Apocalypse World's problems minus the quantum bears.

[silva]

Apocalypse World has a rather elegant take on PvP persuation/manipulation/mind control. Basically the resisting person is offered a XP pt if he accepts your suggested course of action.

So if members of the party mind control each other and then suggest actions they were going to do anyway you ride the xp train to REAL ULTIMATE POWAH?

Dont forget that any test you fail in AW the GM can have your ass on a plate. There is always a risk in every test you do. So youre free to go ahead and try "manipulate your partner by rewarding XP for actions he wouold do anyway" as many times as you want, just have in mind if you fail, youre screwed.

Sounds "elegant".

See, for a player to try and control another player he has to:

1. Roll a success
2. Suggest a course of action
3. If target accepts, he gets 1 XP
4. If target resists, he gets an ongoing penalty

Compared to the other options we see around (and which issues Lago summed up pretty well), yeah I find it rather elegant, becase its simple, fast, and dont compromise player agency. But if you prefer compromising player agency each time your character is mind controlled or persuaded, well, there are tons of games out there that already do it.

[ishy]

Using XP as a currency is awful.

[silva]

I used to think that too. Not only xp, but any currency used to bother me (bennies, fate points, luck pts, karma/edge, etc). Recent implementations of the concept changed my opinion, though. Im finding Marvel Heroic Plot Points / Doom Pool dynamics pretty neat for example.

[Josh_Kablack]

My answer is extremely stern.

Don't take away their stuff unless you want to.

If you want to, you don't need us to explain why and when.

Why didn't what start the conversation about ____ World with that quote?

It explains that this is a game for passive-aggressive MC's with control issues to counteract their real-life powerlessness by lording it over their players with no rhyme or reason and no grounds for meaningful player input better and more succinctly than I ever could.

[radthemad4]

Quantum bears is the thing where you succeed on a 'see things' check, and the MC decides you see a bear next to you right? What if you replace it with Quantum Gummy Bears, so you find good and/or useful things on a success? I call my *World hack, New Genesis World!

[rampaging-poet]

Among other things, yes. However, *World encourages seeing bears instead of gummy bears because seeing gummy bears would be a good thing while most rolls will either be a failure, where something bad happens, or a "success with a cost" where something bad still happens. The fact that bad things can also be spun as successes ("At least you saw the bear!") doesn't help.

[Mistborn]

most rolls will either be a failure, where something bad happens, or a "success with a cost" where something bad still happens. The fact that bad things can also be spun as successes ("At least you saw the bear!") doesn't help.

Yeah it bears repeating that the RNG throws up negative results shockingly often. An unmodified roll gives you a real success less than 20% of the time and characters only end up succeeding more than half the time at the bonus cap.

[silva]

most rolls will either be a failure, where something bad happens, or a "success with a cost" where something bad still happens. The fact that bad things can also be spun as successes ("At least you saw the bear!") doesn't help.

Yeah it bears repeating that the RNG throws up negative results shockingly often. An unmodified roll gives you a real success less than 20% of the time and characters only end up succeeding more than half the time at the bonus cap.

For some this is a feature not a bug. I rather have a bad roll mean I jump over the wall at the cost of having my backpack damaged and half my ammo lost, than have a bad roll and reach a "you fail, wanna try again ?".

But then Im a bitch for the Failing Forward concept. I think all games (even D&D) would benefit from adopting it.

[Mistborn]

For some this is a feature not a bug. I rather have a bad roll mean I jump over the wall at the cost of having my backpack damaged and half my ammo lost, than have a bad roll and reach a "you fail, wanna try again ?".

But then Im a bitch for the Failing Forward concept. I think all games (even D&D) would benefit from adopting it.

While fail forward is cancer and you should feel bad for liking it that's beside the point, your response is a non sequitur. It has no bearing on what I just said, because the PCs failing all the time is an entirely different can of bears to fail forward being shit. For fuck sake at least put in the bear minimum of effort when you're trolling us.

[Emerald]

most rolls will either be a failure, where something bad happens, or a "success with a cost" where something bad still happens. The fact that bad things can also be spun as successes ("At least you saw the bear!") doesn't help.

Yeah it bears repeating that the RNG throws up negative results shockingly often. An unmodified roll gives you a real success less than 20% of the time and characters only end up succeeding more than half the time at the bonus cap.

For some this is a feature not a bug. I rather have a bad roll mean I jump over the wall at the cost of having my backpack damaged and half my ammo lost, than have a bad roll and reach a "you fail, wanna try again ?".

But then Im a bitch for the Failing Forward concept. I think all games (even D&D) would benefit from adopting it.

Case A:

Player: I want to jump over the wall.
GM: Roll for it.
Player: Damn, a 2!
GM: Okay, well, you can still get over the wall, but your backpack hits the wall on the way over and you lose half your shotgun ammo.

Case B:

Player: I want to jump over the wall.
GM: Roll for it.
Player: Damn, a 2!
GM: Your knees smack into the wall and ruin your jump.
Player: Ouch! Well, I still want to get over, so I back up and try again. Got a 15.
GM: You make it over the wall.

In what way is case A better than case B? The character ends up worse off, any time saved in not rolling multiple times is lost in the GM's need to come up with a fail-forward scenario (or the player's need to choose which intermediate options they want, in the case of a predefined *World move), and any drama added later by the character being short on ammo is undercut by the quite un-dramatic way in which that ammo was lost.

