(whatever)-World: Finally read it, here's my veredict

[silva]

One observation: the "Success at a Cost" is just a possibility if the player dont succeed at the test. The GM can also choose a hard bargain, ugly choice or worse outcome if he thinks its fitting to the situation. Here is the move description from the book:

When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire, roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7–9, you flinch, hesitate, or stall: the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or
an ugly choice.

I would remove this one from your list

Thats why the smile after it.

[momothefiddler]

Well given how stealth checks work, it's kind of hard to come up with many good complications for a partial success. I figure the "you're spotted but you get a chance to silence the spotter before he sounds an alarm" or "guard thinks he sees something but isn't quite sure" is about the best you can do there for a success with a complication.

I think it's fairly reasonable, all things considered. What else would you suggest for a partial success on a stealth check?

• You ripped up your armor/clothing/flesh getting over the razor wire
• You had to duck into an outhouse for forty-five minutes while some guards had an interminable chat outside, allowing you to succeed at this check but gaining a minor smell-based penalty to any subsequent stealth checks until you wash
• When you vaulted the wall you landed in a flowerbed, so while you'll probably get in and out fine, anyone with sufficient motivation will have more clues to use to track you down later
• Fuck, as simple as: When you vaulted the wall, you sprained your ankle

EDIT: and what others have posted that I missed. If your system is such that "yes, but" = "no", it's a bad system. If your system is such that "yes, but" =/= "no", but your given example is "yes, but" = "no", you're a bad writer.

[silva]

I like your outcomes better, Momo. I agree the author may have been unfortunate with that example.

In fact, there is the playbook The Turncoat (a kind of spy/double agent) which have a specific move for stealth calling "break and enter":

Youre talented gaining access to places you have no business being (eg. the hardholder's quarters, the armoury's grenade cache, etc). When you attempt to enter such a place, roll+cool. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2:

• you get where you wanted to be.
• you remain undetected while getting there.
• you leave no trace of ever having been there.
• you stumble across something useful or interesting along the way.

This is a much more structured set than the default "Act under Fire", that would yield more coherent results, like the ones you gave.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Vincent didn't write that playbook or that move. Smells like Oberoni to me.

[silva]

He didnt, the Turncoat is a custom playbook. You can find them all here.

I specially like The Kid. (check his sex move )

[schpeelah]

I would just like to point out that Chamomile is own-goaling himself also on the specific issue he was talking about linking that post, aside from what Frank mentioned.

But hey, you want a quote that explicitly tells you to keep track of what NPCs are doing when they're not on-screen? A quote that explicitly allows and encourages you to do shit like set up ambushes in advance? It turns out we have one of those too:

Think offscreen too. When it’s time for you to make a move,
imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing
meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that
now becomes evident? Are any of them doing things offscreen
that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your
quiet notice? This is part of making Apocalypse World seem real
— and if you pay attention to your fronts, it’s part of making the
characters’ lives not boring too.

Chamomile announces he can back up his claims that the DM did not think up the psychic Water Temple Guards about to attack the players on the spot, and produces a quote telling DM that the time to think of what the NPCs have been doing is when he tells the players what the NPCs have been doing. The directness of how his evidence contradicts him is the stuff of satire.

[Chamomile]

you literally quoted a part of the text where it said that the "cost" of "succeeding at a cost" at the action "try not to get seen" was "getting seen."

I am genuinely uncertain as to whether or not you read the right post, because the only quoted text that is even slightly relevant is when someone succeeded at not getting seen, and the MC said he got spotted, and then backtracked because that is not a valid result for a success. The actual result of the example is that he's hidden for now, but they'll find him before long, giving him a narrow window of opportunity to respond. So he got a partial success and was partially successful at hiding.

You can keep doing this bullshit where you claim the reason you didn't respond to that at the time is because you (and, apparently, everyone else, something which you confirmed through some kind of secret poll?) couldn't be bothered, but since you went on responding to silva that is obviously not the case.

It's not a gish-gallop when there actually is a mountain of evidence refuting your claim. It's just you having made a really stupid claim.

