D&D "roleplaying":

Go home virt, you're drunk.

No, it's just a fucking terrible system made by people who don't understand why Apocalypse World is good.

In DW the mechanics don't matter. They're entirely non-variable and provide a simple, somewhat non-interactive method of progressing the plot and resolving conflicts.

And that's fine! It works for a certain play style, but I think minimal mechanics like that aren't what enhance roleplaying, they just kinda get out the way.

Crunchy mechanics can be just as good, if not better than that for roleplaying. Taking a risk isn't just saying 'I'm using my Take a Risk move'. If you have a system of mechanics with enough depth and complexity to give your different choices different effects, choosing a riskier option is more meaningful because it can have real mechanical consequences. The expression of your character has a tangible, distinctly different result as per the rules and mechanics of the system, not just in fluff.

Again, as I said, most D&D doesn't do this well, but some D&D and D&D-like systems do, and others can be made to do it (admittedly with a lot of work from the GM, which does not excuse the quality of the system at all.)

you have to count any more moves that give you extra assorted dice, or increase damage dice
Also, moves like "you have +1 when you protect your allies from an evil danger, etc" seem marginally used or you have to force the situation so much to happen that are virtually a waste of space.

World of Dungeons is neat though if played at low levels.

World of Dungeons Turbo Breakers would be awesome if it was oriented more towards fantasy and magic had real, if tiny, rules.

DW is much more autis

Dungeon world took a good system and made it slightly worse to fit a niche it wasn't intended for, and gets hailed as the best thing fucking ever despite being at best "Slightly more rules light than 3.5".

Play apocalypse world if you want to see what the system can do, and then you'll see why dungeon world just fucks it up every where.

I've actually read both systems to the letter, never played them. COuld you explain how they play differently? I'm genuinelly curious. Just the 2 or 3 more important highlights please.

>I've also heard some fans of rules light games, and PbtA in specific, criticising DW and not being one of the best examples of it, citing other games that use the structure better.

Yeah, I have to agree with this assesment. I don't think that DW is a terrible game, per se, but it tries to combine the Gamerist nature of D&D with the Narrativist nature of PbtA.
In PbtA games, the moves exist to further the plot. In DW they closely emulate D&D powers, as just special action conferred by a class. It's not impossible to connect the two, but the way DW does is not always the best. But hey, if you like it, don't let my opinion stop you from playing it. I'm sure the game has its merits, otherwise it wouldn't have such a following.

Basically this, for me.

3.5 is garbage for Johnny

DW is garbage for Vorthos

I'm not very good at explaining things so bear with me.

Apocalypse world is a system that's very based on story, and storytelling. Whereas dungeon and dragons is more about cool mechanics (How cool they are is another matter, but the mechanics are definitely in focus).

Now what the author has done is essentially bolting on D&D mechanics to apocalypse world, so it gets more finnicky without allowing the mechanical distinctions of D&D.

>Whereas dungeon and dragons is more about cool mechanics

That really only true for the WOTC editions.

Every stat in AW represents a very different approach to a situation.
Three of DW's six stats deal (with) damage.

Moves in AW have tangible and significant consequences that usually lead to further moves.
Half the Moves in DW do numbers instead of consequences, and those that don't tend to be bad at making the consequences stick.

Experience in AW is a tool for the group to reward the players for taking the kind of actions the rest wants to see.
Experience in DW rewards players for ignoring what their characters are good at.

The reality of the situation is that the WotC editions, for the vast majority of people, are D&D. They are what people think of and they provide the key frame of reference for discussing D&D. I think that's part of why the OSR has become its own distinct thing, since even mentioning D&D in the same space would warp peoples perceptions towards 3.x onwards.

I have never understood the appeal of Apocalypse World or its spin-offs.

The game seems like a collection of so many poorly-explained half-ideas that you're probably better of doing it freeform if you're more interested in telling a story than playing a game.

>>Okay, looks like a fairly difficult Hack and Slash move to me, go on and roll with a -2 penalty
That's not a thing, you don't apply penalties in Dungeon World mate
Know the rules before you shitpost about them.

>No, it's just a fucking terrible system made by people who don't understand why Apocalypse World is good.

Can you explain further

See

>-2 to hack&slash
This is what happens when you don't read your source material before you make a bait thread.

>Why do mechanics stop you roleplaying?
Because I have to stop and wait for my supercomputer farm in China to process the crunch on each action. I thought OP's example was brilliantly clear.

it's an optional rule at the back of the book (for some reason)

Maybe try not being a retard who cant do basic math.

Yeah, but using it as the prime example of why X is better than Y marks this as 2/10 making us reply sort of shit.

>Okay, looks like a fairly difficult Hack and Slash move to me, go on and roll with a -2 penalty
okay, enjoy your GM fiat fest

because the less rules, the more what happens depends on GM whim.

