The last flowchart I made got a lot of response. Much of the response was motivated by the fact that I failed to convey the assumption made by the model.
I made a new model (an even simpler one), but this time I’m going to explain my assumptions.
It is assumed that the players are already in a situation that requires immediate action. The flowchart doesn’t explain how to initialize the game, just how to keep it going by explicitly telling the GM when different things happen.
The box after the chart has been updated to indicate, where the main part of the conversation will be. The arrows out tells you when the conversation triggers response from either a player move or GM move.
The “resolve all moves” box has a term called “non-miss”. This is means each move with a rolled hit, or each move that requires no roll. Also, it is assumed in this box that players can react in any way that makes sense before the final value of the roll has been calculated. I.e, you can spent a use from a bag of books in Dungeon World after you have seen your roll.
I might make a further update to make the “resolve moves” part more explicit, perhaps giving it its own sub-chart.
Just one inconsistency (imo): ‘resolve all moves’ is followed by ‘still unresolved moves?’
I’d go for singular all the way, I think it would be simpler:
they trigger a move => resolve the move => is a another move triggered or pending?
That covers everything pretty well; sounds right to me — really there are only three things that trigger moves or MC intervention, and everything hangs in conversation until…
Moves are self-contained processes, can’t think of any reason to expand that step.
On rare (or maybe more frequent than easily considered) occasions, all three routes could be triggered simultaneously from the conversation — hope you are good at multi-threading processes. How many CPUs does the average MC have anyway?
..::grabs MC’s brain, and takes it into the Savvyhead’s workspace::..
Let’s see what useful data we can figure out… For Science!
Eric Nieudan How do you propose explaining it? More than one move can be triggered at a time, like Aid/Interfere that is only triggered in conjunction with another move.
Just my counterpoint for consideration, Eric Nieudan.
Typically a single MC Move is resolved at a time (though exceptions could occur), otoh, multiple PC Moves could be in resolution simultaneously. Grammatical issue is legit; but, maybe not a big deal, imho — Good enough for the internets. All your base are belong to us.
I know that it is often advised to spotlight the player who is in the most intense dramatic moment… (ie, the one being called on to make a roll.)
I don’t personally — have issue with the inevitable and natural flow of conversation splitting and beading, especially as the number of players increase; nor readily take offense when a couple players break off to literally MC their own side story… not everyone may be used to the more free-form structure of many LARP games, but quite a few are.
Any passive encouragement for a GM to start thinking about or improving their multi-tasking skills, and make use of the brain’s multi-threading capacity, I am in support of.
William Mims I disagree. It is entirely possible, and legit, to both reveal an unwelcome truth and to offer an opportunity that fits a class.
One option is to drop the “Still unresolved moves…” box and just go back to GM’s “what do you do?”
From a mechanical POV, you only resolve a move at a time, if only because you process dice results separately. They may be triggered in quick succession, but you only resolve them one at a time – kind of the way you unstack cards in Magic: TG.
Oliver Granger You might be right. Player moves aren’t triggered by being subjected to stuff, but because the character acts. I might just remove it.
Eric Nieudan Yeah. I’ll just remove it and update the post…
Can’t change the picture in post… Argh…
The human brain is not so linear, and presumably multiple brains are at the table… the combined result is a fractal pattern of process threads. exponentially growing with every new addition of depth and participation.
Artificially limiting the conversation and sequence to a singular thread is only logical in mathematics, in the real world of human capacity, a reliance on pure logic ignores two thirds of the human potential.
New thread: https://plus.google.com/+KasperBrohus/posts/FD91DCWY6a8
Kasper Brohus Allerslev, I did caveat… (though exceptions could occur.) in my post, so we do in fact agree. :D
My point was, though I failed to write it, that it is more normal to make several moves than just one.
It’s like pants… left leg first, right leg first, or do you absently slip ’em on before getting out of bed? within the scope of pants wearing humans; what’s normal?
Meanwhile; Some folks wear skirts and bathrobes, and have no cultural reference to the conundrum.
This seems to indicate that the MC must make a hard move on an Opportunity. Actually they make “as hard a move as they like” a soft move is just as valid here.
Technically no move is valid as well; If no move is more desirable, no move is required. To Explicit or To Implicit… that is the question…
Moe Tousignant A hard move is always as hard is you’d like, I believe.