What systems nicely handle more in depth, "complex" rules?

#104

I have not read Troika. It’s on the, uh, Long List.

Good explanation! I’m not 100% convinced that this problem can’t be solved within a symmetric system, but I think I get the gist how things can feel samey.

A question though: The kobold and the ogre. In D&D, I feel like if I am playing a fighter, my options are still the same: It hit it with my axe! Maybe the ogre feels scarier because it had more hitpoints and hits harder or is harder to hit, or whatever is appropriate, but have we actually changed my decision making space any? So if I’m mostly just saying “I hit it with my axe” does the mechanical differentiation that one of the creatures hits me back harder/requires me to hit it with my axe more times/is harder to hit with my axe change the game for me? If it’s just a question of “I am more willing to fight the kobold than the ogre” or “the ogre feels scarier” then I’m troubled, because I feel like a Dungeon World ogre is something that I am less willing to fight and feels scarier due to it’s fictional positioning (It’s big! It has reach!), larger HP pool, and high damage numbers.

Of course the “fighter problem” has been around for a long time now. But it’s also the epitome of ‘samey combat’ which many players avoid by playing classes with have lots of mechanical doodads, which is also a thing in some PbtA games.

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#105

There are tactical options which come into play like grappling the kobold or flanking the ogre. Options you do not have in DW.

Edit: to prevent misunderstandings “options you do not have” means “there are no special rules for it” besides defy danger. Which would fall into the “samey” category for jco - I assume.

#106

Well, in D&D I think the fighter might choose to use a bow (even though they are worse at it) because the ogre lacks a good missile weapon, or stay back and guard the spellcasters or ranged attackers.

Or it might make sense to try to bargain with the ogre or trick it with riddles or something. I guess the point is that it’s easy to make “hit it with a sword” feel like a less attractive option without specifically banning it or introducing new prerequisite actions.

(As an aside, I think some D&D tables feel “samey” because the DM and/or players approach all situations with a fight, and that fight ends up feeling mechanical because they always make the same actions/rolls. I don’t think a complex or symmetric systems guarantees a table will use it well, even if it provides more options.)

#107

For that there is brand new:
https://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Know-What-Theyre-Doing/dp/1982122668

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#108

Wait, people use the grapple rules? :sweat_smile:

I jest, but I see where you are going. I’m not sure those make good examples though. Flanking the ogre, for example, might be exactly what’s needed to attack it in Dungeon World, since no one can get close enough otherwise.

I have the same issues with Calris’ other examples: A DW fighter can certainly shoot it with a bow (I’d say that’s probably a good idea!) and tricking or riddling probably doesn’t engage with the mechanics of either system, so I’d say that goes just fine either way.

So this is my problem: I am picking apart these examples, not because I am defending anything at this point, but because I want to see the differences. Yes, in D&D, “I flank the ogre” means someone gets Advantage against it, while in Dungeon World, it might mean “Now you can stab it without having to weasel past its reach with a Defy Danger or something” but both of those provide real, mechanical advantages. Similarly, the bow and the riddling. (Well, the riddling is sortof a ‘category C’ where neither system does anything with it). So I feel like I am being mean and nitpicking examples, because clearly people have something in mind that gets to the core of this, but are having trouble finding examples. But at the same time, I am asking myself “Why is it so hard to come up with a clear example here?”

Is it that the GM has to adjudicate the difficulty of getting into Hack & Slash range of the ogre? Would this be solved if Dungeon World explicitly said “Since Ogres have the Reach tag, characters who have weapons that have shorter ranges must Defy Danger to roll Hack & Slash against it”? The game never comes out and says something like this – maybe because it assumed people would figure it out, maybe because they didn’t want to assume it would always be true, or maybe because they didn’t want to rigorously define stuff so as to keep people ‘thinking in the fiction’, or whatever, but it doesn’t.

Or maybe it does, as Thomas’ edit suggests, all come down to “But I’m just making another roll!” but that’s… what advantage/disadvantage is, which at the end of the day, is a lot of what you get in these situations in D&D, so I don’t think that’s really it? Does it just need difficulty numbers? Does a roll where you need a 15 feel different from two rolls where you need a 10?

