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Ash Rose posted:Isn't this essentially Court of Blades? Not really. Court of Blades is just "it's Blades in the Dark, but you kind of care about social standing? You're all quite foppish."
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Aug 17, 2022 21:39
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You're not at cross-purposes in Court of Blades, is the main thing. You're at the bottom of your House's social ladder (e.g. maybe you're all servants of one minor lord... and he just got assassinated) but you're all that one House and so you're working together to improve yourselves within it, as well as to make your House in general better. Doesn't work for a "one of you is Arya Stark and one of you is Cersei Lannister" game.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:19
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Panzeh posted:Honestly the weakness of PBTA is if you're not in for the very particular fiction that the game is trying to be, it doesn't really have anything for anyone else. They are all super bespoke to what they can do. The Bee posted:I'd argue that's a strength, not a weakness, honestly. But I imagine its a matter of perspective. I think it's both, at different times. When you have a sufficient group of people to run a game with, and all of them are very down to the specific fiction a PbtA game is trying to cater to, it's absolutely a strength. To my mind it flips to being a weakness in two contexts. The first, minor one, is when you and your group are in a mood for a particular fiction, but you aren't aware of any especially satisfying PbtA games which cater to it. (There probably is one, but you may need to research it a bit - and if none of you knew about that game, none of you are familiar enough with it to pick it up and run it, adding a delay to when you can start playing.) The more significant time it's a weakness is when you and your group want a game which has a fairly broad focus, for whatever reason, and there's a whole bunch of reasons I can think of off the top of my head: - Perhaps you're up for long-term campaign play and you'd like the campaign to incorporate a fairly broad range of moods and themes, so one clutch of sessions might be a tense murder mystery and then the next plot arc might be perilous dungeon exploration or whatever, and you specifically want to do that in a persistent setting with a continuous group of PCs rather than playing a murder mystery game and then switching to a dungeoneering game. - Or perhaps you want to play a quick game of something with reasonably broad possibilities because you've not gamed with each other before and you think it'd be a good way to feel out each others' preferences, or figure out what sort of game you want to play with this specific group. Kind of like the equivalent of jamming a bit as a band before you decide on a specific musical direction (at which point the more specific song formats/game systems can come into play). - Or maybe the specific idea your group has bought into is a mystery box scenario - beyond character creation guidelines, you don't know what the game's going to be about because you, as a group, think it would fun for it to be a surprise (and you trust the referee enough to make it a good surprise), so using a very tightly defined, thematically specific system would undermine that. - Or you don't have a group as yet and you want to meet new people at the RPG night at your local game shop, and you want to run something you can be fairly sure of getting players for. Contrary to a lot of RPG theory rhetoric, going for the big-tent, more flexible, less focused game is actually the right answer in some situations, and that game's almost never going to be a PbtA game in my experience - or if it is, it'll be a pretty lousy example of that because it's pulling as hard as it can away from the strengths of that approach. 5E is going to be the better call for the "I want to play something popular" use case, for instance, and for the other use cases I'd be inclined to go for something blandly inoffensive with a proven track record in a lot of genres (probably BRP in my case because it's a system I am familiar enough with to use for lots of different contexts). Warthur fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 01:21
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I am comfortable with the fact that a lot of things I like are garbage. Myself, for example.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:50
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Splicer posted:I am comfortable with the fact that a lot of things I like are garbage. Saaaame.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:54
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Accepting that something does not have to be good for you to like and enjoy it is a vital and oft-missed step in being a thoughtful consumer of... just about everything, really.
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Aug 18, 2022 01:59
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admanb posted:Accepting that something does not have to be good for you to like and enjoy it is a vital and oft-missed step in being a thoughtful consumer of... just about everything, really. I credit Michael Bay for helping me truly internalize this lesson.
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Aug 18, 2022 02:35
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Roadie posted:I credit Michael Bay for helping me truly internalize this lesson. His milk commercial was true art that has yet to be surpassed.
