The Gaming Den

Kuri Nakk wrote:Many games, certainly D&D, have many specific rules on encounter building. AW apparently has only a few general rules and seems to prohibit specific encounter building off-screen. Isn't it a rather distinctive difference?

Yup, this is what I meant previously. In AW you dont prep encounters, you prep NPCs/groups for eventual encounters (which may come to happen, or not).

silva wrote:

Kuri Nakk wrote:Many games, certainly D&D, have many specific rules on encounter building. AW apparently has only a few general rules and seems to prohibit specific encounter building off-screen. Isn't it a rather distinctive difference?

Yup, this is what I meant previously. In AW you dont prep encounters, you prep NPCs/groups for eventual encounters (which may come to happen, or not).

You don't prep encounters, you just prep every component of an encounter? I don't see the difference other than the latter being a more loquacious way of saying "be adaptable."

The difference is that an encounter, by definition, is something supposed to happen.

QUANTUM BEARS

silva wrote:The difference is that an encounter, by definition, is something supposed to happen.

That's not part of my definition, and I'm confident in declaring that many people here don't include 'railroad' in the definition of that word.

silva wrote:The difference is that an encounter, by definition, is something supposed to happen.

That is not the definition of an encounter in any game being discussed, and probably also all of the ones not being discussed. Seriously, why? Why do you just asspull things and assume they will turn out to be true? I am 99% that merely reading your posts involves more thought and consideration than you put into them.

Well, Im not obliged to know what your specific definition of each world in existence is. If you have a definition for "encounter" thats different from the dictionary and only you and D&D players use, you should not use it out of that context. Im not a D&D player nor have a crystal ball. "Railroad" is a universally known concept in the rpg hobby. "Encounters" that dont mean encounters are not.

silva wrote:Well, Im not obliged to know what your specific definition of each world in existence is. If you have a definition for "encounter" thats different from the dictionary and only you and D&D players use, you should not use it out of that context. Im not a D&D player nor have a crystal ball. "Railroad" is a universally known concept in the rpg hobby. "Encounters" that dont mean encounters are not.

I know of no dictionary that defines 'encounter' in a prescriptive fashion. And as many systems have per encounter rules, including improv RPGs like Munchhausen, the RPG context still doesn't proscribe an inexorable element to the word 'encounter.'

7 pages later, because honestly this game wasn't interesting enough for me to keep reading about it, I just found out that somehow a comment I made sounded anti-gay to some people. That is frankly shocking, mainly because I didn't think you all were that stupid. Someone said "I'll be damned if the thing wasn't written by someone literally sucking his own dick" and I thought it ironic that one of the writers is a gay fella (from my understand after having met him, but maybe I misunderstood the implications of "boyfriend"). I didn't say that it's bad to be gay or that his book was bad because he was gay and it wasn't in any way implied that I'm against gays. It's just an irony born out of a pointless insult someone else made in which it was implied that sucking dick made the book bad.

"Is it possible to write gay?" was a hypothetical bit of absurdity, because obviously writing and sex aren't related things and even though that other guy thought the book was written by someone who would suck dick, and he was right, he couldn't have been as literally serious about the connection as this little absurdity made it seem.

And the absurdity was meant to highlight the really bad insult that had been given. Really we aught to be better than to just say "bad = sucking dick." THAT is literally insulting to gay men and anti-gay. What I said was not.

silva wrote:Well, Im not obliged to know what your specific definition of each world in existence is. If you have a definition for "encounter" thats different from the dictionary and only you and D&D players use, you should not use it out of that context.

Motherfucker, here is the dictionary definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/encounter

Have a look at it, and see where 'supposed to happen' shows up. Oh, it doesn't? It implies 'accidental,' the exact opposite instead? You don't know what the fuck you're talking about?

Silva, kindly shut the fuck up and go look up encounter in an actual dictionary. It does not agree with you either. There is no element of preplanning in the definition of encounter. Contrast this with a word like "rendezvous," whose definition does include an element of preplanning. You obviously have no idea what the definition of encounter is, and you also very obviously will not let that stop you from boldly being wrong and asspulling something that you would like to be true without any idea whether it is or not. Which you do all the fucking time.

What the fuck is this, argument by exhaustion? Do you just say whatever comes off the top of your head and wait for people to get tired of pointing out you're wrong?

Also, ninja'd, but fuck it.

