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

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

That is generally the cost of open ended flexibility, sure. Just like PC gaming vs console gaming, for instance.

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.

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.

Interesting. I think I would, personally, focus more on the dynamics of things. Like exploring why someone becomes a gunfighter, or what are the consequences. Again, I think we would have to refine the agenda a bit. Then it would be possible to think of things like moves, and what sort of granularity to make them come in at. Finally we'd get to consequences and such. I could really see a pretty wide variety of games coming out of the same basic milieu and genre. Assuming that we are aiming at a somewhat realistic understanding of the mechanics of guns and gunshot though I wouldn't think that 5e's combat system would be of much use. OTOH I am making that assumption, and maybe you would not.

As for 'combining PbtA and 5e', what is to be gained? I mean, PbtA (lets say Dungeon World-like, not all of them are identical) has some pretty solid mechanics already. I mean, d20 is a linear distribution check mechanic that easily 'scatters' success probabilities widely and doesn't specifically have a 'baseline difficulty' except by convention (IE you take on near-level CR monsters, so you can normally hit them). I'm not sure why that is more desirable than the PbtA 2d6 bell curve where you CAN adjust things, but probabilities fall hard within a certain band. (IE you will need a 7+ to succeed, and maybe you can get a +2 or even +3 on that once in a while, but mostly you will be in the +1 territory, needing a 6+ with a 9+ for total success). So, yes, technically you could sub in a d20, but then you'd still basically use the PbtA structure to get the whole effect of driving the fiction through moves paced and guided by the GM but engaging in the direction of the players attention and 'finding out what happens'.

I have some partiality to d20 mechanics myself as a long-time D&D player. I think it works well when you want to model stochastic processes in a "move equates to a specific concrete action" where you need some randomization of GM adjudication. Where you are injecting story uncertainty though it is not as strong a mechanic, IMHO.

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?

I'm pretty easy going really I don't know that I am entirely systematic in my statements or consistent in my views in all cases, for sure. @pemerton and @Manbearcat are two posters who ARE, but me? I'm not so much of an intellectual as they are. lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In theory only! In practice, only a fairly new group even has to negotiate these things. Established groups have negotiated them, and know what to expect and which mechanics are in play, and how. What’s more, it’s a conversation even when the DM adjudicates, because players can freely challenge a ruling or suggest something different, and social norms then come into play.

Which is why I don’t recommend D&D by RAW for every group, and don’t really get the appeal of organized play unless you know the people involved. It runs better when you have a group of friends who know eachother and can communicate.

Well, that sort of all reinforces my point, where is the GAME in this? Games normally have established rules and processes which are adopted by the participants. Yes, there's always some room for negotiation, idiosyncracies, etc. in any given implementation (Even MLB, where actually tagging 2nd base on a double play was simply a formality for many years, as long as the play wasn't too close and the player clearly COULD do it they were not held to it. This was partly an injury prevention 'rule', but it was not in the rule books and IIRC was eventually criticized and I guess the practice is now deprecated, though it has been years since I paid that much attention to the sport). So, yeah, but a lot of groups are NOT long term, or new people come in, etc. One new guy in our D&D group has caused huge problems on a few ocassions!

I’ve never seen that happen in any game I’ve run where combat wasn’t going to be an important aspect of the campaign. I do see some classes not getting used, but that’s a whole different discussion.

Well, limiting things to 5e, what would be a more optimum class in a non-combat environment than a Wizard? Their main limitation, being a Daily Refresh class is probably not going to matter in this sort of game most of the time (one that is 'court intrigue' I mean, or similar). Anyway, this is a sort of whole different discussion, but it complicates use of D&D in these alternate types of games, at least as-is.

But most groups develop procedures and norms that govern their game, so no, at the table it isn’t the case that this is all free form. They know how DM Bob handles social challenges of various kinds, non-combat physical challenges, etc. they know how knowledge skills are used and how they’re not, whether expertise in a given skill is fluff or useful in Bob’s campaigns, etc.

I think it is a lot more free-form and a lot more dominated by DM style and agenda than you think, you've just gotten used to it and take it as a 'baseline' that you expect from RPGs. IME GMs are not all that consistent when there aren't any guardrails. Anyway, it STILL supports my contention, D&D (5e specifically, but really also all classic versions and 3.x) is NOT A GAME outside of combat, not fully. It is essentially a process where the GM presents fiction, the players state how they interact with it and declare checks (maybe, as in 5e, the GM gets to decide which skill/ability/feature gets invoked), the player rolls, and then the GM decides what the significance of that roll is, using it as a GUIDELINE to build some more fiction. Even convention only provides some bounds on what is normally expected from the GM. This is VASTLY different from how things work in say Dungeon World where the GM does have pretty wide fictional latitude, but in other respects is pretty constrained and has been explicitly told what techniques to use and how to employ them such that it is fair to call it a game with established rules.

