The Gaming Den

Cyberzombie wrote:

Previn wrote: In fact that whole paragraph you quoted could basically just read: The GM can do a hard move when the frell ever.

Well like any rules-lite game, it hands a lot of power to the DM and assumes he won't be a total dick just for the sake of being a dick. And hell, a D&D DM can just have 100 balors teleport in at any time too. I figure the majority of the exceptions in AW are mostly for just if your PCs are acting stupid and inviting surprise attacks.

These are not exceptions.They are the basic rules for playing *world. The rules specifically say to use hard moves at any the following times:
- After a soft move, but sometimes just because as well, without even following a soft move.
- After a miss.
- When the players hand you the opportunity.
- When you plans don't get interrupted by PC actions.

That covers basically any situation in the entire game of *world, probably without exception. Even a success can be a player handing you an opportunity which the books says should be met with a hard move.



Let's look at your 100 Balors in D&D. First it has to be a status quo encounter (DMG pg.48) due to the method you're trying to use it. That means that you're supposed to tell the players that you're using status qou encounters specifically so that they know that some things will just kill them if the insist on engaging.

Now, even if you informed the players of that, the rules say that a EL of 5 or more above the parties is an 'overpowering' encounter, which the PCs should run from because they will almost certainly lose, again as per the DMG pg. 49-50. This is further backed up by the XP reward table on pg.38 which doesn't award xp for things with a CR 8 above the parties' level and has a specific note about this : "The table doesn’t support awards for encounters eight or more Challenge Ratings higher than the character’s level. If the party is taking on
challenges that far above their level, something strange is going on, and the DM needs to think carefully about the awards rather than just taking them off a table. "

So, in D&D if you drop 100 Balors on your players, they can call you out on it as the bullshit it is because the rules of D&D tell you that that is not a fair encounter and bad things will happen from it if played out.

Neither game outright forbids dropping 100 Balors because you're a bad GM. But D&D gives the players the knowledge that the GM is doing things wrong, and gives the GM knowledge of what is typically a good encounter while in *world... well, frell you.

Bla-bla-bla.

Cite an actual-play example or book example or shut up.

If he does will you agree that you're wrong? Can we get this in writing?

Sure, Dean. Why not ?

The game is far from perfect and its problems (aka: PvP, lack of clarity on the authors writing) were already adressed in this topic. If you or Previn can bring some other genuine problem, go for it.

Previn wrote: That covers basically any situation in the entire game of *world, probably without exception. Even a success can be a player handing you an opportunity which the books says should be met with a hard move.

Well "hand you an opportunity" is very relative terminology, and again, you've got to assume the DM isn't looking for the most dickish interpretation specifically to kill the PCs.

Let's look at your 100 Balors in D&D. First it has to be a status quo encounter (DMG pg.48) due to the method you're trying to use it. That means that you're supposed to tell the players that you're using status qou encounters specifically so that they know that some things will just kill them if the insist on engaging.

The encounter building is guidelines. There's no specific rule saying a D&D DM is limited in what encounters he can run. The 3.5 DMG p.49 even suggests that 5% of your encounters fit in the overpowering category, and as far as I can tell that simply means that the EL is 5+ the party level. There's no cap as to what you can use.

And yeah, it's totally a dick move, but still legal.

So, in D&D if you drop 100 Balors on your players, they can call you out on it as the bullshit it is because the rules of D&D tell you that that is not a fair encounter and bad things will happen from it if played out.

The same thing can happen in AW if the DM is being a dick.

Look man, when you're getting bullshitted on, you know it. You don't need some table in the rulebook to tell you. In fact, AW's math seems so simple enough that it'd be easy to tell a virtually unwinnable encounter from a normal one. Given NPCs don't have stats, it's a pretty simple matter of calculating a PCs odds of survival.

Neither game outright forbids dropping 100 Balors because you're a bad GM. But D&D gives the players the knowledge that the GM is doing things wrong, and gives the GM knowledge of what is typically a good encounter while in *world... well, frell you.

