What makes for a good game?

[Leress]

As an aside:

Rules-lite games aren't hated here, just ones that seem to have very poor mechanics.

[silva]

From what I've read here, a good game is "a game I designed" (or "a game Frank designed" for the members of the Church of Frank).

it's basically about many posters in the Den hating on anything that gives the DM power.

Bingo.

[deaddmwalking]

[quote="Cyberzombie]For Apocalypse World, it's basically about many posters in the Den hating on anything that gives the DM power.[/quote]

I don't think this is true. Essentially, the GM already has all the power. Democratizing the play experience isn't necessarily a bad thing. A GM can 'be a dick' in any system, but some systems seem to actively encourage it.

For example, it is absolutely possible for a GM to tell a 3.x character that 'a worm buried into your chest during the night and explodes out of your chest in the morning - you're dead'. But in order to do that, the player can justifiably point out to a number of 'rules' that may have been ignored. For example, checks to determine if they noticed the worm, or saving throws to resist the worm, or saving throws against instand death if it bursts out.

Putting 'dickish behavior' squarely outside of the rules isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean the GM can't do those things, but it does mean that it is much more obvious when the GM is ignoring the rules - and in the case that it makes the game less enjoyable for the players, it creates a basis for discussion.

In addition, as a GM, I prefer to have good 'guidelines' to assist me with adjudication. I could solve a number of physics equations at the game table if it matters (with great difficulty), but that isn't going to be fun for me or for my players. I want to know what is 'reasonable' for the setting before we even begin - and I want my players to know - so we don't have to address major differences in expectation.

If you've seen a character jump out of a 15-story building and survive hitting the water in a movie, maybe you think that is reasonable for the game. But maybe I think that should be fatal in almost all situations. Rules help clarify expectations.

[Aryxbez]

From what I've read here, a good game is "a game I designed" (or "a game Frank designed" for the members of the Church of Frank).

Kinda insulting to the Den, considering Koumei & Ancient History have both said past works of theirs weren't necessarily good, or explicitly crap (certain year cut-off, and old Shadowrun stuff like Mary-sue elves respectively).

We don't worship Frank, and you probably should cease that ignorant mindset. The reason he gets praise, is he has an exceptional ability to produce content, high-level of mathematics, good critical thinking skills and ability to be introspective with an RPG product that majority of RPG fans are even capable of one. He has established himself as consistently providing good ideas, giving accurate and useful analysis on RPG's that would've bettered them when implemented. So off-hand, he is trusted to know what he speaks by his repute, but DOES NOT mean he's "always right" (been least couple times I found it silly/odd what he advocated), everyone agrees with him now & forever, or whatever other childish notion you have with that. Personally, I don't have bias to one person, but to the (Good) Ideas to those persons. If they have good ideas that are conductive to good design, then they are one to take a listen to, and especially implement if it's a genuinely good idea that would work as intended.

Anyway, back to the original question, it doesn't help that lot of RPG fans are irrational, and ignorant by the majority, and most designers are "RPG fans". Still sizable sum in my area who still hold ignorance in D&D that's inexcusable when the information is a Decade old information at this point. Lot of them don't really "read" the game, let alone introspective enough to look at how rules overall interact with the game. Due to their irrationality and misunderstanding of consistency with REALIZARM, we get DM's who try to constantly Nerf characters that aren't a mystical power source.

Nowadays, what qualifies as "good" is "new & pretty pictures" for most people (even if the games rules are on outdated thinking). I think a modern RPG these days seems to need a dramatically lower page count, pricing?, and rules/ideas that have learned from decades of RPG design. Also need to encourage Optimizer-forum people as their playtesters by welcoming stress-testing, and not Pathfinder BS "How'd it make you FEEL".

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

I always want to see rules that help making DMing easier, Encounter system, NPC/monster-creation system, game laying out the RNG (seen little that really show you expected values for PC's, what in-game implications/value the numbers have), Cool swag for its genre willing to go beyond just number inflation, and ones that make Warrior-types far more awesome, and encouraged to do cool things. I also like rules that willing to go more into action-hero, than focus on the REALIZARM.

