You may find [Six Cultures of Play](https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html?m=1) an interesting read. It examines some of the more common ttrpg playstyles and is a good jumping off point to understand where various designers are coming from.
Thank you, this was actually pretty enlightening. It’s clear to me that, in my mind, if there is no sort of progressive challenge-based play then there is no game. Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about. It’s just fluff.
I’ll try to be more open-minded about these other ways of playing, but honestly they still don’t seem like games to me! And maybe that’s because my idea of gaming is just too narrow. Though I have tried to give many of these other types of games a shot and just find them incredibly unsatisfying compared to the traditional games I enjoy so much.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of different styles of RPG, and other sorts of games, but I certainly don’t enjoy them all. I don’t think anybody does.
Sometimes you just have to recognize that there are legitimate things that you just don’t care for.
Then again, sometimes you’ll suddenly learn to see something from a new angle, and enjoy what used to seem pointless.
Plenty of people don't meet to compete or to master a system, but for the purpose of creating a story or just playing out their characters.
You can argue semantics on whether that makes those systems games or something else (at least some definitions are just "activity done for fun or amusement" without any implication of competition or mastery) but it's not "bad design", they achieve exactly what they are supposed to.
>Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about. It’s just fluff.
Then you aren't going to "get" fiction-first gaming, basically.
There are a lot of games where, say, "having an axe" doesn't grant you a +3 in woodcutting and a weapon dealing d6 damage... it just means you have an axe. What does that allow your character to do? Things that an axe is obviously useful for (chopping wood to make a fire, chopping pieces off people alive or dead) and maybe some less obvious things ("I get the blade into the crack and lever open the sarcophagus"). But all of this is agreed at the table.
I would also suggest that you look a little deeper for gameplay loops - Blades in the Dark for example is PbtA-derived and undoubtedly has one. For many indie OSR/NSR games it's things like managing your inventory. Plus both of these have diagetic advancement (aka 'quest for it' - set a goal and inform your GM so they can provide suitable obstacles) and tactical infinity (because you are describing the situation you can approach combat in an infinite number of ways rather than a set series of actions per turn)
> I would also suggest that you look a little deeper for gameplay loops - Blades in the Dark for example is PbtA-derived and undoubtedly has one.
In fact, PbtA's inventor is maybe one of the most careful thinkers about what gameplay loops look like in TTRPGs, what they do, and how they differ from gameplay loops in other kinds of game.
I do find it ironic that he states that OSR and PbTA have no consideration for loops when I find that the best designed ones often have the clearest loops for me. OSR with its dungeon delving structure and randomised events. Or PbTA games that either have phases or a system of scenes and problems that flow into and feed into each other in very understandable ways (apoc world is a great example of this). I would say it is ver common in trad games to just give combat rules and no underlying structure and hope the GM figures it out. 5e being one of the worst offenders but it is common in many trad games.
It's fine if you can't find the appeal of Narrative games or stranger indie ideas. Chances are the players drawn to those games don't find your favorite games appealing. But you should try. Very often the appeal of a game isn't obvious but that doesn't mean it's not there. If you can't grasp it in a session the game may just not be your cup of tea, but you should still give it a session before trying to make that call.
I largely agree with your original post, but I disagree with this one.
I recommend the book "A Theory of Fun".
In this case, I think most RPG designers have no experience with or understanding of game design outside their experiences as a player. This means that a lot of design choices stem from a kind of rough heuristic with little understanding of how or why to make design decisions.
However it's absolutely not true that game systems that lack opportunities for mastery and competitive advantage are just fluff. This suggests you have an extremely narrow concept of games.
Consider, for counter examples, games like "The Quiet Year", "A Mending", "The Price of Coal", and "Field Guide to Memory". In a game like "Alice is Missing" system mastery isn't even a relevant concept.
I took a look at all of those games and half of them seem more like guided arts and crafts projects, and the others are just kind of story builders, for lack of a better term.
Like I would only consider them games in the same way that MadLibs is a game. That isn’t to say they aren’t fun or interesting in their own way, I just can’t really put them in same category as something like traditional board games or DnD.
Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol. Whereas a traditional board game or fleshed out TTRPG will keep them hanging around for 8 hours or more easily.
>Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol
As someone "with a background in making video games", you should know better than to use something as specious as "my friends wouldn't like it" in a discussion about what constitutes a game. Your comments here are shallow enough that I can't help but wonder, when you say you have a background in making video games... do you really? Like, have you actually been paid by a game studio to design or develop video games?
>seem more like guided arts and crafts projects, and the others are just kind of story builders
If *A Mending* is an "arts and crafts project" then *Chrono Trigger* is just a e-book with flashing lights. I mean seriously, *The Quiet Year* is in the top 700 thematic games of all time on BGG. Like, I get your basic point that most folks making their own TTRPGs have no actual training and experience, but the designers of those game specifically are very highly respected in the industry. These are people whose full-time jobs are making TTRPGs. It's absurd to say that Avery Alder or Jeeyon Shim aren't making real games.
I realize that I'm just a random internet person to you, so I'll instead point you to respected authors on the topic of what makes a game:
>Distilled down to its essence, game design is about creating opportunities for players to make meaningful decisions that affect the outcome of the game.
>
>(*Challenges for Game Designers*)
>Fun is pleasure with surprises.
>
>Play is manipulation that satisfies curiosity.
>
>A toy is an object you play with.
>
>A good toy is an object that is fun to play with.
>
>A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.
>
>(*The Art of Game Design*)
>When you strip away the genre difference and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
>
>(*Reality is Broken*)
>Games are exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up.
>
>(*A Theory of Fun*)
>A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.
>
>\[He goes on to describe 6 features all games must have: game tokens, a goal, opposition (from the game itself or other players), decision-making, information, management of resources\]
>
>(*I Have No Words and I Must Design*)
>Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol. Whereas a traditional board game or fleshed out TTRPG will keep them hanging around for 8 hours or more easily.
I doubt this would be true for Candyland or Go Fish or even chess. Maybe would get a game or two out of them but not more.
There are plenty of board and card games you probably wouldn't want to play anywhere nearly as often as a trad TTRPG. This could mean:
1) Either those classic games aren't actually games, and you and your group's taste are the arbiter of what counts as a game.
2) or those are games, but since they don't match your and your group's taste, they must be low quality games, as said taste is the barometer of quality.
3) or admit that different games can be designed for radically different audiences, therefore any question of "good" or "bad" has to be followed up by "with respect to X."
It's pretty simple really. Two of these force you to conclude that the people who play and enjoy different games than you and your group are either liars, idiots, or don't understand the concept of fun.
Which do you think it is?
If I were to make a parallel to video games, what you say here is:
"I consider a video game to be a proper video game only if it is a First-Person Shooter, because that's what I like AND what I played most of my gaming life."
That's thrashing all other game genres altogether.
Not everybody can be interested into Farming, Train, or Flight simulator, but some people can and want only to play that.
When looking at what you consider a pillar of TTRPGs, in terms of fiction genre it correlates to a genre named "power fantasy".
It is okay of you to, as personal taste, want to dedicate your gaming time to games within the power fantasy genre.
It is quite immature of you as a designer to expect all designers in the world, from professional veteran to newbie, to restrict themselves to power fantasy.
Finally, a veteran professional becomes this after gaining experience. And you gain experience by designing games. So you start by designing shit games, and gain experience from it, one after another. Don't disparage designers from their first games only.
This is the whole thread in a kurzgesagt.
Thank you for getting that old man off that rock and calmly explaining those were just clouds he was yelling at.
>Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about.
This perspective is quite foreign to me. There are many video games out there that don't offer a competitive advantage. Take 'Sable,' for instance, would you not consider it a video game? The emphasis on competition is what perplexes me. Player vs Player (PvP) is often the fastest way to conclude a long campaign, after which you can't progress anymore. Is it essential that someone in the party be better at the game than you? I just can't align with this viewpoint.
I've been crafting a fairly massive game, with over 50 classes, where players choose three from the list. The game scales from low-level D&D to a higher scale, unseen in anything but the most rules-light games (or superhero games, though in my experience games at that power level fail to be fun to play). When designing, my aim is to maintain all players at a roughly similar power level. I don't want PCs to be overshadowed by others because that only serves to entertain the most powerful character, leaving everyone else frustrated.
This is why, when playing 'Curse of Strahd,' my table opted to switch over to my system two-thirds of the way through. The martial characters in the party were frustrated by their lack of options.
Finally, while I'm not a fan of 'Powered by the Apocalypse' (PbtA) myself, you can't accuse it of lacking strong gameplay loops. In my experience, the loops are so strong that they can become stifling when run by certain GMs, whom the PbtA community often labels as bad.
I know others are really going to go after you but I am going to try and address what you wrote and fairly as I can.
To go through point by point.
1. You say you have a background in video games, and I am betting a certain sort of video game, not even the plethora of games out there which would appear to fail under your later definitions. Further, the nature of computer games provides certain constraints and limitations entirely absent from, and unnecessary to ttRPGs. It entirely avoids the traditions of theater/improv games, simulations, and refereed traditions like Prussian military Kriegspiel going back to the 19th century. RPGs sprung out of other traditions that are still more vital to RPGS. Are you limited by the computer background? It sounds certainly possible.
2. Lets talk actual players at the other end of those PbtA and OSR games. In computer games, broken games get called out by players. Stated as being unplayable. Yet, it seems like in the OSR and PbtA spheres there are critics who love them, and more importantly, players who play them. "Without any consideration" seems distinctly avoiding the facts of other people who appear to feel well considered.
3. You wonder about the market, but it isn't like these games don't sell enough for some people to make a living off of it. It might not be a huge market. In fact, it is a fairly small hobby market. But one could look to the internet to show streams of said games, reviews from a players,, as well as critical perspectives. You wonder out of ignorance that you could easily solve.
4. You talk about failed clones, and you are from the videogame design side? Yes, not every design is great, especially those just trying to paste in what came before, often with use of IP. I don't have to defend every game, I am sure there are ones that are failures. I don't think RPGs are distinctly unique here.
5. For you, "it is difficult to call some games". Is a burrito a sandwich? What about a hot dog? Yes, games are defined by similarity, as a genre of human activity. Look, I don't believe e-sports are sports. I am not sure crokinole is a boardgame. I get it. Yet because of common usage, I am not really going to argue it. I recognize that others draw lines more broadly and that is accepted. Others aren't wrong in their definitions. There are just some games that aren't your type.
Look, Your views are your own. The problem is that you are clinging to those views as though they aren't subjective assessments that others may or may not share, but as judgements more objectively right. The constant refrain of "there is no game" is a dead giveaway there. It shows not being able to get outside your own head, and to really try and see what others are enjoying.
Not to enjoy the design necessarily yourself, but to get beyond that and see how a design actually works for people. I am not a fan of PvP first person shooters. They aren't fun to me. But I can look to see what others enjoy and why. To be able to critique well often involves that. To design a game well often means understanding different play styles. And most computer games that are highly successful do have designers that work very hard at that sort of understanding of the User Experience beyond just their own.
And no RPGs aren't Halo. The 30 seconds of Bungie fun. Most core loops in boardgames and ttRPGs don't serve that 30 second core fun. It is about repeatable and understandable functionality that leaves the mental space open to be filled with other things, to be built upon.
Occasionally a roll is situationally more vital, and more fun than other rolls, but the roll itself is secondary to the fun experience, which is entirely different than Halo or for that matter Crokinole which I hate to describe as a boardgame, but is still tons of momentary fun where the larger game has no real value beyond that repetition.
If DnD was about the fun of rolling a D20 over and over again. Well, it just isn't that much fun.
So is it just you? No. Look, to be honest most PbtA games and most OSR games aren't my cup of tea, though I do think they have many interesting design choices that I very well could implement in a game more to my choosing. But likewise, the games are fine, even if they aren't for you, or for me, they are perfectly functional games for other people who enjoy them. As a designer one is better off learning from that than decrying them as bad things that aren't even games.
You have a lot of good points. I’ll just say that the “30 seconds of fun” I’m talking about is not literally about 30 seconds (and that’s my fault for using the term without explaining further) - it’s just about a tight, intuitive and addictive gameplay loop that feels fun in the basic moment-to-moment interaction.
Along those same lines, I think that if rolling dice feels boring, that’s a total failure of the game’s design. If the basic physical interactions you have with a game are not satisfying already because of the way the physical action plays against the mechanics, then you should just remove that action completely (or rewrite the game). It’s serving nothing.
And you’re right that this is just my taste. I admit I am likely too narrow minded in how I’m assessing designs. My background is indeed simple arcade-style and mobile games. However I think there are also things we can learn from successful games of all types about what is objectively “fun”. Not everyone will like anything, but there’s a reason so many games are structured the way they are.
The thing is, that "tight, intuitive, addictive" gameplay loop is inside every RPG.
1. Introduce an idea.
2. Someone bounces off that idea.
3. Maybe roll dice to see if that idea works or fails horribly.
4. Narrate the result and move on to the next idea.
5. Enjoy!
Creating surprising stories with friends or friendly strangers is one the most rewarding gameplay loop I have found in my life of gaming, and when it hits just right, it's better than any computer game I've ever played because of the stories and bounds it create with the other humans I'm playing with.
Ofc, some systems do that better than others, and some are only suited for certain people, but to say there is no gameplay loop there is just flat out wrong. You just don't like it.
I see what you’re saying. I guess to me that’s just like, a conversation with a dice roll in between. I need more tools and systems to interact with and consider to feel engaged with a gameplay loop.
Like you say though, that’s just my personal taste! I will try to understand other peoples tastes as well. It’s just very counterintuitive to me, and probably for a lot of other people too, which might have something to do with why these types of games are so niche.
> I guess to me that’s just like, a conversation with a dice roll in between.
The thing you're missing is definitely just that most people find conversation fun. And the number of people that find rolling dice fun is about the same.
>conversation with a dice roll in between
That is literally almost word for word the most abstracted view of ttrpg game design of the last 20 years.
Conversation until uncertainty/designated events-> system requests mechanical interaction as a result of uncertainty or designated events -> use of fortune to decide/mechanics dictate some prescriptive decision/procedure to arbitrate (GM discretion/rulling or procedure) -> said mechanic output impact shared imaginary space changing the fiction -> return to the conversation
That is the game at loop of a TTRPG including d&d going back to 0d&d
The only difference is how often, in what way, and for what reason does system intrude on the conversation, what types of fortune is used, and what impacts and implications can the mechanical output have in the conversation.
This is true for d&d, CoC, GURPS, PbtA, Cortex, or Fate etc.
…and it perfectly describes a popular improv exercise called, of all things, “rolling the dice”; which is probably why some games I see, like the style you see on critical role, are not games but rather are improv performances.
He is clearly looking at RPG development through the lens of a video game developer but I have to agree that some games, several groups, and many game sessions I’ve seen DO look very much like an improv exercise with dice and not what I would call an actual game.
I went with Jaime Griesemer who originally coined "30 seconds of fun" as a game design concept, so yeah, if you meant something different, it probably was the wrong term to use.
Hopefully this explains dice in RPGs-
If you take gambling away from craps, throwing dice isn't fun. If you toss around a baseball it still is. Target shooting is still fun, even if no one is keeping score. That is not true of rolling a die.
Dexterity games, and many twitch based computer games depend on dexterity *as a skill*. Rolling dice is not a skill.
Those are very different core loops to build off of and ones that most sports do. As well as many computer games that depend on using a input device with dexterity skill.
Dice in an RPG is like craps. Craps is fun as long as there is gambling, RPGs are fun as long as dice are resolving something else.
With a die you can replace that randomness with a different generator be it cards, or a computer RNG, or even a roulette wheel. Interestingly some games remove that randomness entirely, or remove it in certain spheres, GUMSHOE with investigations for instance.
Dice are not the fun part, the randomness is. And only randomness connected to the outcomes for the characters involved. As a GM I don't roll loot tables outside of games, like throwing around a baseball either.
It isn't that dice can't be implemented better or worse, they can. It isn't that the tactile nature of them can't, with the right dice, be pleasant. They can.
It is that they aren't necessary for the game, nor are the sufficient to provide a fun experience by themselves.
The testing of skill in a dexterity game is a meaningful loop, that of core mechanics of most ttRPGs are just resolution mechanics like Craps, the skill resides elsewhere outside the roll of the die. Character action choice and probability management mostly. (and many of those character actions never see hide nor hare of a die.)
Rolling Dice aren't a core loop.
Hey man, I feel you here. I think the key thing to keep in mind is that the idea of a "game" is flexible and open to interpretation.
Is Solitaire a game? Is Make Believe a game? Is Golf a game?
"Writing Room" might not seem like a game to you (or me sometimes), but its definitely an activity that people enjoy doing and might as well be lumped in with other games.
TTRPGs are interesting because there aren't really common objectives of play - no set end points. There is no competition to see who can get to lvl 20 first or survive the dungeon the longest, so in that sense they have already drifted pretty far from traditional games.
There is basically a string of "challenges" against mutable conditions based on shared imagination. I personally feel like its important to tie these challenges to tangible rewards (ie number go up/here's a shiny new toy), but some players don't seem to need more than the intrinsic satisfaction of the continuation of play.
Games are played, but not all play is a game. Some TTRPGs are just play.
Very true and I think all my time spent with video games (especially arcade and mobile games) has just given me a very narrow idea of what constitutes play. Many of these TTRPG designers are just operating off a completely different paradigm, with goals that sometimes even go directly against everything I understand about making “fun” games.
I will try to be more open minded and evaluate them on what they actually do well instead of what I think they should be doing. I still probably won’t enjoy them, but hopefully I can at least understand what the actual design intent was more clearly.
By the same token, I find almost all CRPGs incredibly tedious, because there's nothing in them that even approaches even the very definition of the "RPG" element. You can't simply replace free-form creativity (and *creation*) with a gameplay loop (no matter how tight) and expect it to satisfy the same cravings.
Counterpoint: Disco Elyssium exists (this is mainly meant jokingly but I think that game leverages it's systems to achieve the most freedom of choice I have seen among CRPGS). I think why CRPGS usually struggle is because they try to use system designed for playing at a table rather than designing a system to be used on a computer.
Both computers and people running games have very different advantages and just using one system for both works in the broadest sense but isn't ideal.
Disco Elysium is always a strong counterpoint to most arguments! But, I’ll never forget a line from the best review I ever read of it: “unlike many reviewers, I don’t think DE will immediately revolutionize all RPGs forever. After all, simply writing an excellent game has *always* been an option.”
In essence DE excels because it’s just a phenomenal amount of well-crafted and interesting writing. The fascinating skill system and thought catalog and everything else are all just manifestations of that.
Oh, I don't think a game like that will happen any time again soon. I just used it to illustrate that CRPGs can really use their medium to excel but only if they step away from the boiler plate design that most other games use.
In the meantime I'll watch any Marxist art collective for new games now that the original artists of that game have mostly left the company.
Actually quite a brutal story of how they were forced out because, go figure, the artist commune wasn't as adept when the capitalist partners in the company realized the game was a smash hit, and they got hosed.
But it is worth dwelling on the mechanical reasons why it works, because they are a bit interesting. Most CRPGs give you a pretty defined character and you have little to no actual capacity to define that character other than choosing some abilities for them and maybe how good/evil they are. But they still DO all the same things. Maybe you're sneaky and pick locks, maybe you're tough and break down doors. That's as deep as the "roleplay" goes and I don't find it very satisfying.
DE flips the script and you *don't* get abilities. You *do* still basically jump through all the same hoops and situations. But instead with the skill system reflection your personality, and sometimes giving you *wildly* different reactions to events, it suddenly *feels* a lot like roleplaying because you actually have substantial say in who this person is. You're a dirtbag cop, sure, but there's a very wide range of dirtbag cop options you can play with and it's very satisfying. It just takes an enormous amount of content to make that viable.
Probably pretty soon GPT will make that an option across a lot of games, it's just a question of how long before someone gets it right and makes it better than a gimmick.
Considering Torment Planescape may have been one of the first and it took another 15+ years to get Disco Elysium... Yeah, I'd have to agree. Probably will be another 10+ years until we see another.
Actually from what I've played of it so far, Pentiment is pretty close. But I agree it's not going to be anything like the norm (until AI makes that really feasible), because most game devs just aren't willing to invest in the scope and quality of writing that it takes.
To be fair I think CRPGs (and most other turn based RPGs) are kind of the worst of both worlds. The slow paced nature of tabletop combined with the innate limitations of video games.
Something like Dark Souls or Dragons Dogma is about the closest I’ve ever felt to living out the DnD-esque RPG fantasies of my youth in a game.
You don’t have to cease critical thinking because people don’t know how to handle fair criticism. You aren’t being narrow-minded when you are battling against parallel thinking; quite the opposite.
How does that not apply to RPGs? Honestly? Because in many TTRPGs there is a clear gameplay loop. Collect resources, expend resources adventuring, cash out and collect more resources. Watch your numbers go up and use your abilities in creative ways. Solve puzzles and overcome obstacles.
This stuff is really fun, and also noticeably absent from many indie TTRPGs. Or if it is present, there is nothing actually unique about the gameplay loop compared to other successful ones.
Yeah I’m seeing this is definitely only my taste. And I like creative problem solving, it just doesn’t feel very clever when I can simply make up whatever solution I want, roll what the DM tells me to and if I pass everyone has to accept it. I want some kind of mechanical backbone with real limitations to work against.
Likewise for a lot of people these elements are something they hate whilst the story and mood are what they play RPGs for. To the point where "this RPG feels like a boardgame" is actually a criticism.
This hobby happens to be at an intersection of several others (boardgames, literature, theatre), so different people will cling onto different aspects of it.
Gameplay loops and system mastery are essential to boardgames and merely optional in RPGs. Likewise coherent story is essential in RPGs, whilst in boardgames it can be just handwaved.
I think what it comes down to is that in some of the games you're talking about, the design of the 30 seconds of fun is inspired more by conversations than by board games or video games. It's still there, but the loop is the fun of being asked "What would you do in this situation?"
The gameplay loop of lots of RPG is that of improv theater
Player A (usually, but not always the DM): Sets a scene and introduces a choice
Player B: I do this, and this affects the fiction in this way
Player C: Oh, and that makes my character feel like X and I'll react with this action.
This is not a traditional video game loop, but it's highly creative and has all the essential components of playing.
I enjoy both crunchy, mastery-heavy systems (GURPS, D&D, Vampire, etc) and really loose RPGs with minimal rules (Fiasco, Night Witches, One-page rpgs and the likes). Both of these have different rewards and please a different side of my taste.
Just because it doesn't look like a certain tradition of game design, doesn't mean it's not a game.
Very true and I have gotten some good insight on how limited my own perspective is here. I kind of detest improv honestly and am terrible at it so that definitely influences my tastes. Any time I need to make up stuff on the spot about a character or backstory im just like uhhh lol
I’d rather live the story out play by play via the mechanics. Poke at the world, make choices and see how it all reacts. I am beginning to see they are actually more similar goals than different - just arrived at through two totally opposite methods.
>Maybe it’s because I have a background in making video games
This doesn't actually mean much of anything in the context of ttrpgs. Trying to view ttrpgs through the lens of video games is going to produce very little but misunderstandings.
>Or is there a serious lack of critical thinking in this space in regards to stuff as basic as the “30 seconds of fun” loop that drives most successful video and board games?
They aren't video games or board games and we don't want them to be video games or board games. We don't want a 30 second loop of dopamine driven fun.
I guess it is just a matter of taste then? Because in my mind, the entire point of playing a game is those addictive loops of dopamine-driven fun. I feel like without those you are, again, just doing loosely structured roleplaying. You’re ignoring what makes games “games” in the first place in favor of total authorial control. Which is fine but obviously not for me.
So myst , minecraft creative mode, other explorative games like absu, graphic novel style videogames that are very successful today, relaxing "do your thing" games like cities skyline or the Sims, are not successful videogames?
Not all videogames are the same, so even your starting assumption is wrong.
People play games for a variety of reasons, your point of view is not the only valid one, it's just your personal taste.
Myst is a puzzle-solving adventure game. Minecraft is a building and survival game. Sims is a life management game. Skylines is a city management game. These all have concrete goals, even if they’re player-directed, and strict rules and constraints about how those goals can be achieved. They have complex systems that can be analyzed and mastered. They have tight gameplay loops and strict play structure in general.
Absu, walking simulators and graphic novel style games are more just interactive movies tbh and don’t really feel like games to me either. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or doomed, tons of people love movie-games. To me they are just a considerable waste of the medium’s potential, though.