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#109

Something I find interesting here is that I don’t really see the PbtA sameyness at all, the flavour of the moves and the way the game is designed to drive the fiction from the characters’ actions and give those choices weight mean that to me it doesn’t come out samey at all in play and it doesn’t feel arbitrary.

However every time I have read through a Fate-based game or listened to an AP of them, I always get that feeling from those - even though they can use opposed rolls, the fact that you’re always rolling XdF against whatever opposition the GM has chosen feels as though it’s basically completely arbitrary. I think that’s why I’ve never actually got a game off the ground - there’s a lot to like about the system but I don’t feel the personality.

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#110

I think the issue is that you’re equating fictional positioning with mechanical positioning and asking why two different things that feel the same to you feel different to other people. Your impressions seem to be results focused (gain advantage over the ogre) whereas others are process focused (using/activating game mechanics vs. using a discussion to establish how you are achieving the same effect). By what you’ve been saying, using a battlemap to move your character in such a way that they receive a flanking bonus is identical to describing your character doing the same thing. In both cases the same result is reached, but the brain feel can be different to some people.

This is probably not the perfect metaphor, but imagine you need to create metal bolt. In one case you take raw metal, drop it on a lathe, and craft the bolt yourself. In the other scenario, you create a 3D model of the bolt, import it into a CNC machine, and let the machine automatically carve one. In both scenarios you’ve created a bolt, but the actual act of making it had completely different processes.

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#111

This is a great point.

I played a lot of FATE before PbtA and like PbtA I think it shines when the narrative is driving how the system is being used (i.e. aspects are being introduced, difficulty and stakes are being used well, compels and fate points are used correctly, etc.). I can see how someone reading about FATE might imagine that it is samey, but the games and stories we came up with felt exciting and unique. That said, divorced from the story details the mechanics can feel fairly generic and uninspiring.

All of this is to say that FATE is not that mechanically complex and like with PbtA, I can imagine scenarios where a more complex set of rules might feel like a good fit.

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#112

Let’s build on this ogre example, assuming our PC is relatively inexperienced.

After an hour of searching, you find a large stone bridge over the rushing river. On the near bank guarding the entrance is a large, ten-foot tall ogre with a huge two-bladed axe. As you approach he grins and calls out to you:

“Two-hundred pieces of gold to cross my bridge!”

This sum represents all the money you’ve earned so far. Without it you won’t be able to afford an inn, let alone repairs to your armor and weapons. What do you do?

The goal here is to make it mechanically unlikely that the fighter will be able to take on and defeat the ogre without just making a pronouncement to that effect. I think Dungeon World can do this but it’s a bit tricky (part of this has to do with how the hack and slash move is written).

Let’s imagine our fighter has the following stats:

STR 16 (+2)
INT  9 (+0)
WIS 12 (+0)
DEX 13 (+1)
CON 15 (+1)
CHA  8 (-1)

So when this fighter rolls hack and slash they have a 42% chance of a 10+ (they deal damage without taking any), a 42% chance of a 7-9 (they deal damage and receive an attack in response), and a 16% chance of a 6- and something bad happening. In the ogre example, the DM’s best move is probably to add fictional requirements to be able to attack (e.g. roll defy danger with dexterity to get inside the ogre’s reach) or consequences to the ogre’s attacks (e.g. they don’t just hurt, they knock the fighter down, knock his breath out, terrify him, etc.).

The reason the latter aren’t as effective is that no matter how devastating the ogre’s counterattacks are there’s a 42% chance that they won’t happen (independent of how powerful the ogre is). The probability of consecutive 10+ results is reduced (~16% for back-to-back 10+), but if our hypothetical fighter can get an additional +1 bonus the probabilities become 58% for one 10+ result, 34% for two, and so on.