I suppose my desire to have different RPG experiences, see how games can be improved, and a more wacky premise what entice me to purchase. I do like to "get into" settings, so if the game is right, I can be into such flavor, so long as it's not serving to full-on limit the fun the player could have, or otherwise have GM oppress "player agency" (within reason of the world can make sense, lv4 PC's can't take over a kingdom w/10th lv Bad@$$'s). Oh, most importantly for setting, it gives reason for Players to want to interact with the world, and other locales of the setting.

[fbmf]

Kinda insulting to the Den, considering Koumei & Ancient History have both said past works of theirs weren't necessarily good, or explicitly crap

So have Frank and K, even regarding Tome material.

Game On,
fbmf

[Cyberzombie]

I don't think this is true. Essentially, the GM already has all the power. Democratizing the play experience isn't necessarily a bad thing. A GM can 'be a dick' in any system, but some systems seem to actively encourage it.

I don't know of any systems that actively encourage you to be a dick. I mean it was a claim made against AW, but watching the posted live session of AW, I didn't see any of that at all. I didn't get any sense that the DM was being overly adversarial or that AW played much different from any other rules lite RPG.

For example, it is absolutely possible for a GM to tell a 3.x character that 'a worm buried into your chest during the night and explodes out of your chest in the morning - you're dead'. But in order to do that, the player can justifiably point out to a number of 'rules' that may have been ignored.

I just don't see the point. The thing is that if the GM wants you dead, it's like the Final Destination movies. You may avert death once, you may avert it twice, but it keeps circling around to get you. And eventually it finds a way.

Putting 'dickish behavior' squarely outside of the rules isn't a bad thing.

Waste of time. If the DM wants you dead, and he's just going to come up with a way to game the system and kill you. All that it involves now is the DM gaming the system and saying some high-level NPC uses a Gate spell on you followed by trap the soul. Or maybe he takes the burrowing worm and applies a bunch of buff spells and templates to make it undetectable. You're still just as dead, only now the cheap death is legal. Do you feel any better?

No amount of rules is going to stop your DM from being a dick. And the end result, whether you're playing AW or a game with 10,000 rules and regulations is that you're going to leave the game. In my opinion, the game is better off trying to teach good DMing practices rather than encouraging players to bog down the game and constantly break immersion with a bunch of rules lawyer arguments that at best delay the inevitable. In my opinion, that only encourages DMs to be more adversarial style. Asshole DMs don't stop being assholes, they just learn to exploit the system to beat the players.

What does happen though is that good DMs feel so burdened by the system, it restricts what they can do. For instance, if NPC is creation is a taxcode, then it means you're being forced to railroad, since you can't have dynamic NPC encounters. By making things complex, you may have taken a DM who was capable of running a good freeform sandbox style and forced him into running something linear.

I just don't feel good things happen from straitjacketing the DM.

In addition, as a GM, I prefer to have good 'guidelines' to assist me with adjudication. I could solve a number of physics equations at the game table if it matters (with great difficulty), but that isn't going to be fun for me or for my players. I want to know what is 'reasonable' for the setting before we even begin - and I want my players to know - so we don't have to address major differences in expectation.

If you've seen a character jump out of a 15-story building and survive hitting the water in a movie, maybe you think that is reasonable for the game. But maybe I think that should be fatal in almost all situations. Rules help clarify expectations.

This is all fine. Setting baselines and guidelines are fine. Rules should work with and help the GM, not oppose him. Most GMs don't want to do a bunch of complex math, so it's a good thing to do things like give a CR on a monster to let him know he's likely creating a killer encounter.

[Aryxbez]

For Apocalypse World, it's basically about many posters in the Den hating on anything that gives the DM power. The biggest complaints about AW aren't about the poor mechanics, like being unable to set a difficulty for a given task, but rather that it gives the DM too much control over the game. Many people here believe the DM will inherently turn sadist and be an obstacle to fun, so the primary goal of a rules set is to straitjacket the DM until he's no more than a computer game engine mindlessly following the rules.

