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A friend of mine had (to me) a pretty baffling take on PBTA in a thread on social media discussing the announcement of the Root RPG. I asked why PBTA is a "hard pass" for him. "the core mechanic being that on a 2d6 roll of 2-6 your character fails, and on 7-9 you succeed but something bad happens. I don't like that heroes are essentially loving up 2/3rd of the time. That's not a good way to feel 'heroic'. PtbA characters are supposed to be very skilled and near the top of their game, but only having a 1/3 chance to actually feel that way doesn't feel good to me. Most of the time, when you roll the dice, something bad is going to happen..that just doesn't sit will with me for how they describe the competency of the characters." I assume he had a lovely MC or comes from a background where crunchy mechanics are the way of life and he can't shake it. I tried talking it out but he's sticking to his guns. I just don't get this take at all.
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Dec 11, 2021 20:36
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| # ? May 15, 2024 11:54 |
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It’s a very common perspective from people who haven’t played or read the rules directly. If you watch most movies, almost all the time protagonists succeed with a complication! Random success and failure is an outgrowth of the fact people used certain dice while wargaming, nothing else. (Reminds me how the one role engine was inspired because Greg Stolze asked “what’s the statistical difference between adding dice and lowering difficulty in White Wolf” and nobody actually knew.)
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Dec 11, 2021 20:55
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Dr. Clockwork posted:A friend of mine had (to me) a pretty baffling take on PBTA in a thread on social media discussing the announcement of the Root RPG. I asked why PBTA is a "hard pass" for him. Given that, I think it's more likely that he just can't vibe with the less granular nature of PbtA; DnD's exhaustive simulation means that any given miss doesn't feel that significant... And if the guy's both a grog and a habitual spellcaster, he's more than likely been thoroughly conditioned to build his personal playstyle around guaranteed results. You'd get the same reaction if you asked them to roll to-hit on magic missile. A wizard without a win button? That's scary.
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Dec 11, 2021 20:58
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AW characters get significant bonuses to their rolls, but that aside, he's not that wrong? AW characters kinda are massive fuckups. It's in many ways a game of unspeakably cool people absolutely bumbling through life in the wasteland. Also, if he's an old D&D hand he's used to a gameplay loop where players ask questions like "can I climb this rock wall using this coil of rope and a bunch of pitons". It's not a game where slipping and causing a noisy rockslide is a fun and interesting twist to the whole "saving the princess" gig. They need to save the princess to charm the dragon to prevent the end of the world, and dealing with these extra orcs kinda just sucks.
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Dec 11, 2021 20:59
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I don’t even think it’s being fuckups, it’s that AW characters are constantly getting into interesting situations. A 7-9 is a success AND something to think about later on.
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Dec 11, 2021 21:03
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I mean most power fantasies have gently caress ups. You don’t get two hours of James Bond shooting everyone in the head, Spider-Man managing his work and life and Lady Gaga instantly reaching the top of the corporation. On 7-9, you don’t fall. You might lose gear or the sky might darken and it starts to rain, you might hear the dragons cry from far away warning of impending doom. In a modern game, you might get a call from your ex, or get to the top in record time only to see a cop poking around your Honda Accord, that you 100% know has a sniper rifle hidden in it. If you go back to handle the police, you’ll definitely be late getting to the top of the mountain (a hard choice). Sometimes, you can even bring up a foolish choice the player made while giving success (“And you’re absolutely sure the guy told you Mount Saint Helens. Not Mount Rainier.”) although personally, I never make characters are roll to do something stupid: The consequences of their actions and telling them what follows is punishment enough. (“The mayor seems particularly offended to be bribed in the middle of a press conference… He’s calling for the guards and you still don’t know anymore about the mountain cult.”)
