Adventure Time TTRPG Drops "Yes And" System, Switches To 5E

When the Adventure Time roleplaying game was announced back in June, it was going to be using a brand new RPG system called the "Yes And" system, which involved dice which had Yes and No on one die, and things like And or But on the other.

However, publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment has recently indicated that, following fan feedback, the upcoming Kickstarter will now be powered by 5E instead. The update was included last week as part of the FAQ in its current Adventure Time card game Kickstarter.

Has Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game changed since you announced it a few months ago?

Yes, we made the decision to make it a 5e experience, based on feedback from fans. That doesn’t mean the game shown at Gen Con earlier this year won’t be released too, but the main offering in the upcoming Kickstarter will be the 5e RPG.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm sad to see this. I was excited about what I heard of the "yes and" system. I don't think D&D capture the tone of Adventure Time well.


I said something similar when the original announcement came out.

Adventure Time had a lot of trappings of D&D, and it's obviously made by people who know and love D&D, but it doesn't tell D&D stories. The core story of the Adventure Time is about a boy growing up, and most of the conflicts are interpersonal conflicts.

Start with the very first episode. It's a zombie attack. In a game of D&D the main conflict is whether we can kill all these zombies. But in the episode of AT, the main conflict is whether Finn should reveal the secret to Jake or keep his promise to Princess Bubblegum.

Or look at Vault of Bones. It's a dungeon crawl! That must be a D&D episode right? Except that getting through the dungeons isn't the conflict. It's about sharing your hobby with somebody that you love, accepting that they don't love the same things about it that you do, but then adapting to them and finding a way that you can let them enjoy it their own way.

These kinds of stories I think are hard for D&D to pull off, which is why I don't think 5e is the right fit.

D&D does these stories just fine. It doesn’t force them to happen.

Often in D&D, also, the combat is the fun opportunity to do cool heroics, but the actual conflict is not the combat.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It is not an attack on D&D to say that D&D doesn't incentivize behaving like the characters in Adventure Time do, and that an Adventure Time RPG would ideally incentivize play that resembles the show.

That's what any tie-in RPG should be doing. If you are regularly slaughtering aliens in a Star Trek RPG, for instance, the incentives are all screwed up.

I think here, they will succeed or fail based on how much they stick to 5e core. Because none of the really good games that use 5e are just core 5e plus. They all change and replace things.

The game that is Adventure Time with core 5e is a thing that as of right now only exists rhetorically, and seems pretty unlikely to come into being.

 

[Parmandur]

In AT it often happens that characters do suboptimal things. But D&D as a system punishes suboptimal play.

This, fundamentally, goes against my experience of D&D and 5E particularly. Suboptimal play is normal, and not really punished in any substantial way.

 

[Parmandur]

It is not an attack on D&D to say that D&D doesn't incentivize behaving like the characters in Adventure Time do, and that an Adventure Time RPG would ideally incentivize play that resembles the show.

That's what any tie-in RPG should be doing. If you are regularly slaughtering aliens in a Star Trek RPG, for instance, the incentives are all screwed up.

Who's saying that it's an attack...?

My college campaign of 3.5 was a lot like Adventure Time in a lot of key ways (as was Pendleton Ward's, apparently), and 5E probably makes that style of play even easier.

Thing is,it just makes sense that the creators got overwhelming feedback of "...but this is a D&D show...?" from Adventure Time fans.

 

[Golden Bee]

Here are some AT Plots that don't engage D&D 5E mechanics (Combat or Skill Checks), feature side characters in solo adventures, or have largely internal conflict.

Finn and Jake fall victim to their own laziness when they delegate their adventuring responsibilities to a group of businessmen thawed from an iceberg.

Finn reflects on an upsetting experience in his past and pledges to help everyone in need, but this proves more difficult than imagined.

Jake tries to help Finn overcome his fear of the ocean.

Finn turns Princess Bubblegum green and bald, and faces a moral quandary—whether to confess his mistake and be hated by his friend forever, or let Princess Bubblegum wrongly accuse the Duke of Nuts instead.

Jake finds fatherhood challenging.

Finn and Jake meet a horse named James Baxter and decide to act like him.

The arrival of a visitor causes Cherry Cream Soda's life to fall flat.

Jake's daughter Viola is up for a role in a play by a hot new director -- Lumpy Space Princess.

