Next Gen Games?

[hawkeyefan]

And also:
The Veil
Bootleggers
Dungeon World
Monster of the Week
Monsterhearts
Night Witches
Sagas of the Icelanders
Spirit of '77
The Warren

and those are the ones I own or have seen for sale in my games store. There are dozens more.

Yeah, I know there are a lot. Many more than either of us listed, for sure. My list was limited to not just games that I've read and/or played, but also to ones released in the last 5 years or so, since that's what @MGibster asked about. I was going mostly off memory, so I erred on the side of caution. For instance, Monsterhearts and Dungeon World are two of the biggest examples of PbtA games, but I think both came out in about 2012 or so, so more than 5 years ago.

Not that that diminishes the influence that Apocalypse World has had on gaming. If anything, I think it shows a consistent decade of influence.

To add to this: for me, a significant aspect of AW seems to be that fictional positioning doesn't generate intricate modifiers, but rather is a factor (i) in players making moves, and (ii) the GM establishing consequences.

I think the way the system approaches this strikes me as a very clever way (of course it's clever: Vincent Baker is a game design genius!) of making the fiction matter but not "shutting down" options through impossible modifiers. 4e tried to come close to this with its skill challenge framework, but it's not articulated as clearly as AW and there are some features of 4e that can get in the way of this style of resolution.

Yeah, fictional positioning and success with consequence combine in such a way that the fiction of the game is dynamic but logical, and that's a key element that I think has proven very beneficial to other games. These elements may predate the Bakers' use of them in Apocalypse World, but I think that is one of the games that's really made it clear and pushed it forward as a popular approach.

 

[Campbell]

In the mainstream Pathfinder Second Edition and the Free League games strike me as being strongly influenced by Apocalypse World.

When I read through PF2 almost every rules element is structured like an AW move. The social skill actions feel almost just like Go Agro and Seduce or Manipulate. It also directly calls out where the GM is expected to apply their judgement.

Free League games all list explicit player and GM principles in a manner similar to Apocalypse World. The game also snowballs in a similar way.

Outside the mainstream it has basically become the lingua franca of indie RPG design. It and Blades in the Dark provide the design language utilized by the vast majority of the longer form games in the scene.

There's also a good deal of crossover with more experimental OSR games like the Nightmares Underneath, Necrolautinus, and the Sine Nomine games.

 

[Aldarc]

I have also found a blog Indie Game Reading Club that has an article entitled "A Few of My Favorite (Trindie) Things," where the author discusses a number of trends that they have seen in the indie gaming scene as well as more traditional games that incorporate indie elements.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I have also found a blog Indie Game Reading Club that has an article entitled "A Few of My Favorite (Trindie) Things," where the author discusses a number of trends that they have seen in the indie gaming scene as well as more traditional games that incorporate indie elements.

That's a really solid summary, I'd say. I only recently discovered that blog, and hadn't seen that entry....but yeah, that sums it up well.

 

[Aldarc]

That's a really solid summary, I'd say. I only recently discovered that blog, and hadn't seen that entry....but yeah, that sums it up well.

Yeah, I think that this point gets to the point of why @Campbell finds similarity between PF2 and PbtA, and why 5e leaves him cold:

The Rules Get In The Way​

I’ve used the phrase intentional design before and maybe it’s worth unpacking a bit more. This is the general trend I’m talking about: rules that purposefully create specific play experiences, and not just default to a “players try to beat the GM’s obstacles with a combination of capability and luck” frame. If you’re the sort of GM who prefers to present their story their way, new-school rules feel like they get in the way.

Personally? I love rules that get in the way. Rules can surprise me when I’m facilitating, which is both an exciting creative challenge and alleviates most prep. I’ve never had a good head for prepping with interesting combat or obstacles in mind, so those rules that are “in the way?” I’d rather put my creativity toward things other than balancing fights.

Intentional design shows up all over the place now and for various reasons: genre emulation, or strong emotional response, or enforcing tempo. Redistributing creative responsibilities in surprising ways. Gosh, even just to de-prioritize violence as the main way to get what we want.

But also, this article talks about how there are echoes of Burning Wheel in the Mutant Year Zero Engine of Free League Publishing.

 

[Campbell]

For what it is worth I personally do not see too much value in analyzing trends for roleplaying games overall because like board gaming we're not dealing with just one hobby, but a number of hobbies that share the same medium yet pretty much have a fairly independent existence. There's not much evidence to suggest that the waxing and waning of D&D has a meaningful impact on indie games or vice versa. I mean there is definitely cross pollination, but like the thing we do when we play Apocalypse World is not very much like the thing we do when we play an adventure roleplaying game. It happens, but mostly constrained to technical or design language influences.

Basically in the grand scheme things the more mainstream adventure gaming portion of the hobby has changed very little in the last 30 years since the days of Ars Magica, Shadowrun, Vampire, and Planescape. Vampire really was the last time a major disruption occurred. Expecting fundamental change would be like expecting Monopoly to change. Occasionally you get something like Blades in the Dark, Free League's stuff or Cortex Drama/Heroic which really pushes boundaries. Much like Cristopher Nolan's Batman movies they happen once in a blue moon and do not necessarily impact the greater culture in a significant way.

 

[Aldarc]

Sure, but even board games experience major trends while highly mainstream games like Monopoly dominate. But I am not interested in discussing Monopoly as there is little new insight to be gained from discussing that.

 

[Dragonsbane]

I checked out Blades in the Dark, pretty interesting mashup!

 

[Shardstone]

Swords of the Serpentine. I think it's the first game to really combine all the different ideas that have been coming out over the last decade or more (since the end of the D20 glut and the rise of various innovative new concepts). SotS has combined a number of ideas that have appeared elsewhere and made a quite excellent game out of them, and there's going to be a lot of people imitating the style of the game. There are one or two other games which have done some of that, but none seem to me to have done it quite so well.

Wish I could just buy the PDF without pre-ordering...

 

[Aldarc]

For what it is worth I personally do not see too much value in analyzing trends for roleplaying games overall because like board gaming we're not dealing with just one hobby, but a number of hobbies that share the same medium yet pretty much have a fairly independent existence. There's not much evidence to suggest that the waxing and waning of D&D has a meaningful impact on indie games or vice versa. I mean there is definitely cross pollination, but like the thing we do when we play Apocalypse World is not very much like the thing we do when we play an adventure roleplaying game. It happens, but mostly constrained to technical or design language influences.

Basically in the grand scheme things the more mainstream adventure gaming portion of the hobby has changed very little in the last 30 years since the days of Ars Magica, Shadowrun, Vampire, and Planescape. Vampire really was the last time a major disruption occurred. Expecting fundamental change would be like expecting Monopoly to change. Occasionally you get something like Blades in the Dark, Free League's stuff or Cortex Drama/Heroic which really pushes boundaries. Much like Cristopher Nolan's Batman movies they happen once in a blue moon and do not necessarily impact the greater culture in a significant way.

Going back to this point, I suppose that I am not necessarily interested in "next gen games" as they exist in relation to the waxing and waning of D&D, because honestly not much innovation happens on the D&D side of things, much as you allude to in the bold. In some regards, I have already discussed the current generation of D&D-inspired games already in my d2010 thread, where I looked at some post-4E games that seemed to be dancing around a similar design space.

My discussion here is not necessarily about what "disrupts" D&D either. It's more about speculating on the indie games that are defining a generation and inform us about the next generation of games. Much as you say, this thread is about the games like Blades in the Dark, Free League, or Cortex/Fate which push the boundaries of the hobby/hobbies.