By contrast, if this fighter tries to bargain or trick the ogre (which might make more sense fictionally) they are rolling their worst stat (CHA) and have only an 8% chance of a 10+ and 42% chance of a 7-9. The DM doesn’t have an easy way to give them mechanical bonuses to the roll (or to reduce a difficulty) even though it targets one of the ogre’s weaknesses. The DM might forgo having a roll at all if they want to encourage the player to negotiate with the ogre rather than fighting it, but there isn’t a strong mechanical basis for this (i.e. it might not feel like a tactical success even if it is one narratively). The one silver lining is that a failed negotiation roll might be punished less harshly than a failed attack role by the DM.

In a symmetric system, you can just give the ogre a high STR score along with low INT and CHA scores, and let the player try whatever approach they want. Fighting might be more straightforward but it will be mechanically much tougher even for a very good fighter (but not impossible). The player can be sure that they will be on the receiving end of the ogre’s attacks (and that the likelihood of being hurt isn’t totally determined by their own skill and how well they roll). Bargaining or trickery will probably be much easier due to a reduced target difficulty, even for characters who aren’t usually as good at those kinds of skills. Assuming the odds of winning the fight are long our fighter might be happy with roughly 50/50 odds of coming out on top of a social contest or conflict.

Without variable target difficulty, the DM in Dungeon World has to lean very heavily on defy danger as well as other moves of varying hardness to try to communicate the risks to the player and make these actions feel dangerous. The DM can try to give +1 forward to moves that make fictional sense (e.g. tricking the ogre) but even there the bonus probably isn’t enough to make it attractive to characters who weren’t already committed to it. In those cases the DM will probably just want to grant the player success, which achieves the narrative goal but without an explicit contest. Our fighter may be induced to use diplomacy but they’ll be well aware that mechanically they are setting themselves up for failure if the DM starts calling for rolls.

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#113

Dungeon World actually doesn’t provide many moves directly related to physical conflict resolution, compared to Apocalypse World and some other PBTA games. It feels a but unfair, since Apocalypse World 2nd edition came out much later the Dungeon World which is derived from first edition, but let’s look at the current state of play in the PBTA universe.

I think the problem with Dungeon World is that Hack and Slash is a very generic and bland move. Even compared to Seize by Force in it’s plainest form, the possible outcomes are very basic. In Apocalypse World 2nd Edition, tactical positioning and objectives are forefront. Are you assaulting a position, keeping hold of something, fighting your way free, or defending someone from attack? All of those are variants of Seize by Force, which even in its basic form is a lot more diverse in it’s outcomes that Hack and Slash. Dungeon World does support that last one with an explicit Defend Someone move, but for all the others you’re really on your own. Add in Go Aggro, the various tactical and support moves and subterfuge moves and you have a very rich toolkit for handling all sorts of conflict scenarios.

The simplicity of DW here does have advantages. It is consistent with the fairly simple nature of plain old hitting things in D&D, and that’s a real tangible benefit. However once you get really familiar with the system, I think it does seem a bit unsatisfying.

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#114

I don’t think I’m conflating fictional and mechanical advantages at all. All the examples I provided had hard mechanical impact – not having to make an undesirable die roll, being able to make a roll at all, etc.

The 42% can be a problem, but over the course of a fight with an ogre, the fighter has a pretty darn good chance of taking 1d8+5 and forceful (the obvious answer, if fighting on a bridge is “Swimming time, ol’ chum.”). It’s possible but unlikely that the player will only have to roll once (The ogre has 11 effective HP, which is pretty much the absolute upper end of what the fighter can do.). And I don’t really think it’s at all fair to say that it’s “on the GM to add fictional requirements” – the game has tags. This is literally what they are for. Reach beats near unless there’s a good reason for it. It’s on the GM to use the mechanics that are built into the game, yes.

You’re right that Defy Danger fills a messy gap here as “the move that gets made all the time to make things harder”. Which might be the root of the problem – there’s only one PLAYER FACING way to make things harder. (Because adding more HP/Armor to the ogre is absolutely making things harder, but the player doesn’t really ‘see’ it.)

And yeah, trying to “diplomatize it” is mechanically disadvantageous to a noncharismatic fighter… in much the same way it would be if you engaged those same mechanics in D&D. Honestly, I think we should leave this whole angle out of this, because I don’t feel like it’s helping. Neither game supports this option well mechanically.

