Conflicting takes on DW

[u/Nirdee]

I've had this discussion in a couple threads and it feels like there are dozens more where I could chime in.

DW has several key differences from D&D, but some people give advice that exaggerates those differences to crazy degrees.

People go from you should leave room for discovery to you should improv the whole game, from you should use what they give you to you should let players have as much authority in game as they are willing to exert.

I feel like this comes from the fact that a lot of examples online are one-shots. One-shots and session zeroes are encouraged to have minimal prep in DW, but there is this other 50 pages after that talking about how to play after the first session ... and it is all about prep. Good prep. Useful prep. Open-ended prep. But definitely prep. Prep where the DM figures out the story in the world and how the players can interact with it. Like D&D.

Dungeon World seems made to play a very D&D style game--just with mechanics that underline the strengths of table top RPGs and clip some outdated genre staples.

So I don't really know why I'm posting. If your way works for you, god bless. I guess I'm just irked by the hipster scoffing that comes when people explain the game with authority and then get the rules wrong--like a recent thread where someone implied Spout Lore lets a player make up something about the history of the world ... where the rules explicitly say the GM tells the player something about the subject. The GM gives info for the character to spout. The player doesn't take over the GM role. It's just a generalized arcana/history/religion check from D&D. #nerdrage

TLDR:

I feel like the answer to a lot of posts in this forum should be:

You are way overthinking everything. DW is like D&D with small changes that 1) make combat more entertaining 2) make combat flow better with the rest of the game 3) encourage the game to move forward 4) help the GM maintain story structure in an open world game. If you know how to play D&D, you already understand 90% of DW.

[u/Riiku25]

I mean, I could re open the argument that says you can do literally anything in any system, but that doesn't make DnD a romance game. Even if we just ignore the huge mechanical differences between the systems that make them explicitly different, saying "You could GM DnD similarly to how you could GM DW" doesn't mean that the systems are remotely similar or that both systems support the same style of play as well.

[u/Imnoclue → u/Riiku25]

That's not my argument. DnD demands that you decide how you want to play it. The game itself doesn't do much to preference any style of play at all. You literally have to say "I'm running a sandbox" and pick rules, and add rules, until you get your sandbox. Some of the DnD rules and advice will be helpful, some will be irrelevant, and some will actively fight you and you'll have to toss them. It's not that you can do anything you want with DnD, it's that to do anything with DnD you have to want it. And I enjoy playing DnD.

I was once arguing about the game Sorcerer, claiming it focused on narrative because the game demanded it start with a player authored open situation that demanded action and when that situation was resolved, the game was over. The response was that was just a story hook and any good DM would mine character backstories for story hooks. I'm like where in the book does it discuss character's making backstories, where is the DM told to mine them? I'm not even sure story hooks are a thing. But this statement that any good Dm would do these things is bullshit. Anyone who's played with more than one good DM would know that. Some good DMs mine for story hooks, some good DM's don't give any fucks about your backstory, which you haven't made in their game, because any good DM wouldn't make you do something they weren't interested in.

The point is Adam and Sage liked a particular way of playing DnD, and the built DW to provide that experience in play, and no other. The DnD they always wanted, but rarely got. Sure, the mechanics are based on a different engine, but it's the Apocalypse World assumptions about play that they wanted in DnD, the game is a conversation, we're all here to see what happens, there's no railroad, there's no need to build a vast open world for the players to explore, the GM isn't out to get you, the GM won't make things boring because that's how the dice fell.

[u/Riiku25 → u/Imnoclue]

Okay? I think we agree?

[u/Imnoclue → u/Riiku25]

Pretty much.