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Dec 11, 2021 21:08
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Yeah, your friend is misreading what rolls mean. A 6- means some probably-bad twist occurs; that does not necessarily mean you failed. If you were trying to convince somebody of something, maybe they believe you so hard that they go and do something stupid. If you were trying to gather information, maybe you do and the news you get is an entirely accurate “you’re hosed.” If you were fighting, maybe you crush them, but in the chaos their leader gets away with the prize. Similarly, 7-9 means a success, but only a success, while 10+ means you succeeded with no ifs, ands, or buts. One way this can go is: on a 7-9 you get what you wanted, but it’s the GM’s “turn” to throw a new problem at you or whatever, while on a 10+ you not only get the thing, you retain the initiative and can dictate what happens next. The conflict here is that the binary nature of D&D rolls means any bad roll translates to “your character fucks up like an incompetent idiot.” That result doesn’t happen in PbtA unless you decided that your character actually is an incompetent idiot. e: beaten like an egg
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Dec 11, 2021 21:18
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I wonder if his experience with the system was with an MC who a bit too much of a "killer GM" and used hard moves constantly. I could see that being really demoralizing. I think my most common moves by far are "announce offscreen badness" and "announce future badness". This current game of AW I'm running is one of the best RPG campaigns I've ever been a part of. I also think there's some fair points here in that wanting to feel "heroic" is maybe looking at PbtA the wrong way since the goal is to play interesting characters doing interesting things and creating interesting fiction. Could also depend on which hack they were playing, because some write their custom moves differently. And if he played Dungeon World as an alternative to D&D as his first/only? PbtA...well yeah I could see some feelbads depending on the DM.
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Dec 11, 2021 21:19
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I'm playing Fellowship 2E right now and it's explicitly "you are all heroic champions"; it's simply the case that the hack is designed around that concept. You have a lot of buffs at your disposal, and the materials advise that aside from the Sauron-level baddie, enemies are meant only to be obstacles, not existential threats.
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Dec 11, 2021 21:29
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Siivola posted:AW characters get significant bonuses to their rolls, but that aside, he's not that wrong? AW characters kinda are massive fuckups. It's in many ways a game of unspeakably cool people absolutely bumbling through life in the wasteland. The bonuses count for a lot - almost every playbook will have a stat at +3, meaning that a 10+ is the most likely outcome of any given roll, and actual failure only happens one time in twelve. If it's important enough, you can also try to get help, set up the roll by reading the situation, or otherwise pick up an extra +1 here or there. 7-9 isn't always something bad happens, either. For lots of moves, the difference is just that you get fewer picks from a list. It's far from the end of the world. I am having a tough time making sense of this criticism because it's my criticism of systems like BitD or Ironsworn *in contrast to PbtA*, which I think does an amazing job of making the PCs feel like badasses.
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Dec 11, 2021 22:59
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I've only played in Wicked Ones and Band of Blades, but overall I actually like how FitD deals with mixed results more than PbtA, although the main ways that happens (ie clocks) is really easily portable to PbtAs system anyway. What I'm saying here is people should, no matter the system, use clocks.
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Dec 11, 2021 23:52
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Tekopo posted:I've only played in Wicked Ones and Band of Blades, but overall I actually like how FitD deals with mixed results more than PbtA, although the main ways that happens (ie clocks) is really easily portable to PbtAs system anyway. Clocks are actually in original AW; Blades expanded and refined them 
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Dec 12, 2021 00:29
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Yeah, I think he's just straight wrong there. I don't even think AW characters are bumbling; even 6-s aren't "fuckups". I think this comes from the school where you critfail and trip on a flagstone and land on your face and the goblin laughs at you instead of the school where your failures are like, "while you cleave through the goblins towards the ceremony room door, you hear Prince Algor cry for help and turn to see the ogre is carrying him off over his shoulder". The second is a 6- but doesn't mean your hero is a clumsy shithead idiot, it means their lives are interesting.
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Dec 12, 2021 01:10
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A six could be “you’re so strong your axe is lodged in his rib cage, now you have to deal with carrying around a 50 pound goblin until you deal with that.”
