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There's a certain point where it's moved into the realm of self-parody.
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Apr 30, 2023 23:54
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some of the earliest dice based games have a really nasty history behind them.....will be abstaining from the family yahtzee game
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Apr 30, 2023 23:58
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Runa posted:There's a certain point where it's moved into the realm of self-parody.
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May 1, 2023 00:05
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Apocalypse World punishes players whose characters are either celibate, voluntary or involuntary.
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May 1, 2023 00:07
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I was put off from AW when I first read it because of these Special Move - I'm glad I eventually pushed through to reading the whole thing. I don't think it's really that much of a problem for PbtA games, though. People are much likelier to start with something like Dungeon World, or Masks, or Monster of the Week. And the Avatar game did gangbusters.
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May 1, 2023 00:08
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I wouldn't call an unfortunate overlap of game content and trauma so deep it causes that level of associative revulsion a major flaw of the game as written.
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May 1, 2023 00:08
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Farg posted:some of the earliest dice based games have a really nasty history behind them.....will be abstaining from the family yahtzee game this but unironically for monopoly
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May 1, 2023 00:13
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Nessus posted:IMO, to be clear, this is a flaw (and a pretty major one) in Apocalypse World which casts reputational damage onto its direct descendants in the eyes of some slice of the TTRPG community, not something that is intrinsically wrong to have in an RPG. I don't think you should be paying attention to the opinion of people who think that "Apocalypse World has sex moves in it, therefore all PbtA games are bad" is an actual reasoned opinion.
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May 1, 2023 00:46
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It seems okay that different people can have different preferences in content matter for RPGs, and that different RPGs exist to cater to those different content preferences.
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May 1, 2023 00:53
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Lemon-Lime posted:I don't think you should be paying attention to the opinion of people who think that "Apocalypse World has sex moves in it, therefore all PbtA games are bad" is an actual reasoned opinion.
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May 1, 2023 01:03
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I'm going to leap in here because the comparison between Apocalypse World and 3.5 has a lot of meat to dig into in context. Specifically, class systems were in a pretty maligned place in the wider RPG design community in the post-d20 period, and a big part of that is because 3.5 used classes in a way that severely undermines all the good things about class systems. The big strength of a class system is that you're handed an archetype out of the box and you can make that archetypal character without much fuss. But 3.5 and 3.5 derivatives are generally really bad at that, because they're obsessed with splitting every class into tiny chunks that you can fit together lego-style level by level, and that means you can't feel like your archetype until level 10 because they split it up so finely and you have to make a whole 1-20 build ahead of time to actually make a character that does what you want it to do. I don't think the part I bolded is necessarily true. According to the character advancement rules in AW you can only take a maximum of 2 advances from outside your playbook. So you are confined by the definition of the archetype in the mind of the author, which may not fit into what you want for your character because you see different archetypes than they do. In addition the archetypes for Apocalypse World only apply if Mad Max is your view of the post-apocalypse, maybe Fallout if you really stretch things. If your view of the genre is more based on Earth Abides or A Canticle for Liebowitz than very few playbooks will be useful at all, which leaves you either trying to create you own Playbook or sitting unhappily in an existing one. If you do need to create a new Playbook to run past your GM you need to create an entire set of Moves to go with it; you need to not only create a view of your character's starting state but all the places you want to go with the character. To me, that seems more restrictive than the other modern class systems that I have looked at. It's certainly more confining and intrusive than the class systems in Spellbound Kingdoms or Fading Suns 4th Edition. The same system is present in Monsterhearts and I believe in Masks as well (3 out of Playbook advances in Masks). Not all games that descend from PBtA have this problem to the same extent, Flying Circus has the mastery system so I can advance my character while studiously ignoring whichever Playbook I get slotted into, but it is a problem with a number of these games. So to me the existence of Sex/Intimacy moves isn't a problem in it's own right as long as people aren't getting graphic and creeping out the table. The problem is that players don't get to set it for themselves but it's imposed very broadly through the Playbook system. And because it's very personal it showcases these problems more strongly than other areas do. Want to play as a Werewolf in Monsterhearts? Than you have to be a Jealousy monster, no you absolutely can't be Poly or form a thruple or be Asexual for that matter. You have to be psychotically jealous because that's what the Playbook is about and if that's not what Werewolf means to you than you are screwed. For me, the problem was never about the Sex. Servetus fucked around with this message at 01:37 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 01:16
