Lets talk Spout Lore. How do you GM it? I think the most difficult problem is trying to make solid GM moves on a 6-. Everyone knows that if your 6- Moves aren’t threatening there isn’t a way to stop players from trying to Spout Lore in every conceivable situation.
How do you keep players from Spouting Lore at every opportunity? How do you combine puzzles with Spout Lore? How many ways can you Move on a 6- to make it really count?
“Oh the answer to this is just on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t seem to get it. Of course now you can’t stop thinking about it. Take -1 ongoing until you figure it out.”
“You fumble into your bags trying to find your books and drop your healing potion. Smash it falls on the floor to pieces.”
“Before you can think too hard about the dragon’s weak point, he notices you and lets out a firey roar in your direction. What do you do?”
Answers:
– no one needs to keep the players from spouting lore about everything. It’s one of the best ways to define the setting as you play!
– I don’t think resolving puzzles would trigger spout lore. I mean, unless a character wants to know something about a component of the puzzle o something like that.
– Infinite ways. One of the easiest: Reveal an Ugly Truth. Or, “a ninja leaps at you from shadows while you’re thinking”.
I have event bombs in my current game. Get a 6- and I say “nope you got nothing” or any other move where you get off light I moved the timer closer to exploding. I don’t hide this from the players. Then they can decide how much they want to risk breaking that pinata and adding baddness to what is already happening.
“You’re sitting there, babbling a bit, trying to come out with the answer that’s somewhere in your head when a rumbling interrupts your thoughts. The ground is beginning to shake something fierce. What do you do?”
Context dependent, of course. It doesn’t have to be bad information, it can be a situation interrupting the Spouting.
“How do you stop players from spouting lore at every opportunity?”
Well, if they’re doing it a lot and it’s just kinda making things drag, follow your agenda: fill their lives with adventure! Make something happen that they can’t ignore. Y’know that Orc tribe in the valley? Well, looks like they’re charging. Like, your direction right now. What do you do? Otherwise, if it’s not making things drag, why stop it?
Spout Lore isn’t always the best move. Like sometimes a monster is about to eat you! Or you’re falling into a pit trap! Probably not the right move then. It’s just as content dependent as anything else.
And you can always do the classic, “Okay, how?” How do they know about this stuff? Who have they learned information from? And when they tell you, that helps you flavor and restrict the information you give back. What does their source know? How accurate is it likely to be? What kinds of info would they share, for what reasons?
Lore doesn’t just appear out of nowhere; it comes from other people or past experiences.
Is there a good way for spout lore to come up organically. Like lets say you haven’t showed the players the basic moves sheet, and are just responding to what they say with a move. What are some good examples of narrative that might trigger spout lore without the player aiming for a spout lore move?
“Hey, I’m a wizard. Do I know something about this kinda stuff?” or “You know, Regdar, I’m a wizard, I’ve got books, there’s gotta be something in them about this.”
Or heck, even something like “ahhh, the red hand clan, I know them well.”
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My basic response to Spout Lore failure is Reveal an Unwelcome Truth or Turn Their Move Back On Them. Usually the best way to go about this is to ask the player how does he know about this and turn those answers into nasty revelations.
I really think that having a ninja attack from the shadows or a trap springing or something like that, 90% of the time is the wrong way to go, because your move does not follow the fiction. The 10% remaining are those times when a player wants to Spout Lore about the beast that’s about to eat him or about the cursed orb he’s already holding in his hands.
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I don’t keep player from spouting lores (or any other move, as long as it follow the “rules” – you know what I mean…).
But players should feel that a 6- has a consequence that they won’t like.
In my last game a man died misteriously in his sleep while he was in a tavern.
Random people and some guards came to look what happened….
long story short, the ranger starts to inspect the body, roll for spout lore…miss it!
the guards think he is acting suspiciously, they start questioning him…
…moves snowball, and now he is considered to be an outlaw!