Hey, hi, hello! I should've elaborated more when I said, "crunchier mechanics provide a crutch for people uncomfortable with roleplaying." That isn't the ONLY reason someone could prefer crunchier systems to more narrative focused systems, it's just a specific example I thought of based on my own experience with friends of mine who don't like PbtA because they're uncomfortable with RP and use crunch as a crutch. You can like crunch and be comfortable with roleplay, they're not mutually exclusive.
Well played on the click bait part. Before I make my exit probably for good because of that I agree that all RPGs inherit an abstract and vague element. Of course this was all talked out by everyone already 20 years ago via forums and blogs, it's good you catched up. This could be a video instead of a comment but to everyone who is interested in the topic: There is a soft demarcation line when these elements become too vague. That's why the community invented subgenres like "story games", "tactical rpgs", "diceless rpgs" and so on. The difference usually is a (likewise soft) definition of an action (a short incident) and a conflict (a whole series of events in with you could put everything in belonging more of less to the roll). It all boils down to: how good do you know your players or how submissive are they? Do you know them well enough? => then a story game might work (you might also just not roll and tell them what to do). Do they argue a lot and want a higher level of reproducibility? => you need a tactical rpg
That is exactly what I have going on. Two of my players NEED that crunch for their roleplaying. My other would / does love TSL. (Thirsty Sword Lesbians) I might do a solo game for her.
I... What does this even mean in this context? None of the games you mentioned have any real rules for roleplaying, apart from simple skill checks. The rules of these systems are almost exclusively limited to combat, with exploration and social encounters being almost entirely improvised. It's not like you have to do a Potionomics-style haggling minigame every time you want to sell your loot, for example and conversations aren't usually held in initiative order either, so I legitimately don't know how D&D's or Pathfinder's rules are supposed to help with roleplaying in any way. Mostly, the rules of these games are there to make the combat aspect of them a "proper" game by the definition of Bernard Suits (which I'm really surprised you just kinda skipped over during your dictionary bit in the beginning), "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" - or in this case: Providing a challenge to your players. Without clear rules, providing challenges will the limited to exploration (how do we get across this river) or social challenges (how do we convince the king to join our cause), but the third pillar of ttrpg's - combat - usually requires rules of some kind; preferably ones just complex enough to allow for actual strategic decision making on both sides, without being so complex that it becomes needlessly tedious (sweet spot will wary based on group and time of day)
Honestly the main reason I like crunch (not that I don't like pbta or ground itself) is because it lets me feel like I'm solving a mechanical puzzle, like building and playing mtg.
Yes, but with conditions and limits. I believe the posters point was "there's a point when you stop playing a game and just start riding on PURE imagination - no math or dice required."
This reminds me of why I don’t play d and d anymore. I played with kids and it was only through the eyes of 10 year olds did i realize how unnecessarily complicated it is. One internet search for “simplified version of dnd” led me down the path to dungeon world and I will never go back. Thanks Bro for continuing to chat about how PBTA games rock, cause you got me in your corner!
From my experience, the design of heavy rules systems, like DnD 5e, and PF2E often leads to a contradictory and self-defeating experience for players and DMs alike. On one hand, these systems promise a rich, immersive world, driven by complex rules that lend authenticity and depth to the game. However, the complexity of these rules often creates a steep learning curve and poses a significant barrier for new GMs and even experienced players. Moreover, the sheer volume of rules, supplements, and expansions can make it feel as though these systems are designed more for monetization than for a user-friendly gaming experience. The continual release of new rulebooks and supplements feels like a business strategy, aimed at milking more cash from players and GMs, rather than enhancing the gameplay experience. So yes I agree with Tabletop Bro. Some people enjoy being taken for a ride. It happens in every industry.
My 10 year old decided to run D&D for friends. I’ve been playing since I was 8. I saw the pure joy I’d lost touch with years earlier. For several weeks they the most fun ever, making it all up as they went, collaborating on what to roll and difficulties. It did crash eventually, but it’s shaken me a bit. I haven’t tried pbta, but I like what I’m seeing here.
A friend that likes D&D and dislikes games like these, told me why. "I don't like games where I can do anything I want, that feels to open to me. I want the game to show me a list of exactly the things I'm able to do at any given time."
Philosophy PhD and university professor here. I only mention that so I can give y'all a fun fact. The German philosopher Wittgenstein once described how difficult it is to pick out a single feature that all games share, the feature that you can point to and say, "ah, that's what makes this a game." His comparisons were between card games, board games, ring around the roses, etc., but you can imagine countless others. He concluded that we know a game is a game from its "family resemblance" to other games, not any one trait they share with all games. PbtA definitely resembles other roleplaying games and I've definitely seen similar games get accepted as games. Like… is peek-a-boo a game? A staring contest? The floor is lava? Are these all improv exercises? Was my childhood a lie? lol Honestly, I think this is just a hate bandwagon and probably not worth our attention generally. I found the video helpful nonetheless, so thanks. :)
“Hot” take but the vast majority of PBtA games are certainly heavier rules wise than OSR games like Pirate Borg. PBtA games have dozens of little mechanics and set rules on GM and Player activity more than the average game.
