You’re making me think: Where is System Exploration in PbtAs? Is it catered to at all?
My guess is: if at all, you get to Explore the System at character creation and level up, both moments in which you get to make mechanical choices (which stat to increase, move to get) because the System tells you to.
In play you are supposed to explore the fiction and moves should follow the fiction, not the other way around right?
Does the act of creating new moves count as exploration of the system? Maybe it just scratches a similar itch…
I believe what I’m saying is that the Apocalypse Engine was meant to minimize System Exploration so that it doesn’t get in the way of Fiction Exploration? Is it even fair to say that one gets in the way of the other?
That sounds pretty on point. I might be misinterpreting PbTA, but IMO to build on what @Paul_T described above, a system in which the player is actively creating the fiction (so for example, no move or tag lists, the player creates them as they need) doesn’t actually satisfy a desire for exploration. Because there are no mechanical nooks and crannies to look under, a space of infinite possibility is also infinitely empty until a player puts stuff into it.
It explains why I tend to dislike games where character creation is so open, you don’t have any creative constraints to get you started. That’s different than a “build anything you want” system that gives you a ton of toys and toggles to use. I’m talking more about purely open-ended systems that just say “Hey, here are some rules. Go knock yourself out.”
@Paul_T mentioned that out of the various things you might enjoy explore the system (aka the rules) is one, the fiction is another.
I was arguing that PbtA were never meant to satisfy the desire to explore the rules, but rather to explore the fiction. Maybe even more on point could be explore a genre.
Again I believe you are mixing up the two things that were identified in the previous couple of posts.
Because there are no mechanical nooks and crannies to look underyou don’t get much System to explore.
…while…
A space of infinite possibility, infinitely empty until a player puts stuff into itis preferred by many people that like to explore whatever fiction they (and their friends) come up with, in the scope of a particular genre.
In the end, if you really like running, you’ll probably enjoy football more than darts, but both games are fine.
I don’t think anyone is asking for a lack of emergent outcomes to explore later in play. People are just suggesting that resolving something with six die rolls instead of one, and lots of modifiers instead of a few isn’t really what they are looking for. Truthfully, I think “emergent outcomes to explore” is completely outside the scope of this discussion – it happens in most games, regardless of mechanics.
Otherwise, I agree with the idea of “System exploration” but I don’t see it as missing from PbtA games – you’ve got an entire sheet covered in stuff that’s just saying “You could choose ME next time you advance…!” and when that gets old, there are rather a lot of playbooks to explore.
Also in terms of system exploration, I suspect that this is a slightly dangerous way to build a game – partly because of splat creep, but also because if you train your players to constantly be looking forward to the next advance, it becomes hard to enjoy what they’ve already got. You see this in people who can’t seem to settle on the same character for more than a few sessions in various crunchy games, because they’re desperate to try out some “new build.”
Yes, from what I discovered, when collecting game design theory, there are several WHATs to explore within a game: fiction, meaning (ex. “premise” in Forge), mechanics, setting, group (people you play with).
But Exploration is just one of five WHY you play. You also have Expression, Competition, Sensation, and Destruction, and combine all these with the WHATs. Not every game needs to contain all of these, but most contains a percentage of a few of these combinations.
For me the classic mechanics heavy game is RuneQuest. Coming to it from D&D in the early 80s, it was a revelation. The combat mechanics attempt to closely simulate hand to hand melee combat. You have both an attack skill with your weapon, and a parry skill. TheRe are five levels of success on a D100 roll. Critical hit, special success, success, fail and fumble. Armour subtracts from damage. Each hit location (arm, head, abdomen, etc) has hit points, it’s own armour and different effects if reduced to zero HP. A hit can ‘impale’ with the weapon stuck in the wound. It gives combat a really visceral, immediate feel.
Magic is equally rich and expressive. Protection spells act like magical armour, there are various types of heal spells, but there are also spirits that can attack you psychically and spells to enhance and defend in spirit combat. Magic and spirits add two extra dimensions to the field of conflict that enrich the game in a way I’ve never seen executed as well in any other game.