EDIT: @Schpeelah: Have you considered reading the entire quote you're critiquing? Specifically this line?

Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quiet notice?

This includes stuff like "setting up an ambush."

[Username17]

You can keep doing this bullshit where you claim the reason you didn't respond to that at the time is because you (and, apparently, everyone else, something which you confirmed through some kind of secret poll?) couldn't be bothered, but since you went on responding to silva that is obviously not the case.

Do you live in Bizarro land? Kaelik responds to you in the thread you linked. He points out that you own goaled yourself and laughs at you for being an idiot. Then you don't respond to his critique. Now you're back here claiming that you won the argument by default because no one responded to you? That's literally the opposite of what happened!

-Username17

[Chamomile]

You can keep doing this bullshit where you claim the reason you didn't respond to that at the time is because you (and, apparently, everyone else, something which you confirmed through some kind of secret poll?) couldn't be bothered, but since you went on responding to silva that is obviously not the case.

Do you live in Bizarro land? Kaelik responds to you in the thread you linked. He points out that you own goaled yourself and laughs at you for being an idiot. Then you don't respond to his critique. Now you're back here claiming that you won the argument by default because no one responded to you? That's literally the opposite of what happened!

-Username17

1) Kaelik is not "everyone," he is one dude who appears to have some kind of personal vendetta with me, seeing as how he has in the past called me out by name on arguments I did not make in a discussion I was barely involved in.

2) Because of this, I have him on ignore.

[ishy]

One observation: the "Success at a Cost" is just a possibility if the player dont succeed at the test. The GM can also choose a hard bargain, ugly choice or worse outcome if he thinks its fitting to the situation. Here is the move description from the book:

When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire, roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7–9, you flinch, hesitate, or stall: the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or
an ugly choice.

The fact that on a roll of 7-9 the GM can choose arbitrarily whether you actually succeed or fail straight up, is weird as fuck.

[schpeelah]

EDIT: @Schpeelah: Have you considered reading the entire quote you're critiquing? Specifically this line?

Are any of them doing things offscreen that, while invisible to the players’ characters, deserve your quiet notice?

This includes stuff like "setting up an ambush."

The fact that you think this any kind of rebuttal suggests a deep misunderstanding of what the issue is. Let me spell it out for you:

imagine what your many various NPCs must have been doing meanwhile. Have any of them done something offscreen that now becomes evident?

English motherfucker, do you speak it? Have been doing meanwhile. Now becomes evident.

You announced you have evidence the DM is supposed to have the goddamn Water Temple Guards in ambush ahead of time, as opposed to deciding there are there when the players roll a successful perception check, and produced a quote telling DMs that when describing the result of a perception check, they might decide it makes sense for the Water Temple Guards to have set up an ambush.

[silva]

The fact that on a roll of 7-9 the GM can choose arbitrarily whether you actually succeed or fail straight up, is weird as fuck.

Ishy, a 7-9 roll means a complication happens. The nature of that complication will depend on the circumstances at hand and on the GM improvising ability and/or prep material.

[ACOS]

"slaughter a child" is not "success at a cost" on a "not be seen" check - and the fact that someone can think like that literally makes me nauseous. Seriously - infanticide as a "complication"? WTF is that even about? That's not even "hard bargain". At best, that would be all the way to "ugly choice".
If you're going to intentionally not understand the game, you don't have any business talking about it until you correct that problem.

And yes, silva has now gone full Oberoni.
Also, he apparently enjoys the idea of playing PedoWorld. Seriously - WTF?! I mean, I think I see what they were going for with that playbook; but it's so wrong and deeply disturbing, I don't even know how to begin.

@Chamomile:
Even under "your quiet notice", you don't invent that material until after the players trigger it. That's how the game is supposed to work. It's part of the core design philosophy.

[Cyberzombie]

The fact that on a roll of 7-9 the GM can choose arbitrarily whether you actually succeed or fail straight up, is weird as fuck.