I should probably sit down with AW2 though, and see what that brings to the table.

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#115

Dungeon World gives weapons a range (hand, close, reach, near, and/or far) and in hack and slash makes it clear that the weapon range determines how close (or far away) the player must be to make the move:

Weapons have tags to indicate the range at which they are useful. Dungeon World doesn’t inflict penalties or grant bonuses for “optimal range” or the like, but if your weapon says Hand and an enemy is ten yards away, a player would have a hard time justifying using that weapon against him.

Monsters are also given range tags, so we can assume that these are treated the same way (although it isn’t made explicit). The game doesn’t have explicit rules for getting into (or out of) range of attacks, so the GM has to interpret how to use tags in this situation (since there are no specific mechanics at play). Can an enraged orcish berserker (range: Close) damage a fighter using a spear (range: Reach) on a failed hack and slash roll? Most GMs would probably say yes, despite the difference in range, some might say no due to the tags, and some might substitute a change in range for damage (“now the berserker is on top of you and you can’t use your spear anymore”).

Is it a problem that the GM has to spend more time interpreting how to apply these tags to the situations? Not necessarily. But it’s a stretch to call these tags a mechanic – many of the things implied by tags (including the idea that players may have to make a move to get into range) are never stated in the text (though I agree with you that they will be inferred by many readers). There is a also ambiguity in the rules concerning when and how to multiple tags are resolved (do opposing tags cancel out? do some tags beat others?). In the context of the fiction it’s often clear what to do, which is why I am arguing that most of Dungeon World’s mechanics rely on fictional positioning to guide their use (more so than many other systems).

Stepping back from this, it seems like I failed to make my point about diplomacy. In a game with target difficulty, the GM can decide that a wrestling competition against the ogre is a DC 20 strength check. They can also rule that negotiation is a DC 12 charisma, and a riddle contest is a DC 10 intelligence check, and let the player try whatever approach they want. Even a fighter with a mediocre intelligence or charisma has a fairly good chance to win at diplomacy or riddles. So I disagree that “diplomatizing” the encounter is equally disadvantageous in D&D as in Dungeon World. My claim is that it is much more disadvantageous in DW than in D&D or another system with more complexity.

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#116

So you’re saying that it’s less “These rules aren’t there” and more “These rules aren’t explicit enough mechanically”? That could be it. I think the upsides outweight the downsides (If I had a penny for every “we applied the rules literally and the results they generated made no sense” thread I’ve seen I’d have a movie ticket or something) but that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to chalk this one up as “rules aren’t rigorous enough (to feel non-arbitrary when enforced).”

I did miss your point about diplomacy, but I think the earlier argument about 42% chance of scott-free-success might swing the pendulum back the other way here. A 10 Int D&D Fighter attempting your DC 10 int test to trick the ogre, above, has a 50% chance of it going completely sideways (Fail) and a 50% chance of success. The same 10 int fighter in Dungeon World has only a 40% chance of things going completely south, though their successes get split up a bit (There may be extra cost, but a 7-9 is still a success, by the rules.). So are the odds ACTUALLY better to try to hit a few times? I’d argue that this is going to be a pretty blurry, personal decision.

Anyway, I think I’ve got what I’m going to get out of this discussion. Please resume discussion of actual in-depth, complex rules. :slight_smile:

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#117

So…back to Rickard’s last message on 27Sep then :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Systems what I found had the attributes of emergent complexity:
• While the World Ends : you can powergame but you will end up with a great story.
• Don’t Rest Your Head : the subsystems interact with each other in a way to create loss aversion . The only system (have played Dread too) that gave me a fright.
• Fish tank : a scenario writing model that doesn’t really have an end, but just a result of all actions.

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#118

One approach that I think is pretty interesting in this regard is the compendium games style of things like Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands where different actions are their own mini-game that you play out according to it’s own rules. I think there is a lot of potential in that.

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#119

Yeah, I agree it’s a promising way to go. Burning Wheel and its associated games (Burning Empires, Mouse Guard, Torchbearer) go this direction as well. I bounced off of Burning Empires pretty hard but the other three are great IMO.

