Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[pemerton]

In Storypath there's a resource usually called Momentum. Its a metacurrency used for a variety of purposes in challenges, and as might be guessed from the name, builds up over a scene (combat or not) and allows the scene to finish successfully and hopefully with a flourish.

The kicker is, its a group resource as a default. Which is fine if you've got a group that's very well tuned to sharing spotlight and activity, but if your group runs more to the individualistic, its just asking for some people to overuse it and others to both underutilize it (to the detriment of play as a whole) and/or potentially resent the overuse of others.

I dunno - it seems to me that I could just as equally make this diagnosis about treasure in classic D&D: it is generally encountered/obtained as a group resource (the party defeats some NPCs, or explores a room, and finds some treasure), but then has to be divided up and used individually (I'm thinking especially of magic items here), and that can work out poorly at some tables (eg there is resentment at who gets what for their PC; or everyone agrees that the mage should get the wand, but then subsequently the mage player doesn't use the wand very cleverly, to the detriment of the whole party).

Any game with group dynamics, or that requires groups to make decisions that ramify out through individual decisions that then feed back into the group experience, could raise the issue you describe here.

It seesm to me that if the game makes clear that it is a group game - which really just about any RPG does by labelling itself a RPG - then it has given the relevant "warning".

 

[pemerton]

The thing with PbtA is that while its relatively light, the mechanical portions of the game are also very sharp edged, and I'd even say, rigid. What I mean by that is, mechanically speaking, everything that's resolved is done by a set of finite Moves. There might be cases where the choice of Move at either the player or GM end is controversial, there's never going to be a case when (if run as intended) a brand new move or resolution method drops down on players. That sort of thing is just outside of the normal set of expectations for PbtA gaming, and even odd choices of Move should be uncommon.

I can't comment on Monster of the Week, which I know only by reputation - but what you say here is not true of Apocalypse World, for at least two reasons:

* If a player declares an action for their PC that hands the GM a golden opportunity, then the GM can respond with as hard and direct a move as they like - and that hard move may have a mechanical/rules-defined component to it (eg inflict harm; make the player change their gear list; take a penalty forward; etc);

* The GM is quite at liberty to come up with custom moves - the AW rulebook has a whole chapter devoted to that.​

This is very much not true intrinsically in RNR gaming, where the GM's ability to simply decide how something goes is not only permitted, its lauded.

The principle difference between AW and a "rulings not rules" RPG is that AW has strict rules about when the GM is permitted to make a hard move, and when the GM is permitted to make a soft move; the RNR RPG does not.

This is related to the different ways that prep is expected to be used in the two games.

I think identifying the difference in terms of rigidity of mechanics is a misdiagnosis: it's focusing on the technical minutiae of resolution procedures rather than the more significant differences in what the GM is permitted to say, and when.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think you watched the video. The first time or at least novice player is Wil Wheaton and he spends most of the session frustrated by his lack of spotlight and struggling and failing to hide in his facial features his confusion and frustration. The Trad experience he's having is akin to a player in 3.5e D&D who decided to make a conventional fighter, only to watch combat be dominated by highly optimized CoDzilla's and arcane shapechangers.

I definitely did not watch the video (though I may have seen a bit of it years ago). But that's beside the point. What you're describing is exactly what I expected it was... and as one example, doesn't do a whole lot to support your argument. As I said, we can provide individual examples of misunderstood play for any game.

That's a strange question and I'm also not sure what you are trying to say.
First of all, big moments and spotlight aren't universal goals and I never claimed that, but they are very common goals to a number of important aesthetics of play, and the sorts of aesthetics of play that seek those moments out even if they aren't the player's primary goal of play are still usually important secondary goals of play. And secondly, because well they just don't. Playing your character "faithfully" and without a mind toward achieving "success" isn't likely to earn you a shining moment of awesome and certainly is very unlikely in a system that judges degree of success by how much narrative control a character has. Whatever in the system determines your character's degree of success, whether the bias of the GM in so much as he likes your style and goals or you as a player, or whether the attributes of the character and how much force the character can assert over the narrative via repeated rules driven success to a large extent is the determining factor in how likely you are to get big shining moments of awesome where the spotlight is on your character and you are receiving the social kudos and approval. There isn't any rule that if you slog away be hardworking and faithfully playing your character that the dice will eventually reward you, or that you'll eventually come out on top in some scenes in comparison to that player with real charisma and stage presence and system mastery and a highly optimized character.