Not really. If you're running a sandbox style, part of that is allowing the PCs to get in over their heads. If you challenge the 20th level high priest to a fight, then you're fighting a 20th level cleric and his temple of followers. I'd say the DM is doing things wrong if he's running a sandbox world without the potential for PCs to run into lethal combats. You want to have the possibility (nothing should be inevitable in sandbox) of overwhelming and very easy encounters. Now granted 100 balors would be BS either way, but something like an ancient dragon versus low level PCs is very possible if PCs go to the wrong place. But I'd say that's okay, because sandboxing is supposed to feature that sort of thing.

As for encounter guidelines, yeah, AW lacks that, but that's more of an aide for newbie GMs so they don't accidentally kill the party as opposed to some kind of protection for the players against DM vindictiveness. If you've got a GM who is out to kill you, find a new GM. If you're relying on the rulebook to somehow protect you, don't bother, because it can't. You don't need a rulebook to call out the GM if he's actively just trying to murder you.

Cyberzombie wrote:Well "hand you an opportunity" is very relative terminology, and again, you've got to assume the DM isn't looking for the most dickish interpretation specifically to kill the PCs.

You know what? No. We don't actually have to assume that, because in Apocalypse World, that is the opposite of true. See, the thing you keep doing is assuming that Apocalypse World isn't a crime against humanity and instead runs exactly like every other RPG. From that assumption, you derive the conclusion that Apocalypse World is no worse than any other RPG. However, your assumption is fucking wrong. Bad premises lead to bad conclusions. Apocalypse World is in fact "that bad." And one of the ways it is bad is that it specifically calls out cock slapping the players as being a fun thing to do. No, really.

Apocalypse World wrote:Here’s a fun thing to do: “Keeler, this person named III corners you that night. She’s fucking pissed off, she comes straight at you, fists first. What did you do to her?”

Not only does it suggest that you attack player characters with quantum bears "because it's fun," it suggests that you attack players with quantum fucking bears before figuring out their backstories or motivations. Quantum bears first, retconning a reason for the quantum bear attack later. Because it's fun. Really. That is not an exaggeration. That's not even out of context, that's the whole paragraph.

Apocalypse World wrote:Finally, when a player misses a roll, generally — unless the move specifies otherwise — what happens is that you get to make a move yourself, and as hard and direct a move as you like.

Remember, when a player misses a roll, the MC isn't obligated to make a hard move, they get to make a hard move. Making hard moves against the players is something the MC is supposed to "like" to do. That is why it says you get to make a move that is as hard and direct a move as you like.

Stop this circular reasoning bullshit. Stop it yesterday. You don't get to supply as your fucking premise that Apocalypse World is just like other RPGs and then use that to support the conclusion that Apocalypse World is just like other RPGs. It fucking isn't. Apocalypse World is a fail train torture garden where the MC is specifically and directly and repeatedly told to fuck with the players using quantum bear attacks and which allows the players no actual agency because the MC is allowed to have the players succeed or fail any mission as a direct result of success or failure on any die roll.

The game is "The MC tells a story, and sometimes you roll 2d6 and the MC may or may not choose to change the story because of it. In addition, and here's where it gets creepy, some of the characters in the story the MC is telling specifically represent the people he is telling a story to, and the MC is specifically encouraged to torture those characters and or describe them in sexual situations." That's the game. It's one of the most fucked up things i have ever fucking read, and you do not get to equivocate it with other RPGs. Because it is not the same fucking thing at all.

-Username17

Leress wrote:

Stinktopus wrote: I listened to about an hour of a Fallout New Vegas Apocalypse World Actual Play and I wanted to punch everyone involved in the throat.

Could you post a link to that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elIdMPqw8s

FrankTrollman wrote:Apocalypse World is a fail train torture garden where the MC is specifically and directly and repeatedly told to fuck with the players using quantum bear attacks and which allows the players no actual agency because the MC is allowed to have the players succeed or fail any mission as a direct result of success or failure on any die roll.

Meh. Maybe as run by the designer? In practice, as run by two different people, there was none of the creepiness or deprotagonization that is supposedly inherent.

All I'm saying, is that if I'd listened to the 'wisdom' of people on this thread, I would have had a worse gaming experience. Perhaps it only functions when the players/MC fill in details and run differently from the book without realizing it, but if it works well under those conditions (which it did)? I don't actually have a problem with that.

