So I’ve been thinking about information moves kinda skeptically.
Mostly DW’s Discern Realities but also PbtA generally
When a player asks a question about the scene wanting to know something new(what here is not what it appears to be?), what happens when you don’t have a thing up your sleeve that they don’t know about?
Do you say “Nothing”? Obviously not, that’s the null answer, it doesn’t chain into the next move and the player doesn’t have a thing they’re getting +1 to
Do you make up some pirates hiding in a bush? Surely this is the thing to do? right?
But from the players perspective they’ve got a 10+ and ended up worse off.
Yes, they have +1 to dealing with the problem but they got it by asking for the problem in the first place
Yes, the game is more interesting now but still
Maybe questions like these are meta-moves for increasing scene complexity?
Even negative answers can convey useful information.
“What isn’t what it seems?” “Nothing. This lady has been totally honest with you.”
“What should I be on the look out for?” “Not much. This place looks pretty safe.”
Those answers might be kinda boring, but they are still valuable answers. Players can make informed decisions with those answers. The +1 Forward is just the icing on top. Save the increased complexity for failed rolls.
I treat them as meta-moves like you suggest. I might not have anything hidden in a scene, but when they ask “what here isn’t what it seems?” I feel like they WANT something to be secret. So I make it up – “her speech pattern is really flat, no emotion to it, and every so often you notice her left eye dart around independent of the right… something’s up with her…”
I use these moves the way Uncharted Worlds handles it:
No 3 questions, just the matter at hand. 7+ you get the info you need, 10+ the info is so relevant you get +1 when you act upon it.
Relevant:
plus.google.com – In defense of Discern Realities in which I express numerous opinions (LONG) …
Also, if you don’t have something, ask someone at the table who hasn’t spoken in a bit. It’s the PBtA way.
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I’ve tried it both ways, and now I’m generally more inclined to say “it turns out everything IS as it seems!” This is still a “good” answer to players who feel like their diligence has paid off. If they even remember the move gives +1 forward (we often forget), I still see plenty of ways to apply that knowledge for a bonus.
(Like: They want to sneak somewhere; they confirm everything is as it seems, no traps or whatnot, but they still need to be sneaky to avoid guards; they get +1 to be sneaky because now they know they can just go to the shadowiest corner and quietest path without being overly cautious avoiding traps or alarms that aren’t even there.)
If you play to find out and if the player succeeds in figuring out that something isn’t as it seems then the best response is usually to tell them what that thing is. That they have made the roll tells you that something is not what it seems because if they had failed then that would have kicked something different off for sure.
Ugh…that seems unusually convoluted. What I mean to say is that the dice roll drives the story. If you don’t know what happens next either open it to the floor or ask “how do you figure that out?” before they roll. I try to avoid boring rolls but the way to do that is to make the answer interesting.
Incidentally, If someone has sharp highlighted and is rolling to check every little thing then cool. Tell them their water smells funny or their car has been making a weird gurgling/choking sound or whatever and give them +1 forward trying to figure out what the hell that means while you move to someone else. What I think you shouldn’t do is give the boring answer. If they ask “Is she lying” then the answer is no but she’s not telling you everything, what do you do? That kicks off further story. You don’t have to lay the whole thing out right there, just nudge the story forward and see what happens.
I think that too often we get caught in the trap of having a story to tell as MC’s. It’s not our story to tell, we just facilitate it. When people ask me to add story elements I usually have no idea what those elements mean. That tends to become apparent later in play. Barf forth until something happens. Have someone else show up, have a glint of light from a far off place (is someone spying on you?), have someone cough up blood. You don’t need to know more than that or what it does at the time but it might mean something later on.
Sorry for the ramble but yeah…I’m not a big fan of the boring answer or of letting people mark experience for said boring answer. Something interesting should always happen after the dice roll, even if none of you know what it means.
The more I think about this, the more I disagree that you’re obligated to create a new threat on the spot when players ask if there’s a threat around every corner. Another way of looking at this, referring back to Dungeon World moves and principles:
1. It’s up to you to make a move “When everyone looks to you to find out what happens,” like right after they make a great roll on Discern Realities and ask a question from its list.
