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

[Desdichado]

What are the "meta-mechanics" in Apocalypse World?

I have a difficult time believing that's a good faith question rather than an attempt to devolve into pedantic nitpicking, given that the answer is readily available with thirty seconds on Wikipedia. No thanks, not interested.

 

[Autumnal]

Rather than “aimless”, I think the useful antonym might be something like “unlinked”. There’s a book about the design of the Wild Wide Web and the layers underneath it titled Small Pieces Loosely Joined; the author holds this up as a good idea not just for the Web but for any. Network of thought and action whether neither the borders nor the arrangement of interior parts is likely to stay stable. I personally think an RPG is too small a system for that to be helpful much, but it is a way to go, and games made that way have given a lot of good gaming to a lot of people.

Also, OMG is was hard to find a possible term that didn’t sound totally pejorative, which certainly says something about sub cultural biases.

I note that in the OSR, you can find a lot of this. People will say they’re playing X, with an initiative system and half the combat system from Y, generators for encounters from Z, and so on. It is exactly the loose joining of small pieces. People do it in other parts of gaming too, but not nearly so promiscuously.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I can tell you what I took away from your "aimless" comment (and some of the elaboration/discussion it prompted, eg from @Campbell):

A system is aimless, in this sense, if it adds on elements intended to represent this and that component of the fiction - eg encumbrance rules to represent how laden/burdened characters are; ever-more intricate combat rules to represent the tactics and kinetics of small unit, reasonably close quarters, fighting; weather-generation rules; etc, etc - but it does not talk about, or perhaps even really seem to contemplate, how those elements actually get incorporated into the play of a RPG.

The most tell-tale sign, for me, of this sort of "aimlessness" is that the game doesn't talk about how situations are framed or how stakes are established or how outcomes from one moment of resolution feed into or inform subsequent moments of resolution. The game presents itself as an imagined-state-of-affairs-simulator, but doesn't say anything about how a group of people actually go about establishing what to imagine, or how to make it unfold based on the inputs of the various group members. This is all just assumed as "prior knowledge" that the game participants bring with them (probably from their play of mid-80s style D&D).

My intentions were far from this coherent! I'm still not sure I'm entirely comfortable with calling a finished design aimless, as I really am thinking of it creative problem during the act of design. I do think that gaming has some issues with presuming both the usefulness and the universality of prior knowledge, but I think that's an issue outside of purposefulness/intentionality during the design phase.

 

[SableWyvern]

The following games are not narrowly focused on a single thing:

• Draw Steel
• Warhammer - The Old World
• Fabula Ultima
• Lancer
• Vampire - The Masquerade, 5th Edition
• Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition
• Tales of Xadia
• Dune 2d20

These are games intended for long term campaign play that are no less general use than their contempories that have a clear purpose, mechanics that back it up and most importantly do not have non-contributing mechanics that seldom come up. These are the games I think of when I think of modern traditional design.

Yes. When it comes to a clear focus I look at mechanics and how play is organized. How a game actively supports its premise.

Fair point. I think this means the "and tightly focused mechanics that drive play" (or something along those lines) is indeed the more important part of the definition I suggested.

 

[Aldarc]

Good grief. A lot of this thread has become a discussion of Generic Systems vs. Non-Generic Systems or people who still have a chip on their shoulder by one person's use of "aimless." Call me back once the topic actually returns to the common mechanical expressions of Modern TTRPGs.

 

[NN]

That was my position, but I'm not sure it was widely held -- I recall getting quite a bit of pushback (some of my earliest posts here are most likely on this very topic).

Well yes, D&D 3E and 5E are just bodged Rolemaster, but what ya gonna do about it?

 

[NN]

Seems to me the interesting border in rpg design is “theoretically aware” vs “unknowing”.

 

[aramis erak]

Naw... There is absolutely no functional difference between what WW calls a ST vs what D&D calls a GM. Neither system has mechanics to give players or rules agency over the GM/ST rulings.

PBTA does.

That is a very new and modern concept.

Yes, there is one signidicant difference, at least in VTM 1e: Players having a no-roll option; actually, two: Willpower spend or sufficient ability. They're player discretion.

Note that VTM1e was difficulty being the lowest number counting as a success on each d10.

Sufficient ability: If your sum of attribute and skill exceeds the difficulty, you can declare an automatic success, and the effect is as if you'd rolled 1 success.

Willpower spend: spend a willpower point to add a success.

That it was a player call whether or not to accept the no-roll option(s) is the big difference. D&D, roll or not is a GM decision.

 

[aramis erak]

I think at the time it was largely considered a copying of Rolemaster, which had already existed in similar structure for some 15 years (and which Monte Cook had produced supplemental material for). I think it was seen as a modernisation, and a welcome one, but innovative would be inaccurate.

1981...
The influence was obvious, but not direct; Alternity was MUCH closer to Rolemaster...

To be honest, I'd have preferred at the time to have seen D&D 3 be Alternity...

 

[Enaknomolos]

Honestly, at most PbtA games I scream "what the hell are you doing?!" and I'm famously a big fan of the Apocalypse World.

It's very, very rarely I see a PbtA game that seems to understand how the engine works, and what it's good at. Night Witches, Undying, Urban Shadows, Monsterhearts, Monster of the Week (although I think it's overall pretty shabbily built) and... Nothing else.

I loved AW, but have reached the point where I consider 'PbtA' branding to be a warning flag on a new game. It's a bit melancholy really. I also consider 'OSR' a warning despite being nostalgic for old D&D, avoid 'NSR' games despite liking the Black Hack, and expect nothing but disappointment from Cepheus games despite loving Traveller; so I think it's a more general problem, really.

That said, Under Hollows Hills should surely be on your list. Amazing piece of design