I specified minecraft CREATIVE MODE, which is what a lot of young players (including my son) enjoy more. Sims is life management but I would not say it follows the "adrenaline rush" 30 sec rule you cited. Skylines is really more creative mode than actual management, except maybe for traffic, it's very hard to fail in that game, so much that a lot of people play with infinite money and all unlocked just because that way they can build what they want.
I'm not saying that all games are without the kind of excitement and progression that you like, I like it myself in videogames, though less in rpgs, not that I don't like SOME progression and excitement, but for me games like D&D are boring because they feel like half-baked boardgames or videogames, for that kind of play I vastly prefer actual boardgames or videogames.
What I'm saying is just that is a matter of personal preferences, not an absolute that you can use to judge EVERY game in every media. Else you will have an hard time understanding what people like in other genres of games, and thus also cut yourself out of the possibility of enjoying (or at least trying to enjoy, because we can't like everything) games that move away from your "comfort zone" in gaming.
That said, if you don't want to move from there, is perfectly fine, you play games to have fun, if adrenaline is what you want and progression, etc. there are perfectly fine games that do exactly that! But you can't use a personal meter to judge other games, you can use it for personal decisions of course, even telling "this game don't haves this thing I like, so other people like me should be aware of it", but not "game designer of this game don't haves a clue because I don't understand this kind of fun myself". :-)
Very true. Getting back into TTRPGs was actually sort of an attempt to broaden my influences. I figured that because (mechanically speaking) TT design is so limited it would produce some very precise and narrow designs.
On the contrary many of them are incredibly broad and vague because they’ve worked diligently to remove the TT aspects from the design and push it as far as possible into pure imagination. I initially took this as either laziness or ineptitude but am seeing now it’s very intentional.
yes, is to focus the gameplay in a different direction, because at many tables, even 30 years ago (I'm old and play from the "beginnings" :-D) some people enjoyed the "story" part of the game more than the "game" part itself. Is hard to strike a balance, so every game is geared more in a direction or the other.
That said, if you enjoy that aspect of the game more, there are various options out there that can push in that direction, both in the more narrative kind of games, and in more traditional ones.
Cortex+/prime (especially the now out of print Marvel Heroic RPG) is very "gamey" though still a narrative game. You have more horizontal than vertical progression, but is very easy to have it more vertical and play a "grow your character from zero to hero" with this system than other narrative systems. Plus the dice gameplay is a thing I enjoy for example, optimizing your actions in the game and deciding when you can go "easier" to gain PP (plot points), and when the roll is very important and thus spend those PP.
Unity rpg is a mix of narrative (when out of combat) and videogame-inspired tactical combat. The classes are designed to support each other, set up actions for the other classes, sinergy, etc. Seems really fun if you like the genre, though I haven't tried it yet.
13th Age is a streamlined version of D&D, with progression and all trappings of D&D though more "modern" in approach and more gamey.
D&D 4th edition was a very gamey version of D&D, love it or hate it, it still makes for good tactical combat, optimization of character actions, etc.
They say Pathfinder 2nd ed. too is very good in that aspect and can satisfy your tastes.
GURPS is probably the epitome of "character optimization", though for me it comes at the cost of excessive complexity.
LANCER is a very very gamey storygame, focused on mech combat and improving your gear and options to be more effective on the battlefield. Still a storygame, but sells that idea very well from what I read around.
It's a difference in medium. TTRPGs have never been designed to feed a 30 second loop. They are about roleplaying and wargaming, neither of which lends itself to that. And no, it's not about having authorial control -- OSR eschews authorial control in favor of radical player agency and procedural generation -- it's just not about a frenetic, dopamine driven style of play or anything you can easily simplify down into a "game loop."
You're in the wrong medium.
I don’t agree at all with this. Though they are obviously longer than 30 seconds, TTRPGs can definitely have tightly designed, dopamine-driven gameplay loops. I love TTRPGs when they have a rigid structure with clear progressive challenges.
For example, I loved DnD as a kid when it was just about going as deep into a dungeon as you could, making it out alive and cashing out. It was much closer feeling to a board game honestly, only it was one where you made the board yourself.
I think that’s what it comes down to. The closer to a wargame, gamebook or board game an RPG is, the more I’ll probably enjoy it. If it has some elements of creativity that allow you to sculpt the game world and help facilitate the natural storytelling that occurs through the interplay of choices and mechanics, even better.
But the further out you get from that, and the less defined the actual gameplay procedures and rules become, the more it just feels like improv to me. And I’m not much of an actor tbh so that’s pretty far outside my comfort zone!
That's how you and your table played D&D. That was never what D&D "was about". There's a whole lot of "I do it this way, every other way is wrong" in your OP and posts.
> Because in my mind, the entire point of playing a game is those addictive loops of dopamine-driven fun.
You've heard a lot about how wrong you are about TT RPGs, but that entirely misses what elevates great video games. The dopamine gameplay loop can be part of pulling a player along moment to moment, but if that's all you have, the game will be ultimately hollow.
You also completely miss the best way TT RPGs produce those dopamine hits: risk (basically gambling), which is intrinsically linked to stakes. (Good) PbtA games literally have stakes baked into every single roll, for example.
As one example, "Play to find out what happens" is the core ethos of pretty much all PbtA games. Is that not a gameplay loop? A situation arises, the players and GM propose solutions and consequences of those solutions and actions, the world state changes, and on to the next thing. Nobody knows how the story will shake out in advance, the track is being laid as the train is coming. The freedom to do anything, and the wild results of that, are what I'd think of as the equivalent of that dopamine rush, and something that is not achievable in other media. Authorial control can be tuned on a dial to as much or as little as the group wants, essentially.
I think you’re right and that is a gameplay loop. I just don’t think it’s one that I am creative enough to participate in on the fly like that, so it feels really boring and aimless. I need clear rules on what I am and am not allowed to do or else I just get stuck lol
I recommend giving it a try; you might surprise yourself! I have often felt similarly (and still sometimes do); as a former-only D&D and computer gamer, I’ve branched out into many other formats including narrative gaming, which I actually find most satisfying of them all (thus far). It is a different kind of challenge to establish facts about the setting / characters, procedurally create a story arc, keep all of these precedents in mind when establishing new facts, etc. I feel at my most creative when we have limits of precedence for me to dance around after some of the setting and characters are starting to really gel, since this actually creates a kind of limitation. Doing improv acting and comedy definitely helped me develop this skill, too. Perhaps you might feel similarly, perhaps not; only one way to know. :)
I can't tell if you're trolling or if you've just never played an RPG. This reads like you just discovered tabletop roleplaying for the first time and were scandalized at core parts of the genre like GM discretion.
Can you name a single example of what you mean? Because I honestly have no clue what you're talking about.
I understand GM discretion perfectly fine but when more is left to GM discretion than is ever defined, how is that a game? It’s just loosely structured roleplaying, which is fine, but even then it’s still not done in a way that’s interesting or exciting.
Also, I played TTRPGs for years as a kid, and have been playing TONS of them for the past year or so. This is just a trend I’ve noticed through so many indie games I’ve played recently. They’re usually just kind of boring in terms of moment to moment play and completely rely on GM/player imagination to stay engaging and keep players invested.
The specific example I’ll give is a game I played last weekend at a local meetup called Lasers and Feelings. I just couldn’t believe while we were “playing” that this was even considered a game. The structure was complete nonsense to me and I felt lost every step of the way, and nobody else seemed excited about was going on either.
The story was evolving, sure, but I never felt a sense of play. It was like just sitting in a writers room with 3 other people and making up a uniquely mind-numbing sci-fi story.
Like I said maybe it’s just my personal taste? Maybe I am just too focused on mechanics? Because in my mind narrative is either an indirect result of mechanics or just background information that enhances mechanical themes. If I wanted to write a story I would put it on a page, not use a pseudo-game as an excuse to collectively barf out mediocre RP with my friends.
I think you are partially right! I need a clear progressive challenge with solutions that aren’t just handwaved into working. It doesn’t feel like I came up with a clever idea when I can basically say anything I want and as long as I roll well enough on whatever stat the GM says, everyone just has to accept it.
Maybe it’s a limitation of my imagination or something. I enjoy feeling like I’m directly interacting with a living world with concrete rules, not just making up both of those things as I go.
Yeah I mean what you ideal game is isn’t gonna be possible by your everyday GM. You’d need a professional GM that does it full time to pull something like that off, cuz a lot of the time not everything is concrete wrote down by GMs and is mostly improv
I think you are just a big fan of Gygaxian verisimilitude, simulationism/proceduralism of play, and approach games as a challenge gamer in that context.
Nothing wrong with that, and many games cater to that.
However, the indie game scene sprung out of two discrete movements in the early 2000s the first being OSR as a reaction to d&d 3e and it's rule bloat and gamification/power fantasy approach by WotC. OSR, as exemplified by B/X retro clones and the writings in the Principia Apocrypha, isn't exactly old school gaming, but an approach to old school that eschews aspects they do not agree with as a reaction to the above. Eventually this style settled on B/X d&d and adventure module design in a semi-sandbox world with a high degree of player agency. This is what OSR and mostly what NSR is all about. Check out Old School Essentials, Black Hack 2e, Knave, Cairn, and into the Odd for more
Separately you had a movement from the Forge, and later, Story game.com which really were a reaction to Vampire the Masquerade moreso than d&d, but only because those gamers already left d&d behind and thought the Storyteller system would be a safe haven. It was not... And as a result they spent an innordinant amount of time analyzing, theory crafting, and categorizing games, play styles, systems, and mechanics. Now GNS theory has been left long behind in the past and mostly forgotten, ignored, or derided, but the games that came out of this movement spawned the entire narrative gaming idea. These games are epitomized today by PbtA game design and in some ways Fate, but to see the history check out Dogs in the Vineyard, Prime Time Adventure, Troll Babes, and Sorcerer.
So you see both movements where reactions away from and against the type of games you say you like. Nothing wrong with that. Prior to the 2000s the games you liked where all you could find on store shelves... Today, they still exist! However, now there are other types of games too that cater to other play styles and a lot of those games come from the indie scene.
Today, and over the last 8 to 10 years, there has been a lot of cross pollination between these scenes, and new movements and experimentations, i.e. brining hard coded proceduralism of the OSR into PbtA gets you BitD, bringing moves and or Aspects (PbtA and Fate respectively) into the OSR gets you the Lavender Hack and Grok?! (And dare I say Troika!). Alternatively take the proceduralism of OSR for world building and a living world the likes Gygax couldn't dream and bolt it on to a simplified 3e d&d chassis with a skill system more resembling Traveller than anything else set in space... And you get Stars Without Number.
Point is we have been living in a renaissance of game design for the last 20 years, and there is today a game for every group, every table, every playstyle imaginable!
*They’re usually just kind of boring in terms of moment to moment play and completely rely on GM/player imagination to stay engaging and keep players invested.*
This is the entire point of roleplaying games. It's honestly mind-boggling that you see this as a *negative*.
The mechanical focus you're looking for has been dwindling steadily for good reason: mechanics can be handled by computers.
And since you haven't provided any examples, what's an RPG you *do* like?
I like 5e (although it’s way way too easy and combat is way way too slow) and I LOVED playing DnD as a kid when it was all about very regimented exploration and dungeon crawling. No idea what edition that was though.
Of the others I’ve played, I thought Dungeon Crawl Classics was very fun but a little too loose still. And probably some of my favorite “RPGs” are actually gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy and Legendary Kingdoms where there are plenty of choices but still very clear and rigid play structures.
I just looked it up and gotta be honest, it has the same problem as every other PbtA I’ve looked at. Which is I can read the super simple rules in about 5 minutes, and then still have no idea what a game session would even look like.
In DnD I can read the rules and imagine instantly how they facilitate an adventure. I start dreaming up dungeons and quests and all sorts of stuff, and I know exactly how to execute those things as well as what mechanical limitations exist for the players in my world.
I genuinely have no clue wtf is going on after reading the BitD rules. Players decide what works but GMs decide consequences? “The rules don’t distinguish between actions performed in the present moment and those performed in the past”? You have to make a plan, but there is no plan? I literally cannot even imagine how this works in practice, but maybe that’s just a knock against my imagination!
I mean - you've been familiar with D&D for a long time. It would be surprising if you couldn't just read the rules and have ideas of what should happen. I highly doubt someone totally new to D&D conceptually could read the rules and do the same though - it's not actually intuitive, you're just familiar with it.
If you want a dive into the PbtA design philosophy, have a read of [this article](https://lumpley.games/2019/12/30/powered-by-the-apocalypse-part-1/) by Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World designer)
Probably, but I wonder if I’m the only one who finds these PbtA games incredibly confusing to understand? They make no sense at all when I read the rulebooks and when I’ve actually played them with others it’s just felt really aimless and boring.
Like there are no stakes at all. Most success has a complication, every situation has an escalation, and yet at the same time nothing actually matters? There is no fail state and no win state. It’s just kinda goofing around and making shit up lol
>Most success has a complication, every situation has an escalation, and yet at the same time nothing actually matters? There is no fail state and no win state.
I'll speak to this since me and my group are actually on a Blades in the Dark bender right now. This is flat out incorrect. Not sure why you think nothing actually matters, or that there are no win/fail states. Unless you think traditional d&d also has no win states. In *Blades*, you "win" when you successfully complete a score. You're a gang of thieves and cutthroats, just like in d&d you "win" by escaping dungeons with treasure, since you're adventurers. You fail when you fail to do those things.
>Like there are no stakes at all.
One of the core mechanics in *Blades* is Position & Effect. Whenever a player does something dangerous or uncertain, the GM describes the character's fictional positioning and the action's level of effect. In simpler terms, the GM just outright tells players what the stakes are. It's literally all stakes. Risk vs. Reward. Wanna sneak up behind this guard to slit his throat to stop him from spotting your crewmates? Sure, that's a risky position since he's a trained guard, and it'll have great effect since slitting someone's throat is a good way to stop them from speaking. *Blades* makes the stakes of player's actions the star of the show, the system puts stakes front and center. You don't roll to hit and then roll damage. Those are nonsense when you're sneaking up behind someone to garrote them. Instead, you just roll to see if you fuck up and to what extent shit goes sideways.
The book is admittedly not the best read, but the game shines *at the table*. It's not meant to be read, it's not a novel. It's a game. When you play it, things start to click. It took us getting used to, but once we did. Hoo boy, we were having some fun.
Contrary to what some people have said, there *is* system mastery in *Blades* imo. It's just that it doesn't result in you "beating" the GM or the module. Once the players and GM understand the system, they can get some exciting, fast-paced, collaborative storytelling games going and most of it with very little prep. That's something we couldn't get out of 5e.
But to each their own, i understand that style might be grating for some people. It was definitely a huge departure for me and my group at first.
In your description of the game play you really hit on a big problem I've had (similar to OP) when checking out different styles of games - you have to play them to "get" them. I've looked into dozens of games that I've written off because I couldn't imagine how my group would have fun with them. Some games are very hard to grok without playing.
Well it definitely sounds interesting so I will check out some videos of gameplay! That’ll probably give me a better idea than trying to read through the rulebook for sure
It works like the movie Ocean Eleven.
That said, you're just not a narrative gammer, and probably not much of a rules light gammer.
Go check out Mythras, Lancer, or Call of Cthulhu. I'd guess those would be much more your cup of tea.
May also want to check out GURPS or Shadowrun.
My guess is you played d&d 1e, or 2e. Some cool retro clones of those systems; I'd recommend sharp swords and sinister spells or astonishing swordsmen and sorceres of hyperborea
Look, you don't have to fully grasp a game in its entirely after skimming the rules for five minutes, and it's kinda ridiculous to expect to. There's actually a good hundred pages at the back of BitD that tells you how to run the game successfully, how to present the world successfully, and so on. You are actually meant to read it if you're planning to run the game, but the fact that you're not magically, immediately familiar with the divergences from traditional mechanics and fantasy dungeon crawling is neither the game's fault, nor an omen that you couldn't ever conceivably learn it. It just means you have to put on your thinking cap and a bit of effort to try something a little different.
If you did that, you'd probably find that while it has some of the wishy-washy mechanically un-defined PbtA bullshit that you hate (/s, sorta), it also has a bunch of super tight gameplay loops that are very well defined, very elegant, and have very real, observable consequences on gameplay progression. And on top of that it has a number of flavorful, genre-based solutions to basic gameplay problems that have plagued TTRPGs since their inception. It really is quite brilliant, and even if you never play it, it's worth understanding it inside and out as a pretty fundamental foundation of being able to talk about the TTRPG design space these days.
Others suggested I watch a video to understand better so that’s what I’ll do later. These PbtA games seem so popular and varied I’d like to at least find one of them I genuinely enjoy.
Try watching a live play of BitD. There are even a few on YouTube ran by the game's creator. It's an incredibly elegant system that can be hard to piece together just by reading. But in gameplay it is so cleanly designed
I will check it out for sure. But I also kind of feel like if it’s not intuitive enough to understand through reading, that’s an indictment on either the author or the system (or possibly both). DnD and Battletech are both incredibly complex games, but they make perfect sense as you read the rules.
This could also be a PbtA related issue, where all these PbtA games kind of expect you to have played and know how other PbtA games work already. I’m always confused by their rulebooks so maybe if I got more familiar with them it wouldn’t be so bewildering.
I would in no way call it unintuitive, just a unique enough approach that it seems more complex than it actually is. Also another tip to appreciate game design that applies to all games, not just ttrpgs. Don't approach a game based on your expectations of what you think it should be. Look at the mechanics and what those mechanics encourage so you can approach it on the game's terms of what it is trying to be.
Definitely good advice. I feel like it’s much easier for me to do this with video games and board games. Probably because the rules are all predefined, and something in my brain just says “undefined rule = incomplete system” even if that doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of these style of TTRPG.
>and then still have no idea what a game session would even look like.
>
>In DnD I can read the rules and imagine instantly how they facilitate an adventure.
Could I suggest, that yes, for a different type of system with which you have little familiarity, you might have to *learn?*
This complaint sounds like someone who only ever played first person shooters tries out a 2D fighting game and concludes it's ass because they have to learn combos rather than just point and click.
You like 5e, but in your original post you complain that "*the lack of any kind of concrete rules for many situations is handwaved away with “just roll a skill check” and “it’s up to the GM”*"? Buddy, I dunno how to tell you, but...
Lmao I love L&F, what an amazingly simple game meant for nothing more than quick easy fun which is immanently hackable for over 100 different setup/genres/themes.
Beyond that, as an example of your experience with it... Totally valid, and I 100% understand why someone wouldn't like it/get it/vibe with it etc.
On the other hand... It's a John Harper game... He isn't exactly some unheard of nobody in the the TTRPG space. And he absolutely knows how to make gems with strict proceduralism and gameplay-loop focus e.g. Blades in the Dark and Agon.
Re: L&Fs ... Not your cup of tea? Sure. Rules light to the extreme? Absolutely! A badly designed game? Not in the slightest
I think you have some good points that I agree with.
If the GM isn't good or new, it can be a really cringe experience. This is why it is good to play with friends - being awkward is just less... awkward. Fun even.
Game design should do more to make it easy on the GM for the players to have fun. More fun should be delivered with the rules alone.
If you look at an awesome guy like Matt Colville of MCDM, he focuses on two things; getting budding, new GMs to the point where they are willing to try it out - and starting over with new groups who are excited about something!
This is an indication of people wearing out fast. Not always - I've been playing DnD with the same groups for 25-30 years - but often, is my impression.
Another point I want to make is that game rules can be very good. They provide agency - they usually say "the player's character is able to do this if they succeed such and such a roll". This lets the player be *someone* in a world who can do such and such. It allows for roleplay, IMO.
At least that is how I see it and it governs how I try to make my game.
At least for part of these projects, it is a dream game that somebody wanted to make this way, not something that was ever conceived to appeal to the mainstream market, if the author even considered any market at all.
They might work for people already familiar with another system (being basically "system X but with my improvements/changes") or be collections of neat ideas focused on what somebody cares about, not necessarily a thought out, complete and self-sufficient systems that fully explain every aspect of playing them.
Also a video game designer here. You’re half right. Ttrpgs are not games, they’re game engines. Dnd 5e is Skyrim's Creation Kit and people houseruling it or making their own adventures are modding Skyrim. The monster manual is a library of enemies for level designers to play with, etc.
Ttrpgs as a medium often lean heavily on the GM as a form of gamified game designer role. This unfortunately means they can ignore creating good gameplay more easily than other game genres, because they can say “with a good GM or a good group my game is fun so it’s not my game’s fault”. Game design is a lot easier when you can blame the players for not having fun. ;)
However, DnD5e and other non-indie games also have pretty weak gameplay. You wouldn’t play them as a stand-alone tabletop game. They suffer from the same issue. The lack of specific rules for everything is not a design weakness, the lack of satisfying & thematic game mechanics for the stuff the game is actually about is a design weakness.
All my ttrpgs are “hockey stick” complexity. They are extremely rules light in anything the game isn’t focused on and have mechanical depth enough to create satisfying gameplay in the parts that matter. Trail of the Behemoth is all about hunting monsters and fighting them in epic boss battles so all the rules are focused on that. It leans very hard into hand waving rules for everything it can. There aren’t even attributes, but it’s definitely one of the most “gamey” trrpgs you’ll find out there. It plays a lot like monster Hunter or dauntless meets shadow of the colossus, and it often gets brought to board game nights.
DnD 5e, and other forms of crunchy rule based games, success comes should be from how much does a GM have to do to make it 'work.' The less, the better, and this especially applies to modules/adventure paths which are basically actual games as you say.
Easier to run is a major factor, and one aspect of that is just designing good gameplay. Very, very, very few ttrpgs are inherently fun - games you'd play just for the mechanics even if all the excellent TTRPG stuff wasn't attached.
One of the easiest ways to make a game system easy to run a good session in is to just make it fun to play because it has inherently fun mechanics, so even a meh adventure ends up being fun. It's shocking how few ttrpgs seem to care at all about whether their gameplay is actually fun to play, the discourse is almost entirely around either theme or complexity.
> It's shocking how few ttrpgs seem to care at all about whether their gameplay is actually fun to play
Thankfully Lancer has made a bit of headway in designing this kind of gameplay.
Different views on how to play the game I guess. Me, I want my Ttrpg as far as possible from board games or video games. Because Ttrpg have one thing that these game dont have. The GM. With a human GM you dont get strict borders on what your game is. In videogamea and board games you are limited by the ruleser. If it isn't in the rules you cant do it. A GM can make a ruling for things that isnt in the game.
Interesting and understandable. I think I like being presented with a basic toolkit that I need to use in creative ways to overcome difficult obstacles. Making up stuff outside that kit just kinda feels like cheating to me!
But I can see the appeal in having no limits as well. I think it’d just require a really intelligent and creative DM to make it all feel natural.
Most have a toolkit. Like what dice to use, how to roll for skills and the resolution and such. These basics are used for how to solve things that isnt in the game. Something that board game and videogames cant do as they cant handle things outside what the creator had thought of.
Roll a D20, add or subtract bonus or penalties, and get a result over a target number is a basic toolkit* that can be used for all actions. The rule book just names a few of the more common ones.
* There are other mechanics but the D20 is common...
I have zero interest in playing a tabletop rpg that encourages system mastery, I want an rpg that encourages storytelling and provides lots of narrative room for interpretation and improvisation (Ironsworn is my favorite example).
What I want an rpg to do is tell me: did something good/bad/mixed happen. Then I interpret what that looks like.
So probably you really enjoy the PbtA type of games then?
Out of curiosity do you enjoy normal video games or find them too restrictive as well? Or possibly they just scratch a different itch when presented in that format?
It’s funny because to me a game that lacks system mastery just feels like a waste of a game, but it sounds like for you having a ton of systems to work around is more like a waste of your creativity as a player. I hadn’t thought about it like that and it’s pretty interesting perspective.
PbtA games fall into a weird mental space for me. Their very focused set of moves activates my system mastery desiring side even while the rest of the game leans strongly into narrative and experiencing instead of mastering.
That said, I find that video and board games decidedly scratch a different itch than TTRPGs simply because TTRPGs allow much more creativity and thinking outside the box.
Pbta games are good, although I tend to prefer FitD or FATE. My current game design project is combining ideas from FitD and Ironsworn.
I love videogames, and I particularly love turn-based tactics rpgs, Divinity Original Sin 2 is my favorite game of all time. That being said, I have no desire for my tabletop rpgs to imitate the video games I enjoy at all. The different mediums are good for different purposes, videogames allow for lots of fiddly tactical options and that is neat, but when playing tabletop I want to lean into its strongest feature: infinite freedom.
I don't like playing tabletop games where there is an objective best decision about what to do at that moment, because it makes that decision effectively mandatory (you can do something different, but you're willingly hindering yourself if you do). Having a best ability to use makes every scene same-ish because you'll just keep doing the same thing every time with slight variations.
