Can anyone explain YB to me?

[reapersaurus]

The You Bastard! forum is truly amazing.

It is the 3rd most-posted Forum, with the In-Character Forum right behind it.

It looks amazing (and a lot of fun), but for the life of me I don't understand it.
There is a hell of a lot of work and care and creativity being done with that "game", yet as far as I can tell, it is all centered around a random move generator.

How is there any strategy or personal control over the outcome of the "battle"?
And there looks to be an absolutely mind-boggling amount of other stuff with each character. (Items, levels, etc)

What do some of you non-YB players think of what it has grown to ?
Do you understand it?

Just think - ahile ago, me and others had to fight to get YB! its own Forum.
It's funny to think how unbelievably crowded the In-Character Forum would have become if YB had stayed there.
(Over 40,000 combined posts almost rivals the D&D Rules Forum, and is over a 3rd of General Discussion.)

This discussion might be Meta territory, but it just doesn't feel right sequestering it there.

As a footnote, I think it's really amazing how much gaming creativity there is going on these boards, between the YB! Forum and the In-CharacterForum.

Of special note is the Indutrial Revolution campaign in IC.
Edena and all the others really did something special with that.
I never COULD understand it, why you'd go to all that effort for in essence is just one guy's personal "rulings", or interpretations, but it sure is a strong gaming experience it looked like, and I salute anything that gets gamer's creative juices flowing.

As another footnote, it's great to see the In-Character Forum going so strong, what with so many games dying, but others have sprouted and flourished.
It's just really too bad the grand-daddy of them all, The Iconic Adventure, is left without a GM.

R.I.P. PirateCat.
You spawned a Very Good Thing.

 

[Wicht]

YB you say? Sounds like something I can help with

YB is almost totally centered around a random generator and the fights are judged on purely arbitrary standards at the whim of the judge. So whats the attraction? You almost have to try it to believe how addictive it can be as a game. Plus, in the current YB 2.0 rules we have added a greater degree of control over the moves and more fight variations to allow more or less control over the fights. Also as you win more fights, you gain special abilities for your characters that allow you, with some strategy, to be better at the game than others.

For example, some paths allow a fighter to post two moves at once. Which means if you think you have a killer move, you can stack up the points you win by posting a second move in addition to the first (This power is called a Fist of Fury). Some fighters can choose to once or twice during a fight cancel a round if they think the other move is too good for them (called a dirty trick). The rules for the game are available for you to read at YB Rules and give a detailed explanation of what you can or can't do. There is also a faq at the top of the fight club front page.

One cannot talk of fight club without also mentioning YBA (YB adventure) which is a seperate game from YB. YBA is in some ways as popular if not more so than YB. In YBA one uses the same generator as in YB but character advancement is experience based and the powers are bought by the players as they go up in level. YBA is more of a traditional rpg than YB and is great for one on one or one on two adventures. Characters in YBA can purchase equipment and the characters advanced by one judge can leave that judges adventure and enter another judges adventure without worrying about whether the GM will accept them or not as all characters and adventures must abide by the same set of rules. Rules for YBA can be found at
YBA rules. Unlike Yb which is in its second set of rules, YBA is still in its first incarnation. When someone gets to the bottom of Wicht's Lair (my personal dungeon) and kills the lich Wicht I will feel playtesting to be over and get busy (with the help of the YBA players) rewriting the rules. However the game, with its bugs and all, is still a lot of fun to play as a bb game.

 

[Zappo]

One of the attractive bits is that it has a lot of room for roleplaying. The rules are at a very abstract level, to the point where a move or a power doesn't really represent anything in particular. For example, if I get a "The dragon claws..." move, I could state that my character is performing a weird martial art move, but I could also state that he raises his hands to the sky and summons an actual dragon. Or anything else really. Similarly, if I use a dirty trick the only limit to what that trick is is my imagination. Could be throwing dust into your eyes, could be kicking the judge in the shins.

Basically, the generator and the rules give you an abstract idea of what you attempt to do in a round, but you're free to choose how it concretizes.

 

[Wicht]

Oh and the game is great for building up a healthy looking post count

 

[reapersaurus]

thanks, wicht.
I'm wondering what other non-YB players' thoughts are, too.

hmm.. maybe this is the wrong forum for this?

 

[Zappo]

hmm.. maybe this is the wrong forum for this?

In what way this isn't general RPG discussion?

 

[Apok]

*sniff* I miss my old postcount...

Oh and the game is great for building up a healthy looking post count

Just to back this up, when I was still involved in YB a while back (before the site shifted servers), my post count jumped from the mid 50's into the high hundreds in less than two months.

 

[Kalanyr]

Evil addictive games. Best description I can think off. Well that and it doesn't look like you're really just bumping your post count .