So I'll try and clarify, and I'll repost what my comment was in response to.

The reality of most characters is that they want to succeed. There is always someone at the table with a least in part aesthetics driven by Fantasy and a desire to win big, but then also everyone at the table wants spotlight and shining moments of awesome and they will pick up on the methods a player is using to get that spotlight.

So, you start off by talking about what characters want... but this isn't all that relevant in this context. It may align with what the player wants, it may not... it will depend on a lot of factors. Very often, yes, player desire and character desire are aligned. But if we are talking about one in particular... which I think we are when we're talking about the play of the game... then it's not helpful to muddy the waters.

You then go on to assume that there is "always someone" driven by "Fantasy" (I assume this means Power Fantasy?) and a "desire to win big". I read this as challenge-based play? So, this is you saying that this is therefore a concern at almost every table, and in almost every game. So, perhaps not "universal" but merely "nearly omnipresent".

I don't know if "spotlight and shining moments of awesome" are all that important at all times, either. I mean, certainly I want to be involved in play... I don't want to just watch others play when I'm supposed to be participating as well. But I certainly don't begrudge anyone if the spotlight time isn't divided evenly. In that very basic sense, yes, spotlighting is something that comes up and is a concern, but I don't know how much that matters. Meaning... different groups will have different takes on it. And sure, we all like our characters to get what they want... but we also enjoy the risk of failure that comes along with play. That things are uncertain. There are definitely times I don't want my characters to get what they want.

In my last Scum & Villainy game, the biggest moment for my character was when he resisted a roll to prevent damage to his ship, and then took enough stress to be out of the scene. Hardly a victory... but it was a cool moment, nonetheless. It showed what was important to him and how far he'd be willing to go to protect it. He got a Trauma as a result... four of which means your character must retire... and I took "Obsessed", with the focus of his obsession being the ship's maintenance and condition. It was a character defining moment that had nothing to do with victory or a "shining moment of awesome".

So, I think the lens you are viewing all this through... that there is one consistent take on play that will matter at all tables... is flawed. Those concerns... power fantasy fulfillment or challenge-based play may not be important to every player or every game.

Again, watch Wil Wheaton sit down with the games designers and players with more system mastery, and more importantly more "rizz", and see how that works out. I've participated in worse Con games than that one, but they weren't committed to film.

Yeah, I don't know if it's realistic to assume anyone will immediately grasp a game and how it works in one session. Especially if they may be inclined to not understand in some way... or if there is more than just trying to understand at risk. Like say, if the video is made for entertainment purposes.

No, it's just not a take that validates your own biases and preferences.

I have a variety of preferences. That doesn't have much to do with it. I think it's astonishingly bad because of the implications it has if applied to other games. They don't seem accurate, and certainly wouldn't be flattering in most cases.

 

[Faolyn]

I think you need to make a distinction when talking about "light" games between what PbtA games are doing, and what a lot of lightweight games that focus on "rulings not rules" are doing.

(Small caveat up front; I'm going to use the term "PbtA" somewhat generally, but because its a popular basic design paradigm there are a lot of games called PbtA out there, some of which have drifted considerably from the things I'm about to say; my specific model for this since I read it recently is Monster of the Week, but it should apply to at least most PbtA games).

The thing with PbtA is that while its relatively light, the mechanical portions of the game are also very sharp edged, and I'd even say, rigid. What I mean by that is, mechanically speaking, everything that's resolved is done by a set of finite Moves. There might be cases where the choice of Move at either the player or GM end is controversial, there's never going to be a case when (if run as intended) a brand new move or resolution method drops down on players. That sort of thing is just outside of the normal set of expectations for PbtA gaming, and even odd choices of Move should be uncommon.

This is very much not true intrinsically in RNR gaming, where the GM's ability to simply decide how something goes is not only permitted, its lauded. So even if both a PbtA game and a game with a RNR ethos of of similar degrees of mechanical complexity, the ability for a player to reasonably plan their actions can be vastly different.

(Note I am not a big fan of either approach for various reasons, but the difference seems pretty stark).

I've run Monster of the Week (in fact, I need to get started on the next adventure) and I haven't found it to be rigid at all. Yes, PbtA games can seem (edit to write in actual English here) that way from the outside ("What if I want to do something not covered by the moves?") but the moves aren't the end-all and be-all of these games. Characters can do anything they want; the Moves are just there if the PCs do something that triggers them. Otherwise, the play, meaning conversation, just continues.