So Vincent Baker is gay, 8d8 ? Thats interesting. Have no problem at all with that. Just find it interesting.

Edit: about the encounter thing, I always understood it was a railraodish resource as used in roleplaying games context. If thats not the case, I. Stand corrected (even if still not thinking it fits AW premise well).

unnamednpc wrote:I'll be damned if the thing wasn't written by someone literally sucking his own dick.

8d8 wrote:It was written by a guy who literally loves sucking dick. Maybe you're picking up on that. Is it possible to "write gay"?

8d8, that is the core of the original exchange. You connected the dots from "the author is pretentious and sucks his own dick" to "well, the author sucks dick, maybe that has something to do with it?" That's not okay. Now, my usual assumption when people pull that shit is that they are not actually homophobic and it's just unthinking reflex, and that's usually true. But I still wanted to call you out on that one myself (albeit, in a more jovial and less accusatory manner), because, again: it really was over the line, and you should not do that shit. But then I got lazy and did not.

Now, the fact that in your latest post you try to shift blame onto unnamednpc for the "sucking his own dick" comment is goddamn ridiculous. To suck one's own dick is an idiomatic metaphor for being a pretentious twat convinced of his own personal awesomeness. It is not the least bit offensive to homosexual men, because sucking your own dick has exactly nothing to do with being gay. The homosexual version of the birds and bees does not involve two men climbing into bed and twisting themself into self-fellating pretzels. Well, they can if they want, but the relevant portion of that is "two men," not "self-fellating pretzels."

If you really wanted to, you could get offended on behalf of the people who have and utilize the ability to contort their spines and bury their heads in their own junk, many of whom will not be homosexual at all. Normally when people who get more blowjobs than me whine about their problems, I tell them to go fuck themselves. Clearly, self-fellatio is a confusing topic for me.

I think it was a fairly solid joke, I didn't read it as implying a homophobia on the joke authors part but rather using the colloquial use of gay meaning "lame" (which is homophobic) to juxtapose against the actual homosexuality of the author. This creates a humorous commentary on the colloquial use of the word. You could certainly critique the joke for moving to far a distance between the set up (self fellatio) to the punchline (being gay) but they share some conceptual space (dick sucking) and I've made jokes with bigger leaps.

It reminds me a tiny bit of the comedian Stewart Lee's joke about William Wallace being gay, which I recommend highly because he may be the greatest living comedian. The joke does not seem unaware of homophobia, it winks at it I think.

8d8, in another thread you referred to Kaelik as "being a bundle of kindling". In this thread you responded to a comment about the game being shitty with the suggestion that it might be because the author likes sucking dick, and it might be "written gay".

If those were honest mistakes I might suggest you put a little more thought into your posts as multiple people have come away with the idea that they were homophobic. Just sayin'.

What Red Rob said.
If there is consistently garble between you and every receiver, it's probably a transmit issue.

If it is currently being perceived (on- or off-screen), then it is part of the scene.

I just...What? Something offscreen is something which the audience (in this case, the players) cannot perceive. A player cannot perceive something off-screen. That's what off-screen means. It means that in AW and it means that everywhere else, too, which is why off-screen badness has to be announced (i.e. some sign of it is displayed on-screen). It's not fair play to have it pop up fully formed without any warning.

The action is being taken now, and it's being justified retroactively by the idea that NPCs "must have been" doing stuff while not being discussed or thought of in any way.

I have already answered this:

You are assuming that it is asking the question of what your NPCs have been doing since the last time the players saw them rather than since the last time you made a move, but this doesn't gel with any of the other things Apocalypse World says about how you run your NPCs.

Try to keep up, Frank. Also: You have leveled pretty damn serious accusations at everyone who has ever supported Apocalypse World and when I told you to justify them, you instead posted this You claim that Apocalypse World is rape fetishization and that supporting it, even just in words, makes people measurably worse as people. Justify that bullshit.

By the power of tautology, this is deciding something about a scene (a scene that may or may not occur) before that scene occurs.

Yes. And so are circumstances, developing NPC actions, and possibly pressures, depending on what exactly AW means by that. Planning out things that might end up in scenes is not the same as planning out the scenes in their entirety.

