I've always played it as written, no confusion.  But I did find it odd that you needed to be in a dangerous area.  Although, in a Points of Light style game you could argue that any area outside a settlement is dangerous :)

And some areas within a settlement...

The other way to go with be to say that it's easy to forage in a settled area, so you don't need to spend a ration there.

(Here's a thing: Shanks has a bond "Amdor has my back when things go wrong". How is that bond going to be declared as resolved? When does it count?)

Easy answer: whenever the players are done with it. In the fiction, that could result from Amdor leaving Shanks out to dry ("I thought you had my back, man!") or Shanks being increasingly reckless ("Look man, you know I have your back, but the shit you're doing is getting crazy.") Or it could just be that it's an accepted part of both characters that doesn't need to be played to anymore, i.e. you're bored with that as a bond, so you agree to pick something else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "when does it count". It's a bond, so it counts mechanically whenever you're using the aid/interfere move, and it counts fictionally whenever someone chooses to make it relevant.

The one thing I'd try to avoid is the point where the mechanical incentives ("We want the +1!") are fighting the players' instincts for roleplaying their characters ("You don't get to tell me what the plan is!").

As a player, I am the guy who will simply object in the process of playing my character, and the +1 can go to hell.  But stick me in a group with folks who really value their mechanical resources, and there could be friction.

As long as that friction is in the fiction, that's war movie gold!

We don't need to compare a Paladin to a Paladin that are both in the same game. If I were a player, though, I would certainly compare who I am with what I "could be." This would bother me personally, as a player, if I didn't notice it. Maybe I'm the only one with that OCD, but, as a player, I'd be sad I couldn't hit the "reset," button on my character... but then, I have min/max tendencies :P

As far as I know, there's nothing in the rules that says a GM can't allow a character to rearrange their advances. If I had a player in this situation, I'd probably give them an option to switch around their abilities in some period of downtime.

"Hey guys, Octavia went to a distant monastery and became more attuned to her God!"

I'd also allow a character to be a half elf without taking that move (which personally, I don't think is that great anyway).

Each hit adds something to the camp: safety, supplies, etc. One roll can only add one benefit. So one person does not a camp make.

That said, we're open to changing the move.

*Re-reads*

OooooOOOOOh!

Well, I've been playing it wrong. Has it always been like that, or was that a Beta change? It probably could stand to be clarified.

Yikes! The way that reads (and this is perhaps not your intention, Marshall) is tyhat you need three advances to prepare and cast spells even before you start buying extra "levels" of casting?

If the move gave you Prepare and cast as part of the move, then each time you bought the advance it bought you a new "tier" of spells (so two advances and you're casting level 3 spells. 3 and you have level 5, etc), that might work. With a cap on the spell levels at your own level -1 or something.

At any rate, Beta 2.0 is coming out soon, so there's not much point getting and downloading Beta 1.x now just to have to read through Beta 2.0 a couple of days later.

Sage just tweeted about almost catching up on his email, so fingers crossed!

Doesn't that make it too easy to camp? One person succeeds and everything is fine? How do you incorporate misses into that?

It seems like a weird (unique?) situation where everyone has to make the roll, then the GM has to look at all of the results and craft a situation that potentially combines total success with partial success and a miss or two.

Yes, but Octavia has been getting the bonus from smiting evil for all those levels and Lex hasn't. Perhaps LEx's focus on spells at the expense of combat abilities has meant that he's had to make a deal with death at some point along the way? Perhaps he lost friends and allies because he wasn't a strong enough warrior?

You're right, Octavia will never catch up to Lex, but that's the choices they made at  second level. *W is about nothing if it's not about choices.

Easy! Just email gm@dungeon-world.com with a link to this AP that you've posted and ask to join.

But don't the characters that take spellcasting levels later have a bunch of cool non-casting moves to be badass with? They're not really "behind the curve" unless you just comparing them with the respective spellcasting class only on the basis of spallcasting. By that comparison, yeah, they'll always be behind.

On the plus side, they have more hp, better damage dice and other awesome class moves.

I have one player roll. Anyone else can aid if they want to help, or wander off into the woods and do other things if that's their bag.

[part of the point of moves is to prime your mind and frame your expectations to guide you to act in particular ways]

A move can start with naming the move or with the fictional action, but the fictional action is REQUIRED.

I know how moves work. What I was reacting to is Josh's apparent preference for people not considering their moves at all. There was a story-games thread about not giving players access to the character sheets -- I think that's the kind of thing he would prefer. To me that seems like a misguided approach to *W games, since part of the point of moves is to prime your mind and frame your expectations to guide you to act in particular ways. But maybe I read too much into what Josh was saying.

FWIW. I have a similar conception to Josh of how DW works, but I'm totally with you on this point. I give every player a copy of the move sheet and would object to having them taken away from me as a player. The clause I have highlighted in bold is very well put.

Sure, but if we put all games on a spectrum DW would end up much closer to the traditional end (near DITV and Burning Wheel, as opposed to something like Fiasco or roll-to-declare-a-fact games), so I have trouble wrapping my head around why the narrative authority issue seems to loom so large for some people.

I think of DW as having a lot of player narrative control because of the way the gamma edition discovery moves (Spout/Discern) gave explicit narrative control to the players. Now I have gamma edition brain damage and my conception of DW has not kept pace with development on this issue. :D

You make an excellent point about the "damage is the most boring move" line, Dan.

Thanks also for revealing the different ideas people have about the term "sandbox"! My understanding is exactly in line with how you describe it, Dan; it didn't occur to me that it might be a disputed term.

I think I read the damage numbers and from them assume that the game is supposed to be lethal and gritty. It seems like other people assume it's a wahoo game and from that conclude that you're almost never supposed to actually do the damage that the numbers call for since they're so lethal. I'd really like to know if one or the other approach is wrong, or if the game is supposed to encompass both.

On the Podgecast, Josh talks a lot about using attacks to change the fictional state of combats and the fictional positioning of characters within them, rather than doing damage with them. Josh is clearly in the "damage is the most boring hard move you can make" school. I think this is the specific disconnect that Dan is talking about.

I certainly take the same position as Josh, but like Dan, I'm interested to hear what the designers' position is. Is this addressed in 2.0?