Moves

Good point. Don't roll for it is a better way to say what I'm getting at. I'd avoid formalizing it into the move that is done every time too. It moves.

They seem like the corporate speak of P&P, give every normal thing a spiffy formalized name to make it sound more remarkable.

I've always seen who physically rolls the dice as a technicality (except when needing a hidden roll). Wouldn't have thought that such a minor thing can surprise people.

Stat blocks are normal to some people, poetics to others. I find short evocative phrasing to be more conducive to the cinematic gameplay pbta is built for, and acronym+/# for more granular stuff. Probably indicative that you prefer the latter if you also don't see a significant difference between who rolls a dice and focus more on the dice result in relation to a stat.

More examples

I think this over structuring feels a bit too obtrusive especially for games that try to be lighter.

Personally I like playing freeform and near freeform and I like granular simulationist stuff, but this is in a design space that seems uncanny valley to me.

Masks is interesting because it has GM moves for specific character playbooks. It's a cool way to have a mishmash of arcs/genres, I think.

when I ran Masks I found myself using the playbook specific moves more than the GM ones, they just always felt like the more interesting options

>The Bull

Anyway, "moves" are fine in theory but the insistent use of dumb terminology is inelegant.

I like them. It's a good way to focus the efforts of the players on what the game is about.

>I've always seen who physically rolls the dice as a technicality (except when needing a hidden roll). Wouldn't have thought that such a minor thing can surprise people.

As I get older I read more and more accounts of what I would consider to be really awful game play, though, so I guess there's that. We talk about railroading and stuff like it's this obvious thing we all immediately recognize and hate, but it seems that there are lots of people who spent years getting led around by the nose by a GM who just did whatever the fuck they wanted. These people didn't even realize that roleplaying could be something more than that. It's not just about "who rolls the dice"; the GM basically is the entire system.

I get what you mean. I tend to end up at those ends too. I like a few PbtA games, but find most of them clutter themselves up/defeat their own purpose when people get too caught up in making moves for everything and making over spec'd playbooks. I basically play in two groups, one does stripped down pbta and focused story games, the other does hex&chit/boardgames.

I talked to vincent baker and some of the play testers for AW and Dogs once, and am under the impression they were playing in a lot of conventions during peak 3.5 so they were encountering a lot of railroad and play based on sheets and/or boardgame combat engine stuff. Playbooks were a way to have quick character generation that got across setting and tone, have the mechanics the player needed, etc. in one package so they could get to playing stories.

Moves are absolutely meaningless. They change a few of the assumptions about RPGs but are basically just bullshit for hipsters to feel superior to other RPG players for playing Dungeon World instead of pleb-tier 5e or even worse Pathfinder. Which is rather sad because Apocalypse World, the original system to use "moves," is actually quite good, and D. Vincent Baker is a cool guy. The problem is that Apocalypse World's setting just isn't that popular, despite being extremely rich, as rich as the "assumed" setting of D&D (i.e. D&D has no default setting but it's assumed that displacer beasts exist, there's a tarrasque out there, there are dozens of gods in the sky, and gnomes and kobolds hate each other). Baker based his game off of interparty drama and Firefly (the former makes it ironic that so many people complain about PvP being impossible in PbtA games because of lack of opposed rolls).

The problem is, Apocalypse World is very clear about being a narrative-based game. It is not a hack-and-slash shoot-em-up game, it's one where the GM and players basically improvise a story together. There are "hit points" but they are more gritty than D&D and represent actual damage to your body, and there are even rules for harm causing you to drop shit or stumble. The moves are pretty tightly designed but still open to interpretation.

The problem with Dungeon World and many other PbtA hacks is the assumption that the 7-9/10 mechanic will work for every genre out there. Dungeon World just mashes AD&D and Apocalypse World together and expects two very divergent rules sets to work together. And they do, just do so shittily. Hx are dumbed down into bonds which you preselect from a list. Damage is meaningless due to characters starting with as many hit points as an elder dragon, and the harm rules are gone. Classes are back and damage is set by class for some odd reason. The game has all the trappings of D&D yet tries to use Apocalypse World's mechanics like fish out of water.

