So somehow 5e is the goldilocks area of being simple enough for some of my friends to understand so they can play effectively (barring the weird edge cases that keep coming up and tripping them up), and crunchy enough for my other friends to minmax to their hearts' content. Once I finish my campaign, I still have some Avernus and Candlekeep stuff to work on, but I guess I can put them off to try a different fantasy game.
So I can't wrap my head about the way Powered by the Apocalypse (and therefore, Dungeon World) plays, and Pathfinder looks a bit too fiddly for some of my friends. If my friends are a bit more interested in a light hearted romp of throwing magical anvils, shooting their fire wands, punching bugbears, and saving beleaguered towns, punctuated by moments that remind them that shit's still serious and dangerous, which other systems would you recommend?
So somehow 5e is the goldilocks area of being simple enough for some of my friends to understand so they can play effectively (barring the weird edge cases that keep coming up and tripping them up), and crunchy enough for my other friends to minmax to their hearts' content. Once I finish my campaign, I still have some Avernus and Candlekeep stuff to work on, but I guess I can put them off to try a different fantasy game.
So I can't wrap my head about the way Powered by the Apocalypse (and therefore, Dungeon World) plays, and Pathfinder looks a bit too fiddly for some of my friends. If my friends are a bit more interested in a light hearted romp of throwing magical anvils, shooting their fire wands, punching bugbears, and saving beleaguered towns, punctuated by moments that remind them that shit's still serious and dangerous, which other systems would you recommend?
Savage Worlds
+3
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Also if you want a little more flavor, and if you can find a store that still has it, Fantasy Flight Edge of the Empire is a star wars bounty hunter game, and there are apps for the dice rolling if you can't get their custom dice.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah, for that direct transfer over, I feel like 13th Age is your best bet.
More generally in the fantasy sphere, I'd recommend:
- Slayers: Asymmetric adventuring and monster hunting.
- Stonetop: Iron age fantasy based around protecting a small town. PbtA.
- Blades Against Darkness: Frontier town fantasy dungeon crawling. FitD.
- AGON: Greek mythology heroic fantasy, saving towns across the Aegean.
- Unbound: Not fantasy necessarily, but you can make it that - it's fairly open ended setting wise. Some really interesting mechanics with playing card resolution and building your own personal deck of cards over time that is your character.
+1
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
It feels as though confusion over PbtA mechanics has to be the result of over thinking it
Which, coming from d20 I can understand, because maybe it feels like you're missing mechanics
But really it's just you have a list of moves, or actions, that players can take. There is only ever one roll, 2d6, and only ever one modifier to that roll, the stat (-1 to +2 usually). And every move describes what happens when you make that roll.
That is kind of the whole system, barring quirks in different PbtA games, but what is there is roughly true of all of them.
It feels as though confusion over PbtA mechanics has to be the result of over thinking it
Which, coming from d20 I can understand, because maybe it feels like you're missing mechanics
But really it's just you have a list of moves, or actions, that players can take. There is only ever one roll, 2d6, and only ever one modifier to that roll, the stat (-1 to +2 usually). And every move describes what happens when you make that roll.
That is kind of the whole system, barring quirks in different PbtA games, but what is there is roughly true of all of them.
The hard part is adapting to the idea that the fiction is everything and the moves define the ways in which the rules interact with the fiction, and that anything else that happens is simply not under the purview of the rules.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited January 16
I also think that Dungeon World, the PbtA game that a lot of people are going to immediately gravitate towards (and game I've played a lot of myself for similar reasons) is frankly not great. A weird hack of a game that doesn't really explain itself well and ends up making a lot of unfortunate compromises.
I also think that Dungeon World, the PbtA game that a lot of people are going to immediately gravitate towards (and game I've played a lot of myself for similar reasons) is frankly not great. A weird hack of a game that doesn't really explain itself well and ends up making a lot of unfortunate compromises.
I also think that Dungeon World, the PbtA game that a lot of people are going to immediately gravitate towards (and game I've played a lot of myself for similar reasons) is frankly not great. A weird hack of a game that doesn't really explain itself well and ends up making a lot of unfortunate compromises.
I was just thinking about this. I think DW is a good example of a port or clone vs a hack. DW is, to me, a PbtA hack of D&D. I don't think that it being a hack is or makes it inherently bad, I just think it happened to be attempting to hack together two ideas that don't work great together.
MotW is probably the PbtA clone I would recommend to my wife, and all she's played is 4e, and some 5th and some 13th Age.