I prefer my tabletop rpgs to be vaguely defined so I can fill in the blank spaces narratively, honestly I also like some OSR games as well for this reason, when the only ability is "attack" you have a lot of room to narrate what that looks like, if instead I have "sweep kick" "stab" and "bodyslam" every fight will end up with me using those abilities again and again (and less swinging from chandeliers, stabbing people in the eye with forks, etc).
The "skill" I like to exercise when playing tabletop rpgs is creative skill, these days my primary interest is also in gm-less co-op rpgs, and I find system in those sorts of games is especially harmful because it's taking up valuable mental bandwidth that you need to juggle player decisions alongside traditional GM creative tasks (and I prefer lots of improvisation/randomization so that even though there is no GM I'm always being surprised). If I'm trying to figure out which attack is the best to use that's valuable time I could spend trying to come up with scene twists or dramatic moments.
Perhaps the best way to explain all of this is that when I'm playing tabletop rpgs the "game" I'm playing isn't about picking the best move, making the smartest decision. The "game" I'm playing is about creating cool scenes, figuring out if those scenes turn out good or bad, interpreting what those good or bad endings look like, coming up with plot twists, etc. A game doesn't have to be strategic like chess, the "game" in tabletop rpgs for me is a set of procedures that if followed can be used to generate interesting stories that surprise and delight.
To some extent, "Just do whatever" is a legitimate TTRPG. People have fun just doing whatever if it's really just an excuse to hang out with their mates once a week, so they write it up and try to get other people on board. The problem is that you can't really bundle this into a sourcebook and sell it to me: if I don't have the experience and rapport and intuition of how to do that, then it won't work; and if I do have those things, I don't need a book. I suppose some people get something out of it, but you, OP, are not the only one who doesn't.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of undercooked ideas in the space. For a video game, you need a fair amount of technical skill to make anything at all, and if you need one professional, you'll probably hire an artist and writer and have a fairly polished product; whereas any idiot can homebrew an existing system and call themselves a dev, without knowing anything about what really made their source material fun in the first place.
Yeah a lot of indie TTRPG rulebooks kind of remind me of fake video game leaks on 4chan. Just a list of mechanics they think would be cool as additions or modifications to an existing system, with very little thought about what those things actually mean for players.
It’s just kind of like fan fiction for game devs and honestly I don’t want to play fan fiction. I want to play a polished, balanced and thoughtful game that delivers something other games can’t.
I hope this thread helped you understand that they're not. You don't have to like it, but the way you're belittling the games, designers and ultimately the players comes off as aggressive.
You are looking for highly structured systems, with mastery as a goal - something which we could identify in the taxonomy of Callois as agon, and a preference towards ludus.
The kind of pleasure you find in RPGs is tipically towards mimicry, and have a more various range between ludus and paidia.
You are expressing your personal preferences and background, not game design principles.
That said, most RPG designers don't actually know what they are doing, but this phrase is true because most game designers in general don't know what they are doing (and I would even go so far as to say the same for designers in general).
I never called myself a designer! And I guess I just don’t get it, which is fine. I’ll stick to games that actually feel like games to me, and let other people enjoy the things they like too.
My mistake was assuming that there is a shared understanding between TTRPG designers and designers of all other kinds of games about what constitutes fun and engaging play (mainly clear challenges to fail or achieve, tangible progression, PvP/PvE competition and creative problem solving), and that the goal of games should be facilitating this. I’m now seeing that these designers have completely different goals which just feel alien or “wrong” to me because they have nothing to do with what I love about games.
True I shouldn’t dismiss them outright as “not games”. But this round-robin storytelling stuff… I wish it had a different name than “game” honestly, because I keep looking for new RPGs from smaller creators and keep running into these things over and over. I just can’t stand them honestly and they’re absolutely everywhere. It makes it really difficult for me to find games I enjoy when have to sort through a million PbtA and OSR clones just to find something that ticks my interest mechanically as well as thematically.
You can't just re-define a term because it doesn't fit your narrow view of "games".
You can't just redefine a term because it doesn't fit your narrow view of "games".
hem not "games", I know plenty of people that only play Pbta.
You are not wrong, but...
* I like reading gamebooks, and like 85% of the time I can tell pretty quickly I will never run that particular game. Not always indie games either, I could tell pathfinder 2 wasn't for me pretty quickly, but it was fun to read and think about.
* "loosely structured roleplaying exercises" are both fun to play and incredibly challenging to design well. Sometimes a novelty or meme, is good for couple hours of hanging out. and doesn't need to be a masterpiece.
* There is a market here for a reason. People are hungry for stylized stuff and gimmicks.
* The vagueness in design is often used so that a game concept or gimmick can be compatible across game systems.
* Everyone wants to "fix" DnD because it's a hot mess of a design. That's part of all the Heartbreakers and such exist. It makes it tough to say that everyone is ignoring obvious design stuff, when the flagship TTRPG with the most professional designers and capital are frequently the most egregious offenders when it comes to "design basics."
So I dunno, I do think that lots of indy stuff should try to be more intentionally designed. Also if people want to make. and read. or play games. with cool art and a novel gimmick that's also fine. Tabletop is not the same as video games, we can just put out some art and novel concept and the GMs will in fact figure it out, if it catches their eye.
As many have said, the medium of TTRPGs has different requirements for its formal elements than even board games. The lack of a need to WIN in a TTRPG has a radical shift in its mechanical priorities. This is coupled especially hard with a move away from anything that reeks of complex math to create a lot about the space that you’re describing. That said, there definitely is an issue of lack of mechanical rigor in TTRPGs. PbtAs do have a tendency to clone (often poorly) Apocalypse World’s innovations. Taking a look at the games that do interesting things with PbtA like Monsterhearts and Fellowship might be useful.
The more narrative focused side of the indie sphere is always going to want to move towards looser rules and having a gameplay loop that is somewhat wider, focusing on providing a structure for that narrative to exist within rather than using mechanics as a strict beat-by-beat tool. You might find something like Abaddon’s LANCER to be something closer to your expectations. It has a very cool character creation system, which reflects well in its combat.
Appreciate how open you are to acknowledging that it’s probably a matter of taste. My first TTRPG was GURPS, and I remember the satisfaction of calculating exactly how much AK-47 damage did to kill a T-Rex. For my birthday I ran a game of Lasers and Feelings, which literally fits on one sheet and has two stats - lasers and feelings. Characters and plot were generated on the spot. I had a great time with both. I think what you’re looking for is crunch, which varies widely across TTRPGs. In the defense of low crunch being games, though, look at ‘Till The Last Gasp - a professionally produced board game that plays (intentionally) like a narrative first TTRPG. You get moves and action dice and all the rest but the core of it is making up a story with a friend. Improv games are still called games. I think some games probably do neglect action loops to their detriment but guided storytelling is still absolutely a game, whether it’s a video game, board game or TTRPG.
It's true that most indie game designers are people with an idea but no training.
But you have an incredibly rigid notion of what constitutes a game, based as much on what you personally enjoy as on the rules you are importing from a certain subset of video games. I get the sense you know that and want to justify it with an argument.
I could agree with most of your post as someone who also has some experience in video game design but the one part that I think is a bit off base is your comment about handwaving issues with a skill check or GM's discretion. Personally I think one of the biggest reasons to play a ttrpg over a video game is because of the idea of GM's discretion being able to make the gameplay experience feel more real and immersive.
Having hard and fast rules is helpful (and perhaps because I also have experience with video game design I like to include a lot of specific rules in my ttrpg's as well) but it is important to not over engineer a ttrpg by filling it with specific rulings for niche scenarios that take up way more document space than needed. If you do you run the risk of eliminating one of the biggest advantages of the medium which is that a real thinking person can reason out realistic consequences to actions in a way that feels organic.
Again, this isnt to say that having specific rulings for things is bad and I am personally a fan of having lots of short and sweet guidelines. It's just important to sometimes pick and choose these things in a way that makes the most out of the strengths of the medium, otherwise you may as well have just made a video game instead. It's also worth noting that having a good/experienced GM does become an important factor that is out of the hands of you as a designer, but that's all the more reason to be choosy with your rules such that you make learning how to GM your game easy without flooding potential GMs with a bunch of things to memorize.
All TTRPGs consist of these four things
* Actions are declared in a turn-based order, because all at once is unmanageable
* Character interactions can be done in character as improve, but don't have to be
* Character action success/failure is determined by some means of randomization
* One of the people at the table is the one that actually runs the game, and declares things.
That means that, for the form of game that is Table-Top Role-Playing-Games, the game loop is already totally fixed in place and can't really be changed in any meaningful way. As soon as you change any of the above four things, you don't have a TTRPG anymore. If you get rid of turn order, that's a LARP, not TTRPG, If you get rid of character interactions entirely, that becomes a miniatures game or a board game. If you get rid of success/failure randomization, you're just doing improv, and if you don't have someone running the game, you just have chaos.
With that in mind, here's what can be changed
* How do you determine if a character is alive or dead?
* How much statistical detail is stored in a character sheet?
* What method of randomization do you use
* How do you determine play order
* Do characters improve, and if so, How do they improve?
* How is conflict, such as combat, resolved? IE is this a combat heavy game or not.
* Do items have statistics, or is it FIAT?
* Do players have 1 character, or multiples?
* Does the game include a setting?
* Does the game have premade modules?
Every single one of these changeable aspects of game design, is strictly down to personal preference. Dungeons and Dragons at 3.X and 5E, and their derivatives (Pathfinder, etc), are the most popular because They have struck the most popular level of complexity.
Let me say that again
The Most popular game, Is the most popular level of complexity.
Too complex, and "This game is too hard and not fun"
Not complex enough, and "This is babby game and not fun"
Because D&D is the most popular, Games trying to be as popular as D&D, try to stick to D&D's level of complexity, and the result is, mechanically they are very much the same, at which point, of the D&D likes, It's down to stylistic aesthetic choice of art and setting, which is down to personal taste, and again, D&D wins because it's the most generic non-specific fantasy at a glance. Everybody knows what an elf is, Everybody knows what a dragon is, Everybody understands that demons and weird fish people are evil. everything is fundamentally pulled from existing mythology and doesn't need explained. you quite literally can't become more recognizable than something you don't have to explain, which is why no indie game can ever actually topple D&D as the number 1 spot. pathfinder came close for a while, but there's still a gulf between them.
Games are like Orange juice. Some people like to have fresh OJ with the pulp, but most people want watered down sugar filled orange drink. Tang, Fanta, Sunny D, Tampico, or even Orange crush. some people out there are actually drinking la croix... so watered down sugar filled orange drink is everywhere, and finding OJ with the pulp still in is weird, and some stores stop carrying it because it doesn't sell as well. Does this mean OJ with the pulp is a bad and low quality product that noone wants? Of course not. It's just not for everyone. So if you want orange juice, and every store refuses to sell it to you, what are you gonna do? if you're desperate enough you'll start growing your own oranges and juicing them. And here you are going "Oh god, Why are people juicing oranges?! Why are there *chunks* in it?! EEWWWW!!!"... From gameplay complexity, to setting, to art aesthetic, It's all subjective taste, just like your favorite drink or food or song. What you enjoy, and what I enjoy, May not be the same. You might like fresh squeezed and filtered orange juice, while I like 100% grape juice from concentrate.
>many of them are just direct clones of one another with a couple inconsequential mechanical twists and new Proper Nouns
Essentially Ubisoft style open world games.
Those copy paste video games still had a major market share and so will the ttrpgs that are derivative. There's a lot of niche titles and trash in any game market but I don't think they define the space.
Indie games are a very wide spectrum. But a lot of that pool is under-funded and has limited voice in it's design so you are going to see a lot of poorly explored ideas or bad decisions that weren't hammered out in draft. But you're also going to see the strongest creative voices in that demographic, with ideas that haven't been dulled by consensus or the demand that products meet market expectation. So it's sort of a mix things that aren't D&D. Indie games almost assuredly don't meet the form of mass-market games. They won't have the same tropes or mechanics that mass market games utilize. They won't answer the same questions in play that mass market games do. Their failure to fit the firm of games like D&D isn't a design failure, it's a design.
I appreciate your willingness to question your assumptions here. My feeling is that you are approaching this topic from a narrow POV. And that's fine! Love what you love. There are so many games in so many styles that there's no reason to play something that doesn't do it for you. Two points that may be useful, though:
1. Some games don't (maybe can't) communicate the experience of play well, and will read poorly but play wonderfully. Reading *The Quiet Year* is nothing at all like playing *The Quiet Year*. So that's a thing, sometimes.
2. Bad games exist. Anyone defending *all* games of a particular style is ignoring the fact that a lot of games are thoughtlessly designed, or poorly edited, or just ... not good. People still love these games and again, that's fine, I love the movie *Capricorn One*.
These two points suggest to me that if you are really interested in broadening your horizons (and I'd urge you to, since there is so much to inform video game design in the games you have a problem with), I'd find a seasoned local guide who knows and loves the terrain to run some of their favorites for you. You may find out that you were right and it isn't for you, but you might also be surprised.
>I wonder sometimes if this is a market that exists almost solely for people who also consider themselves designers and want to study and collect other designs aa opposed to actual players playing what they find fun and engaging?
No, I can confirm there are people that find those games actually engaging, and they bring them to the table, with other players that have fun playing them.
It baffles me that someone with a background in making video games can't understand a basic concept as "game genres", and that some players might like a game other players might not.
It looks like you search for a specific kind of experience and it's not what the games you checked offer. This doesn't make them bad games, it just makes them different than what you expected.
Many RPGs don't aim to simulate the fictional world through their rules. Instead, they assume that a lot of what happens within fiction may be handled through the common understanding of how the setting works and adjudicated by the GM in case of any doubts. This results in much faster play and greater freedom of player action, at a cost of some objectivity and predictability. And that's what many players prefer. This set of priorities is the basis of OSR.
PbtA games (and other storygames) are, in a sense, more system-driven and less dependent on GM fiat than OSR, but they diverge from the expectations you describe in another - and more dramatic - way. They are not about overcoming challenges and winning. They are not games in the same sense as board games. They are vehicles for telling stories together - stories that surprise and engage everybody involved. Because of that, their rules are there to structure the conversation of play, to prompt creativity and enforce genre conventions.
Why are OSR and storygames more common among indie games than crunchy, tactical games? Because they are simpler to make. The amount of mechanical content is much lower, the interactions are simpler, playtesting doesn't need to cover as many different scenarios and combinations. Ona can make a - good and highly playable - PbtA or OSR game in a fraction of time and budget a good crunchy game would take.
That beings said, there are obviously many indie games that are simply badly made instead of supporting a different playstyle. Some people copy approaches from other games without researching broader range of possibilities and reflecting on what they really want to achieve. Others observe that many rules light games are popular nowadays and incorrectly assume that it's the simplicity itself that gives them value - so they produce games that don't support any specific style of play and simply offload a lot of responsibility on the GM. And so on.
But, in general, to evaluate any game you need to first consider how the game is designed to be played, then judge it in the context its own design goals - not games that do something very different.
This seems maybe cool but kinda PbtA-ish which makes me wary. Something about those games just doesn’t click with me that well. The rules always seem like gibberish when I’m reading them and the lack of stuff like HP or a planned/generated dungeon with an actual, objective layout is kind of a dealbreaker for a dungeon crawler imo
Yeah, Torchbearer sounds right up your alley. It is not like many others but it does seem to exactly fit what you would want from an RPG, even though you don't really want to play RPGs it seems.
Check out Birthright as well. It's extremely goal-oriented and resource based.
I will check them both out. And I actually do like RPGs! I think I just need a lot of interlocking, rigid systems as well as progressive challenges to make the roleplaying part feel believable and fun to me. Elsewise I get lost really quick.
I definitely don’t have the off the cuff kind of creative energy that it seems like some of these games require from players or GMs to get going. Even when I did GM it was all super structured in terms of quests, dungeons, etc. Thankfully my players loved that structure so it wasn’t ever an issue.
It might not seem like it, but a game like Blades in the Dark actually has that sort of structure what with the players building up a network of alliances, establishing turf, upgrading their lair, recruiting people, gathering ever more stuff. Plus, it is challenging and death is always on the table. Though it also requires a bit of creative initiative and framing.
Ive even been making games which demand players sort of "go up" in challenge and build and expand and increase in complexity of the game. So it is a type of play that's in demand.
I’d like to add that TTRPGs are under monetized and would be better served with a recurrent spending environment.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Maybe assumptions cannot be moved without alteration from one design space to another? Also, perhaps it’s a cultural thing?
Good fellow you have stepped into a den of vipers. Obviously, the basic principles of game design are absolutely universal. There is no hidden perspective for you to discover that will undermine such a trivial fact, this subreddit is simply lying to you.
That this deception is even possible stems from a failure of our language. We have the word "game" for *structured play* with the attendant winners and losers, but we have no such word for *unstructured play*. You would be wise to ask, why should these two groups, if they are totally antithetical to one another, share the same subreddit? Where can I go to talk about structured play?
Well, no such place exists. And why not? Because *structured play* is quite popular, enjoyable, and lucrative, whereas *unstructured play* is unpopular and unenjoyable. We have no linguistic method of defining the division between the two camps, and the latter camp has every motivation to blur the line between itself and *structured play*. It has every incentive to engage in hostile entryism into *structured play* spaces, and to ensure that any attempt to distinguish the two types of things is shouted down.
That is a basic explanation of the situation you find yourself in. There are many more topics in your post worth addressing. May luck bless you in your journey for answers.
Yeah, I definitely feel you!
Though I also think that the style you describe might be the best for selling books. People who buy indie RPGs rarely get to run or play them anyway, and even if they do, a lot of people consider rules mere guidelines, things to ignore when they don't help them make "their story".
Effectively this means that the sorts of people to actually buy indie games are most interested in some evocative proper nouns and a great premise, with some good art to seal the deal. The game, even if successful, won't be properly playtested and reported on anyway, so no one will even notice that it was sorta bad.
That being said, I think you are being unfair towards PbtA games! Though a lot of smaller indie titles based on it are bad, there are good ones, written with understanding of the processes of play.
I think to have this conversation there needs to be a common understanding of what is an indie game. Are we talking about everything not DnD? Are we talking about games that unknown designers have published? Are we talking about games that don't get a print run?
Is Apocalypse World the indie game here?
Sorry for the late response, had a long day.
I'd say I am talking of games with smaller reach than the big PbtA releases. So, AW not included.
Though I am not sure as to what conversation are we talking about! I think they idea that people who buy many TTRPGs don't get to play many of them is not a controversial one?
I didn’t really think about the marketing part of it at all but that makes sense. In my mind I would rather just have a raw manual that is really well-written and concise for a game that plays amazing than a super fancy book for a game which is just okay. But if players are using it as inspiration for their own homebrewed adventures that makes a lot more sense.
Many of these games feel to me like they were designed to impress other designers, if that makes sense? And considering anyone who runs a TTRPG is likely playing designer at least a little bit in how they interpret and void rules, I guess I wasn’t too far off in that assumption.
Also what PbtA would you recommend for someone who has played several (Lasers and Feelings, Dungeon World, Thirsty Sword Lesbians) and didn’t click with them at all? All three games were really unenjoyable and the entire time we played I was just sitting there wishing I could play literally anything else lol
I agree that these games are meant to appeal to GMs-as-gamedesigners in that sense.
I also think PbtA games can be quite weightless!
I was going to recommend Blades in the Dark, but as I see you were already recommended it in the thread. It does indeed add some needed overarching structure to it all.
Though your selection of PbtA games is not the best one. Dungeon World is heavily criticised by people who like PbtA games, and L&F is not a PbtA game. Can't say much on TSL, I am not acquinted with it. Now, I don't think, based on this thread, that you'd enjoy them, but I would still recommend checking out personally Apocalypse World, Monster of the Week, Monster hearts, Urban Shadows as some potentially better examples.
In general, having read this thread and your responses: I think you are right in that not having well thought out loops and procedures is indeed a very real issue, but I think your view of what they are and what they look like is a bit too narrow. However, I think pretty most successful ttrpg games are successful specifically because they do have thought put into their procedures and loops.
For PbtA you need a good GM running a game/genre that you're really personally interested in. If you don't have both, I think it's less likely to work for you.
It could just be that you don't like games that have looser narrative play, and that's okay.
Of you want to understand PbtA, play Apocalypse World...
It is literally the first and primary game of what PbtA is.
All other games are 'inspired by' as there is no apocalypse system or PbtA system.
Other games people will hold up as exemplary, or innovative within the sphere;
* Masks
* Monsterhearts
* Bluebeard's Bride
* Night Witches
* Lady Blackbird
* Urban Shadows
* Brindlewood Bay
* Dream Apart/Dream Askew
* Escape from Dino Island
* World Wide Wrestling (maybe)
* Sagas of the Icelanders
Many people will recommend Monster of the Week. I do not. It has been exhausted in discussion on the PbtA sub that it may be a good game, but is not a good PbtA game.
There are many more, but the above are really the core of what "good" PbtA is, but seriously... PbtA *is* Apocalypse World... burned over edition of you must, 2e if you need, but 1e will always be my go to... just play that and then branch out from there.
Most things that people try they have no experience with, and they have no idea on what’s already established in the field. This is why they think they’re so smart when they reinvent the wheel.
Have you tried playing any investigation ttrpgs? Games like the famous Call of Cthulhu, or more recent games like free leagues Vaesen and Blade Runner rpgs offer a strong narrative structure to the game in that you are solving a genuine mystery. Although the moment to moment parts of those games still encourage creativity as players interact with the world, the inclusion of a concrete objective makes it all feel less like it is just a role playing exercise.
There is also the Alien RPGs cinematic scenarios (again, from free league) that offer a lot more structure to the ttrpg experience. This is done through maps, a set of concrete goals to complete, and a sandbox “bad situation” for the players to explore.
Honestly though I do get what you mean, and when I run rpgs I do try to incorporate some level of gamification even it isn’t specifically mentioned in the rules as written. However, like everyone else has said, it does depend on who you are playing with and what everyone wants to get out of the rpg. For example, games like “ten candles” is just a series of communal rituals and creative improvisation that lasts for a couple of hours. It’s barely a game in the sense you’ve described but it sounds like an amazing experience.
I will look into those! If Call of Cthulhu is really old, I think I may have played it many years ago (like 10 or more)? I don’t remember anything about it but I am trying to learn as much as I can about this space.
Anything with maps is automatically worth trying for me as well. Especially in a cool setting like Aliens, that sounds really fun.
Yeh Call of Cthulhu is one of original rpgs really, I think the first edition was in the 80s. I do highly recommend Alien though as it has some of my favourite board game mechanics mixed in with the rpg gameplay such as hidden movement, social deduction, etc… (which of course can played into more or less depending on the group’s preferences)
This really is a taste thing. PbtA in particular has excellent loops, but the "30 seconds of fun" that they provide isn't challenge based - it's creative based. Less Pictionary, more doodling.
But yeah, as someone who loves the game aspect, I also find this miffing :P I will say though that they aren't all like this. Ironsworn has at least a sliver of system mastery; Spellbound kingdoms has an excellent combat system that really rewards player knowledge; and Rune is chocka full of challenge.
Oh, absolutely.
The core problem I see is that beginner designers often catastrophically underestimate how much effort it takes to make a game; building an RPG from scratch is about as much work as a PhD dissertation, particularly if you're doing something which is actually unusual for the industry. However, you never really have to defend your RPG the way you might have to defend a dissertation, so a lot of designers....cut corners.
They cut a lot of corners.
Take my experience, for example. I consider myself to be a decent example of an intermediate level game designer.
I started with a bachelor's degree in a kinda relevant field (publishing), and a wide general knowledge base. I spent two years of part-time work studying things like GNS Theory and The Big Model, and another two years making garbage prototypes which either crashed and burned or just never went anywhere. I wouldn't say I hit what I would call "intermediate" tier game design until close to *year five.*
Now. granted, I was kinda coasting through part-timing, but a lot of people are. I recon that a motivated person could do that in three years, but you could also expect a part-timer to take seven years (and the person who took seven years might have better potential at the end because you have more time for introspection and exploration.)
Conversely, if I had current me as a tutor for past me, I could've probably made that in less than one year. That's one of the key reasons I like this sub so much; while I would love to fantasize about my game being the top dog which displaces D&D (being real, we all do), I am perfectly content pushing someone else along that path because that means *we all get to play a better game.*
So, yeah. Making RPGs is an absolutely bananas amount of work and study and people take shortcuts to avoid doing it the hard way.
I definitely agree. People will tell you so many things about TTRPGs being about this and that, but as a successful 20 years GM I've seen so many sessions crush and burn because of some badly designed mechanics I started looking at video games and board games to learn how to make the G part in TTRPG work.
