Here’s another tiny question that came up during gameplay.
When a player Discerns Realities and hits 10+, do they ask all three questions at the same time and then get three answers, or is it Q/A, Q/A, Q/A?
I could not find anything explicit about this in the DW book (the one example they list uses the 3 x Q/A format, so I suppose that’s an implicit endorsement), so again I am just curious how other people are usually playing this.
We’ve tried multiple ways, Q/A, Q/A, Q/A works best. The player’s more informed about what their 2nd and 3rd questions should be, and I don’t have to remember and answer 3 questions at once. We’re currently saying “on a 10+, hold 3,…” and spending hold to ask questions where they come up. Also works pretty well.
I’m a fan of: narrate, Q/A. Narrate more, Q/A. Narrate more, Q/A. That helps me answer the questions better if I know what they’re doing to find an answer.
I tend to ask what three questions they are going to ask, then go through them in the way that makes the most sense or is most useful to them.
I mostly do q/a, q/a, q/a but i really like the narrste method q/a as well from the posts here so i might try to incorporate thst more.
Any hints to encourage that with players that eould be more familiar to the former?
I pretty much always do q/a, q/a, q/a. And I try to make the last “a” a soft GM move, followed by “what do you do?”
The move is based on Apocalypse World’s Read a Sitch. The AW rulebook actually describes an example of play and says not to ask all of the questions at once. Play it out like a story, asking one question at a time so each one informs the choice of the next question.
Spout Lore and Discern Reality questions always seems jarring to the flow of the game. Usually, I get questions to further the details of their surroundings, when I do, I ask for the roll, see if I can fit the first question into the set of questions and answer that with a bit of narrative, then if they have any questions left, I ask them what else they want to know, if I need to clarify or what not. Many times the questions on the list don’t fit what is going on, so it’s hard. Also, If they ask for clarifications, I don’t “charge” them another question unless it is obvious that the character is really “zooming in” on the specific details and not attempting to get a clearer “over all” picture.
I must admit. I struggle with these two moves.
Matrix Forby The moves made a lot more sense to me after watching some recorded Apocalypse World play sessions. That game uses the pre-defined question/answer approach even more than Dungeon World and you can really see how the structure helps drive the story forward. It’s basically the mirror of the GM applying ask questions and use the answers where the players guide the GM toward shaping the world in particular ways by their choice of questions. There’s a great post here from Jeremy Strandberg a short while ago that covers the DR move pretty well and helps fit it into context.