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Outside of discrete subsystems like combat I often like to add success with complications into otherwise traditional games. In our group's Vampire hack 1-2 successes is success with complications, 3-4 is success with complications and 5+ is critical success. In Worlds Without Number I often use...

@clearstream If you wanted to honestly ponder and engage in a conversation about these things, I would hope that you would engage with Vincent's accounts of his Ars Magica game or ask questions about my own freeform experience. I would also hope you would offer up some relevant principles, way...

Vincent Baker's unwelcome is the thing none of us would choose but is still compelling. It's also conflict-sustaining. It's all about resolving some basic issues that tend to rear their head in freeform play - mainly that when we all like (or at least feel for) each other's characters there is a...

What's most important to me is that player characters are connected. I want them to have relevant relationships that they leverage and heighten the emotional stakes of situations. I want history, but like history that does not stay history. I want characters who can confidently move through...

At least from a D&D perspective one of the sorts of characters I often need to represent are characters who very skilled in one particular area but lack the broad capabilities of D&D adventures. Diplomats, physicians, scholars, ritualists, weaponsmiths, etc. Highly skilled, but also highly...

I think what matters is whether or not people are thoughtful and able collaborators. I think being open to new ideas is important, but so can adhering to a vision. My overall stance is that merely asking should never be taken as rude. Insisting sure. What I don't want to get to the point of is a...

When it comes to NPCs there is a phenomenal difference between a game having a consistent interface and the process by which we get to the stat block. As a longtime GM of games like Vampire, Legend of the Five Rings, various 2d20 games, et al most of the games I have run outside of 3e advocate...

I mean that for a setting to feel like a real lived place there needs to be some elements that come from novel creativity rather than just extrapolation. That's regardless of top down or bottom-up design. That exceptions to the norms should exist, especially when comes to the behavior of...

Despite the name of the thread the actual thesis seems more like top-down setting extrapolation is overrated. That's a sentiment I can personally get behind. I find that often settings designed from a top-down approach with very little of the sort of novel (as in usual) elements that Tolkein's...

So, to my mind there is a phenomenal amount of difference between these things: The game inevitably produces incoherent fiction to a degree I could not bear. You have lower standards for coherency so it is fine for you. The process of the game would not allow me to interface with the fiction of...

I mean if you can actually explain how than we can actually have a conversation. However, the way this usually goes is that people will claim that a game will support a playstyle they actively do not enjoy and have never tried to achieve with game C while paying no need to efforts people playing...

On GM Moves one common meme that I think leads people astray is that they are what a GM normally does. This comes from John Harper's response to the MC Playbook / GM section of Apocalypse World being just how you GM. That is mostly true from someone with Harper's background (deeply embedded in...

Generally, when game A is capable of providing experience X but not Y and Game B is capable of providing experience Y but not X we do not call either narrower than the other. We simply accept they both have something of value that might appeal to different parties or the same parties at...

Here are the relevant bits. What's important to keep in mind is that playbook and basic moves are an interruption to the flow of the conversation. It's like this: players are always saying what their character does and says and in response the GM will make a GM move that moves the...

The way threats work in Apocalypse World is fairly similar.

There is a real issue with PbtA games that are not Apocalypse World assuming high level knowledge of how AW functions in their texts. Particularly when it comes to the process of running the game. A lot of games just give you principles and a list of GM Moves, but they do not provide the high...

Only in part. It's loaded with premise, but the actual plot/narrative are emergent in play. Story Now play is all about defining and exploring loaded premises. We set the stage, but then we just let things play out and follow the momentum of play. There are multiple forms of emergent narratives...

I think it's best to start with the underlying assumption that both GMs and players are running/playing games because they want to run/play the game in question. As a GM I enjoy games like Chronicles of Darkness (especially Vampire: The Requiem Second Edition), Exalted Third Edition, Dune 2d20...

So, the full context of play to find out is we play to find out what happens. That means everyone at the table (especially the GM) approaches the game with curiosity and does not try to nudge or push the narrative outcome in a specific direction. It's basically the same formulation as...

You mean declaring an action based on the fictional situation that allows you to leverage your character's strengths? Like what we do whenever we play a roleplaying game? The fictional reasoning utilized to do so is what makes it a roleplaying game. This is no different from what happens in...