I know you emotionally freak out to anyone who cusses, or insults your ideas when responding to you, however you know when someone you know says something wrong, you correct them, but then continue to keep saying the same thing despite you/others multiple instruction of correcting them? (assuming its correct for the semantics of this example) Well basically here, it seems you're continually making an ignorant assumption, one that's rather idiotic on your part. I'm going to assume it's given the recent thread on over about it, that has you reached this conclusion.

The Den doesn't hate DMing doing anything, but it is worth hating elements of game(s) that will bring out occurrences of Bad DMing (whether its accidental, or otherwise). Do want to encourage good design to help most DM's out there, so they'll bring about a fun experience, and least be made "decent" at the role by it (this excludes gygaxian-sadists, and super DM's obviously). Laying out what the result of an action should be on the DM, will cause unreliable experiences, and by iterative probability, it'll be more bad than good.

The Den doesn't want the DM to be a computer program (especially since go on to saying how crappy computers are at what RPG does), but neither do want the entire game people paid FRAGGIN MONEY FOR, to be discarded, or inferior to just doing MTP. If game going to feature minigames with rules, having those minigames with consistent functions conductive to providing a fun experience on its own merit, than relying on a DM as a crutch is a good thing (who,mind will be of mutable quality, generally assuming lower-mid end, opposed to "sadist or super DM" territory). Since you know, we play games to have fun, and games have rules, but the DM should NEVER be discarded, and I don't recall any who've said it should (aside from threads specifically about that theoretical, or how a book be better than Mearls DMing).

[Ice9]

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

I want a bunch of stuff which is contradictory, unfortunately enough:
* Lots of widgets to combine, but runs at high speed.
* Supports crazy MtG style combos, but doesn't become unplayably broken.
* Semi-concrete rules that mechanically represent differences, but allows Mage-style improvising of effects.

In practice, I'll settle for fast enough I don't feel like falling asleep, enough widgets to support at least some combos, enough ability to improvise that it's worthwhile for it to be a TTRPG, not so broken it necessarily falls apart, and not too many things that annoy me.

[Cyberzombie]

I know you emotionally freak out to anyone who cusses, or insults your ideas when responding to you, however you know when someone you know says something wrong, you correct them, but then continue to keep saying the same thing despite you/others multiple instruction of correcting them?

I don't freak out at all. It's just annoying and tiresome to wade through cookie cutter 3rd grade insults from people I know wouldn't have the balls to say the same thing to someone in real-life. Internet tough guys are just lame. I have no problem with people insulting actual ideas, but all too often criticisms tend to be "You're a stupid head!" instead of "Your idea is dumb." And given many posters don't even come up with original insults, but instead reuse the same insults they learned as children, I'd prefer to live without that. If the goal is to insult people... at least come up with something more interesting than the stock retard/idiot/moron insults. It doesn't say much for the intelligence of the insulter if that's the best they can come up with.

The Den doesn't want the DM to be a computer program (especially since go on to saying how crappy computers are at what RPG does), but neither do want the entire game people paid FRAGGIN MONEY FOR, to be discarded, or inferior to just doing MTP.

I may have used a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but I feel that it's still more or less accurate. Given that I find that posters here tend to come down harder on games that utilize MTP than they do games with outright broken written rules. I mean, AW takes way more flak for "quantum bears" than Shadowrun does for having a bunch of slow bad rules, like never having a version of the Matrix that actually worked (and this is after 5 editions!).

It really does seem that a lot of posters here would prefer to put the power in the hands of a bad rule rather than a good GM. That's my observation anyway.

[silva]

I may have used a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but I feel that it's still more or less accurate. Given that I find that posters here tend to come down harder on games that utilize MTP than they do games with outright broken written rules. I mean, AW takes way more flak for "quantum bears" than Shadowrun does for having a bunch of slow bad rules, like never having a version of the Matrix that actually worked (and this is after 5 editions!)... It really does seem that a lot of posters here would prefer to put the power in the hands of a bad rule rather than a good GM.

This.

If there was a rank of the crappiest games ever designed, Shadowrun would be a serious contender to occupy last position.

