What would happen if there was a disagreement on employment of the rules though? I mean, most editions of D&D (you didn't really specify one) don't really state much in the way of principles of play beyond "if there's a choice, it is up to the DM" basically. You can certainly create some rules around that (handing around a baton for example that gives rule 0 authority until you use it, then you pass it left for instance). I think you may run into that sort of need with any game you are 'hacking on' of course, D&D isn't atypical in that sense.
Informal voting, basically. We eventually developed a cyclical method of running NPCs in combat and social skill challenges, that would have applied had we run into this problem more than we did. When your turn is done, you take on most of the job of running NPCs until the next PCs turn. We evenly spaced PCs and NPCs based on initiative, so about the same number of NPCs go between any two PC turns, and that order stands throughout a scene even if a combat switches to a skill challenge or vice versa.
However, in at least a lot of editions, you would be ignoring quite a lot of rules, and hacking a lot of subsystems (there are a lot of places in 1e for instance where Gygax advocates/dictates, depending on his mood, hidden checks for instance). The DM role in that game is very pervasive! 5e is a bit of a different case in that you have mostly unified mechanics at the core, but the fundamental issue still bites, which is DM authority pervades the process of play so thoroughly that the game is extremely sensitive to inconsistency.
That is generally the cost of open ended flexibility, sure. Just like PC gaming vs console gaming, for instance.
That is, I am sure you worked out your co-DMing activity without much problem. I don't think it is a replicable process though. If you took 100 tables and did this experiment at them, how many would run into enough issues to give it up? If you started with a PbtA core, I think an equal amount of 'hacking' would get you to a place where the game was fully playable, though I certainly would want to do some experiments to see what worked best.
IMO you’d get even better results by taking some specific elements of pbta games and adding them to the D&D game, but I suspect it will end up being a situstion where the D&D model works better for established groups (as a lot of trust based dynamics do), while the pbta model will be easier to pick and and play without extensive instructions. Then again we played MoTW
wrong at first, because we didn’t fully read the play guidance. It was still very very fun, however. So much so that my own TTRPG has moved a bit more toward a pbta model in some aspects.
At the risk of recapitulating what is probably already answered, this is a reasonably good question:
So, the question IMHO here in terms of flexibility is which of these processes can be best adapted to other types of situations and play? I mean, I'm assuming games A and B both focus on some sort of genre and tone that is related to this example, reading the room and leveraging that information in terms advancing the agenda of the game (whatever that is). In other words, the question is "If I change the genre/tone/agenda, in which type of system will I have to make the most adjustments, or achieve the least satisfactory results?"
I think we would most likely need to develop more detail about the systems in question to answer that. I will make a few assumptions here, as few as possible, to see what I can come up with (I haven't predetermined an answer to the question here, lets find out):
System A sounds like a 'traditional model RPG' in which the rules govern resolution of application of character elements to fiction. The GM describes the fiction, players declare actions of some sort, and that gets mapped onto skills or something similar which simulate the varying degree of competency and talent of each character. System B sounds, well, pretty much like PbtA, but it might also fit other games, depending.
So, now imagine that we want to have a 'gunfight'. That is, neither system A nor B explicitly provides a mechanism for this, but we've taken ourselves to a new genre, lets call it 'old west gun fighting' and we are wanting to handle this situation. Now, regardless of agenda, whatever this mechanism is it will have to
A) leverage our existing resolution scheme (IE skills or moves according to your description)
B) produce some sort of fictionally appropriate results (IE someone outshoots somebody else, possibly with variations like outdrawing, hitting/missing, shot in the back, etc.).
C) mesh with our agenda such that it leverages the things we care about in terms of both agenda and principles and processes, or else build new ones.
Now, 'traditional' RPGs don't tend to be very explicit about C. Usually a game simply advertises its target genre and then perhaps its material and mechanics produce some variation of that (or perhaps even something wildly different in a few cases...). Agenda is TYPICALLY in those cases unstated or embedded within it. So, for example, classic D&D embeds its agenda in 'XP for GP' pretty much, and its deeper agenda in the architecture of leveling, which requires you to gain XP to 'unlock' much of the potential content, combined with the various exploration/encounter/terrain/architecture type rules. So, what would be an agenda for System A 'Shoot 'em Up'? We just don't know exactly, but let me just leave this question until after we talk about System B for a minute.
As for points A and B, System A probably 'works' here, to some degree. That is, some 'skill-like' resolution scheme can include something like 'gunfighting' as a skill and resolve attacks. Where it may fall short is in B, but we can reasonably engineer something that embodies basically "It hurts to get shot." Depending on tone (gritty, pathetic, heroic, etc.) you might vary things like exactly how much damage you can take, its immediate effects, healing, etc. Obviously if you are building on a system which already has these rules, you can 'just use them' assuming they produce the correct tone. Otherwise you will need to hack those too.
