My players finally escaped the dungeon of The God That Crawls in tonight's game. After actually deciding to start mapping the place last week, they just went straight to their goal and then exited the dungeon. They missed some of the cooler treasures thanks to short-cutting past the vault, but that might be for the best in the long run.
If you are looking for an unforgiving but fun challenge for your players, I certainly recommend this one.
D&D tonight ended with me and one of the other players having a bit of a shouting match with (at) the guy who DM'd our game this week. He's one of my least favorite people at the group anyway - a prototypical post-adolescent would-be edgelord whose PCs all have Dark Pasts and names like "Ebon Shadow" - but he over-relies on combat for everything, and all his NPCs/enemies are "clever" references to obscure anime characters with no real personality, bullshit powers, and ridiculous save DCs to essentially force things how he wants them to go.
Things came to a head when we interrupted a vampire ritual where the Big Bad was trying to raise a corpse as a vampire; the boss (vampire Cloud Strife) could fucking stop time to move away and avoid opportunity attacks (the party was level 3). Then, after he'd been vanquished along with all his minions, we attempted to decapitate the corpse and prevent it from rising as a vampire (we didn't have a cleric), only to be told that we couldn't because he was encased in magic bullshit plot armour that meant we just couldn't, because.
So we had a bit of a rant about how random super-powered bullshit and plot armor and characters that he's lifted wholesale from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure don't help the players understand anything about what's happening, why, or why we should care about it.
I think there was even some constructive advice, hidden somewhere along all the swearing…
Yikes . I hope he pays attention, player agency is everything.
a prototypical post-adolescent would-be edgelord whose PCs all have Dark Pasts and names like "Ebon Shadow"
Sounds like he's well past the protoype stage.
Yeah. It likely didn't help that his facsimile best mate was also in the game, playing a monk/barbarian named - I shit you not - Obsidian Bastion, and "helpfully" Google-image-searching all the references as he giggled at the apparent cleverness.
Yikes . I hope he pays attention, player agency is everything.
I think the key issue, plot-wise, was that the NPC on the ritual slab was some key/favorite character he wanted us to rescue - but the mission we were given at the start was a "kill all the vampires" kind of deal, so there was an immediate disconnect.
I do not know the Obsidian Bastion reference. I'm sure it was super clever though.
Hopefully you will get a different GM soon.
It's not a reference. He just thought "Dark Tower" was too on-the-nose, and broke out the thesaurus.
Monk/Barbarian seems… thematically confused.
How old are these guys? If they're still in or just leaving uni, that's very different than if they're in their 30s with jobs.
Monk/Barbarian seems… thematically confused.
He wanted the bonus action unarmed attack. It's a league-style thing, rather than a campaign, so a lot of min/maxing goes on.
How old are these guys? If they're still in or just leaving uni, that's very different than if they're in their 30s with jobs.
Most of them are uni age, or uni-adjacent. Pretty sure I'm about ten years over the average.
That sounds like some entry level GM mistake shit.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rebel-country-tickets-48882091652
Rebel Country Megagame. Star Wars! Rebels!
Tonight, we finished the first "season" of the Monster of the Week campaign I've been running since May. I've never played in a game that's survived this long, let alone running one; I'm sure if it'd been a more heavyweight system I might have struggled to keep the content coming but it's such a breeze to prep.
I feel like it's made me a whole lot better at improvising, which should help when I'm behind the screen again for 13th Age - it's got a bunch more stuff to keep track of with combat and enemy stats, battlefield positioning, temporary conditions… it'll be a big shift in perspective I'm sure.
Luckily one of the other guys is going to run a quick Eberron 5e game in between, which gives me a break but has the added bonus of getting everyone back into a d20 mindset in a familiar system before we jump to an entirely new game.
