A couple tweaks to Discern Realities that I’m considering implementing for Stonetop and Homebrew world, to help address the “when does it trigger?” issues that so often come up.
Thoughts, questions, and feedback welcome and appreciated.
Discern Realities: make the question part of the trigger?
I’m thinking about making this change to Discern Realities in Stonetop and Homebrew World. I’ll be honest, as a player the line between “just describing stuff” and Discern Realities always seemed a little fuzzy.
I definitely like putting the trigger more intentionally in the players’ hands, and the discretion afforded the GM in triggering it too.
I do wonder how often you’ll end up saying “If you want to DR, ask one of the questions”… it came up a few times in your hypothetical play-through.
It might actually work out better though, because it gets the player engaging with the very specific DR questions before they actually commit to the move… if they can’t see how what they want to ask corresponds to one of the questions, they can ask a different question to just get an answer or a move out of the GM, or discuss back and forth to clarify that e.g. they’re really looking for a secret door, at which point the GM can say “that sounds like you’re looking for something that isn’t what it appears to be!”
Regarding the version where you gain Insight… it sounds like it would work quite well in play. For Jeremy Strandberg and other experienced DW GMs, how often do players who roll a 10+ on Discern Realities feel that they’ve been put on the spot and have to grope around for their second and third questions?
Incidentally, I always did the way Jeremy suggested. I never let my players studying a situation or a guy, with no precise ideas on what they are trying to obtain. And, of course, this is the only way I have, as Master, to choose if the answer needs a roll or not.
Jeremy Strandberg Nice write up. I’m interesting to know how it plays out at the table.
Not read the thread (yet) but this:
On a 7+, the GM will answer honestly; on a 10+, you can also ask two more questions and get honest answers
10+ is part of the 7+ line, I feel like having to say again that you will get honest answer is redundant.
Robert Rendell re: this:
how often do players who roll a 10+ on Discern Realities feel that they’ve been put on the spot and have to grope around for their second and third questions?
In my experience, not much at all. But it does sometimes cause you to stay “in the move” a little longer than I think is ideal, y’know? Like, answering 3 questions, especially when they’re out-of-the-blue questions that you don’t have a ready answer for, can sort of hog the spotlight.
And I worry a little that a more structured, disciplined approach to triggering Discern Realities in the first place is going to make it feel weirder to to keep the spotlight focused on that character and their subsequent Q&A on a 10+.
Andrea Parducci yeah, I suspect that this “revision” makes the move more closely describe what GMs and playgroups have been doing all along to make the move work.
One of the problems that I see a lot of people run into with DW as written is that there’s a few places where you need to read between the lines to understand what to do in some situations. In these situations, D&Disms tend to creep in and the GM winds up fighting against the rules. Discern Realities as a Perception check is one of these such incongruences.
Explicitly stating that the GM should reveal what is obvious does give some clarification, but is it at odds with the “fiction first” principle?
Peter J I don’t follow you. How would telling the GM to reveal what is obvious be at odds with “fiction first?”
I mean in fishing for the specific DR questions. It’s a weak complaint, in all fairness.
In my very own specific experience with DW, I’m the one that checks if what they say is triggering a move and which.
So in both case (RAW or Jeremy’s version), I don’t think it will affect my game.
Players will still tell me they’re inspecting something. I’ll still tell myself : “that’s the trigger for DR”, and I’ll still tell them to ask me one of the following questions.
Could it make it more clear that you don’t need to roll to get an answer? Maybe. Honestly, to me this principle applies to every move. Do you need to roll H&S or DD? In my mind, if it’s not going to bring up something interesting at the table, I’m not making you roll.
Example, two games ago, one of the characters jumped on the back of a giant monster and wanted to stab it in the back of the head. We were satisfied with the scene at that point, it was going for about 30 minutes, the move was cool and she already Defied Danger to get there. Technically, she was attacking in melee so it should have triggered H&S but I ruled that she would roll damage directly. And it was perfect (she one-shot it).
My point is, does it matter that much that the move implies or not that you should or should not roll?
Jeremy Strandberg You approach of putting the question into the trigger made me think about why DR uses questions in the first place? If instead we would focus on the player intend at least in my opinion a lot of the awkwardness disappears. Something like that:
When you closely study a charged situation with the intend to…
…find the best way out
…find something useful or valuable
…find out what happend her recently
…find out who is in control here
.. find out what really is going on
Julian Plaga Yes but how does the intent of the player come across? If they just say “I’m closely studying the area” does the move trigger?
Ben M The intent of the player can come across in two ways, either he is describing something that clearly shows his intent:
1.Damn with the arrival of the guard I am trapped. I am carefully looking from my hiding spot and scan the room for another way out of this room.