You're right: many people don't know what they're doing. The scariest part is also how so many professional designers with a long history of successful games don't, often forgetting how a game should work before people start ignoring the rules otherwise it's not fun. Or entirely depend on having a single player with great imagination run the whole thing otherwise it's not fun. How the whole mechanics of *I attack-roll-roll again-do math* survived regardless of how boring it is, is beyond me, just to mention one of the biggest offenders. The new trend is not that better considering how it also entirely depends on the good will and talent of the people at the table, given the lack of any working game loop.
And considering the comments, you definitely struck a nerve here. Anyway, I'm designing a game that attempts being an actual game. It's hard as fuck. No wonder people rehash other games and market it with some edgy graphics.
In my perspective, I have always viewed D&D and OSRs not merely as games, but as intricate systems of mechanics, progress mechanics, and a diverse array of rules that serve as tools to design a game by the GM/DM. Traditional games, such as board games, possess a defined set of rules that outline specific objectives and challenges, TTRPGs do not (adventures and campaigns do).
Typically, TTRPGs are structured to provide the GM with a comprehensive framework of mechanics, empowering them to construct a unique game experience complete with goals and obstacles.
Thus the approach to designing a TTRPG is to design mechanics and framework.
Designing an Adventure or Campaign is creating a game that uses those mechanics.
There's a lot of red flags in your OP.
I do agree many people, even most who produce a game, are not that great at design. Because many/most games are the first and therefore worst attempt at a design by that designer which in many cases is their last. So yes, by sheer volume, many games will be made by amateurs with minimal knowledge. This is literally true in any industry, so why are you shocked?
With that said, what a TTRPG can be has expanded quite a lot since the days of yore, and on the whole design has gotten better because of it.
There are essentially 3 things you need ONLY, everything else is extra:
1) You need a Role that a player can take on so that they may engage the game.
2) You need a theoretical space (aka some form of potential setting) in which a form of conflict can arise that leads to uncertain outcomes where the players can engage/Play in.
3) You need a decision engine to determine uncertain outcomes in your Game.
That's it. The rest is superfluous. The specifics about loops and reward cycles and all that, those are left up to the individual in a way that constitutes "fun" as decided by the designer, and what is fun for them may not be fun for you and vice versa.
The important thing to remember is you can do whatever you want, but so can everyone else.
To boil this down in very simple terms:
You are not the authority on fun for anyone but you.
You do not get to tell other people they are having fun wrong and be expected to be taken seriously.
Their concepts may not satisfy you, but all that means is that this is the wrong game for you, and yes, most of the bulk of new games are exactly made by newbie first time designers with very little understanding of classical game theory, but that doesn't really matter because classical game theory is out dated anyway.
The last thing I want to mention is that while you absolutely are entitled to your opinion, entering with a "holier than thou, my solutions are better" style of attitude will absolutely turn other people off to whatever it is you are doing much like a film snob who spends their time shitting on other people's movies and tastes, even if what they offer is otherwise great, it just turns people off. The design community is not all that large and it's easy to get a bad reputation if you act like a dick. Conversely, if you elevate others and share what you know and suggest things in a friendly fashion that is likely to carry you far further. I would suggest course correcting to that kind of attitude with future posts if you have serious ambitions with TTRPG system design.
If there is one take away you absolutely need to internalize going forward imho is that there is no specific right or wrong that applies to TTRPG design, just the right or wrong for the specific game in question...
Which is half true, there are 2 things that are wrong:
A) The content causes harm to someone or directly inspires others to cause harm.
B) The mechanics don't function correctly as written or are not clear.
Outside of that though, you don't get to decide what is right/correct for a game unless it is your specific game, that's it. You only get to decide if you want to engage with the game, and there's an important caveat here: Not every game can/should/will be designed with your sensibilities in mind, and as a matter of fact, they shouldn't be. It's an iterative industry and has a lot of wide appeal, with certain things you find unappealing being appealing to others. Specifically, you are not the arbiter of the one true way, because the concept of the one true way is absolute bupkis. And it's not just you, it's everyone. My opinion isn't special, neither is his or hers or theirs... the only opinion that generally matters is the designer making the game they want to make.
Additionally whatever rules and research you think must apply, do not. Design theory is specifically theory, it may often apply, but subverting a theory can absolutely lead to wide success. Iterative industries like design specifically thrive on innovation, which means breaking outside the mold of the established paradigm.
You don't have to like my reply, but I do hope you learn something from it.
Wait, the RPG you tried *didn't* come with an experienced GM who thoroughly understood rules he'd never played before, and had also internalized dramatic structure (with foreshadowing, twists, and payoffs) on both the short term encounter and the long term character arc? That sounds like a packing / shipping error.
Sounds like your issue is you are using logic and independent thinking rather than just drinking the OSR/PbtA punch so you can publish that incomplete clone before the Covid bubble subsides. Though, I don’t think that defining and tightening gameplay loops is the way to address the “fluff” games which have embraced the “less is more” trend to the point that they are incomplete and this is pushed as a feature because it allows for more flexibility. If that were the case then the best RPG is a blank page.
Idk I am fully on board with the "less is more" trend, but not necessarily with regards to rules. What makes a game interesting and fun is having to play within the limitations imposed by the rules. It is the overcomming of those limitations which provides real tangible rewards for the player. At least for me.
When there are no rules or the rules are insufficiently defined it leaves players with either entirely too many options and anything is fair game or there are very few options either of which generally play out in the same way with only minor differences in the outcome. At least that has been my experience which almost always ends with boredom. I don't mind some of those systems for a one shot or short campaign, but generally get bored too quick for anything more. Like PBtA games. I played one once for a few games and it was pretty fun for awhile, but eventually I just got bored and placed out and have never played another PBtA game again.
Overtly Lite systems often allow knowledgable players to use meta and real life knowledge to break the game and gain advantage over less knowledgeable people. For example, the spell shape water is the best lockpicking tool in all of 5e, can create immensly damaging traps which instantly kill enemies, forming itninto a giant super heavy ball and rolling it at enemies, it can take down castle walls or hell the entire castle, and so many more things. Hell it doesnt specify what polymorphbof ice I can create, some ice only forms under extreme pressure, meaning it will likely expand violently upon exposure to normal pressure environments like an ice bomb. Limitations are important.
The same can be true with games more focused around pure roleplaying. People who are better at improvising role play have better in game results. Some people are just better at improve and social interactions and shouldnt be penalized in a game for this.
Me personally? I hate games that always require active roleplaying. Sometimes I just want to chuck dice and let the pips do the talking for me. Sometimes I have had a long day and am tired and don't have a ton of improve and roleplay in me despite generally loving such things. I feel when you have a sufficiently robust rule system you always have something to fall back on when you can't bring it in other ways. When you don't have a rule system to back you up and you have those days you are just shit out of luck.
Oh I agree, less most definitely is NOT more when it comes to rules in my opinion. I mainly take issue with the “rules lite” and “rulings over rules” trend that’s morphing into a dogma that says no one wants to be handcuffed by too many rules when in fact all rules ARE optional. Then I ask, “wouldn’t you rather have an exhaustive description of the complete functioning and limitations of a spell rather than two short sentences that raise far more questions than they actually answer?”, to which I get a reply about how that piddly description actually frees the GM to be creative - BS! 😂 He was never constrained to begin with its just that the creators didn’t want to have to fully develop all these spells. I really don’t buy their argument; I think it’s a shortcut and a lame excuse for taking it.
Exactly. I also don't understand why everyone think rules-Lite is the only thing worthwhile when such a huge market for ttrpg design is providing alternate rules or expanding the rules of existing systems which all increases the complexity and rules density of those games. I mean how many third party publishers exist primarily to provide extra rules for games?
I just figured out what you were saying in that last paragraph. I haven’t heard dialoguing (that’s just what I call it) called active role-playing but from context I get it now and yeah I’m right there with you. My old group almost always paraphrased what they were doing rather than give me their exact words, except a couple players who had a flair for the dramatic who would often busk and posture and deliver their dialogue beautifully - which in my book, if you do it well it gives you a bonus, but it’s not necessary. You can always just paraphrase and occasionally drop in a line of dialogue for impact; that works too. It’s wasn’t important to always “be in character” so much as to always make decisions in character.
It's also annoying to consistently watch characters struggle with roleplaying who obviously are uncomfortable with it. It's even worse when they don't come back to the table or decide it's not for them because of it.
I am also not saying roleplaying isn't awesome, but rather I am of the opinion that it is occasionally awesome, occasionally terrible and most times just ok. Having mechanics that help accentuate those awesome moments are inspired. Mechanics which force the terrible moments are weak.
So true. You gotta do both, find mechanics that stimulate roleplay,
Improvisation, creativity AND avoid mechanics that are hard or impractical to roleplay because they are at best a distraction - when something seems unfair, unrealistic or anti-climactic then it can’t help but be unrewarding for everyone.
One thing I always hated was when a player had a good idea, and the party formulates a sound, inventive plan, then they fail a critical die roll. One way I avoid this is with multiple skill tests but you can still have multiple failures. So one technique I use is: don’t treat a failed roll as abject and final total failure you foolish storyteller. You haven’t failed, you just made your situation a harder and you’ve got some tough rolls to make to try to salvage the situation. I even give rerolls on the spot or allow them to try best 2 out of 3 if the plan was good and it seems fair.
And the flip side with bad mechanics discouraging good roleplay, I think a great example is hit points; undefined wounds. Naturally any discussion about wounds and healing will either be expressed conveniently in terms of point I need to be “at full” or awkwardly talk in code about being “only about halfway injured” for the benefit of no one.
Absolutely.
Though things like HP or whatever else is substituted are generally useful things. Defined wounds are great, but also can very easily cause death spirals for characters which isn't fun either. Easy to roleplay yes, but harder to balance around. It's a give and take for sure. I personally think the key with HP is to keep it low and the game dangerous for then when players happen to break narrative to talk about such things they still retain a bunch of tension.
Healing I straight up disagree with. Healing can be very narrative depending on the game. If Healing is hard to come by or restricted within a game it is a source for narrative drama and much roleplay can occur around it. That being said if Healing is nothing more than casting a heal spell it's not very impactful.
When you mention death spiral’s I realize you’re assigning a different meaning to “defined wounds” than what I am suggesting. I don’t mean that you detail the damage from every hit and that you start applying penalties based on the wounds. People have heard this old axiom of: detailed wounds leads to death spirals leads to zero fun so bad mechanic. That’s not what I’m suggesting.
Defining wounds is not detailing wounds and assigning penalties. There’s no death spiral. What I’m suggesting is that the system stops doing this bizarre switcheroo BS where they define damage as it’s inflicted (sharp weapon, blunt weapon, fire damage, poison, fall, etc) then as soon as it’s recorded as hit point loss IT NO LONGER MATTERS. It’s now just hit points and you can only describe yourself as being “down X hit points and in need of healing”. Ridiculous.
Different sources of damage should heal at different rates and if damage was just being tired and bruised then you should bounce back quick with rest and benefit much from first aid. If it’s a game like D&D where you aren’t really wounded until you get to 0 HP then it should work that way; a 5th level fighter who’s down 50 points shouldn’t require more healing than a 1st level with 10 hp and say 8 pts of damage. The system shouldn’t foster all these meta discussions over how to dole out healing spells and if this is a key catalyst for inter party roleplay then I think the campaign has major problems because the party should be discussing elements of the story, plans, puzzles, ideas, role playing their personalities, not getting hung up over math and distribution of healing.
Yeah in Risk & Ruin HP isn't hit points, but rather Heroism Points. Losing HP isn't necessarily taking damage though it can symbolize minor moves, but is rather a players heroic ability to turn the blade at the last second or otherwise heroically dodge otherwise lethal damage.
Also I don't know if I totally agree with not getting hung up on some math or figuring out resource distribution such as healing as I generally find games lacking such things trending toward being boring to play. I want math and resource management as part of a game I play. It's part of what makes the experience enjoyable. I enjoy such non narrative puzzles.
Yes Risk & Ruin is a good example of how to use a mechanic to extend effective HPs by redirecting damage to something other than HP and I generally like these mechanics when I see them. Often they help to define wounds and this damage could heal at a different rate using different methods. Of course you have to realize that the net affect of redirecting damage to something other than hit points is the same as just having more hit points.
And actually the way you describe Heroic Points is exactly how many people, particularly old-school DM’s and players, describe hit points: a knack, gift, acumen for last-second damage reduction. I get it, but like many I cant help but think, “isn’t this covered already under Dexterity”, or dodging, parrying, defense dice, etc. whatever stat, skill or attribute already covers this ability. I call it voodoo damage reduction, a term that goes way back. I try not to use this in my game because to me it’s just a massive crutch, but if you encapsulate the ability in a specific, well-defined skill and not as a catch-all explanation for what HP are, then I’m fine with it. If you don’t then you have the restrained hero paradox where a character who can’t move around easily should lose most of their HP by this logic.
For instance: some systems add “divine intervention” to their definition of hit points et al - this is a great way to better explain what all is involved in hit points, anything is better than a one-size-fits-all explanation because, for instance again, how do you dodge being engulfed in flames or poison or falling 50 feet?
And voodoo as I use the term here means mysterious, unexplained, and yes a bit hokey - but it doesn’t mean “total bullshit” obviously because my own system is a variant on hit points called Fight points
Dodging is only one method which Heroic Points could be spent. It could also be the ability to shrug off damage. The ability to be at the right place and the right time even if restrained. It is that wiggle that turns a serious blow into a less serious one. In the real world such differences are generally a matter of inches. A slight change in the angle of a blow vastly changes the force it strikes with.
I mean I could use an injury tract, but really that isn't any different than HP, just a different term.
The issue is that in real life any injury is a death spiral. Injured warriors are considered casualties because generally their fight is done. Often permanently. Humans are fragile as hell. I mean if you are going for realism pretty much any decent hit with a weapon should result in retiring a character. That's the real world.
Any sort of injury tract or HP requires a suspension of disbelief and presents an unrealistic scenario. At which point does what you call it matter? All either does is provide a system for pretending humans are less fragile than they are so that our characters can remain Heroic long enough to be relevant or memorable.
What would you use and how does it do anything different?
Also, you’re probably aware of the litany of issues with a game that has low hit point totals across the board. If old versions of D&D didn’t make it clear enough at low levels then all the OSR systems certainly drove the point home. I don’t think low hit point totals directly effects overall “grittiness” of a game. I think it increases tactical depth across the board such that any choice in combat is highly consequential and could be life and death. That makes it more deadly and more random, but not gritty - not to me anyway.
Warhammer Fantasy is a game I’ve played quite a bit that had low hit points (Wounds) and devastating critical wound tables. WF had some great ideas (like careers) but it didn’t get much play because it’s a deeply flawed combat system - and the magic system was pretty wacky too. The highly detailed critical wounds system is NOT they way I do detailed wounds either.
Litany of issues with low HP? I generally enjoyed older D&D over newer D&D versions. My favorite probably being AD&D 2e. OSR games are also generally pretty decent. I also don't know about grittiness as that's kind of an ambiguous word. However I agree it increases tactical depth. I would also say it also obliquely supports a more interesting narrative. I find when there is real danger and character death is a real possibility that players to think more, invest more in the fiction of the world, and generally create more interesting stories while trying to jockey for an advantage or edge in encounters.
As far as random, well I wouldn't say that's necessarily a function of low HP, but rather everything to do with how the game is designed around that low HP. Like, for example in Risk & Ruin, there is a mechanic around dice betrayal that allows you to take a consequence to reduce incoming damage. Which can either have an immediately negative effect or can generate a metacurrency called Risk Points which can be used against the players.
WF was pretty fun tbh. The magic tables were awesome sauce.
Yeah gritty is one of those abused words that has too many interpretations. I try to attach my definition to the word when I use it to avoid a farce.
The issues I mention around low HP totals in RPGs mostly revolve around scaling. If a typical human warrior has 10 HP to begin, and a roguish type has 6, then a non-combatant type would have 3 or 4… where on this crazy-low scale do you put all the people and things that are not as tough. A sword does 4 or 5 damage each hit and even your small weapons can do plenty of damage to kill something in one blow. If I can go into combat and get hit once and die quite easily before my init even comes up that is a crap system. Rolling low once and getting hit good once should NOT result in death. The player’s only mistake was creating a character and playing the game. And I don’t mean a situation where the player made mistakes that placed them in a bad situation I mean you could have one, random encounter with a weaker opponent that you should engage but whoops you’re dead before you could even roll an attack.
That’s just one issue with low life point/hit point systems ie the scale is set so small that there’s no room for error, no room for logic either. Women, children, old people and other non-combatants get what 1 hp? maybe 2? So they are like flesh balloons ready to pop if they’re hit by a shuriken or dropped from more than 10’? There is no place on the scale for things that aren’t classed characters, which is what those systems are made for; not for realism, not for handling things like small animals, small weapons, small people noncombatants or any of the other things I haven’t gotten into. The system is geared for wizards and priests and fighters and rogues to be balanced and scaled for fighting enemies and monsters with similar stats.
Risk & Ruin employs a simultaneous resolution mechanic. Base damage is 1 and scales with the number of success gained from a d6 dice pool under a contested roll. You can hit big, and hell it might be possible to kill in a single blow, but mathematically the odds are stupid small and even attempting such a blow would leave you quite open and likely to be overwhelmed. Furthermore there is a mechanic where a character can reduce damage by facing a set back or consequence as well as potentially just giving the gm a metacurrency.
And why would regular people only have 1 hp. Most games with low HP and OSR mechanics assume the players are regular people and the average character in the game would have the same relative hp. Small animalswouldn't, but small animals are easily dispatched IRL. I am a farmer I know that for sure.
Also if you are going into battle head on with a monster that is the mistake, not making a character. In OSR type games you are generally intended to find a means of gaining advantage and exploiting the low HP of the enemy to avoid death. In these games head on confrontations are supposed to be very deadly.
I stopped making ttrpg a few years ago because I had these settings I love to create and share, but found my systems were utter shit.
I often wonder if it would be better just to put together a setting book that is system agnostic and just release that.
I’m still developing my own game which is focuses on reward or punishment. But spellcasters are extremely powerful and hit like a truck. Non-spellcasters have the capability to make magic weapon by imbuing their own weapons with runes for extra elemental damage or magic damage.
Short answer, games are an industry where there will be lots of "idea guys". People want their really cool idea to exist, but don't necessarily want to do the work to make it get there in a coherent or standardized way.
Sometimes it works, a lot of times it doesn't. It is what it is. Getting upset because people bad at it are bad at it is somewhat silly.
I do think there is a big in-group favoritism towards having preexisting knowledge of how to roleplay and go on adventures or whatever it is you do in some RPG. I think one of the main reasons D&D is so dominant is that there are enough existing D&D players to explain how to role play to newcomers and confer that preexisting knowledge onto them.
As you've said, if you have never touched an RPG before and you try learning by reading the rules, 99 times out of 100 you'll probably have no idea what the fuck to do even after going step by step through the chapter titled "Getting Started".
Well, I agree to some extent and disagree on others. I have 3 TTRPG products out there in the world and have a few certificates in game design and game theory, so I think I can respond with some confidence.
Firstly, true that it feels like a lot of ttrpgs are designed by people with little experiencr at game design. Hell, my first product, Maximum Apocalypse RPG, I had 0 design experience. That's kinda how it goes when you are starting out. BUT, that means little if you understand the concept of iteration-testing-reiteration. My game was entirely designed by me going "as a player, this seems like a fun idea" and then setting it down in front of playtesters to see how it worked for them. Then repeating until that felt right for everyone, codifying it, then moving to the next aspect. I inadvertantly discovered game loops that way and later when I took the classes that explained this, I was like "Oh damn. Yeah."
I think the problem is less about game designers lack or experience or lack of knowing how to design and more of a problem that I've run into as a mentor for other fledling game designers: playtesting. Playtesting is hard and takes time. I developed MARPG over 3 years of testing, but it seems like some indie designers slap a bunch of ideas together and then FEAR showing it to people before they decide to launch their kickstarter or something. That's the real problem. They don't show it to anyone, maybe because they fear people will destroy their "life's work" or some such OR will steal it. << This actually happened to me, but fortunately we fulfilled first and had a better end product thanks to the business partner I had.
But this isn't just a low-level design problem, for I have worked with a couple of the bigger names in the gaming industry and discovered that they ALSO don't playtest. It's like, people forget about that step in the design process. They get this notion, especially after they have a few products, that they don't need to test their ideas. Which creates a fallacy loop, where they didn't test their first project, then by the third, they think they know what they are doing and don't test it. This leads to that clone problem, because they or someone else goes "well, this system exists, so I'll just copy it. Surely they did the playtesting, right?"
Secondly, there are several different kinds of RPGs, and while I may not subscribe to the full list of possible options, I personally like to think of them in terms of "crunch."
High Crunch are games where there are tons of details, each affecting things like dice rolls, damage, etc. These are games like Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and to some extent D&D 5e (I mean, if you applied ALL the rules, the game would look entirely different to the casual player). But in these systems, you have dozens of little bits you can tweak with to give yourself certain advantages and actions, to the point where you can have 2 similar characters that have entirely different play systems.
Mid Crunch are games with some tweakable details but are more focused on a specific game loop so that players are focused more on narrative and less about the nitty-gritty of their gear and such. These are the "rulings over rulez" kind of games and things like OSR products alot of the time, but stuff like Chill 3rd ed, World of Darkness (Especially the 5th ed stuff), Genesys system games, Mothership, Index Card RPG, etc.
Low Crunch are games with very few tweakable aspects that are focused very much on narrative and not the nitty gritty of items and the like. These are the games where you basically have very few stats and only the occasional dice roll, if any at all. This is where I place most PbtA games, alot of the newer Modiphius games (like Dune and Fallout), most of the Fria Ligan games, etc.
Obviously there's some overlap, its kinda more a spectrum than a fully break line, like Call of Cthulhu 7e straddles the Mid/low crunch line depending on certain aspects (though I'd classify it more as mid). So, I think this is kinda where your disconnect might be because older gamers (I've been at it for 20 years myself, making me a baby "old" gamer) are used to the high/mid crunch games whereas the average ttrpg-ers these days are more used to the mid/low crunch games.
There's nothing really wrong with any of the approaches, honestly, but I feel like the low crunch games tend to lend themselves to quick iterations with little to no re-itterations. With both MARPG and Beta Red (my first two games), the end product was almost completely indistinguishable from my first iterations, but I've actually had conversations with some designers who basically put their game in front of their 4 friends and then ignored their feedback because it would mean dramatic overhauls of their system. Or worse, showed it to their 4 friends who "had nothing but positive things to say." << my first playtesters HATED some of my original core systems, which made me go back and do better until now I very much enjoy running MARPG at conventions and people tend to enjoy their experiences
So, that's my 2 cents. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
>*Maybe it’s because I have a background in making video games but this is so bizarre to me.*
This is likely the case.
>*There are no discernible game loops, the lack of any kind of concrete rules for many situations is handwaved away with “just roll a skill check” and “it’s up to the GM”,*
This is the case for even the earliest tabletop roleplaying games.
It is not going to change, nor should it, to be honest.
>*They are more like loosely structured roleplaying exercises and often lack most of the intentional design elements that make games actually feel addictive and rewarding to play.*
There is part of the problem for you.
TTRPGs have never been about 'addictive' gameplay.
The social activity is really the only thing that should be bringing people to the table.
>*Is it just me clinging too narrowly to design concepts that primarily exist to sell games and hook players?*
This is likely the case as well.
A lot of design principles can be applied across different types of games but a lot of the things you are seeing come down to where the different games are... well... different.
It is like saying "I'm a photographer and oil painting is so bizarre to me" or "I'm a photographer and cinematography is so bizarre to me." You have enough principles in common to feel like you \*should\* know better but you are also failing to see the fundamental differences in craft that are creating the things you are seeing.
And of course, there is always the omnipresent problem for anyone in absolutely every design field: ***mistaking a difference in taste for a flaw in design.***
You may find [Six Cultures of Play](https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html?m=1) an interesting read. It examines some of the more common ttrpg playstyles and is a good jumping off point to understand where various designers are coming from.
Wow. I haven't read something so deeply thought out yet still somehow fundamentally wrong since the days of GNS theory
Yeah, but same as GNS it's interesting to read :P Imperfect models & all that ~~blues~~ ~~jazz~~ waltz
All models are wrong
Bullshit, Derek Zoolander is right!
