Adventure Time TTRPG Drops "Yes And" System, Switches To 5E

When the Adventure Time roleplaying game was announced back in June, it was going to be using a brand new RPG system called the "Yes And" system, which involved dice which had Yes and No on one die, and things like And or But on the other.

However, publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment has recently indicated that, following fan feedback, the upcoming Kickstarter will now be powered by 5E instead. The update was included last week as part of the FAQ in its current Adventure Time card game Kickstarter.

Has Adventure Time: The Roleplaying Game changed since you announced it a few months ago?

Yes, we made the decision to make it a 5e experience, based on feedback from fans. That doesn’t mean the game shown at Gen Con earlier this year won’t be released too, but the main offering in the upcoming Kickstarter will be the 5e RPG.

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly surprised it doesn't happen more often, Star Trek RPG would have made alot more money with 5e for example.

OK, I have to say that wouldn't make sense to me. 2d20 fits the mold of Star Trek more than 5E does, though PbtA maybe would be better. Unlike Adventure Time, which is a D&D show.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The theme of the setting of a show has nothing to do with what game system would fit the show. The theme is just fluff. What matters is whether or not the system can emulate the fiction of the show.

Adventure Time would be better emulated by something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine or some kind of adaptation of that system.

I'm not seeing how Adventure Time matches D&D at all.

 

[Dexamalion]

I could be wrong but is this the first time this has happened? A licensed game being pushed into 5e?

How do you mean "pushed"? We had the Rick and Morty licensed box set for 5e a few years ago.

 

[Parmandur]

The theme of the setting of a show has nothing to do with what game system would fit the show. The theme is just fluff. What matters is whether or not the system can emulate the fiction of the show.

Adventure Time would be better emulated by something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine or some kind of adaptation of that system.

I'm not seeing how Adventure Time matches D&D at all.

I mean, the fiction of the show feels like a D&D campaign based on my experience...?

 

[Parmandur]

Found this from Pendleton Ward:

"And at the beginning, when we didn’t have any time to play Dungeons & Dragons anymore because we were all working so hard on the show, we realized, “Well, we can still play sort of, just by writing the stories we’d want to be playing D&D with.” [Laughs.] I remember Pat McHale would write out a cool, dandy storyline, and it was fun because we were sort of living it out as we wrote it, which is a lot like playing D&D. So we did a lot of that."

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward

Since 2010, Cartoon Network has been airing Adventure Time, a quirky, fanciful animated series about an enthusiastic boy, a shape-shifting dog, and the various monsters and royal types they live alongside in a land transformed by “The Great Mushroom War.” Produced under the creative direction of...

www.avclub.com

 

[Emberashh]

How do you mean "pushed"? We had the Rick and Morty licensed box set for 5e a few years ago.

In the sense that the game was using a bespoke system but then got pushed to using 5e instead.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I mean, the fiction of the show feels like a D&D campaign based on my experience...?

It doesn't feel like a D&D campaign at all.

D&D and similar games feel like completely off for this purpose because yeah sure Adventure Time is obviously inspired by D&D but nothing in the show feels like it is, mechanically, anything like D&D. The thing with D&D is that so many useful mechanics are lacking for setting the tone of the adventure, and at the same time they have extremely complex mechanics for things that are barely relevant in Adventure Time.

I assume they might produce something that works if they can get some kind of incentive mechanics to work, and if they remove the entire spell casting system (which is extremely inappropriate) but I still think that they are fighting against the system.

Coming out of my second watch of AT, I note the following things: I will use AT and D as abbreviations of Adventure Time and Dungeons and Dragons respectively.

1: D has no mechanics for doing nothing. Yes you can roleplay sitting around and doing nothing, but there are no mechanical rules for it. An obvious counter question is "why would you need rules for doing nothing?" to which the obvious reply is: Because in the show a lot of the time is spent messing around doing nothing productive whatsoever. You might argue it does not need rules, but if you have no rules then there is no incentive to do it. You want the mechanics to support the fiction.

2: D has no useful rules for anything besides dungeon crawling and fighting monsters. It basically sucks for everything else. This, I guess, can be fixed if they patch the system (which it sounds like they might actually do to some degree).

3: D as a system is very much focused on the players functioning as a cohesive group. Splitting the party is a very very bad idea. Splitting the party also happens in pretty much every episode of AT. You need mechanics to support this otherwise you have a conflict between the fiction and how the game plays in practice.

I don't think the result is going to unplayably bad, but I think the game is going to require a good group and a good GM.

 

[Parmandur]

It doesn't feel like a D&D campaign at all.

I'll take Pendleton Ward's word and my own personal D&D experience on this point.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I'll take Pendleton Ward's word and my own personal D&D experience on this point.

Yeah sure. I think it's certainly possible that it can work successfully, but I think that it requires a lot of guidance to the GM on how to run it. I don't think the system is a natural fit.

I'll add another problematic aspect. In AT it often happens that characters do suboptimal things. But D&D as a system punishes suboptimal play. There's no incentive for the players to act in ways that are not optimal.

Consider Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine. That system is designed to make the players play their characters in a way that matches the fiction of the character. They do this by giving you XP whenever to do something that is in line with your arcs, and your arcs are essentially like D&D backgrounds but more elaborate. An arc is a commitment to play your character in a particular way, if you do it you get XP. If you pick a "crazy scientist" arc then you get XP whenever you do crazy scientist things, even if those actions would be totally suboptimal in a D&D context.

Chuubo's also rewards you for doing campaign appropriate things. One part of an adventure could totally focus on trying to bake an amazing cake to celebrate someone's birthday.

D&D could involve baking a cake too, but there are no mechanics for it so it's not supported by the system, and because it's not supported by the system it's unlikely to happen unless there is a deliberate attempt by the players and GM to make it happen.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is not an attack on D&D to say that D&D doesn't incentivize behaving like the characters in Adventure Time do, and that an Adventure Time RPG would ideally incentivize play that resembles the show.

That's what any tie-in RPG should be doing. If you are regularly slaughtering aliens in a Star Trek RPG, for instance, the incentives are all screwed up.