>I talked to vincent baker and some of the play testers for AW and Dogs once

Damn... he wouldn't even reply to my email...

If you're going to complain about people being "hipsters," it's probably not a great idea mention how much you hate the world's most popular roleplaying game every sentence.

>Dungeon World is the most popular roleplaying game

You are deluded.

It was a while ago, I use to brows the forums for apocalypse world. Haven't looked in actual years, not sure if they're still a thing. I think there's a google+ for the 2nd edition you can probably get at him from.

I have an account on the AW forums but he rarely posts anymore. I'll have to try to see if I can get him to respond to me.

>h-hey guys, this agricultural book calls roosters "cocks", isn't that funny because "cock" has another meaning

user, this is a bull. If you've heard the phrase "like a bull in a china shop", you should be familiar with the concept of a large, brutish character.

whya re theycalled "moves"

Or you could him The Brick, The Tank, The Bruiser, The Tough Guy, etc. all of which are more relevant to the genre and don't carry cuckoldry subtext.

The Emasculator
The Guy She Tells You Not To Worry About
The Macho Villian Who Makes You Feel Inferior

top tier reading comprehension

>call the guy whose schtick is rage issues The Brick

>make Masks PC
>make love interest supporting character
>GM uses Bull Move
>the Bull rapes my love interest in front of me
>she starts to enjoy it and screams in pleasure
>GM turns to me and says "What do you do?"

Well then explain where in my post I took even a single dig at D&D, let alone "every other sentence"

They're more limited Aspects, but much more open Feats. They can do away with a lot of leveling lists and balance concerns.

If you think about getting cucked whenever you hear the word "Bull," that says more about you than any inherent flaws in the terminology.

>Making NPC's for your character's backstory.
You have nobody to blame but yourself, take it as a lesson to never make NPC's unless you truly trust the DM to handle them properly.

It's a superhero game, user. Just find a way to timetravel.

Hes a bad guy in a numale RPG literally called The Bull who has and I quote "endanger their love" as his first gimick. It's not a huge stretch.

No, that's a GM move to use ON the Bull, who is a PC. The Bull playbook has a Love and a Rival with mechanical weight

who knows

>Damage is meaningless due to characters starting with as many hit points as an elder dragon

What's your opinion on this article: latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/ ?

You're confused on what the moves actually mean.

The moves aren't representing villains who perform these moves on the heroes, the moves are moves that specifically target the hero called "The Bull" who has a rival and a loved one as a part of his playbook.

Like I said, if you think about getting cucked whenever you hear the word "Bull," that says more about you than any inherent flaws in the terminology.

So, what was her name and how did Chad "steal" her from you?

what are they?

>I've always seen who physically rolls the dice as a technicality (except when needing a hidden roll). Wouldn't have thought that such a minor thing can surprise people.
that too is, quite obviously, a pure marketing stunt.

Apocalypse World and the games it spawned have moves. Moves are codified bits of the game. When the narration resembles the situation a move talks about, someone calls for it and the move helps determine what happens, sort of like a skill check, but with granular success and usually giving the player choices to make about the consequences.

GM moves, like the ones OP posted up there are what the GM does when pic related. They look at the list and pick one. I think Apocalypse World actually tells you to not use any of them more than once in a session.

They're useful because they're good at reminding you what the genre of the game is, and what goes into it.

Physically rolling the dice is a critical aspect of the "feel" of the game, it enhances player involvement and excitement. Same reason why lazy phone dicerollers are frowned upon.

I disagree with you, pretty hard. No dice rolling for the GM is pretty important because it totally changes how you handle responsibility for what happens.