[OgreBattle]

I want a bunch of stuff which is contradictory, unfortunately enough:
* Lots of widgets to combine, but runs at high speed.
* Supports crazy MtG style combos, but doesn't become unplayably broken.
* Semi-concrete rules that mechanically represent differences, but allows Mage-style improvising of effects.

That's what Standard format MtG feels like to me.

[silva]

I want a bunch of stuff which is contradictory, unfortunately enough:
* Lots of widgets to combine, but runs at high speed.
* Supports crazy MtG style combos, but doesn't become unplayably broken.
* Semi-concrete rules that mechanically represent differences, but allows Mage-style improvising of effects.

Do you know Netrunner ? Its awesome. Its from the same author of MtG.

[John Magnum]

I mean, AW takes way more flak for "quantum bears" than Shadowrun does for having a bunch of slow bad rules, like never having a version of the Matrix that actually worked (and this is after 5 editions!).

Shadowrun has taken a shitload of flak on the Den for having terrible Matrix rules. The difference is that we don't have any posters who make it their full-time job to insist that ACTUALLY Shadowrun's Matrix rules are the best ever and anyone who doesn't like them just doesn't know how to have fun.

[Stinktopus]

Rules don't matter because the MC can put a bomb under the table and kill everyone in real life so you might as well drop actual cash on books that spend 300 pages telling you to make shit up.

That's a compelling argument right there.

Anyway... What makes a good game? Well, brace yourself for a bit of subjectivity...

1. Does it do what it says on the tin? Savage Worlds promises ERMAGERD CINEMATICNESS, which sorta doesn't mean anything to begin with, and the game includes a dice mechanic so swingy that no particular range of results can be anticipated. Meanwhile, GURPS and D&D 3.X offer adventures in a world where you can be Fighting Man or Sauron. That's pretty much what you get.

2. Are the rules clear? AD&D had people rolling on the floor, stabbing each other in arguments over backstabs and illusions. D&D 3.X has a LOT of rules, so you may have to look things up, but the rules are pretty clearly explained and things are easy to find.

3. Did I need to pay money for this? I swear to fucking God that I will kickstart a "Ranchers vs. Native Americans" ultra-rules-light RPG that will spend 200 pages telling people to go outside and play Cowboys & Indians. People like Silva will gush about how it's fucking genius. Most incarnations of D&D, GURPS, HERO, etc. all offer you an actual game that does stuff. If the answer is "roll 2d6 and make shit up," then people shouldn't be giving you money. Anus World should be a blog post, not merchandise.

Certain matters are too vague or subjective to be anything other than marketing speak and/or niche appeal.

Setting: Setting is a really subjective matter. It doesn't matter if you make the most epically awesome cyberpunk game in the universe if someone thinks that cyberpunk is a dead relic of the 90's. Forgotten Realms is widely loved and hated.

"Is it fun?": This is just a stupid question. If I get together with the cast of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" to do improvisational roleplaying, then I'm going to have a blast. Many games, Anus World being a prime example, try too hard to be hip and edgy, like you can bake "fun" into the recipe by having dumb shit abilities called "Insano Like Drano." Tales From the Floating Vagabond is another contender for this category. Having your melee combat ability be called "Swinging sharp and pointy things about with great panache" is not more "fun" than calling the skill "melee" after the first time you use it.

[fbmf]

Given that I find that posters here tend to come down harder on games that utilize MTP than they do games with outright broken written rules.

If I paid money for the game, I would rather have an attempt at a rule than be told to do the game designing myself. Because I paid for a designed game, not the designer's permission to make content for their existing game.

The thing is that if the GM wants you dead, it's like the Final Destination movies. You may avert death once, you may avert it twice, but it keeps circling around to get you. And eventually it finds a way.

(DISCLAIMER: Unlike most of you, the core of my gaming group has been the same people for 12-20 years. We generally trust each other to play it straight and roll out in front of each other. I do not do pick up games with strangers. I have before, and it really isn't my thing. I haven't played in an RPGA-type event since 1999. I had a pretty steady GENCON streak from 2004-2011, but I only went to attend seminars, hit up the exhibitor's hall, and meet up with my friends and drink.)

