Posted this on SG, in a discussion about the “theory” behind Apocalypse World, and thought some folks might be interested. The question was explicitly about “when to roll dice,” which is kind of a side issue actually, because there are plenty of moves that don’t involve dice at all.
It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, probably, but it bears repeating. It’s easy to be distracted by the outer layers and miss what’s actually driving play down below. Most of the really successful AW hacks have internalized this at some level:
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The philosophy is: if you’re not making one of the limited number of moves available (all of which have explicit fictional triggers), then you don’t roll for it. But also, the AW system collapses down (in onion layers, as Vincent describes on Anyway) so that if you forget to roll for something, you’re missing out on a part of the game, but it’s no big deal; the game still functions.
The core of AW is a conversation between the various players about what happens (totally functional, by itself). Then the GM’s agendas, principles, say alwayses, and moves are layered on top of that (which creates a totally functional diceless system for play). Then the player’s stats and moves and gear and other stuff are layered on top of that (creating the full system). But there’s always the basic conversation and the diceless core functioning beneath the layer where dice are rolled.
It’s not a big problem if you don’t roll dice when you’re supposed to! The principles and other stuff will carry you through (though you may be missing some aspect of the game). But sometimes it’s a problem to roll dice when you’re not supposed to (i.e. when there’s no fictional trigger), because then the stuff you’re supposed to do afterwards may not make any sense.
P.S. If something doesn’t require a roll or move, then the players decide what happens according to the GM’s agendas, principles, say alwayses, and moves (sometimes the GM just says what happens and goes “what do you do?”; sometimes they ask the players questions; sometimes the players just say stuff that happens; all of these are fine).
Oh, also, the problems that you can’t solve at other levels, you solve at the conversation level: you talk about it!
I read about the onion layers and this is nice clarification. Your writing makes me wonder… Is there such a thing as a roleplaying game that doesn’t have that same core? Is there something else to layer on top of?
The conversation core is near-universal, but not totally. Frex, larp has a slightly different core that isn’t a “conversation” exactly (an “interaction” maybe?), and so stuff that’s a hybrid of various kinds of games (including board games) may have a different core.
The GM freeform/diceless layer is definitely really different between different games in what it asks you to do, and in GMless games those duties are distributed more evenly, but I venture that something like it is nearly always there in games, structuring player interactions when you’re not engaging explicit resolution mechanics.
Really it’s the layer of explicit resolution that seems like the optional one! 🙂
It’s a conversation with occasional die rolling, if you didn’t roll then it obviously wasn’t risky or cool enough to be worth rolling for. If failure isn’t interesting, don’t roll.