The Gaming Den

Ice, as with anything else in the book, the author examples tend to be worst then your own. In fact, I cant see any problem at all with that advice, nor how is it related to quantum bears. Here goes a couple better examples (courtesy of this guy, again):

"So we have good hold of the cargo ship now. The crew all accounted for and tied up on deck?"
"Yep. The crew is bound helpless at the feet of your gang of murderous savages. You're leaving them alone while you go check out the bridge, right?"
"Ah... fuck."

"I'm looking over the cargo manifest. How much loot can we get off this boat?"
"Here's the list. You can see where everything is meant to be delivered. There's barrels of clean water, boots, some luxe goods. Which settlement would you like to steal from first?"
"Dammit."

Schleiermacher wrote:The chucklefuck who wrote that has issues, and they go far beyond being a bad GM or designer.

Yeah, even if I like his games, I find the author obsession for this kind of imagery a bizarre thing.

Ice9 wrote:But, that is a really weird example to pick, because FATE is pretty far on the freeform axis itself

FATE is shared narrative, which is the polar opposite of storygaming. This is independent of freeforming or not.

Ice9 wrote:Yes, you can spend a Fate point to reject a compel. But is there any limit to how many such compels can be made,

Yes, it's called a bid, it's in the basic SRD. Also, depending on the FATE flavor, a hostile encounter will have a finite pool of fate points to be used against the PCs, and limits to how many fate points can be used in a single action may exist.

Ice9 wrote: or how bad a compel can be?

Yes it is, it's called -your character's aspects-. If an aspect doesn't exist (be PC', NPC', or scene), it can't be used against you. A GM can't just pull aspects out of his ass (you're thinking of Numenera, or *World).

I highly commend you to do your homework next time.

Dogbert wrote:I highly commend you to do your homework next time.

To be fair, he doesn't actually use any of the rules of AWorld when "playing" "it." So it only makes sense that his idea of the game FATE is "Whatever the hell I make up" and not what the actual rules say.

The version of FATE I've played was SotC. Now maybe it's made some kind of big improvements since then, but in that, the GM doesn't need to spend any kind of resource to make a compel against one of your aspects. They must offer a Fate Point if you accept, but if you refuse then you are paying the FP to them. So repeated compels you don't want to accept -> out of Fate Points -> forced to accept compel.

Edit: Actually ... I feel bad for dragging FATE into this now. The issues I've had with it have nothing to do with GM dickishness, and it seems unfair to imply that it encourages that. So:

Dogbert, you're being a dipshit. Not because you like FATE, but because you're claiming that:
1) The possibility of GM dickishness automatically leads to it and ruins the game for any purposes.
2) *World is much worse in this manner than other rules-light games.


Edit 2: On the subject of gaining some perspective, this thread is at 16 pages, well past the crap threshold. It's long stopped being any kind of debate, if it ever was one, and I'm not sure why I'm still posting on it. So - play or don't play what you want. I already know to take TGD advice with a grain of salt, and I guess that's about the extent of the moral here.

Previn wrote:

I'm starting to wonder if everyone who champions *world games has ever actually read the rules for the game.

I didn't read it, and I don't really defend it.


Anyway, I started MCing with AD&D2. I learned that the MC shouldn't be a dick using AD&D2. And literally every page of the AD&D2 DMG said that you should act as a dick.

So... yeah.

AW seems to have better rules than AD&D2, and as terrible MC advices as AD&D2. My friend and me had fun with AD&D2, and I objectively improved my MCing with it. So I don't think AW is as bad as you say.

Anyway, it doesn't make AW a *good* game. It doesn't seems good enough or bad enough for me to read it: I have other stuff to read. So my opinion will never be based on actual reading.

I didn't read it

Every single person who says that Apocalypse World is "good" or even not that bad needs to actually shut up and accept they are fucking wrong if they haven't actually read this piece of garbage.

See, every game has certain tasks it leaves to the MC, and certain rules for the MC, and certain advice for the MC. 2nd edition AD&D, for example, explicitly empowers the MC to line item change every part of the rules and setting at any time for any reason. And then it offers advice to the MC to suggest that they do that whenever they want on virtually every page of the rules. Sometimes multiple times per page, it's really pretty insane. Also bad.

But Apocalypse World isn't fucking like that. It has actual rules for what the MC can do and what they are supposed to do. It actually has rules for telling the MC how and when to fuck over the players. If you, as MC, are not being a dick waving asshole who trollfaces the players and forces them to confront dead children and surprise sex, you are playing it wrong. Because it has actual rules that actually tell you that you actually have to do that, and if you don't play that way you are fucking playing the game wrong. The book actually tells you that. Explicitly.

Apocalypse World wrote:There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these as rules. The whole rest of the game is built upon this.

This is not a case of the book giving out some really shitty GMing advice that you can and should ignore. Lots of games have mystifying, insulting, or just plain terrible advice for GMs. That's not unique or interesting. Apocalypse World is different, in that it has literal rules that the GM is required to behave as if they were following offensively terrible GMing advice.

If you play the game and the MC isn't behaving like a colossal cock and randomly taking away player agency and rubbing their nose in dead babies and surprise sex for the lulz, you are not actually playing Apocalypse World. Because, as the game says in so many words, The whole rest of the game is built upon this.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Every single person who says that Apocalypse World is "good" or even not that bad needs to actually shut up and accept they are fucking wrong if they haven't actually read this piece of garbage.
-Username17

Frank, you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. Cyberzombie essentially wrapped it up when he said that AW, when run by "actual people," was basically the same as any other rules-light. A rules-light RPG that actually works as intended is basically missing the point, because the rules are just a way of denying that you are free-form improv-ing/storytelling/playing make-believe.

The fact that the rules say "On a 7, you successfully pick the lock, but your family is raped by badgers" is a good thing because it gives the deviants running the game something to point at and say, "Look how reasonable my rulings are in comparison!"

Stinktopus wrote:A rules-light RPG that actually works as intended is basically missing the point, because the rules are just a way of denying that you are free-form improv-ing/storytelling/playing make-believe.

Nah, a rules-light RPG is supposed to give you a step up over playing Magical Tea Party. Even if it's something as simple as Munchausen's ability to break the main rule of improv and say "no, it happened like this" or even improv's rules on being additive instead of subtractive with your bit.

#Stnktopus, that was irony, right? Because you just argued that up is down, which is good for irony, but there's people have really been arguing that here too. So?