For all of 5e's books full of procedures and subsystems and whatnot, at its heart there is really no structure at all. We call these things games by convention, but I am a little dubious.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Interesting. I think I would, personally, focus more on the dynamics of things. Like exploring why someone becomes a gunfighter, or what are the consequences. Again, I think we would have to refine the agenda a bit. Then it would be possible to think of things like moves, and what sort of granularity to make them come in at. Finally we'd get to consequences and such. I could really see a pretty wide variety of games coming out of the same basic milieu and genre. Assuming that we are aiming at a somewhat realistic understanding of the mechanics of guns and gunshot though I wouldn't think that 5e's combat system would be of much use. OTOH I am making that assumption, and maybe you would not.

As for 'combining PbtA and 5e', what is to be gained? I mean, PbtA (lets say Dungeon World-like, not all of them are identical) has some pretty solid mechanics already. I mean, d20 is a linear distribution check mechanic that easily 'scatters' success probabilities widely and doesn't specifically have a 'baseline difficulty' except by convention (IE you take on near-level CR monsters, so you can normally hit them). I'm not sure why that is more desirable than the PbtA 2d6 bell curve where you CAN adjust things, but probabilities fall hard within a certain band. (IE you will need a 7+ to succeed, and maybe you can get a +2 or even +3 on that once in a while, but mostly you will be in the +1 territory, needing a 6+ with a 9+ for total success). So, yes, technically you could sub in a d20, but then you'd still basically use the PbtA structure to get the whole effect of driving the fiction through moves paced and guided by the GM but engaging in the direction of the players attention and 'finding out what happens'.

I have some partiality to d20 mechanics myself as a long-time D&D player. I think it works well when you want to model stochastic processes in a "move equates to a specific concrete action" where you need some randomization of GM adjudication. Where you are injecting story uncertainty though it is not as strong a mechanic, IMHO.

I'm pretty easy going really I don't know that I am entirely systematic in my statements or consistent in my views in all cases, for sure. @pemerton and @Manbearcat are two posters who ARE, but me? I'm not so much of an intellectual as they are. lol.

Those are all fair points. My goal in this case was to make a gunfighting game, where you can feel like a cinematic gunslinger or indeed like The Gunslinger (of the Stephen King books). For a more grounded game I’d probably simply house rule that every hit invokes an injury check, which might mean you taken out of the fight immediately, and then focus more on other elements.

As my proposed tag line suggested, it would be a game as much about romantic views of the gunslingers of the old west, with expanded bonds and ideals, and use perhaps the Piety system for favor with the person tied to your bond (a distant love, your home town, the sherif who taught you to fight, you family, etc. and perhaps figure something else to mechanize a rival as well.

Anyway, we are on a tangent. I’ll probably expand on this discussion later.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, that sort of all reinforces my point, where is the GAME in this? Games normally have established rules and processes which are adopted by the participants. Yes, there's always some room for negotiation, idiosyncracies, etc. in any given implementation (Even MLB, where actually tagging 2nd base on a double play was simply a formality for many years, as long as the play wasn't too close and the player clearly COULD do it they were not held to it. This was partly an injury prevention 'rule', but it was not in the rule books and IIRC was eventually criticized and I guess the practice is now deprecated, though it has been years since I paid that much attention to the sport). So, yeah, but a lot of groups are NOT long term, or new people come in, etc. One new guy in our D&D group has caused huge problems on a few ocassions!

Well, limiting things to 5e, what would be a more optimum class in a non-combat environment than a Wizard? Their main limitation, being a Daily Refresh class is probably not going to matter in this sort of game most of the time (one that is 'court intrigue' I mean, or similar). Anyway, this is a sort of whole different discussion, but it complicates use of D&D in these alternate types of games, at least as-is.

I think it is a lot more free-form and a lot more dominated by DM style and agenda than you think, you've just gotten used to it and take it as a 'baseline' that you expect from RPGs. IME GMs are not all that consistent when there aren't any guardrails. Anyway, it STILL supports my contention, D&D (5e specifically, but really also all classic versions and 3.x) is NOT A GAME outside of combat, not fully. It is essentially a process where the GM presents fiction, the players state how they interact with it and declare checks (maybe, as in 5e, the GM gets to decide which skill/ability/feature gets invoked), the player rolls, and then the GM decides what the significance of that roll is, using it as a GUIDELINE to build some more fiction. Even convention only provides some bounds on what is normally expected from the GM. This is VASTLY different from how things work in say Dungeon World where the GM does have pretty wide fictional latitude, but in other respects is pretty constrained and has been explicitly told what techniques to use and how to employ them such that it is fair to call it a game with established rules.