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Mr. Maltose posted:I wouldn't call an unfortunate overlap of game content and trauma so deep it causes that level of associative revulsion a major flaw of the game as written. Arivia posted:this but unironically for monopoly
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May 1, 2023 01:29
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There's so much skeevy poo poo out there, that having a red flag pop up when you see sex stuff being introduced in an RPG is reasonable, even if folks here are quite sure that it'd be misplaced in this case. Some folks have basically been conditioned to see piss wizards, and you know what? There's been a lot of piss wizardry, so if this time no no it's just healthy and optional and you don't gotta blah blah too late, I'm moving on to a game that doesn't ring any alarm bells, there's a million games so this is a very easy choice to make. From what I can gather AW's failing isn't having a move that is about sexual intimacy, but rather, failing to frame that in the text well enough that a first-time reader isn't put off by it. It doesn't have to be trauma to lead someone to prefer not to have their character be the subject of a sex move - even in a rated-PG way - with the people they play games with. I don't think that's a particularly weird boundary to set, and I do think it's kind of lovely to cast aspersions, even indirectly, at people who place a boundary at that spot. That is not a condemnation of games with sex. It just needs to be clear up front what this is being introduced, and why, and how to not use that in your game. If someone was reading the AW rules and were blindsided by coming across sex moves without having been warned or reading a preamble that specifically calls out and recognizes that this is a sensitive subject, well, I think noping out is pretty reasonable. I appreciate that everyone's been relatively chill to each other so far on this touchy subject, although I did get a PM that suggests not everyone is happy, so regardless of where you stand on the subject here's a reminder to be sensitive to other people's sensitivities, even if you don't understand them.
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May 1, 2023 01:31
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Servetus posted:I don't think the part I bolded is necessarily true. What you're describing here is one of the simultaneous biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses of PbtA: that successful PbtA systems are by and large built to accommodate very specific tones and stories, and that's a deliberate feature of the system. Apocalypse World isn't a generic post-apoc system; it's specifically designed to create stories like Fury Road, with the assumptions that implies about how the world works, what's scarce and what isn't, what characters can do, and so on, so its playbooks and system assumptions don't work for something like Canticle for Leibowitz, even if they're both technically "post-apoc." It's a deliberately non-generic system and requires player buy-in for what it's putting down. Similarly, Monsterhearts is explicitly about telling stories about teenage monsters whose relationships are messy, fraught, and dangerous -- that's the point, and no MH playbook is built to have happy stable relationships/throuples/non-coupled well-being/whatever, because it's not what the game is about. (MH 2E may change this some -- I'm not really familiar with it, but I think it has more rules about defining character sexuality, possibly including ace rules? -- but once again, that's a deliberate change of focus. MH 1E is very much about "what kind of literal monster you are is also a metaphor for what kinds of interpersonal problems you have." It's baked in.) There are certainly PbtA games that don't have this tightness of focus, and obviously I'm not familiar with the whole field, but my understanding is that the most successful PbtA implementations involve the idea of player buy-in to "we are telling a story in this very specific genre, with these very specific tropes and ideas, and everyone plays within that framework." Obviously that means that not all games will work for not all tables, but once again, I suspect this is a feature, a deliberate refutation of the mold of "one generic system does everything (just not anything all that well)" that dominated RPG design philosophy for a long time.
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May 1, 2023 01:39
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And yeah, double-posting for clarity: I'm willing to defend the AW Sex Moves, but obviously, it's 100% okay to decide the game isn't for you because of it, or to draw a safety line about whether your character or table will use them. Always draw those lines, and always respect other people's.
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May 1, 2023 01:41
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Yeah, the tightness of focus is one of the big strengths of the system, though it also comes with its downsides. I thought Mad Max wasn't exactly what AW was trying to emulate? I remember it was some weird blend of Mad Max and Fallout and a couple of some drat things or other you'd never heard of. If Zardoz was in the mix, it all makes sense, at least.
