If you were going to tweak the questions you can ask with Discern Realities, how would you tweak them?

If you were going to tweak the questions you can ask with Discern Realities, how would you tweak them?

If you were going to tweak the questions you can ask with Discern Realities, how would you tweak them? What questions would add or remove? What questions would you reword and how? Why?

For example:

I might rephrase “Who is in control here?” to “Who or what is control here?” Why? Because I like the idea of being able to answer that question with something impersonal, like “His fear of failure is totally in control here” or “These people are gripped by despair.”

Another example:

I might add a question like “How could I learn more?” Why? I like the idea of the player being able to ask the GM for a path forward.

I’m not sure about either of those two examples… I’m just starting to roll this around. But whatchya got?

14 thoughts on “If you were going to tweak the questions you can ask with Discern Realities, how would you tweak them?”

  1. I like questions with blanks in them, and find these two to not match the question people want to ask:

    What happened here recently? is okay, but I feel like the question is usually closer to What caused __?

    What is about to happen? is the same – What is __ going to do? is a little bit cleaner and specific

  2. Aaron Griffin I wholeheartedly support the “What happened here recently”

    but “What is about to happen” i disagree on. It’s more of an environmental question than a direct confrontation, however i have seen it used in that wat before

    i think, in general, DR should be rephrased to “ask these questions in some way, shape, or form relevant to the current situation, or regarding the person/object you are studying closest”

  3. So Discern Realities is a BIG means to authoring your (shared) vision of the world. The questions provided (and the advanced versions in playbooks) give a distinct channel for how the canon in your Dungeon World appears.

    So I would first ask what sort of broad strokes I’d like to see in our world and then frame questions that best provide suitable answers.

    Though I Love the AD-LIB framework that Aaron Griffin suggests above 🙂

  5. Mark Weis in my experiences, it’s used more like Read A Sitch – you have like, I dunno, some vines that appear to be moving. “What is about to happen?” is more like “Hey GM, I want to know what the vines are going to do!”. But that might not be clear. Perhaps the GM is thinking about something else – the goblins following the party or something, so he says “goblins are coming!” as part of the response. But that’s not what the player wanted to know!

  7. +Aaron Griffin What happened here recently and what caused___ are vastly different questions, don’t you think? One is an immediate perception, or perhaps a recent event; while the other seems to be what in many other systems would be an Investigation-like mechanic.

    Same with the one below. What is about to happen is extremely encompassing; while the other is a character pinpointing their attention. Think of a blasting battlefield. What is about to happen is vastly more helpful than what is __ going to do.

  8. Also I’d like to add that moves that every class have should be more limited than class specific ones. Every group can houserule all they want, however they want; but limitations not only force, but incite imagination from the players. McGyver is much more interesting than Superman.

  10. I’d change the name of the move. A system should allow its user to accomplish their goals as quickly and easily as possible. New players and GMs have to think about what the phrase “Discern Realities” means each time they come across it, far more than “read a sitch” or “perceive”. The latter two are plain English that clearly say what they do, while the former is unnecessarily fanciful and abstruse.

  11. I’d remove all of them, and then the move as well. And focus on building a player facing list of questions that can be asked at any time. Perhaps even a few lists with different categories, eg the social category which is similar to the bard’s charming and open ability.

    “His fear of failure is totally in control here” or “These people are gripped by despair.” This is cool stuff, it enriches the game, why are we putting it behind a pay wall?

  12. I don’t think “pay wall” is a fair description. Are you saying you would never want to use a gym move like reveal an unwelcome truth in response to one of these questions?

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