As a MotW Keeper, I can indeed "just decide" that something happens (assuming I understand what you're talking about here). That, in fact, is the entire point of making Hard Moves--I make something happen and now the PCs have to react to it. The difference between PbtA and more traditional games is that PbtA games have actually taken the list of just about everything a traditional GM does and given it a name. It looks like a finite list, because there's like 13 items on the Basic Keeper Moves list and 14 on the Monster Moves list, but it's actually no more finite than the options for a D&D DM's are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm still at loss. Games usually lay out their rules, tone, and expectations.

If you think most games lay out what purpose individual rules are serving, we've obviously seen very different games.

I can't think of a single rpg that could be blamed, either unintentionally or through poor design, for problems at the table.

I mentioned one earlier. If you don't see why that could be a contributing factor, I'm not seeing how my presenting more examples would help.

 

[Arilyn]

I've run Monster of the Week (in fact, I need to get started on the next adventure) and I haven't found it to be rigid at all. Yes, PbtA games can seem that out the outside ("What if I want to do something not covered by the moves?") but the moves aren't the end-all and be-all of these games. Characters can do anything they want; the Moves are just there if the PCs do something that triggers them. Otherwise, the play, meaning conversation, just continues.

As a MotW Keeper, I can indeed "just decide" that something happens (assuming I understand what you're talking about here). That, in fact, is the entire point of making Hard Moves--I make something happen and now the PCs have to react to it. The difference between PbtA and more traditional games is that PbtA games have actually taken the list of just about everything a traditional GM does and given it a name. It looks like a finite list, because there's like 13 items on the Basic Keeper Moves list and 14 on the Monster Moves list, but it's actually no more finite than the options for a D&D DM's are.

This is often a misunderstanding. Moves were created to assist the GM and offer support for beginning GMs. They are not at all constraining. PbtA games make it very clear that these are not specific things players do. Don't name the move. State what you are doing in the fiction. Just like any other rpg.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But you've provided only one example (from Storypath), and for that that you yourself noted wasn't a bad design element, but a potential style mismatch issue.

Okay, I'll do one more. This one is, as far as I'm concerned, a flat out bad design element. Ironically, its of the same lineage as Storypath.

Most versions of Storyteller had relatively simple linear character building (distribute X points in various categories, then subdistribute individual points to the attributes.

Now, when you get time to do advancement, you do (at least on the numeric elements that have ranks) progressive cost increases to improve all those attributes, skills and powers. The net effect of this is that it produces a perverse incentive to build a character hyper-focused at the start, and broaden out over time (because the inverse is ridiculously expensive to do). So if you've got two players, one of whom is sensitive to this sort of mechanical incentive, one who isn't, the former builds to the incentive (while potentially resenting it because it may well distort what he would prefer to play because he doesn't want to put up with the overhead of doing what he genuinely wants) and one doesn't (because he doesn't notice or doesn't understand the implications of it--but is still irritable that when he wants to advance a couple things up later they're really time consuming to do). Over time, the first will simply flat out have a better character than the second (because the maths favor him and not the latter) and if the players care about that sort of thing at all, it creates problems at the table (even moreso if the characters are at all similar where its liable to be stark).

To say this sort of thing has no social impact is, IMO, nonsensical.

So, these issues are, to us, hypothetical. You've seemed to assert, but not really establish with evidence, that there's a class of bad design elements out there waiting to be pitfalls.

Well, first, there are elements that are pitfalls just because of their inobviousness. I still say Momentum lands in that, as it may well not jump out at a GM and group when they start out as likely to be a problem.

I give an example of the second case above. That one's even easier to fall into because not everyone gives the advancement in a system a particularly good look when deciding on it.

I come back with the following:

1) If it doesn't work as intended, even if you know how it works, that's bad design. And don't get me wrong, there are bad designs out there. I can recognize FATAL and HYBRID as just bad games. But you're talking about something more specific than that.

Correct. Also more narrow. As I said, these sort of things are worse when they're buried in otherwise sound designs. A rather lot of them have to do with advancement systems, since those are often intrinsic carrots for various kinds of behavior.

2) If it works as designed, but the game doesn't really tell you how it works so that you can choose to avoid it, that's a presentation issue.

I entirely agree with this one. In fact I said it elsewhere. That said, its still going to be a contributor to table dynamics problems, so that seems to suggest that "the game can't effect that" is incorrect.

3) If it works as designed, but it isn't a good choice for your group, that's a style mismatch issue.

