On a miss: for GMs or players?
Our group plays a wide variety of PBtA games, and we’re noticing a somewhat frustrating inconsistency across games. On a 6-, where do you expect to find the information for what to do? Coming off of Dungeon World, I’m used to finding instructions for misses on the playbooks, even if it’s just “GM makes a hard move.” It seems like a lot of the newer games completely eschew these instructions on the playbooks. Is this because responding to misses is solely in the purview of the GM? The players in my group find themselves at something of a loss as to what to do.
Just looking for opinions or further insight, I guess.
In AW, at least, a 6- is one of the few things that trigger the GM making a move (as soft or hard at they like). Most pbta systems take that as read, I think, only spelling out a 6- result where it diverges from the default of ‘a gm makes a move’.
Yeah Jay Iles has the same understanding I do. There is the section of the text that describes “when a GM makes a move” and one of them is “when someone rolls a 6-“.
Common practice seems to be that if the 6- effect is spelled out in the move, you simply do that.
You really have to approach each game as it’s own thing, with its own game design. The designers have different takes on how to handle that piece of their game design, although the “default” described above, where on a miss, the GM makes a move, is logical. Writing it out is clearer.
In Apocalypse World I believe the pattern is that the basic moves all have the generic “GM makes a move” option. I’m led to believe this is because they can be employed in so many different fictional situations that a more specific miss clause wouldn’t always make sense. Moves that are only used in more specific situations also have more specific miss clauses.
It’s not newer games. It’s games other than Dungeonworld. AW doesn’t do it either.
I go out of my way to avoid “on a miss” text when designing Dungeon World moves, because it gets taken as “this is always the thing that must happen on a miss”, which is inflexible and not the point of a GM move.
Occasionally, I’ll say something that “might” happen, or use the magic “in addition to whatever else happens…”.
Generally, though, if you can’t think of something obvious to do on a miss for a move, then the move probably shouldn’t involve a roll.
I like to use 6- text on some moves. It can add flavor, inform players of the stakes involved, and help keep the GM from having to improv a move. I think there’s something nicely menacing about “the GM makes as hard a move as she pleases.”
This makes a lot of sense, thanks everyone!