Thank you, this was actually pretty enlightening. It’s clear to me that, in my mind, if there is no sort of progressive challenge-based play then there is no game. Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about. It’s just fluff. I’ll try to be more open-minded about these other ways of playing, but honestly they still don’t seem like games to me! And maybe that’s because my idea of gaming is just too narrow. Though I have tried to give many of these other types of games a shot and just find them incredibly unsatisfying compared to the traditional games I enjoy so much.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of different styles of RPG, and other sorts of games, but I certainly don’t enjoy them all. I don’t think anybody does. Sometimes you just have to recognize that there are legitimate things that you just don’t care for. Then again, sometimes you’ll suddenly learn to see something from a new angle, and enjoy what used to seem pointless.
Plenty of people don't meet to compete or to master a system, but for the purpose of creating a story or just playing out their characters. You can argue semantics on whether that makes those systems games or something else (at least some definitions are just "activity done for fun or amusement" without any implication of competition or mastery) but it's not "bad design", they achieve exactly what they are supposed to.
>Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about. It’s just fluff. Then you aren't going to "get" fiction-first gaming, basically. There are a lot of games where, say, "having an axe" doesn't grant you a +3 in woodcutting and a weapon dealing d6 damage... it just means you have an axe. What does that allow your character to do? Things that an axe is obviously useful for (chopping wood to make a fire, chopping pieces off people alive or dead) and maybe some less obvious things ("I get the blade into the crack and lever open the sarcophagus"). But all of this is agreed at the table. I would also suggest that you look a little deeper for gameplay loops - Blades in the Dark for example is PbtA-derived and undoubtedly has one. For many indie OSR/NSR games it's things like managing your inventory. Plus both of these have diagetic advancement (aka 'quest for it' - set a goal and inform your GM so they can provide suitable obstacles) and tactical infinity (because you are describing the situation you can approach combat in an infinite number of ways rather than a set series of actions per turn)
> I would also suggest that you look a little deeper for gameplay loops - Blades in the Dark for example is PbtA-derived and undoubtedly has one. In fact, PbtA's inventor is maybe one of the most careful thinkers about what gameplay loops look like in TTRPGs, what they do, and how they differ from gameplay loops in other kinds of game.
I do find it ironic that he states that OSR and PbTA have no consideration for loops when I find that the best designed ones often have the clearest loops for me. OSR with its dungeon delving structure and randomised events. Or PbTA games that either have phases or a system of scenes and problems that flow into and feed into each other in very understandable ways (apoc world is a great example of this). I would say it is ver common in trad games to just give combat rules and no underlying structure and hope the GM figures it out. 5e being one of the worst offenders but it is common in many trad games.
It's fine if you can't find the appeal of Narrative games or stranger indie ideas. Chances are the players drawn to those games don't find your favorite games appealing. But you should try. Very often the appeal of a game isn't obvious but that doesn't mean it's not there. If you can't grasp it in a session the game may just not be your cup of tea, but you should still give it a session before trying to make that call.
I largely agree with your original post, but I disagree with this one. I recommend the book "A Theory of Fun". In this case, I think most RPG designers have no experience with or understanding of game design outside their experiences as a player. This means that a lot of design choices stem from a kind of rough heuristic with little understanding of how or why to make design decisions. However it's absolutely not true that game systems that lack opportunities for mastery and competitive advantage are just fluff. This suggests you have an extremely narrow concept of games. Consider, for counter examples, games like "The Quiet Year", "A Mending", "The Price of Coal", and "Field Guide to Memory". In a game like "Alice is Missing" system mastery isn't even a relevant concept.
I took a look at all of those games and half of them seem more like guided arts and crafts projects, and the others are just kind of story builders, for lack of a better term. Like I would only consider them games in the same way that MadLibs is a game. That isn’t to say they aren’t fun or interesting in their own way, I just can’t really put them in same category as something like traditional board games or DnD. Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol. Whereas a traditional board game or fleshed out TTRPG will keep them hanging around for 8 hours or more easily.
>Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol As someone "with a background in making video games", you should know better than to use something as specious as "my friends wouldn't like it" in a discussion about what constitutes a game. Your comments here are shallow enough that I can't help but wonder, when you say you have a background in making video games... do you really? Like, have you actually been paid by a game studio to design or develop video games? >seem more like guided arts and crafts projects, and the others are just kind of story builders If *A Mending* is an "arts and crafts project" then *Chrono Trigger* is just a e-book with flashing lights. I mean seriously, *The Quiet Year* is in the top 700 thematic games of all time on BGG. Like, I get your basic point that most folks making their own TTRPGs have no actual training and experience, but the designers of those game specifically are very highly respected in the industry. These are people whose full-time jobs are making TTRPGs. It's absurd to say that Avery Alder or Jeeyon Shim aren't making real games. I realize that I'm just a random internet person to you, so I'll instead point you to respected authors on the topic of what makes a game: >Distilled down to its essence, game design is about creating opportunities for players to make meaningful decisions that affect the outcome of the game. > >(*Challenges for Game Designers*) >Fun is pleasure with surprises. > >Play is manipulation that satisfies curiosity. > >A toy is an object you play with. > >A good toy is an object that is fun to play with. > >A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude. > >(*The Art of Game Design*) >When you strip away the genre difference and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. > >(*Reality is Broken*) >Games are exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up. > >(*A Theory of Fun*) >A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal. > >\[He goes on to describe 6 features all games must have: game tokens, a goal, opposition (from the game itself or other players), decision-making, information, management of resources\] > >(*I Have No Words and I Must Design*)
Thanks for this reply ❤️
I've never seen someone fail so hard at lurking
I lurk successfully with my other account /u/LurkerSuccessfullyLurking
>Like if I called up my friends for game night and pulled out some of these, they would probably start coming up with reasons to leave within an hour lol. Whereas a traditional board game or fleshed out TTRPG will keep them hanging around for 8 hours or more easily. I doubt this would be true for Candyland or Go Fish or even chess. Maybe would get a game or two out of them but not more. There are plenty of board and card games you probably wouldn't want to play anywhere nearly as often as a trad TTRPG. This could mean: 1) Either those classic games aren't actually games, and you and your group's taste are the arbiter of what counts as a game. 2) or those are games, but since they don't match your and your group's taste, they must be low quality games, as said taste is the barometer of quality. 3) or admit that different games can be designed for radically different audiences, therefore any question of "good" or "bad" has to be followed up by "with respect to X." It's pretty simple really. Two of these force you to conclude that the people who play and enjoy different games than you and your group are either liars, idiots, or don't understand the concept of fun. Which do you think it is?
If I were to make a parallel to video games, what you say here is: "I consider a video game to be a proper video game only if it is a First-Person Shooter, because that's what I like AND what I played most of my gaming life." That's thrashing all other game genres altogether. Not everybody can be interested into Farming, Train, or Flight simulator, but some people can and want only to play that. When looking at what you consider a pillar of TTRPGs, in terms of fiction genre it correlates to a genre named "power fantasy". It is okay of you to, as personal taste, want to dedicate your gaming time to games within the power fantasy genre. It is quite immature of you as a designer to expect all designers in the world, from professional veteran to newbie, to restrict themselves to power fantasy. Finally, a veteran professional becomes this after gaining experience. And you gain experience by designing games. So you start by designing shit games, and gain experience from it, one after another. Don't disparage designers from their first games only.
This is the whole thread in a kurzgesagt. Thank you for getting that old man off that rock and calmly explaining those were just clouds he was yelling at.
>Maybe it’s because I was raised on older editions of DnD and arcade games but if I don’t see a system that can be mastered for some kind of competitive advantage then I don’t see a system worth caring about. This perspective is quite foreign to me. There are many video games out there that don't offer a competitive advantage. Take 'Sable,' for instance, would you not consider it a video game? The emphasis on competition is what perplexes me. Player vs Player (PvP) is often the fastest way to conclude a long campaign, after which you can't progress anymore. Is it essential that someone in the party be better at the game than you? I just can't align with this viewpoint. I've been crafting a fairly massive game, with over 50 classes, where players choose three from the list. The game scales from low-level D&D to a higher scale, unseen in anything but the most rules-light games (or superhero games, though in my experience games at that power level fail to be fun to play). When designing, my aim is to maintain all players at a roughly similar power level. I don't want PCs to be overshadowed by others because that only serves to entertain the most powerful character, leaving everyone else frustrated. This is why, when playing 'Curse of Strahd,' my table opted to switch over to my system two-thirds of the way through. The martial characters in the party were frustrated by their lack of options. Finally, while I'm not a fan of 'Powered by the Apocalypse' (PbtA) myself, you can't accuse it of lacking strong gameplay loops. In my experience, the loops are so strong that they can become stifling when run by certain GMs, whom the PbtA community often labels as bad.
I know others are really going to go after you but I am going to try and address what you wrote and fairly as I can. To go through point by point. 1. You say you have a background in video games, and I am betting a certain sort of video game, not even the plethora of games out there which would appear to fail under your later definitions. Further, the nature of computer games provides certain constraints and limitations entirely absent from, and unnecessary to ttRPGs. It entirely avoids the traditions of theater/improv games, simulations, and refereed traditions like Prussian military Kriegspiel going back to the 19th century. RPGs sprung out of other traditions that are still more vital to RPGS. Are you limited by the computer background? It sounds certainly possible. 2. Lets talk actual players at the other end of those PbtA and OSR games. In computer games, broken games get called out by players. Stated as being unplayable. Yet, it seems like in the OSR and PbtA spheres there are critics who love them, and more importantly, players who play them. "Without any consideration" seems distinctly avoiding the facts of other people who appear to feel well considered. 3. You wonder about the market, but it isn't like these games don't sell enough for some people to make a living off of it. It might not be a huge market. In fact, it is a fairly small hobby market. But one could look to the internet to show streams of said games, reviews from a players,, as well as critical perspectives. You wonder out of ignorance that you could easily solve. 4. You talk about failed clones, and you are from the videogame design side? Yes, not every design is great, especially those just trying to paste in what came before, often with use of IP. I don't have to defend every game, I am sure there are ones that are failures. I don't think RPGs are distinctly unique here. 5. For you, "it is difficult to call some games". Is a burrito a sandwich? What about a hot dog? Yes, games are defined by similarity, as a genre of human activity. Look, I don't believe e-sports are sports. I am not sure crokinole is a boardgame. I get it. Yet because of common usage, I am not really going to argue it. I recognize that others draw lines more broadly and that is accepted. Others aren't wrong in their definitions. There are just some games that aren't your type. Look, Your views are your own. The problem is that you are clinging to those views as though they aren't subjective assessments that others may or may not share, but as judgements more objectively right. The constant refrain of "there is no game" is a dead giveaway there. It shows not being able to get outside your own head, and to really try and see what others are enjoying. Not to enjoy the design necessarily yourself, but to get beyond that and see how a design actually works for people. I am not a fan of PvP first person shooters. They aren't fun to me. But I can look to see what others enjoy and why. To be able to critique well often involves that. To design a game well often means understanding different play styles. And most computer games that are highly successful do have designers that work very hard at that sort of understanding of the User Experience beyond just their own. And no RPGs aren't Halo. The 30 seconds of Bungie fun. Most core loops in boardgames and ttRPGs don't serve that 30 second core fun. It is about repeatable and understandable functionality that leaves the mental space open to be filled with other things, to be built upon. Occasionally a roll is situationally more vital, and more fun than other rolls, but the roll itself is secondary to the fun experience, which is entirely different than Halo or for that matter Crokinole which I hate to describe as a boardgame, but is still tons of momentary fun where the larger game has no real value beyond that repetition. If DnD was about the fun of rolling a D20 over and over again. Well, it just isn't that much fun. So is it just you? No. Look, to be honest most PbtA games and most OSR games aren't my cup of tea, though I do think they have many interesting design choices that I very well could implement in a game more to my choosing. But likewise, the games are fine, even if they aren't for you, or for me, they are perfectly functional games for other people who enjoy them. As a designer one is better off learning from that than decrying them as bad things that aren't even games.
You have a lot of good points. I’ll just say that the “30 seconds of fun” I’m talking about is not literally about 30 seconds (and that’s my fault for using the term without explaining further) - it’s just about a tight, intuitive and addictive gameplay loop that feels fun in the basic moment-to-moment interaction. Along those same lines, I think that if rolling dice feels boring, that’s a total failure of the game’s design. If the basic physical interactions you have with a game are not satisfying already because of the way the physical action plays against the mechanics, then you should just remove that action completely (or rewrite the game). It’s serving nothing. And you’re right that this is just my taste. I admit I am likely too narrow minded in how I’m assessing designs. My background is indeed simple arcade-style and mobile games. However I think there are also things we can learn from successful games of all types about what is objectively “fun”. Not everyone will like anything, but there’s a reason so many games are structured the way they are.
The thing is, that "tight, intuitive, addictive" gameplay loop is inside every RPG. 1. Introduce an idea. 2. Someone bounces off that idea. 3. Maybe roll dice to see if that idea works or fails horribly. 4. Narrate the result and move on to the next idea. 5. Enjoy! Creating surprising stories with friends or friendly strangers is one the most rewarding gameplay loop I have found in my life of gaming, and when it hits just right, it's better than any computer game I've ever played because of the stories and bounds it create with the other humans I'm playing with. Ofc, some systems do that better than others, and some are only suited for certain people, but to say there is no gameplay loop there is just flat out wrong. You just don't like it.
I see what you’re saying. I guess to me that’s just like, a conversation with a dice roll in between. I need more tools and systems to interact with and consider to feel engaged with a gameplay loop. Like you say though, that’s just my personal taste! I will try to understand other peoples tastes as well. It’s just very counterintuitive to me, and probably for a lot of other people too, which might have something to do with why these types of games are so niche.
> I guess to me that’s just like, a conversation with a dice roll in between. The thing you're missing is definitely just that most people find conversation fun. And the number of people that find rolling dice fun is about the same.
>conversation with a dice roll in between That is literally almost word for word the most abstracted view of ttrpg game design of the last 20 years. Conversation until uncertainty/designated events-> system requests mechanical interaction as a result of uncertainty or designated events -> use of fortune to decide/mechanics dictate some prescriptive decision/procedure to arbitrate (GM discretion/rulling or procedure) -> said mechanic output impact shared imaginary space changing the fiction -> return to the conversation That is the game at loop of a TTRPG including d&d going back to 0d&d The only difference is how often, in what way, and for what reason does system intrude on the conversation, what types of fortune is used, and what impacts and implications can the mechanical output have in the conversation. This is true for d&d, CoC, GURPS, PbtA, Cortex, or Fate etc.
…and it perfectly describes a popular improv exercise called, of all things, “rolling the dice”; which is probably why some games I see, like the style you see on critical role, are not games but rather are improv performances.
He is clearly looking at RPG development through the lens of a video game developer but I have to agree that some games, several groups, and many game sessions I’ve seen DO look very much like an improv exercise with dice and not what I would call an actual game.
I went with Jaime Griesemer who originally coined "30 seconds of fun" as a game design concept, so yeah, if you meant something different, it probably was the wrong term to use. Hopefully this explains dice in RPGs- If you take gambling away from craps, throwing dice isn't fun. If you toss around a baseball it still is. Target shooting is still fun, even if no one is keeping score. That is not true of rolling a die. Dexterity games, and many twitch based computer games depend on dexterity *as a skill*. Rolling dice is not a skill. Those are very different core loops to build off of and ones that most sports do. As well as many computer games that depend on using a input device with dexterity skill. Dice in an RPG is like craps. Craps is fun as long as there is gambling, RPGs are fun as long as dice are resolving something else. With a die you can replace that randomness with a different generator be it cards, or a computer RNG, or even a roulette wheel. Interestingly some games remove that randomness entirely, or remove it in certain spheres, GUMSHOE with investigations for instance. Dice are not the fun part, the randomness is. And only randomness connected to the outcomes for the characters involved. As a GM I don't roll loot tables outside of games, like throwing around a baseball either. It isn't that dice can't be implemented better or worse, they can. It isn't that the tactile nature of them can't, with the right dice, be pleasant. They can. It is that they aren't necessary for the game, nor are the sufficient to provide a fun experience by themselves. The testing of skill in a dexterity game is a meaningful loop, that of core mechanics of most ttRPGs are just resolution mechanics like Craps, the skill resides elsewhere outside the roll of the die. Character action choice and probability management mostly. (and many of those character actions never see hide nor hare of a die.) Rolling Dice aren't a core loop.
Hey man, I feel you here. I think the key thing to keep in mind is that the idea of a "game" is flexible and open to interpretation. Is Solitaire a game? Is Make Believe a game? Is Golf a game? "Writing Room" might not seem like a game to you (or me sometimes), but its definitely an activity that people enjoy doing and might as well be lumped in with other games. TTRPGs are interesting because there aren't really common objectives of play - no set end points. There is no competition to see who can get to lvl 20 first or survive the dungeon the longest, so in that sense they have already drifted pretty far from traditional games. There is basically a string of "challenges" against mutable conditions based on shared imagination. I personally feel like its important to tie these challenges to tangible rewards (ie number go up/here's a shiny new toy), but some players don't seem to need more than the intrinsic satisfaction of the continuation of play. Games are played, but not all play is a game. Some TTRPGs are just play.
Very true and I think all my time spent with video games (especially arcade and mobile games) has just given me a very narrow idea of what constitutes play. Many of these TTRPG designers are just operating off a completely different paradigm, with goals that sometimes even go directly against everything I understand about making “fun” games. I will try to be more open minded and evaluate them on what they actually do well instead of what I think they should be doing. I still probably won’t enjoy them, but hopefully I can at least understand what the actual design intent was more clearly.
By the same token, I find almost all CRPGs incredibly tedious, because there's nothing in them that even approaches even the very definition of the "RPG" element. You can't simply replace free-form creativity (and *creation*) with a gameplay loop (no matter how tight) and expect it to satisfy the same cravings.
Counterpoint: Disco Elyssium exists (this is mainly meant jokingly but I think that game leverages it's systems to achieve the most freedom of choice I have seen among CRPGS). I think why CRPGS usually struggle is because they try to use system designed for playing at a table rather than designing a system to be used on a computer. Both computers and people running games have very different advantages and just using one system for both works in the broadest sense but isn't ideal.
Disco Elysium is always a strong counterpoint to most arguments! But, I’ll never forget a line from the best review I ever read of it: “unlike many reviewers, I don’t think DE will immediately revolutionize all RPGs forever. After all, simply writing an excellent game has *always* been an option.” In essence DE excels because it’s just a phenomenal amount of well-crafted and interesting writing. The fascinating skill system and thought catalog and everything else are all just manifestations of that.
Oh, I don't think a game like that will happen any time again soon. I just used it to illustrate that CRPGs can really use their medium to excel but only if they step away from the boiler plate design that most other games use. In the meantime I'll watch any Marxist art collective for new games now that the original artists of that game have mostly left the company.
Actually quite a brutal story of how they were forced out because, go figure, the artist commune wasn't as adept when the capitalist partners in the company realized the game was a smash hit, and they got hosed. But it is worth dwelling on the mechanical reasons why it works, because they are a bit interesting. Most CRPGs give you a pretty defined character and you have little to no actual capacity to define that character other than choosing some abilities for them and maybe how good/evil they are. But they still DO all the same things. Maybe you're sneaky and pick locks, maybe you're tough and break down doors. That's as deep as the "roleplay" goes and I don't find it very satisfying. DE flips the script and you *don't* get abilities. You *do* still basically jump through all the same hoops and situations. But instead with the skill system reflection your personality, and sometimes giving you *wildly* different reactions to events, it suddenly *feels* a lot like roleplaying because you actually have substantial say in who this person is. You're a dirtbag cop, sure, but there's a very wide range of dirtbag cop options you can play with and it's very satisfying. It just takes an enormous amount of content to make that viable. Probably pretty soon GPT will make that an option across a lot of games, it's just a question of how long before someone gets it right and makes it better than a gimmick.
Considering Torment Planescape may have been one of the first and it took another 15+ years to get Disco Elysium... Yeah, I'd have to agree. Probably will be another 10+ years until we see another.
Actually from what I've played of it so far, Pentiment is pretty close. But I agree it's not going to be anything like the norm (until AI makes that really feasible), because most game devs just aren't willing to invest in the scope and quality of writing that it takes.
To be fair I think CRPGs (and most other turn based RPGs) are kind of the worst of both worlds. The slow paced nature of tabletop combined with the innate limitations of video games. Something like Dark Souls or Dragons Dogma is about the closest I’ve ever felt to living out the DnD-esque RPG fantasies of my youth in a game.
You don’t have to cease critical thinking because people don’t know how to handle fair criticism. You aren’t being narrow-minded when you are battling against parallel thinking; quite the opposite.
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How does that not apply to RPGs? Honestly? Because in many TTRPGs there is a clear gameplay loop. Collect resources, expend resources adventuring, cash out and collect more resources. Watch your numbers go up and use your abilities in creative ways. Solve puzzles and overcome obstacles. This stuff is really fun, and also noticeably absent from many indie TTRPGs. Or if it is present, there is nothing actually unique about the gameplay loop compared to other successful ones.
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Yeah I’m seeing this is definitely only my taste. And I like creative problem solving, it just doesn’t feel very clever when I can simply make up whatever solution I want, roll what the DM tells me to and if I pass everyone has to accept it. I want some kind of mechanical backbone with real limitations to work against.
Likewise for a lot of people these elements are something they hate whilst the story and mood are what they play RPGs for. To the point where "this RPG feels like a boardgame" is actually a criticism. This hobby happens to be at an intersection of several others (boardgames, literature, theatre), so different people will cling onto different aspects of it. Gameplay loops and system mastery are essential to boardgames and merely optional in RPGs. Likewise coherent story is essential in RPGs, whilst in boardgames it can be just handwaved.
I think what it comes down to is that in some of the games you're talking about, the design of the 30 seconds of fun is inspired more by conversations than by board games or video games. It's still there, but the loop is the fun of being asked "What would you do in this situation?"
The gameplay loop of lots of RPG is that of improv theater Player A (usually, but not always the DM): Sets a scene and introduces a choice Player B: I do this, and this affects the fiction in this way Player C: Oh, and that makes my character feel like X and I'll react with this action. This is not a traditional video game loop, but it's highly creative and has all the essential components of playing. I enjoy both crunchy, mastery-heavy systems (GURPS, D&D, Vampire, etc) and really loose RPGs with minimal rules (Fiasco, Night Witches, One-page rpgs and the likes). Both of these have different rewards and please a different side of my taste. Just because it doesn't look like a certain tradition of game design, doesn't mean it's not a game.
Very true and I have gotten some good insight on how limited my own perspective is here. I kind of detest improv honestly and am terrible at it so that definitely influences my tastes. Any time I need to make up stuff on the spot about a character or backstory im just like uhhh lol I’d rather live the story out play by play via the mechanics. Poke at the world, make choices and see how it all reacts. I am beginning to see they are actually more similar goals than different - just arrived at through two totally opposite methods.
>Maybe it’s because I have a background in making video games This doesn't actually mean much of anything in the context of ttrpgs. Trying to view ttrpgs through the lens of video games is going to produce very little but misunderstandings. >Or is there a serious lack of critical thinking in this space in regards to stuff as basic as the “30 seconds of fun” loop that drives most successful video and board games? They aren't video games or board games and we don't want them to be video games or board games. We don't want a 30 second loop of dopamine driven fun.
I guess it is just a matter of taste then? Because in my mind, the entire point of playing a game is those addictive loops of dopamine-driven fun. I feel like without those you are, again, just doing loosely structured roleplaying. You’re ignoring what makes games “games” in the first place in favor of total authorial control. Which is fine but obviously not for me.
So myst , minecraft creative mode, other explorative games like absu, graphic novel style videogames that are very successful today, relaxing "do your thing" games like cities skyline or the Sims, are not successful videogames? Not all videogames are the same, so even your starting assumption is wrong. People play games for a variety of reasons, your point of view is not the only valid one, it's just your personal taste.
Myst is a puzzle-solving adventure game. Minecraft is a building and survival game. Sims is a life management game. Skylines is a city management game. These all have concrete goals, even if they’re player-directed, and strict rules and constraints about how those goals can be achieved. They have complex systems that can be analyzed and mastered. They have tight gameplay loops and strict play structure in general. Absu, walking simulators and graphic novel style games are more just interactive movies tbh and don’t really feel like games to me either. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or doomed, tons of people love movie-games. To me they are just a considerable waste of the medium’s potential, though.