For all of 5e's books full of procedures and subsystems and whatnot, at its heart there is really no structure at all. We call these things games by convention, but I am a little dubious.

I’m gonna reply in a fairly simple manner, not because your full post isn’t interesting, but because the main point is fairly simple.

If you made each weapon proficiency work like a skill, and ran combat on the skill system, and just junked 99% of the combat rules, 5e still absolutely be a game.

The idea that it isn’t a game because it doesn’t pre-codify process, but instead leaves everything to a conversation with a simple resolution mechanic and fairly open ended consequence determination, is pretty wild.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I find that the solution

I think I'm missing your point on this one

Ah but the trick is that it isn't a game, its a part of another game, one that has fairly deep (ymmv by edition) combat resolution mechanics and a working skill system. The classic problem of freeform roleplaying is the "Godmode" or as we prefer here at enworld, the "Calvinball" where capability is arbitrary and character-to-player identification biases their sense of fairness.

Again, I was responding to a post about using D&D rules in a genre where combat was virtually non-existent, and it was suggested it might even be handled by a single check if it did happen. Still, when you talk about 'godmode' and 'Calvinball' I feel like you are making my point... Also I don't agree about the 'working skill system'. What does it work for? It has no mechanical weight WHATSOEVER, as I've pointed out (and I'm far from the first guy to point this out, even in this thread).

But in my experience, its way less of a problem in social interaction than combat resolution. Probably because we can by blow a conversation by just doing it and there's very little meanjngful argument to be had since the only argument you could have is about how a character you didn't create mught respond, whereas a fight is more subject to subjective assesments of genre and such.

So to summarize, freeform social mechanics coupled with strict physical simulation mechanics is a design with a well supported basis and often feels right for many.

Yeah, I don't agree. MOST DMs, and that included myself for a very long time, had ABSOLUTELY no blinkin' idea how to manage a social situation whatsoever. We simply avoided all of that like the plague because it is completely outside the limits of what D&D can handle, and it inevitably lead to all sorts of arguments and wrangling, begging, etc. My response in the early days was to go to page 36 in the DMG, or to page 63, the reaction table. P63 has a tab on it in my DMG, in fact both of them do, though my DM screen also reprints those tables.

I cannot speak for what actually feels 'right for many'. I can, however, point out that modules have almost assiduously avoided social interactions. Even in OA, which was clearly written with the idea in mind that the game would have a heavy focus on the character's place in society, etc. the modules are all clearly designed to get you out into the wilderness/dungeon as soon as possible! There are a number of awkward segments of various OA modules where the author attempts to guide the GM through dealing with court, or some local ruler NPC who is significant, or there's one module with a whole subsystem in it where you go from village to village searching for a gateway to pocket dimension IIRC and they have a whole slew of charts and rules to try to make it all work. So color me skeptical!

Yes, when you are playing with your accustomed friends in a dinner table game of D&D you can obviously handle the bartender and the thief guild thug, and the plot hook girl, and whatever. Beyond that, it is totally up to whether the GM can make it convincing or not, the rules and process of the game are at best no help at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

BRP does have several mechanical elements that D&D 5e doesn't - 5 success levels (Fumble, fail, success, special success/impale, and critical success). Last edition I looked at also had rules for social actions that were slightly more nuanced than D&D 5E has. A larger number of skills with narrower scope each. Advancement by use, rather than by experience points and/or levels. No classes (but templates can be created for quick gen of archetypes). The system also places very different priorities and relationships between attributes and damage capacity, attributes and skills, and a significantly different action sequence action economy.

Right, but BRP still has the same issue as 5e, there is no 'valence' to checks. Its core process is basically identical, the GM describes a scene, players invoke skills or attributes as checks to carry out specific actions; "I lift the chair." and the GM determines a difficulty, the player rolls, and either succeeds or fails, possibly with a level of success (the GM is not bound by those, at least in the edition of BRP I own, they are situationally useful basically). It is up to the GM exactly what a success or failure accomplishes/entails, and how often or many checks will be required to achieve a fictional goal/state desired by the players. As with 5e, this is only really more specifically elaborated for combat. I'm not sure about 'social actions', there are MANY 'social' skills. I'll accept that the most recent version of BRP (I don't even recall if that is what I have or not, I bought it a few years ago) may have some added rules. Still, given the fully GM-arbitrated and mediated nature of the BRP process, how much can it help? I guess it could get as intricate as the combat system, that would be something.