Suppose the MC doesn't want me dead. Suppose the dice just come up bad for me and I'm screwed?

When that happens in my game (both as PC and MC), we audit the sequence of events leading up to it to make sure everything was done according to Hoyle and that the PC was killed fair and square, with the dice as the arbitrator.

Game On,
fbmf

[DSMatticus]

For Apocalypse World, it's basically about many posters in the Den hating on anything that gives the DM power. The biggest complaints about AW aren't about the poor mechanics, like being unable to set a difficulty for a given task, but rather that it gives the DM too much control over the game. Many people here believe the DM will inherently turn sadist and be an obstacle to fun, so the primary goal of a rules set is to straitjacket the DM until he's no more than a computer game engine mindlessly following the rules.

You are being an idiot again. The biggest complaint about Apocalypse World (no, silva, this isn't an invitation to discuss it with us; there are other threads for that, shut up) is that it is a game about loose, improv storytelling that doesn't give players enough (or any) authority over the narrative - because of its super-fluid DM-arbitrated results and quantum fuckery, the DM decides virtually everything based on whatever the fuck he feels like. If the DM is a bad DM and ignores your prompts and does whatever he wants, then he is totally in line with AW rules and there's nothing you'll be able to grab out of the book to call bullshit (inb4 silva "don't be a dick"). If the DM is a good DM and respects the spirit of your prompts, then he could do that just as well without AW and your group paid real money for a placebo.

TTRPG's are cooperative. If the rules don't give the players some reasonable guarantee of input, they're not very good. And when you call "hey, players should get to tell part of the story too" straitjacketing the DM, you come off sounding incredibly dickish. Yes, technically, every ounce of authority shifted from DM to players is a limitation on the DM - that doesn't make it bad. Players are supposed to be able to influence the narrative alongside the DM.

If the DM wants you dead, and he's just going to come up with a way to game the system and kill you. All that it involves now is the DM gaming the system and saying some high-level NPC uses a Gate spell on you followed by trap the soul. Or maybe he takes the burrowing worm and applies a bunch of buff spells and templates to make it undetectable. You're still just as dead, only now the cheap death is legal.

If you drop a CR 20 balor on your level 1 party and expect them to fight it because "my story!", everyone at the table knows you're being a dick. The book even tells you you're being a dick (not in those exact words, but whatever). If you drop completely unbeatable opposition on an AW party because "my story!", you are following an example in the goddamn book.

In the first example, if someone does that I can flip open the Dungeon Master's Guide and tell him what he's doing wrong and why it's bad for the game. In the second example, I... just have to call him a dick and tell him he's not being fun, I guess? Now, neither one of those is going to physically prevent him from being a dick. But so fucking what? The number of DM's who are actual assholes is pretty fucking small compared to the number of DM's who are just following bad advice. 9/10ths of the time you're playing with friends and when there are problems you can just talk to them.

But you are seriously arguing that there's no difference between the DM doing X even though the book says not to and the DM doing X because the book says to. If that's your argument, you are arguing that systems don't matter at all - the DM will do a thing, and the rules won't change whether or not he does that thing, and so the rules don't matter. You are a complete and total rules-nihilist, so why even bother evaluating rules at all?

[Drolyt]

I don't think the problem with AW is dick MCs. If your MC is a dick, then there are no solutions to be found in any RPG, you either convince him to stop being a dick or get a new MC. The problem with AW is that it gives the MC all narrative control. No choice your character ever makes ever has a defined effect on the game world, the MC has to make something up. Even if you have a great MC and he tells great stories, the fact is he's doing it all by himself without your help, which kind of defeats the purpose of cooperative storytelling. Moving on...

I think the most important thing to remember when determining the quality of a game is not whether it is fun, but whether it is more fun then having a magical tea party. When you sit down with a few friends with some beer and pizza and spend the night pretending to be elven wizards/shining knights/hard boiled detective vampires/mutant superheroes/starfighter pilots/undead alien pop stars/whatever it is honestly pretty hard to screw that up. The question is whether the rules of the game make that more fun or less fun and to what degree.

[Ice9]

That's what Standard format MtG feels like to me.