System B is a more 'indie' kind of system. So our process is going to be 'fiction first' in focus, typically. That means fiction will govern mechanics, much like DW reads the fiction of a fight and has the GM translate it into moves based on how the players describe the PCs These games also don't typically map resolution mechanics so much to 'physical parameters'. That is, System B might potentially not even focus on things like 'firing a gun' so much as maybe 'Can I Control My Fear'? or maybe its an exploration of the cultural impact of violence in society, etc. Moves might be pretty abstract, or they might be quite detailed. There isn't a really specific requirement here that we can generalize without really building a game. A seems simple, B seems straightforward once we know about C, but C is deep.
Getting back to agenda in System A, it is hard to see how you will approach something like an agenda of 'Explore the Effects of Violence on Society' or something like that. You COULD make a much more granular system, like instead of modeling gunfire, you could model the effects of various tactics, terrain, and other factors to reduce the results to a much more abstract level. You might even create an agenda like "Arrest and Convict Bad Guys" (that might leverage the mechanics of the original game's social skills). Traditional model games generally are limited to focusing on 'action agendas' which are mostly described as 'Do X'. That's because they work on an action basis. Once you go beyond that, you start to need more narratively focused process/mechanics. Of course, you MIGHT be able to add some of those to System A, but the core process is going to limit you to things you can do in a 'GM presents the material, players call out actions' loop where each action is a specific 'apply skill X to perform action A on target B' kind of a thing. In a game like DW you do clearly state actions, but the process is more just pushing you to "what must the GM describe next?" vs "Did the bullet hit the guy I fired at?" and that is a more generalizable kind of process IMHO.
I think one of the reasons that traditional games SEEM very flexible is simply that RPGs have avoided addressing things that model doesn't do well.
Okay, I won’t go point by point on that, but you raise some interesting points. I’m going to address the thrust of the above as best I can while be a distractible rambler.
Gunslinger’s Creed! The weird west TTRPG of gunfights, broken dreams, and love won and lost!
I’d play it, either way system, first of all. Okay, so, I like D&D combat for
shootouts, but I’d model
duels using the basic structure of the cleverly hidden 5e skill challenge. Downtime activities! Using specifically Crime as my model, I’ll do a rough sketch of how I’d approach this.
Establish stakes for a total loss, mixed result, and total victory. Next prescribe 1 - 3 proficiencies, possibly letting the player choose from a list, using each proficiency only once. The DC is determined by the skill of the opponent, either in opposed checks, or giving each NPC a Gunfighting DC based on their proficiency bonus, and how many relevant proficiencies they have. Crime just has three DC options the player can select from by choosing a small, moderate, or big, score, but I’d want it more dynamic. Other activities in Xanathar’s have a modifier that you add to a 2d10 roll to determine the DC.
Regardless, you’d have variable DCs, but the player would be able to find out how hard the DC will be by either observing the opponent in a fight, or by making an Insight or Investigation check while interacting with them socially. Being hard to read, being good at sizing up someone you may have to fight, etc, is a big deal in these kinds of stories. You could break this down into multiple checks with variable success, if you want to emphasize it more.
On consequences and stakes, I’d definitely advise making them transparent in general, along with how difficulty works, etc. Ironically, perhaps, I always advise making this stuff transparent and reliable, even
prescribed, in the context of a group and campaign. I just like to be able to change it to better fit the campaign, adventure, etc. but my players know what they can do and how hard it will be. Any given adventure I run is quite focused, but the campaign, much less all my campaigns taken together, are very very varied.
Anyway, consequences would probably range from a clean victory, to getting taken down, to a middle state where you can either take an injury to win, or neither get a good hit and transition into a gunfight, or neither gets hit and sue for calling the duel a draw.
In general, I find a lot of the statements you’ve made as to why “will inevitably happen or result from a thing” or what can’t be achieved, etc, to be fairly confusing. I may go back and collect them all at a later time, and use them to start a separate discussion about D&D specifically (rather than comparatively) if you’re okay with that?
To John Harper's points I would add that part of the reason we might not want consensus is that if we want to experience emotional bleed with the characters we are playing is that we do not want consensus because they do not have consensus. We want to feel the tension they feel.
You don’t feel the tension your character feels in D&D? No matter how it’s run? Is it possible for you to believe that other people do?
Making play dependent on that consensus forces us into a position some of us do not want to be in all the time.
Okay, but even if we just accept all this without challenge, how does that make a game based on applying these principles to a specific genre not more focused than 5e D&D?
And again, why is it a bad thing to be more focused? I see 5e derided all the time for lacking focus, particularly in comparison to games like blades or AW. People who are really into those games often say that D&D doesn't know what it wants to be, and site all kinds of focused mechanics to bring about a specific intended play experience, and claim that 5e D&D has nothing like that.
Before this thread and the last one, I’d never seen anyone treat focus as a bad thing, or suggest that 5e was as focused as the other games.