This sadly isn't going to be the game where I finally get to use my Kenku Bard/Rogue, though, so I've got to roll up a new character. Thinking of going for Changeling Cleric…
I just backed the Kickstarter for Things From The Flood, the follow up the excellent RPG Tales from the loop. Both games are based on the fantastic art of Simon Stålenhag, Tales From The Loop was about kids in the 80's exploring a Swedish countryside strewn with discarded, occasionally autonomous science fiction technology. The follow-up is set in the '90s and involves teenagers exploring the same land, now far more dangerous and broken thanks to the flood which may have risen from the abandoned particle accelerator beneath the islands. The book contains a adventure environment (possibly two actually) and a bunch of adventures, which further adventures unlocked as stretch goals already.
It's great. Everything Fria Ligan does is great, and it's about £17 to get these PDFs.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/things-from-the-flood-sequel-to-tales-from-the-loo
Stumbled on the core book for TFtL in Forbidden Planet on Friday and had a flick through; been thinking about it near-constantly since. It seems like an interesting system, and I love the setting, but I just don't know if I'd be able to swing a group; the particular kind of RP it seems to expect doesn't quite match the… dynamic… of folks I usually play with.
Stumbled on the core book for TFtL in Forbidden Planet on Friday and had a flick through; been thinking about it near-constantly since. It seems like an interesting system, and I love the setting, but I just don't know if I'd be able to swing a group; the particular kind of RP it seems to expect doesn't quite match the… dynamic… of folks I usually play with.
I'd say it's worth taking the chance, it doesn't really require any particular role playing as such, it's just that players have to understand that they can't punch their way to a solution. It's a weird SF mystery game about kids exploring an unfamiliar world. Whether that ends up being closer to The Goonies or Stranger Things is up to you.
Come through to Dundee and play Rebel Country! It's a Star Wars themed Megagame about a rebel controlled planet being held by the empire. It's gonna be ace!
Come through to Dundee and play Rebel Country! It's a Star Wars themed Megagame about a rebel controlled planet being held by the empire. It's gonna be ace!
Aw man, it's on my Birthday and everything.
all the more reason to come and have some fun
I'm actually getting to play in a campaign! We've only done session 0 yet, but my Kenku ranger is all ready to go. I haven't rolled for stats since I played a freakishly-tall thief in a Call of Cthulu game back in university, but I did uncharacteristically well - +8 to hit at level 2 is going to be fun.
The DM took everyone aside and asked Deep RP Questions to set stuff up for later, too, so I'm interested to see how all that shakes out.
The party is me, a half-elf paladin, a tabaxi monk, a wood elf druid and her "pet" kobold cleric, and a very cheerful water genasi bard.
We're compete misfits, it's gonna be great.
I've had a kenku Bard 3/Rogue 2 sitting here for months, but our 5e DM has dragged his feet with prep (leading to my Monster of the Week campaign, and now 13th Age; I'll have prepped and run two games, in two different systems, in the time it's taken him to get ready for one, but I'm not bitter).
Coincidentally, I also rolled stats for mine, but didn't do tremendously well - the highest I got was a 16 (lowest was 7) – so even at fifth level, I only get +5 to hit.
I get +9 to deception and intimidate, though, so I'm hoping for more RP than combat anyway - if I ever get to play again.
I didn't roll lower than 11. He's a beast.
Fria Ligan are making some of the best RPGs around just now, evocotive settings, a clear system which is fun to use, and loads of stunning artwork. Two of their games are in a Bundle of Holding just now: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/CoriolisLoop
Tales From The Loop is a wonderful game of kids exploring an '80 Swedish countryside littered with discarded SF tech. It's a bit like Stranger Things, was set in City 17. Actually, there's an optional US setting for the game too, which now that I think about it is probably just down the road from Black Meas. The game explicitly doesn't have a combat system, which ensures that it feels different from most other RPGs. It's based on the art of Simon Stalenhag and it features a lot of his art.
Coriolis is basically the Firefly RPG, only instead of being SF Western, it's Arabian Nights in space, and it is quite unlike anything else I have read. It uses the same fun mechanics as Tales From The Loop and the setting does a great job of feeling old and lived in. Just have a look at some of the art to get an idea for yourself: https://bit.ly/2TTAv4O
If you want to have a better look at them, free quickstarts are available and I have all the PDFs.