The down side of all this is that the game is very intimidating mechanically. The latest edition is an awesome thing of beauty, both physically and in content, but the mechanics are full of edge cases that are ambiguous and hard to reason about. I’d love, love, love to play or run a campaign with a crew of RQ nerds. It would be one of the high points of my gaming experience, but the chance of doing that are close to zero.
So I’m working on a PBTA Hack for playing in Glorantha. I’m hoping that PBTA has the flexibility that I need to express the things I love about RQ and Glorantha in a much more digestible and playable set of mechanics.
So I’ve still been mulling this over. I think the honerable @calris did an excellent job, but I still felt there was some thread lacking. Lately I’ve been ramping up on Ars Magica, trying to get a PBP together. I’ve been mainlining sourcebooks (4 of 14 down to go!) and during the process I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. What do I enjoy? What do I not enjoy? And the key piece: why?!
I’m going to start by responding to his post, but I had a bit of an epiphany and that’ll be at the end.
I think there is something to this. I think this is related to some of the other points below, and some points others have made. Giving things mechanical weight serves many purposes: it makes them special, it makes them customizable, it creates space for system mastery, and it makes them comparable. Comparability I think is extremely important and not covered here…player actions exist in comparison with each in a given scene, and also with themselves across time. Ars Magica is a good example here: it has a very general system for magic which lets you construct spells and then converts it to a level with various requirements. In this way there is a huge amount of variation, but it’s comparable – it’s not arbitrary. I think not being arbitrary is a key aspect of crunchy systems – yes there is also GM fiat, but the nature of that fiat is very different (this has to do with the epiphany later). Regardless, a more detailed rule system makes actions comparable. Magic cast now and in the future will be handled in the same way…whereas in a PbtA, there can be pretty significant changes depending on the nature of the narrative in a given moment. It depends on the move, and I’m talking broad strokes here. In a PbtA, in one scene a mook might be very threatening, and in another it might be disposable – depending on the scene. Of course different tables care different amounts about this. But still, clearer rules handling things ensures that these things are meaningful across characters and across time. It creates consistency, which imo gives things more meaning. I’m getting an Urban Shadows game off the ground right now and I love the setting and the system, but I really really dislike that enemy’s attacking the player is basically just the GMs call. This ruins comparability, even if the GM is trying. Rules are essentially the physics of the world, and with looser rules, the physics of every scene can be dramatically different. Whether that is desirable of course varies.
I think there is something to this, but I think there are two takes. One is that the mechanics themselves are satisfying, which is true to a point (when elegant), but in my opinion it’s that it expands the decision space. Ironically, when you can do anything…often there is sort of a revision to the mean, or to the absurd. In my experience with open ended systems people generally “play it straight,” or they really lean into the absurd, since the decision space is often so so wide. But when there are rules to define thievery in great detail, you get the benefit of that decision space but without the degeneracy. This relates to your point that rules can sometimes even foster creativity in this way, since by defining this system people can sort of frame there creativity in it.
I think this is related to 1, I think it is true to some degree, but for me, not quite it.
I think this is related to me comment on #2. Wide decision spaces within a well considered framework can be the best of both worlds: a wide, interesting space, but ideally constructed with balance or at least tradeoffs in mind. In PbtA tradeoffs are generally narrative rather than mechanical.
This can definitely be satisfying, though for me personally I think it’s the verisimilitude, the comparability, and the gravity that mechanics give.
This for me I think is very important, though nailing it is hard. But ironically, sometimes being purely narrative can end up creating very “samey” stories, because players have their own tendencies and biases, and end up framing conflict in identical ways. A mechanical system can shortcut that, because they have to figure out how to frame their actions, and the mechanics may provide complications etc. In a space game, for example, in a PbtA, whether the ship has issues or not may be a narrative decision…but if you have rules for space travel, then even during a scene about something else entirely, maybe the ship has issues and now you have to deal with that too (of course a space based PbtA may have rules for this, but PbtA tends to have rules for very specific things then nothing for anything else). This can provide sort of an extra layer to games that I personally enjoy. PbtA is all about leaning into the narrative and sort of throwing out everything else…but having perpendicular elements can enhance the experience, because it makes it feel like this world exists beyond the characters. Which I think goes back to the physics points: well done rules can make things feel more “objective” rather than driven by GM fiat.