>who has a rival and a loved one as a part of his playbook.
It figures. Is the rival being referred to as cuck?

so basically standardized, narrative building blocks?

>Or you could him The Brick, The Tank, The Bruiser, The Tough Guy, etc. all of which are more relevant to the genre and don't carry cuckoldry subtext.

>can't have a race called giants, what if people pick up giantess suffix
>can't have a show called transformers, obvious transformation subtex
How do you function in daily life?

No, user thought The Bull was a villain who had a move to cuck a PC.

The Bull has a Love and a Rival but can change who they are, so no, they're not the cuck playbook and they're literally the Chad character. Super strength, super durability, fighting ability.

If there's a cuck it's the Beacon.

The Bull can totally put your love interest as their love. I never thought of that before. That'd be so fucked up to do that to another player

Words exist in context. The word "faggot" can mean "bundles of sticks", "a cigarette", or "gay man" but if there's a guy called "The Faggot" roaming around then only one of those definitions is going to be at the front of my mind.

>strawmanning this hard
You * World-drones are annoying.

Listen man, if you want to go through life with cucking on the brain, I'm not going to stop you or ask you to change your ways. All I'm going to do is remind you that "The Bull" already has context within the game and the only one arguing that it actually means cuck shit is you.

I don't know who he/she is and how they hurt you but you gotta learn to accept that they traded up and that you're never going to have them again.

>Knowing so much cuckoldry lingo it's starting to affect your life

user, there's still time to go on a break.

>Words exist in context. The word "faggot" can mean "bundles of sticks", "a cigarette", or "gay man" but if there's a guy called "The Faggot" roaming around then only one of those definitions is going to be at the front of my mind.
If I see a guy nicknamed "The Bull" I'm going to go "Man I bet this guy's really strong and or angry", not "I bet he fucks a load of white women behind their husband's backs because I literally can't stop thinking about porn for one second". If you do the latter you might have a problem.

Yes but given its in the context of an apocalypse world game, the connection should be obvious and no mere coincidence.

Terrible name for a good idea.

I think they're babby's first roleplaying primer and that anyone who has an ounce of imagination moves past them very quickly and into real roleplaying games.

*World games are worthless to anyone whose played a few games.

>Yes but given its in the context of an apocalypse world game
Mad Max: Really well known for cucking people I guess?

how would you call them?

>when you are the bull and the gm is prepping the move

and if that "bull" is in a literal MFM love triangle? damn, this is textbook magical realm

As someone who's played role playing games for fifteen years, I'd like to point out that I thought DW was extremely eye-opening for me. Especially the extremely rigid core gameplay loop, the focus on not always abstracting everything with rolls (being forced to "play to see what happens" instead of calling for frivolous skill checks), and the clarity and especially the speed that rules with explicit triggers (moves) bring with them.

I think it's a very flawed game for lots of other reasons (Suddenly Ogres, etc.) but it made a huge impression on me, and I do think some of its ideas are potentially revolutionary, for some value of that term.

>and if that "bull" is in a literal MFM love triangle?
Then they're just like about 60% of teenage heroes from comics? Or, wait, are they cuck metaphors too? I don't know how deep the crazy goes here.

All I see is a xDy list of bullshit I can throw at a party of people if I'm lazy about what should happen next in an immediate story
What's the purpose of this bullshit?

If you had gotten in on AD&D, it wouldn't be nearly so novel.

All the moves are just deswcriptives of things that you could decide to do as you wanted to in AD&D, without needing a handbook to play them. You want to do soemthign acrobatic, you make a dex check. You want to do something amazingly strong, you make a strength check. And unlike 3..0 plus, the rules were exceedingly flexible and forgiving of the things players wanted to try.

Triggered rules, or something like that. Though I can see how that'd be made fun of in this day and age perhaps.

I'm not sure, but "move" is a dumb term to use for something specific, because the word is already used much too commonly in conversation, and it's not descriptive on its own.

