Indie Games Are Not More Focused. They Are Differently Focused.

[kenada]

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of the evening working on faction cards for my WWN game, so I’ve got factions on the brain, but there seem to be two different kinds of factions being described over the last few pages.

The first kind is the sort of faction that is a tool the GM uses for managing the dynamics of the game. @AbdulAlhazred please correct me if I’m wrong about what you mean. A concrete example of this would be the faction mechanics in WWN. The other kind of factions being discussed are those PCs can join and influence. They’re both quite different and serve different roles.

The faction subsystem in WWN (and BitD, which is similar) is a tool for the GM to bring life to the setting. Neither the players nor their characters never interact with it directly. They only interact with it indirectly based on the effects it has on the setting. As Kevin Crawford says frequently in WWN, it’s a tool for generating adventuring grist.

@The-Magic-Sword I assume when you talk about joining or influencing factions, you mean something like the reputation subsystem in Pathfinder 2e. That subsystem works quite differently. While it is loosely built on the VP subsystem, it’s meant to be a way for the PCs to gain favors from allied organizations. Any adventuring grist is decided by the GM.

BitD has something analogous to that, which is built on factions but separate from the GM-facing mechanics. You gain status with factions by doing missions for them. However, high status with a faction in BitD doesn’t afford the PCs favors. It potentially has favors asked of them (at the cost of losing status if you decline). Additionally, assuming BitD is like Scum and Villainy, which is the only FitD game I have experience playing, end game is triggered when you hit +3 status.

Of course, these factions mechanics can be adapted to other games. WWN is OSR-adjacent, so it’s not even that far off 5e. What FitD has is arguably already an adaption to PbtA-style games.

Anyway, I’ve run out of post, and I’m not sure where I’m going. I hesitate to get too involved because this seems like one of those threads that will go for fifty pages without reaching any kind of consensus or agreement.

 

[kenada]

Couldn't tell you for all of those systems, thats a lot of rulebooks I've never read after all but something like BITD would probably need to shanghai it into a score, which is fine but would also turn it into a heist. Else you could break from the structure of the game and just do it, but then you're kind of lost in the ether without generic conflict resolution mechanics to fall back on.

A score is just your adventure. As long as there’s a goal, you should be fine. Where things would get weird for a delve is that your map and key could get invalidated or screw up things for the PCs depending on how authoritative it is (because flashbacks can’t change things that have been established). I guess you could take a cue from Dungeon World and leave blanks on your map.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

A score is just your adventure. As long as there’s a goal, you should be fine. Where things would get weird for a delve is that your map and key could get invalidated or screw up things for the PCs depending on how authoritative it is (because flashbacks can’t change things that have been established). I guess you could take a cue from Dungeon World and leave blanks on your map.

I was thinking more about how the score stuff feels, with flashbacks, the dynamics of the stress system in play, the... footing? You know the mechanic you do at the beginning of every score that influences whether they're already on the backfoot. It strikes me as something you could do, but BITD's play process would potentially work against the feeling you're trying to achieve.

But I guess that gets into the nebulous weeds of what you get from mechanics, and I've had disconnects that seem to come down to differences in how the texture of play is percieved. For me, the texture of the mechanics seem to do a lot more work in Story Now, which seems like a good thing, but its kinda a double edged sword, stronger game feel at the core mechanics of the game can be overpowering when you're deliberately working against them.

In a sense something like pf2e's core is less concerned with evoking a specific theme, but instead all of the content layered on top of it evokes that feel, so its very easy to curate because the ststem's skeleton is neutral to what you're trying to do.

To put it in another way, the mechanical texture is in how a class feature or feat works instead of at the game's core. So this means a class can be given a mechanical system like stress, or spell slots, or pursue a lead, to evoke a specific feel, but it still interacts with the game's core mechanic that everyone else interacts with.

To summarize, the texture of the score is non optional in BITD, but its Pathfinder equivalent would be a modular piece that you could use or not use where apropo. I'd go so far as to say, that if Forged in the Dark were designed to be played in its own right rather than as a design basis, it would be an apt comparison to the level of mechanical texture present in 5e or PF's core mechanic.

They all still do some texture work, but less than the fully realized FITD game like Torchbearer or BITD woulf... or a specific AP with supporting mechanics or a well curated homebrew that employs the right subsystems and options for its experience.