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#120

Regarding difficulty in DW and PBTA.

There are a ton of ways to make things harder or more difficult. Take the giant axe wielding ogre. Well, maybe he’s a complete klutz. Yes he does heavy damage, but on a 7-9 hack and slash, the character gets a Defy Danger to avoid his slow, heavily signaled axe swing. Maybe they even get that on a 6-. Easier still? Defy danger 7-9 to avoid the counter attack now comes with negligible consequences. Or maybe 10+ grants a free extra attack opportunity as you dive between his legs, or both. Spout Lore or discern realities might reveal a weakness that grants +1 forward, such as fear of mice, or Elves, etc.

Want to make persuasion easier? Well parlay is still basically a success on any hit anyway, so just get liberal about what counts as leverage or concrete assurance. The ogre is dumb as a pile of bricks, so as long as he thinks they have leverage or are credible, it’s all good. Again even a 6- doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Play it for comedy, maybe this ogre is a bit if a pitiful character, a mummy’s boy that the PCs might even befriend. Tons of ways to make this easy and signal leverage opportunities.

Want to make things harder? You have to defy danger past the axe just to make a HnS at all, and even on a weak hit you take half or full damage. He doesn’t understand your language, so Parley is a non starter, or get tough about leverage and assurance. Etc

So basically to make things harder, make the consequences of weak hits worse, or add moves as a prerequisite to the main attempt. To make things easier, be more forgiving of the consequences of weak hits, or even misses, add moves as saving throws against consequences, and give ways to get easy bonuses, leverage, etc.

#121

I think everything you’ve discussed is part of the impasse people have had in understanding each other.

IMO the examples you’ve described are how you use fictional positioning; you have results you wish to achieve (easy/hard versions of the various avenues of overcoming a challenge) and describe what the situation would be to establish those parameters.

In a DnD style game, you would create the desired parameters through mechanical positioning. If you want the ogre to swing hard but inaccurately, you give him 20+ str and <10 Dex. If you want him to be suggestible, you give him poor cha/diplomacy. Maybe instead of chaotic evil he is chaotic nuetral to signify that he won’t immediately resort to threats or bargaining with violence.

Neither of these approaches are incorrect, but they should be recognized as different enough that different people respond to them positively or negatively. Unless we can properly frame what kind of depth and complexity we are looking for, we cannot provide satisfactory examples.

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#122

From the discussion, I believe that’s it’s not the “fictional positioning” that’s the problem. It’s two things:

  • It all “just” involves rolling Defy Danger, more times, or fewer times.
  • It all “feels arbitrary” because the GM is deciding on those harder/softer moves rather than the mechanics saying “When X, Y ABSOLUTELY HAPPENS.” (Which is also how you get results that make no sense in the fiction.)
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#123

It doesn’t have to be defy danger, although it’s a heavily used move due to its omni-attribute nature in DW as I’ve discussed earlier. It could be discern realities to observe an opportunity “you notice his left boot is damaged, a good slash at the stitching and it will tangle up on his foot”, or spout lore remember a weakness. It could be parlay to try and shift the terms of the conflict, perhaps luring an opponent into an ambush spot.

I don’t buy the GM deciding as being a problem. Everything is someone deciding. Why should we privilege a designer writing 5 years ago, I’ve a GM prepping a few days ago, over the same GM thinking up something now.

Furthermore, what I’m describing are the mechanics. If I was writing up this encounter in a published scenario, that is how I’d write it up the encounter with Grognak the mummy’s boy Ogre with the loose boot.

I do think a fair criticism is that PBTA games don’t really do a great job spelling all of this out. They do a job of it, the long rulebook descriptions of the moves are always referring back to and often resolve arguments in forums based only on reading the short form move descriptions. However, discussions of how to establish a fictional scene in such a way as to calibrate the challenge level, and offer or close off opportunities in various ways is a bit of an art.

I think the risk is presenting examples in flowchart form would look too much like a turn sequence. The theme in PBTA is to come up with this stuff fluidly in play, but more complete worked examples would help.

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