Stinktopus wrote:

Leress wrote:

Stinktopus wrote: I listened to about an hour of a Fallout New Vegas Apocalypse World Actual Play and I wanted to punch everyone involved in the throat.

Could you post a link to that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elIdMPqw8s

This should be interesting to watch. When I get some free time I'll check this out, and then I'll have a better idea of what AW is really like.

Ham and Cheese Sandwich wrote: 2x slices of bread
1x slice of ham
1x 4 oz human feces

Assembly:

1. Put the ham on a slice of bread
2. put the feces on top of the ham
3. put the second slice of bread on top of the feces
4. eat

Is this a good recipe?

When I substituted cheese for human feces, it tasted good, so clearly it is a good recipe.

There's a reoccurring supportive argument that keeps getting thrown up here, an it needs to stop - i.e., it's waaaay worse than Oberoni.
To say "if you get rid of the creepy, skeevy bullshit, then it's a fun game", is completely missing the point of the game. It's functionally equivalent to saying "I like playing V:tM, but without all that blood sucking and Humanity and shit"; or "D&D, except without all those dungeons or dragons getting in the way". WTF?

---

I've been out for a few days, but I really feel the need to address something from a few pages back; RE: murdering children:
That particular theme has become a staple of the post-apocalyptic genre because of a want to smack the viewer/reader as hard as possible with the level of grimdark brutality. The goal is to try to have the penultimate example of "seriously fucked up" as the author can get, and add as much gravity to the situation as possible. When you trivialize such a thing as "eh, just another thing that happens", you have trivialized the entire genre in to meaninglessness; and you've completely missed the point. And to approach things in this manner is just fucking stupid; and indeed is wrongbadfun. I think that Frank's analogy to RaHoWa isn't far from the mark - and depending on your particular "Atrocity Hierarchy Prioritization", AW may actually be considerably worse. At least with RaHoWa, it's a way for KKK fucksticks to have fun with RPGs. AW is exploitative on a deeply personal level - people who "get it" and play it as intended need serious therapy; and Baker needs a fucking straight-jacket.

Ice9 wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Apocalypse World is a fail train torture garden where the MC is specifically and directly and repeatedly told to fuck with the players using quantum bear attacks and which allows the players no actual agency because the MC is allowed to have the players succeed or fail any mission as a direct result of success or failure on any die roll.

Meh. Maybe as run by the designer? In practice, as run by two different people, there was none of the creepiness or deprotagonization that is supposedly inherent.

All I'm saying, is that if I'd listened to the 'wisdom' of people on this thread, I would have had a worse gaming experience. Perhaps it only functions when the players/MC fill in details and run differently from the book without realizing it, but if it works well under those conditions (which it did)? I don't actually have a problem with that.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/clas ... 5754.phtml

Ice9 wrote:All I'm saying, is that if I'd listened to the 'wisdom' of people on this thread, I would have had a worse gaming experience. Perhaps it only functions when the players/MC fill in details and run differently from the book without realizing it, but if it works well under those conditions (which it did)? I don't actually have a problem with that.

Have people not heard of the Oberoni fallacy? I guess that's one of those XKCD jokes.

Anyway, Ice9. Here, enjoy.

Oberoni wrote:This my my take on the issue. Let's say Bob the board member makes the assertion: "There is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X." Several correct replies can be given:

[*]"I agree, there is an inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X."
[*]"I agree, and it is easily solvable by changing the following part of Rule X."
[*]"I disagree, you've merely misinterpreted part of Rule X. If you reread this part of Rule X, you will see there is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."

Okay, I hope you're with me so far. There is, however, an incorrect reply:

[*]"There is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X, because you can always Rule 0 the inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."

Now, this incorrect reply does not in truth agree with or dispute the original statement in any way, shape, or form. It actually contradicts itself--the first part of the statement says there is no problem, while the last part proposes a generic fix to the "non-problem." It doesn't follow the rules of debate and discussion, and thus should never be used. Simple enough.

The argument people should be making, if they like *world, is of the form:

[*]"It is very easy to ignore or not even notice the designer's intent regarding screwing the players, on account of the rules-light and interpretive nature of the GM's role. You can just not do that and use your infinite DM powa for Good(tm) instead."

