Beta questions

Hey John, I like the opener When you charm, trick, or beguile...
Awesome. I'd write a move based on that.

Hmmm, "When you charm, trick, or beguile" is something worth investigating. I feel like that's a lot of what Parley already is though. What is tricking someone but using the appearance of leverage you don't actually have? Parley as it strands covers much of the same ground but also extends to other cases that I think are important to adventurers.

In fact my first instinct for "When you charm trick or beguile" is "When you charm, trick, or beguile, tell your target what you want of them and what you'll offer in return. If what you offer is worth what they'll give you in their eyes, roll+Cha. On a 10+ they agree to the deal and expect you to hold up your side. On a 7-9 they're skeptical: offer some concrete assurance now or they're not interested." Maybe that's just because I really like Parley, but I feel like those mechanics of promise and assurance are a perfect fit for DW. Want the goblins to do as you say? You'd better have something on them, and they may bargain you down some.

I mentioned some examples of the D&D style we're looking at here in my earlier post. There's a lot of space for adventurers to use their resources to get leverage to get things done.

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The 7-9 result has nothing to do with the PC lying, it has to do with the NPC being incredulous. Dan, your example is exactly what I'm making clear in the moves discussion chapter: you already offered a promise and concrete assurance in your parley, the GM doesn't have to ask for a different one (but they can).

McGruff: (after killing a bunch of other lizardmen) If you want to run, I'll let you go.
GM: You've got leverage (killing him), something you want (him to leave), and he can understand you. Sounds like Parley.
McGruff rolls a 7.
GM: "You'll let me live? Of course, mighty one." says the lizardman. He starts backing away while facing you "just keep your sword at your side and you'll never see me again." Once he's several paces away he turns and runs.

That's the case where the GM thinks that promise is fine and accepts the assurance. The lizardman mentions the promise ("You'll let me live") and the assurance already being made ("just keep your sword at your side").

The GM doesn't have to take that though. If this lizardman is fighting for a larger cause or whatever maybe he doesn't care for his life so much as the safety of his nest, his honor, or whatever else.

That's a good example, Sage. This topic has certainly given me some ideas for handling Parleys in game. Are you going to put some of this in a moves discussion chapter? This idea should certainly be in there:

What is tricking someone but using the appearance of leverage you don't actually have?

McGruff: (after killing a bunch of other lizardmen) If you want to run, I'll let you go.
GM: You've got leverage (killing him), something you want (him to leave), and he can understand you. Sounds like Parley.

This is where Parley breaks down for me. I would never call for a roll there. It's already my job as GM to play the NPCs. McGruff kills a bunch of lizardmen, I go, okay, are lizardmen super brave or vicious? No? Okay he runs away. Calling for a Parley there seems very silly to me.

[This is why the move in AW is when you seduce or manipulate not "when you tell someone to do something." The move has really specific fictional triggers, which I like to characterize as 'are you letting them make up their own mind about it?' A conversation, even one about a deal or promise or threat, isn't automatically the move.]

Mcgruff says, "Run if you want to live." The lizardman runs, the end. There's no move there.

Also, making deals with monsters doesn't sit well with me, either. They're vile, awful things dedicated to evil. They're not like AW NPCs, which have a wide range of personalities -- some reliable and trustworthy, some not. I'm never going to have a chat with the goblin chief to let us pass through their territory unharmed. No adventurer is that naive. We know the goblins are gonna stab us in the back the first chance they get, so why even bother?

Maybe I'll try to trick the goblins into letting their guard down, and then run away, try to murder them, toss down some gold coins to distract them, or something. But I'm not going to, like, parley with them. They're monsters!

[If monsters are actually people, we have other problems. But that's another topic.]

Those are some really good points, John. Maybe the Cha move's trigger should use the word manipulate. I see now how this is problematic: it creates a dice roll when there's no conflict. Like if McGruff rolls a 6, now this lizardman does what now?

