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Dungeon World / Aid system - especially in regards to Discern Realities and Spout Lore
« on: September 01, 2014, 07:15:48 AM »
Aid?:
I have a hard time getting the Aid system to work fluently in my group. Especially in regards to Spout Lore and Discern Realities. For the more physical moves it usually seems more intuitive who is the main actor and who aids.
Example: Group enter room , room appears empty except for 3 doors and a statue of an epic looking warrior. Everyone in the group wants to look for traps (magic and/or physical traps) and/or try to figure out more about who the statue is supposed to look like - possibly someone wants to be and guard/scout duty at the same time figuring out how if someone can be heard behind the doors.
Aiding Failures: What happens if someone fails an Aid move? I have been playing it like any other move failing, but that does lower the amount of Aids a lot. I generally like this, but it can lead to players sometime acts less than their character would otherwise have done. Also, the effect on failed Aid is often quite easy to just turn the +1 Aid to -2 Interfere instead, but that is more on me than a general thing I guess.
Main Move Failures: A second issue is that the players always know if someone in the group potentially missed something. In other systems I have GM-rolled all the players "perception rolls", so that when I tell them "You find nothing suspicious" the players don't have more information than their character. What players do when they know they failed such a roll is very individual - some roleplay it well treating the roll as a success. Others metagame it and suddenly becomes more careful. And yet someone goes to the other extreme and become more reckless. However, GM-rolling here goes against the Dungeon World rules, and also isn't as fun for the players. I was considering each player doing the roll, but only showing it to the GM and the player himself (easily doable as we use Roll20). Still 1 person who can potentially meta-game it, but better than the entire group, right?
I have a hard time getting the Aid system to work fluently in my group. Especially in regards to Spout Lore and Discern Realities. For the more physical moves it usually seems more intuitive who is the main actor and who aids.
Example: Group enter room , room appears empty except for 3 doors and a statue of an epic looking warrior. Everyone in the group wants to look for traps (magic and/or physical traps) and/or try to figure out more about who the statue is supposed to look like - possibly someone wants to be and guard/scout duty at the same time figuring out how if someone can be heard behind the doors.
- Lets say I tell everyone to roll Dicern Realities. Sure I can come up with multiple moves to account for all the failures, but basically their chances of figuring out every secret in the room is generally too good for my taste.
- Lets say the statue actually has a magical trap - so I decide to tell the Wizard to roll Dicern Realities and he fails - now the party still have a good idea that there is magic involved here - why would I otherwise have asked the Wizard to roll and not the Thief?
- What I try to do at the moment is just assigning 1 person to do the roll and all who want to make assist rolls. Since each assist roll failing also can trigger failures the players are more careful here, which is good. But who gets to do the roll and who gets to assist? The players decide or DM decides? Aways highest stat rolls? First come, first served is what I have tried to go for, but it does leads to the more silent players idling more, and the most outspoken players to powerlevel faster.
- Character stats not a factor in assisting. Let's take an example with a group of 4 players: WIS is +2, +2, +1 and -1. Assuming equal amounts of bonds the +2 WIS player assisting would be as good assisting as the -1 WIS player. Same for other tasks involving other stats. That seems very weird unintuitive to me, and the assisting +2 WIS player can easily feel like his stat priority in WIS are wasted in this case.
Aiding Failures: What happens if someone fails an Aid move? I have been playing it like any other move failing, but that does lower the amount of Aids a lot. I generally like this, but it can lead to players sometime acts less than their character would otherwise have done. Also, the effect on failed Aid is often quite easy to just turn the +1 Aid to -2 Interfere instead, but that is more on me than a general thing I guess.
Main Move Failures: A second issue is that the players always know if someone in the group potentially missed something. In other systems I have GM-rolled all the players "perception rolls", so that when I tell them "You find nothing suspicious" the players don't have more information than their character. What players do when they know they failed such a roll is very individual - some roleplay it well treating the roll as a success. Others metagame it and suddenly becomes more careful. And yet someone goes to the other extreme and become more reckless. However, GM-rolling here goes against the Dungeon World rules, and also isn't as fun for the players. I was considering each player doing the roll, but only showing it to the GM and the player himself (easily doable as we use Roll20). Still 1 person who can potentially meta-game it, but better than the entire group, right?