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Aug 18, 2022 04:05
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Warthur posted:I think it's both, at different times. Oh, no doubt. PbtA games are for very specific moods and genres with groups comfortable about getting deep with each other, and that's practically the antithesis of your average pickup game. I still think focus is usually better than a lack thereof, and a broader game should be something mechanics light and simple, but there's a reason why it feels like the gaming sphere has stopped acting like PbtA is the insta-slam pick answer to everything (hello, Dungeon World).
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Aug 18, 2022 04:44
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I think there are enough "big tent" games out there, not that I think anyone making another is somehow in the wrong to do so (though D&D is going to pretty much forever dominate that space), that I appreciate seeing games which are instead laser focused on a particular specific set of themes, moods, or genres. I'll probably never play Monster Hearts and I have no personal interest in what it's going for but I like the fact that it exists and does what it's doing well.
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Aug 18, 2022 09:32
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admanb posted:Accepting that something does not have to be good for you to like and enjoy it is a vital and oft-missed step in being a thoughtful consumer of... just about everything, really. There's obviously limits though.
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Aug 18, 2022 10:39
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I think you're right about there being enough big tent systems already - I can't think of the last one which really got much traction. There's D&D, of course, and from where I am sitting the BRP ecosystem seems particularly healthy (especially once you fold in games which aren't strictly speaking BRP but are built along comparable principles like WFRP) - not on a computer mmercial scale as massive as 5E, but there's enough hobbyist creativity being applied in the field to keep it going a long time. On the other hand, a lot of the 1980s-vintage big tent systems like GURPS or Hero System or Rolemaster seem to be in the doldrums. The 1990s didn't really produce any big tent systems. (Storyteller tries to be that, but doesn't seem to be used like that in practice.) Was FATE the last big-tent system to become a critical darling? Possibly, but it seems to no longer be flavour of the week and I think it's not as big tent as some of its advocates made it out to be. Savage Worlds, likewise. In principle it shouldn't be impossible to make a new big tent systems which catches on - perhaps not to a 5E extent, but certainly on a level where it's competing with similar stuff. In practice, seems like commercial self-harm to do so.
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Aug 18, 2022 10:42
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Warthur posted:I think you're right about there being enough big tent systems already - I can't think of the last one which really got much traction. There's D&D, of course, and from where I am sitting the BRP ecosystem seems particularly healthy (especially once you fold in games which aren't strictly speaking BRP but are built along comparable principles like WFRP) - not on a computer mmercial scale as massive as 5E, but there's enough hobbyist creativity being applied in the field to keep it going a long time. I mean, I am kinda partial to GURPS but yeah the management of the thing kinda has left something to be desired. There was a 10-20 year period where a lot of things got adapted to it, and then nowadays the best GURPS stuff that gets released is the Gaming Ballistic Dungeon Fantasy stuff, other than that it's pretty much a holding pattern. The Bee posted:Oh, no doubt. PbtA games are for very specific moods and genres with groups comfortable about getting deep with each other, and that's practically the antithesis of your average pickup game. I still think focus is usually better than a lack thereof, and a broader game should be something mechanics light and simple, but there's a reason why it feels like the gaming sphere has stopped acting like PbtA is the insta-slam pick answer to everything (hello, Dungeon World). Yeah, my experience with RPG groups is that people tend to not exactly have the same thing in mind- so it's hard to get people together to, say, want to play Masks because I might get one or two who want that exact premise, and then the other three will probably be okay with something broader like Superheroes, and Masks is a very particular kind of superhero game, so it's not gonna work with my group- it also doesn't have enough 'game' there to keep somebody engaged who's not up for doing a ton of narration. One really good example is Band of Blades- it's a war story, but what people want out of it is going to very, very different from person to person. Some people want to really emulate a war movie, and that's great for it- once you understand which parts are critical and how it's GMed, it's a really good war movie simulator, but if you're interested in the tactics of situations, the fights, you're not going to get much out of "roll a Skirmish check".
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Aug 18, 2022 11:01
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Splicer posted:I am comfortable with the fact that a lot of things I like are garbage. you like yourself, lol amateur
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Aug 18, 2022 11:35
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Megazver posted:you like yourself, lol amateur
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Aug 18, 2022 12:25
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Kai Tave posted:I think there are enough "big tent" games out there, not that I think anyone making another is somehow in the wrong to do so (though D&D is going to pretty much forever dominate that space), that I appreciate seeing games which are instead laser focused on a particular specific set of themes, moods, or genres. I'll probably never play Monster Hearts and I have no personal interest in what it's going for but I like the fact that it exists and does what it's doing well. Yeah, I've played Masks with a good GM and a party who made the buy in and it kinda rocked. It's like finding the precise distance from the sun for a planet to support life and about as common to happen unfortunately.