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May 1, 2023 01:41
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The only reason I use the word trauma is because I’m specifically discussing whoever Nessus plays with that was negative on the idea of even playing a PbtA game, and only because Nessus is describing it like they’re discussing someone else’s reasoning that comes from a very personal and negative place. If Nessus is being circumspect in details for other reasons that’s a bad read on my end I guess.
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May 1, 2023 01:45
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Nessus posted:Yeah, the tightness of focus is one of the big strengths of the system, though it also comes with its downsides. I thought Mad Max wasn't exactly what AW was trying to emulate? I remember it was some weird blend of Mad Max and Fallout and a couple of some drat things or other you'd never heard of. It's stuff like tank girl and heavy metal.
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May 1, 2023 01:45
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Immediate Media Influences also says "I’d recommend some of these enthusiastically, some reservedly, and some not at all. You know how it is." Which is... confusing? Zardoz isn't there, but Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is, which I don't know if I could reproduce with this (and also where the sex moves would not fit). But it did encourage me to watch that film, which is soooo goood, so there's that! And there's also a whole "Sex Ed" segment, separate from that.
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May 1, 2023 01:47
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Servetus posted:I don't think the part I bolded is necessarily true. That is intentional to the design of PBTA games. The intended fiction dictates the playbooks. PBTA based games work best when they are focused on a very specific type of fiction. Apocalypse World is not a generic post apocalypse RPG, it's a very specific setting with a very specific type of intended fiction and the playbooks reflect that. Monsterhearts is not a generic supernatural high-school RPG, it's Monsterhearts its about using monsters as metaphors for romantic/sexual coming of age drama. There are a lot of games that stretch PBTA and make more generic settings with a lot more freedom in character creation, but they lose a lot of the focus and mechanical integrity of the game because of it.
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May 1, 2023 01:50
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Nessus posted:Yeah, the tightness of focus is one of the big strengths of the system, though it also comes with its downsides. I thought Mad Max wasn't exactly what AW was trying to emulate? I remember it was some weird blend of Mad Max and Fallout and a couple of some drat things or other you'd never heard of. It’s actually still quite flexible, you just gotta be familiar enough with the mechanics to know what it’s good for. It’s gotta be action and it’s gotta be a violent setting but after that you can sort of “steer” with playbook choices. I actually hadn’t played it with default Mad Max-lens for years because I used it play historicals instead. (30 Years War is a favorite since it basically was Fury Road with horses and cool hats.) Also Sean Connery was totally a battlebabe.
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May 1, 2023 01:57
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Megazver posted:Describing fictional violence isn't actual violence.
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May 1, 2023 01:57
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Mr. Maltose posted:The only reason I use the word trauma is because I’m specifically discussing whoever Nessus plays with that was negative on the idea of even playing a PbtA game, and only because Nessus is describing it like they’re discussing someone else’s reasoning that comes from a very personal and negative place. If Nessus is being circumspect in details for other reasons that’s a bad read on my end I guess. I've been playing with most of these people for over ten years. Xiahou Dun posted:It’s actually still quite flexible, you just gotta be familiar enough with the mechanics to know what it’s good for. It’s gotta be action and it’s gotta be a violent setting but after that you can sort of “steer” with playbook choices. I actually hadn’t played it with default Mad Max-lens for years because I used it play historicals instead. (30 Years War is a favorite since it basically was Fury Road with horses and cool hats.) Nessus fucked around with this message at 02:02 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 01:59
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I imagine it's something like: "hey, wanna play this game? It's powered by the apocalypse" "Oh, that game with the sex moves, nah" and not "hey, wanna play this game? It's powered by the apocalypse" "I am so offended by that game with the sex moves that anyone who touches that game, their rules, or anything by association is probably skeevy, gently caress them!"
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May 1, 2023 02:00
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Leperflesh posted:I imagine it's something like: And that's where it sets, but the sex moves are what is cited! I think it's unfair to these games (WWWRPG, Fellowship, I think I remember another one somewhere in the mix that wasn't AW) -- but I don't push back on a "No," just on a "Ehh".
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May 1, 2023 02:04
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Well then I apologize for overestimating the severity of the source of that resistance.
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May 1, 2023 02:08
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Mr. Maltose posted:Well then I apologize for overestimating the severity of the source of that resistance.
