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Messages - Dan Maruschak

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Dungeon World / Re: Beta 2 Questions / Feedback
« on: March 27, 2012, 12:39:24 AM »
Sage's examples make sense to me. In general I'm a little leery about how quickly people seem to jump to the "lies are Defy Danger with Charisma!" position. To my mind, Defy Danger ought to be about defying a specific fictional danger. "Not being believed" isn't always a danger. If the consequence is an NPC thinking "huh, there's some goofball here claiming to be someone he's not", that's not a danger. I can definitely imagine situations in which lying or fast-talking to extricate yourself from a sticky situation would be Defy Danger, but situations shouldn't magically become Defy Danger because your D&D-based intuitions say "there should be a role here." (But I guess I'm off in the wilderness on my dislike of the Defy Danger = catchall move idea, so I should stop harping on it).

Personally, I'm not too concerned about the lack of a lying move. Telling lies doesn't give you magical powers, and most people aren't sitting around waiting to pounce on liars, so "telling a lie" isn't always some critical juncture in the fiction that demands special attention. Lies are sometimes a means to an end, and I think Parley ought to be fine most of the time for proactive bluffing or trickery if people weren't importing expectations from other games. (Expanding Discern Realities to include some choices that were easier to apply to people-reading might be something to consider, though. If people know they have avenues of trickery that are guaranteed to work on someone they'd probably be less skittish about pursuing fiction that doesn't map to an explicit move).

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Dungeon World / Re: The new character sheets...
« on: March 26, 2012, 02:54:43 PM »
I have mixed feelings about the character art. I think my problem is that the art reads more like a specific character than an archetypal one, so if I was making choices during chargen that diverged from the art I might feel some cognitive dissonance. (Also, I'm not crazy about the framing of the art with respect to the stat boxes: so many graphical elements poking into the image makes me vaguely uncomfortable, like a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing -- maybe I'm overstating this since my biggest issue is with the Bard's right hand and it's the first image in the package). I understand Sage's point about the gear being referenced less frequently, but my initial reaction was "if the gear was on the first page instead of the second you'd have everything you need for the first session on a single sheet". Overall I thought they were pretty good, though.

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Dungeon World / Re: Beta 2 Questions / Feedback
« on: March 26, 2012, 02:40:44 PM »
We haven't tried beta 2 yet, but one of the guys in the game I'm running keeps getting hung up on the "there's no bluff move!" thing. I'm not sure I have a handle on it exactly, but I think the problem is that he has trouble framing what he wants in terms of directing the NPC to do a specific thing -- since I don't notice anything implied for the NPC to do when he's "bluffing" I don't say "that sounds like Parley, roll+CHA", and when he doesn't get the mechanical reinforcement he expects based on intuitions he's built up from other games about when the dice get rolled he backs off, saying "oh, there's no bluff move..." instead of pursuing what he was doing in the fiction. As an analogy, instead of "Listen guard, I'm the new captain, and you need to report to your new post right now!", it's more like "Listen guard, I'm the new captain! <looks at GM expectantly.>". (I also think the "ask you for something"/"promise" phrasing makes the move read like it's only about explicit verbal requests, so that may make it harder for people to parse implied ideas into the framework of the move). The wording of the move changed a bit in the new beta so maybe it will be smoother for us now.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 15, 2012, 02:32:39 PM »
I haven't seen what second level looks like yet, and I can't speak for the player, but a net gain of 2 HP if you get a 10+ seems somewhat inconsequential compared to what a single monster hits for. So far the biggest impact has been getting a post-Last Breath party member back on their feet. Maybe things will change a bit once we level up.

I'm curious, is the "somebody needs to play the cleric" thing (or equivalent multiclass) one of the D&D tropes you want strongly represented in DW?