I think using the word manipulate and mentioning in the move discussion "are you letting them make up their own mind about this?" (and of course "how?") is really strong. I'll talk with Adam, but I think we should do that. The current trigger is certainly problematic.

I'm never going to have a chat with the goblin chief to let us pass through their territory unharmed. No adventurer is that naive.

Heh. In my first DW game, we did exactly that.

And, uh, my second, come to think of it.

Quote from: John Harper on February 16, 2012, 05:12:23 PM

I'm never going to have a chat with the goblin chief to let us pass through their territory unharmed. No adventurer is that naive.

Heh. In my first DW game, we did exactly that.

And, uh, my second, come to think of it.

Yeah, Adam and I are having a little sidebar right now on if that's in our vision or not. It's very old school D&D, but I'm not sure we're that old school. There's a whole rathole of "are goblins inherently evil?" that you can go down (and Adam and I are).

In many old school (and new school) modules there are presented factions of "evil" demi-humans.  You can't survive by taking them all on, and part of the fun of these modules is striking "deals with the devil" and temporarily allying with the goblins (for example) against the dark elves.  Sure, goblins might be evil, but they're also intelligent and capable of parley if it serves their interest.  The question of how long any kind of truce or trust can be maintained in these cases adds depth and tension to an adventure.

PS - we need stats for Orc babies! (just kidding)

Yeah, I'm overstating things a bit, I admit. A good reaction roll could give you an opportunity for a temporary truce or arrangement with intelligent monsters, for sure.

(Still, after the third time your party has been betrayed by such arrangements with evil, you kind of give up on it as a methodology.)

Maybe I'm not arguing that parley doesn't happen, just that it's a weird peripheral move for rare cases, and not the go-to Charisma move for every kind of interaction.

Dan, your example is exactly what I'm making clear in the moves discussion chapter: you already offered a promise and concrete assurance in your parley, the GM doesn't have to ask for a different one (but they can).

OK, that makes sense. I don't think I would have guessed that's the way it's supposed to work from the current rules. With the current wording "they need some concrete assurance of your promise, right now", my intuitive read of the "right now" part is implicitly asking for a new thing to happen in the fiction, and I'm guessing that's how my GM was reading it at the time, too.

I think bargaining does have a place in this kind of game. In an earlier session of that game the other PC's halfling thief had died in a place only reachable by a small tunnel (although in-character I didn't know he was dead), so I used Parley to intimidate a goblin into going into the tunnel to check on him for me, and I think the mechanic worked well there. I also probably wouldn't have offered to let the lizardman retreat if the Parley move hadn't been on my sheet (it was with the old XP rules and I think I had CHA highlighted at the time) but it seems in-genre for that kind of interaction to happen so I think it's good that there's a mechanical prompt to suggest it.

@Marshall (mease19): I just can't enjoy a dungeon adventure game in which the monsters are people. It's... just too ugly and genocidal. I went through my period where it was all an examination of racism and colonialism and such and I really don't want to do that again (not in a D&D game, anwyay).

I want monsters to be monsters: vile, unnatural, and unambiguous -- like horrors from a horror movie.

Like, ALIENS is a good dungeon adventure, to me.

(And -- holy shit -- it has a parley with a monster! Ripley pointing the flamer at the eggs. Would you look a that. Huh.)

@John, its not just that they could be bargained with but maybe goblins are neutral peoples in your dungeon world, people to protect.  Maybe its the elves, those flesh-hungry elves that are the problem.  Maybe in your dungeon world every elf boy has a rustmonster when they're young to teach them about responsibility and protect them from the dwarves that steal elfish children to work in their mines.  I like that you can play around with which 'monsters' are monsters in the fiction.

Oh, I see. That makes sense. That's not something I'd put to player improvisation during play (during game setup, sure), but I get what you mean.

We're rephrasing Parley to have manipulation as a key part and making sure the move discussion talks about how it's parley when you're trying to make up their mind for them, not when you're just making a deal or something.

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I had a whole long discussion of alignment and killing things and justification, but I don't think this is the time or place to post it.