I still wanna do a d12 conversion for CoD. I just don't like the spinny top style dice as much, they don't feel as good to me
It feels as though confusion over PbtA mechanics has to be the result of over thinking it
Which, coming from d20 I can understand, because maybe it feels like you're missing mechanics
But really it's just you have a list of moves, or actions, that players can take. There is only ever one roll, 2d6, and only ever one modifier to that roll, the stat (-1 to +2 usually). And every move describes what happens when you make that roll.
That is kind of the whole system, barring quirks in different PbtA games, but what is there is roughly true of all of them.
The hard part is adapting to the idea that the fiction is everything and the moves define the ways in which the rules interact with the fiction, and that anything else that happens is simply not under the purview of the rules.
Something people exploring more narrative-forward game systems should understand is that those games reward a more improv theater style of play. The power of yes-and. Take big swings and don't worry about whether or not the rulebook says you're allowed to do that.
+3
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
I have never played a game with it so I don't have any idea what the real in practice issues with it were, but the original D&D concept where treasure value was your experience points, so everyone can spend down their advancement points for cool shit, has always sounded in concept like a clever mechanic.
It wasn't quite that simple in OD&D - 1GP=1XP, sure, but also beating up monsters was 1HD=100XP. In practice it definitely encourages more of a greedy treasure-hunter gameplay loop than modern D&D's more combat-centric gameplay, but I don't think it was ever purely treasure-focused.
Neat fact about OD&D, though: there's actually some treasure-focused mechanics that got dropped in later editions? When fleeing from an encounter (itself something that's much less elaborate these days), you can drop stuff to attempt to distract your pursuers. If it's something edible, it's distract intelligent monsters 10% of the time, "semi-intelligent" monsters 50% of the time, and non-intelligent monsters 90% of the time... with the opposite being true for treasure.
Also, of course, as cumbersome as encumbrance rules are they're also kind of central to the entire GP=XP concept. OD&D did some mildly interesting stuff here by only really counting the weight of armor, weapons, and treasure, and counting it all in coins as that's the most relevant game value, but it's still pretty fiddly. It's probably better to just count encumbrance by the sack (or do some fancy inventory slot thing on the character sheet like Torchbearer did).
god of course the JRPG "flee from battle and drop some money" trope originated from old school tabletop
+1
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I have never played a game with it so I don't have any idea what the real in practice issues with it were, but the original D&D concept where treasure value was your experience points, so everyone can spend down their advancement points for cool shit, has always sounded in concept like a clever mechanic.
It wasn't quite that simple in OD&D - 1GP=1XP, sure, but also beating up monsters was 1HD=100XP. In practice it definitely encourages more of a greedy treasure-hunter gameplay loop than modern D&D's more combat-centric gameplay, but I don't think it was ever purely treasure-focused.
Neat fact about OD&D, though: there's actually some treasure-focused mechanics that got dropped in later editions? When fleeing from an encounter (itself something that's much less elaborate these days), you can drop stuff to attempt to distract your pursuers. If it's something edible, it's distract intelligent monsters 10% of the time, "semi-intelligent" monsters 50% of the time, and non-intelligent monsters 90% of the time... with the opposite being true for treasure.
Also, of course, as cumbersome as encumbrance rules are they're also kind of central to the entire GP=XP concept. OD&D did some mildly interesting stuff here by only really counting the weight of armor, weapons, and treasure, and counting it all in coins as that's the most relevant game value, but it's still pretty fiddly. It's probably better to just count encumbrance by the sack (or do some fancy inventory slot thing on the character sheet like Torchbearer did).
god of course the JRPG "flee from battle and drop some money" trope originated from old school tabletop
early JRPGs are extremely OD&D inspired. Not even sure if that came from the TTRPG or games like Pool of Radiance, but yeah.
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited January 16
I really appreciate the focus of od&d. do you go further in or cash out now while you're still ahead? How much can you even carry? Between healing potions and levelling up, will you have enough gold left for better equipment?
it was honestly a pretty well thought out run based roguelike. I'm glad the focus shifted to RP later but the old mechanics that hung on feel really detached once the core conceit changed
Indie Winter on
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
The difference between "ok tell me what you want your character to do" versus "ok tell me which part of the rulebook you want to throw at this monster" is a pretty big one
+3
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
I've fallen off listening to them but I can't stress how important collaborative storytelling from Friends At The Table was for me when I started DMing
their counter/WEIGHT season alone is worth its weight in gold for getting the hang of guiding group storytelling
+4
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
The difference between "ok tell me what you want your character to do" versus "ok tell me which part of the rulebook you want to throw at this monster" is a pretty big one
Also the old joke about D&D allowing you to do whatever you want is that while you can, almost none of it is mechanically useful, and you need a really good DM to handle things out of left field because the DMs guide is very bad at teaching DMs how to improvise usefully. Versus a Narrative first system where the shared narrative is baked in.