I don't think that's the intent at all. I mean, granted in the stealth example they gave (which is among the worst), the partial success results in you being discovered (sort of).

Though even then, that's not all that bad because the net end effect if you take the hard choice of killing the kid is that you do in fact still remain undetected (at least by anyone still alive). So I'd still call that a success.

Granted, many people on this thread have thought up far better complications that could occur, but it's not as though the example as written resulted in a true stealth failure. The end result is that the base isn't on high alert and the enemy still doesn't know you're there. As far as stealth checks go, that's a pretty solid end result. It's hardly the "DM declares you fail!" hyperbole that some people claim it is.

[ishy]

The fact that on a roll of 7-9 the GM can choose arbitrarily whether you actually succeed or fail straight up, is weird as fuck.

I don't think that's the intent at all.

It really is. To quote the author:

he still hits it with a 7. A 7-9 on going aggro isn't the decisive win that AT was hoping for, but it's still a win. I have to choose from the list and I choose to have the guy get the hell out of AT's way. "When you open fire, he drops his gun and runs."

He rolls+cool and gets an 8. He flinches, hesitates, or stalls - and who can blame him! - and I get to give him a worse outcome or a tough choice. I go with the worse outcome, straight up

There's nothing in the rules stopping me from giving Berg a +1 for Clarion's help, and often in play I do, but the player can't look at the rules and expect one, if you see what I mean. It's up to me, case by case. I can include an example in round 3.

[deaddmwalking]

Granted, many people on this thread have thought up far better complications that could occur, but it's not as though the example as written resulted in a true stealth failure. The end result is that the base isn't on high alert and the enemy still doesn't know you're there. As far as stealth checks go, that's a pretty solid end result. It's hardly the "DM declares you fail!" hyperbole that some people claim it is.

If you had to kill everyone that noticed you, you didn't succeed at avoiding notice.

Extra Period.

[ACOS]

The fact that on a roll of 7-9 the GM can choose arbitrarily whether you actually succeed or fail straight up, is weird as fuck.

I don't think that's the intent at all. I mean, granted in the stealth example they gave (which is among the worst), the partial success results in you being discovered (sort of).

Though even then, that's not all that bad because the net end effect if you take the hard choice of killing the kid is that you do in fact still remain undetected (at least by anyone still alive). So I'd still call that a success.

The word "success" has a definition; and in no part of that definition is "failure" anywhere to be seen. On what planet does "fail at goal, but murder a child" equate to any iteration of "success"? This isn't an issue of "bad example"; this is the author himself having zero clue what he's writing - it's vomit on a page.
When the child sees you, that's straight up failure at "not being seen". Murdering the child is overcoming the consequences of failure; at which point, you have to start all over with trying to "not be seen".

There is literally zero point to having degrees of success if your game can't even handle success states.

[schpeelah]

Granted, many people on this thread have thought up far better complications that could occur

The fact that the authors couldn't think of those better examples, given that they were writing a book and presumably had relatively a lot of time to think of them is great incompetence, but also accidental truth in advertising. Because they are asking DMs to come up with something on the spot every time anything happens, and since the DMs are not writing books and do not have time to brainstorm, so the results will be stupid bullshit on a regular basis.

but it's not as though the example as written resulted in a true stealth failure. The end result is that the base isn't on high alert and the enemy still doesn't know you're there.

Do you know the meaning of words? The goal was not to sneak in without raising an alert, it specified as sneaking in undetected. That word means that the event "being detected" does not occur. If that event occurs, that is a failure.

Not raising an alarm isn't even a superset of being undetected. I could plausibly be the goal of sneaking in somewhere undetected, making the people there believe some other enemy of theirs is or was present.

Being accurate about the exact goals of actions is highly important. Part of the problem with the interrogation example is that the players may fail to extract information or succeed at getting out with their lives, because of redefining goals.

[silva]

Granted, many people on this thread have thought up far better complications that could occur, but it's not as though the example as written resulted in a true stealth failure. The end result is that the base isn't on high alert and the enemy still doesn't know you're there. As far as stealth checks go, that's a pretty solid end result. It's hardly the "DM declares you fail!" hyperbole that some people claim it is.