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 14, 2012, 09:11:41 PM »
Dungeon World is a game of action, where so long as you can still get into a position to cast it healing is always around the corner (with a roll).
Maybe it's an artifact of the small party size of my group and the classes they chose (2 players, Paladin + Thief, still first level), but I don't think healing has felt abundant to us. Are we just outliers, or are we maybe missing some easy source of healing?

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Dungeon World / Is "say yes or roll the dice" part of DW?
« on: March 13, 2012, 11:46:42 AM »
In the third session of the DW beta campaign I'm running (available on my podcast, if anyone wants to listen) the thief in the party said he was examining something for traps. It sounded to me like he was obviously intending to use his Trap Expert move ("When [you] spend a moment to survey a dangerous area, roll+DEX..."), but as the GM I was following my prep and knew that there weren't any traps on the thing he was examining. I felt a little weird, because I didn't think it felt fair to expose him to the danger of failing when there was no point to succeeding, so I wanted to say "you don't need to roll for that, there aren't any traps here", but that also felt wrong to me since I thought he was obviously trying to use his move, which calls for a roll of the dice. I "resolved" the situation at the time by interpreting the fiction as if a Discern Realities was warranted, but it felt like I was fudging something when I did that, and it did force him to roll his worst stat instead of his best. (Now that I read the move's trigger explicitly, I think I may have accidentally done it right, since the "dangerous area" part of the fictional trigger didn't apply).

In the fictional positioning thread, Zac offered this opinion about how certain things should be adjudicated in the game:
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the game works better if you use only use Moves when a risk of failure would be interesting. Yep, that's the GM's call, big time, but I find myself frequently letting people do harm as indicated (or whatever) because there's no "seed of uncertainty" that could make things go awry.
To me, that sounds like "say yes or roll the dice", a principle which games like Burning Wheel embrace. My reading of Dungeon World is that the GM isn't the arbiter of whether a roll is warranted, but is an interpreter of the fiction like everyone else:
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The basic rule of moves is: take the action to gain the effect. To make the mechanical aspect of a move happen the character has to do something that triggers that move. Likewise, if the character does something that triggers a move the mechanical portion happens.
One of the consequences of that (at least the way I interpret it) is that it isn't the GM's job in DW to decide if certain actions are "important enough" to warrant dice rolls, but that the dice rolls always happen in the fictional situation and therefore might become important even if we don't think they're that big a deal before we roll. Is that the way other people interpret it? How would other people have handled this situation? Would that change if the move were something like "when you spend a moment to survey an area for potential dangers" instead of the "dangerous area" thing is says now?

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Dungeon World / Re: New AP podcast ep using DW beta 1.1 rules
« on: March 08, 2012, 05:22:49 PM »
I posted another episode with the third session. At the end of this one I talk a little bit about how I'm interpreting the agenda and principles and how that's informing my GMing of the game.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 07, 2012, 04:20:08 PM »
You are running in a "step on up" mode
I'm really not. Whether or not you're using the term in the Forge jargon sense, I can't think of any interpretation of the phrase where it would be a good characterization of how I'm playing. I can go into more depth about how I know that if you really need me to, but that seems like it would be pretty far afield from the topic of the thread. The amount of damage or number of deaths isn't really a good proxy for determining someone's approach toward a game.

I would still be very interested in seeing you address the "really earn it" question.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 07, 2012, 01:43:38 PM »
You play Dungeon World in a "step on up" manner
No, this is 100% wrong.

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Both of us read the "Be a fan of the players" and say "hell yea, I'm a fan of the players!", and then go about being fans of the players in two totally different ways. Dungeon World works for both playstyles.
Does it work for both? I don't know. I think I go about "being a fan of the characters" the way the book tells me to:
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Treat the players' characters like characters you watch on TV. You want to see how things turn out for them. You're not here to make them lose, or to make them win, and definitely not to guide them to your story. You're here to portray the interesting world around them and see how interacting with that world changes everything.