Where the obvious retort is, "why, when there's games with fairly similar rules which both encourage the GM to be good and give players power to do Good and avert Evil directly." Or "Fuck that sadistic GM power-tripping bullshit." As the case may be.

tussock wrote: Have people not heard of the Oberoni fallacy?

It's been mentioned at least 6 times in this thread; but the AW supporters keep ignoring it.

Sorry but I cant see how Oberoni or something is related to the discussion. Care to elaborate, Tussock ?

Tussock wrote:Or "Fuck that sadistic GM power-tripping bullshit."

In my actual-play experience (and Langsdorf too, if I got his impressions right) the GM being ruthless when given the opportunity is not only a stylistic device for making post-apocalyptic life miserable, its a balancing measure because otherwise the players will be cleaning the floor with the opposition. The players characters in AW are really powerful, really badass, and there is very little the GM can do to stop them.... except being "hard" when given the chance.

See, there is no way the GM can surprise the players. The prompt "what do you do?" will always come before any endangering move by the GM. So while in your typical D&D or Shadowrun game a NPC can win the initative and bring pain on the players before they could react, in AW thats impossible - the GM will always give the prompt first. "The guard points his gun at you ready to open fire, what do you do ?" or "He swings his knife at you, what do you do ?". This holds true for every aspect in the game. Since the GM dont roll dice for NPCs, and its the players rolls and choices that decide if NPCs intentions succeed or not, the players are always given a prompt to respond to every event.

There is even a GM principle related to this thats exaustingly repeated through the book: be honest. Be completely honest to the players in all situations, dont hold any secret or info from them, otherwise youre depriving them of choice and agency. Be honest, tell possible stakes, and ask. Theyre entering a trap? Tell them "you feel something weird about this place, perhaps a trap. Are you sure youre entering there ?" Or "Janet is sweating.. its clear she is lying to you. What do you do ?".

Thats why GM hardness is necessary in AW. If the GM gets soft with the players in this game, they will do what they want super-hero style and the GM will feel powerless. In fact thats something that happen to a lot of new GMs to the game. They get soft at first, and take some until calibrating for the necessary level of hardness the game asks for.

Hm...
hmmm...

some guy on another forum wrote:I very rarely report anything that isn't spam, but in this case I reported silva. Not because I was offended, but because 1) trolling with image macros is against site policy, and 2) I honestly was flabbergasted that in like 600+ posts no one had noticed that he was transparently trolling both sides of the argument.

I simply pointed this out, along with the fact that the chosen image (trollface) was more or less a direct admission of what he was doing, and he even proved the point by keeping it up from there.

hmm...

Hmmm....

Silva on yet another forum (26th June 2013) wrote:Just played it this weekend, and I still cant believe how awesome it is. ... Let me define "awesome"

some other guy on that forum wrote:I'm still waiting for an explanation for making the exact same post including "Just played it this weekend" in it a year and a half later on a different forum

Then another guy wrote:Sure, I can understand laziness just fine But you did the same thing with that RuneQuest thread recently, so I'm getting the idea that you're even lazier than me - which is not something I expected to see

Silva wrote:Well, the RQ thread was made all 3 at the same time, I think. So, yeah, that was a kind of collective trolling experiment.

By the way, who are you on theRPGsite and RPGnet ? You got me curious..

Silva's exact same just played let me define awesome post on RPGsite, 14th of January 2012 wrote:Just finished reading it, and I cant believe how awesome it is.

Let me define "awesome"

The only difference being he "just read it" over a year before he "just played it this weekend". A mere turn around of just a simple year and a half between having his panties blown off reading the book and rounding up a group to blow his panties off again with an actual game... only...

In between here on the gaming den he was...

Silva wrote:Dont know about Dungeon World, but Apocalypse World is liquid awesome. My group is playing it and have loads of fun, to the point of considering making it our default game engine from now on.

(the rest of that thread)
In March of 2013. Which makes Silva a weird liar on several levels.

And yeah, his RPGNet activity is also apparently significant and similar but the identical thread referred to is lost to time or something.