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May 1, 2023 02:15
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Servetus posted:According to the character advancement rules in AW you can only take a maximum of 2 advances from outside your playbook. So you are confined by the definition of the archetype in the mind of the author, which may not fit into what you want for your character because you see different archetypes than they do. In addition the archetypes for Apocalypse World only apply if Mad Max is your view of the post-apocalypse, maybe Fallout if you really stretch things. If your view of the genre is more based on Earth Abides or A Canticle for Liebowitz than very few playbooks will be useful at all, which leaves you either trying to create you own Playbook or sitting unhappily in an existing one. If you do need to create a new Playbook to run past your GM you need to create an entire set of Moves to go with it; you need to not only create a view of your character's starting state but all the places you want to go with the character. I'd say playbooks give a common jumping off point, and the players make their own spin on it. You usually won't be able to take every advance your playbook has so the ones you do take and what out of playbook or special advances you also take can make a world of difference. Having played the same PbtA games repeatedly, I've seen people create unique takes on the playbooks you're given and I myself have used the same playbook to play very different characters.
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May 1, 2023 02:32
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Servetus posted:I don't think the part I bolded is necessarily true. Plenty of people have already responded, but I may as well make a few more points. 1) Yes, there's only two "take a move from another playbook" options in most playbooks' advancements, but five advancements is the point where the game starts to go "you know, you could have your character retire happily at any point". And that urge to just give your character a happy ending is going to get louder as you take more and more of the character-appropriate advancements. 2) The point of advancement in AW isn't to make literally any combination of mechanics. It's to start with a relatively simple seed of a character archetype (which you've still customized a good amount), and then grow it into Your Character. You started with a Gunlugger, and you ended with an unflappable Gunlugger with a sick motorcycle that's willing to drive into any kind of danger. It's not about infinite possibility.
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May 1, 2023 03:29
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Servetus posted:So to me the existence of Sex/Intimacy moves isn't a problem in it's own right as long as people aren't getting graphic and creeping out the table. The problem is that players don't get to set it for themselves but it's imposed very broadly through the Playbook system. And because it's very personal it showcases these problems more strongly than other areas do. Actually, on second thought, I do have more to say here. 1) Setting aside that Monsterhearts is a game about being a teen in a constant state of ??? while flirting and being flirted with and trying to figure out whether you even actually want to flirt with any of these people in the first place... You can be asexual and also an aggro dickhead who gets possessive, which is what the Werewolf is about. 2) Again, PBTA games (and to my original point, well-designed class systems in general) are generally archetypical. Monsterhearts mixes monster and teen archetypes, so... yeah, it's a bit awkward if your mental image of a werewolf fits parts of multiple playbooks' archetypes. Sometimes your concept fits well enough that you can just play it by ear and advance normally. Sometimes you need to tease the undead flavor out of Ghoul and replace it with werewolf flavor to get something that works mechanically the way you'd like. Sometimes you want to do something really weird and your group is going to have to come up with some homebrew. That's just how these games go sometimes.
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May 1, 2023 03:49
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Nessus posted:Yeah this is basically accurate, sometimes more like "Wanna play this?" "Let me check it out" *3D6 minutes pass* "ugh it's like that AW game, pass" I mean, it sounds like maybe they just don't click with PbtA, and that's fine? I dunno if I would push on it unless it's something where the rest of the table is excited to play and you just want this person to give it a shot, but even then I think it's fine for people in groups to sit out games they're not interested in. I think sometimes we can get a little overinvested in Good Games You Should Play in this hobby, and it's important to remember that even the best games in the world won't work for some people.
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May 1, 2023 03:51
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I just thought the paragraph that first introduces "special sex moves" was funny. I'm glad we all had this chat, but my opinion is that the paragraph is still funny.
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May 1, 2023 03:55
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I mean, yeah, it's droll? A lot of AW is written in that style. It's really a very idiosyncratic game for a game that launched a subgenre.
