What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

Prince Valiant probably doesn't count as breakout, but it has rotating GM responsibilities as part of its rules, back in 1989.

Burning Wheel has clear procedures and agenda, and has the whole table vote for Mouldbreaker awards, the Trait Vote, etc.

Neonchameleon said:

For the record I'm pretty sure the breakout game that did this was (as so often with modern gaming trends) 2010s Apocalypse World. Which called the GM the Master of Ceremonies, took away their dice, and gave procedures and agendas.

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For ME... yes, it was Apocalypse World. Well, first City of Mist. But AW followed right after. But even then, it took me 3 years of playing AW and saying "this is just WoD in training wheels!", but also thinking "This is better, I just can't say how...must play again..." lolol

RenleyRenfield said:

For ME... yes, it was Apocalypse World. Well, first City of Mist. But AW followed right after. But even then, it took me 3 years of playing AW and saying "this is just WoD in training wheels!", but also thinking "This is better, I just can't say how...must play again..." lolol

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The idea that GMing principles for a RPG are "training wheels" or for "beginner GMs" is one of the more bizarre, yet recurrent, ideas out there.

pemerton said:

The idea that GMing principles for a RPG are "training wheels" or for "beginner GMs" is one of the more bizarre, yet recurrent, ideas out there.

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You know what made it "click" for me?

I went back to D&D and failed rolls resulted in nothing happening.

I went back to running WoD and there was no "Success with Complications" result.
Which, again...IMHO... is no the same thing in any way whatsoever as "partial success" that some systems use.

No amount of fussing over what 3 successes meant vs 4, no amount of needing 2 successes and getting 7 and trying to guess what that meant. And above all else = no more needing to fudge rolls or results when a player rolled a Fail or I the ST rolled a Fail....

Seeing the "moves" in action make it soooo much easier to understand the Purpose of the GM (MC) Principles and moves. Seeing a game truly and really resolve it as a "success" and then complications (and not just rip our the rung under a player by negating the success)= lifechanging! Also, I am no longer "the GM" they fear or outwit, they work with me and they lean into the drama because PBTA also taught us to trust "us".

I have now written my own Star Wars PBTA game, and I offer it as a really great intro to what PBTA is and how it generates amazing stories and drama without the GM needing to fudge, agonize, or frustrate.

I wrote it to highlight to GM/ST like me = what it is that makes life easier, and how i get those great emotion/drama/*uckery moments I loved in WoD that were just exhausting (or landmine bad) to make!

pemerton said:

The idea that GMing principles for a RPG are "training wheels" or for "beginner GMs" is one of the more bizarre, yet recurrent, ideas out there.

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This is one of those things I’ve done a kind of 360 on.



Bah the GM controls all, all role-playing is the same, just give me the mechanics >

Specific text for specific games, the rules are rules >

Well you know actually, all role-playing is kind of the same


The issue is that people have to port assumptions, and therefore procedures, to make stuff work. Some assumptions are only broken by going right back to fundamentals, which principles don’t tend to convey very well.

Although I’m on tenuous ground because the counter argument is that books can always be better written. My response to that though, would be that it’s the job of theory to provide the fundamentals. Rules texts can’t be comprehensive enough.

pemerton said:

The idea that GMing principles for a RPG are "training wheels" or for "beginner GMs" is one of the more bizarre, yet recurrent, ideas out there.

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I’ve seen that at times. I think it shows a lack of understanding on the part of the person saying it.

zakael19 said:

Surely there's some middle ground between "DM is god of all they survey" and "I'm just a wee service animal GM."

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Middle ground: "DM is god of wee service animals"?

thefutilist said:

Although I’m on tenuous ground because the counter argument is that books can always be better written. My response to that though, would be that it’s the job of theory to provide the fundamentals. Rules texts can’t be comprehensive enough.

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And mine is that different games are different. MCing Apocalypse World is very different from GMing a PF2E Adventure Path is very different again from an old school dungeon crawl and each provides you with very different tools.

Theory can't be comprehensive enough to cover all possibilities without a full working theory of the human mind - and even if it could it would be too big to be digestible. This is ultimately what doomed the Big Model.

Meanwhile putting how to run this specific game in the rules text attaches it to the game, puts it where it will be read, and doesn't require a massive overarching theory for the GM in order to run the game.

thefutilist said:

This is one of those things I’ve done a kind of 360 on.



Bah the GM controls all, all role-playing is the same, just give me the mechanics >

Specific text for specific games, the rules are rules >

Well you know actually, all role-playing is kind of the same


The issue is that people have to port assumptions, and therefore procedures, to make stuff work. Some assumptions are only broken by going right back to fundamentals, which principles don’t tend to convey very well.

Although I’m on tenuous ground because the counter argument is that books can always be better written. My response to that though, would be that it’s the job of theory to provide the fundamentals. Rules texts can’t be comprehensive enough.