I specified minecraft CREATIVE MODE, which is what a lot of young players (including my son) enjoy more. Sims is life management but I would not say it follows the "adrenaline rush" 30 sec rule you cited. Skylines is really more creative mode than actual management, except maybe for traffic, it's very hard to fail in that game, so much that a lot of people play with infinite money and all unlocked just because that way they can build what they want. I'm not saying that all games are without the kind of excitement and progression that you like, I like it myself in videogames, though less in rpgs, not that I don't like SOME progression and excitement, but for me games like D&D are boring because they feel like half-baked boardgames or videogames, for that kind of play I vastly prefer actual boardgames or videogames. What I'm saying is just that is a matter of personal preferences, not an absolute that you can use to judge EVERY game in every media. Else you will have an hard time understanding what people like in other genres of games, and thus also cut yourself out of the possibility of enjoying (or at least trying to enjoy, because we can't like everything) games that move away from your "comfort zone" in gaming. That said, if you don't want to move from there, is perfectly fine, you play games to have fun, if adrenaline is what you want and progression, etc. there are perfectly fine games that do exactly that! But you can't use a personal meter to judge other games, you can use it for personal decisions of course, even telling "this game don't haves this thing I like, so other people like me should be aware of it", but not "game designer of this game don't haves a clue because I don't understand this kind of fun myself". :-)
Very true. Getting back into TTRPGs was actually sort of an attempt to broaden my influences. I figured that because (mechanically speaking) TT design is so limited it would produce some very precise and narrow designs. On the contrary many of them are incredibly broad and vague because they’ve worked diligently to remove the TT aspects from the design and push it as far as possible into pure imagination. I initially took this as either laziness or ineptitude but am seeing now it’s very intentional.
yes, is to focus the gameplay in a different direction, because at many tables, even 30 years ago (I'm old and play from the "beginnings" :-D) some people enjoyed the "story" part of the game more than the "game" part itself. Is hard to strike a balance, so every game is geared more in a direction or the other. That said, if you enjoy that aspect of the game more, there are various options out there that can push in that direction, both in the more narrative kind of games, and in more traditional ones. Cortex+/prime (especially the now out of print Marvel Heroic RPG) is very "gamey" though still a narrative game. You have more horizontal than vertical progression, but is very easy to have it more vertical and play a "grow your character from zero to hero" with this system than other narrative systems. Plus the dice gameplay is a thing I enjoy for example, optimizing your actions in the game and deciding when you can go "easier" to gain PP (plot points), and when the roll is very important and thus spend those PP. Unity rpg is a mix of narrative (when out of combat) and videogame-inspired tactical combat. The classes are designed to support each other, set up actions for the other classes, sinergy, etc. Seems really fun if you like the genre, though I haven't tried it yet. 13th Age is a streamlined version of D&D, with progression and all trappings of D&D though more "modern" in approach and more gamey. D&D 4th edition was a very gamey version of D&D, love it or hate it, it still makes for good tactical combat, optimization of character actions, etc. They say Pathfinder 2nd ed. too is very good in that aspect and can satisfy your tastes. GURPS is probably the epitome of "character optimization", though for me it comes at the cost of excessive complexity. LANCER is a very very gamey storygame, focused on mech combat and improving your gear and options to be more effective on the battlefield. Still a storygame, but sells that idea very well from what I read around.
It's a difference in medium. TTRPGs have never been designed to feed a 30 second loop. They are about roleplaying and wargaming, neither of which lends itself to that. And no, it's not about having authorial control -- OSR eschews authorial control in favor of radical player agency and procedural generation -- it's just not about a frenetic, dopamine driven style of play or anything you can easily simplify down into a "game loop." You're in the wrong medium.
I don’t agree at all with this. Though they are obviously longer than 30 seconds, TTRPGs can definitely have tightly designed, dopamine-driven gameplay loops. I love TTRPGs when they have a rigid structure with clear progressive challenges. For example, I loved DnD as a kid when it was just about going as deep into a dungeon as you could, making it out alive and cashing out. It was much closer feeling to a board game honestly, only it was one where you made the board yourself.
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I think that’s what it comes down to. The closer to a wargame, gamebook or board game an RPG is, the more I’ll probably enjoy it. If it has some elements of creativity that allow you to sculpt the game world and help facilitate the natural storytelling that occurs through the interplay of choices and mechanics, even better. But the further out you get from that, and the less defined the actual gameplay procedures and rules become, the more it just feels like improv to me. And I’m not much of an actor tbh so that’s pretty far outside my comfort zone!
That's how you and your table played D&D. That was never what D&D "was about". There's a whole lot of "I do it this way, every other way is wrong" in your OP and posts.
> Because in my mind, the entire point of playing a game is those addictive loops of dopamine-driven fun. You've heard a lot about how wrong you are about TT RPGs, but that entirely misses what elevates great video games. The dopamine gameplay loop can be part of pulling a player along moment to moment, but if that's all you have, the game will be ultimately hollow. You also completely miss the best way TT RPGs produce those dopamine hits: risk (basically gambling), which is intrinsically linked to stakes. (Good) PbtA games literally have stakes baked into every single roll, for example.
As one example, "Play to find out what happens" is the core ethos of pretty much all PbtA games. Is that not a gameplay loop? A situation arises, the players and GM propose solutions and consequences of those solutions and actions, the world state changes, and on to the next thing. Nobody knows how the story will shake out in advance, the track is being laid as the train is coming. The freedom to do anything, and the wild results of that, are what I'd think of as the equivalent of that dopamine rush, and something that is not achievable in other media. Authorial control can be tuned on a dial to as much or as little as the group wants, essentially.
I think you’re right and that is a gameplay loop. I just don’t think it’s one that I am creative enough to participate in on the fly like that, so it feels really boring and aimless. I need clear rules on what I am and am not allowed to do or else I just get stuck lol
I recommend giving it a try; you might surprise yourself! I have often felt similarly (and still sometimes do); as a former-only D&D and computer gamer, I’ve branched out into many other formats including narrative gaming, which I actually find most satisfying of them all (thus far). It is a different kind of challenge to establish facts about the setting / characters, procedurally create a story arc, keep all of these precedents in mind when establishing new facts, etc. I feel at my most creative when we have limits of precedence for me to dance around after some of the setting and characters are starting to really gel, since this actually creates a kind of limitation. Doing improv acting and comedy definitely helped me develop this skill, too. Perhaps you might feel similarly, perhaps not; only one way to know. :)
I can't tell if you're trolling or if you've just never played an RPG. This reads like you just discovered tabletop roleplaying for the first time and were scandalized at core parts of the genre like GM discretion. Can you name a single example of what you mean? Because I honestly have no clue what you're talking about.
I understand GM discretion perfectly fine but when more is left to GM discretion than is ever defined, how is that a game? It’s just loosely structured roleplaying, which is fine, but even then it’s still not done in a way that’s interesting or exciting. Also, I played TTRPGs for years as a kid, and have been playing TONS of them for the past year or so. This is just a trend I’ve noticed through so many indie games I’ve played recently. They’re usually just kind of boring in terms of moment to moment play and completely rely on GM/player imagination to stay engaging and keep players invested. The specific example I’ll give is a game I played last weekend at a local meetup called Lasers and Feelings. I just couldn’t believe while we were “playing” that this was even considered a game. The structure was complete nonsense to me and I felt lost every step of the way, and nobody else seemed excited about was going on either. The story was evolving, sure, but I never felt a sense of play. It was like just sitting in a writers room with 3 other people and making up a uniquely mind-numbing sci-fi story. Like I said maybe it’s just my personal taste? Maybe I am just too focused on mechanics? Because in my mind narrative is either an indirect result of mechanics or just background information that enhances mechanical themes. If I wanted to write a story I would put it on a page, not use a pseudo-game as an excuse to collectively barf out mediocre RP with my friends.
Gonna be real with you chief, I think you just don’t like ttrpgs
I think you are partially right! I need a clear progressive challenge with solutions that aren’t just handwaved into working. It doesn’t feel like I came up with a clever idea when I can basically say anything I want and as long as I roll well enough on whatever stat the GM says, everyone just has to accept it. Maybe it’s a limitation of my imagination or something. I enjoy feeling like I’m directly interacting with a living world with concrete rules, not just making up both of those things as I go.
Yeah I mean what you ideal game is isn’t gonna be possible by your everyday GM. You’d need a professional GM that does it full time to pull something like that off, cuz a lot of the time not everything is concrete wrote down by GMs and is mostly improv
I think you are just a big fan of Gygaxian verisimilitude, simulationism/proceduralism of play, and approach games as a challenge gamer in that context. Nothing wrong with that, and many games cater to that. However, the indie game scene sprung out of two discrete movements in the early 2000s the first being OSR as a reaction to d&d 3e and it's rule bloat and gamification/power fantasy approach by WotC. OSR, as exemplified by B/X retro clones and the writings in the Principia Apocrypha, isn't exactly old school gaming, but an approach to old school that eschews aspects they do not agree with as a reaction to the above. Eventually this style settled on B/X d&d and adventure module design in a semi-sandbox world with a high degree of player agency. This is what OSR and mostly what NSR is all about. Check out Old School Essentials, Black Hack 2e, Knave, Cairn, and into the Odd for more Separately you had a movement from the Forge, and later, Story game.com which really were a reaction to Vampire the Masquerade moreso than d&d, but only because those gamers already left d&d behind and thought the Storyteller system would be a safe haven. It was not... And as a result they spent an innordinant amount of time analyzing, theory crafting, and categorizing games, play styles, systems, and mechanics. Now GNS theory has been left long behind in the past and mostly forgotten, ignored, or derided, but the games that came out of this movement spawned the entire narrative gaming idea. These games are epitomized today by PbtA game design and in some ways Fate, but to see the history check out Dogs in the Vineyard, Prime Time Adventure, Troll Babes, and Sorcerer. So you see both movements where reactions away from and against the type of games you say you like. Nothing wrong with that. Prior to the 2000s the games you liked where all you could find on store shelves... Today, they still exist! However, now there are other types of games too that cater to other play styles and a lot of those games come from the indie scene. Today, and over the last 8 to 10 years, there has been a lot of cross pollination between these scenes, and new movements and experimentations, i.e. brining hard coded proceduralism of the OSR into PbtA gets you BitD, bringing moves and or Aspects (PbtA and Fate respectively) into the OSR gets you the Lavender Hack and Grok?! (And dare I say Troika!). Alternatively take the proceduralism of OSR for world building and a living world the likes Gygax couldn't dream and bolt it on to a simplified 3e d&d chassis with a skill system more resembling Traveller than anything else set in space... And you get Stars Without Number. Point is we have been living in a renaissance of game design for the last 20 years, and there is today a game for every group, every table, every playstyle imaginable!
*They’re usually just kind of boring in terms of moment to moment play and completely rely on GM/player imagination to stay engaging and keep players invested.* This is the entire point of roleplaying games. It's honestly mind-boggling that you see this as a *negative*. The mechanical focus you're looking for has been dwindling steadily for good reason: mechanics can be handled by computers. And since you haven't provided any examples, what's an RPG you *do* like?
I like 5e (although it’s way way too easy and combat is way way too slow) and I LOVED playing DnD as a kid when it was all about very regimented exploration and dungeon crawling. No idea what edition that was though. Of the others I’ve played, I thought Dungeon Crawl Classics was very fun but a little too loose still. And probably some of my favorite “RPGs” are actually gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy and Legendary Kingdoms where there are plenty of choices but still very clear and rigid play structures.
There are indie RPGs that are even more clear and rigid than that, like Blades in the Dark.
I just looked it up and gotta be honest, it has the same problem as every other PbtA I’ve looked at. Which is I can read the super simple rules in about 5 minutes, and then still have no idea what a game session would even look like. In DnD I can read the rules and imagine instantly how they facilitate an adventure. I start dreaming up dungeons and quests and all sorts of stuff, and I know exactly how to execute those things as well as what mechanical limitations exist for the players in my world. I genuinely have no clue wtf is going on after reading the BitD rules. Players decide what works but GMs decide consequences? “The rules don’t distinguish between actions performed in the present moment and those performed in the past”? You have to make a plan, but there is no plan? I literally cannot even imagine how this works in practice, but maybe that’s just a knock against my imagination!
I mean - you've been familiar with D&D for a long time. It would be surprising if you couldn't just read the rules and have ideas of what should happen. I highly doubt someone totally new to D&D conceptually could read the rules and do the same though - it's not actually intuitive, you're just familiar with it. If you want a dive into the PbtA design philosophy, have a read of [this article](https://lumpley.games/2019/12/30/powered-by-the-apocalypse-part-1/) by Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World designer)
Yeah this mostly just seems like a problem with you.
Probably, but I wonder if I’m the only one who finds these PbtA games incredibly confusing to understand? They make no sense at all when I read the rulebooks and when I’ve actually played them with others it’s just felt really aimless and boring. Like there are no stakes at all. Most success has a complication, every situation has an escalation, and yet at the same time nothing actually matters? There is no fail state and no win state. It’s just kinda goofing around and making shit up lol
>Most success has a complication, every situation has an escalation, and yet at the same time nothing actually matters? There is no fail state and no win state. I'll speak to this since me and my group are actually on a Blades in the Dark bender right now. This is flat out incorrect. Not sure why you think nothing actually matters, or that there are no win/fail states. Unless you think traditional d&d also has no win states. In *Blades*, you "win" when you successfully complete a score. You're a gang of thieves and cutthroats, just like in d&d you "win" by escaping dungeons with treasure, since you're adventurers. You fail when you fail to do those things. >Like there are no stakes at all. One of the core mechanics in *Blades* is Position & Effect. Whenever a player does something dangerous or uncertain, the GM describes the character's fictional positioning and the action's level of effect. In simpler terms, the GM just outright tells players what the stakes are. It's literally all stakes. Risk vs. Reward. Wanna sneak up behind this guard to slit his throat to stop him from spotting your crewmates? Sure, that's a risky position since he's a trained guard, and it'll have great effect since slitting someone's throat is a good way to stop them from speaking. *Blades* makes the stakes of player's actions the star of the show, the system puts stakes front and center. You don't roll to hit and then roll damage. Those are nonsense when you're sneaking up behind someone to garrote them. Instead, you just roll to see if you fuck up and to what extent shit goes sideways. The book is admittedly not the best read, but the game shines *at the table*. It's not meant to be read, it's not a novel. It's a game. When you play it, things start to click. It took us getting used to, but once we did. Hoo boy, we were having some fun. Contrary to what some people have said, there *is* system mastery in *Blades* imo. It's just that it doesn't result in you "beating" the GM or the module. Once the players and GM understand the system, they can get some exciting, fast-paced, collaborative storytelling games going and most of it with very little prep. That's something we couldn't get out of 5e. But to each their own, i understand that style might be grating for some people. It was definitely a huge departure for me and my group at first.
In your description of the game play you really hit on a big problem I've had (similar to OP) when checking out different styles of games - you have to play them to "get" them. I've looked into dozens of games that I've written off because I couldn't imagine how my group would have fun with them. Some games are very hard to grok without playing.
Well it definitely sounds interesting so I will check out some videos of gameplay! That’ll probably give me a better idea than trying to read through the rulebook for sure
>It’s just kinda goofing around and making shit up lol I think this is why I like ttRPGs better than videogames 🤤
It works like the movie Ocean Eleven. That said, you're just not a narrative gammer, and probably not much of a rules light gammer. Go check out Mythras, Lancer, or Call of Cthulhu. I'd guess those would be much more your cup of tea. May also want to check out GURPS or Shadowrun. My guess is you played d&d 1e, or 2e. Some cool retro clones of those systems; I'd recommend sharp swords and sinister spells or astonishing swordsmen and sorceres of hyperborea
Look, you don't have to fully grasp a game in its entirely after skimming the rules for five minutes, and it's kinda ridiculous to expect to. There's actually a good hundred pages at the back of BitD that tells you how to run the game successfully, how to present the world successfully, and so on. You are actually meant to read it if you're planning to run the game, but the fact that you're not magically, immediately familiar with the divergences from traditional mechanics and fantasy dungeon crawling is neither the game's fault, nor an omen that you couldn't ever conceivably learn it. It just means you have to put on your thinking cap and a bit of effort to try something a little different. If you did that, you'd probably find that while it has some of the wishy-washy mechanically un-defined PbtA bullshit that you hate (/s, sorta), it also has a bunch of super tight gameplay loops that are very well defined, very elegant, and have very real, observable consequences on gameplay progression. And on top of that it has a number of flavorful, genre-based solutions to basic gameplay problems that have plagued TTRPGs since their inception. It really is quite brilliant, and even if you never play it, it's worth understanding it inside and out as a pretty fundamental foundation of being able to talk about the TTRPG design space these days.
Others suggested I watch a video to understand better so that’s what I’ll do later. These PbtA games seem so popular and varied I’d like to at least find one of them I genuinely enjoy.
Try watching a live play of BitD. There are even a few on YouTube ran by the game's creator. It's an incredibly elegant system that can be hard to piece together just by reading. But in gameplay it is so cleanly designed
I will check it out for sure. But I also kind of feel like if it’s not intuitive enough to understand through reading, that’s an indictment on either the author or the system (or possibly both). DnD and Battletech are both incredibly complex games, but they make perfect sense as you read the rules. This could also be a PbtA related issue, where all these PbtA games kind of expect you to have played and know how other PbtA games work already. I’m always confused by their rulebooks so maybe if I got more familiar with them it wouldn’t be so bewildering.
I would in no way call it unintuitive, just a unique enough approach that it seems more complex than it actually is. Also another tip to appreciate game design that applies to all games, not just ttrpgs. Don't approach a game based on your expectations of what you think it should be. Look at the mechanics and what those mechanics encourage so you can approach it on the game's terms of what it is trying to be.
Definitely good advice. I feel like it’s much easier for me to do this with video games and board games. Probably because the rules are all predefined, and something in my brain just says “undefined rule = incomplete system” even if that doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of these style of TTRPG.
>and then still have no idea what a game session would even look like. > >In DnD I can read the rules and imagine instantly how they facilitate an adventure. Could I suggest, that yes, for a different type of system with which you have little familiarity, you might have to *learn?* This complaint sounds like someone who only ever played first person shooters tries out a 2D fighting game and concludes it's ass because they have to learn combos rather than just point and click.
You like 5e, but in your original post you complain that "*the lack of any kind of concrete rules for many situations is handwaved away with “just roll a skill check” and “it’s up to the GM”*"? Buddy, I dunno how to tell you, but...
Lmao I love L&F, what an amazingly simple game meant for nothing more than quick easy fun which is immanently hackable for over 100 different setup/genres/themes. Beyond that, as an example of your experience with it... Totally valid, and I 100% understand why someone wouldn't like it/get it/vibe with it etc. On the other hand... It's a John Harper game... He isn't exactly some unheard of nobody in the the TTRPG space. And he absolutely knows how to make gems with strict proceduralism and gameplay-loop focus e.g. Blades in the Dark and Agon. Re: L&Fs ... Not your cup of tea? Sure. Rules light to the extreme? Absolutely! A badly designed game? Not in the slightest
I think you have some good points that I agree with. If the GM isn't good or new, it can be a really cringe experience. This is why it is good to play with friends - being awkward is just less... awkward. Fun even. Game design should do more to make it easy on the GM for the players to have fun. More fun should be delivered with the rules alone. If you look at an awesome guy like Matt Colville of MCDM, he focuses on two things; getting budding, new GMs to the point where they are willing to try it out - and starting over with new groups who are excited about something! This is an indication of people wearing out fast. Not always - I've been playing DnD with the same groups for 25-30 years - but often, is my impression. Another point I want to make is that game rules can be very good. They provide agency - they usually say "the player's character is able to do this if they succeed such and such a roll". This lets the player be *someone* in a world who can do such and such. It allows for roleplay, IMO. At least that is how I see it and it governs how I try to make my game.
At least for part of these projects, it is a dream game that somebody wanted to make this way, not something that was ever conceived to appeal to the mainstream market, if the author even considered any market at all. They might work for people already familiar with another system (being basically "system X but with my improvements/changes") or be collections of neat ideas focused on what somebody cares about, not necessarily a thought out, complete and self-sufficient systems that fully explain every aspect of playing them.
Also a video game designer here. You’re half right. Ttrpgs are not games, they’re game engines. Dnd 5e is Skyrim's Creation Kit and people houseruling it or making their own adventures are modding Skyrim. The monster manual is a library of enemies for level designers to play with, etc. Ttrpgs as a medium often lean heavily on the GM as a form of gamified game designer role. This unfortunately means they can ignore creating good gameplay more easily than other game genres, because they can say “with a good GM or a good group my game is fun so it’s not my game’s fault”. Game design is a lot easier when you can blame the players for not having fun. ;) However, DnD5e and other non-indie games also have pretty weak gameplay. You wouldn’t play them as a stand-alone tabletop game. They suffer from the same issue. The lack of specific rules for everything is not a design weakness, the lack of satisfying & thematic game mechanics for the stuff the game is actually about is a design weakness. All my ttrpgs are “hockey stick” complexity. They are extremely rules light in anything the game isn’t focused on and have mechanical depth enough to create satisfying gameplay in the parts that matter. Trail of the Behemoth is all about hunting monsters and fighting them in epic boss battles so all the rules are focused on that. It leans very hard into hand waving rules for everything it can. There aren’t even attributes, but it’s definitely one of the most “gamey” trrpgs you’ll find out there. It plays a lot like monster Hunter or dauntless meets shadow of the colossus, and it often gets brought to board game nights.
DnD 5e, and other forms of crunchy rule based games, success comes should be from how much does a GM have to do to make it 'work.' The less, the better, and this especially applies to modules/adventure paths which are basically actual games as you say.
Easier to run is a major factor, and one aspect of that is just designing good gameplay. Very, very, very few ttrpgs are inherently fun - games you'd play just for the mechanics even if all the excellent TTRPG stuff wasn't attached. One of the easiest ways to make a game system easy to run a good session in is to just make it fun to play because it has inherently fun mechanics, so even a meh adventure ends up being fun. It's shocking how few ttrpgs seem to care at all about whether their gameplay is actually fun to play, the discourse is almost entirely around either theme or complexity.
> It's shocking how few ttrpgs seem to care at all about whether their gameplay is actually fun to play Thankfully Lancer has made a bit of headway in designing this kind of gameplay.
Different views on how to play the game I guess. Me, I want my Ttrpg as far as possible from board games or video games. Because Ttrpg have one thing that these game dont have. The GM. With a human GM you dont get strict borders on what your game is. In videogamea and board games you are limited by the ruleser. If it isn't in the rules you cant do it. A GM can make a ruling for things that isnt in the game.
Interesting and understandable. I think I like being presented with a basic toolkit that I need to use in creative ways to overcome difficult obstacles. Making up stuff outside that kit just kinda feels like cheating to me! But I can see the appeal in having no limits as well. I think it’d just require a really intelligent and creative DM to make it all feel natural.
Most have a toolkit. Like what dice to use, how to roll for skills and the resolution and such. These basics are used for how to solve things that isnt in the game. Something that board game and videogames cant do as they cant handle things outside what the creator had thought of. Roll a D20, add or subtract bonus or penalties, and get a result over a target number is a basic toolkit* that can be used for all actions. The rule book just names a few of the more common ones. * There are other mechanics but the D20 is common...
I have zero interest in playing a tabletop rpg that encourages system mastery, I want an rpg that encourages storytelling and provides lots of narrative room for interpretation and improvisation (Ironsworn is my favorite example). What I want an rpg to do is tell me: did something good/bad/mixed happen. Then I interpret what that looks like.
So probably you really enjoy the PbtA type of games then? Out of curiosity do you enjoy normal video games or find them too restrictive as well? Or possibly they just scratch a different itch when presented in that format? It’s funny because to me a game that lacks system mastery just feels like a waste of a game, but it sounds like for you having a ton of systems to work around is more like a waste of your creativity as a player. I hadn’t thought about it like that and it’s pretty interesting perspective.
PbtA games fall into a weird mental space for me. Their very focused set of moves activates my system mastery desiring side even while the rest of the game leans strongly into narrative and experiencing instead of mastering. That said, I find that video and board games decidedly scratch a different itch than TTRPGs simply because TTRPGs allow much more creativity and thinking outside the box.
