Dungeon World - Any opinions?

[Username17]

i doubt you will accept that, but maybe some others guilty of the same behaviour might.

Stop being a too-clever concern troll.

Look, you genuinely don't know what you're talking about. So don't give me shit about what is and is not "true." You don't fucking know what's true! So when you stake out ground about how other people are saying things that aren't true and making some larger point about accuracy and hyperbole, it's very likely that you're going to be the jackass in this conversation because you don't fucking know what you are talking about.

Stop doubling down on your ignorance. Just stop it. Argue about shit that you have the slightest clue about.

-Username17

[shlominus]

The player gets total success on an action, and the MC responds by telling the player that enemy has gained infinity hit points and the mission as previously described is an automatic loss.

you must have missed a few bits in your quote. infinite hitpoints? automatic loss? is there more to the quote? nothing about that is mentioned in the example. if you have more to support your claim please provide it, as it stands you are simply making things up, as far as i can tell.

a "read a sitch"-success provides answers to 3 out of 6 possible questions. in this case these are "biggest threat", "escape route" and "enemies true position". the output simply has nothing to do with your claim of autolosing the mission (whatever that may have been). even if the cultists are of the quantum-variety this would be irrelevant. unless you can provide more than that quote everything you claim about a mission-autoloss in this example is bullshit.

please provide other examples that actually support your claim of autoloss on a success and explain where those infinite hitpoints come from.

[Omegonthesane]

shlominus if you had read Anus World or even a femto-basis-point of the thread you were so kindly linked you would know that enemies do not have stats or mechanical existence in Anus World. They are just another "get this many hits" challenge to be overcome.

[shlominus]

that may be the case, but it is not relevant to the example we are talking about or frank's claims.

i am only interested in "autoloss on a successfull check" in the example provided.

frank is definitely wrong about maps never being used and mobs always being quantum-mobs in *-world games and so far i've see nothing to support his interpretation of the supposed autoloss-example. if he provides more i will be happy to reconsider. maybe i'll get to reading the whole thread tomorrow.

[Omegonthesane]

The mission was not "get out of here alive as part of a hostage exchange", the mission was "kill Tum Tum dead permanently". The moment that you are even thinking of taking Tum Tum as a hostage your mission to murder him has failed.

[Username17]

Fuck you Shlominus. Just, fuck you.

For you to even make that claim means that you have no idea what *World is or how it works. Confrontations do not work the way you think they work. NPCs do not work the way you think they work. Actions and plotting does not work the way you think it works.

I think that your fundamental problem is that your mind is just refusing to accept how fucking dumb the narrative flow in *World actually is. Those bodyguards outside weren't "already there" until the declaration. They became "already there" when the declaration occurs. Because such things are declared retroactively when elements are introduced and elements are specifically forbidden from being planned before their introduction. The dice are rolled and the MC makes up the bodyguards on the spot, and their previous existence is retroactively written into continuity. Yeah, a lot of people who claim that they "like" or even "play" *World don't do that, because it's obviously insane, but that really is what the book says and the book explicitly and repeatedly says that if you aren't doing this you are playing the game wrong.

The second thing you are refusing to understand is how conflict is resolved. *World does not have a difficulty slider. Full stop. Combat is resolved by you making the exact same roll whether you are stomping on an uppity child or facing down a squad of hunter killer droids. Different situations don't have different roll modifiers, the MC simply declares different results for the three levels of failure. Against easy opposition a "success" means that you get to win, while against overwhelming opposition the same "success" means that you perform a fighting retreat with less losses than you otherwise might have gotten. Really. That's really how it works.

So within that context, when the player gets an unmitigated success on a perception test and they are told that the opposition they were previously concerned about doesn't count because there is now an arbitrarily bigger threat and their best bet is to try to get into a hostage situation and bargain their way out of the building - that means that:

• The MC made up new opponents at that moment.
• The stakes of the conflict were changed such that simple victory was no longer possible on subsequent Act Under Fire tests.
• This was all in response to player succeeding at a roll.[b/]

Really. That's really how it works. It really is that fucking bad. A successful perception test made the party fail the mission. For reals. This is the last fucking time I'm walking your ass through this shit. If you continue to refuse to understand this shit, I'm putting your ass on ignore.