Even retards can do increments, it has nothing to do having to keep track of a million such modifiers.

why have rules at all? why not let the GM decide everything on a d20 roll?

You know there's a number in the lower right that keeps track of how many posters are in the thread?

>Why do mechanics stop you roleplaying?

>I want to swing from that chandelier and kick two guards on the way down!
>do you have the advanced chandelier swinging feat?
>If you don't, Johnny will be assmad that you're stealing thunder from his Halfling Chandelier Swinger prestige class that he had to focus all his skills and feats on til level 8.

And the point of creating an imaginary example that doesn't really apply to anything is...?

missing the point: the post

I don't see a point to miss.

An exaggerated, unrealistic example of how ludicrously bad mechanics might limit your options in combat with a bad and uncreative GM has no bearing on the statement 'Why do mechanics stop you roleplaying?'

so?

fuck me you're dense

Oh no, I entirely get what you were trying to do. I'm just using questions as a way of implying that it completely failed to land. To be clear- The example was trash, the intended meaning had no support and the intended point had no substance. It is a trash, worthless argument that I snidely dismissed as it deserved.

>tips fedora

It was actually pretty funny because it's true, old D&D was too restrictive unless you had specific prestige bullshit.

What the nigga is trying to say is that your "argument" is a pointless strawman that's literally never actually happened to anyone; therefor the post in itself is completely irrelevant to the thread; and as such, a perfect example of shitposting.

>old D&D
>3.X now qualifies as old

You can literally blame thieves/rogues for it. Before that class was introduced, there weren't skills or anything like that, but when it came in, you needed rules for all the things it could do. Now, instead of just picking a lock or climbing a rope, you had to have the abilities of that one specific class.

Ha, nicely done.

It's 17 years and 2 new editions ago.
It's old.

So before they made a class for it, how did people pick locks or climb? Did they just say 'I pick the lock' and that was it?

When you consider that the system as a whole is nearly 50, it's only middle-aged.

I do find it funny that being overly focused on RAW is an accusation often levelled at 4e, yet as a system 4e actually had better support for that kind of improvised action than 3.5 did.

yep
roll under str/dex on a d20 if you really must, but for the most part why bother, keep the game moving to the fun stuff.

Exactly the same way as they picked locks and climbed after the Thief was introduced: They told the DM that they wanted to do the thing, and the DM told them what to roll.

Usually with a simple dex or str roll. Really simple. Roll a d20, if it's under your stat, you succeed.

There's the sort of assumption as well in very early D&D that every character is a thief to some degree. If you weren't, why would you be breaking into ancient tombs and temples to take all the valuable stuff? From AD&D 2e and beyond it moved more towards epic fantasy and storytelling, so this assumption stopped being made.

>every agile person can pick a lock
yep, that's D&D bullshit

>Every tomb raiding adventurer who isn't unprepared can do tomb raiding activities
Yep, sounds about right.

see

The shame is that DW would actually benefit from stuff like small positive and negative modifiers but all of that stuff is just too complex for DW fans to get their heads around

To be fair, the whole point of feats/archetypes is to bundle certain actions around a specific theme. I'm totally fine with reinforcing penalties for untrained chandelier swinging for everyone who's not Johnny's halfling, because he's choosing to invest in fluff over outright munchkining (or playing a wizard).

That might seem restrictive, but the give-and-take with collaborative storytelling is sometimes placing restrictions on how much a character can do so you keep the action moving for EVERYONE. Play with any veteran roleplayer and they'll say "I move here and power attack the goblin." Play with any new player (or That Guy) and he'll say, "I want to kick over the table AND vault over it so I can push goblin A into goblin B before I cut off goblin C's head AND kick it into the chamberpot to impress the barmaid I'm seducing on this turn."

Dungeon World encourages these sort of nonstop godmode fantasies, but doesn't actually have the means to back it up except GM fiat.
>"I want to hack and slash the goblin"
>"Well, you're not supposed to KNOW the name of the move, just describe it and I'll pick one."
>"Fine, I want to run up and attack the goblin."
>"...Ok, that's a Hack and Slash move..."
And of course you're encouraged to put your worst stat as the one you're using to attack the most with, because for some idiot reason you get more XP for failing moves.

Dungeon World is acceptable for quick pulp games, but for me it lacks the detail and groundedness for more serious ones.

No, I am not a DnD player either.

>you must play a tomb raider
yep, D&D bullshit

The entire game, in the early days, was about playing as tomb raiders, so yes, sure.

>And of course you're encouraged to put your worst stat as the one you're using to attack the most with, because for some idiot reason you get more XP for failing moves.

You also get killed for failing moves.

XP is not an incentive to fail, it's a reverse slippery slope (which is of course counter to AW's, and even DW's original goal of a downwards spiral, but there it is).