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Aug 18, 2022 13:04
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Warthur posted:I think you're right about there being enough big tent systems already - I can't think of the last one which really got much traction. Ironically, I think a lot of Apocalypse World's success is how it threads the needle between bespoke and big tent. Any given game is going to be extremely focused in what it does, but there are enough similarities between PbtA games that learning a second one isn't nearly as big ask on a group as learning a totally new system, and it's got a clear enough design philosophy that it's (relatively) easy to design your own hack for whatever type of concept you want to make. Bespoke games, big tent toolkit?
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Aug 18, 2022 14:19
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Warthur posted:On the other hand, a lot of the 1980s-vintage big tent systems like GURPS or Hero System or Rolemaster seem to be in the doldrums. The 1990s didn't really produce any big tent systems. (Storyteller tries to be that, but doesn't seem to be used like that in practice.) Thing is, universal systems are a dime and dozen and succeed or fail in the marketplace like any other tabletop game. I've seen so much bombastic ad copy over the years for somebody's incredible new universal system that can do any genre, and is easy to learn, and intuitive and logical and plays quickly, and prioritizes FUN and ROLEPLAYING over the rules, which is not a thing, and
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Aug 18, 2022 14:38
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Generic systems are out, house systems are in. I don't want one rule book to rule them all. I want five game lines for five different genres, all drawing from the same pool in a different way, that show me where the limits of the system are.
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Aug 18, 2022 15:57
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Like modiphius 2d20, kinda thing? I think that system has shown it can work for a variety of applications, but probably not universal, yeah.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:31
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Panzeh posted:I mean, I am kinda partial to GURPS but yeah the management of the thing kinda has left something to be desired. There was a 10-20 year period where a lot of things got adapted to it, and then nowadays the best GURPS stuff that gets released is the Gaming Ballistic Dungeon Fantasy stuff, other than that it's pretty much a holding pattern. By contrast, the BRP ecosystem seems pretty vibrant - it helps that Call of Cthulhu is a lot of people's first non-D&D RPG they choose, and particularly helps that the CoC Starter Set is an especially strong product which got the Critical Role rub. It also helps that, due to Mongoose putting out an OGL for their edition of RuneQuest, the system isn't locked down and can't be locked down, and Chaosium have embraced that and encouraged third party producers through various means (both through their DM Guild equivalent programs and through being very willing to allow third party licences). If Chaosium collapsed tomorrow, the fandom and other publishers could handily fill the gap, even if the IP rights end up in bankruptcy hell. quote:Yeah, my experience with RPG groups is that people tend to not exactly have the same thing in mind- so it's hard to get people together to, say, want to play Masks because I might get one or two who want that exact premise, and then the other three will probably be okay with something broader like Superheroes, and Masks is a very particular kind of superhero game, so it's not gonna work with my group- it also doesn't have enough 'game' there to keep somebody engaged who's not up for doing a ton of narration.  I have definitely had the experience where someone in a group proposed playing a superhero game, and everyone was initially enthusiastic, but then it fell apart because what each person wanted out of "superheroes" ended up being mutually incompatible.OtspIII posted:Ironically, I think a lot of Apocalypse World's success is how it threads the needle between bespoke and big tent. Any given game is going to be extremely focused in what it does, but there are enough similarities between PbtA games that learning a second one isn't nearly as big ask on a group as learning a totally new system, and it's got a clear enough design philosophy that it's (relatively) easy to design your own hack for whatever type of concept you want to make. That said, there is a point where you'd be distant enough from the general PbtA consensus that it'd look like you're taking the piss by calling your game a PbtA thing. I'd say one of the defining features of the system, for instance, is the use of playbooks - and playbooks, like character classes (especially in class-based games which forbid multiclassing), are to my mind not actually so useful for big tent stuff. It tends to nudge you into a space which is very much about character slotting into particular distinct archetypes, which is going to be great for certain flavours of premise but less so for others. I don't know if anyone's actually done a playbookless version of PbtA and suspect the problem is a lot like the idea of "classless D&D" - in that if you solve the problem, you effectively ended up designing a whole new game, just like how by trying to achieve "classless D&D" Chaosium invented RuneQuest/BRP. Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure what counts as a Big Tent System, but a lot of companies had house systems that they used for different genres. Eden's Unisystem and DP9's Silhouette are the first that come to mind. (Silhouette is pretty poor, though; one of the most exciting things Silhouette have done is announce their Forged In the Dark adaptation of Tribe 8, and god that's a game which would benefit a lot from that.) CitizenKeen posted:Generic systems are out, house systems are in. Absolutely, and I think a sufficiently flexible house system can be a good "Big Tent" system, at least to an extent - especially once it's been used for sufficient variants that it becomes fairly intuitive to work out how to apply it to something new. (This is pretty much exactly what BRP did.) Actually, there we go: 2D20. I'd say that's a fairly "big tent" system because it seems to work quite effectively for stuff ranging from Star Trek to Conan to Dune, and the setting-specific adaptations work a charm but once you strip those away the fundamentals are fairly simple.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:34
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There's Cortex Plus/Prime, for another example of a house system that's essentially a big tent system. The only problem is that it actually takes a lot more work than you'd hope to get from the generic base system to something flavored for you're actually trying to do. If you're lucky you aim for something that already has a version that basically fits what you're going for, but it's still more work than most people want from a generic system that can kind of handle anything.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:38
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Leperflesh posted:Like modiphius 2d20, kinda thing? I think that system has shown it can work for a variety of applications, but probably not universal, yeah. In "big tent" terms I think it helps to think in terms of different size of tent. Your BRPs, your 2D20s and so on are medium-large tents - they can handle a fairly wide range of things, but there's areas where they struggle and aren't the right tool for the job. Stuff like 5E or FATE, to me, ends up feeling like a small-to-medium tent - definitely less focused than a tightly-designed PbtA game, but still really excels at delivering a particular range of experiences and suffers when you try to move outside that zone. Universal systems are attempts to make the biggest tents of all, but in practice it's never actually feasible to make a tent as large as their ambitions. Sooner or later you have to actually put in the support structure and once that's in place you've set a particular shape and implicitly excluded stuff which undeniably falls outside that shape.
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Aug 18, 2022 16:38
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Even the most diehard GURPS or Hero System fanatics probably realize that it's not the best ruleset for absolutely anything. I think it's market pressures, more than anything else, that leads to stuff like D20 Pride & Prejudice or 5E Compatible All My Children.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:00
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Yeah, my thought for "bespoke house systems" was the Year Zero Engine and 2d20. Cortex Prime (née Plus) used to be, if it could hold onto a license for more than three or four years. PbtA is pretty darn close to this definition, though it's not a singular house. From the outside I always had the impression WoD/Storyteller was kind of that, too.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Even the most diehard GURPS or Hero System fanatics probably realize that it's not the best ruleset for absolutely anything. Counterpoint:  It's not one size fits all until you've stuffed all sizes into it.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:07
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Maybe the most absurd product ever released.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:11
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Halloween Jack posted:Even the most diehard GURPS or Hero System fanatics probably realize that it's not the best ruleset for absolutely anything. I think it's market pressures, more than anything else, that leads to stuff like D20 Pride & Prejudice or 5E Compatible All My Children. Pretty much, yeah. 5E sells big, has outside reach, and as most people's first exposure to a combination of gaming and improv gets billed as "a game where you can do anything."
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Aug 18, 2022 17:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Maybe the most absurd product ever released. Ugh. I bought that at Double Exposure back in 2007 and I still have no idea how to make a character in this to this day. (This is down there with Cyberpunk 2030 on my list of RPG purchases I regret.)