I'm still interested in seeing your answer to the question I asked.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 07, 2012, 11:13:50 AM »
first I don't like killing off PCs unless they really earn it
Could you (or anyone who has a similar outlook) talk about how this perspective relates to the agendas or principles? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but "really earn it" makes it seem like the GM is deciding what characters deserve, like you're sitting in judgment of them, which conflicts with how I interpret "Be a fan of the characters".

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Dan I would recommend you either figure out a front for Death or stop killing your characters. If Death is going to play a big part in your game (likely in your game) then Death needs some end goal. Or stop sending them to Death, send them to some other god or daemon. DW can be gleefully gritty if you want it to be but with Last Breath you need to prepare for it.
I don't kill the characters. The monsters do. When characters take damage it's because that's the most fictionally consistent thing to happen based on the moves we've been making.

Personally I don't have a problem with the way Last Breath has been working in my game. I was stumped for a bit when Death had to make a second deal in the second session but it all worked out in a really fun way, and I've now got a campaign front related the the deal in the first session and a (secret) custom move related to the deal in the second. The biggest death-related issue I've had was whether or not to do enough damage to kill a character for the third time in the first session, but to me that issue was about the monster damage and the healing powers available to characters, not about the way Last Breath works.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 06, 2012, 08:11:53 PM »
The best advice I can give is to stop worrying who's playing "by the rules" and play the rules as written as best you understand them.
For a released game I would probably be better able to ignore people who are "playing wrong" (from my POV). Since the game is in beta I think that changes things a bit, since I assume it's useful for the designers and the community to understand how different people are interpreting the text. If this were a released game I'd probably not bother posting thoughts like mine in this thread since it would seem like a moot point to me.

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As to the tightrope, again my best advice is not to worry about it. If a character dies, they die. There's nothing in your agenda or principles about keeping them alive. (There's nothing about killing them either, of course.) You're there to present a fantastic world, if that world happens to kill a few unlucky adventurers so be it.
I agree with that to an extent, but saying "I didn't tell you to worry about that!" isn't the same as crafting a game in which it isn't one of the psychological factors weighing on my mind. Generally I don't have a problem because I don't keep track of player HP (they do that themselves) so I have no idea if the damage is lethal or not, but if the damage per hit is high enough it sort of becomes obvious whether I'm deciding if they live or die and it starts making me feel guilty. But that's probably best discussed in a different thread.

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That sounds like a disagreement with Josh. Some people find fiction-first preferable, that's fine. I don't see why the game needs to be any more clear about this
Yes, it's a disagreement with Josh, not something you need to address. Remember that you asked me to expand on where I differed with Josh, not where I differed with you or with the game. This was one of the places.

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So I guess the problem is people are excited about it but it's not something new? Again, I can't quite see the issue that needs to be addressed. The rules say who has narrative control over what. Some people find this new and different. Others won't.
Problem? Addressed? I wouldn't frame it like that. But when I hear people gushing about how the player narrative authority in DW or AW are so mind-blowing it makes me think that they have a very different take on the games than I do.

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The full game has all the tools to make that. Or is there something in your vision that you feel is contradicted by the rules?
Contradicted? Maybe not. I found it difficult with the current Fronts rules, but a lot of my understanding of the current Fronts rules were based on inference and assumption rather than a robust understanding of the procedures. I know those have been updated for beta 2 so I've been waiting to see the new text before trying to articulate my thoughts about dungeon creation.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 06, 2012, 05:49:33 PM »
Why are you starting in the middle of a scene, or the middle of a dungeon?
I'm not, because those rules didn't make sense to me and I couldn't think of a way to follow them. "In the middle of a dungeon" doesn't seem wildly out of place to me in the context of the examples you offered in the text. Maybe I'm wrong to read it that way.

