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Indie Games Are Not More Focused. They Are Differently Focused.
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8312951" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Can't really agree with you. I think you are largely arguing semantics in distinction between Indie games and D&D (as well as there may be an excluded middle here). 'FitD' or 'PbtA' can be thought of as 'toolboxes', yes, but that doesn't mean that 'making a FitD based game' is really any different from hacking D&D heavily! I mean, seriously, you suggest a 'cop game' built from D&D. That is going to be a RADICALLY hacked D&D, or else just basically D&D with uniforms. I mean, the only way it comes out that I can see with rules mostly intact is that the 'cops' are a hierarchy of power where 'captains' can literally eat bullets, laugh it off, and rip civilians apart with their bare hands with ease. That is what D&D's level-based rules and combat abstractions WILL produce! To tell me that eliminating character levels, most rules related to class and race, all magic, creatures, etc. is not equivalent to writing a new game doesn't hold water to me. That is what it would take to turn 5e D&D into 'Adam 12, the Game'.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, I can clearly build a PbtA 'Adam 12'. In fact my path is 100% clear. I need to decide on the basic principles and some play process which will evoke stories typical of that genre. I will need to describe moves and some other things the GM needs to do to make it work. I will need to create some playbooks or something for the PCs to use to describe how they navigate the story and adjudicate how their PCs 'do stuff' and how that relates to the agenda of the game. That will be some fairly 'game designer' kind of tasks, but I have MANY example games covering a wide variety of genre to draw design ideas from. My guess is I can have that game up and working inside of 2 weeks, though a few campaigns of testing and tweaking will certainly solidify it. </p><p></p><p>So, really, I'm not super convinced that the 'play loop' of D&D being 'loose' is much of an advantage. In fact I'm not sure it IS lose! D&D has an extremely strong tradition of a certain type of narrative construction, and the rules really are built around that, more than you seem to think IMHO. D&D, as written, doesn't seem like a wildly niche game to me, and I've even written a pretty extensive hack of 4e, so I'm not hostile to build off of it, but I don't see it as more flexible than, or even close to, systems like PACE, FATE, BW, PbtA, or FitD in general. Because these systems focus more on DRAMA and CHARACTERIZATION, which are universals in all story telling, they are really strong general platforms for any RPG activity where story matters much at all. I consider that to be MOST of the range of RPGs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8312951, member: 82106"] Can't really agree with you. I think you are largely arguing semantics in distinction between Indie games and D&D (as well as there may be an excluded middle here). 'FitD' or 'PbtA' can be thought of as 'toolboxes', yes, but that doesn't mean that 'making a FitD based game' is really any different from hacking D&D heavily! I mean, seriously, you suggest a 'cop game' built from D&D. That is going to be a RADICALLY hacked D&D, or else just basically D&D with uniforms. I mean, the only way it comes out that I can see with rules mostly intact is that the 'cops' are a hierarchy of power where 'captains' can literally eat bullets, laugh it off, and rip civilians apart with their bare hands with ease. That is what D&D's level-based rules and combat abstractions WILL produce! To tell me that eliminating character levels, most rules related to class and race, all magic, creatures, etc. is not equivalent to writing a new game doesn't hold water to me. That is what it would take to turn 5e D&D into 'Adam 12, the Game'. Meanwhile, I can clearly build a PbtA 'Adam 12'. In fact my path is 100% clear. I need to decide on the basic principles and some play process which will evoke stories typical of that genre. I will need to describe moves and some other things the GM needs to do to make it work. I will need to create some playbooks or something for the PCs to use to describe how they navigate the story and adjudicate how their PCs 'do stuff' and how that relates to the agenda of the game. That will be some fairly 'game designer' kind of tasks, but I have MANY example games covering a wide variety of genre to draw design ideas from. My guess is I can have that game up and working inside of 2 weeks, though a few campaigns of testing and tweaking will certainly solidify it. So, really, I'm not super convinced that the 'play loop' of D&D being 'loose' is much of an advantage. In fact I'm not sure it IS lose! D&D has an extremely strong tradition of a certain type of narrative construction, and the rules really are built around that, more than you seem to think IMHO. D&D, as written, doesn't seem like a wildly niche game to me, and I've even written a pretty extensive hack of 4e, so I'm not hostile to build off of it, but I don't see it as more flexible than, or even close to, systems like PACE, FATE, BW, PbtA, or FitD in general. Because these systems focus more on DRAMA and CHARACTERIZATION, which are universals in all story telling, they are really strong general platforms for any RPG activity where story matters much at all. I consider that to be MOST of the range of RPGs. [/QUOTE]
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