Which TTRPG has the best PvP rules?

[Reynard]

In your opinion, which tabletop RPG has the best rules for running player-versus-player competitive combat? By "rules" here I mean both balanced character building options as well as general game rules. By "competitive combat" I mean any one or all of the following: battle royale free for all, team based "sport" play ala MOBAs, or competitive dungeon crawling (adventure plus PvP).

Please indicate why, and what strengths your suggestion has fairly specifically.

For my part, I think Savage Worlds might be the right one, though I would have to review some of the combat abilities' balance in PvP versus against mooks/NPCs. But it was developed off a war game. I am afraid 5E is not particularly well balanced, but maybe PF2? I don't know it well enough to be sure. Starfinder, potentially, as well as older point buy systems like GURPS and Hero where antagonists were at least nominally built with the same rules as PCs anyway. Maybe Mutants and Masterminds?

Anyway, what do you think?

 

[Lanefan]

In your opinion, which tabletop RPG has the best rules for running player-versus-player competitive combat? By "rules" here I mean both balanced character building options as well as general game rules. By "competitive combat" I mean any one or all of the following: battle royale free for all, team based "sport" play ala MOBAs, or competitive dungeon crawling (adventure plus PvP).

Please indicate why, and what strengths your suggestion has fairly specifically.

Can't speak to any specific strengths or weaknesses, but we've had "competitive dungeon crawling" as a sidebar (and sometimes central feature!) to our games for 40+ years in a close-to-1e system and it's worked out OK.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Paranoia.

Could there be any other answer?

 

[payn]

Paranoia.

Could there be any other answer?

/Thread

 

[Reynard]

Paranoia.

Could there be any other answer?

I'm not sure we can call those rules good for PvP. They are good for Paranoia, and little else.

 

[pemerton]

Of RPGs that I'm familiar with, Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant and Marvel Heroic RP all handle PvP conflict pretty straightforwardly.

In the first two, a versus/opposed test, or an extended conflict, between two PCs unfolds the same as vs a NPC. Burning Wheel also makes it easy for players to write PC Beliefs about one another's PCs.

MHRP likewise uses the same resolution framework for PvP as it does for any other conflict, but because both characters will be growing the Doom Pool it does invite GM intervention to steer or disrupt the PvP more than is the case for Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not sure we can call those rules good for PvP. They are good for Paranoia, and little else.

I think that the way you frame your premise is flawed.

You assume that the best way to make a "PvP game" is to find a normal RPG (which has built-in assumptions for collaborative play), and to find which game happens to have balanced mechanics that might make PvP acceptable.

Naw. I reject that.

Instead, I look for games that are built entirely on the idea that there will be PvP- that this is baked into the premise. Paranoia, because it exploded the premises that were baked into RPGs to start with ... including collaborative play ... is the ur-example of this.

Moreover, the lore and the crunch not only enable PvP, they fully support it and make it more enjoyable- in fact, by turning the concepts on their head, by making it explicit and humorous, and by allowing players to have multiple deaths (six clones), the game makes PvP fun.

If you say that the rules for Paranoia are not good for PvP ... while knowing that Paranoia is the quintessential RPG example of PvP, then I think that there is definitely an issue ... and it's not with Paranoia.

 

[Bedrockgames]

In your opinion, which tabletop RPG has the best rules for running player-versus-player competitive combat? By "rules" here I mean both balanced character building options as well as general game rules. By "competitive combat" I mean any one or all of the following: battle royale free for all, team based "sport" play ala MOBAs, or competitive dungeon crawling (adventure plus PvP).

Please indicate why, and what strengths your suggestion has fairly specifically.

For my part, I think Savage Worlds might be the right one, though I would have to review some of the combat abilities' balance in PvP versus against mooks/NPCs. But it was developed off a war game. I am afraid 5E is not particularly well balanced, but maybe PF2? I don't know it well enough to be sure. Starfinder, potentially, as well as older point buy systems like GURPS and Hero where antagonists were at least nominally built with the same rules as PCs anyway. Maybe Mutants and Masterminds?

Anyway, what do you think?

Full disclosure I did some of the writing on the early version of the game, but Conflict Roleplaying was built for this stuff. I didn't play a role in any of the game design though

 

[Breaking Star Games]

I like how Apocalypse World tends to give a choice. So for Go Aggro, there is an out. For Seduce or Manipulate, there is a nice bonus of XP and Read a Person helps structure conversation during PvP. Though I think the man himself, Vincent Baker says it better as he goes into Permissions and Expectations

Before I move on from Apocalypse World’s basic moves, let me go back for just a minute to permissions & expectations, to tie the bow.

Apocalypse World’s designed to heighten and escalate the conflicts between the characters, while avoiding or peacefully resolving any conflicts that might develop between us as players. In other words, it’s designed so that we keep collaborating enthusiastically together as players, even when our characters are at odds. In fact, even when they’re locked into intense, bloody, escalating conflicts with each other.

You can think of it as fight choreography. Our characters are in conflict, fighting on opposite sides, but you and I, we’re on the same side, working together to choreograph their fight.

In Apocalypse World, all of the systems are designed to work together to make this happen, and each system approaches it in its own way. The foundation of them all, the basic moves too, is this single principle:

When your character escalates a conflict, you give the other player the choice. When somebody else escalates a conflict against your character, they give you the choice.​

 

[Bladeac]

I really like how dread does it, when 2 players get in conflict nothing changes about the core resolution system: which in dread is making “pulls” from a jenga tower when you want to do as opposed to the normal method of dice, when the tower falls, whoever caused it to fall dies.

So effectively if two players are in conflict they are ramping up the game tension and risking their lives with every “pull” they take, and if neither backs down, eventually they’ll meet their demise.