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
I don't fully disagree
And I've also got players who have never played D&D who fall into those same traps
I think that D&D may encourage it, but it's hardly the only source of that sort of logic, nor is the sort of narrative forward game inherently easier for all players
So, chasing up Icon stuff lead to me sharing my Grand Beast Generator with the ICON/Lancer discord. They like it! This has lead to me starting to do more work on it and updating it, and now... now i want feedback.
So, since you're all too blame for this, you're now morally obligated to give me labor >=(
More seriously: I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Here's the piece i'd like the most feedback on right now: The basic shape of a creature. This is done by using 1d8, 1d10 & 2d20.
1d8 gives you how your creature moves around the world.
Hopping (Sparrows, similar bird like movement)
Stalking (Storks/Tyrannosaurus)
Conditional Bipedal (Apes, "knucklewalkers")
Bouncing (Kangaroo, frog, springtails)
Lumbering (large herbivores eg hippos, can't jump, won't take more than two legs off the ground at once)
Racing (cheetah and similar lean predators, good jumping, high speed)
Serpentine (no surprises here)
Rolling (pangolins, Namib Wheeling Spiders)
Flying is fairly intentionally skipped here, as is swimming, but i'm very open to the argument that this should be a d10 list that includes "Flying" and "Swimming" as primary forms of locomotion. Thoughts? This is the list i probably feel needs the most work, and is the most hard to figure out what a natural spread of options is vs. making sure stuff feels distinct and interesting. There's an argument i should make it clear that every creature is presuamble to be able to walk/run based on it's limbs, and Movement is an addtional or primary form of locomation.
Swinging (ala monkeys or similar) is also a movement style i feel like i might be missing.
Next up is the d10 - how many limbs does your creature get?
None.
Two
Four
Four
Four
Four
Six
Eight
Ten
Roll 1d100, round odd numbers up.
This is balanced so it'll predominantly produce 4 limbed critters, but again, i'm open to arguments otherwise on the exact chance - having a 4/10 chance to roll a 4 limbed creature feels about right in my tests so far, but i can easily see the argument that it should be closer to a 5/10. Or even that i should chop off anything past six limbs and leave that part of the roll 1d100. Worth noting that several of the more specific options later on the document will add extra limbs (Such as scorpion pincers, or mantis-shrimp bludgeons, or praying mantis scythes, or wings).
Finally is the pool of aesthetics. For this the idea is you roll 2d20 and pick two of them, and combine that togther.
Plant-like (Could be living, animate plant matter, could be symbiotic with plants)
Fungoid (Slime mold, mushroom, fungus - could be symbotic, it’s own thing etc)
Slime/ooze like
Undead (may be traditionally reanimated, could have exposed bone/muscle, be rotting, be wearing corpses as armor)
So, thoughts?
There's more to the generator than just this, but i'd like some focused feedback on this bit as it's probably the biggest chunk.
You'll also note i've skipped what size the beasts are. While i do have a simple d6 table for that, what size your monster is seems best picked by the gm on your needs - Make it a fucking Kaiju if you need a kaiju, make it tiny if you want a werid little guy to be cute, make it humanoid in size for most monsters... you get the idea.
Edit: To be clear, the goal of this is to create realistic, believable monsters on fly, ala things like the Monster Hunter games, or the more believable class of Forgotten Beasts from Dwarf Fortress. Pacific-Rim Style Kaiju are another major inspiration/asthetic feel for what this should kick out. Elderitch griblwhatsits and things that man were not meant to know are beyond it's intended scope, though they may still pop up as edge cases - i'm okay with this and think it's cool, they're just not the primary focus.
Some initial thoughts of my own now that i'm sitting down and diving into this are that the limb section seems fine, but the movement style needs a ton of work - it's just missing a lot of different methods of locomotion. Current instinct is to probably build a much bigger table for locomotion and suggest that you roll twice on it for the creature's primary movement and secondary approach (i.e a creature that hops and dives, or a creature that lumbers and flies)
Asthetics i'm pretty happy with - i think between that and # of limbs, you get a lot of variety and interesting imagery, and there's enoguh different things covered across a pretty wide spectrum of the animal world that you shouldn't get any duds - even stuff like getting Cnidaria + Mollusc still gives you interesting visuals to draw on and build something out of.