This leads to the epiphany: a well done crunchy systems “launders” GM fiat…it provides layers of removal between the arbitrary decisions GMs have to make in most RPGs, and the influence they have on the game. This can make things feel more objective and much less arbitrary (and fuel comparability and immersion).
One thing I don’t like in many PbtA games is that if an enemy attacks, it just hits and the GM chooses how much damage. All GM action is arbitrary, but the closer it gets to the core of the characters, the less satisfying it feels.
Compare this to Dnd, where the arbitrariness is in the placement of the enemy at all. That feels acceptable as it’s part of the concept of the gaming experience. After that though, the game mechanics take over. Of course, choosing how to play said enemies can involve some arbitrariness, but it feels much different than “hrm I guess the enemy hits you now and you take 3 points.”
But I think there is something to this beyond just combat. It’s sort of…the mechanics can give leverage to the arbitrariness of the GM. More complex systems require less arbitrariness, which seeds the functioning of the world. This can thus make the world feel much richer, in a sort of big bang way. This is opposed to the more “biblical” PbtA style, biblical in the sense that the GM is constantly “interceding” in the world via fiat…oh that enemy just hits you and does 2 damage. That sucks! “But last time they didn’t hit me for two actions!” “Last time was different!”
Looking stuff up in tables can be time consuming and annoying, but in a sense every time you do that, that’s an arbitrary decision the GM didn’t have to make. Which makes things feel more satisfying. It’s the difference between poker and baccarat. In poker, the cards are what they are, but skill determines the winner. In baccarat, the winner is determined the second the deck is shuffled and the players sit down.
A lot of your issues with “PbtA” are confusing to me – to the point where it feels more like you are criticizing a hypothetical PbtA game with no additional instrumentation at all (Like some sort of PbtA Lasers & Feelings) rather than an actual PbtA game. I certainly do not feel that “PbtA is all about leaning into the narrative and sort of throwing out everything else” is an accurate statement, and that makes it hard for me to look at the rest of your commentary objectively. Which PbtA games did you play? Did you run them? Play in them? Because statements like this make me feel like you are talking more about “the PbtA I read about on the internet” than “The PbtA I ran for my group last week.”. Which is to say nothing of the dangers of lumping “PbtA” together into one bucket, but I think we’re long past that point already.
I also feel like the concern for “arbitraryness” in combat is overplayed – the GM doesn’t decide that an enemy hits someone in any PbtA game I have played. Much like D&D, the GM decides that “the monster” is attacking someone… though unlike D&D, the results aren’t based on a die roll by the GM but rather, it’s up to the player to decide how they handle being attacked, and whether they end up taking damage is usually the result of their die roll instead. Still, the basic formula is the same: GM chooses a target for an attack, and the results of said attack are interpreted via a die roll. PbtA games have the additional step of “How do you deal with this?” in between the two, and the “owner” of the die roll changes, but neither of these adds any additional arbitraryness to the process.
Indeed, I feel like you would have to get substantially more crunchy than D&D to remove this “arbitrary” factor from the game, and to my knowledge, few to no games do so. For example, in D&D, there is very little to keep the monsters from all “focus firing” on one PC to clobber them quickly. It’s probably considered bad form in a lot of circles, but it’s almost entirely up to the GM, subject to the limits of, maybe, the grid. But it’s also generally just considered a good idea to have monsters behave in a fashion that makes sense. “You hit this one really hard last turn, Fighter, so it’s coming for you, but the one next to it is done trying to get through your plate mail and is going to turn on the rogue.” And to me, this is very, very similar to how PbtA handles combat – the GM can make whatever arbitrary decisions they like about how things act, but really, the “right” way to do it is the way that makes sense – sure, D&D can force you to count square, or provide other hard limits on the number of melee opponents that can pile onto one person, but none of these things address your fundamental complaint. The game mechanics in D&D certainly do not “take over” from the GM after encounter design – the GM still has to play the monsters.
Lastly, I feel like that a PbtA GM should basically never be saying “I guess it hits you and you take 3 damage.” That’s a PbtA fail on several different levels, unless the preceding conversation was “The drake is about to bite you – it’s creeping up on the side and getting ready to pounce.” followed by “I ignore it and continue the ritual.”