I don't have a problem with that at all, in its historical context. However, if someone criticizes the existence of a skill system, it's an issue that needs to be raised.

I think Freebooters on the Frontier does better what DW tried to get at.

So what you're saying is you don't like math? Gotcha

>Says he isn't good at explaining things
>Nonetheless explains

Literally why? As you yourself could have predicted your explanation wasn't very good.

That's just WotC D&D vs. TSR D&D. Babies raised on 3e cancer don't know how to roleplay. Dungeon World is a garbage game that completely misinterprets the PoA engine. get better taste.

This isn't true at all. AD&D 2e started down that route and 3e took it to an extreme. The majority of vast majority of real D&D's gameplay was done through roleplay that were mostly guided by mechanics behind the DM screen.

Skill systems are not old school D&D.

So Oriental Adventures is not old-school?

>real D&D

Man, No True Scotsman doesn't really benefit your point dude.

All D&D is real D&D. Your preference is your preference, and that's fine and all, but trying to draw an arbitrary line between what you like and everything else and declaring your preferred version to be the 'real' one is just kinda dumb.

The only real d&d is OD&D, the moment you ask opinions from people that shouldnt be playing your rpg, and use those opinions to make your rpg, your rpg will become something else.

So... You oppose the very concept of iterative design and development?

Learn what the no true scotsman fallacy means, pseudo-intellectual. Drawing boundary lines between categories it is not.

There is a very strong and well recognized shift in design & gameplay (character, dev team, owning company, setting, system, basically everything not part of the brand identity) in the D&D series, to the point where the later period would not be remotely considered the same game if it was not for retaining the intellectual property that was stolen from the creators. It's hardly an arbitrary line.

Nah, real D&D is where you resolve conflicts through Knife Fights. The DM is allowed to strap a phone book to his chest to represent task difficulty, but mine was just that good at dodging that he just adjusted how quickly he reacted.

Get on my level scrubs.

>There is a very strong and well recognized shift in design & gameplay (character, dev team, owning company, setting, system, basically everything not part of the brand identity)

You could make this statement about literally every edition change, though. Heck, I've seen people make this statement about every edition change.

And even with that, that's still not an argument for the first one being 'Real'. It'd be just as easy to argue that with such sweeping changes each time, only the latest iteration is 'Real' D&D. It's utterly arbitrary.

I oppose justin bieber asking death metal fans how his next album should be and vice-versa

Who are the death metal fans in this analogy?

>middle aged isn't old
Keep telling yourself that Gen X

Why do autists have such a problem with letting the GM decide difficulty? Have years of 3.PF rotted their minds, made them unable to trust the GM? Or are they GMs afraid of having to think without having their hands held?

>stolen from the creators
Good Lord, I think you are serious.

>You could make this statement about literally every edition change
Except you couldn't, not pre-WotC. The first edition to take any distinct departure from OD&D's clear design goals and inspirations was AD&D 2e after Gygax was ousted, and even that was mostly in the modules and marketing, not the system mechanics itself.

>It'd be just as easy to argue that with such sweeping changes each time, only the latest iteration is 'Real' D&D. It's utterly arbitrary
D&D was a game very distinctly drawn from the intentions, tastes, inspirations of two individuals. The series very clearly retained all of that in each iteration until it didn't. You're trying to argue that regardless of how far you drift from an original series, regardless of removing its creators from the project, removing all its influences, radically altering its design goals, mechanics, setting, etc. it's still completely wrong and arbitrary to suggest it's not an authentic member of the series. For no reason other than the current producers of the product have legally acquired the IP and choose to continue using it to describe their own, entirely different game. Interesting.

Except this happens to franchises and series all the fucking time? They change hand and change nature and evolve, but trying to call all the current iterations of those franchises not 'real' is utterly meaningless. You're objecting to a fundamental part of how media works.

Jokes about the artwork aside, Fellowship does a much better job of PbtA fantasy. Of course, even then, it's doing a very specific kind of fantasy - a group of friends on an epic journey. Not sure how well it would do for a game about pulp vagabonds, or dnd-esque murderhobos, or epic wizard battles.

>Except this happens to franchises and series all the fucking time?
Yes, and fans completely ignore the egregiously unfaithful corporate manipulations - or if it's good on its own, respect it as its own separate thing. Nobody has a problem suggesting there's a difference between Howard's Conan and "Hollywood Conan" or that the latter isn't true to the former. Not to say that it's inferior, it's just not at all what the Conan character actually is. inb4 but WHO'S to say which is the real Conan character? Movies, comics, books what's the difference? It's all the same, man! No, it's not. Conan is clearly a distinct character created and explored by one author in a series of works, all other adaptations are interpretations looking towards the original. while they can stand on their own as worthwhile works, it doesn't change the fact there is a "true" Conan. Trying to argue against that is just petty sophistry.