I've fallen off listening to them but I can't stress how important collaborative storytelling from Friends At The Table was for me when I started DMing
their counter/WEIGHT season alone is worth its weight in gold for getting the hang of guiding group storytelling
I’ll fully endorse this recommendation for FatT, just to add that I started with one of their more recent seasons, PARTIZAN, and it was a fine jumping-on point.
Further working though this on defining how creatures move, one of the big issues is posture.
Because there's actually at least 3 different types of posture used in say, terrestrial locomotion... But at the same time posture isn't really important as per say if you're just a jellyfish doing a float.
But also posture defines a lot about how a creature holds and uses it's body
If I can thread the needle on this stuff, I'm going to be very proud because it's a thorny one
I've fallen off listening to them but I can't stress how important collaborative storytelling from Friends At The Table was for me when I started DMing
their counter/WEIGHT season alone is worth its weight in gold for getting the hang of guiding group storytelling
I’ll fully endorse this recommendation for FatT, just to add that I started with one of their more recent seasons, PARTIZAN, and it was a fine jumping-on point.
Counter/WEIGHT is kind of a slow burn, because the players and GM both take a bit to gel with the system - eventually they shift systems entirely to something that better suits their play style - but it is still good story stuff and can be informative for prospective GMs to see how important those early shaky sessions end up being for defining the characters and campaign, and seeing everyone get more confident in their roles.
For D&D players getting into something like PbtA, I think there's more to unlearn than there is to learn
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
I don't fully disagree
And I've also got players who have never played D&D who fall into those same traps
I think that D&D may encourage it, but it's hardly the only source of that sort of logic, nor is the sort of narrative forward game inherently easier for all players
It definitely feels more like a carryover from just playing games in general. No matter how much a videogame since you can beat it the way you want there are limits to what the system can actually handle. A tabletop RPG doesn't really have that problem. You're idea might be crazy enough that it takes the GM a while to figure out how they want you to roll, or if your character is capable of pulling the plan off, but there are no limits if you don't want there to be and people aren't used to that.
And in general if the player isn't a person who does a creative work outside of playing rpgs I don't think they see the possibilities available or know how to take advantage of them. When my GM asks me to describe a room I know how to do that, although it is the weakest part of my writing, or if I have to improvise a conversation I can do that and keep in mind the limit of my characters vocabulary or knowledge depending on their stats and background. And even with that I have limits like any time my GM has introduced a puzzle/riddle I just stop and let somebody else work on that, because I don't like them.
Different people also express creativity in very different ways - like if you tell me to tell you the first time my character used a shiny new thing I just came up with, I'm probably going to freeze up and stare owlishly at you because it's just not how my brain is wired.
But I can probably talk for a while about how my character Gear in one of @Endless_Serpents games had a heavy crossbow as her spellcasting focus (she was an artificer) and slowly modded it to be able to work as a big ol grappling hook, a way to channel her magic, a place to attach her summoned turrets etc - because my creativity wotks better at that sort of iterative over time design.
Also that's sort of one of my big frustrations with DnD these days, is that it's very simulatonist in ways that don't actually matter.
Not sure how to more cleanly express that, but say: weapons are often very fiddly relative to the actual mechanical pay off.
I tend to be a mechanics first, flavor it however the fuck you want later person, and it feels like DnD at least comes at things from a flavor/simulation first, then mechanics pont of view
For me it was a case of reframing how I thought about combat in TTRPGs. Between video games and starting TTRPGs with D&D I was also having trouble getting my head around more freeform systems (and am still learning), because their narrative focus made combat feel wishy-washy... but then I got to thinking, what's the difference between using an attack that makes me leap at the enemy to strike at them (+ rolling some dice), and describing myself leaping at the enemy and striking them (+ rolling some dice)?
Instead of trying to use pre-defined, set in stone moves and trying to build a character around them, why can't I just decide how my character would fight? Why do I feel that moves designed by the book (or video game) are Real, but if I come up with something, it's Fake? I wouldn't go so far as to say that prolonged Gamer Discourse about cheating in video games over the past decades is responsible for how I feel about it, but there certainly are similarities to feeling like, if it's not In The Game, then it's worth less.
I also think listening to a bunch of TAZ over the years helped, because those boys will always pick storytelling over mechanics and it's always the correct choice.