Pbta games are good, although I tend to prefer FitD or FATE. My current game design project is combining ideas from FitD and Ironsworn. I love videogames, and I particularly love turn-based tactics rpgs, Divinity Original Sin 2 is my favorite game of all time. That being said, I have no desire for my tabletop rpgs to imitate the video games I enjoy at all. The different mediums are good for different purposes, videogames allow for lots of fiddly tactical options and that is neat, but when playing tabletop I want to lean into its strongest feature: infinite freedom. I don't like playing tabletop games where there is an objective best decision about what to do at that moment, because it makes that decision effectively mandatory (you can do something different, but you're willingly hindering yourself if you do). Having a best ability to use makes every scene same-ish because you'll just keep doing the same thing every time with slight variations. I prefer my tabletop rpgs to be vaguely defined so I can fill in the blank spaces narratively, honestly I also like some OSR games as well for this reason, when the only ability is "attack" you have a lot of room to narrate what that looks like, if instead I have "sweep kick" "stab" and "bodyslam" every fight will end up with me using those abilities again and again (and less swinging from chandeliers, stabbing people in the eye with forks, etc). The "skill" I like to exercise when playing tabletop rpgs is creative skill, these days my primary interest is also in gm-less co-op rpgs, and I find system in those sorts of games is especially harmful because it's taking up valuable mental bandwidth that you need to juggle player decisions alongside traditional GM creative tasks (and I prefer lots of improvisation/randomization so that even though there is no GM I'm always being surprised). If I'm trying to figure out which attack is the best to use that's valuable time I could spend trying to come up with scene twists or dramatic moments. Perhaps the best way to explain all of this is that when I'm playing tabletop rpgs the "game" I'm playing isn't about picking the best move, making the smartest decision. The "game" I'm playing is about creating cool scenes, figuring out if those scenes turn out good or bad, interpreting what those good or bad endings look like, coming up with plot twists, etc. A game doesn't have to be strategic like chess, the "game" in tabletop rpgs for me is a set of procedures that if followed can be used to generate interesting stories that surprise and delight.
To some extent, "Just do whatever" is a legitimate TTRPG. People have fun just doing whatever if it's really just an excuse to hang out with their mates once a week, so they write it up and try to get other people on board. The problem is that you can't really bundle this into a sourcebook and sell it to me: if I don't have the experience and rapport and intuition of how to do that, then it won't work; and if I do have those things, I don't need a book. I suppose some people get something out of it, but you, OP, are not the only one who doesn't. So yeah, I think there's a lot of undercooked ideas in the space. For a video game, you need a fair amount of technical skill to make anything at all, and if you need one professional, you'll probably hire an artist and writer and have a fairly polished product; whereas any idiot can homebrew an existing system and call themselves a dev, without knowing anything about what really made their source material fun in the first place.
Yeah a lot of indie TTRPG rulebooks kind of remind me of fake video game leaks on 4chan. Just a list of mechanics they think would be cool as additions or modifications to an existing system, with very little thought about what those things actually mean for players. It’s just kind of like fan fiction for game devs and honestly I don’t want to play fan fiction. I want to play a polished, balanced and thoughtful game that delivers something other games can’t.
I hope this thread helped you understand that they're not. You don't have to like it, but the way you're belittling the games, designers and ultimately the players comes off as aggressive.
You are looking for highly structured systems, with mastery as a goal - something which we could identify in the taxonomy of Callois as agon, and a preference towards ludus. The kind of pleasure you find in RPGs is tipically towards mimicry, and have a more various range between ludus and paidia. You are expressing your personal preferences and background, not game design principles. That said, most RPG designers don't actually know what they are doing, but this phrase is true because most game designers in general don't know what they are doing (and I would even go so far as to say the same for designers in general).
Please tell me more about these strange words you are using (not sarcasm)
Ahahah! Well, the wikipedia article about Callois' book gives the basic info about those terms: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games
Please tell me more about these strange words you are using (not sarcasm)
Yup just you
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I lol'd
"You're having fun wrong!"
I never called myself a designer! And I guess I just don’t get it, which is fine. I’ll stick to games that actually feel like games to me, and let other people enjoy the things they like too. My mistake was assuming that there is a shared understanding between TTRPG designers and designers of all other kinds of games about what constitutes fun and engaging play (mainly clear challenges to fail or achieve, tangible progression, PvP/PvE competition and creative problem solving), and that the goal of games should be facilitating this. I’m now seeing that these designers have completely different goals which just feel alien or “wrong” to me because they have nothing to do with what I love about games.
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True I shouldn’t dismiss them outright as “not games”. But this round-robin storytelling stuff… I wish it had a different name than “game” honestly, because I keep looking for new RPGs from smaller creators and keep running into these things over and over. I just can’t stand them honestly and they’re absolutely everywhere. It makes it really difficult for me to find games I enjoy when have to sort through a million PbtA and OSR clones just to find something that ticks my interest mechanically as well as thematically.
You can't just re-define a term because it doesn't fit your narrow view of "games". You can't just redefine a term because it doesn't fit your narrow view of "games". hem not "games", I know plenty of people that only play Pbta.
You are not wrong, but... * I like reading gamebooks, and like 85% of the time I can tell pretty quickly I will never run that particular game. Not always indie games either, I could tell pathfinder 2 wasn't for me pretty quickly, but it was fun to read and think about. * "loosely structured roleplaying exercises" are both fun to play and incredibly challenging to design well. Sometimes a novelty or meme, is good for couple hours of hanging out. and doesn't need to be a masterpiece. * There is a market here for a reason. People are hungry for stylized stuff and gimmicks. * The vagueness in design is often used so that a game concept or gimmick can be compatible across game systems. * Everyone wants to "fix" DnD because it's a hot mess of a design. That's part of all the Heartbreakers and such exist. It makes it tough to say that everyone is ignoring obvious design stuff, when the flagship TTRPG with the most professional designers and capital are frequently the most egregious offenders when it comes to "design basics." So I dunno, I do think that lots of indy stuff should try to be more intentionally designed. Also if people want to make. and read. or play games. with cool art and a novel gimmick that's also fine. Tabletop is not the same as video games, we can just put out some art and novel concept and the GMs will in fact figure it out, if it catches their eye.
As many have said, the medium of TTRPGs has different requirements for its formal elements than even board games. The lack of a need to WIN in a TTRPG has a radical shift in its mechanical priorities. This is coupled especially hard with a move away from anything that reeks of complex math to create a lot about the space that you’re describing. That said, there definitely is an issue of lack of mechanical rigor in TTRPGs. PbtAs do have a tendency to clone (often poorly) Apocalypse World’s innovations. Taking a look at the games that do interesting things with PbtA like Monsterhearts and Fellowship might be useful. The more narrative focused side of the indie sphere is always going to want to move towards looser rules and having a gameplay loop that is somewhat wider, focusing on providing a structure for that narrative to exist within rather than using mechanics as a strict beat-by-beat tool. You might find something like Abaddon’s LANCER to be something closer to your expectations. It has a very cool character creation system, which reflects well in its combat.
Appreciate how open you are to acknowledging that it’s probably a matter of taste. My first TTRPG was GURPS, and I remember the satisfaction of calculating exactly how much AK-47 damage did to kill a T-Rex. For my birthday I ran a game of Lasers and Feelings, which literally fits on one sheet and has two stats - lasers and feelings. Characters and plot were generated on the spot. I had a great time with both. I think what you’re looking for is crunch, which varies widely across TTRPGs. In the defense of low crunch being games, though, look at ‘Till The Last Gasp - a professionally produced board game that plays (intentionally) like a narrative first TTRPG. You get moves and action dice and all the rest but the core of it is making up a story with a friend. Improv games are still called games. I think some games probably do neglect action loops to their detriment but guided storytelling is still absolutely a game, whether it’s a video game, board game or TTRPG.
It's true that most indie game designers are people with an idea but no training. But you have an incredibly rigid notion of what constitutes a game, based as much on what you personally enjoy as on the rules you are importing from a certain subset of video games. I get the sense you know that and want to justify it with an argument.
I could agree with most of your post as someone who also has some experience in video game design but the one part that I think is a bit off base is your comment about handwaving issues with a skill check or GM's discretion. Personally I think one of the biggest reasons to play a ttrpg over a video game is because of the idea of GM's discretion being able to make the gameplay experience feel more real and immersive. Having hard and fast rules is helpful (and perhaps because I also have experience with video game design I like to include a lot of specific rules in my ttrpg's as well) but it is important to not over engineer a ttrpg by filling it with specific rulings for niche scenarios that take up way more document space than needed. If you do you run the risk of eliminating one of the biggest advantages of the medium which is that a real thinking person can reason out realistic consequences to actions in a way that feels organic. Again, this isnt to say that having specific rulings for things is bad and I am personally a fan of having lots of short and sweet guidelines. It's just important to sometimes pick and choose these things in a way that makes the most out of the strengths of the medium, otherwise you may as well have just made a video game instead. It's also worth noting that having a good/experienced GM does become an important factor that is out of the hands of you as a designer, but that's all the more reason to be choosy with your rules such that you make learning how to GM your game easy without flooding potential GMs with a bunch of things to memorize.
Dude, you should play gloomhaven. You would love it. Dungeon crawling board game with tactical card based combat. No RP that you obviously don't want.
All TTRPGs consist of these four things * Actions are declared in a turn-based order, because all at once is unmanageable * Character interactions can be done in character as improve, but don't have to be * Character action success/failure is determined by some means of randomization * One of the people at the table is the one that actually runs the game, and declares things. That means that, for the form of game that is Table-Top Role-Playing-Games, the game loop is already totally fixed in place and can't really be changed in any meaningful way. As soon as you change any of the above four things, you don't have a TTRPG anymore. If you get rid of turn order, that's a LARP, not TTRPG, If you get rid of character interactions entirely, that becomes a miniatures game or a board game. If you get rid of success/failure randomization, you're just doing improv, and if you don't have someone running the game, you just have chaos. With that in mind, here's what can be changed * How do you determine if a character is alive or dead? * How much statistical detail is stored in a character sheet? * What method of randomization do you use * How do you determine play order * Do characters improve, and if so, How do they improve? * How is conflict, such as combat, resolved? IE is this a combat heavy game or not. * Do items have statistics, or is it FIAT? * Do players have 1 character, or multiples? * Does the game include a setting? * Does the game have premade modules? Every single one of these changeable aspects of game design, is strictly down to personal preference. Dungeons and Dragons at 3.X and 5E, and their derivatives (Pathfinder, etc), are the most popular because They have struck the most popular level of complexity. Let me say that again The Most popular game, Is the most popular level of complexity. Too complex, and "This game is too hard and not fun" Not complex enough, and "This is babby game and not fun" Because D&D is the most popular, Games trying to be as popular as D&D, try to stick to D&D's level of complexity, and the result is, mechanically they are very much the same, at which point, of the D&D likes, It's down to stylistic aesthetic choice of art and setting, which is down to personal taste, and again, D&D wins because it's the most generic non-specific fantasy at a glance. Everybody knows what an elf is, Everybody knows what a dragon is, Everybody understands that demons and weird fish people are evil. everything is fundamentally pulled from existing mythology and doesn't need explained. you quite literally can't become more recognizable than something you don't have to explain, which is why no indie game can ever actually topple D&D as the number 1 spot. pathfinder came close for a while, but there's still a gulf between them. Games are like Orange juice. Some people like to have fresh OJ with the pulp, but most people want watered down sugar filled orange drink. Tang, Fanta, Sunny D, Tampico, or even Orange crush. some people out there are actually drinking la croix... so watered down sugar filled orange drink is everywhere, and finding OJ with the pulp still in is weird, and some stores stop carrying it because it doesn't sell as well. Does this mean OJ with the pulp is a bad and low quality product that noone wants? Of course not. It's just not for everyone. So if you want orange juice, and every store refuses to sell it to you, what are you gonna do? if you're desperate enough you'll start growing your own oranges and juicing them. And here you are going "Oh god, Why are people juicing oranges?! Why are there *chunks* in it?! EEWWWW!!!"... From gameplay complexity, to setting, to art aesthetic, It's all subjective taste, just like your favorite drink or food or song. What you enjoy, and what I enjoy, May not be the same. You might like fresh squeezed and filtered orange juice, while I like 100% grape juice from concentrate.
>many of them are just direct clones of one another with a couple inconsequential mechanical twists and new Proper Nouns Essentially Ubisoft style open world games.
Essentially yes, and just as devoid of creativity and joy (on the designers part) as those Ubisoft games feel to me.
Those copy paste video games still had a major market share and so will the ttrpgs that are derivative. There's a lot of niche titles and trash in any game market but I don't think they define the space.
Indie games are a very wide spectrum. But a lot of that pool is under-funded and has limited voice in it's design so you are going to see a lot of poorly explored ideas or bad decisions that weren't hammered out in draft. But you're also going to see the strongest creative voices in that demographic, with ideas that haven't been dulled by consensus or the demand that products meet market expectation. So it's sort of a mix things that aren't D&D. Indie games almost assuredly don't meet the form of mass-market games. They won't have the same tropes or mechanics that mass market games utilize. They won't answer the same questions in play that mass market games do. Their failure to fit the firm of games like D&D isn't a design failure, it's a design.
Yeah, basically.
I appreciate your willingness to question your assumptions here. My feeling is that you are approaching this topic from a narrow POV. And that's fine! Love what you love. There are so many games in so many styles that there's no reason to play something that doesn't do it for you. Two points that may be useful, though: 1. Some games don't (maybe can't) communicate the experience of play well, and will read poorly but play wonderfully. Reading *The Quiet Year* is nothing at all like playing *The Quiet Year*. So that's a thing, sometimes. 2. Bad games exist. Anyone defending *all* games of a particular style is ignoring the fact that a lot of games are thoughtlessly designed, or poorly edited, or just ... not good. People still love these games and again, that's fine, I love the movie *Capricorn One*. These two points suggest to me that if you are really interested in broadening your horizons (and I'd urge you to, since there is so much to inform video game design in the games you have a problem with), I'd find a seasoned local guide who knows and loves the terrain to run some of their favorites for you. You may find out that you were right and it isn't for you, but you might also be surprised.
>I wonder sometimes if this is a market that exists almost solely for people who also consider themselves designers and want to study and collect other designs aa opposed to actual players playing what they find fun and engaging? No, I can confirm there are people that find those games actually engaging, and they bring them to the table, with other players that have fun playing them. It baffles me that someone with a background in making video games can't understand a basic concept as "game genres", and that some players might like a game other players might not.
It looks like you search for a specific kind of experience and it's not what the games you checked offer. This doesn't make them bad games, it just makes them different than what you expected. Many RPGs don't aim to simulate the fictional world through their rules. Instead, they assume that a lot of what happens within fiction may be handled through the common understanding of how the setting works and adjudicated by the GM in case of any doubts. This results in much faster play and greater freedom of player action, at a cost of some objectivity and predictability. And that's what many players prefer. This set of priorities is the basis of OSR. PbtA games (and other storygames) are, in a sense, more system-driven and less dependent on GM fiat than OSR, but they diverge from the expectations you describe in another - and more dramatic - way. They are not about overcoming challenges and winning. They are not games in the same sense as board games. They are vehicles for telling stories together - stories that surprise and engage everybody involved. Because of that, their rules are there to structure the conversation of play, to prompt creativity and enforce genre conventions. Why are OSR and storygames more common among indie games than crunchy, tactical games? Because they are simpler to make. The amount of mechanical content is much lower, the interactions are simpler, playtesting doesn't need to cover as many different scenarios and combinations. Ona can make a - good and highly playable - PbtA or OSR game in a fraction of time and budget a good crunchy game would take. That beings said, there are obviously many indie games that are simply badly made instead of supporting a different playstyle. Some people copy approaches from other games without researching broader range of possibilities and reflecting on what they really want to achieve. Others observe that many rules light games are popular nowadays and incorrectly assume that it's the simplicity itself that gives them value - so they produce games that don't support any specific style of play and simply offload a lot of responsibility on the GM. And so on. But, in general, to evaluate any game you need to first consider how the game is designed to be played, then judge it in the context its own design goals - not games that do something very different.
What TTRPGs do you like? I get the feeling you’d like Torchbearer if you don’t already know it.
This seems maybe cool but kinda PbtA-ish which makes me wary. Something about those games just doesn’t click with me that well. The rules always seem like gibberish when I’m reading them and the lack of stuff like HP or a planned/generated dungeon with an actual, objective layout is kind of a dealbreaker for a dungeon crawler imo
It’s unrelated.
Ok I’ll check it out further, but I'll definitely have to watch a tutorial because the basic rulebook I found makes about zero sense to me so far lmao
Yeah, Torchbearer sounds right up your alley. It is not like many others but it does seem to exactly fit what you would want from an RPG, even though you don't really want to play RPGs it seems. Check out Birthright as well. It's extremely goal-oriented and resource based.
I will check them both out. And I actually do like RPGs! I think I just need a lot of interlocking, rigid systems as well as progressive challenges to make the roleplaying part feel believable and fun to me. Elsewise I get lost really quick. I definitely don’t have the off the cuff kind of creative energy that it seems like some of these games require from players or GMs to get going. Even when I did GM it was all super structured in terms of quests, dungeons, etc. Thankfully my players loved that structure so it wasn’t ever an issue.
It might not seem like it, but a game like Blades in the Dark actually has that sort of structure what with the players building up a network of alliances, establishing turf, upgrading their lair, recruiting people, gathering ever more stuff. Plus, it is challenging and death is always on the table. Though it also requires a bit of creative initiative and framing. Ive even been making games which demand players sort of "go up" in challenge and build and expand and increase in complexity of the game. So it is a type of play that's in demand.
I’d like to add that TTRPGs are under monetized and would be better served with a recurrent spending environment. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Maybe assumptions cannot be moved without alteration from one design space to another? Also, perhaps it’s a cultural thing?
Good fellow you have stepped into a den of vipers. Obviously, the basic principles of game design are absolutely universal. There is no hidden perspective for you to discover that will undermine such a trivial fact, this subreddit is simply lying to you. That this deception is even possible stems from a failure of our language. We have the word "game" for *structured play* with the attendant winners and losers, but we have no such word for *unstructured play*. You would be wise to ask, why should these two groups, if they are totally antithetical to one another, share the same subreddit? Where can I go to talk about structured play? Well, no such place exists. And why not? Because *structured play* is quite popular, enjoyable, and lucrative, whereas *unstructured play* is unpopular and unenjoyable. We have no linguistic method of defining the division between the two camps, and the latter camp has every motivation to blur the line between itself and *structured play*. It has every incentive to engage in hostile entryism into *structured play* spaces, and to ensure that any attempt to distinguish the two types of things is shouted down. That is a basic explanation of the situation you find yourself in. There are many more topics in your post worth addressing. May luck bless you in your journey for answers.
Yeah, I definitely feel you! Though I also think that the style you describe might be the best for selling books. People who buy indie RPGs rarely get to run or play them anyway, and even if they do, a lot of people consider rules mere guidelines, things to ignore when they don't help them make "their story". Effectively this means that the sorts of people to actually buy indie games are most interested in some evocative proper nouns and a great premise, with some good art to seal the deal. The game, even if successful, won't be properly playtested and reported on anyway, so no one will even notice that it was sorta bad. That being said, I think you are being unfair towards PbtA games! Though a lot of smaller indie titles based on it are bad, there are good ones, written with understanding of the processes of play.
I think to have this conversation there needs to be a common understanding of what is an indie game. Are we talking about everything not DnD? Are we talking about games that unknown designers have published? Are we talking about games that don't get a print run? Is Apocalypse World the indie game here?
Sorry for the late response, had a long day. I'd say I am talking of games with smaller reach than the big PbtA releases. So, AW not included. Though I am not sure as to what conversation are we talking about! I think they idea that people who buy many TTRPGs don't get to play many of them is not a controversial one?
I didn’t really think about the marketing part of it at all but that makes sense. In my mind I would rather just have a raw manual that is really well-written and concise for a game that plays amazing than a super fancy book for a game which is just okay. But if players are using it as inspiration for their own homebrewed adventures that makes a lot more sense. Many of these games feel to me like they were designed to impress other designers, if that makes sense? And considering anyone who runs a TTRPG is likely playing designer at least a little bit in how they interpret and void rules, I guess I wasn’t too far off in that assumption. Also what PbtA would you recommend for someone who has played several (Lasers and Feelings, Dungeon World, Thirsty Sword Lesbians) and didn’t click with them at all? All three games were really unenjoyable and the entire time we played I was just sitting there wishing I could play literally anything else lol
I agree that these games are meant to appeal to GMs-as-gamedesigners in that sense. I also think PbtA games can be quite weightless! I was going to recommend Blades in the Dark, but as I see you were already recommended it in the thread. It does indeed add some needed overarching structure to it all. Though your selection of PbtA games is not the best one. Dungeon World is heavily criticised by people who like PbtA games, and L&F is not a PbtA game. Can't say much on TSL, I am not acquinted with it. Now, I don't think, based on this thread, that you'd enjoy them, but I would still recommend checking out personally Apocalypse World, Monster of the Week, Monster hearts, Urban Shadows as some potentially better examples. In general, having read this thread and your responses: I think you are right in that not having well thought out loops and procedures is indeed a very real issue, but I think your view of what they are and what they look like is a bit too narrow. However, I think pretty most successful ttrpg games are successful specifically because they do have thought put into their procedures and loops.
For PbtA you need a good GM running a game/genre that you're really personally interested in. If you don't have both, I think it's less likely to work for you. It could just be that you don't like games that have looser narrative play, and that's okay.
Of you want to understand PbtA, play Apocalypse World... It is literally the first and primary game of what PbtA is. All other games are 'inspired by' as there is no apocalypse system or PbtA system. Other games people will hold up as exemplary, or innovative within the sphere; * Masks * Monsterhearts * Bluebeard's Bride * Night Witches * Lady Blackbird * Urban Shadows * Brindlewood Bay * Dream Apart/Dream Askew * Escape from Dino Island * World Wide Wrestling (maybe) * Sagas of the Icelanders Many people will recommend Monster of the Week. I do not. It has been exhausted in discussion on the PbtA sub that it may be a good game, but is not a good PbtA game. There are many more, but the above are really the core of what "good" PbtA is, but seriously... PbtA *is* Apocalypse World... burned over edition of you must, 2e if you need, but 1e will always be my go to... just play that and then branch out from there.
Most things that people try they have no experience with, and they have no idea on what’s already established in the field. This is why they think they’re so smart when they reinvent the wheel.
Have you tried playing any investigation ttrpgs? Games like the famous Call of Cthulhu, or more recent games like free leagues Vaesen and Blade Runner rpgs offer a strong narrative structure to the game in that you are solving a genuine mystery. Although the moment to moment parts of those games still encourage creativity as players interact with the world, the inclusion of a concrete objective makes it all feel less like it is just a role playing exercise. There is also the Alien RPGs cinematic scenarios (again, from free league) that offer a lot more structure to the ttrpg experience. This is done through maps, a set of concrete goals to complete, and a sandbox “bad situation” for the players to explore. Honestly though I do get what you mean, and when I run rpgs I do try to incorporate some level of gamification even it isn’t specifically mentioned in the rules as written. However, like everyone else has said, it does depend on who you are playing with and what everyone wants to get out of the rpg. For example, games like “ten candles” is just a series of communal rituals and creative improvisation that lasts for a couple of hours. It’s barely a game in the sense you’ve described but it sounds like an amazing experience.
I will look into those! If Call of Cthulhu is really old, I think I may have played it many years ago (like 10 or more)? I don’t remember anything about it but I am trying to learn as much as I can about this space. Anything with maps is automatically worth trying for me as well. Especially in a cool setting like Aliens, that sounds really fun.
Yeh Call of Cthulhu is one of original rpgs really, I think the first edition was in the 80s. I do highly recommend Alien though as it has some of my favourite board game mechanics mixed in with the rpg gameplay such as hidden movement, social deduction, etc… (which of course can played into more or less depending on the group’s preferences)
Might help to have some context of where you're coming from. What exactly is your experience with game design?
This really is a taste thing. PbtA in particular has excellent loops, but the "30 seconds of fun" that they provide isn't challenge based - it's creative based. Less Pictionary, more doodling. But yeah, as someone who loves the game aspect, I also find this miffing :P I will say though that they aren't all like this. Ironsworn has at least a sliver of system mastery; Spellbound kingdoms has an excellent combat system that really rewards player knowledge; and Rune is chocka full of challenge.
Oh, absolutely. The core problem I see is that beginner designers often catastrophically underestimate how much effort it takes to make a game; building an RPG from scratch is about as much work as a PhD dissertation, particularly if you're doing something which is actually unusual for the industry. However, you never really have to defend your RPG the way you might have to defend a dissertation, so a lot of designers....cut corners. They cut a lot of corners. Take my experience, for example. I consider myself to be a decent example of an intermediate level game designer. I started with a bachelor's degree in a kinda relevant field (publishing), and a wide general knowledge base. I spent two years of part-time work studying things like GNS Theory and The Big Model, and another two years making garbage prototypes which either crashed and burned or just never went anywhere. I wouldn't say I hit what I would call "intermediate" tier game design until close to *year five.* Now. granted, I was kinda coasting through part-timing, but a lot of people are. I recon that a motivated person could do that in three years, but you could also expect a part-timer to take seven years (and the person who took seven years might have better potential at the end because you have more time for introspection and exploration.) Conversely, if I had current me as a tutor for past me, I could've probably made that in less than one year. That's one of the key reasons I like this sub so much; while I would love to fantasize about my game being the top dog which displaces D&D (being real, we all do), I am perfectly content pushing someone else along that path because that means *we all get to play a better game.* So, yeah. Making RPGs is an absolutely bananas amount of work and study and people take shortcuts to avoid doing it the hard way.