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Dec 12, 2021 03:27
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I think it’s a rulesfeel thing. Like, the difference between: “You try to stab the wizard. You roll badly. You miss. The wizard survives, and then on his turn, he fireballs your buddies.” And “You try to stab the wizard. You roll badly. You roll a failure. I make a hard move. I inflict harm as established. The wizard fireballs your buddies.” Might have the same pattern and effect, but the rulesfeel for some players is awkward, in particular the impression that if they had not attacked the wizard but done something else instead and succeeded, their friends would not be on fire. The rule about “golden opportunities” can be taken by players as “avoid creating golden opportunities” which can be good in some circumstances but can be bad in others.
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Dec 12, 2021 06:07
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I mean yes, if they had tried something else and succeeded the wizard wouldn't have fireballed their friends but that also applies to trying to stab the wizard in the first place. If your players don't want to risk rolling low and having bad things happen because of that then you probably need a system that doesn't use rolling.
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Dec 12, 2021 06:23
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The thing about rolling in PbtA games (mostly) is that a roll's result essentially describes the entire result of an encounter, rather than just one "action." It's narrativist, not simulationist. So one roll covers the flow of action that multiple rolls would describe in a D&D-like. "Despite your flashing swordplay, the troll slowly pushes you closer and closer to the cliff, until pebbles fall into the abyss from beneath your heels. You're completely cut off from your companions and things look grim" can be about half an hour of die rolling in D&D vs. one roll in PbtA. Incidentally, the probabilities in PbtA get surprisingly good once you get a +1 or +2 bonus on that roll. Rolling a 7 is a 16% chance with 2D6, so moving 7 or more into "unqualified success" territory is a big jump.
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Dec 12, 2021 06:25
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hyphz posted:I think it’s a rulesfeel thing. Like, the difference between: This is assuming that NOT stabbing the wizard results in zero friends on fire. If that's the case, why stab him ?
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Dec 12, 2021 06:26
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Mirage posted:Incidentally, the probabilities in PbtA get surprisingly good once you get a +1 or +2 bonus on that roll. Rolling a 7 is a 16% chance with 2D6, so moving 7 or more into "unqualified success" territory is a big jump. Yeah, it's a pretty big deal to be rolling with bonuses in PbtA since they can swing the curve quite a bit. Hell, most characters can improve their +2 stat to a +3 stat with their first advance and then you're firmly in 'Anything but a 1' territory with your dice when looking to succeed with cost or no. The thing that always strikes me in AW or PbtA games is how often people choose something like the Skinner playbook and then decide 'I'm really good at talking poo poo and not getting hit but you know what? Time to hit a motherfucker!' and then despair when their -1 Hard doesn't let them smash someone into the ground like their Gunlugger buddy. AW characters are really, really good at the things they're good at and they're kinda poo poo at everything else, which is fun as hell.
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Dec 12, 2021 06:48
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I like XP on failure to encourage players to try new things. It’s not good for every system but in ones where characters aren’t going to doom themelves by failing to bluff their way into a casino, it can create great gameplay.
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Dec 12, 2021 07:24
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Chunnel and Mirage already implied it, but I'll state it right out: In classic dungeoncrawl D&D you're rolling to unlock a door, rolling to disarm a trap, rolling to unlock a door, rolling to unlock another door. In PbtA you're rolling to Navigate The Maze of Locked Doors and Traps. Clockwork's friend may just misunderstand the number of die rolls in a typical PbtA game vs. most D&D games. A 90% chance of "success" becomes much smaller when you have to make several rolls to accomplish what is effectively a single narrative beat. In the end there's little difference between "make several rolls, miss one and suffer a consequence" or "make a roll, achieve a partial success and suffer a consequence."