Currently $13 will get you the Coriolis corebook, a setting guide and four short adventures. If you pay $25 though, you also get the Tales From The Loop corebook, a TFTL campaign and a larger adventure for Coriolis.
You should buy it. It's good.
:-)
First campaign session down!
We're part of a group hired to take care of threats to, essentially an infrastructure project - a new road cutting through the wilds - which in this case took the form of some goblins and a basilisk.
My Kenku ranger was extremely combat-effective (4 killing blows!), but for some reason the dice decided he sucks hard at stealth; I think the highest I rolled was a 13.
The bard attempted to cast Sleep the basilisk, and succeeded instead on putting our tabaxi monk to sleep. The cleric (a cheese-thieving kobold) was unconscious before his second turn. Then I killed it with a shot to the eye after succeeding in not being petrified twice (the only character who had to make the save).
It was a lot of fun, even if the goblin fight dragged a bit; 6 PCs and 8 enemies does not a swift round make.
I played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition for the first time the other day. A group of 6 players escorting a prisoner from one town to another get the drop on the criminals gang who are setting up an ambush to free him!
So we stealth attack to drop in on them and then oh no Beastmen!
The GM was like 'okay, the players will work with the bandits to kill the beastmen and-'
But we ended out kickflipping off the bandits and just fucking bodying the beastmen. Our starting Ratcatcher annihilated the lead Gor in one round.
It's an interesting game with a very nice presentation but there's some system stuff that feels… kind of broken? Karl's situation was that he surprised one guy and then used advantage to dumpster someone that was supposed to be a boss. Combat swings wildly too with fate points being reserved to handle conditions that are inflicted and have the potential to one shot you. It feels kind of like playing rocket tag.
If only there was someone around these parts that was very familiar with the game that could offer some advice on dealing with runaway juggernaut advantage stacking + critical hits even on defensive rolls throwing it for a loop. Is there meant to be a cap on advantage that we're not seeing because we're getting into a state where we're basically +30 on everything at the moment. Is this something that's intended, do you think, mysterious reader?
You called?
#StillAlive
But, yes, very unSociety to make multiple posts. I'm too used to hanging around on Discord these days.
I can answer all of the above, but it will take an age, and I'm currently chilling after mucho travelling. Any specific issues you'd like me to address?
And, no the RPG side, I've been tabletop roleplaying more this last year than I have in a fair while. It's been a busy one. Loving doing the WFRP thing, though. Pretty much my dream job.
It's a cracking looking book. The layout's great and the interior art's brilliant. Love the nun career picture; Very old-world.
Basically, how's the GM/player expected to deal with advantage stacking? Like, a Ratcatcher with 150ish XP over starting feels like they probably shouldn't be able to dumpster a beastman the way it's happened so far.
Is combat meant to feel very swingy? Conditions swing wildly between the mild and the character killing - I've seen a lot of fractured jaws, cut legs and then massive internal bleeding with not a lot of in between.
#BoughtTheStarterSetYet?
Okay, a few things to unpack there.
I'll start with the Nun, because that's easy, and is more commentary than discussion: the Nun piccy was a very late addition. I'd just reached the point where I had some creative decision making (still long before I took over as the producer, which happened after the core book), and I commissioned that image to replace something quite different. Very glad I did. It's ridiculous in a way that amuses me.
Next: Advantage stacking. Once you get used to the game and use all the rules, it is rare. It happens, and sometimes happens hard, but that's when the fight is going against one party, and they should retreat, regroup, or similar. More commonly, Advantage is stripped by missile fire, magic, by sustaining a Condition, an unlucky dice roll, or by one of several other methods. Indeed, the maths alone make high swings of Advantage statistically very unlikely (but it can happen), assuming you use all the rules. Managing Advantage (including gaining it without risk) makes the combat much more tactical than simple CHARGE and hit lots, but that aspect of the rules is not made explicit and can take a while to grasp. For example, it can be better not to attack Characters with high Advantage, as they will easily beat you, and gain more – back off, go defensive, circle, use a Skill to gain Advantage yourself, call help to flank your opponent or similar. These are all tactics the GM should be deploying, too – nobody marches to their death unless frenzied or idiotic, after all. However, none of this is immediately obvious (for all groups quickly get there). Because of this, I added the Limiting Advantage rule on page 164 (another late addition when I had more active content control). I don't use it, and have never had to, but it's a fine addition for those learning the ropes, and it helped enormously in the playtests as people learned how Advantage worked, and how best to use it in play (the first option, tying it to Initiative Bonus, is my preferred option, if you want to use the rule).