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Some games are more drama-oriented, some more gonzo, but I don't think I've yet heard two that both played by the rules and yet still seemed like different games. I'm curious about that for sure.
That "played by the rules" is the tricky part for me, since I can't definitively know whether or not what different people are doing lines up with the intent of the game. When I hear something that seems "wrong" from my POV I have to consider the different permutations of which interpretation is correct since I know it might be mine. Since you guys know what you meant (at least to a degree, since you're collaborators rather than a single author) it's probably much easier for you to parse things like this than it is for me.

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There is no social tightrope to damage.
If there was a more gradual gradation in the hardness of the moves I would agree (and I think the half-damage addition sounds like it might address this issue) but when I feel like my choice of moves is equivalent to "should this character live or die?" then I do feel the social tightrope. The idea that "good GMs always prefer narrative moves over damaging moves" (an oversimplification, obviously) or that "damage is the most boring thing you can do" feel like they're the kind of statements that build a social tightrope (I don't want the players to think I'm boring, do I?).

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Especially if you're used to 4E you can easilly default to damage. Don't! Default to looking at the situation and seeing what could happen, then pick out an element and realize it. If damage is the clearest response, do it. If there's another option, do it. Just don't think of damage as the default GM move, it's not. And don't use damage as a soft move, it's not (instead present the damage as incoming and Show Signs of Doom).
That's all fine. That's how I've been playing it, I think (my podcast is out there if people want to give me their own observations on how I've been GMing). This reads to me as very different from saying that the non-damaging moves are better. They're softer, that's not the same thing.

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A move can start with naming the move or with the fictional action, but the fictional action is REQUIRED.
I know how moves work. What I was reacting to is Josh's apparent preference for people not considering their moves at all. There was a story-games thread about not giving players access to the character sheets -- I think that's the kind of thing he would prefer. To me that seems like a misguided approach to *W games, since part of the point of moves is to prime your mind and frame your expectations to guide you to act in particular ways. But maybe I read too much into what Josh was saying.

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I have no idea how this lines up with Josh's ideas or what he said. Compared to, say, 4th Ed D&D this is a lot of player narrative control.
Sure, but if we put all games on a spectrum DW would end up much closer to the traditional end (near DITV and Burning Wheel, as opposed to something like Fiasco or roll-to-declare-a-fact games), so I have trouble wrapping my head around why the narrative authority issue seems to loom so large for some people.

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The opening scene to Raiders isn't a great example of a dungeon (or a Dungeon/Adventure Front). It's entirely linear and there isn't much to it.
I wasn't offering it up as an ideal to copy in all particulars, but trying to give a tone or feel reference.

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I'll let Josh speak to his own work, but from what I read it's smaller scoped than Bloodstone Idol, nothing quite so huge. Maybe that's more what you're looking for? I don't quite see how the size and complexity of the dungeon is a defining feature of the game.
I don't know anything about Josh's adventures. I was mostly reacting to his comments about the game in general. My issue with the Bloodstone Idol isn't necessarily about the size, or even necessarily the complexity. To me it seemed like the amount of activity from all of the other active agents made them the focus so the exploration of the dungeon itself took a back seat. (But my impressions are filtered through the game I played in, so maybe the way our GM ran it had a big impact).

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 06, 2012, 02:54:44 PM »
A few direct answers to Dan: I don't quite know what the definition of Sandboxy is here or how in media res runs counter to it.
The way I'm using the term involves players always deciding where their characters go and what they do. Starting play in the middle of a dungeon or other action scene involves the GM making decisions for where the characters have gone and what they've done before play begins. An in medias res opening seems to be more focused on crafting the experience of a scene, which isn't what I normally think of as a sandbox approach.