BMO and Ice King hit the road as door-to-door salesmen and stumble upon an irresistible opportunity.

When an old flame comes calling on urgent business, Tree Trunks reconsiders both her wild past and her tranquil present.

 

[DarkCrisis]

For everyone saying a game has to be based on 5E to make money obviously wasn’t a gamer during the 3E clone glut.

Some games just don’t match the system.

Also, branch out. I used to be like you and only wanted D20 then I opened myself up to a bigger and better RPG world. Don’t be afraid to try new and different things. D&D is the beginning not the end of this path.

And I’m not downplaying D&D. I love and still play it but it’s system works for D&D just like the Storyteller system works best for Vampire etc

 

[aramis erak]

Well, I will be checking it out now, which I wasn't going to do before.

And I won't, because my sole interest was in the mechanics, It's a tradeoff.

 

[Parmandur]

And I won't, because my sole interest was in the mechanics, It's a tradeoff.

Yeah, I am pretty sure the net gain there is to make the D&D show a D&D game.

 

[Shardstone]

It's so crazy that the creator of the show literally says the episodes are based off D&D games they wanted to run and yet people still say Adventure Time cannot be played in D&D.

Then people post things like the iceberg episode, as if that requires any mechanics at all to do. And it isn't like the new Adventure Time book won't include new mechanics to finetune the game to the proper tone -- it most certainly will.

The people who are saying D&D can't work for this are literally ignoring the creator of the show and the entire purpose for making a rules EXPANSION. I don't know why you guys are so fervent about ignoring logic. What else do you need?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This, fundamentally, goes against my experience of D&D and 5E particularly. Suboptimal play is normal, and not really punished in any substantial way.

Same. I’ve never met any player that obsesses over optimal play, or feels punished by the system when they do something like spending their turn freaking out because their best friend just got ganked in front of them.

Who's saying that it's an attack...?

My college campaign of 3.5 was a lot like Adventure Time in a lot of key ways (as was Pendleton Ward's, apparently), and 5E probably makes that style of play even easier.

Thing is,it just makes sense that the creators got overwhelming feedback of "...but this is a D&D show...?" from Adventure Time fans.

I was pretty disappoint when they announced the system originally.

Here are AT Plots that don't engage D&D 5E mechanics (Combat or Skill Checks), feature side characters in solo adventures, or have largely internal conflict.

Finn and Jake fall victim to their own laziness when they delegate their adventuring responsibilities to a group of businessmen thawed from an iceberg.

Finn reflects on an upsetting experience in his past and pledges to help everyone in need, but this proves more difficult than imagined.

Jake tries to help Finn overcome his fear of the ocean.

You don’t see where skill checks and saving throws could come into that plot? Seriously?

Finn turns Princess Bubblegum green and bald, and faces a moral quandary—whether to confess his mistake and be hated by his friend forever, or let Princess Bubblegum wrongly accuse the Duke of Nuts instead.

So a social challenge with an inviting incident that doesn’t need mechanics because it’s the setup of the adventure or challenge? How would 5e struggle here, exactly?

Jake finds fatherhood challenging.

Finn and Jake meet a horse named James Baxter and decide to act like him.

I would absolutely hate the experience of a game that makes this into mechanics. It would inescapably be cheesey, forced, and needlessly meta to a jokey nonsense degree.

The arrival of a visitor causes Cherry Cream Soda's life to fall flat.

Jake's daughter Viola is up for a role in a play by a hot new director -- Lumpy Space Princess.

Why would this have mechanics, other than perhaps bespoke mechanics for this specific adventure that can be added to a broadly applicable action resolution system?

BMO and Ice King hit the road as door-to-door salesmen and stumble upon an irresistible opportunity.

You don’t…see where skill checks can come into play here? Or how a game that uses the 5e engine could build out the skill system to add more weight to social interactions and dealing with impulse control and temptation?

When an old flame comes calling on urgent business, Tree Trunks reconsiders both her wild past and her tranquil present.

You would want mechanics for…reflecting on the past and present and how far you’ve come and whether it’s a good thing to be where you are now? Seriously? Why?

As for side characters…those episodes don’t need to be modeled, they’re side stories. Like in the presentation of the show, they’re fun little tangents that don’t really interact with the adventures of Finn and Jake except tangentially.

There are many systems that could do AT well, sure. I just don’t see any issue with a 5e game, not really any more different from core than Adventures In Middle Earth.