Next: Rat Catchers can be pretty decent, eh? Exactly as designed. The issue you're having here, I presume from what you've written, isn't the Rat Catchers, it's the Beastmen. The Bestiary in the book presents basic stats, much like those rolled by a beginning Character – they are supposed to be added to as required to create the antagonist you need for your game. This is covered on page 310. The creatures are 'generic, typical starter examples' – they are designed to be expanded to create 'realistic' versions of what the PCs may encounter.
So, a Basic Beastman, the Gor on page 331, is the equivalent of a basic PC without moving through any Careers. Traits should be added to that template as required to make what is needed, either using the Optional Traits presented, or using the Generic Traits on page 310. As every combat in WFRP is potentially deadly, it's rare to have a simple 'generic' NPC. They all carry some extra details when presented in the published adventures. Even the simplest Characters, such as the basic Beastmen and Mutants offered in the free Night of Blood adventure, have tweaks and extra details. The NPCs are supposed to be expanded using the toolbox the core book provides, rather than simply using the neat stats as presented in the book.
Or, tl;dr: NPCs, like PCs, need development.
Lastly, combat. Combat, especially to begin, is dangerous, nasty, and can kill (although maiming is more common with the core rules – followed by death). It is supposed to be fraught, dramatic, with changes in momentum not infrequent. Enter combat, and it could all go wrong very quickly. You have various rules to balance this – Armour (it avoids Crits – page 299, and is essential if you're not looking to be carved up) Fortune points (to reroll missed Tests), Resolve points (to ditch unwanted Conditions), Fate points (to avoid death), and Resilience points (to definitely succeed) – but all are in limited supply, so deploying them carefully is required.
But, yes, you Charge even a simple Goblin, and it can kill you. But, because you have many tools at your disposal, it's not hugely likely.
I ran a one-shot last night for three of my regular players using Into The Odd.
Into The Odd is D&D striped back to its barest minimum. Characters are three stats, HPs and a few bits of randomly assigned equipment. The only rolls the game uses are Saves to avoid effects and Damage rolls. To Hit rolls have been dropped because they just slow the game down with misses.
It's fantastic. The game runs so fast and smooth, it's all about what the players want to do and never needs you to stop and check what they actually can do. Unlike something systemless though, which would also enable a similar flow and player agency, Into The Odd ensures that the PCs are always vulnerable, which keeps the tension up.
So it was perfect for a one-off, but I would happily carry on the game into a short campaign. The the PCs were a motley crew to start with, after a couple of days exploring the Gardens of Ynn they were even more bizarre, I'd love to see what happens to them next.
Warhammer Fantasy 4E stuff
Quick thing: I rolled a scholar/student and it's not likely that I'm going to get a degree any time soon by virtue of that either being an honorary thing or a 4 year downtime session which seems kind of counter-intuitive to roleplaying with a group. If I don't get all my trappings, is that going to have a defined effect on me other than people assuming that I'm a fake student?
The Beastmen had stats and advancement. It seems weird that the requirement for them is to bring ranged or magic users with them on an ambush attack so they can be on anti-rat-catcher-on-a-hot-streak duty. We had a fight with 3 sides in it (us, the bandits, the beastmen), and if the answer to dealing with advantage in that situation is 'don't have fights with three opposing sides in it' then whatever, that's fine, but that limits options a fair bit.
In the situation we encountered should the Gor that got fragged by the catcher who just gibbed another enemy run away while his buddies throw rocks in the hope of getting rid of advantage?