Your whole damn post is a giant strawman. Yes, you keep track of the psychic bodyguards, and no, that is not a contradiction to anything that Apocalypse World has ever said (it is, in fact, something Apocalypse World explicitly instructs you to do over and over again) because Apocalypse World did not say not to plan out anything. It did not say not to plan out things that could be a part of scenes. It did not say not to plan ahead at all. Apocalypse World tells you not to plan this:

future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.

Not only is it saying "future scenes" (as in, in their entirety; things that could hypothetically be a part of future scenes is totally fine), it's even specifying a certain kind of future scenes: Future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to. Pretending that this means not planning ahead at all is just horribly dishonest.

You are seriously suggesting that the MC is updating the entire game world in his head every couple of minutes.

Yeah, because if you know a couple of shortcuts, that's pretty easy. Just keep track of what direction Fronts are going, and if the players aren't interfering, they just keep going in that direction. The players can't reasonably interfere with more than one or two Fronts at a time so the actual amount of stuff you have to update is pretty small. That's developing NPC actions and AW tells you to prep those. There's even stuff like countdowns which allow you to keep track of how close a threat is to coming to fruition.

Of course, you're suggesting that the GM model the entire world in his head at all times, because if you ask yourself every five minutes "what must my NPCs have done in the last five minutes?" apparently that is an unforgivable sin. You aren't allowed to retroactively decide what NPCs are up to no matter how small a time gap you're updating for, so apparently you must track every NPC's present actions at all times, something which actually is impossible. No amount of circumstance or NPC action prep will allow you to update on their actions in under three or four seconds unless that prep is to program a computer to do it for you.

Chamomile, your theodicy stance that words don't mean what they normally mean because you've read far enough into the book to understand the true meaning of Christmas and totally have all the secret opposite day meanings for all the passages that very demonstrably don't mean what you say they mean is exactly as credible as silva's claim that he has a secret dictionary where all the nouns mean something different from their definitions in Webster's or the OED. It's exactly as credible because it's the same argument. If you're going to claim that words have specific technical jargon meanings distinct from their natural English definitions, you're going to have to come up with some evidence to that effect. Because otherwise you come off as deeply insane and totally impossible to even communicate with. You're seriously taking the Humpty Dumpty stance that words mean whatever you want them to mean in order to deflect direct quotes that to all appearances proved your ass wrong a long time ago.

Basically, we're done here. If you refuse to concede that words have meaning there's no fucking debate possible on this or any other issue. We're down to fisticuffs as the only language you will apparently acknowledge, and this just isn't worth it.

-Username17

Chamomile wrote:Not only is it saying "future scenes" (as in, in their entirety; things that could hypothetically be a part of future scenes is totally fine), it's even specifying a certain kind of future scenes: Future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to. Pretending that this means not planning ahead at all is just horribly dishonest.

I am not actually going to go back and find examples of you flubbing the distinction between preparation and railroading to your benefits because 1) I am lazy, and 2) I don't have to. In the middle of your rant about how I am an ebul railroading dickbag you did me the favor of making some stupid arguments (like "And if any of this requires you to scrap material you prepared or prepare new material, it means you're doing it wrong") that apply equally well against preparation with railroading and preparation without railroading.

I think it is interesting that your original arguments completely fail to distinguish between the two, but now that it's becomes a point of contention suddenly you are and always have been aware. Retconning arguments in defense of retcon storytelling. So meta.

Chamomile wrote:Yeah, because if you know a couple of shortcuts, that's pretty easy. Just keep track of what direction Fronts are going, and if the players aren't interfering, they just keep going in that direction. The players can't reasonably interfere with more than one or two Fronts at a time so the actual amount of stuff you have to update is pretty small.

Congratulations. Your shortcut is to just handwave everything as proceeding in a vague direction and leave as much as possible in the quantum ether. It is exactly what I'm calling out as bullshit. If all you know is that the Temple of Bears are looking for their macguffin, then they can run into the PC's at any time and place that is even vaguely related to their macguffin based on what the MC feels like the Temple of Bears "must have been doing" up until now. You are actually conceding that the portion in question is talking about quantum bears.

Chamomile wrote:There's even stuff like countdowns which allow you to keep track of how close a threat is to coming to fruition.

Here is an actual Apocalypse World countdown:
1:30 Quarantine breach
2:00-9:00??? Riot, burn, kill scapegoats; build a gang
9:00-10:00 Gang's big enough
10:00-11:00 Ultimatum to Uncle
11:00-12:00 Direct assault on Uncle

That's it. That's the whole thing. That doesn't even qualify as the cliffnotes of a conflict.