Or by directly naming one of the intends in the Move:
2. This situation is getting out of hand. I want to look for the best way out.
If the player is just saying he is searching the room/closely studying the situation this wouldn’t trigger DR It would be more of a sign for the GM to give the players a better mental picture of whats going on and where they are. I find this distinction valuable. Since its separating a confused player from a character who is investigating the scene with a specific intent.
If we follow through on that thought it would change DR in a way that it fulfills a totally different purpose which begs the question if that is really what we want. I guess I have to think about this more.
Julian Plaga ” why DR uses questions in the first place? “
From Jeremy Strandberg ‘s blog :
But Why Do the Questions Have to Come From the List?
But here’s the part that’s brilliant: the questions force them to ask something meaningful.
Addramyr Palinor I see your refer to the blog post defending DR. The idea with the intents instead of questions doesn’t affect that point much. It still makes the Player rolling for DR propel the story forward in accordance with the intents from the list.
So my question why DR uses questions is more geared towards the phenomenon I encountered a few times when the player has to translate his intent into a question from the list which then gets often answered by the GM to fit more the players actual intent/question. Jeremy Strandbergs solution to this was to add the question to the trigger. The idea to go with the characters intend directly makes the move IMO more based in the fiction and avoids this sometimes weird hamfistedness of translating the players intent into the questions and then answer back. I am really curious to hear Jeremy Strandberg take on this.
Oh man I wanted to jump on this from the start. I love this kind of discussions and Jeremy Strandberg is brilliant in the way he exposes his arguments.
Please forgive me, I’m just trying to further the discussion, but I’m going to do so by trying to defend Discern Realities.
1) It’s difficult to tell the difference between just asking for details and triggering DR
The trigger is pretty clear to me:
You’re not merely scanning for clues—you have to look under and around things, tap the walls, and check for weird dust patterns on the bookshelves.
A player asks me: What do I see? What’s in this room? How’s the weather? Do I see something pink? Anything valuable?
For me they are just looking at me to find out what happens. I make a soft move:
There’s a cool book on a stand (Opportunity without cost)
There’s a strongbox in the corner (Opportunity with cost)
This is just a bedroom (Make them backtrack)
2) Discern realities gets triggered mainly when the players give up on exploring the space and want to skip to the answer. Feels like cheating.
I’ll suggest a different point of view here: A GM describes things to allow the players to see through their PC’s eyes. Discern Realities is there to allow players to think through their PC’s brains and is triggered when the player wants their PC to put two and two together for them.
I’ll argue that you can move the trigger backwards (easier to trigger) or forward (require more fictional investigation). But at a certain point you will want to allow players to use their PC’s brains for 2 reasons:
a) Like me you’re not exceptionally good at coming up on the fly with puzzles that are both interesting and solvable.
b) There might be consenquences associated with the act of investigating and DR models that.
3) “I’m looking carefully at these jars and such on the shelves… what here is useful or valuable to me?”
Looking carefully is already the trigger for DR.
4) …benefits of making the player ask a question before rolling… It can give you something more to work with when they roll a 6-.
Having the player state how they are investigating also does that. Looking carefully at the jars? Are you also touching? Moving? Opening?You accidentally bump one, the floor is now covered in sovereign glue!
5) GMs, a player triggers Discern Realities and rolls a 7+ when examining a location (say) which in your mind was unimportant or incidental. How do you tend to answer their questions?
The move states clearly that the GM should answer honestly. If you think it is uninportant, be honest. If you feel bad for the player just ask yourself, and the table, why they felt like investigating here in the first place.
Also, make a move that follows for me means that you shouldn’t create high tension where there is none to begin with. A 6- while investigating something inconsequential in a context of low tension should’t lead to the black gate so to speak… unless they present you a golden opportunity of course.
6) DR is triggered “when you closely study a situation or person” which means that a player deciding to closely examine something makes it a thing, even if they don’t want it to be.
One of DW and AW main principles is if you want something to happen, you have to act in the fiction. So… why would a player say that he wants his PC to spend some time closely examining something if he actually doesn’t want it to happen?
If the player didn’t want to incur in the negative consequences of a roll he could have simply said: No, no. I’m not interacting, I’m just looking. Do I see anything else without actually investigating?. Which in turn is lookig at the GM to see what happens right? In DW terms it’s the equivalent of I don’t want to risk a hard move. Can you make a soft one for me?.
7) How often do players who roll a 10+ on Discern Realities feel that they’ve been put on the spot and have to grope around for their second and third questions?