Do you know Netrunner ? Its awesome. Its from the same author of MtG.

Hah; yeah, I guess my list does actually describe a CCG, with the exception of the last point - being able to improvise stuff outside the box; that one's pretty important though. If there was an RPG that did that and still used MtG-like mechanics, I think I'd enjoy it.

[angelfromanotherpin]

FWIW, M:TG mechanics often interact in counterintuitive and unexpected ways, in a manner that totally feels like operating outside the box.

[Cyberzombie]

You are being an idiot again.

*sigh*

Here we go leading off with the 3rd grade insults. I can see why some people here have trouble with RPGs when their imagination doesn't even let you think up anything more than stock insults.

If the DM is a bad DM and ignores your prompts and does whatever he wants, then he is totally in line with AW rules and there's nothing you'll be able to grab out of the book to call bullshit (inb4 silva "don't be a dick").

Who cares? You're a human being, not a robot. If you're not having fun, you don't need some excuse out of the book that tells you that you can leave the game. You just go and find a new DM. You're not taking him to RPG court and trying to get the immortal spirit of Judge Gygax to find him guilty of 5 counts of Negligent DMing under article 17, sub-paragraph B.

If you don't like the game, leave. You don't need a rulebook to tell you that.

TTRPG's are cooperative. If the rules don't give the players some reasonable guarantee of input, they're not very good. And when you call "hey, players should get to tell part of the story too" straitjacketing the DM, you come off sounding incredibly dickish. Yes, technically, every ounce of authority shifted from DM to players is a limitation on the DM - that doesn't make it bad. Players are supposed to be able to influence the narrative alongside the DM.

The degree at which they can influence the narrative varies by what the game is trying to achieve. Trying to be heavily into letting PCs share the storytelling and you lose immersion. If PCs are spending their time deciding what treasure they find, or what monster is behind the door, that's all time they're not roleplaying their character and are instead playing scenewriter. The other style is of course where players try to immerse themselves in their characters and their character's decisions. Sir Theunor the Bold doesn't have the ability to decide if there's a balor or a fair maiden behind the next dungeon door, so neither does the player.

AW tends to focus more heavily on the characters themselves and less on putting the player in the role of storyteller. I don't really feel that's all that bad because almost all traditional RPGs are like that.

In the first example, if someone does that I can flip open the Dungeon Master's Guide and tell him what he's doing wrong and why it's bad for the game. In the second example, I... just have to call him a dick and tell him he's not being fun, I guess?

Exactly. This is a game that we play for fun. Saying that people aren't having fun is all that matters. The most important objective of DMing is to make the game fun for the people playing it. Your responsibility is not to the rulebook, the simulation, or to your story, but rather to the players entertainment. A DM that fails to make the game fun is the most direct of failures. I don't care how well he followed the rules or how detailed his story was. If he doesn't run a fun game, then he's not the DM for me.

[ishy]

If your MC is a dick, then there are no solutions to be found in any RPG, you either convince him to stop being a dick or get a new MC.

If your RPG tells you that you're a dick (and your players know that too) if you throw Balors at a lvl 12 party, will that mean:
A) just as many DMs will throw Balors at the party, no matter if that text is there or not.
B) more DMs will throw Balors at lvl 12 parties
C) less DMs will throw Balors at lvl 12 parties
D) Giant frog.

[Koumei]

I mean, AW takes way more flak for "quantum bears" than Shadowrun does for having a bunch of slow bad rules, like never having a version of the Matrix that actually worked (and this is after 5 editions!).

Frank has actually said he'd like to petition the UN to ban those writers from ever writing hacking rules again, and I'm not sure that's hyperbole. Trust me, while there is a lot of love for the previous edition of Shadowrun here (and I'm sure plenty of smaller problems exist that are overlooked), that actual bit gets all the flak it deserves.

[DSMatticus]

Here we go leading off with the 3rd grade insults. I can see why some people here have trouble with RPGs when their imagination doesn't even let you think up anything more than stock insults.

I don't see how idiot is a third grade insult. Turning 10 isn't a magical cure for stupidity. Case and point: you're still an idiot, so there's that.