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Dec 13, 2021 15:49
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Was watching a dnd live play with a friend and we skipped 2+ hours of combat and my friend, not aware of this discussion, unprompted said "in AW that would have been like 1, maybe 2 rolls per player." I've got a friend that is an awesomely talented (but very inexperienced) GM. She did a short campaign of DW and we were talking and she felt like the system really fought her - she thinks combat is boring and kept drifting to a goofier, more modern tone. My first instinct for a new campaign would be MOTW - combat is pretty there but it's not every class, it's pretty goofy and very modern so 2.5/3. I'm wondering if somebody's got a better AW like because the core AW remnants in DW were great fits.
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Dec 13, 2021 16:12
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My immediate suggestion is Homebrew World, which is an attempt to remake Dungeon World into a more "traditional" PbtA game. From there you start moving out of the dungeon crawl fantasy zone into different genres, i.e. Fellowship.
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Dec 13, 2021 17:14
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If you want goofy and somewhat modern, go for spirit of 77 which has the following adventures: – women’s prison of the apes -midnight flight to Amityville -The kaboom show (The Gong Show, but with explosions. After the players perform the host tries to defect from Soviet Russia.) - Cruise ship of the Damned and return to the cruise ship of the Damned (Love boat plus zombies, and a reboot) -Beast Bound And Down: which starts with the players behind the wheel of a stolen beer truck on the Fourth of July. And these: http://towerofzenopus.blogspot.com/2015/03/spirit-of-77-adventure-seeds.html?m=1
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Dec 13, 2021 17:24
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What's the best PbtA live play? Any hack will do.
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Dec 14, 2021 22:15
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I like Dave Kizzia running cruise ship of the damned but I’m completely biased.
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Dec 14, 2021 22:16
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Golden Bee posted:If you want goofy and somewhat modern, go for spirit of 77 which has the following adventures: Oh poo poo awesome. This dive also lead me to read Epyllion which I'd had in my library for years and not actually cracked open and oops turns out it loving bangs. Haven't read all of it, really just the intro and playbooks, but it's looking like an A-tier PBTA (the S-Tier is currently just AW and Firebrands)
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Dec 14, 2021 23:34
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Halloween Jack posted:Chunnel and Mirage already implied it, but I'll state it right out: In classic dungeoncrawl D&D you're rolling to unlock a door, rolling to disarm a trap, rolling to unlock a door, rolling to unlock another door. In PbtA you're rolling to Navigate The Maze of Locked Doors and Traps. Clockwork's friend may just misunderstand the number of die rolls in a typical PbtA game vs. most D&D games. I think the big twist with PBTA specifically is how the roll outcomes can be kind of unrelated to the actual action. D&D's task-based resolution implies, even where it doesn't directly say, that you should have consequences based on the roll; it's okay to have, for instance, the door stay locked, or a lockpick to break, or have the guard catch you (wandering monsters!). The moves system, by contrast, legitimises plays like "you're in the middle of that when you see prince horace run past the corridor on the left, being chased by king dragon, what do you do", or "you're trying to do that when you hear a clank of a glass bottle and realise the fairy you bottled earlier has managed to escape, and is flying off". D&D, and, honestly maybe more D&D's culture, implies those are unfair play.
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Dec 14, 2021 23:55
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https://twitter.com/KamalaKaraA1/status/1482079452121243648 HOT-BLOODED YOUTHS! TENSE MELODRAMA! SHONEN ACTION! Join the fray in Friendship, Effort, Victory, a shonen battle manga tabletop roleplaying game. Inspired by works such as Bleach, One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia, and other battle manga, Friendship, Effort, Victory uses the acclaimed Powered By The Apocalypse Engine to deliver the flashy, dynamic battles and intense, climatic drama of those sensational works.
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Jan 15, 2022 03:56
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Playing a PbtA game and have been thinking about fights and how they are handled. The game we are playing right now mostly copied it's basic move list from DW and frustration with it got me thinking about alternatives to Hack and Slash and Volley. I peeked at AW and was kind of blown away by it's various bespoke types of fights it has it's own rules for, even if there are aspects of it I am less sure of. Has anyone seen a game with a combat resolution system or set of moves that really excited you? Ideas to improve on Hack and Slash / Volley since so many games just take them as is?