-Username17

[shlominus]

i understand perfectly well. i simply disagree with your interpretation of a text.

i'm sure there's much to critique about the *world games. i'm not very excited by much of what i've skimmed today. i doubt i'd like them very much. i have no idea why anyone would feel the need to make stuff up to make the game look worse.

[Username17]

OK, I'm gonna put your passive aggressive ass on ignore. Fuck off.

-Username17

[Leress]

i understand perfectly well. i simply disagree with your interpretation of a text.

i'm sure there's much to critique about the *world games. i'm not very excited by much of what i've skimmed today. i doubt i'd like them very much. i have no idea why anyone would feel the need to make stuff up to make the game look worse.

What part was made up?

[shlominus]

lets not start again.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Stop feeding the troll.

[Occluded Sun]

The moment that you are even thinking of taking Tum Tum as a hostage your mission to murder him has failed.

Well, that's just a ridiculous claim. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the players briefly ponder whether to abandon the mission, then decide to complete it - and do so.

[Ice9]

The way the example is described, the enemies were not specifically determined before the roll happened. But that's not the same as coming completely out of nowhere and changing the situation for the worse.

Where that's the case depends on what the GM was thinking, which we can't really know (and it might just be a hypothetical example anyway). If this is the first time the GM considered there being an army of cultists, then yeah, the roll changed things for the worse. But if the army of cultists was always in the GM's mind, and would have shown up another way later (like "act under fire as a shitload of surprise cultists burst through the doors"), then the roll didn't create the situation, it just revealed and detailed it.

AW-series games, all of them I think, have a liquid MTP center, where the GM is supposed to make things coherent based on their own logic. Not at all consistent, but it can work with the right GM.

There was also the "skill check solves problem that didn't exist before it" thing going on, but since that happens in lots of systems (D&D included), it's not a point for or against DW.

[Username17]

The moment that you are even thinking of taking Tum Tum as a hostage your mission to murder him has failed.

Well, that's just a ridiculous claim. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the players briefly ponder whether to abandon the mission, then decide to complete it - and do so.

In a "normal" RPG that would be true. However in *World, Tum Tum are not independent objects. They don't have armor classes or hit points. You don't have the option of declaring attacks on them separately from the rest of the opposition. You just have the Act Under Fire action. Once "success" has been defined down to "you escape," there is nothing you can roll that involves succeeding at the original mission.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

I was just going to jump in and mention that despite all our informative threads on Bear World I was recently considering trying a Dungeon World game. After reading the book and skimming some threads on Reddit I am reconsidering.

As far as I can tell, the Bear World games are like weaponized Decemberists songs: twee, cloying, pretentiously "clever", unnecessarily capitalized, and inimical to life and fun.

I mean, we bag on the Gygax mindset of hating players, but as far as I can tell Bear World not only hates the player, but also the hates the game (master). Stripped of some of its weird conventions, I think PBTA might make a decent rules-lite. But damn, what a slog.

[Prak]

...I like the Decemberists...

[GâtFromKI]

And before you ask, no, this is not just revealing an enemy that was there anyway. Turns out, that's not even a thing in this game.

I am the only one to have a problem with the question "where's my best escape route/way in/way past" ?

As I understand the rules, at the moment the MC gives an answer, it becomes the truth. At the moment the MC answers "the best way of escaping is taking an hostage", it becomes the best way of escaping. Any idea the PCs may have is automatically worse, because the rules say so.

At that point, what is the point of playing ? The only input from the players is asking what they should do, and doing what the MC suggest.

[Leress]

.

At that point, what is the point of playing ? The only input from the players is asking what they should do, and doing what the MC suggest.

[Mask_De_H]

AW-series games, all of them I think, have a liquid MTP center, where the GM is supposed to make things coherent based on their own logic. Not at all consistent, but it can work with the right GM.

The problem with that is twofold: one, the right GM can make any game work; so instead of measuring the game off of the Right GM, the game needs to be measured off of the Right Now GM. Two, the PbtA games have the rules for GMing baked into the Moves; the explanations/examples of which are either GM unhelpful, generally insane, or player disempowering.