I think a lot of people tend to view all interaction in an RPG in the form of "I need to do *specific thing* to get *specific result*. That's definitely the problem that I had in my aforementioned attempt at introducing the party to a skill challenge.
In retrospect it's clear that they were hesitant to make a move because what they thought they were doing was looking for the specific solution that would solve their problem. They didn't realize that any solution that made sense and could be backed up by a dice roll could be a correct answer.
Matt colville actually mentioned this problem in a video at some point. It's pretty common for people to not be trying to find a solution that makes sense for their character or works within the bounds of the fiction but instead find the answer that they assume the DM predecided was the right one.
+4
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
I don't particularly enjoy PbtA systems because they aren't tactical enough, but then I come to D&D from the wargaming side and generally treat the RP side as the cool story that links all the fights together rather than the goal. Also, not enough crunch to activate the part of my brain that wants to min/max. I'll still play a more narrative game if offered of course, ttrpgs are like pizza, it's still good even if not my exact preference.
Mrs. Red Robe flat out refuses to play anything without a battle mat at this point. She started her ttrpg journey with 4e and then Pathfinder; if a system doesn't allow her to control a battlefield with clever use of terrain effecting powers/spells she's not interested.
I don't particularly enjoy PbtA systems because they aren't tactical enough, but then I come to D&D from the wargaming side and generally treat the RP side as the cool story that links all the fights together rather than the goal. Also, not enough crunch to activate the part of my brain that wants to min/max. I'll still play a more narrative game if offered of course, ttrpgs are like pizza, it's still good even if not my exact preference.
Mrs. Red Robe flat out refuses to play anything without a battle mat at this point. She started her ttrpg journey with 4e and then Pathfinder; if a system doesn't allow her to control a battlefield with clever use of terrain effecting powers/spells she's not interested.
This is why Icon is interesting me so much - the very clear narrative/tactical split is exactly my jam, and I like the generalized narrative shennagins that then morph into the specific tactical kicking kin right in the gronch
I don't particularly enjoy PbtA systems because they aren't tactical enough, but then I come to D&D from the wargaming side and generally treat the RP side as the cool story that links all the fights together rather than the goal. Also, not enough crunch to activate the part of my brain that wants to min/max. I'll still play a more narrative game if offered of course, ttrpgs are like pizza, it's still good even if not my exact preference.
Mrs. Red Robe flat out refuses to play anything without a battle mat at this point. She started her ttrpg journey with 4e and then Pathfinder; if a system doesn't allow her to control a battlefield with clever use of terrain effecting powers/spells she's not interested.
This is very much me. I can't stand theater of the mind shit with combat, it drives me nuts. There also seems to always always always be an argument at some point in the session because nobody knows where the fuck their character is or where the bad lads are because we've assigned loose terms like "nearby." So we'll put tokens on a small paper to try and make more sense of things, but then people start subconsciously assigning distance between characters based on physical distance, despite explanations from the GM that everyone's "Nearby."
And then we have someone trying to back away from combat so they can use their ranged stuff and the GM doesn't really want them to, but the player wants to because they're made of wet paper bag and they don't want to tank any more bad lads. Or we try to use battlefield control spells but it's not clear who they're going to hurt or help because everyone's technically in the same fucking space.
JUST USE A FUCKING GRID!
People understand grids. People play board games, they understand spaces. They can visualize distance and how many bad lads there are, who's engaged with who, why someone might not want to try to go somewhere they shouldn't, etc. Yes they take up table space, I don't care, non-grid combat sucks to high heaven and I will die on that hill.
13th Age, in particular, hurt me with this shit. Just fucking non-stop explaining to players where they were and where bad lads were. I used pictures, I drew boxes, I tried a hundred different things and they were always asking me where the fuck their character was.
If I ever run 13th Age again I will both use maps and combat grids, as well as either eschew the icons completely or come up with some other system for using them, because at a certain point in the campaign everyone's got a hundred points because I'm not creative enough to make up enough shit for them to get involved in every session.
I think a lot of people tend to view all interaction in an RPG in the form of "I need to do *specific thing* to get *specific result*. That's definitely the problem that I had in my aforementioned attempt at introducing the party to a skill challenge.
In retrospect it's clear that they were hesitant to make a move because what they thought they were doing was looking for the specific solution that would solve their problem. They didn't realize that any solution that made sense and could be backed up by a dice roll could be a correct answer.
Matt colville actually mentioned this problem in a video at some point. It's pretty common for people to not be trying to find a solution that makes sense for their character or works within the bounds of the fiction but instead find the answer that they assume the DM predecided was the right one.
