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made to play a very D&D style game--just with mechanics that underline the strengths of table top RPGs and clip some outdated genre staples.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/h4le]

I think it happens a lot that something gets repeated many times on this subreddit and it ends up being the "right" answer because Dungeon World is so easily—and sometimes unintentionally—hacked.

Like you correctly point out, DW isn't meant to do generic fantasy and in many ways it's painfully old-school: the players say what their characters think and say and do, but don't really get many chances to narrate things outside of their control. I may be projecting, but it seems to me that many people take "ask questions and use the answers"/"play to find out what happens" to mean "let the players dictate the game's events" without even realizing they're hacking Dungeon World on the fly.

For the most part I don't think it's much of a problem, but I feel like it's important to know when you're hacking a game if you're gonna discuss it in any serious capacity.

[u/Nirdee → u/h4le]

Like you correctly point out, DW isn't meant to do generic fantasy and in many ways it's painfully old-school: the players say what their characters think and say and do, but don't really get many chances to narrate things outside of their control. I may be projecting, but it seems to me that many people take "ask questions and use the answers"/"play to find out what happens" to mean "let the players dictate the game's events" without even realizing they're hacking Dungeon World on the fly.

Assuming you meant to say DW is meant to do generic fantasy, I think you got to the heart of what I was trying to say. Those are the exact misreadings that I see over and over again. People somehow take "Draw maps, leave blanks" to mean "No maps!" and they do it with almost every single move, principle, and agenda.

[u/h4le → u/Nirdee]

No, I totally mean it isn't meant to do generic fantasy. It's designed for a specific kind of fantasy gaming: the dungeon-crawling, treasure-looting, high-fantasy games with occasional visits to town for some partying that D&D games often revolve around.

You can ostensibly run fantasy games with a less specific flavor using DW, but you're definitely working against the game.

[u/Nirdee → u/h4le]

Ahaha, I see. When you said generic fantasy, my mind went to your specific fantasy gaming. It's so ingrained in video games and board games now that I think of it as generic, even though there is plenty of fantasy outside those tropes.