Stacking advantage isn't a rare thing. Could just be my group, mind. It's been a common thing in all the sessions we've played so far. My takeaway is that the way to ‘win’ a combat encounter is for both sides to pile everything on their biggest advantage character and keep the two actually avoiding each other until other characters can try to ping their opponent’s super advantage pile with ranged attacks. Like ‘tactically’ the beastmen somehow want their biggest advantage Gor who one shot an enemy to avoid Karl The Ratcatcher at all costs until Ungors can hit him with river stones and distracting dances (assuming that they randomed into Entertainer, at which time Ulric help you in a fight)
I really don’t see how the beastmen should have behaved differently. They are stronger on paper than starting players. They're also aggressive monster people, so the being wary to fight part doesn’t feel like it makes sense here. They came into the fight hot, scored a lot of successes and still got immediately dumpstered in one and a half rounds due to the nature of the mechanics. Like, there wasn’t even a window in which Larry the Ungor could start using his oratory skill to convince Karl that all is lost—and is the GM just supposed to have a fire support group of NPCs in standby to lob projectiles at whatever PC gets a bunch of advantage off chained successes?
Once you lose advantage, you need to make an opposed dodge/melee test as your action, against everyone in range. Who have advantage. And no desire to let you leave. They also get +20 to hit.
Also, what's an entertainer meant to do in a fight? Or a halfling? Like, you could puppydog eyes the GM into letting you use Juggle as a ranged attack. Also shortbows are 3GC which is out of range for a good long time; is the game meant to just meatgrind starting characters until someone's lucky enough to escape gravity?
Also we might just have a difference in opinion, but frenzied and idiotic seems to be a common thing. Northmen are literally frenzied. Chaos warriors/cultists, skaven and Sigmarites (Ulricians if you wanna get specific?) are all big into frenzied stupidity. Orcs, too.
I just picture like, some Bretonnian knights (who refuse to use ranged) seeing someone else fighting a bunch of snotlings and being like WE CAN'T ATTACK THEM, GET SOME PEASANTS WITH BOWS OVER HERE. Sigmar getting whaled on by some farmers so he can go and fight the demon lords and just chain his way from enemy to enemy.
Firstly, Titan Hunt looks cool, so I might have dropped £7 on that.
Secondly, jumping back up the thread a little, I'm pretty sure that the phrase
Quick thing:
at the start of a nine-paragraph, six-hundred word essay might be peak luscan.
I'm better in podcast form, I'll be honest.
Titan Hunt does look cool.
I just backed The Ultraviolet Grasslands, a weird epic continent-spanning point crawl adventure for OSR or 5e or whatever else. It is written and drawn by Luka Rejec so the whole feels both unique and coherent like a good indie comic. Have a look I think you'll like it:
I have two things.
First of all: Fucking Yikes the last two weeks of TTRPG stuff have been a goddamned nightmare.
Second of all: I have fallen into a situation where I am running an on-again-off-again Vampire 20th Anniversary game. The first session was pretty great.
Three players, playing the only vampires in a pretty small provincial city (Dundee). I premade the characters based on stuff they'd told me. I spent about five minutes with each player talking about the game, the basics of the setting, how Vampire's function and then asked them what their life was like, how the change hit them, what they'd been doing for the last twenty or so years. Then I got everyone around the table and did some background stuff.
These are people that have only really played a lot of DnD before so being like 'no, it's set in the modern world, right here' was kind of a blast of 'wait, there… there are RPGs that do that?' I broke out a map and let them draw up their own Domains (the Gangrel got pissy and territorial about the Brujah saying 'no, that part of the beach is part of the docks, which means it's mine' vs 'No, it's outside of city limits, which means it's mine.') which was kind of great to see! Players slip into the role of 'no, I want that!' very easily.