I found the skill system in BRP to be actually a lot less useful than the 5e one. I give 5e credit for one thing here, it learned from 4e that a very short list of very general skills is a lot better than BRP's laundry list. I mean, what skill do I use in BRP? Negotiation, Sociology, Appraisal, Archaeology, Mysticism, or there are even 3 or 4 other candidates when I want to bargain with an Arab trader to see what price I can get for an artifact? Even just executing simple physical tasks can often plausibly be covered by 3 or more skills, and even though these different skills overlap, a high expertise in one bears no relation to the next! Depending on which one the GM arbitrarily tells you to roll for your chances could be 90% or 5%!!!! It is a hot mess! I did play a one-shot of the latest CoC, and I see they have pruned the skill list down very heavily, but it still seemed exceedingly clunky and basically obsolete RPG design. Personally, I won't use BRP again, there are vastly better engines. If I was going for a classic GM driven game I would think something like Cypher System would be vastly better (but I still would not use it over something like a PbtA variant).

D&D 5E officially only has 3 levels of success - Fail, Success, and Critical Success, with that last being optional. (I don't recall if a fumble exists in the DMG as an option other than for death saves; a nat 1 is merely a fail, not a fumble for combat and att saves, and not even an autofail on skills. Not that it hasn't stopped a lot of people from adding fumbles as house rules.)

Well, the DMG has some options to add 'level of success', but as has been discussed extensively in various threads of late, that is still toothless because of the core structure of how checks work in 5e, they simply don't MEAN anything (except in combat)!

5E is indeed a simpler engine - were it not for the sheer and insane number of options, it would be the simpler game. It's also worth noting that some of the 5E SRD based games have moved considerably away from the 5E advancement mechanics, while retaining the simple core mechanics. The new SG1 is a very good candidate for a "5e Modern" baseline...

Right, but just like d20 Modern, or just d20 system in general, there were many games that jumped on that bandwagon early in 5e, but pretty much all the 'd20 variant of X' sort of sank without a trace. I don't know of a single game that made a d20 conversion that didn't go back to its original design immediately after. I'm sure you can do quite a few variations on D&D, but it is still D&D!

 

[Campbell]

This is an obvious side tangent, but I'm a social guy. I like to go out. I love talking. I love my friends. Obviously I should be able to handle a conversation with them. After all the very act of playing a roleplaying game is a social one. There's an issue though. The social context of the relationships at the table might be dramatically different between the characters we are playing and how we orient here in meat space.

There are vast differences between the characters I play and myself in terms of thought patterns, social ties, social pressures, emotions, etc. The farther we are removed from the context our characters live in the less reliable just talking things out becomes. So if I'm playing a territorial vampire who must contend with a Beast driving him towards social dominance and predatory behavior or an empowered demigod driven to realize their ambitions at any cost because they suffer under an ancient curse levied against those responsible for slaying the Primordials then my ability to carry on conversation with my buddy Rob who tells dad jokes (even though he's only 22) and loves to run is not all that relevant to the play experience if we really care about getting those social dynamics right.

 

[Campbell]

@doctorbadwolf

I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm communicating my perspective as best as I know how. It's also based on a lot of hard fought experience over the course of 20 years of play that involved a fair amount of trying to wrestle with games to get them to do things I found they were inadequate for. I have attempted to run highly social and character focused games using multiple versions of D&D only to have the game's system actively work against what I was trying to do which I believe is pretty different from what you have been doing in your own games.

I am glad that traditional RPGs do the things most people want them to do. I even enjoy plying them from time to time. I still hold that the popularity of an approach is not related to its overall flexibility. My own table experience is that most games of D&D and other traditional games like Shadowrun, L5R, et al feel incredibly similar to me at the table in terms of playstyle. I have seen an incredible amount of consistency between the ways different groups play these games across tables despite never meeting each other. That does not mean it's not fun. I have had a ton of fun playing once I was able to accept they weren't going to offer some of the things I wanted out of them.

My biggest issue with flexible/focused narrative is that it places the sort of play games like Apocalypse World engenders as a more specialized form of what they are already doing. I think that's wrong. The sort of play described on Play Passionately is not contained within more traditional RPGs. It is fundamentally different in character.

The bigger issue is that this results in a sense of erasure within the larger community. The unique play processes seen in both the indie community and OSR community are basically seen as specialized instead of just different. The creative insecurity that causes when people like me are frustrated because they want something out of traditional RPG spaces that they are ill equipped to provided then get thrown back at them. Their creative insecurity and frustrations get treated as their fault. They just need to get good.