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Actual play is sandboxy, I guess? I'm still not quite sure what that means. Sandboxes are boring, they just sit there. In Dungeon World there are bad things happening, things which the GM is going to make evident. You're going to stop them for gold and glory, or they're going to get right in your face.
To me sandbox doesn't read as "static". The things you say about bad stuff happening in the world is totally consistent with how I read the term. The most important things for my conception of sandbox play is the causal consistency of the fictional world (this is in contrast to something that is more story-like, where the consistency of the world merely has to be good enough to provide plausibility for the narrative to hang together). Once something is established in the fiction (either because it's prepped or explicitly comes up in play), it proceeds on its own course whether the players interact with it or not. The focus of play follows the PCs, so stuff may get more "clock ticks" in their vicinity then the rest of the world, but the world isn't there to provide a specific experience (and definitely not a narrative) for the players or the characters. You don't prep "adventures" so much as you prep interesting places where adventurous stuff might happen if the players go there. Most of the principles, etc., of DW seem to me to be entirely consistent with this (which is why I assume this is the way the game is meant to be played) so the few things that don't kind of stand out to me.

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I don't see where the Front rules say anything about making them relevant to the players
Maybe I'm reading too much into the first session section? Personally I have a really hard time understanding what I'm supposed to do with that section. I'd much prefer the game to just tell me to prep an interesting dungeon for the first adventure and find ways to hook the player contributions to what's already prepped, but I got the impression that the game doesn't want me to do that.

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It'd be great if you could explain what you find vague. I've edited the hell out of the GM chapter again, but I didn't find much vagueness to begin with. What's not clear?
I don't have any specific ideas in mind right now. Maybe I'm reacting more to the fact that I see conflicting interpretations that aren't compatible but which don't necessarily outright contradict the text? I could maybe reread the text and find some things that are contributing to my sense of vagueness, but that seems like it would be kind of a questionable use of time since you've already got a new version about to come out.

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I haven't had a chance to list the The Podge Cast yet and likely won't get to it for a bit, could you give me some ideas what you heard that doesn't mesh?
Some of it is about tone. Josh seems to think the game is way more over-the-top than I do. The damage thing is definitely part of it (I'm not fond of the "most boring" characterization of damage -- I hate it when games want me to walk a social tightrope about when I'm supposed to use certain options that the game presents to me as valid. I want to use damage when it's fictionally appropriate to do so, and not feel like I'm being boring, or ruining someone's fun, or doing anything else that I ought to feel guilty for when I do it). He seems to really dislike the idea of using the mechanical moves as starting points for player decisions, but I think that's half of the game (i.e. it's perfectly fine to use the mechanics to inspire you to do something in the fiction, or to do something in the fiction that may or may not translate directly into a mechanical move -- both are valid, neither is privileged). He seems to think that "player narrative authority" is the killer app for the game but I think that's kind of incidental and the most important thing is how the game structures interactions. There might have been other stuff. Basically, he was totally gushing about DW, but the game he was describing seemed to be dramatically different from the game I'm familiar with so I had that "maybe I'm the crazy one" reaction.

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It reads a fair bit like the Bloodstone Idol, actually.
There's a good chance that I'm the odd one out here, but there was a lot of stuff about the Bloodstone Idol that didn't make a ton of sense to me, like the armies of lizardmen and goblins. It seems like your vision of a dungeon might have a "crazy beehive of activity" element, whereas my mental prototype of a dungeon is a lot closer to something like the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Dungeon World / Re: Dungeon World is...
« on: March 06, 2012, 12:35:36 AM »
I just listened to episode 182 of The Podge Cast where Josh Mannon talks about the Dungeon World adventure path he's working on. It seems to me that he's got a radically different take on the tone and feel of this game than I do, so I wish Sage and Adam would talk more definitively about how the game is supposed to work. I think I read the damage numbers and from them assume that the game is supposed to be lethal and gritty. It seems like other people assume it's a wahoo game and from that conclude that you're almost never supposed to actually do the damage that the numbers call for since they're so lethal. I'd really like to know if one or the other approach is wrong, or if the game is supposed to encompass both.

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Dungeon World / Re: New AP podcast ep using DW beta 1.1 rules
« on: March 05, 2012, 11:07:53 PM »
I posed a new episode of the podcast with our second session of the game.

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