If you're not having fun, you don't need some excuse out of the book that tells you that you can leave the game. You just go and find a new DM. You're not taking him to RPG court and trying to get the immortal spirit of Judge Gygax to find him guilty of 5 counts of Negligent DMing under article 17, sub-paragraph B.

Believe it or not, the goal isn't to justify storming off and then do so. If your go-to for all conflict resolution is to take your ball and go home, you are a manchild. Fuck, most people play with their friends. The extent to which your advice is terrible is truly staggering. When someone is doing something that detracts from or completely ruins the experience, the goal is to get them to stop. When the game you are playing validates what they are doing, getting them to stop is harder, because they are playing the fucking game correctly. When the game you are playing invalidates what they are doing, getting them to stop is easier, because you can point to the actual page of the book that agrees with you.

You are twisting "it is better to have the book agree with you in an explicit and substantive manner that your DM shouldn't do X," with "the book will leap off the table and beat your DM in the face for doing X." And then arguing that because the latter is clearly ridiculous and will never happen, nobody should care whether or not the former happens. It's fucking ridiculous.

The degree at which they can influence the narrative varies by what the game is trying to achieve. Trying to be heavily into letting PCs share the storytelling and you lose immersion. If PCs are spending their time deciding what treasure they find, or what monster is behind the door, that's all time they're not roleplaying their character and are instead playing scenewriter. The other style is of course where players try to immerse themselves in their characters and their character's decisions. Sir Theunor the Bold doesn't have the ability to decide if there's a balor or a fair maiden behind the next dungeon door, so neither does the player.

AW tends to focus more heavily on the characters themselves and less on putting the player in the role of storyteller. I don't really feel that's all that bad because almost all traditional RPGs are like that.

This is an embarrassing misunderstanding on your part. You are implying that playing your character doesn't have an influence on the narrative, but that's completely ridiculous. Deciding whether or not to hide while the dragon attacks the castle and devours the princess or intervene and rescue her is a decision that will greatly influence the narrative. But if your DM decides that no matter what you do the princess gets eaten and the dragon autodetects you and selects you for its next meal, then your decision is completely meaningless and has no effect on the narrative whatsoever.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Who cares? You're a human being, not a robot. If you're not having fun, you don't need some excuse out of the book that tells you that you can leave the game. You just go and find a new DM. You're not taking him to RPG court and trying to get the immortal spirit of Judge Gygax to find him guilty of 5 counts of Negligent DMing under article 17, sub-paragraph B.

If you don't like the game, leave. You don't need a rulebook to tell you that.

"Don't play with a dick GM" assumes that only players want the system to reign in the GM.

The truth is, though, that not every GM WANTS to be a dick, but their rules don't provide an effective mechanical system to determine whether they should give their players a million dollars, or drop a million balors on them. GMs don't come from GM school knowing everything they ever need to know. All they have is the mechanics and advice contained in the product they paid money for.

Take SimCity. SimCity can be awful fun to mess around with for 10 minutes with an infinite money cheat code. But that isn't the meat and potatoes of the game. The point is to build something cool out of a budget. When you do that, you can say, here is something planned, here is something with an infrastructure.

RPGs need to do that too. They should leave a GM feeling as though the content they built was robust and malleable by player ingenuity, that it was built fairly around the capabilities of the party. You need more than your "best judgment" when determining whether to give your players a free pile of treasure, or a free pile of balors. My judgment is free. Solid mechanics are not.

[silva]

If the DM is a bad DM and ignores your prompts and does whatever he wants, then he is totally in line with AW rules

Man, this fallacy was busted half a dozen pages ago by half a dozen citations and play examples from the book. If you want to criticize the game, at least attack it where it is factually vulnerable - the low differentiation between relative abilities and clunky PvP.

But if your DM decides that no matter what you do the princess gets eaten and the dragon autodetects you and selects you for its next meal, then your decision is completely meaningless and has no effect on the narrative whatsoever.

And no game in the world advices GMs to actually do this kind of stupidity. Not even the worst game ever designed (Shadowrun) nor the most retarded one (FATAL). Your point is ?