The Toreador said they would hold Elysium in the V&A, and they were told (since they're now the de facto head of the Cam in town) about an Envoy from the Prince of London coming to visit. Now, initially that was fine but one of the players realised that surely something like that would go through the Edinburgh office. Why would that bypass them since there's apparently this rule about presenting yourself before the local lord or something. The Cam in Edinburgh/London more or less leave the kindred in Dundee to their own devices; so long as they keep the wolves out and watch out for the Sabbat coming in from the North Sea then no one really cares about what they do. The Envoy will be arriving in 4 and a half hours time.
Something important to note about Dundee is that it's where the vast majority of Europe's oil rigs get sent to be decommissioned. There's actually 4 rigs on dockside right now being stripped and pulled apart. The Envoy was coming up to have a look at the industrial sites and didn't give any more information than that. This wrankled the players a bit and they wanted to head down there, check it out, and discovered that a new oil rig from an American petro-chemical/pharmo giant called Pentex was being brought into town for decom. They asked around, with the Brujah using their dockside contacts and domain, and found out from the local union rep that Pentex had their own specialists come into town who weren't union guys. Union guy figured that the players looked like a pretty mean bunch and told 'em where the Pentex guys were staying. 5 engineers and 1 Manager, staying in the local fancy hotel.
Players head around, find the rooms while the engineers are out for dinner, break in and botch something. They get a laptop full of emails and a work order, but a hotel employee walks in on them. The Gangrel does what Gangrel do and just fuckin' attacks the guy, stabbing him to death. The rest of the players are like 'what the fuck did you do that for?!'
It's at this point that I explain the concept of Humanity to the players and go 'so, you've just lost a point of humanity for that.'
He gets the body, carts it over to the bathtub and dumps it there. They make a hasty exit. They head down to the dockyard and the Toreador manages to board with a stolen ID and the laptop as proof of identification. The rest of the guys got held up at the hotel. Jetlagged, that kind of stuff. I'm just here to lay groundwork and do a bit of an inspection. While this is happening, the Brujah and the Gangrel board by climbing up the four huge concrete stacks that support the rig. They discover that one of the stacks is hollow which seems weird! Most of them have gravel and a concrete interior, after all. The Gangrel begins to dig with his claws but I'm like 'that will take longer than an hour to get through,' so he and the Brujah team up. He works on busting up the top of the stack while she climbs up the side, gets a length of towing chain (from the tugboats that pulled the rig into port), and John McClain's off the side with the chain around her waist and then wraps it around the leg. She boards the tugboat, slams the engine on and it begins to pull. It's not quite enough though (not enough successes) so she just straight up fuckin' Wonder Woman's the chain in both hands and rolls 9 successes on her strength check and rips the concrete stack out of place.
Alarm bells go off, the rig is evacuated and the Gangrel, who's still at the top of the stack that just tipped over thirty five degrees, climbs on into the hole. I may have oversold how much protection Fortitude would give him in the lead in to this, but also I didn't want to work out how much lethal damage having an oil rig collapse on you would cause. Gangrel sticks his head in, looks down and goes 'oh hey, a casket, that's weird.'
The Toreador, as their parting gift before they go off and pick up the Envoy, convinces everyone to head home while they call the emergency services. He heads off to pick up the Envoy.
The Gangrel climbs out of the stack, the Envoy gets picked up from the airport. The two phys-focused characters crack open the crate and inside is an middle-eastern man, with a shard of wood in his chest. His eyes are held open by two wire rims, and he has a strange symbol burnt into the back of his right hand. They both fail their Lore roles and are unable to work out that this is an assamite. The Brujah pulls the stake and the Assamite starts back up and just leaps forwards, grabs her and begins to drink. The Gangrel and Brujah freak out, and the Gangrel gets a good look at the Assamite who's now looking more blooded-up but also looking like someone's boiling them from the inside out. There's been a fierce miscommunication; escaping 25 years+ of torpor and eating the first thing you can see ended with the Assamite taking alotta damage, the Brujah reaching 3 blood and the Gangrel looking on angrily.
The Envoy is told that their tour will have to wait as there's been an incident at the docks. The Envoy, a ventrue because of course, is none to happy about this. She demands to go to the docks as soon as possible, any pretense of her not knowing about the casket dropped.