I'm sorry the new school fanbase has some weird pathology about pretending their versions come from a direct lineage of progression from the primitive, unformed TSR games - rather than it being an entirely different game with different goals - but that doesn't stop describing those games as inauthentic or unfaithful to the series from being a completely reasonable and accurate assessment that would be entirely uncontroversial if we were discussing literally anything else.

>Crunchy mechanics can be just as good, if not better than that for roleplaying. Taking a risk isn't just saying 'I'm using my Take a Risk move'. If you have a system of mechanics with enough depth and complexity to give your different choices different effects, choosing a riskier option is more meaningful because it can have real mechanical consequences
I disagree. There is little functional difference between "I'll use my Take A Risk move, at -2 to my roll" and "I'm going to do x, with all these -x penalties but because I built my character to do this, I get +x too"...only to it mean the same mechanically, a -2 to the roll only it appeases grognard autism more.

Crunch is the dumbest shit, all it ever seems to do is 'reward' min-maxing but effectively punishes not min-maxing. Why dies the guy with 18 str have to take all those feats just to reliable wrestle a bear? Why not just let him be good at wrestling?
"B-but I NEED to be mechanically distinct! What if I want to be good at wrestling but another character who has the same primary stats can wrestle just as good despite not focusing on it with their character?!? WAAH MY CHARACTER ISN'T UNIQUE"
That's where ROLE PLAYING comes in, something that seems to be lost on you rules heavy spergs.

It just sounds like you've only ever played systems with shitty crunch.

A well designed crunchy system is enjoyable to play, in and of itself. The mechanics are a fun game that supports and adds to the roleplaying you're doing alongside it.

There is a tangible difference between an abstract thing like a move and choosing how you interact with a more complex and satisfying set of mechanics. With simple, rules light systems there are no mechanical choices to speak of- It's all just a matter of how it ends up being fluffed.

This is fine for some people, but the crunch is part of the fun for me, and how I interact with it through the lens of my character is part of how I roleplay.

Are a lot of crunch heavy systems bad for this? Sure. But they aren't by default, and we're seeing games like Legends of the Wulin, which combine satisfying mechanics with a narrative focus on storytelling which break the old assumption that narrative focused games must be rules light.

Brainlets systems """Playing""" a """Game"""
>Is character is rooollsss
>Nooo! us forget buff!!
>Noooooo!! us forget debuff!!!
>iz modifiers 2?
>Is numbers final... 23!
>me confus, number go over 20? Me no like.
>I no natural 20, i no fun no crit fun

GURPS
>Hello my fellow mensa IQ150+ certified players, I have run the calculations and you emerge victorious of this session
>Thanks my fellow IQ150+ certified MENSA member DM, we're understanding as we too have run the calculations, our satisfaction degree is of 94.23% total we now shall leave your house.

>6yr old pasta

Pretty autistic

I don't understand why they changed the XP system from apocalypse world for DW. What did they think would be gained?

This is why free form / homebrew is the best.
You can adjust your gameplay to your party obviously you need to know your PC's but its not difficult

Do you guys think we could keep a powered by the apocalypse general alive? An awesome user posted his mega with a Tom of sweet pdfs awhile back and I'd love general just for that. Not a dungeon World player but Green Law of Varkith sounded like a cool setting for example

A reward for high risk play to encourage players to embrace the downward spiral in-built into the game.

Problem is that it leaves players sour because people want to do the stuff they're good at but the game rewards failure.

That's why I like the AW system because the players and GM determine progression rather than a mechanic that rewards only shenanigans

It also gives the MC heavy encouragement to make sure that a character's highest stat is tagged for xp even if the player with highest hx didn't pick it.

>D&D "roleplaying"
That's wading through WotC "rollplay" d20-System-muck.

True D&D is listening while a TSR-era fat man rolls all the dice for everyone behind a full-body screen.
No one consults the rules. They would fit on a single page if they weren't so chock-full of shitty prose.
Despite that, everyone has a 3-ring binder. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No one knows why.

>Dungeon World:
Is a shitty clone of Apocalypse World that was made without any consideration for what made AW good.
It also becomes self-defeating in an attempt to use "familiar" mechanics to dungeon delve systems.

The only remotely good* narrative system for dungeon delving is Torchbearer.
*but even that's a stretch, narrative and dungeon delving are inherently at odds
I would sooner try to drift upstream than expect them to mesh well

I don't think they intrinsically need to be so. It's a very different medium, but Dark Souls (for example) shows how you can have an environment and the enemies you fight tell a story.

The places you pass through and the state they're in, the foes you face and the equipment you bear... Even if it's not conventional storytelling, it can still weave a story of a place in ways that can be interesting and compelling, making the act of getting through it more meaningful than it might otherwise be.

That being said, I don't know any systems which particularly support this, but I think it's an example of how the two can mesh together.