If you want to try to inject tension into the scene (when there doesn't need to be any tension in it at all), then instead of adding fake tension to a bland "trying to get over a wall" scene, why not add actual tension in the form of guards, pursuing enemies, environmental hazards, or anything else that would justify spending mental effort on the scene instead of taking 10 (D&D) or buying hits (Shadowrun) or whatever else to get past it and keep going?

[Sakuya Izayoi]

There's not really a Move for "jump over a wall while there's no stakes." If someone was chasing you, you could define that as Do Something Under Fire. If the MC tells you to roll vs the wall when nothing's happening, that means you should probably go find some C4 and use it on the wall, which also has no move unless you're under pressure.

[silva]

@Sakuya: youre correct. No point in rolling to go over a wall if there are no stakes involved. It was just to illustrate my point.

@Emerald: you got a valid point. But, even if the time spent on both are identical, I still prefer coming up with interesting complications than re-rolling the same stat again over again. Apples and oranges, I think.

[Mask_De_H]

You still want clearly delineated success and failure points silva, something which failing forward doesn't really do. A fail forward is still a failure and it takes an ad-hoc ruling to determine what the complication is. It's tenuous at best in FATE Core where you could just give someone a negative Aspect or Boost and it's completely up to MC fiat in A-World.

[silva]

@Mask,

I agree clearly delineated results is a good thing, but in the end its just another factor in the equation, which, as any other factor, will be more valued or not depending on the demographics. And the 10.000 plus Fate backers and dozens AWorld hacks are there to prove there is this bunch of people who dont care that much for delineated results as you think.

So in the end its not a matter of whats wrong with AWorld or Fate or any other Fail Forward game, its a matter of what I want out of my roleplaying.

[TiaC]

Deflection/"Just your opinion". Appeal to popularity.

Attempt to walk away without admitting anything.

Come back when you are ready to act like a grown-up.

[silva]

Its not deflection or appeal to popularity, its simply acknowledging that people have different tastes than you, and these are equally valid.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I hestitate to call Fail Forward a genre, but there's a number of ways you can handle it.

Doom Patrol has a very specific mechanic for introducing previously unrevealed problems to a scene.

GUMSHOE gives you a number of charges in special skills that auto-succeed and then go on cooldown, ensuring you can roleplay Inspector Clouseau and still win.

FATE, as you mentioned, does its thing.

AW's version of fail forward is specifically criticized because of how it turns mitigated success into abject failures that taint your character. Sneaking in undetected? Whoops, looks like a 7-9, you weren't actually undetected, and are now a child killer.

Saying "different tastes" can well be deflection, as it could be seen as using a strawman to say people hate rules-light systems, or story focused systems, or beer & pretzels games, when all of those have their fans here.

[Leress]

Its not deflection or appeal to popularity, its simply acknowledging that people have different tastes than you, and these are equally valid.

Which doesn't make them immune to criticism.

[silva]

...except there are no fans of AW here. There are AW fans in RPGnet, Therpgsite, Story-games, even in ENWorld, but not here.

And there is nothing wrong with this really. The problem is in thinking the game is objectively bad just because it doesnt catter to your tastes.

[Leress]

The problem is in thinking the game is objectively bad just because it doesnt catter to your tastes.

This is not why people here a saying it's bad, they are saying that it's bad because the mechanics are not good. It's bad because the goals that it sets seem like they were implemented poorly. Even when you said about Failing Forward, which I don't think it does, it does that poorly. That's why some people here are not fans of the game.

Now the part where people are uneasy about the Sex Moves, okay that is matter of taste, but even those are done poorly.

[radthemad4]

...except there are no fans of AW here. There are AW fans in RPGnet, Therpgsite, Story-games, even in ENWorld, but not here.

I actually like Apocalypse World.

I'm one of the Apocalypse World supporters

[Ice9]

Whether 7-9 is a "real" success depends on the move though. For Act Under Fire - no, it isn't, it's just not as bad as a complete failure. For some moves though - Read a Situation, frex - it's a full success, just with smaller benefits than a 10+.

Actually, almost nothing is as harsh as Act Under Fire is with regards to 7-9. I think this is because of AUF's dual status as "you're probably fucked, but here, have a saving throw" and "you're doing something that might be difficult" - two things that are not the same, but the move seems to be designed for the former. Like, when the situation is "the whole house is rigged with explosives, and they just got set off", then I'd be happy for a result like "you survived, but your leg is broken now" and consider that much better than a failure. When it's applied to something like "climb over a wall" though, then "you did it, but your leg is broken" is probably worse than just failing.

TL;DR - AUF should only be used when the failure state would be "you are dead / totally fucked", or at least close to that. There should probably be another move for "doing something potentially dangerous but not all that bad". And yes, I know it doesn't say that, this is a change to the game I'm proposing.

[ishy]

Yeah the designer gives some examples for act under fire were on a 7-9 he's just fucking with the players. And sometimes gives them choices and in other situations just gives them a failure result.

But based on Silva's sig, I don't think he likes apoc world anymore either.

No matter the system, I'm not playing to learn the GM's plot - I read books for that -

[Mistborn]

But based on Silva's sig, I don't think he likes apoc world anymore either.

[Leress]

*sighs* Oh, Boy.