It's the same (though worse) with "hold". The resource. That's just mind-numbingly stupid. Arrogantly so, even.
It's difficult to learn just due to sheer linguistic mental interference.

What's your real roleplaying game tough guy?

>playing at conventions
Wew, no wonder they ran in the opposite direction of rules and structure, con players are quite literally the worst people I've gamed with
Serious role-playing isn't made for one-offs anyways, so in that context their terribad games make sense

Any roleplaying game where your actions aren't defined by a restrictive playbook that doesn't allow for improvisation in the game. 4e D&D is just as bad.

Considering I've played AD&D 2e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e, oWoD, and a slew of derivative homebrew games, I'm familiar with skill checks (and the lack there of) in various forms already.
But moves aren't skill checks. They're a resolution mechanic but the way they're implemented is distinct from them.

(1) If a move doesn't apply to a situation, you're not supposed to just make up a skill check. Instead, you're meant to keep describing and allow the tension of the situation to rise until eventually a move (often Defy Danger in this case) does manage to trigger. It's difficult to wrap your mind around but once you start doing it, it's genius.

It's the same kind of upside-down zen logic you'll find if you read the oldschool primer.

(2) The moves themselves are designed to take situations that come up a lot, give them very deliberate design. Skill checks (in most other systems) are mostly free-form, where moves give the DM a pre-made mini system that's designed to includes risks and rewards in an almost board game like way, yet be abstract/vague enough in terms of theming/fluff that generally the DM can fill in the blanks and continue describing what happens from there.

Badly designed moves would be catastrophic, but well-designed moves really help keep things interesting while moving the action along.

Sometimes people grow out of thinking their free form poetry is profound and come to understand form.

>Serious role-playing isn't made for one-offs anyways
>Serious stories can't be finished in one book.
>Serious shows can't be finished in one series.
>Serious movies can't be finished without sequels.

What I like most about these games is the relative simplicity coupled with the sheer range of zany shit you can do when you focus your mechanics to a specific premise.

Most big systems have this... simulationist bent, I guess? I don't like using Forge language, but the idea is they're trying to please everyone and make their game useful for running a larger number of premises than they probably should.

>Most big systems have this... simulationist bent, I guess? I don't like using Forge language, but the idea is they're trying to please everyone and make their game useful for running a larger number of premises than they probably should.
Absolutely this. The best thing about PBTA games is they're for a specific thing and there's enough of them that whatever you want to do is probably done already.

I don't understand what the fuck are you about. This list is like "what can you do in tabletop rpg" except it's less than 1% of possibilities and in completely random order. What's the purpose of this shit?

Read then The ones in the pictures are GM moves. Player moves are different.

It's for dumb people who can't make RP naturally happen so they look at lists and "make moves".

t. unimaginative rollplayer

See:

>thinks shitposting is roleplaying trolling

What you're saying is complete horseshit, but you're right insofar that DW's approach resulted in much less rollplaying and much more focus on describing what we're doing and what's happening.
The way the moves are implemented in DW makes action descriptions much more potent in terms of how they affect what happens. They affect whether a move triggers at all, how often it triggers, and the circumstances it might trigger in (and the effects interact often very directly with the specific circumstances of a situation.)

Before we played DW, we saw this very strong distinction between fluff/descriptions and game mechanics, but since DW weaves the two together so tightly, here was suddenly this feeling that how we chose to do things differently mattered - beyond just, do i use my X skill or my Y skill.
There was such a huge wealth of difference from one approach to another in DW compared to what we'd been playing previously; even oWoD which is ostensibly "roleplay over rollplay".

I probably sound like a huge fanboy, but it's mostly because your criticism is such total dogshit, and obviously comes from a place of never having actually played the game, or even witnessed it enough to gain any understanding of it.