With the Brujah dropped to three blood and the Gangrel already running low from the nights exertions, the Assamite uses Quietus 1 to silence the area and they enter a stand off just as 11 PM hit in reality and we had to stop.
I haven't played Vampire since the 90's. Your game sounds awesome.
As to point 1, yes the last week or two has been heavy going.
I’ve never actually played a TTRPG (though the idea, and a few of them in particular, most notably Call of Cthulhu and Blades in the Dark, do appeal), but I am now curious as to what the hell happened in the last couple of weeks.
V20 is probably the best version of Vampire out there. One book is all you need for the whole shebang, it's got all the clans and bloodlines in it, a really good run down of the metaplot that you can ignore at your leisure and, other than Swedracula being a massive edgelord and demanding his larp character become a canon character, it's pretty good all round. Even fixes Celerity being broken as hell.
Blades in the Dark is real good and I'd like to play more of it. It's sort of Dishonored only with less whales and more existential dread.
The last two weeks have basically… TTRPG's are having a really violent #MeToo thing mixed with a 'how the fuck is there always more and how the fuck is it always worse' Missing Stair sequence at the same time. It's all playing out incredibly publically and it's playing out in a way that's incredibly ugly.
Powered by the Apocalypse games are weird.
Can you be more specific? I've only played one (Monster of the Week) and I love it. Though I've only seen it from the Keeper's side.
I've been investigating them recently. Dungeon World, World of Dungeons Uncharted Worlds, Monster of the Week, Monsterhearts. The systems are a level of abstraction more than I'm used to. I'm out and about just now so the simplest thing to do is link you to the conversation I've been having over on G+:
So the jist of it is that the moves in Dungeon World are constructed not to represent a avatars in a fictional world, but to represent the experience of playing D&D.
If you aren't Aniki you might not know what a Move is. The rules in these games are presented in little parcels which cover each situation which might come up in a session. One for hitting things, one for avoiding getting hurt, one for convincing someone to do something. Each move looks something like this:
Hack and Slash
When you attack an enemy in melee, roll+Str.
✴On a 10+, you deal your damage to the enemy and avoid their attack. At your option, you may choose to do +1d6 damage but expose yourself to the enemy’s attack.
✴On a 7–9, you deal your damage to the enemy and the enemy makes an attack against you.
Where it says "roll" it means 2d6, and if you don't even get a 7 you done fucked up and the GM gets to do something cool. Each of these games recreates their chosen genre and play styles through their unique moves.
So anyway, there's a move in Dungeon World called Discern Realities which you roll on when you are investigating or trying to figure something out. It lets you ask questions which the GM has to answer about the thing or situation. In D&D you would roleplay the investigation, describing how you search the room for traps or what vulnerabilities you are looking for in the enemy fortification or whatever. The GM tells you what you find, maybe asks for a roll to see if your character's expertise helps you out, maybe you do some more investigating and after a while you decide you've got enough information and draw some conclusions. The Discern Realities move though lets you ask the GM "What should I be on the lookout for?" or "Who’s really in control here?" which is a hell of a shortcut.
Another move is Take Watch which abstracts a whole night's guarding down to one roll of 2d6. There's a Make Camp move. Supply covers shopping trips. Undertake a Perilous Journey could get you all the way from The Shire to Rivendell with another 2d6 roll. The game has basically looked at all of the things that happen in a game of D&D and turned each on into a move.
Sometimes this makes sense. Taking watch and going shopping are things that always happen in D&D and often it's not very interesting, why not just roll 2d6 and pretend you did it? But the ones like Perilous Journey and Discern Realities seem to be abstracting away a lot of the fun of the game.
And that's the thought process that too me to what I write in that thread: D&D is an abstraction of fantasy adventurers, Dungeon World is an abstraction of playing D&D.
Which is fine if you enjoy it, and clearly a lot of people do, but I don't quite get it yet.