 

[pemerton]

Couldn't tell you for all of those systems, thats a lot of rulebooks I've never read after all but something like BITD would probably need to shanghai it into a score, which is fine but would also turn it into a heist. Else you could break from the structure of the game and just do it, but then you're kind of lost in the ether without generic conflict resolution mechanics to fall back on.

Doesn't BitD default to roll your pool, keep your best, if it's 3 down you fail, if it's 4 or 5 you get a mixed/complicated success, if it's 6 you get complete success? I'm not sure why someone couldn't fall back on that.

 

[pemerton]

I was thinking more about how the score stuff feels, with flashbacks, the dynamics of the stress system in play, the... footing? You know the mechanic you do at the beginning of every score that influences whether they're already on the backfoot. It strikes me as something you could do, but BITD's play process would potentially work against the feeling you're trying to achieve.

<snip>

In a sense something like pf2e's core is less concerned with evoking a specific theme, but instead all of the content layered on top of it evokes that feel, so its very easy to curate because the ststem's skeleton is neutral to what you're trying to do.

I don't have quite this same sense of some core systems being neutral compared to others.

The most striking thing for me is those systems in which dice rolls represent the luck of the situation: the chance of the dice is the chance of the universe. It seems to me that AD&D, B/X/ 3e D&D and process-sim systems like RQ and RM default to this. It gives the gameworld a particular disenchanted feel.

Given its design history, I would expect PF to feel like this too.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I don't have quite this same sense of some core systems being neutral compared to others.

The most striking thing for me is those systems in which dice rolls represent the luck of the situation: the chance of the dice is the chance of the universe. It seems to me that AD&D, B/X/ 3e D&D and process-sim systems like RQ and RM default to this. It gives the gameworld a particular disenchanted feel.

Given its design history, I would expect PF to feel like this too.

I'm sure it would were you to play it, I get what you mean, but its a disconnect in our mutual understanding of texture because it isn't a feel I have.

As for BITD, I think what seals it for me as something you wouldn't want to do is how it feels like all of the games mechanics flow together to create the specific experience.

Are you doing it in a score? Do you have footing, stress, flashbacks? The answer to those radically changes the play experience to an extreme degree, whereas I feel like your problem solving tools are more self contained in 5e or PF, they're part of the layer you added on and don't have to be present to the core game, heck, thats why the level 0 rules on pf2e function the way they do.

If we don't do combat, or exploration mode or downtime mode in pf2e the game itself in doesn't actually break down the skill system can handle it.

But the core process of play in BITD is the spine of the game, following it is playing.

 

[innerdude]

I'm going to throw out something possibly controversial --- I don't think any RPG games or systems are particularly flexible, in the sense that the system's core assumptions largely pre-determine the general play experience.

And I say this as someone who played Savage Worlds almost exclusively for 8+ years, which is widely considered one of the most "flexible" systems on the market.

I played or ran in 7 different campaigns across 5 different genres (high fantasy, modern zombie survival, cyberpunk, sci-fi, historical fantasy). Even when we switched between genres/subgenres, the core feel of Savage Worlds' in-play feedback loop was largely unchanged. You could never get away from it largely feeling like most of the other campaigns.

GURPS is pretty much the same way. Didn't matter if I was playing high fantasy, gritty fantasy, modern day spy thriller, or superheroes, it was all still pretty much GURPS.

After playing D&D 3/3.x for seven years, and another 18 months of Pathfinder after that, I am deeply skeptical of any claims of the system's flexibility. There's a huge difference between a system being truly flexible, and simply knowing a system so thoroughly, deeply, inside and out, that one can just ignore or "kitbash" stuff on the fly.

In this sense, I completely agree with the OP. Indie games aren't more focused, they're just differently focused---they're focused on the synergy between the gameplay feedback loop and the rules in ways that more "mainstream" systems aren't.

 

[kenada]

I was thinking more about how the score stuff feels, with flashbacks, the dynamics of the stress system in play, the... footing? You know the mechanic you do at the beginning of every score that influences whether they're already on the backfoot. It strikes me as something you could do, but BITD's play process would potentially work against the feeling you're trying to achieve.

If you look at the way D&D adventures tend to go, they usually start with a complication or some kind of conflict. The engagement roll helps you generate that instead of relying on the GM to come up with something in the moment (since the nature of BitD means it’s unlikely the GM got time to sit down and decide, which would go against your [BitD] principles anyway).