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May 1, 2023 03:56
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Leperflesh posted:There's so much skeevy poo poo out there, that having a red flag pop up when you see sex stuff being introduced in an RPG is reasonable, even if folks here are quite sure that it'd be misplaced in this case. Some folks have basically been conditioned to see piss wizards, and you know what? There's been a lot of piss wizardry, so if this time no no it's just healthy and optional and you don't gotta blah blah too late, I'm moving on to a game that doesn't ring any alarm bells, there's a million games so this is a very easy choice to make. I think another thing that contributes to the polarizing nature of the Sex Moves, at least from a game design perspective, has to do with the assumed default POV of TTRPGs. I'm probably going to be doing some of my usual fumbling to concretely explain very abstract concepts that make sense in my head, but I think it's actually an interesting topic that doesn't get enough discussion. Basically I think that for a lot of people in this hobby, the assumed perspective for roleplaying is a very granular, 1:1 assumption of the persona of their character. That is they approach every action they undertake in-game from the perspective of their character, interacting with the world in a similar manner to how one would with an old-school text adventure game: State action, get response. Being presented with the idea of "Sex moves" is a very off-putting prospect in this kind of framework because the the assumed implementation of something like that in the assumed gameplay method is "I describe sex things and then the GM describes the consequences of that". Apocalypse World, at least from what I've read of it, works from a slightly different gameplay perspective. One where, rather than the player piloting around a single, imaginary dude like a text adventure protagonist, players are more collaboratively writing a story through discussion. They're still primarily responsible for their one character, but there seems to be more of an assumed detachment in how the player describes the actions of their character. Thus the assumed way the trigger for the sex moves play out is not "Two players awkwardly try to sext at each other" and more "These two players decide it would be narratively appropriate that their characters hook up and then [muh] happens mechancially". I feel like I'm doing a really bad job at explaining this, but it feels like there are certain assumptions baked into how players relate to their characters that make the sex moves a less off-putting concept in practice.
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May 1, 2023 04:22
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KingKalamari posted:Apocalypse World, at least from what I've read of it, works from a slightly different gameplay perspective. One where, rather than the player piloting around a single, imaginary dude like a text adventure protagonist, players are more collaboratively writing a story through discussion. They're still primarily responsible for their one character, but there seems to be more of an assumed detachment in how the player describes the actions of their character. Thus the assumed way the trigger for the sex moves play out is not "Two players awkwardly try to sext at each other" and more "These two players decide it would be narratively appropriate that their characters hook up and then [muh] happens mechancially". Surely everyone has to grasp the concept of skipping over details whatever game you're playing, no? Having rules for refreshing your spells when you sleep doesn't invite you to lavishly describe every detail of your character undressing, getting into bed, being restless for half an hour trying to settle down because you're still on edge after having massacred that goblin village a few hours ago and you're pretty sure you still have a bit of goblin guts stuck between your toes but is it really worth getting up again and taking a bath in the middle of the night?
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May 1, 2023 04:30
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KingKalamari posted:I feel like I'm doing a really bad job at explaining this, but it feels like there are certain assumptions baked into how players relate to their characters that make the sex moves a less off-putting concept in practice. No, you're making sense. Sex moves in AW have always been more about the thematic beats that happen around sex than the sex itself. (Hardholders give out barter because they're the richest person in the wasteland and they want to keep this person they care about around, not because they cum gold.) But there's still that weirdness to saying "it feels like there would be a sex scene fade-to-black here", and the separation or lack thereof between player and PC can definitely contribute to that. EDIT: ^^^ It's not that people can't make that separation. It's that, because the character and the person playing the character are so connected, there's just the half-second where saying "I think the Hardholder and Driver would have sex here" feels like saying "I think we should briefly think about me and you having sex and then shiver because that feels weird". EDIT 2: And the only solution to that is either having enough separation from your characters to not feel weird or to have a friend group with a specific dynamic. It's tricky. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 04:44 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 04:34
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It resulted in someone in an AW game asking if two others were “friends with special moves” (they weren’t) which was amusing.
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May 1, 2023 04:44
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hyphz posted:It resulted in someone in an AW game asking if two others were “friends with special moves” (they weren’t) which was amusing. lmao
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May 1, 2023 04:50
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hyphz posted:It resulted in someone in an AW game asking if two others were “friends with special moves” (they weren’t) which was amusing. lol
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May 1, 2023 05:29
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i will say while the topic of sex moves comes up I have to say that my very favourite one is The Mortal from monsterhearts. i've been running alot of it lately and seen several people clearly skim the playbook and accidently walk straight into that bear trap
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May 1, 2023 05:31
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