The thing about PbtA games is: the main way of playing/consuming them (Playbooks) is easily digestible and the engine is prompted MTP, so everyone ends up winging it and playing their own version of the game. That schema of the game in their head is vastly different than the game VB/Sage/Adam wants people to play in the AW/DW rulebook, so when it's fuck or walk the PbtA player tells the designers to walk. When we talk about the game, we're using the actual rulebook(s) in which their insanity is not only GM advice, it is the entire foundation on which the game's mechanics are built.

[nockermensch]

The moment that you are even thinking of taking Tum Tum as a hostage your mission to murder him has failed.

Well, that's just a ridiculous claim. It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which the players briefly ponder whether to abandon the mission, then decide to complete it - and do so.

In a "normal" RPG that would be true. However in *World, Tum Tum are not independent objects. They don't have armor classes or hit points. You don't have the option of declaring attacks on them separately from the rest of the opposition. You just have the Act Under Fire action. Once "success" has been defined down to "you escape," there is nothing you can roll that involves succeeding at the original mission.

-Username17

WAIT

If this is true, how can the players get worried by the appearance of super-powered psychic bodyguards? If the opposition is just an amorphous jelly with a paper thin-skin under the DM's whims, then it doesn't matter if you're going against a host of psychic bodyguards or "just Tum Tum".

The game is still stupid and pointless, but not for the reasons you're claiming.

[spongeknight]

If this is true, how can the players get worried by the appearance of super-powered psychic bodyguards? If the opposition is just an amorphous jelly with a paper thin-skin under the DM's whims, then it doesn't matter if you're going against a host of psychic bodyguards or "just Tum Tum".

The game is still stupid and pointless, but not for the reasons you're claiming.

You seem to be missing the point- after the GM declared the appearance of the bodyguards, Tum Tum was implicitly unbeatable by GM fiat. That is the reason they were put there. Any attempt by the player to kill Tum Tum after the introduction of the bodyguards, even when rolling a success, is fucking defined by the GM after the roll and will not result in killing Tum Tum. The GM is literally declaring the opposition arbitrarily too powerful for the PC and declaring running away is the best result.

[nockermensch]

If this is true, how can the players get worried by the appearance of super-powered psychic bodyguards? If the opposition is just an amorphous jelly with a paper thin-skin under the DM's whims, then it doesn't matter if you're going against a host of psychic bodyguards or "just Tum Tum".

The game is still stupid and pointless, but not for the reasons you're claiming.

You seem to be missing the point- after the GM declared the appearance of the bodyguards, Tum Tum was implicitly unbeatable by GM fiat. That is the reason they were put there. Any attempt by the player to kill Tum Tum after the introduction of the bodyguards, even when rolling a success, is fucking defined by the GM after the roll and will not result in killing Tum Tum. The GM is literally declaring the opposition arbitrarily too powerful for the PC and declaring running away is the best result.

I was talking about this:

They don't have armor classes or hit points. You don't have the option of declaring attacks on them separately from the rest of the opposition. You just have the Act Under Fire action.

I don't know if this is just Frank being hyperbolic, as he is wont to be, but if that quote is for reals then it doesn't matter if the DM skins "the opposition" as a fluffy bunny or a Star Destroyer. The PCs' chances are just the same (that's it, very bad, because anus-world).

[Pixels]

As I understand it, the difference between fighting a fluffy bunny and a legion of psychic superwarriors is that MC is supposed to alter how much a result level gets you. So against the bunny a success might mean that you handily kill it and skin it ready for dinner, but against the legion you barely manage to escape as they give you a mind wedgie.

Of course, that's also terrible. As a player you have no idea what a particular result level will actually get you. It's a thin veener over "Mother May I?" If MC is competent, creative, and fair it works out, but it's all too easy to make the game terrible and unfun for somebody - and sometimes for everybody. In the worst case, MC will twist whatever result you get into their own narrative flow, destroying player agency and giving you degenerate gameplay like total successes causing you to fail your objective.

[Omegonthesane]

So against the bunny a success might mean that you handily kill it and skin it ready for dinner

Nah, still ends in your minions dying

[spongeknight]

Pixels puts it correctly- enemies have arbitrary power, and what a hit does against an opponent is determined 100% by the GM and not at all by any sane amount of numbers. So if the GM determines that psychic bodyguards are an insurmountable foe, no amount of successful attacks will defeat them. Your "successful attacks" change from defeating your enemy to surviving their attacks against you. That's the complaint of introducing the bodyguards on the successful roll.