2. Your moves aren’t all about punishing them or presenting them with danger. (Yeah, yeah, danger is in the principles, but so is making a move that follows, and throwing a bunch of random bandits into a bush doesn’t always follow.) Your moves also include “Give an opportunity that fits a class’ abilities” and “Offer an opportunity, with or without cost” (emphasis mine).
You’re not necessarily violating the rules or principles by responding to their question with “no bandits here!” As long as that answer doesn’t mean “and therefore life is boring and there is nothing for you to do,” that’s a fine answer. As long as they can benefit from this, like by applying that knowledge to some other opportunity, the story keeps moving, and you get to keep playing to find out what happens. Finding out “no bandits here—it’s a way out!” or “no bandits here—we can hide in here and set an ambush!” is practically like finding treasure, and players love finding treasure.
In other words, the only time you really ought to feel compelled to insert danger into a scene is when you aren’t already meeting your obligations to “fill the characters’ lives with danger” and to “think dangerous.”
Jason Tocci your point is well taken but I think that you can just say “You know what to look for and there are no danger signs here.” If there is no challenge or risk there you don’t need a roll. I’m just saying that the dice mechanic is for when you don’t know what happens next. If you do make a roll it doesn’t have to be a dangerous answer, just an interesting one. Maybe that gangster is giving you the once over and there might be an opportunity there? Maybe you notice that their ring looks a little bit like the weird symbol they saw on the road back there. Maybe they notice the Mona Lisa hidden behind a bunch of car parts.
As an addendum, I think your answers were perfectly in keeping with my AW philosophy. Ambush spot or getaway path are both more interesting than ‘nothing to see here, move along’. Also, presumably, neither option existed until after the dice roll.
PbtA games are made to “play to find out what happens” as such this moves are not for players to uncover what you MC prepared, this moves are means for you MC to “announce future badness” or “announce off screen badness”.
If anything such moves enrich the scene as you create connections and things that would otherwise be missed.
This moves side effect is that they give +1 to acting on an answer, but in my experience players forget about it in 95%. My players use this moves to find out what is going on.
If the scene is enough complicated “nothing” is valid answer as others have pointed out already.
However if not enough is going on this is perfect opportunity to reveal to players who is working with/against their adversary -> and you didn’t need to have planned on it, “play to find out what happens” and you say “Corrupt Mayor has been taking orders from Lord Grimlock, you find letter with instructions for him to pick up poison barrel and dump it into the city well … in like 5 minutes, what do you do?”
Another amazing example of such moves I have from game of Urban Shadows. Player was investigating house of a wife of the accused and through his move and selection of questions the wife was not only found sleeping with accused adversary in secret but also took a bag full of cash to testify against the accused -> this details were not known by MC nor the players up until player asked the question.
Pawel Solowczuk I have to disagree there. “Play to find out what happens” is just another way of stating that these games facilitate a “Story Now” Creative Agenda, meaning in this specific context that there is no scripted plot. Pretty much every “story game” out there since granddaddy Sorcerer is “play to find out what happens”, this isn’t particular to PbtA games. However, I notice that a lot of people seem to think that “playing to find out what happens” means that you just pull shit out of your ass all the time as if NPCs had no motivations or backstory of their own. This isn’t the case. If a player wants to know if an NPC is lying and there is a move for that, then ASSUMING the GM has established in his prep that the NPC isn’t lying, just say so. It’s a valid and informative piece of info. You’re of course free to make decisions in the spur of the moment based on the roll and decide that that the NPC has something to hide after all because it feels cool to do so at that moment, but this isn’t “the right way of playing PBTA games”, it’s just your style of GMing.
NPC motivations and backstory established through prep =/= scripted plot/railroading
Hey Pedro Pereira, I’m eager to hear more how do you see “play to find out what happens”.
To stay on topic could you write some more regarding questions asked by Daniel and your point of view ??