Chamomile wrote:Of course, you're suggesting that the GM model the entire world in his head at all times, because if you ask yourself every five minutes "what must my NPCs have done in the last five minutes?" apparently that is an unforgivable sin. You aren't allowed to retroactively decide what NPCs are up to no matter how small a time gap you're updating for, so apparently you must track every NPC's present actions at all times, something which actually is impossible. No amount of circumstance or NPC action prep will allow you to update on their actions in under three or four seconds unless that prep is to program a computer to do it for you.

This is basically just the MTP false dichotomy ported to a new topic. "You can't criticize a system for its over reliance on X without completely abandoning X in its entirety!"

Bullshit. When people criticize systems for relying too much on MTP, that does not put them in the uncomfortable position of demanding highly detailed rules for every single fucking thing imaginable in every game. And when people criticize Apocalypse World for relying too much on "the DM bullshits it up as he goes," that does not put them in the uncomfortable position of demanding the game's world be modelled with complete accuracy at every level of detail. You are demanding that people who want to criticize Apocalypse World make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Chamomile wrote: I just...What? Something offscreen is something which the audience (in this case, the players) cannot perceive. A player cannot perceive something off-screen. That's what off-screen means. It means that in AW and it means that everywhere else, too, which is why off-screen badness has to be announced (i.e. some sign of it is displayed on-screen). It's not fair play to have it pop up fully formed without any warning.

When the MC says "you hear gunfire", guess what? That means that you have perceived gunfire. If the gunfire happens to be off-screen, then you just perceived something that is off-screen. Again, you're conflating off-screen with out-of-scene.
How are you supposed to perceive anything in the game? MC tells you. It's called "framing the scene". Which brings me to the next revelation: if it's part of the scene framing, then it's part of the scene. It might not necessarily be of immediate bodily concern - maybe it's just there for mood (who gives a fuck, that part is basically irrelevant to the point) - but it's still part of the scene.

Try to keep up, Frank. Also: You have leveled pretty damn serious accusations at everyone who has ever supported Apocalypse World and when I told you to justify them, you instead posted this You claim that Apocalypse World is rape fetishization and that supporting it, even just in words, makes people measurably worse as people. Justify that bullshit.

It's not so much as a claim as it is a rather reasonable assessment of Baker's campaign journals, even from the most casual of readings. And it seems rather uncontroversial to suggest the idea that supporting rape fetishization is a bad thing.

There's even stuff like countdowns which allow you to keep track of how close a threat is to coming to fruition.

I'm confused:
1) countdown to what? an encounter?
2) how does this differ from planning inevitable encounters?

---

Speaking of autofellating: I am fairly comfortable saying that I think that I speak for all guys when I say if you haven't tried it, you've at least thought about it

Acos, countdown clocks are useful for tracking the progress of important entities plans/agendas/evolving etc. These entities can go from a merchant plans for dominance over a city, to the natural spreading of a disease, to the decay of a small society into barbarism. If you take a look at the previous page, I gave an example of clock for thr npc Dirk the Slaver and his plans to monopolize the regional slaves market.

Its important to note though that the clocks must evolve with the game - sometimes you advance them according to the players actions, sometimes you advance them cause of players innaction, and some times you have to scratch some steps and rewrite them in reaction to game events. This is all part of thr gm prep after the first session and forward.

silva, plot points are useful for tracking the progress of important events. These events can go from a merchant plans for dominance over a city, to the natural spreading of a disease, to the decay of a small society into barbarism.

Its important to note though that the plots must evolve with the game - sometimes you advance them according to the players actions, sometimes you advance them cause of players inaction, and some times you have to scratch some points and rewrite them in reaction to game events. This is all part of every freeform RPG EVER.

Previn, no matter what name you give to these tools, if they help to promote sandbox, player-driven gameplay, thats cool.

I know what countdown clocks are - I've been using them for ~20 years. And yes, many people call them plot points.
My question was rhetorical. The point I was trying to get at is that when you boil things down, AW doesn't really offer anything new in this respect; and that AW is, in all reality, internally conflicting in its language on this point (and seems to be rather self-unaware about it, to boot).

Oh, I thought your question was genuine. Anyway, yeah sandbox play exists since ever. AW just makes a particular, lighter and more improv-based, version of it, while mixing in some inter-personal drama.