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I'll accept there have to be some assumptions. A card game often assumes that the players know what it means, for instance, to shuffle the cards and deal hands.

The analogue in a RPG might be assuming that participants know how to roll and read dice. Perhaps even that they have an idea of the contrast between GM (default manage of backstory and framing) and player (engages the fiction primarily by declaring actions for a particular imaginary character) roles.

But I think there's quite a bit that is possible to specify.

Referring to AW in particular, I was going to post a couple of quotes from this four-year-old thread: thoughts on Apocalypse World? But having looked through it, there's too much to quote! In addition to that linked post, you can see my thoughts in posts 86, 100, 104, 223, 224, 252, 254, 271, 311, 318, 341, 362, 365, 370 and 375.

In those posts I try and identify some of the things that follow, for AW play, from the way the rules are stated: if you do it, you do it; always say what honesty, and what prep, demand; the purpose of prep is to give you interesting things to say; when everyone looks at the MC to see what happens next, the MC makes a move - a soft move, unless its a 6-down roll or a golden opportunity on a plate; etc.

The rulebook doesn't answer every question (like your one about how many opponents?). But I think it's pretty complete.

Burning Wheel, especially supplemented by the Adventure Burner, I think is pretty complete too. (Though it also doesn't answer the how many opponents? question!) And the completeness of both helps to make clear how they're different games.

pemerton said:

I'll accept there have to be some assumptions. A card game often assumes that the players know what it means, for instance, to shuffle the cards and deal hands.

The analogue in a RPG might be assuming that participants know how to roll and read dice. Perhaps even that they have an idea of the contrast between GM (default manage of backstory and framing) and player (engages the fiction primarily by declaring actions for a particular imaginary character) roles.

But I think there's quite a bit that is possible to specify.

Referring to AW in particular, I was going to post a couple of quotes from this four-year-old thread: thoughts on Apocalypse World? But having looked through it, there's too much to quote! In addition to that linked post, you can see my thoughts in posts 86, 100, 104, 223, 224, 252, 254, 271, 311, 318, 341, 362, 365, 370 and 375.

In those posts I try and identify some of the things that follow, for AW play, from the way the rules are stated: if you do it, you do it; always say what honesty, and what prep, demand; the purpose of prep is to give you interesting things to say; when everyone looks at the MC to see what happens next, the MC makes a move - a soft move, unless its a 6-down roll or a golden opportunity on a plate; etc.

The rulebook doesn't answer every question (like your one about how many opponents?). But I think it's pretty complete.

Burning Wheel, especially supplemented by the Adventure Burner, I think is pretty complete too. (Though it also doesn't answer the how many opponents? question!) And the completeness of both helps to make clear how they're different games.

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There are generic narrativist principles that Apocalypse World doesn’t spell out that are far more important than most of the principles in the actual text. I’m not saying that a text necessarily should spell them out but how that hole gets plugged determines a whole load about play.


Say you have an NPC Hardholder is using their brutish strength to make a better world. In their background you’ve decided that this is mainly because they want a better world for their lover. One of the PC’s kills that lover and there is a lull in the conversation.

The MC thinks off-screen. News of the death will reach the hardholder, what’s he’s going to make of it? How will it change his plans, if at all?

The advice in the book is ‘think about what they would do in that situation.’ Which I’m all for but it leaves the whole ‘how to play a character’ thing down to the MC. Which maybe it should because this is some fundamental role-play stuff but, eh, theory around playing a character and what that means goes a long way. Sorcerer annotated for instance, pretty much says a similar thing but it takes pains to say. NPC’s can only ever really do three things: continue with their priority, escalate/double down, change priorities. Is that extra bit of advice helpful? Could be. No in itself I don’t think but in terms of how the artistry around character expression and what means for how theme manifests (premise is addressed), it’s a good model.


Or how about the stuff we’ve been talking about recently. How the constraints of fictional positioning work such that prompts and inspiration seem to give the appearance and sense of a non-contrived fictional causality. The AW book even flat out states that it’s the goal (and kudos to it). Does make AW seem real, never say the name of your move, disclaim responsibility actually get you there?


Or what about play to find out, play to find out what and how do I do that? Yes it’s in the text but I’m one of the very few people I know who can immediately point to the various bits to explain what it means. Not because I’m a good reader of texts but it’s just so obvious what must be in there given it’s a narrativist game in a specific family.



Although it’s possible the crux is, Apocalypse World tells you how to play it but only 12 people read and understood the rules.

Now I changed my mind about my main argument an hour to two after I wrote it. I was thinking about our conversations around fictional positioning and how it’s brought even more clarity to me and what I’m doing. In part these conversations were inspired by Apocalypse World but they were inspired by it in reference to DnD4, Champions and role-playing more generally. So yeah, it’s good for games to have principles but they don’t exist in a silo, they exist as part of a general art, narrativist roleplaying in this case.

I’m almost certainly straw-manning your position a bit here but it allows me to rant so...