Pawel Solowczuk Sure, let me get home (I’m at work now) and I’ll read more carefully what Daniel asked and I’ll give my own view specifically on his questions.
Regarding “play to find out what happens” (I’ll abreviate this to PTFOWH) I’m not sure what else can I say unless you ask a more specific question. This has to do with NGS theory and Narrativism/Story Now, which is the Creative Agenda that (if you subscribe to it) most of these “Story Games” (I hate this term) are buitl to facilitate. I can link you to an essay by Ron Edwards that makes this more clear, even though it was written in a different context. Would that be OK for a start?
Pedro Pereira I read about GNS and one or two essays (of Ron Edwards) some time ago (maybe I should refresh my memory and ready them again).
I was mostly curious, because you negated my understanding of PTFOWH however I didn’t fully understand your point.
When you have time please respond to this topic or maybe start a fresh one (and tag me in description) as “play to find out what happens” is a very interesting topic to discuss.
A more specific question would be how do you understand PTFOWH in regards to Read XYT or Discern Reality moves??
Hum, it wasn’t so much negating your understanding of PTFOWH, but to make the point that it’s perfectly fine to use, say, Discern Realities (DR) and just answer “there’s nothing hidden” or “everything is pretty much as it seems” or whatever without necessarily having to create something on the spot just because the move was triggered. If the answer is “no/nothing”, then that’s just fine.
I re-read your post (the one I originally answered to) and it seems to me that the main point that I disagree with is this:
“PbtA games are made to “play to find out what happens” as such this moves are not for players to uncover what you MC prepared, this moves are means for you MC to “announce future badness” or “announce off screen badness.”
I disagree because you can certainly use the moves to uncover what the GM has prepared. The point is that PTFOWH is about not having scripted plots/railroading, as in pre-fabricated “modules” or “adventures”. This PTFOWH principle is just a rephrasing or restatement, in a straightforward way, of this principle, which is a necessary component of the Narrativist/Story Now Creative Agenda. All that Vincent Baker did was call it PTFOWH to drive the point home in a straightforward way.
So when you use the DR move, you can certainly use it to figure out IF something is going on or not. There’s no need to create something going on just because DW was rolled and now you have to provide a positive answer. There’s no obligation on the GM’s part to all of a sudden have something going on just because the player asks a question. It’s perfectly fine to say “nothing is going on”. That’s part of the conflict resolution built into the system. The conflict here is “is there something going on or not.” But it is ALSO possible to use the dice result to create something if you wish so, like you said. My point is simply that this does not follow directly from PTFOWH. None of these two ways to use the moves violates PTFOWH. Both of them are perfectly within the Story Now/PTFOWH paradigm.
In other words, what you have in PBTA games is a conflict resolution system with 3 outcomes. The moves themselves are a layer on top of that that helps standardise the interpretation of the outcomes, facilitate the GMs job, and at the same time create a particular feel for the game in question. None of this is directly related to PTFOWH in particular. Sorcerer, Primetime Adventures, Fiasco, etc are all games that use PTFOWH. They’re all facilitating Story Now. Burning Wheel does the same and doesn’t even have a conflict resolution system (it’s task resolution). Ron Edwards has even run D&D in “Story Now” mode (check the old Forge forums). All are “PTFOWH”, as long as you play them that way. So I don’t see any particular relation between moves like DR and PTFOWH, although you can certainly use them to make up shit in the spur of the moment and answer “oh yeah, there’s something here alright” if you wish so.
Not sure if that was clear? Did it answer your question regarding how I see the moves and PTFOWH? As for a lengthy discussion of PTFOWH, that would lead us to discuss NGS theory and the history of “story-games” up to AW. Not sure I have the time or stamina to get into another one of those!
These moves are a direct tool for the players to ask the GM questions that the GM has to answer. Is this guy lying to me? Yes or no? No ambiguity or squirreling on the part of the GM. That’s the main intent. Their job is not for the GM to add new shit to the pot.
Thanks Pedro Pereira. All clear now.