I think you can teach your players to get over this, but it requires at least one player who thinks this way or at least has played that way before who can really jump into it and help lead the other players and not just the GM setting up the game to play out that way.
Some players just aren't going to get into that mode of playing though, but that's why you want to find more than one group of people to play with.
I don't particularly enjoy PbtA systems because they aren't tactical enough, but then I come to D&D from the wargaming side and generally treat the RP side as the cool story that links all the fights together rather than the goal. Also, not enough crunch to activate the part of my brain that wants to min/max. I'll still play a more narrative game if offered of course, ttrpgs are like pizza, it's still good even if not my exact preference.
Mrs. Red Robe flat out refuses to play anything without a battle mat at this point. She started her ttrpg journey with 4e and then Pathfinder; if a system doesn't allow her to control a battlefield with clever use of terrain effecting powers/spells she's not interested.
This is very much me. I can't stand theater of the mind shit with combat, it drives me nuts. There also seems to always always always be an argument at some point in the session because nobody knows where the fuck their character is or where the bad lads are because we've assigned loose terms like "nearby." So we'll put tokens on a small paper to try and make more sense of things, but then people start subconsciously assigning distance between characters based on physical distance, despite explanations from the GM that everyone's "Nearby."
And then we have someone trying to back away from combat so they can use their ranged stuff and the GM doesn't really want them to, but the player wants to because they're made of wet paper bag and they don't want to tank any more bad lads. Or we try to use battlefield control spells but it's not clear who they're going to hurt or help because everyone's technically in the same fucking space.
JUST USE A FUCKING GRID!
People understand grids. People play board games, they understand spaces. They can visualize distance and how many bad lads there are, who's engaged with who, why someone might not want to try to go somewhere they shouldn't, etc. Yes they take up table space, I don't care, non-grid combat sucks to high heaven and I will die on that hill.
13th Age, in particular, hurt me with this shit. Just fucking non-stop explaining to players where they were and where bad lads were. I used pictures, I drew boxes, I tried a hundred different things and they were always asking me where the fuck their character was.
If I ever run 13th Age again I will both use maps and combat grids, as well as either eschew the icons completely or come up with some other system for using them, because at a certain point in the campaign everyone's got a hundred points because I'm not creative enough to make up enough shit for them to get involved in every session.
Posts
13th Age if you want to stick with D20.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Savage Worlds
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
More generally in the fantasy sphere, I'd recommend:
- Slayers: Asymmetric adventuring and monster hunting.
- Stonetop: Iron age fantasy based around protecting a small town. PbtA.
- Blades Against Darkness: Frontier town fantasy dungeon crawling. FitD.
- AGON: Greek mythology heroic fantasy, saving towns across the Aegean.
- Unbound: Not fantasy necessarily, but you can make it that - it's fairly open ended setting wise. Some really interesting mechanics with playing card resolution and building your own personal deck of cards over time that is your character.
Which, coming from d20 I can understand, because maybe it feels like you're missing mechanics
But really it's just you have a list of moves, or actions, that players can take. There is only ever one roll, 2d6, and only ever one modifier to that roll, the stat (-1 to +2 usually). And every move describes what happens when you make that roll.
That is kind of the whole system, barring quirks in different PbtA games, but what is there is roughly true of all of them.
The hard part is adapting to the idea that the fiction is everything and the moves define the ways in which the rules interact with the fiction, and that anything else that happens is simply not under the purview of the rules.
Also one of the creators is a noted piece of shit
I was just thinking about this. I think DW is a good example of a port or clone vs a hack. DW is, to me, a PbtA hack of D&D. I don't think that it being a hack is or makes it inherently bad, I just think it happened to be attempting to hack together two ideas that don't work great together.
MotW is probably the PbtA clone I would recommend to my wife, and all she's played is 4e, and some 5th and some 13th Age.
I still wanna do a d12 conversion for CoD. I just don't like the spinny top style dice as much, they don't feel as good to me
Something people exploring more narrative-forward game systems should understand is that those games reward a more improv theater style of play. The power of yes-and. Take big swings and don't worry about whether or not the rulebook says you're allowed to do that.
god of course the JRPG "flee from battle and drop some money" trope originated from old school tabletop
early JRPGs are extremely OD&D inspired. Not even sure if that came from the TTRPG or games like Pool of Radiance, but yeah.
it was honestly a pretty well thought out run based roguelike. I'm glad the focus shifted to RP later but the old mechanics that hung on feel really detached once the core conceit changed
Yea over the years I've found its WAY easier to get new players into Narrative forward games and then into D&D, than vice versa. You can take a lot of skills learned in Narrative forward games into D&D, but D&D doesn't give you any tools to play anything else but D&D.