This.

The fact people managed to give better examples in this thread than the ones in the book proves two things, in my view:

1) People around here actually grokked the concept well and wouldnt have any problem playing the game. (even if some keep insisting the game is "broken" )

1) The author should work harder next time with his examples.

[fbmf]

Vincent didn't write that playbook or that move. Smells like Oberoni to me.

I've shared a hotel room with Oberoni at multiple GenCons. I don't remember him having a particular smell.

Game On,
fbmf

[Cyberzombie]

The word "success" has a definition; and in no part of that definition is "failure" anywhere to be seen. On what planet does "fail at goal, but murder a child" equate to any iteration of "success"? This isn't an issue of "bad example"; this is the author himself having zero clue what he's writing - it's vomit on a page.
When the child sees you, that's straight up failure at "not being seen". Murdering the child is overcoming the consequences of failure; at which point, you have to start all over with trying to "not be seen".

Success can be relative. Yes, by a purely literal standpoint, you've failed at being "not seen", but from a practical point of view, you succeeded in sneaking in. The alarm's haven't been raised, the guards aren't on alert and nobody still living knows you're there. If you were a CIA director who sent in an infiltrator to some place, and your agent told you "I made it inside without any alarms and nobody knows I'm here, but I had to kill a witness on my way in." You'd likely call that a successful infiltration with a cost. It's certainly not a failure.

I don't think that the stealth example is the crazy unreasonable thing people are making it out to be. Yeah, the author could probably have picked a better complication, but even if you run it exactly as written, it certainly doesn't lead to the game being unplayable or anything like that.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Vincent didn't write that playbook or that move. Smells like Oberoni to me.

I've shared a hotel room with Oberoni at multiple GenCons. I don't remember him having a particular smell.

Game On,
fbmf

That was indeed a poor choice of words. Especially since when an RPG player becomes known for their scent, its never a good thing. My apologies to Oberoni.

[momothefiddler]

Also, he apparently enjoys the idea of playing PedoWorld. Seriously - WTF?! I mean, I think I see what they were going for with that playbook; but it's so wrong and deeply disturbing, I don't even know how to begin.

I've spent way too much time now thinking about that and I'm in some combination of pretty sure and want-to-believe that it's "If two characters are having sex, they're obviously both adults" which got further modified to avoid paladin-style "lose all your abilities" while also trying to avoid weird "make a kid and immediately fuck someone for levelup!" incentives.

I'm pretty sure it came out terrible. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be there at all. But I hope that's basically where it came from.

[Kaelik]

1) Kaelik is not "everyone," he is one dude who appears to have some kind of personal vendetta with me, seeing as how he has in the past called me out by name on arguments I did not make in a discussion I was barely involved in.

[Previn]

Granted, many people on this thread have thought up far better complications that could occur, but it's not as though the example as written resulted in a true stealth failure. The end result is that the base isn't on high alert and the enemy still doesn't know you're there. As far as stealth checks go, that's a pretty solid end result. It's hardly the "DM declares you fail!" hyperbole that some people claim it is.

This.

The fact people managed to give better examples in this thread than the ones in the book proves two things, in my view:

1) People around here actually grokked the concept well and wouldnt have any problem playing the game. (even if some keep insisting the game is "broken" )

1) The author should work harder next time with his examples.

We here at the Den are in general no neophytes to GMing, and can pull reasonable responses without much issue. We can also give you specifics of why rules work or don't work when other people are left scratching their heads or trying to articulate why they don't feel good about a rule.

We totally understand what the intent was. We also totally understand why it fails miserably. We are smart enough, and experienced enough to also be able to call bullshit when a success is factual not in any way a success, something a great many GMs and players, you included apparently cannot do.

You are exemplifying exactly why we don't accept what is a terribly realized resolution mechanic. That you can't even figure out what the *world games do makes me believe that you shouldn't even try to champion it, because you actually make it seem even worse than it actually is.