PbtA games and player cleverness

#81

I think this is misunderstanding what’s typically going on in archetypal OSR play.

You’re not “avoiding triggering the rules”; that a player is allowed to attempt something using fictional positioning is very much part of the rules that people play the game by (arguably the most important rule, for a lot of people).

The “cleverness” is in being able to suggest that the situation in question can be resolved through the use of a bespoke move outlined by the player (typically to their own advantage; otherwise it’s not really all that clever). Perhaps in the most lopsided of situations this results in the situation being resolved by clear declaration of fiat, but in many cases it’s far less clear-cut.

In OSR play, everything that exists in the fiction can potentially have teeth, because everything that exists in the fiction might potentially be a challenge or a way to overcome a challenge; player cleverness is in figuring out how to hook into those teeth. This is, I think, rather the opposite of “fictional positioning without triggering a move” that happens in PbtA play.

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#82

Yes, I think that’s a very good distillation. I agree with yukamichi.

In the meantime, I got my hands on Vagabonds of Dyfed and read through it. It’s a nice ruleset! Seems quite well put together, and would work work challenge-oriented play.

It avoids many/most (maybe even all?) of the pitfalls posed by typical PbtA designs which might get in the way of “challengeful” play. (I think freeform tags are a problematic match for this kind of gaming, for example, but I’m sure some people can make that work.)

However, I think it’s not a coinidence that… it has almost no PbtA-based design features whatsoever. Aside from rolling 2d6+adds and a similar scale of success, does it actually have anything in common with PbtA games? There is no move structure (either player-side moves or MC moves), no playbooks, no picklists, no subsystems that tie into that, no attempt to structure the “conversation” - which, according to Vincent Baker, is one of the foundational things that makes PbtA PbtA, it has an initiative system, etc, etc. I don’t see much that’s definitionally PbtA here except for the dice mechanic.

Perhaps the list of techniques could be seen as a sort of PbtA-ism? Maybe, if you squint.

Perhaps that’s actually a good proof of concept? Vagabonds had to step this far away from typical PbtA design in order to fulfil its desired agenda.

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#83

I’m sorry; but this feels like a niggling distinction to me – you’re basically playing the “unwritten rules vs written rules” card where I don’t think it’s appropriate. All these rules are rules, and I don’t think anything I have said breaks down when it is applied unwritten rules.

“that a player is allowed to attempt something using fictional positioning is very much part of the rules that people play the game by” is absolutely a part of PbtA principles. Maybe even the principle. “The game is a conversation and moves only occur when they specifically say so.”

I’m not even sure which set of games you are talking about with “proposing bespoke moves” because it sounds like you are still talking about OSR games, but you are using PbtA terminology.

Lastly, “In OSR play, everything that exists in the fiction can potentially have teeth, because everything that exists in the fiction might potentially be a challenge or a way to overcome a challenge” – is precisely true in PbtA play as well.

So no; I don’t get it. It sounds like you are using different words to say exactly the same thing. I’m going to duck out of this conversation at this point, because I don’t think I’m ‘Getting it’ and I’m just making a bunch of noise to people who clearly think they do.

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