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The difference between "ok tell me what you want your character to do" versus "ok tell me which part of the rulebook you want to throw at this monster" is a pretty big one
their counter/WEIGHT season alone is worth its weight in gold for getting the hang of guiding group storytelling
Also the old joke about D&D allowing you to do whatever you want is that while you can, almost none of it is mechanically useful, and you need a really good DM to handle things out of left field because the DMs guide is very bad at teaching DMs how to improvise usefully. Versus a Narrative first system where the shared narrative is baked in.
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I don't fully disagree
And I've also got players who have never played D&D who fall into those same traps
I think that D&D may encourage it, but it's hardly the only source of that sort of logic, nor is the sort of narrative forward game inherently easier for all players
So, since you're all too blame for this, you're now morally obligated to give me labor >=(
More seriously: I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Here's the piece i'd like the most feedback on right now: The basic shape of a creature. This is done by using 1d8, 1d10 & 2d20.
1d8 gives you how your creature moves around the world.
Flying is fairly intentionally skipped here, as is swimming, but i'm very open to the argument that this should be a d10 list that includes "Flying" and "Swimming" as primary forms of locomotion. Thoughts? This is the list i probably feel needs the most work, and is the most hard to figure out what a natural spread of options is vs. making sure stuff feels distinct and interesting. There's an argument i should make it clear that every creature is presuamble to be able to walk/run based on it's limbs, and Movement is an addtional or primary form of locomation.
Swinging (ala monkeys or similar) is also a movement style i feel like i might be missing.
Next up is the d10 - how many limbs does your creature get?
This is balanced so it'll predominantly produce 4 limbed critters, but again, i'm open to arguments otherwise on the exact chance - having a 4/10 chance to roll a 4 limbed creature feels about right in my tests so far, but i can easily see the argument that it should be closer to a 5/10. Or even that i should chop off anything past six limbs and leave that part of the roll 1d100. Worth noting that several of the more specific options later on the document will add extra limbs (Such as scorpion pincers, or mantis-shrimp bludgeons, or praying mantis scythes, or wings).
Finally is the pool of aesthetics. For this the idea is you roll 2d20 and pick two of them, and combine that togther.
So, thoughts?
There's more to the generator than just this, but i'd like some focused feedback on this bit as it's probably the biggest chunk.
You'll also note i've skipped what size the beasts are. While i do have a simple d6 table for that, what size your monster is seems best picked by the gm on your needs - Make it a fucking Kaiju if you need a kaiju, make it tiny if you want a werid little guy to be cute, make it humanoid in size for most monsters... you get the idea.
Edit: To be clear, the goal of this is to create realistic, believable monsters on fly, ala things like the Monster Hunter games, or the more believable class of Forgotten Beasts from Dwarf Fortress. Pacific-Rim Style Kaiju are another major inspiration/asthetic feel for what this should kick out. Elderitch griblwhatsits and things that man were not meant to know are beyond it's intended scope, though they may still pop up as edge cases - i'm okay with this and think it's cool, they're just not the primary focus.
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Asthetics i'm pretty happy with - i think between that and # of limbs, you get a lot of variety and interesting imagery, and there's enoguh different things covered across a pretty wide spectrum of the animal world that you shouldn't get any duds - even stuff like getting Cnidaria + Mollusc still gives you interesting visuals to draw on and build something out of.
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Once you get Lancer on your shelf you might need to get a bigger shelf. It is over 500 pages of goodness.
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Could be worse, could be exalted.
Something something bad choices for players something something
That was a hell of a choice the 3E devs made to say.
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I’ll fully endorse this recommendation for FatT, just to add that I started with one of their more recent seasons, PARTIZAN, and it was a fine jumping-on point.
Because there's actually at least 3 different types of posture used in say, terrestrial locomotion... But at the same time posture isn't really important as per say if you're just a jellyfish doing a float.
But also posture defines a lot about how a creature holds and uses it's body
If I can thread the needle on this stuff, I'm going to be very proud because it's a thorny one
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Counter/WEIGHT is kind of a slow burn, because the players and GM both take a bit to gel with the system - eventually they shift systems entirely to something that better suits their play style - but it is still good story stuff and can be informative for prospective GMs to see how important those early shaky sessions end up being for defining the characters and campaign, and seeing everyone get more confident in their roles.