Regarding Moves – much like in D&D, where the DM is the one who calls for a skill check, the DM in an PbtA game should the one who decides when a move's prerequisites have been met ("a move happens when it happens" is the catchphrase). You as a player shouldn't be saying, "I Discern Realities" – you should be describing how and where you search, and then the DM says "roll to Discern Realities" when they're satisfied that the roll is appropriate.
My experience is mostly with Monster of the Week, so I'm going to stick to that, but it has two similar moves for "figure shit out" – Investigate a Mystery and Read a Bad Situation – but I only ever made the call about which one a player would roll after they described what they were doing, and often why they were doing it (and if the information would be easily determined, often I'd just give it to them without a roll at all). Similarly, Kick Some Ass and Act Under Pressure could be interchangable in a combat situation depending on whether the Hunter's intent was to cause damage or something else.
I can't speak to Dungeon World because I've not played or run it, but the impression that I get from most PbtA games is that they're more interested in the story and characters than the nitty-gritty mechanics of how you take each step.
Edit: I've skimmed the Dungeon World pdf again, and while I agree that things like Supply and Undertake a Perilous Journey are a level of abstraction further than what something like D&D does, they also remove a lot of the tedious bullshit around negotiating with merchants or repeatedly rolling Survival checks so I'm not sure that the additional abstraction is a bad thing.
Another move is Take Watch which abstracts a whole night's guarding down to one roll of 2d6.
This isn't really true – Take Watch, rules-as-written, just describes how well the person on watch at the time of an approaching attack manages to alert the rest of the camp. It's functionally the same as a Perception roll to avoid a surprise round from that pack of wolves.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't run a Dungeon World game either, but more because it's too complicated.
Monster of the Week works so well, for me, because its limited number of relatively broad Moves give players a lot of options to work with (especially when combined with Hunter playbook Moves) based on their characters and the situations they find themselves in.
Dungeon World looks like a whole lot of extra paperwork for very little benefit, and its larger list of more specific Moves actually feels, to me, like it'd actually be more restrictive.
"A move happens when it happens" and "You have to do it to do it" Were my first stumbling block with PbtA games. They make perfect sense when you understand them, and are absolutely useless before that. Also "Brexit means Brexit" has killed them dead in my mind.
If Take Watch is just a perception check, doesn't that make overnight scenes very similar? I've played through all the camping and overnight scenes in my campaign and while not much happened in most of them, the decisions about rest and healing were important and the couple times that they did get attacked by something nasty were excellent sessions and they made the quiet nights tense too.
The big difference about Discern Realities is the questions, which give the players absolute facts. In D&D you ask loads of questions, pick up lots of details and it's up to you to prioritise and decide what to do. In Dungeon World questions like "Who’s really in control here?" or "What here is not what it appears to be?" skip right past that.
If Take Watch is just a perception check, doesn't that make overnight scenes very similar?
Depends how the GM runs it. Maybe the rest of the party are sitting round a campfire having a roleplay scene while the character Taking Watch is in some assumed vantage point when the GM decides there's an attack and the watcher has to react. Maybe the night passes uneventfully and there's no call for Take Watch at all.
The roll is only called for when the story demands it; if there's no attack on the camp, nobody has to make the roll.
The big difference about Discern Realities is the questions, which give the players absolute facts.
Not quite - any of the DM's answers to those questions have to be supported by the fiction, so if there's no evidence of the mastermind in this location, then the answer to "who's really in control here" might genuinely be "there's no way for you to know".
Back to MotW, when one of Hunters was trying to Investigate a Mystery, they would have to justify each question they asked with specific(ish) descriptions of what they were looking at (usually informed by the initial description of a location) or how they asked a witness/suspect.
You don't – or at least shouldn't, if the DM is doing it right – get answers to questions for which you have no relevant information.
Well that sounds more like what I am used to. It seems that for a lot of people though if the players ask a question the GM will ensure they find whatever they need to learn the answer.
So the jist of it is that the moves in Dungeon World are constructed not to represent a avatars in a fictional world, but to represent the experience of playing D&D.
spends one forward to buy the GM a pizza
spends one forward to buy the GM a pizza
Controversial perhaps, but pizza for the GM isn't actually D&D RAW.