Is it just me or is Discern Realities extremely underused?

Is it just me or is Discern Realities extremely underused?

Is it just me or is Discern Realities extremely underused? I feel like whenever people want to use it its always to ask questions that aren’t actually on the list (which isn’t really allowed), and that usually what they actually want to know isn’t covered. It just seems like the list of questions makes the move rather useless.

13 thoughts on “Is it just me or is Discern Realities extremely underused?”

  1. My players use Discern Realities all the time. Or rather: my players do things which trigger Discern Realities all the time. If it seems like players aren’t “calling for the move”, maybe focus harder on the idea that players don’t call for moves. They do stuff which trigger moves.

  5. Well, the thing about Discern Realities, is that it forces the players to choose a question closest to what they want to know. They can always just straight up ask the GM about details of the world.The GM can ask for a wisdom roll at any time to figure that out, or just tell them or how they can figure it out. I think that’s very intentional, and imo, well-crafted because it reveals a part of the world most players wouldn’t see, and it allows the GM to reveal as much or as little as they want to reveal. As far as answering them without giving everything away, that’s on the GM :P. As far as how often it’s used… it kind of depends on the GM and the players to keep it mind. If the players are focused on getting more information from their environment, it will come up alot. If they’re not, it won’t. 

  6. Joseph Lopez maybe give some examples of the questions they’re asking and the situations they’re asking about?

    I’ve certainly had players struggle with the questions, but they usually get over it pretty quickly.  

  10. We use it a lot. The way I think of it: these are the things your character knows how to figure out. Like, me personally, I hang out with friends for an evening, and there are certain things that if you asked me I could answer them and certain things I couldn’t. I tend to be very tuned in to some things, but not to others. I think that’s true of a lot of people.

    So as an adventurer, you can figure out some things, but not others. If there are things your players want on that list, maybe add them as custom moves? There’s a lot of space there.

  11. I always handle it like this: If the players want to know something that really cannot be answered by a Discern Realities question, I just answer them and the move doesn’t trigger. If the players ask something that is close to a Discern Realities question, the move triggers and I answer the appropriate question ( if asked).

    I’ve had players say the questions are bad or useless. But in my experience they really do cover a lot.

  12. Well, I think you’re referring to the situations like “There’s a door that soesn’t really seem to have a handle or anything” “I take a closer look” “Seems like’ you’re discerning realities, roll +WIS” “I’d like to know how to open those doors?” … and it usually comes to “What here is not what it appears to be?”, a trick question that translates “I’m looking at hidden things.”

    Yeah – it’s the silly habit taken from DnD where you make a perception check for the DM to tell you things. DW don’t work that way. The situation above is actually quite illustrative of how one could/should play DW – say there’s the secret door as above, the player in DnD would roll perceptin but a DW player would rather invent his own story of opening the door and wouldn’t have to use Discern Realities at all. A Thief woul just roll +DEX and tell you how he finds the secret locking mechanism and skillfully disables the lock. The warrior could tell you how she takes the door down with the sheer strangth of her muscles.

    Gotta remamber Discern Realities is actually Read a Sitch/Read a person form AW, doesn’ really have that much to do with anylyzing obstacles, and that confuses a lot of dudes and dudettes.

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