As long as its obvious, that's not a problem per se (though it can still be one for groups--of which I have no reason to not thing there's a lot of--who are not introspective about what it is they actually like/want).

And sure, if (2) and (3) happen at the same time, that's unfortunate, but ultimately the responsibility for making sure you know what the game does before it runs still sits with the GM.

Doesn't mean there aren't plenty of GMs who aren't good at it, especially among ones who are not very mechanically focused.

And no, "It isn't a good choice for a large percentage for gamers" may be a valid statement, but it isn't a valid critique. Game design for a niche audience is a valid choice! It may not be a commercially viable choice, but that's between the designer and their bank account.

Then you need to make it abundantly clear in your design what your niche is, especially if its liable to include people in groups who are unlikely to want to deliberately exclude some members by choice of system. Things about genre or tone are usually pretty obvious, but things about mechanical design can often be far less so.

 

[Thomas Shey]

D&D. Alignment.

Though to be fair, part of that is depends on how much lifting Alignment is doing. If its simply definitional, it may be too broad, but it doesn't matter. It turns into a problem when its defining the borders of permitted behavior among characters and the group is not all on the same page, and things with a lot more nuance than Alignment can do that.

 

[Faolyn]

This is often a misunderstanding. Moves were created to assist the GM and offer support for beginning GMs. They are not at all constraining. PbtA games make it very clear that these are not specific things players do. Don't name the move. State what you are doing in the fiction. Just like any other rpg.

To be fair, in many games, the rules often do allow you to use the mechanics in place of RPing. Like, I could "legally" get away with saying "I lie to the guards. 15 on Deception!" and never describe my lie at all. It's just that nearly every GM out there would insist the player give at least the bare bones of what they're doing, and nearly every player would do so without the GM asking for it.

I think that's such a baked-in assumption that seeing moves like "When you tell a lie, roll +Stat and..." could make someone come to the conclusion that that's the Lying skill and anyone who doesn't have similar move can't lie. Especially since (IMO and IME) PbtA games and fans are not necessarily the best at actually describing what a lot of the genre's parts are. The often-touted phrase "to do it, do it!" can be exceedingly unhelpful for people who grew up on much crunchier games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The first question is, how do you know it creates problems for a lot of groups? If that's the criteria for "bad game" then D&D is the worst game in the history of RPGs, right?

Proportion matters.

Most problems that D&D causes are generic RPG problems; they aren't things you can point at individual design to say they're why its happening. That doesn't mean there aren't some--and some are, if not unique to D&D made worse by the fact it carries a lot of expectations other games don't because of its age and footprint--but they tend to not be problems about whole classes of player so much as some choices being at least perceived as being favored/antifavored and people who like those being annoyed about that, but they aren't things that are aimed at whole broad playstyles.

But in either case its not a question of raw numbers so much as "how likely is this to cause problems for one or more players in a given group". And most of those are things that are visible enough at a distance with D&D at least.

(Yes, you can read me as saying there are things I consider bad design in D&D. Its not a coincidence I haven't used it in decades at this point. But they're different kinds of problems than the ones I'm talking about here).

And are you talking about a specific game, or a hypothetical game? Like, you bring up momentum and Storypath games, so I assume you mean like from Onyx Path. You say:

Onyx Path has had some particular issues over the years as did their predecessor White Wolf, but they're far from alone; I just use them as they're an example I figure a fair number of people can be familiar with. As I noted to Umbran, there are quite a few games that have made assumptions they baked into their advancement systems that I don't think were entirely thought through as to the impact they could easily have on sociodynamics of tables.

I haven't played any of those games yet (I've kickstarted Curseborn, though), but from everything I've seen, having some people use it more than others is perfectly fine. Some players want their characters to succeed as often as possible and thus will spend it. Others are fine with failing. But I guess I'd have to know what you mean by "to the detriment of play as a whole" to truly understand what the problem is.

Because sometimes you want the second group to use it too. And you certainly in any case don't want that group to resent the first group for overuse.

As I said, that one has an easy fix; other problems that land in this area don't have as easy a one, and even this one can be a problem that takes a bit to be obvious causing stressors along the way.

But for your next part, "potentially resent the overuse of others," again, that's a people-problem, not a game problem.

If it doesn't occur in other games, its both, and I don't see any sensible way to argue otherwise.

Your players should have frank, mature discussions with each other.

if you think that's common among gamers, I have to suggest you have had a very selective exposure to same. Heck, it isn't that common outside of games, I don't know why someone would expect it here.