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Aug 18, 2022 17:24
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Halloween Jack posted:Maybe the most absurd product ever released. I got years of enjoyment out of BESM 2e, but agreed that the d20 adaptation was ludicrous.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:26
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https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd Looks like 5.5 has official information now.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:34
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Snorb posted:(This is down there with Cyberpunk 2030 on my list of RPG purchases I regret.) One weird little thing that caught my eye is that I can't find any strength requirements for the BFGs. Unless I'm mistaken, they're not designed for Edgerunners and borgs. Anyone can just pick up a 20mm railgun and blaze away. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 17:36
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Leraika posted:https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd "One D&D"? Really?
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Aug 18, 2022 17:48
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It's a 5.5 lol, they are just trying to make sure people know their old poo poo will work. Watching this video they are seemingly changing an absolute poo poo ton at least when it comes to like how characters are made. Adding level based feats etc etc. Making custom backgrounds that start with a feat the default for character creation and tying how stuff like the ability scores are assigned to said backgrounds. Some decent changes from listening to this video but need to see the PDF
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Aug 18, 2022 17:56
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hyphz posted:"One D&D"? Really? It's probably "One D&D" like 5e was "D&D Next".
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Aug 18, 2022 17:57
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Megazver posted:It's probably "One D&D" like 5e was "D&D Next". yep, it’s specifically the codename and not what it will actually be called.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:59
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Leraika posted:https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd So most of the articles I'm reading are doing the usual debate of like, "oh is this 5.5e, is this 6e" kinda grog-lite early backbiting, but I don't think this is a D&D Next kind of situation. Between the really stupid name, the Beyond acquisition, and the announcement of a first-party VTT/wider digital services, I don't see too many people connecting the dots that this is D&D going full games as a service. It's One D&D because there's not going to be "editions", there's just going to be D&D as a subscription with evolutions, updates, "DLC", and other microtransactions alongside the more expensive expansion and splatbooks. I could even see it becoming the gateway to D&D media in general (actual plays, movies, novels, comics, cartoons). At some point maybe they add support for previous editions to try and fully capture their audience, old and new, but that's the one thing I wouldn't hold my breath on. Like maybe I'm crazy and connecting too many dots, but it seems pretty obvious this is the way the wind is blowing. I think roll20 making its deal with DTRPG/OneBookShelf and trying really hard to find purchase outside of D&D is another canary in the coal mine.
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Aug 18, 2022 18:01
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Kor posted:So most of the articles I'm reading are doing the usual debate of like, "oh is this 5.5e, is this 6e" kinda grog-lite early backbiting, but I don't think this is a D&D Next kind of situation. Between the really stupid name, the Beyond acquisition, and the announcement of a first-party VTT/wider digital services, I don't see too many people connecting the dots that this is D&D going full games as a service. It's One D&D because there's not going to be "editions", there's just going to be D&D as a subscription with evolutions, updates, "DLC", and other microtransactions alongside the more expensive expansion and splatbooks. I could even see it becoming the gateway to D&D media in general (actual plays, movies, novels, comics, cartoons). At some point maybe they add support for previous editions to try and fully capture their audience, old and new, but that's the one thing I wouldn't hold my breath on. No, this is exactly where it's going.
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Aug 18, 2022 18:04
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Yeah we realized this when they bought Beyond earlier in the year, and earlier when they sent out a survey talking about digital minis and stuff lol.
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Aug 18, 2022 18:06
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Kor posted:So most of the articles I'm reading are doing the usual debate of like, "oh is this 5.5e, is this 6e" kinda grog-lite early backbiting, but I don't think this is a D&D Next kind of situation. Between the really stupid name, the Beyond acquisition, and the announcement of a first-party VTT/wider digital services, I don't see too many people connecting the dots that this is D&D going full games as a service. It's One D&D because there's not going to be "editions", there's just going to be D&D as a subscription with evolutions, updates, "DLC", and other microtransactions alongside the more expensive expansion and splatbooks. I could even see it becoming the gateway to D&D media in general (actual plays, movies, novels, comics, cartoons). At some point maybe they add support for previous editions to try and fully capture their audience, old and new, but that's the one thing I wouldn't hold my breath on. I don't know about "no more editions", because new editions just need to happen eventually, but it seems they're definitely trying to make their own one-stop VTT/Database/digital store.
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Aug 18, 2022 18:06
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