This is still too abstract for me to follow. Are you trying to have an OSR game where players have character moves to add setting content ? That would be a challenge !
Here’s an BoB explanation of https://itch.io/t/424217/what-is-belonging-outside-belonging . I didn’t know it was a dogma-like movement, always thought it was a game.
WizardThiefFighter’s Thoughts on GMing vs? Playing
Finished reading the two first articles and what Luka says resonates with me. I’ve gone down a similar path for the last years. It’s not a movement, it’s just the natural path a creative but lazy designer will take when they discover they have less and less time/energy to waste in prep and their group experience with different games makes them able to create, understand and adapt quickly to new, improvised house rules.
Like, I also ended up hacking microscope and coming up with my own 8-step worldbuilding procedure, brainstorming with the players in 30 min or less. I mountain-witch the players back and forth to get them come up with ideas for me. I get them to express their expectations of every choice they take, then build upon those and take it a step further. I’d also like 5e more if encounters weren’t so hard to calculate. Like, give me a list of what each monster can do and a rule to escalate them to any party level. Tell me if it’s edible, valuable, if it can be tamed and what could go wrong with that. That’s way more interesting than a bunch of statistics I can’t show the players or it will spoil their fun.
Perhaps the thing is that Luka is still, like me, trying to grasp something he can’t totally put a finger on. Whenever we explain it people tell us “GMless doesn’t work like that” and we reply “of course, what I want isn’t GMless”. Which leaves everyone as puzzled as us.
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I’m not trying to come up with a game system at all nor am I necessarily concerned with labels like “OSR” and “PbtA” — it’s definitely an abstract exploration of what playing a roleplaying game is; what are its components, the variables that make up the formula? Is it useful to dismantle binaries in game settings (GM vs player) and how, then, does that affect the game itself?
I’ve seen that post about BoB, but, while that explains that theory behind it, BoB is used now to refer to a specific kind of mechanical system, like PbtA (and PbtA definitely has its theoretical underpinning, usually reproduced through principles).
BoB came from Dream Askew/Dream Apart and those games have a chapter on how to create your own BoB games, but that SRD, if you will, isn’t available outside of that product.
Basically, BoB games do not have a GM and do not have dice rolls, which eliminates the need for an GM entirely since there is no third party (i.e. random dice without agency) to interpret. This supports the theoretical foundation of BoB because it eliminates the hierarchical power structure of “traditional” RPGs and equitably (re)distributes authorial control of the narrative to all players, to include setting elements (which, for the purposes of BoB, include traditionally non-player characters).
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Thank you, I can picture better where you’re at.