.  I usually just use "the shit we're imagining in our heads" when "fiction" evokes a reaction.