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Jan 19, 2022 17:48
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I think Fellowship should be studied by anyone who wants combat in a D&D setting to be more than "do HP damage until it dies," including OSR people who are operating from a very different set of assumptions and wouldn't use PBTA basic resolution at all.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:07
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Most exciting combat I've seen from PBTA are definitely from Master of Elements and Firebrands, both drive substantially further away from HP meters to fiction driven resolution. I'd say nearly any other hack will be better than DW for that tho, DW is the weakest hack I've played and a lot of that is in its combat.
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Jan 19, 2022 18:14
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Masks focuses on emotional stakes in combat which solves the problem every other super RPG had, which is one person wants to play Superman and another as Robin.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:12
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Golden Bee posted:Masks focuses on emotional stakes in combat which solves the problem every other super RPG had, which is one person wants to play Superman and another as Robin. Definitely check out how Masks (and the upcoming Avatar) do things because they keep it interesting with 2 different damage tracks.
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Jan 19, 2022 19:34
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Halloween Jack posted:I think Fellowship should be studied by anyone who wants combat in a D&D setting to be more than "do HP damage until it dies," including OSR people who are operating from a very different set of assumptions and wouldn't use PBTA basic resolution at all. Fellowship is indeed fantastic, but bear in mind its combat expects the PCs to be ultrapowerful. You roll once and the creature you're attacking either dies instantly, loses one of its abilities, or hits you, which you can completely recover from by eating a meal with friends. (Oversimplifying it, but not by much.) It's a great starting point, though.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:50
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Mirage posted:Fellowship is indeed fantastic, but bear in mind its combat expects the PCs to be ultrapowerful. You roll once and the creature you're attacking either dies instantly, loses one of its abilities, or hits you, which you can completely recover from by eating a meal with friends. (Oversimplifying it, but not by much.) Using the Finish Them move is a little more complicated than "you hit them with it and they die, job done" even as a simplification.
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Jan 19, 2022 22:56
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bewilderment posted:Using the Finish Them move is a little more complicated than "you hit them with it and they die, job done" even as a simplification. Plus enemies that need to be tougher tend to have traits that make them harder to take out.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:04
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Ash Rose posted:Playing a PbtA game and have been thinking about fights and how they are handled. The game we are playing right now mostly copied it's basic move list from DW and frustration with it got me thinking about alternatives to Hack and Slash and Volley. I peeked at AW and was kind of blown away by it's various bespoke types of fights it has it's own rules for, even if there are aspects of it I am less sure of. I think the random die rolls are a big part of this. I could see a game working with something simple like Hack and Slash, but the fact that you could get a 10+ and then roll low on damage that gets absorbed by armor sucks. A lot of PbtA games work with fixed values and even if your attack will be absorbed you know that ahead of time. In AW if I'm going unarmed against someone in a bulletproof vest I know that I will do -1 Harm, but I can still take something from them or have my fighting change what they're doing if I want to go ahead with it.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:33
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bewilderment posted:Using the Finish Them move is a little more complicated than "you hit them with it and they die, job done" even as a simplification. Yeah, I get that. But at the same time, in the game I was running, two level 1 characters faced off against dozens of basic soldiers and just mulched them, receiving a scratch or two at most. Admittedly I wasn't being very imaginative, but it was the first battle I ever ran in the system and was amazed at how what would be an "overwhelming force" in most games dissolved like wheat before the scythe. Fellowship is a real "work smarter, not harder" game.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:35
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| # ? May 15, 2024 11:54 |
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https://twitter.com/KamalaKaraA1/status/1484189028824006659?s=20 And we're live with the PDF!
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Jan 20, 2022 16:44
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