This example is directly from the urban shadows core rules. And yes I mean they do suggest sort of having the rhythm of fighting be related to player actions, but they themselves in the rules emphasize that it’s all up to GM discretion.
My experience with PbtA is not extensive, but it’s not non-existent. Mainly dungeon world, some space wurm and unicorn, some urban shadows. Obviously there are a spectrum of games.
Obviously any game has GM arbitrariness, but certain forms of arbitrariness “feel” more arbitrary than others.
Do you know where in the Urban Shadows rules that is? Because this feels like something that needs more context, and I’d like to look it up.
I think many games do a good job of disguising the fact that they are arbitrary, but that relatively few of them actually reduce the amount of arbitraryness. For example, games with difficulty level charts for target numbers can “feel” less arbitrary, but upon close inspection, it’s completely up to the GM what number is actually rolled against, regardless of what the chart says.
P193 inflict harm. This is sort of narrative agnostic, but the rules go more into it later
P212
“Eventually, some of your NPCs will decide that the only way to deal with the PCs is to hurt or kill them. Since one of your moves is inflict harm, you’re free to hit the PCs with harm whenever it’s appropriate in the fiction, even to the point that the NPCs kill the PCs. That said, you want to set up the punch before you follow through with harm; no player should ever be surprised that an NPC is stomping on their character’s face.”
“Conflicts move fluidly between characters. One side makes a move; the other side responds. This isn’t a hard and fast back and forth, though. Some- times you might make several moves before the PCs get to react, especially if they’re hitting on 7-9s and making tough choices.”
I mean, I really like urban shadows. And it definitely has very rough guidelines more or less in line with what you said: harm should come as the result of the narrative. But it stresses that it’s pure GM Fiat. Sometimes it a back and forth, sometimes it’s not! “If they’re hitting 7-9s and Makin tough choices” is not a mechanic, it’s a fairly arbitrary guideline avoided competent by systems with more robust combat rules.
I mean look at the examples from page 193
“You hear the crack of a sniper rifle from a nearby apartment complex. You turn to look for the source when Kozlov’s head snaps back and he crumples to the ground. Shit. You can tell right away that he’s not breathing. What do you do?”
“As it leaps at you, you level the shotgun at the first demon, inflicting 3-harm. The blast rips through its chest knocking it to the ground. A second demon grabs your shoulder and lifts you off your feet, throwing you into the wall across the room with superhuman strength. Mark 2-harm. The demon starts to march toward you, undeterred by your shotgun. What do you do?”
For the first, the GM is choosing to unilaterally off an NPC. Of course in urban shadows NPCs are fragile in this way (to drive drama), and before this scene the GM would likely have broadcasted the dangers, but still.
In the second example, the second demon’s actions are dramatic, but again, totally dramatic. Why can it throw you so easily? In other cases will demons be so potent?
Again, I don’t think these are egregious per se, but they emphasize to me the very arbitrary nature of combat. Sometimes you off the bad guy in one hit. Sometimes they throw you back. Sometimes they off your NPC partner in one blow (likely depending on if there is plot armor or not). And if “things are tough,” maybe they’ll get a couple of blows off. This is very very different than deciding who the gnolls attack in DND combat.
Respectfully, I disagree that any of that is arbitrary except maybe “Are demons strong enough to do that” which is a thing that is established once, and then stuck to. To me, "no player should ever be surprised that an NPC is stomping on their character’s face.” is “Don’t be arbitrary, stick to the rules.”
I wish you’d avoid using terms like “competent” in these sorts of comparisons. What is “arbitrary” about “They rolled a 7-9”?
How is it not arbitrary? It’s all completely GM discretion. “The NPC is dead now — what do you do?”
Compare these to what it’d be in dnd (I don’t choose that because it’s good but because it’s a reference everyone knows). In the sniper case, there’d certainly be a roll involved, with a chance to survive. Maybe a small chance but still a chance. Maybe a perception roll to see if the sniper gets advantage or not.
In the demon case, they’d have to roll to see if they can successfully throw you or not. In this example, the gm just decided that they can successfully throw the character because it made for a good scene.