We don't play DW anymore, but that's mainly due to other things. We're not fans of it having no initiative order or action economy, for example, or the fact that the game is capped at level 10, or the XP-on-a-miss that in theory necessitates spawning ogres if you're doing research in peace and quiet, or the shackling of the DM to particular moves.

I've also got other criticisms. Incidentally, the game is really obtuse when it comes to explaining how everything fits together, and fails completely at teaching you how to DM it. So it's not exactly a surprise you're up shit creek without a paddle when trying to attack it "from the outside".

When we were trying to figure out how to DM it (playing it is piss easy as long as you don't sperg out or expect D&D rules, but DMing it is almost insurmountably stupidly hard because you kind of have to actually "get it" to DM it properly), and we ended up working together as a group in our free time, trying figure out how it actually worked in-depth. It took us two weeks "studying it" by watching vids, reading articles (e.g. 16 HP dragon et. al.), reading the guidebook thingy, reading and re-reading the rulebook, reading stackexchange threads, etc.
I'm sure it comes easier to a lot of people, but it was seriously an ordeal for us to get there.

It's almost like being indoctrinated into the world's laziest cult; you need to learn how to think in a very particular way.

In the end, it wasn't the game rules or the guidebook that really made it click for me, it was the Oldschool Primer. Which in itself is kind of a mental exercise to understand.

I was wondering when someone would make this joke

I was really into Dungeon World for a while for short campaigns and oneshots, but my experience running two almost year-long campaigns for my home group and main online group's highlighted some really clumsy aspects of the system that I'm not a big fan of. I've found that I really like the core PBtA mechanics, but the unique things that DW does almost universally seem to be its weakest points.

Apocalypse World is not built for traditional hit points. Almost every last PBtA game has a harm clock and a "take-harm" move to deal with damage, and entire sequences of combat are resolved in a couple of rolls at most. The lack of a proper turn order in most other Apocalypse World games is fine because combat can be treated in broad strokes, but Dungeon World turns it into a blow-by-blow series of single actions and exchanges that makes the lack of anything resembling an action economy regrettable.

Rewarding XP on a failed roll was an awful design choice, too. In Apocalypse World or The Sprawl, I can justify occasionally making a soft move on a 6- instead of a hard move if the scene calls for it, but it really starts to feel like the pressure is on to make your moves hard on a miss since its always tied directly to character advancement. I get that its supposed to encourage players to use their lesser stats, but the risk of a hard move on failure usually just makes players more likely to try to justify always using their 3+ stat at higher levels.

Masks and The Sprawl both seem like much more eloquent implementations of the system, in practice.

These are people who have never played anything but D20 variations and D20 homebrews before, it is no wonder they think it is revolutionary.

Vaguely on-topic, is there a pbta game about mecha? I know there's that one stupid Vincent Baker game, but I was wondering if there was anything a bit less specific.
I know, it's not really on-topic, but I didn't want to kill a thread for my question, and this is the first pbta thread I've seen in a while.

I don't think there is one, sadly. Here's what I could find: web.archive.org/web/20150108153838/http://leftoblique.net/wp/2013/08/12/three-small-aw-hacks/#more-590

This is specifically for playing something like the first half of Gurren Lagann, as it says, since it retains a lot of the apocalypse world flavor. I'd definitely play this, to be honest.

consult the big list
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1whsN3C5e31CZfo8hqlJbiKTPBX9kkCDSEG_An9FlP5s/edit#gid=0

There's Hearts of Steel or Souls of Steel or whatever it's called, not finished but enough to play.

>The 16 hit point dragon

Ah I am glad you brought that up. Yeah, any DM can load up on the bullshit to make anything challenging. This isn't a new concept, and just because LaTorra is giggling and wanking himself thinking he invented Tucker's Kobolds, doesn't mean he is at all clever.

>They do negligible damage (yay 4 armor) for those that DO anything, and realize that the only person who has a shot at killing this is the armor-penetrating wizard spells.