I acknowledge the use of focus / incomplete text language used in parts of the indie community. I think it was fundamentally based on faulty understanding within the indie community. Many of us just did not get traditional/neotraditional play practices and the unique value they provide. Several things were said based on that lack of understanding I regard as mistaken.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

@doctorbadwolf

I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm communicating my perspective as best as I know how. It's also based on a lot of hard fought experience over the course of 20 years of play that involved a fair amount of trying to wrestle with games to get them to do things I found they were inadequate for. I have attempted to run highly social and character focused games using multiple versions of D&D only to have the game's system actively work against what I was trying to do which I believe is pretty different from what you have been doing in your own games.

I am glad that traditional RPGs do the things most people want them to do. I even enjoy plying them from time to time. I still hold that the popularity of an approach is not related to its overall flexibility. My own table experience is that most games of D&D and other traditional games like Shadowrun, L5R, et al feel incredibly similar to me at the table in terms of playstyle. I have seen an incredible amount of consistency between the ways different groups play these games across tables despite never meeting each other. That does not mean it's not fun. I have had a ton of fun playing once I was able to accept they weren't going to offer some of the things I wanted out of them.

My biggest issue with flexible/focused narrative is that it places the sort of play games like Apocalypse World engenders as a more specialized form of what they are already doing. I think that's wrong. The sort of play described on Play Passionately is not contained within more traditional RPGs. It is fundamentally different in character.

The bigger issue is that this results in a sense of erasure within the larger community. The unique play processes seen in both the indie community and OSR community are basically seen as specialized instead of just different. The creative insecurity that causes when people like me are frustrated because they want something out of traditional RPG spaces that they are ill equipped to provided then get thrown back at them. Their creative insecurity and frustrations get treated as their fault. They just need to get good.

I acknowledge the use of focus / incomplete text language used in parts of the indie community. I think it was fundamentally based on faulty understanding within the indie community. Many of us just did not get traditional/neotraditional play practices and the unique value they provide. Several things were said based on that lack of understanding I regard as mistaken.

Okay, man. I'm never going to agree that a game being focused is a bad thing, nor that a game must be flexible to be good. I will just walk away from arguing with you about it, though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

How don't you have 'general conflict resolution mechanics' in FitD? You have obviously a set of mechanics which model character capabilities. There are some things that need to be established, like the level of control of the situation in effect at the time. FitD/BitD, IMHO, doesn't really require that a 'scene' be a 'heist'. That is how things in BitD are flavored and oriented, but basically any dramatic situation can follow roughly the same model. You establish one or more clocks, the initial situation (is it controlled, desperate, whatever) and present the fictional situation. From there the mechanics are perfectly capable of working. It might be a bit unclear what the impact of some things are in terms of various tallies like relations with other groups or whatever, but if these are important they can be worked out pretty easily.

Likewise with PbtA games. DW for instance, assuming a fantasy milieu appropriate to its character classes, is perfectly fine doing dungeon crawl, wilderness, intrigue, quests, military campaigns, building a holding, etc. I could very easily run a pirates campaign, for example, using DW. I wouldn't need to change a thing. AT MOST one might consider creating a playbook or two as a way to support some genre specific character types. Honestly, I think PbtA generally is EASILY capable of handling about 95% of what is normally done with 5e, including what shows up in other '5e based games'. There is really VERY little structure to PbtA, it is just principles/agenda/techniques/process, and then playbooks and generic moves. The only other parts to it are details of the character sheet for a given PbtA 'flavor' and any associated mechanics. So, for instance, DW has 6 ability scores, hit points, armor, equipment, bonds, alignment, and XP rules. Other PbtA flavors have similar stuff. Chances are you can co-opt a lot of your material from one or more of them, though honestly between DW, AW, and Uncharted Worlds, you have pretty solid systems for your more maintstream RPG genres (High Fantasy, Post-Apocalypse, and Asimovian-style Space Opera). I'm not familiar with others, but I am 100% certain there are various Supers games, several other flavors of Sci-Fi games, etc. They are all extremely similar in overall architecture! Certainly as similar as 5e-based games. I would say that PbtA is to 'indie games' what GURPS, d20, or BRP is to traditional games. And heck, if you don't like that FATE is an equally flexible toolkit (and there are others).

I just don't think the idea that there is some sort of 'mainstream traditional' game architecture that is the 'generalized flexible way' that can do a version of anything, and then some 'other way' that is somehow more limited. That is utterly not supported by what is out there in the market today.