I feel this too. I’ve got a different solution too:
Make DR a “hold” move:
You can spend hold any time to ask a question. You lose all hold when the scene changes dramatically (GM says)
8) Damn with the arrival of the guard I am trapped. I am carefully looking from my hiding spot and scan the room for another way out of this room.
In my opinion this is still looking at the GM to see what happens. It means: GM, the situation changed, tell me what I see that now is relevant but wasn’t before.
Esample:
GM Well, there IS a window. And the door of course…
Player I open the window and look if I can find a way to climb down, or maybe if I can walk on the cornice up to another window.
GM Roll DR
I think its time for some more polls from Jeremy Strandberg with some evocative scenes where DR might apply. Seems like the community has many different ways of using and handling DR.
I really like what Stefano Casella writes about handling most of these situations with a GM move. On the other hand this can be heavy on the GM and lead to inconsistent experiences since GMs will have different approaches and Ideas what GM move fits best and how it manifets.
What I like about DR:
– rewards players for exploring (gain advantage, +1 forward)
– choosen questions goalpost GM what the player is interested in eg. What here is not what it appears to be? -> (GM Lightbulb!) Something here is not what it appears to be and this is exciting.
Julian Plaga when I read:
On the other hand this can be heavy on the GM and lead to inconsistent experiences since GMs will have different approaches and Ideas what GM move fits best and how it manifets.
I got the impression that you perceive this as a downside. Am I wrong?
Instead of inconsistencies I would have used the word variety. Dungeon World has an Agenda, Principles and Moves in stead of a bunch of tables and formulas because it wants the GM to use they’re imagination to make things up on the fly. It allows for interpretation and variation.
Also how is anwering questions with moves harder than answering DR’s questions?
What I was talking about is only a way to read the DW rules. In the end a GM will have to make something up anyway right? Unless you’re playing a module and you can look up what’s in the room (which is totally fine by the way).
Just to make it clear:
I never wanted to suggest that the GM should have a list of moves to apply in response of random questions, then other lista specific to every different situation… When I say, you just make a move I’m basically saying you just make something up because that is what DW is about. The GMs moves list for me is something I look up when I’m alone to remember myself of the great many things I can do to spice up the fiction. When I’m at the table I seldom look it up cause I don’t have time to stop and consider how every move would apply to the situation at hand.
Julian Plaga in my opinion, having Discern Realities use questions instead of statements of intent allows us to proceduralize the whole thing more easily while still using fairly natural, intuitive language. It also makes it easier to modify the move with other moves.
Like, if we take your initial suggestion…
When you closely study a charged situation with the intent to…
…find the best way out
…find something useful or valuable
…find out what happend her recently
…find out who is in control here
.. find out what really is going on_
…and finish writing the move, what does that look like? I’m honestly having a hard time coming up with whatever comes next. I guess maybe something like…
…the GM will either tell you want you want to know, tell you how you could learn it, or have you roll +WIS. On a 7+, they’ll tell you honestly what you hoped to find out; on a 10+, tell them two more things you hope to find out and they’ll honestly tell you those things, too.
That is way, way less elegant than “ask one of the following…” If the answer isn’t obvious, roll…” “…the GM will answer honestly.”
Also, how does a move like the Barbarian’s “Eye for Weakness” get reworded? “When you Discern Realities, add “…find something that is weak or vulnerable” to the list of intentions you might have.” That sounds pretty clumsy to me.
We used this version of the move last Saturday in Planets Collide. It worked well, but it didn’t come up more than a couple times, so I can’t report on a variety of results.
When I first read out the move (to ask the players if they wanted to try it), one player was immediately excited by the distinction that sets this version apart from the standard move.
This post by Chris McDowall has been on my mind a lot lately, and his identification of “questions as gameplay” articulates my interest pretty well:
bastionland.com – The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact
Since I’ve been working on Twisted Tunnels β6, I incorporated the ICI idea into my perception “moves” for that game:
Perception
When you examine your environment, ask questions. The referee will tell you everything you can see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. You will get better answers from better questions. Searching* and surprise are special cases, covered further on.
Search
When you scour your environment for something hidden, name something you are looking for and make a Saving Roll. Describe how you search for the item or feature.
On a success, the referee will tell you whether you are getting “hotter” or “colder” after each step of the process, until you are interrupted or you find what you are looking for.
On a miss, describe your search anyway. You might find it, if you happen to look in the right spot.
~~~
I don’t claim that this approach is right for Dungeon World, but I think your version of DR comes much closer to what McDowall is talking about by putting the questions first, and the “if it is not obvious” qualifier.
D’oh, sorry for the tangent. TL;DR: We’ll be using this version of DR again, and I’ll report back if I notice anything worthy of comment or inquiry. Thank you, Jeremy Strandberg!