Somebody recently commented or posted with a quote I really liked. For the life of me I cannot find it. It was something along the lines of:
Traditionally a GM would set out to entertain his players but in DW the roles are reversed as a GM waits to be entertained by his players.
It was much more eloquent than that. Anybody remember this? I have a buddy asking about DW and he is having trouble wrapping his head around it. I thought this would be cool to share.
Found it! It was from Steven Lumpkin giving first session advice to David Benson.
_In traditional RPGs, the DM entertains the party. In Apocalypse World / Dungeon World, the secret goal of the GM is to get the party to entertain HIM (or her).
You’re going along with their expectations, their suggestions, and their antics. They may think you had all this planned, but secretly they’re the ones who are driving the story, and you’re the one laughing at their antics._
It’s not always easy to get players out of the passive mode of play, if that’s what they’re used to. But if you can get them rolling forward, this is exactly what *World games can do.
I introduced a group of pathfinder players to dw the other day. When I asked them questions about the world their first reaction was “You’re the GM. Why do you ask us?”
Clearly implying that I should have prepped better!
Wow, Wynand Louw. I’ve seen that kind thing before. Not my preferred style of play.
Larry Spiel They caught on very quickly and got into the swing of things. Great fun! But this does illustrate the paradigm shift that DW introduced.
I think DW can easily support both styles of play, even in the same campaign. Both styles have their merits!
Marques Jordan, it certainly can. I ported a 4th edition D&D campaign to DW and as such much of the detail is already fleshed out. You can still improvise in small scale ways that keep it entertaining for the GM.