There’s a lot of moves that allow you to make some choices in DW, like Discern Realities and Volley on a partial.

There’s a lot of moves that allow you to make some choices in DW, like Discern Realities and Volley on a partial.

There’s a lot of moves that allow you to make some choices in DW, like Discern Realities and Volley on a partial.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, about the choices, and some times it in a sense seems to be the character making the choice, as in Hack and Slash, where you can “open yourself up to an attack” in order to deal more damage.

I notice another more prevalent approach; giving options for the player to shape the story. This is reflected in moves such as Discern Realities. While the character might wish to learn the answers to some of the questions, it is ultimately the player that choose which questions that will be answered.

I actually prefer the latter approach, since it doesn’t tie the player down in terms of what his character wants, but lets the player decide the direction of the story.

I have not read the AW rulebook, but the emphasis on player choice in contrast to character choice in DW is something that really speaks to me.

In a lot of games, like D&D and WoD, you can only interact with the story through the actions of your character, and it really only serve to diminish story potential. You never get to say what you want, but only what your character attempts. In DW you are free to do both, almost all the time.

It’s just something I really like about DW, and may in fact be the feature I appreciate the most.

6 thoughts on “There’s a lot of moves that allow you to make some choices in DW, like Discern Realities and Volley on a partial.”

  2. It is also beautiful in the sense that the GM can’t stop it. “What do you do?” is a question that allows the character to do anything feasible, and you can almost always do something that prompts the player for an OOC decision.

  3. I like it when a system doesn’t assume the GM to be in “complete control of everything except dice rolls”.

    This might also be why DW is so easy to run, you don’t need to have the answer for everything.

  5. The counter to that is that one of my favorite things about DW is that it forces me as the GM to think about why things are important in the world. For example, in my game, the PCs assaulted an astral shipyard, full of magical airships that float and are propelled by magic, but still had sails. A PC rolled Spout Lore to learn what purpose the sails served, since, at minimum, they knew that the ships could propel themselves without sails.

    The real answer, of course, is that they had sails because it was cool and that was the art that I found. But since it now mattered, I had to come up with something (or let them do it, obviously). We ended up on the sails being big diffusion panels for excess magical energy (akin to static electricity) which led to some cool scenes later on. 

    So I’m very glad that the system doesn’t make me come up with the answer to everything in advance, but I like that it can force me to come up to the answer to anything in the moment.

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