So yeah. Silva. He not only trolls the gaming den with endless *-world free advertising bullshit he trolls the whole fucking internet of RPG forums doing it. With cut and paste posts. And freaky lies about time lines so he can eternally pretend he was "just now" discovering something really exciting.

And on at least one occasion on being accused of basically just trolling everyone with it his response was to paste troll faces and just keep on going until a ban.

PS Yes. I just linked some other forums. So don't go there and troll people. But I imagine you won't. Those threads are dead history that just shows just how incredibly batshit obsessed Silva really is. I just hope it somehow pays well...

That's extremely interesting, good research PL. You can count me as convinced. That's bullshit of an extremely high caliber and I have no intention of responding to Silva hereafter. I'm sure we'll see an extinction surge in the near future though where he types things that are as aggressively trolly as possible to get responses but if someone is such a troll that they are just copy pasting what they write then I don't even think we should give them Shadzar level response. Fuck this guy.

Well I can't recall the thread but I'm pretty sure we already knew at least one or two of his earlier threads here were copy pasted elsewhere too.

Edit: Actually for instance...
I'm in love with runequest 6 right now... 04-02-2013, 04:46 PM
I'm in love with runequest 6 right now... 04-02-2013, 03:00 PM
I'm in love with runequest 6 right now... 02 Apr 2013 10:02 pm

Though that's a little less damning. Stupid. But not so damning. The time stamp variation could just be down to variation on forums or something. And copy pasta stuff in the short term like that has plausible deniability as being due to excessively stupid exuberance.

The thing where he was eternally just now "discovering" apocalypse world with copy pasta posts years apart, THAT is kinda damning. That and everything else about his alarming obsession, or rather the apparent pretense of an obsession.

In fact. Try this little game. Pick ANY thread Silva has ever started here. Search for a marginally unique sentence from it. He has posted a copy pasta of it at between 1-2 other locations amongst the at least 3 other RPG forums he seems to be (or rather have been) plaguing. This is true of the oldest threads he started here. This is STILL true of the newest threads he has started here.

At this point I'm actually marginally curious if some of his more bullshit crazy responses might also be copy pasta.

And yeah... here he is on RPGnet with that original "let me define awesome!" apocalypse world crazy post. Stumbled across it once it became obvious that he either goes by the name of vini_lessa there, or steals vini_lessa's stuff wholesale a lot.

Edit: Oh yeah and some of the more remarkably stupid dumb asses on Grognards.txt at some point copy pastad a bunch of Silva's stuff and Frank's responses as part of their eternal campaign of weird hate obsession with Frank. Apparently they seem to agree with Silva. Because you know. Nothing is too low and embarrassing for them when they have a vendetta erection to work on.

Maybe silva is just playing a really long con on Grognards.txt by posting his trolls where those people most look, so that he can eventually reveal himself once they have committed themselves to defending an absurd idea.

Shifting the discussion from the game rules to my own person wont get you anywhere on the matter. I appreciate the careful research on my person (I feel flattered really) , but if you guys cant produce evidence to support your Oberoni something, you dont have an argument.

It's really odd that he has spent almost 1000 posts on this *world trollfest. Some people have weird hobbies I guess.

Apocalypse World pg.114 wrote:“Make as hard and direct a move as you like” means just that. As hard and direct as you like. It doesn’t mean “make the worst move you can think of.” Apocalypse World is already out to get the players’ characters. So are the game’s rules. If you, the MC, are out to get them too, they’re plain fucked.

At this point the discussion turned full dishonest mode, so Im ignoring everyone except Momo, cyberzombie, Ice9, mLangsdorf and other honest posters.

silva wrote:Shifting the discussion from the game rules to my own person wont get you anywhere on the matter. I appreciate the careful research on my person (I feel flattered really) , but if you guys cant produce evidence to support your Oberoni something, you dont have an argument.

Are you claiming that they don't have an argument after they've been over the same arguments with you in excess over many pages and across different threads? Is this the thing that makes you put people on ignore? Someone exposing that you are indeed not only just ignoring people's points but you're doing so purposefully in order for you to continue on with your transparent shilling? Seriously PL going out and getting proof that you're actually a shill doesn't really erase any of the prior accusations of you being just that. It just gives the proof and in an ironic twist you turn around and call THAT dishonest?