And the 7-9 thing is just a guideline, not a mechanic. It’s not arbitrary in the sense that it’s without a logic, so maybe arbitrary is not the right word. But it is not mechanically driven, and will certainly vary a lot between situations. If the number of attacks the demon gets is purely a judgement call on the perceived level of success of the players, that is a level of fiat that is generally not present in many more developed combat systems.
I think at this point our expectations are too different for me to continue here. I disagree with how you suggest handling this situation in D&D for a variety of reasons, and I certainly can’t agree that “you rolled a 7-9 so bad things happen” is “not mechanically driven”; So I think we’re not going to find any common ground without going back to try to build it from base principles, which doesn’t serve this discussion.
Sorry to have dragged this down a rat hole that didn’t go anywhere.
I think the point being made is that this GM discretion is not necessarily more arbitrary. For example, a MC decides, you take 1 harm from creature X after the player rolled a 6- is not more arbitrary than, I rolled a hit as GM and roll damage die of 1d8. Both are completely arbitrary. In the case of take 1 harm though, the MC knows if the PC is going down or not whereas a GM does not thanks to the randomness of dice? It actually seems less arbitrary to assign harm this way but certainly there is more GM control / fiat.
There is a legitimate and wide spectrum of how much room a GM (or any player) has to apply dramatic choice to a fictional situation. Every game might occupy one (or more!) points along this spectrum.
PbtA games depend heavily on a particular approach to play and principled decision making by the GM. Very true. And if the GM’s decision making isn’t principled, it’s going to feel very arbitrary indeed.
At the (other) far end of this spectrum, we’d end up with something like a board game: where the “GM” or game system has no room at all for dramatic coordination, instead operating entirely on rules. You input your choices and it spits out an outcome.
I know some people who find D&D combat too arbitrary and play it this way: there is an algorithm which determines who each monster attacks, instead of the GM being allowed to decide. In their view, this removes an unnecessarily arbitrary decision point from the game, making it more “fair” and more “real”.
There are advantages and disadvantages to pretty much any point along that spectrum. To what degree are the procedures of play an active force or participant at the table? How much room is left for us to actually “play” and express ourselves?
But, more importantly, how do those elements align with what we’re trying to get out of the game? If the lacunae in the system line up with the things we wish to express or challenge ourselves, it’s fun. If not, it’s frustrating.
For instance, one person might (legitimately) say that Dungeon World is too loose and arbitrary to feel interesting in a competitive form of combat. Fair! But another might point to the rules for disarming traps and overland travel and say that the rules are too strict and codified, not leaving any room for player ingenuity or actual problem solving. So it goes.
Very good points. I think the use of the word “arbitrary” is indeed a misnomer for how we describe the feel of gameplay. After all, the entire game is arbitrary!
I can’t think of labels right now, but it seems the discussion is coming from two different interpretations of what constitutes “random” and what is “determined”. One player may say that to-hit rolls and damage from dice is random while another might say it is determined. Same goes for a damage value assigned by the GM. It depends on if you value the narrative emerging from uncontrolled events (like dice, cards, tables) or from the call and response of rational actors (other players, the GM, group vote, etc). Neither is the one true way, but if you have diametrically opposite interpretations of how those mechanics feel you’re not going to come to a mutual understanding.
I don’t think we should be holding up “damage rolls” vs “damage value being assigned by the GM” as somehow opposites – after all, where does that damage die # come from? Someone made it up. If it wasn’t the GM, it might as well have been.
And at that point, you’re down to “Do you want your game with a side of variance?” which is neither more complex nor more simple nor more arbitrary nor more complete, it just is.
That is what I was trying to communicate. I phrased them as “opposites” not in terms of their mechanical characteristics, but in terms of how they will feel to different players. A player heavily invested in sandbox games will (probably) view randomly generated outcomes as a “structured” narrative in the sense that the makeup of the table colors the results. They would (probably) think a system in which the GM is given full fiat on outcomes “random and arbitrary” while a player heavily invested in narrative style games would (probably) feel that way tables and hexcrawl is “random and arbitrary” because there is no actual driver for the narrative.