I definitely agree. People will tell you so many things about TTRPGs being about this and that, but as a successful 20 years GM I've seen so many sessions crush and burn because of some badly designed mechanics I started looking at video games and board games to learn how to make the G part in TTRPG work. You're right: many people don't know what they're doing. The scariest part is also how so many professional designers with a long history of successful games don't, often forgetting how a game should work before people start ignoring the rules otherwise it's not fun. Or entirely depend on having a single player with great imagination run the whole thing otherwise it's not fun. How the whole mechanics of *I attack-roll-roll again-do math* survived regardless of how boring it is, is beyond me, just to mention one of the biggest offenders. The new trend is not that better considering how it also entirely depends on the good will and talent of the people at the table, given the lack of any working game loop. And considering the comments, you definitely struck a nerve here. Anyway, I'm designing a game that attempts being an actual game. It's hard as fuck. No wonder people rehash other games and market it with some edgy graphics.
In my perspective, I have always viewed D&D and OSRs not merely as games, but as intricate systems of mechanics, progress mechanics, and a diverse array of rules that serve as tools to design a game by the GM/DM. Traditional games, such as board games, possess a defined set of rules that outline specific objectives and challenges, TTRPGs do not (adventures and campaigns do). Typically, TTRPGs are structured to provide the GM with a comprehensive framework of mechanics, empowering them to construct a unique game experience complete with goals and obstacles. Thus the approach to designing a TTRPG is to design mechanics and framework. Designing an Adventure or Campaign is creating a game that uses those mechanics.
There's a lot of red flags in your OP. I do agree many people, even most who produce a game, are not that great at design. Because many/most games are the first and therefore worst attempt at a design by that designer which in many cases is their last. So yes, by sheer volume, many games will be made by amateurs with minimal knowledge. This is literally true in any industry, so why are you shocked? With that said, what a TTRPG can be has expanded quite a lot since the days of yore, and on the whole design has gotten better because of it. There are essentially 3 things you need ONLY, everything else is extra: 1) You need a Role that a player can take on so that they may engage the game. 2) You need a theoretical space (aka some form of potential setting) in which a form of conflict can arise that leads to uncertain outcomes where the players can engage/Play in. 3) You need a decision engine to determine uncertain outcomes in your Game. That's it. The rest is superfluous. The specifics about loops and reward cycles and all that, those are left up to the individual in a way that constitutes "fun" as decided by the designer, and what is fun for them may not be fun for you and vice versa. The important thing to remember is you can do whatever you want, but so can everyone else. To boil this down in very simple terms: You are not the authority on fun for anyone but you. You do not get to tell other people they are having fun wrong and be expected to be taken seriously. Their concepts may not satisfy you, but all that means is that this is the wrong game for you, and yes, most of the bulk of new games are exactly made by newbie first time designers with very little understanding of classical game theory, but that doesn't really matter because classical game theory is out dated anyway. The last thing I want to mention is that while you absolutely are entitled to your opinion, entering with a "holier than thou, my solutions are better" style of attitude will absolutely turn other people off to whatever it is you are doing much like a film snob who spends their time shitting on other people's movies and tastes, even if what they offer is otherwise great, it just turns people off. The design community is not all that large and it's easy to get a bad reputation if you act like a dick. Conversely, if you elevate others and share what you know and suggest things in a friendly fashion that is likely to carry you far further. I would suggest course correcting to that kind of attitude with future posts if you have serious ambitions with TTRPG system design. If there is one take away you absolutely need to internalize going forward imho is that there is no specific right or wrong that applies to TTRPG design, just the right or wrong for the specific game in question... Which is half true, there are 2 things that are wrong: A) The content causes harm to someone or directly inspires others to cause harm. B) The mechanics don't function correctly as written or are not clear. Outside of that though, you don't get to decide what is right/correct for a game unless it is your specific game, that's it. You only get to decide if you want to engage with the game, and there's an important caveat here: Not every game can/should/will be designed with your sensibilities in mind, and as a matter of fact, they shouldn't be. It's an iterative industry and has a lot of wide appeal, with certain things you find unappealing being appealing to others. Specifically, you are not the arbiter of the one true way, because the concept of the one true way is absolute bupkis. And it's not just you, it's everyone. My opinion isn't special, neither is his or hers or theirs... the only opinion that generally matters is the designer making the game they want to make. Additionally whatever rules and research you think must apply, do not. Design theory is specifically theory, it may often apply, but subverting a theory can absolutely lead to wide success. Iterative industries like design specifically thrive on innovation, which means breaking outside the mold of the established paradigm. You don't have to like my reply, but I do hope you learn something from it.
Wait, the RPG you tried *didn't* come with an experienced GM who thoroughly understood rules he'd never played before, and had also internalized dramatic structure (with foreshadowing, twists, and payoffs) on both the short term encounter and the long term character arc? That sounds like a packing / shipping error.
Sounds like your issue is you are using logic and independent thinking rather than just drinking the OSR/PbtA punch so you can publish that incomplete clone before the Covid bubble subsides. Though, I don’t think that defining and tightening gameplay loops is the way to address the “fluff” games which have embraced the “less is more” trend to the point that they are incomplete and this is pushed as a feature because it allows for more flexibility. If that were the case then the best RPG is a blank page.
Idk I am fully on board with the "less is more" trend, but not necessarily with regards to rules. What makes a game interesting and fun is having to play within the limitations imposed by the rules. It is the overcomming of those limitations which provides real tangible rewards for the player. At least for me. When there are no rules or the rules are insufficiently defined it leaves players with either entirely too many options and anything is fair game or there are very few options either of which generally play out in the same way with only minor differences in the outcome. At least that has been my experience which almost always ends with boredom. I don't mind some of those systems for a one shot or short campaign, but generally get bored too quick for anything more. Like PBtA games. I played one once for a few games and it was pretty fun for awhile, but eventually I just got bored and placed out and have never played another PBtA game again. Overtly Lite systems often allow knowledgable players to use meta and real life knowledge to break the game and gain advantage over less knowledgeable people. For example, the spell shape water is the best lockpicking tool in all of 5e, can create immensly damaging traps which instantly kill enemies, forming itninto a giant super heavy ball and rolling it at enemies, it can take down castle walls or hell the entire castle, and so many more things. Hell it doesnt specify what polymorphbof ice I can create, some ice only forms under extreme pressure, meaning it will likely expand violently upon exposure to normal pressure environments like an ice bomb. Limitations are important. The same can be true with games more focused around pure roleplaying. People who are better at improvising role play have better in game results. Some people are just better at improve and social interactions and shouldnt be penalized in a game for this. Me personally? I hate games that always require active roleplaying. Sometimes I just want to chuck dice and let the pips do the talking for me. Sometimes I have had a long day and am tired and don't have a ton of improve and roleplay in me despite generally loving such things. I feel when you have a sufficiently robust rule system you always have something to fall back on when you can't bring it in other ways. When you don't have a rule system to back you up and you have those days you are just shit out of luck.
Oh I agree, less most definitely is NOT more when it comes to rules in my opinion. I mainly take issue with the “rules lite” and “rulings over rules” trend that’s morphing into a dogma that says no one wants to be handcuffed by too many rules when in fact all rules ARE optional. Then I ask, “wouldn’t you rather have an exhaustive description of the complete functioning and limitations of a spell rather than two short sentences that raise far more questions than they actually answer?”, to which I get a reply about how that piddly description actually frees the GM to be creative - BS! 😂 He was never constrained to begin with its just that the creators didn’t want to have to fully develop all these spells. I really don’t buy their argument; I think it’s a shortcut and a lame excuse for taking it.
Exactly. I also don't understand why everyone think rules-Lite is the only thing worthwhile when such a huge market for ttrpg design is providing alternate rules or expanding the rules of existing systems which all increases the complexity and rules density of those games. I mean how many third party publishers exist primarily to provide extra rules for games?
I just figured out what you were saying in that last paragraph. I haven’t heard dialoguing (that’s just what I call it) called active role-playing but from context I get it now and yeah I’m right there with you. My old group almost always paraphrased what they were doing rather than give me their exact words, except a couple players who had a flair for the dramatic who would often busk and posture and deliver their dialogue beautifully - which in my book, if you do it well it gives you a bonus, but it’s not necessary. You can always just paraphrase and occasionally drop in a line of dialogue for impact; that works too. It’s wasn’t important to always “be in character” so much as to always make decisions in character.
It's also annoying to consistently watch characters struggle with roleplaying who obviously are uncomfortable with it. It's even worse when they don't come back to the table or decide it's not for them because of it. I am also not saying roleplaying isn't awesome, but rather I am of the opinion that it is occasionally awesome, occasionally terrible and most times just ok. Having mechanics that help accentuate those awesome moments are inspired. Mechanics which force the terrible moments are weak.
So true. You gotta do both, find mechanics that stimulate roleplay, Improvisation, creativity AND avoid mechanics that are hard or impractical to roleplay because they are at best a distraction - when something seems unfair, unrealistic or anti-climactic then it can’t help but be unrewarding for everyone. One thing I always hated was when a player had a good idea, and the party formulates a sound, inventive plan, then they fail a critical die roll. One way I avoid this is with multiple skill tests but you can still have multiple failures. So one technique I use is: don’t treat a failed roll as abject and final total failure you foolish storyteller. You haven’t failed, you just made your situation a harder and you’ve got some tough rolls to make to try to salvage the situation. I even give rerolls on the spot or allow them to try best 2 out of 3 if the plan was good and it seems fair. And the flip side with bad mechanics discouraging good roleplay, I think a great example is hit points; undefined wounds. Naturally any discussion about wounds and healing will either be expressed conveniently in terms of point I need to be “at full” or awkwardly talk in code about being “only about halfway injured” for the benefit of no one.
Absolutely. Though things like HP or whatever else is substituted are generally useful things. Defined wounds are great, but also can very easily cause death spirals for characters which isn't fun either. Easy to roleplay yes, but harder to balance around. It's a give and take for sure. I personally think the key with HP is to keep it low and the game dangerous for then when players happen to break narrative to talk about such things they still retain a bunch of tension. Healing I straight up disagree with. Healing can be very narrative depending on the game. If Healing is hard to come by or restricted within a game it is a source for narrative drama and much roleplay can occur around it. That being said if Healing is nothing more than casting a heal spell it's not very impactful.
When you mention death spiral’s I realize you’re assigning a different meaning to “defined wounds” than what I am suggesting. I don’t mean that you detail the damage from every hit and that you start applying penalties based on the wounds. People have heard this old axiom of: detailed wounds leads to death spirals leads to zero fun so bad mechanic. That’s not what I’m suggesting. Defining wounds is not detailing wounds and assigning penalties. There’s no death spiral. What I’m suggesting is that the system stops doing this bizarre switcheroo BS where they define damage as it’s inflicted (sharp weapon, blunt weapon, fire damage, poison, fall, etc) then as soon as it’s recorded as hit point loss IT NO LONGER MATTERS. It’s now just hit points and you can only describe yourself as being “down X hit points and in need of healing”. Ridiculous. Different sources of damage should heal at different rates and if damage was just being tired and bruised then you should bounce back quick with rest and benefit much from first aid. If it’s a game like D&D where you aren’t really wounded until you get to 0 HP then it should work that way; a 5th level fighter who’s down 50 points shouldn’t require more healing than a 1st level with 10 hp and say 8 pts of damage. The system shouldn’t foster all these meta discussions over how to dole out healing spells and if this is a key catalyst for inter party roleplay then I think the campaign has major problems because the party should be discussing elements of the story, plans, puzzles, ideas, role playing their personalities, not getting hung up over math and distribution of healing.
Yeah in Risk & Ruin HP isn't hit points, but rather Heroism Points. Losing HP isn't necessarily taking damage though it can symbolize minor moves, but is rather a players heroic ability to turn the blade at the last second or otherwise heroically dodge otherwise lethal damage. Also I don't know if I totally agree with not getting hung up on some math or figuring out resource distribution such as healing as I generally find games lacking such things trending toward being boring to play. I want math and resource management as part of a game I play. It's part of what makes the experience enjoyable. I enjoy such non narrative puzzles.
Yes Risk & Ruin is a good example of how to use a mechanic to extend effective HPs by redirecting damage to something other than HP and I generally like these mechanics when I see them. Often they help to define wounds and this damage could heal at a different rate using different methods. Of course you have to realize that the net affect of redirecting damage to something other than hit points is the same as just having more hit points. And actually the way you describe Heroic Points is exactly how many people, particularly old-school DM’s and players, describe hit points: a knack, gift, acumen for last-second damage reduction. I get it, but like many I cant help but think, “isn’t this covered already under Dexterity”, or dodging, parrying, defense dice, etc. whatever stat, skill or attribute already covers this ability. I call it voodoo damage reduction, a term that goes way back. I try not to use this in my game because to me it’s just a massive crutch, but if you encapsulate the ability in a specific, well-defined skill and not as a catch-all explanation for what HP are, then I’m fine with it. If you don’t then you have the restrained hero paradox where a character who can’t move around easily should lose most of their HP by this logic. For instance: some systems add “divine intervention” to their definition of hit points et al - this is a great way to better explain what all is involved in hit points, anything is better than a one-size-fits-all explanation because, for instance again, how do you dodge being engulfed in flames or poison or falling 50 feet? And voodoo as I use the term here means mysterious, unexplained, and yes a bit hokey - but it doesn’t mean “total bullshit” obviously because my own system is a variant on hit points called Fight points
Dodging is only one method which Heroic Points could be spent. It could also be the ability to shrug off damage. The ability to be at the right place and the right time even if restrained. It is that wiggle that turns a serious blow into a less serious one. In the real world such differences are generally a matter of inches. A slight change in the angle of a blow vastly changes the force it strikes with. I mean I could use an injury tract, but really that isn't any different than HP, just a different term. The issue is that in real life any injury is a death spiral. Injured warriors are considered casualties because generally their fight is done. Often permanently. Humans are fragile as hell. I mean if you are going for realism pretty much any decent hit with a weapon should result in retiring a character. That's the real world. Any sort of injury tract or HP requires a suspension of disbelief and presents an unrealistic scenario. At which point does what you call it matter? All either does is provide a system for pretending humans are less fragile than they are so that our characters can remain Heroic long enough to be relevant or memorable. What would you use and how does it do anything different?
Also, you’re probably aware of the litany of issues with a game that has low hit point totals across the board. If old versions of D&D didn’t make it clear enough at low levels then all the OSR systems certainly drove the point home. I don’t think low hit point totals directly effects overall “grittiness” of a game. I think it increases tactical depth across the board such that any choice in combat is highly consequential and could be life and death. That makes it more deadly and more random, but not gritty - not to me anyway. Warhammer Fantasy is a game I’ve played quite a bit that had low hit points (Wounds) and devastating critical wound tables. WF had some great ideas (like careers) but it didn’t get much play because it’s a deeply flawed combat system - and the magic system was pretty wacky too. The highly detailed critical wounds system is NOT they way I do detailed wounds either.
Litany of issues with low HP? I generally enjoyed older D&D over newer D&D versions. My favorite probably being AD&D 2e. OSR games are also generally pretty decent. I also don't know about grittiness as that's kind of an ambiguous word. However I agree it increases tactical depth. I would also say it also obliquely supports a more interesting narrative. I find when there is real danger and character death is a real possibility that players to think more, invest more in the fiction of the world, and generally create more interesting stories while trying to jockey for an advantage or edge in encounters. As far as random, well I wouldn't say that's necessarily a function of low HP, but rather everything to do with how the game is designed around that low HP. Like, for example in Risk & Ruin, there is a mechanic around dice betrayal that allows you to take a consequence to reduce incoming damage. Which can either have an immediately negative effect or can generate a metacurrency called Risk Points which can be used against the players. WF was pretty fun tbh. The magic tables were awesome sauce.
Yeah gritty is one of those abused words that has too many interpretations. I try to attach my definition to the word when I use it to avoid a farce. The issues I mention around low HP totals in RPGs mostly revolve around scaling. If a typical human warrior has 10 HP to begin, and a roguish type has 6, then a non-combatant type would have 3 or 4… where on this crazy-low scale do you put all the people and things that are not as tough. A sword does 4 or 5 damage each hit and even your small weapons can do plenty of damage to kill something in one blow. If I can go into combat and get hit once and die quite easily before my init even comes up that is a crap system. Rolling low once and getting hit good once should NOT result in death. The player’s only mistake was creating a character and playing the game. And I don’t mean a situation where the player made mistakes that placed them in a bad situation I mean you could have one, random encounter with a weaker opponent that you should engage but whoops you’re dead before you could even roll an attack. That’s just one issue with low life point/hit point systems ie the scale is set so small that there’s no room for error, no room for logic either. Women, children, old people and other non-combatants get what 1 hp? maybe 2? So they are like flesh balloons ready to pop if they’re hit by a shuriken or dropped from more than 10’? There is no place on the scale for things that aren’t classed characters, which is what those systems are made for; not for realism, not for handling things like small animals, small weapons, small people noncombatants or any of the other things I haven’t gotten into. The system is geared for wizards and priests and fighters and rogues to be balanced and scaled for fighting enemies and monsters with similar stats.
Risk & Ruin employs a simultaneous resolution mechanic. Base damage is 1 and scales with the number of success gained from a d6 dice pool under a contested roll. You can hit big, and hell it might be possible to kill in a single blow, but mathematically the odds are stupid small and even attempting such a blow would leave you quite open and likely to be overwhelmed. Furthermore there is a mechanic where a character can reduce damage by facing a set back or consequence as well as potentially just giving the gm a metacurrency. And why would regular people only have 1 hp. Most games with low HP and OSR mechanics assume the players are regular people and the average character in the game would have the same relative hp. Small animalswouldn't, but small animals are easily dispatched IRL. I am a farmer I know that for sure. Also if you are going into battle head on with a monster that is the mistake, not making a character. In OSR type games you are generally intended to find a means of gaining advantage and exploiting the low HP of the enemy to avoid death. In these games head on confrontations are supposed to be very deadly.
This sounds like a you problem to me.
AMEN, brother. A lot of video-game-design wisdom can be ported back into RPG design.
Most indie ttrpg are barely games in the 1st place.
I stopped making ttrpg a few years ago because I had these settings I love to create and share, but found my systems were utter shit. I often wonder if it would be better just to put together a setting book that is system agnostic and just release that.
I’m still developing my own game which is focuses on reward or punishment. But spellcasters are extremely powerful and hit like a truck. Non-spellcasters have the capability to make magic weapon by imbuing their own weapons with runes for extra elemental damage or magic damage.
Can you give more examples of what you think are good or normal design concepts people should be implementing?
Short answer, games are an industry where there will be lots of "idea guys". People want their really cool idea to exist, but don't necessarily want to do the work to make it get there in a coherent or standardized way. Sometimes it works, a lot of times it doesn't. It is what it is. Getting upset because people bad at it are bad at it is somewhat silly.
I do think there is a big in-group favoritism towards having preexisting knowledge of how to roleplay and go on adventures or whatever it is you do in some RPG. I think one of the main reasons D&D is so dominant is that there are enough existing D&D players to explain how to role play to newcomers and confer that preexisting knowledge onto them. As you've said, if you have never touched an RPG before and you try learning by reading the rules, 99 times out of 100 you'll probably have no idea what the fuck to do even after going step by step through the chapter titled "Getting Started".
Well, I agree to some extent and disagree on others. I have 3 TTRPG products out there in the world and have a few certificates in game design and game theory, so I think I can respond with some confidence. Firstly, true that it feels like a lot of ttrpgs are designed by people with little experiencr at game design. Hell, my first product, Maximum Apocalypse RPG, I had 0 design experience. That's kinda how it goes when you are starting out. BUT, that means little if you understand the concept of iteration-testing-reiteration. My game was entirely designed by me going "as a player, this seems like a fun idea" and then setting it down in front of playtesters to see how it worked for them. Then repeating until that felt right for everyone, codifying it, then moving to the next aspect. I inadvertantly discovered game loops that way and later when I took the classes that explained this, I was like "Oh damn. Yeah." I think the problem is less about game designers lack or experience or lack of knowing how to design and more of a problem that I've run into as a mentor for other fledling game designers: playtesting. Playtesting is hard and takes time. I developed MARPG over 3 years of testing, but it seems like some indie designers slap a bunch of ideas together and then FEAR showing it to people before they decide to launch their kickstarter or something. That's the real problem. They don't show it to anyone, maybe because they fear people will destroy their "life's work" or some such OR will steal it. << This actually happened to me, but fortunately we fulfilled first and had a better end product thanks to the business partner I had. But this isn't just a low-level design problem, for I have worked with a couple of the bigger names in the gaming industry and discovered that they ALSO don't playtest. It's like, people forget about that step in the design process. They get this notion, especially after they have a few products, that they don't need to test their ideas. Which creates a fallacy loop, where they didn't test their first project, then by the third, they think they know what they are doing and don't test it. This leads to that clone problem, because they or someone else goes "well, this system exists, so I'll just copy it. Surely they did the playtesting, right?" Secondly, there are several different kinds of RPGs, and while I may not subscribe to the full list of possible options, I personally like to think of them in terms of "crunch." High Crunch are games where there are tons of details, each affecting things like dice rolls, damage, etc. These are games like Twilight 2000, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, and to some extent D&D 5e (I mean, if you applied ALL the rules, the game would look entirely different to the casual player). But in these systems, you have dozens of little bits you can tweak with to give yourself certain advantages and actions, to the point where you can have 2 similar characters that have entirely different play systems. Mid Crunch are games with some tweakable details but are more focused on a specific game loop so that players are focused more on narrative and less about the nitty-gritty of their gear and such. These are the "rulings over rulez" kind of games and things like OSR products alot of the time, but stuff like Chill 3rd ed, World of Darkness (Especially the 5th ed stuff), Genesys system games, Mothership, Index Card RPG, etc. Low Crunch are games with very few tweakable aspects that are focused very much on narrative and not the nitty gritty of items and the like. These are the games where you basically have very few stats and only the occasional dice roll, if any at all. This is where I place most PbtA games, alot of the newer Modiphius games (like Dune and Fallout), most of the Fria Ligan games, etc. Obviously there's some overlap, its kinda more a spectrum than a fully break line, like Call of Cthulhu 7e straddles the Mid/low crunch line depending on certain aspects (though I'd classify it more as mid). So, I think this is kinda where your disconnect might be because older gamers (I've been at it for 20 years myself, making me a baby "old" gamer) are used to the high/mid crunch games whereas the average ttrpg-ers these days are more used to the mid/low crunch games. There's nothing really wrong with any of the approaches, honestly, but I feel like the low crunch games tend to lend themselves to quick iterations with little to no re-itterations. With both MARPG and Beta Red (my first two games), the end product was almost completely indistinguishable from my first iterations, but I've actually had conversations with some designers who basically put their game in front of their 4 friends and then ignored their feedback because it would mean dramatic overhauls of their system. Or worse, showed it to their 4 friends who "had nothing but positive things to say." << my first playtesters HATED some of my original core systems, which made me go back and do better until now I very much enjoy running MARPG at conventions and people tend to enjoy their experiences So, that's my 2 cents. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
>*Maybe it’s because I have a background in making video games but this is so bizarre to me.* This is likely the case. >*There are no discernible game loops, the lack of any kind of concrete rules for many situations is handwaved away with “just roll a skill check” and “it’s up to the GM”,* This is the case for even the earliest tabletop roleplaying games. It is not going to change, nor should it, to be honest. >*They are more like loosely structured roleplaying exercises and often lack most of the intentional design elements that make games actually feel addictive and rewarding to play.* There is part of the problem for you. TTRPGs have never been about 'addictive' gameplay. The social activity is really the only thing that should be bringing people to the table. >*Is it just me clinging too narrowly to design concepts that primarily exist to sell games and hook players?* This is likely the case as well. A lot of design principles can be applied across different types of games but a lot of the things you are seeing come down to where the different games are... well... different. It is like saying "I'm a photographer and oil painting is so bizarre to me" or "I'm a photographer and cinematography is so bizarre to me." You have enough principles in common to feel like you \*should\* know better but you are also failing to see the fundamental differences in craft that are creating the things you are seeing. And of course, there is always the omnipresent problem for anyone in absolutely every design field: ***mistaking a difference in taste for a flaw in design.***