I will say the 4 Armor is what gives the dragon its edge. Also lol @ the wizard being the only one who can be effective, looks like caster supremacy stayed with Dungeon World no matter how much it pretends it wants to be different from D&D.

>What ensues is horrific. One fighter takes up defensive position, when the dragon strikes it doesn’t just do 1d10+5 damage, it rips off his arm (messy remember?) and shreds mail like tissue paper. It does breath weapon attacks that cause ALL of them to defy danger or burn.

So the party acted stupidly and lined up in such a way that the dragon could attack all of them at once. And the DM just randomly decides a character loses an arm because it has the shotgun quality from AW. Alright, fair enough.

>The Dragon had 16 hit points. The party did 9 to it before they left.

So it was almost fucking dead. Did you alert your players to that, Sage, or did you just bullshit it. Character can't Discern Reality or whatever to see if the dragon is a bit hurt? Did your player even ask that question? If he didn't, he's an idiot and it's his fault. A group can lose to inferior foes if they are retarded. If he did, and you lied, then it is on you for giving deceptive information. What, you're saying the dragon didn't look hurt at all?

>The moral of the story is it’s not about the hitpoints.

Except it is. You outright lied about the thing being almost dead. And the party ran away like pussies when they probably would have won. You proved nothing.

Good points, although for what it's worth that was Sage quoting somebody else's story on a forum.

I'd imagine the group knew the dragon was fairly hurt since they were dealing damage to it, the story just paraphrases that part.

It's a good story, don't get me wrong. It shows how a DM should portray a monster to be frightening. The problem is that he takes that story and shows it up as "oh look! look how good my system is!" when in reality the dragon has the same abilities as a D&D dragon, except the Messy thing, which just says it can shred armor, it says nothing about ripping character's arms off, that's just the DM going to max dick potential to make up for his dragon being so pathetically weak. And the funny part is, it was almost dead. I honestly find the story kind of hard to believe. Acting like the dragon was triumphant there when in reality it was licking its own wounds, is just deceptive. But yeah it was probably paraphrased. And I shouldn't give Sage shit for using this article to shill Dungeon World, because he actually doesn't, it's the rabid fans who are really about 75% of why the game is so annoying. I remember deciding to check out the Reddit RPG board a while back because I was curious if it was anything like Veeky Forums, and it seemed like every other thread was shilling Dungeon World, it was fucking ridiculous. So, those are my biases laid out plain to see.

I didn't run into the same problem with, but I agree that the worst parts of the game are where it tries to bring in stuff like HP and D&D stats. HP especially doesn't belong in pbta.

>Or you could him The Brick, The Tank, The Bruiser, The Tough Guy, etc. all of which are more relevant to the genre and don't carry cuckoldry subtext.
Others have already made fun of you for this, but if your mind immediately goes to "cuck" when you see "bull", it probably reflects more poorly on you than any game designer.

>Then they're just like about 60% of teenage heroes from comics? Or, wait, are they cuck metaphors too? I don't know how deep the crazy goes here.
Everything is a cuck metaphor if you look hard enough.

>another retard can't tell the difference between "bull" and "The Bull"

>just bullshit for hipsters to feel superior to other RPG players
>D. Vincent Baker is a cool guy

Vince Baker is one of the arch-hipsters of gaming in the same ranks as Jared Sorensen, Emily Care Boss, and Jason Morningstar, but not quite Ron Edwards. The last game lumpley released that didn't reek of pretension was Cheap n Cheesy RPG.

You are regurgitating the same pap all DW detractors present in their opening salvo. The core reason for hating on DW is that is a perfect example of the genre of D&D co-opting an indie idea, and indie darling really, and having enough success to present evidence that people like to play D&D. The idea that your narrative driven system can serve as an action game undermines the belief that narrative driven games are purer, more enlightened gaming.

The PbtA system has inspired far worse shit than DW and it would serve you better to have a broad understanding of a topic rather than a list of talking points.