But I guess that gets into the nebulous weeds of what you get from mechanics, and I've had disconnects that seem to come down to differences in how the texture of play is percieved. For me, the texture of the mechanics seem to do a lot more work in Story Now, which seems like a good thing, but its kinda a double edged sword, stronger game feel at the core mechanics of the game can be overpowering when you're deliberately working against them.

In a sense something like pf2e's core is less concerned with evoking a specific theme, but instead all of the content layered on top of it evokes that feel, so its very easy to curate because the ststem's skeleton is neutral to what you're trying to do.

To put it in another way, the mechanical texture is in how a class feature or feat works instead of at the game's core. So this means a class can be given a mechanical system like stress, or spell slots, or pursue a lead, to evoke a specific feel, but it still interacts with the game's core mechanic that everyone else interacts with.

To summarize, the texture of the score is non optional in BITD, but its Pathfinder equivalent would be a modular piece that you could use or not use where apropo. I'd go so far as to say, that if Forged in the Dark were designed to be played in its own right rather than as a design basis, it would be an apt comparison to the level of mechanical texture present in 5e or PF's core mechanic.

They all still do some texture work, but less than the fully realized FITD game like Torchbearer or BITD woulf... or a specific AP with supporting mechanics or a well curated homebrew that employs the right subsystems and options for its experience.

I agree. Some games use mechanics just for resolution or to model some aspect about a character, but others use them to create a certain feel of play, or they use them to create situations that might not arise organically (i.e., as a prompt). A game like Scum and Villainy is more like Call of Cthluhu taken to 11 than it is D&D because it pervasively uses its stress mechanics to create the feel of playing a daring outline on the fringe. Your work is dangerous, and that danger affects you. If you don’t want trauma, you have to work at it, and that ends up reflected in how things play (though the system does try to incentivize you to lean into the conceit with additional XP for playing your traumas).

That seems to be the two strains of discourse in this thread. There’s the “D&D-style flexibility”, which is about the system’s not prescribing mechanics so GMs can do whatever they want. If they want to hack D&D to include stress mechanics (from BitD), they can do that. Then there’s “experience flexibility” (for lack of a better word, so hopefully someone suggests something better) where the system is built with the idea that some parts of play are being delegated to the system, and the experiences created by them are ones that are not or are unlikely to occur in a “D&D-style flexibility” environment. See also: the discussion previously regarding consensual versus non-consensual.

I think there’s an assumption that the latter are more difficult to modify, but that seems true only looking at things narrowly. People have built a variety of games on top of PbtA and FitD. Bluebeard’s Bride is very different from Dungeon World is very different from Monster Hearts. It might be more difficult to do it in the moment (such as deciding to use PbtA-style conflict resolution for a particular a social challenge in D&D), but those games enumerate their principles, which should help make intentioned modification easier. It may be that some communities are less receptive to modification than others, but I don’t think it’s fair to project that back onto the games themselves. Otherwise, I’d have to concede that PF2e and its APs are expected to be run 100% RAW (no matter how awful the results), and I’m not going to do that.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

You're right about the strains of discourse, I do wanna mention I wouldn't actually consider Story Now harder to modify in a direct sense (they're often intentionally pretty lightweight after all) I think you usually just have to do more to them in terms of the percentages of what you change and it would probably feel more like making a new PBTA or FITD game if you're trying to change feel (putting aside light modifications, like the community playbooks for Masks) it just feels to me like greater responsibility and risk of breaking things.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think it depends on what you mean by indie. If you just mean small press games or games that are independently published, focus is all over the map. If you mean a particular style of RPG design, that could be different. Personally I am fine with games having more of a focus. I like games focused on a particular genre for instance (I may differ with some posters on my preferences in terms of how to have the mechanics support a given genre, but I do like genre focus). And in design I think building towards a particular style or goal is good as well. That is one of the advantages of putting out indie games (and here I mean it as small press, or publishers who publish their own games): you can be as niche as you want. I would say I tend to think of something like D&D as being less focused in that it aims for a broad fantasy setting style that allows for a range of play styles too. One of the reasons I don't play it quite so much is that isn't what I am really after these day (sometimes I want that, and I will play D&D when I want that), but if I want to play a game about werewolves, I will tend to play a game written expressly for that purpose now. Also one of the reasons I like games that make their own system and don't use an existing one

However I do think it does depend on the game. Some games do things differently from more mainstream games, but that doesn't automatically mean the focus is tighter. Even trad games have a focus of some kind (even if that focus is just 'fantasy adventure').