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It definitely feels more like a carryover from just playing games in general. No matter how much a videogame since you can beat it the way you want there are limits to what the system can actually handle. A tabletop RPG doesn't really have that problem. You're idea might be crazy enough that it takes the GM a while to figure out how they want you to roll, or if your character is capable of pulling the plan off, but there are no limits if you don't want there to be and people aren't used to that.
And in general if the player isn't a person who does a creative work outside of playing rpgs I don't think they see the possibilities available or know how to take advantage of them. When my GM asks me to describe a room I know how to do that, although it is the weakest part of my writing, or if I have to improvise a conversation I can do that and keep in mind the limit of my characters vocabulary or knowledge depending on their stats and background. And even with that I have limits like any time my GM has introduced a puzzle/riddle I just stop and let somebody else work on that, because I don't like them.
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But I can probably talk for a while about how my character Gear in one of @Endless_Serpents games had a heavy crossbow as her spellcasting focus (she was an artificer) and slowly modded it to be able to work as a big ol grappling hook, a way to channel her magic, a place to attach her summoned turrets etc - because my creativity wotks better at that sort of iterative over time design.
If that makes any sense
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Not sure how to more cleanly express that, but say: weapons are often very fiddly relative to the actual mechanical pay off.
I tend to be a mechanics first, flavor it however the fuck you want later person, and it feels like DnD at least comes at things from a flavor/simulation first, then mechanics pont of view
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Instead of trying to use pre-defined, set in stone moves and trying to build a character around them, why can't I just decide how my character would fight? Why do I feel that moves designed by the book (or video game) are Real, but if I come up with something, it's Fake? I wouldn't go so far as to say that prolonged Gamer Discourse about cheating in video games over the past decades is responsible for how I feel about it, but there certainly are similarities to feeling like, if it's not In The Game, then it's worth less.
I also think listening to a bunch of TAZ over the years helped, because those boys will always pick storytelling over mechanics and it's always the correct choice.
In retrospect it's clear that they were hesitant to make a move because what they thought they were doing was looking for the specific solution that would solve their problem. They didn't realize that any solution that made sense and could be backed up by a dice roll could be a correct answer.
Matt colville actually mentioned this problem in a video at some point. It's pretty common for people to not be trying to find a solution that makes sense for their character or works within the bounds of the fiction but instead find the answer that they assume the DM predecided was the right one.
Mrs. Red Robe flat out refuses to play anything without a battle mat at this point. She started her ttrpg journey with 4e and then Pathfinder; if a system doesn't allow her to control a battlefield with clever use of terrain effecting powers/spells she's not interested.
This is why Icon is interesting me so much - the very clear narrative/tactical split is exactly my jam, and I like the generalized narrative shennagins that then morph into the specific tactical kicking kin right in the gronch
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This is very much me. I can't stand theater of the mind shit with combat, it drives me nuts. There also seems to always always always be an argument at some point in the session because nobody knows where the fuck their character is or where the bad lads are because we've assigned loose terms like "nearby." So we'll put tokens on a small paper to try and make more sense of things, but then people start subconsciously assigning distance between characters based on physical distance, despite explanations from the GM that everyone's "Nearby."
And then we have someone trying to back away from combat so they can use their ranged stuff and the GM doesn't really want them to, but the player wants to because they're made of wet paper bag and they don't want to tank any more bad lads. Or we try to use battlefield control spells but it's not clear who they're going to hurt or help because everyone's technically in the same fucking space.
JUST USE A FUCKING GRID!
People understand grids. People play board games, they understand spaces. They can visualize distance and how many bad lads there are, who's engaged with who, why someone might not want to try to go somewhere they shouldn't, etc. Yes they take up table space, I don't care, non-grid combat sucks to high heaven and I will die on that hill.
13th Age, in particular, hurt me with this shit. Just fucking non-stop explaining to players where they were and where bad lads were. I used pictures, I drew boxes, I tried a hundred different things and they were always asking me where the fuck their character was.
If I ever run 13th Age again I will both use maps and combat grids, as well as either eschew the icons completely or come up with some other system for using them, because at a certain point in the campaign everyone's got a hundred points because I'm not creative enough to make up enough shit for them to get involved in every session.
I think you can teach your players to get over this, but it requires at least one player who thinks this way or at least has played that way before who can really jump into it and help lead the other players and not just the GM setting up the game to play out that way.
Some players just aren't going to get into that mode of playing though, but that's why you want to find more than one group of people to play with.
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