Sure is hot. Because I heavily disagree. When reading a DnD manual, I feel the game is written for GMs and players to purposefully ignore many of the rules. I mean, you can find videos saying "Top 10 rules you didn't know were in the game". Meanwhile when reading a PBTA, I feel the game has few rules and a ton of explanation on how to apply said rules. Because these are usually left vague. Of course there are crunchier PBTAs out there (like Blades in the Dark)
PBTA is certainly a game, however I can understand the confusion: it's a game which is far less tactical and simulationist than 5e, meaning players may feel that their decisions don't matter since they usually reduce down to the same dice roll mechanic. And that is simply the trade off of having a lighter more agile system. I truly appreciate pbtas simplicity and there's a lot to learn from that, but it loses my engagement because it often fails to deliver a more tactical experience.
My suspicion is that PbtHate is from people who like to mix-max characters and otherwise exploit loopholes. Or people who prefer games that are more miniature and combat oriented. PbtA doesn't really have room for that. Some people I've doing that, and there's nothing wrong with that approach. I prefer to tell a story and push mechanics aside, which is where PbtA shines.
You can have a game with crunchy mechanics and still have great stories. One don't cancel the other. The Rules Lawyer even have a recent cut from one of his campaigns with D&D content creators, playing and learning Pathfinder 2e, that is exactly about how rules enhance the roleplay and the story.
@@Nora-sp3gi oh, you can absolutely tell a great story with a rule heavy game. My favorite game I've ever run was using Pathfinder 1e. I also feel that a rules heavy game CAN get in the way of trying the story. Again, my opinion. Not that it does get in the way, but it can. If you play a rules light game, that possibility is eliminated. Rules can't get in the way if they're not there. That said, some groups arguably need a game that is more rules heavy because they want that structure. The free form method that PbtA has is hard to get used to if you've been playing rules heavy for decades. There is no right or wrong, here. Every group is different. I like what PbtA tries to do. I also won't turn down a game of Mathfinder just because of the rules.
I feel the statement that people need crunch as a crutch because they can't roleplay is a bit ingenuine. I've always held the stance that good crunch improves roleplay. If it makes it worse than that's bad crunch. D&D 5e has bad crunch. I always feel like the mechanics are working against my roleplay in that. Pathfinder on the other hand, is more crunchy but feels like the game is working with me instead of against me. Also isn't the PbtA license so broad you can have any level of crunch you want? Isn't Flying Circus openly simulationist?
FLYING CIRCUS MENTIONED LETS GOOOOOO its been on my list for absolute ages. One of the tell tale signs of PbtA is that its crunch averse and I've read Flying Circus's crunchier elements aren't looked highly upon by the PbtA community. In terms of your first point, I actually made a video talking about how playing Pathfinder with D&D UA-camrs showed me that you CAN have crunch and good roleplay. When I said some people prefer mechanics because roleplay makes them uncomfortable, I was thinking of my RL friends who don't like playing PbtA games with me as the open endedness and reliance on roleplay makes them uncomfortable. I should've been more clear with my following statement, of "people who are cool with it sometimes wanna kick back, relax, and throw some dice," that I don't think that's the ONLY reason you can like crunch!
@@tabletopbroyou should read the actual license for the Pbta label. Literally any game, regardless of the content of said game, can be labeled as Pbta. A card game can be powered by the apocalypse.
I've played both PbtA (specifically Masks and Monster of the Week) and much crunchier games, and I've had fun with both. The main issue I've had with PBTA-style games is the feeling that certain moves aren't "unique". What I mean is that, if there is no mechanical difference between a barbarian attacking with a sword and my weird Bee Priest throwing a swarm of magical bees at the opponent, then it feels like both characters are too "samey", in that they somehow both fight the same way mechanically despite being radically different fluffwise. Maybe it's because of the games I've been playing, perhaps something like Dungeon World would be more up my alley. Also, I don't always like how hyperspecific they can be, sometimes to the point of baking character traits and character struggles into the classes themselves (I'm thinking specifically of Masks and MotW here, don't know if DW is like that). All of that being said, though, I do still enjoy them sometimes, and I can definitely see the merits of them.
I like either crunchy games (like Pathfinder or Shadowrun), or lighter rules games (like PbtA or YZE). What I don't enjoy is the weird in between of 5e and a lot of other "simple" d20 systems
The reason that PbtA and other story games were written is because the crunchy elements of games like shadowrun get in the way of a good story. Blades in the dark gives the players a better shadowrun experience then shadowrun ever has.
I always hear that but that isn't true for everyone. People who like rules heavy system usually want to just roleplay and let the rules, dice and GM take care of the story. I feel that when I have to care about the story that gets in the way of roleplaying because it takes me out of character. So TO ME "a good story" gets in the way of roleplaying.
@@louisst-amand9207 I dont play any of those. I started playing RPGs back in adnd2nd, and I played mostly 3.5e. But PF, 4e and 5e feel almost as light as PbtA to me (I am kinda joking here hahha). Now a days the games I play are Shadowrun and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
@@Valkyrja90 ahhh, i know more about 40k than the fantasy version, although my friends and I don't really use Warhammer for campaigns, and more for a strategy game (one massive battle one shot)
I think Pathfinder and OSR fans are the biggest dickheads to the PbtA community. Most 5e fans aren't invested enough in RPG's to know about or have opinions about other systems
Hey just because PBtA is realistcally a vehicle for improve acting moreso than a game isn't a negative! I plan on trying to run it sometime with my friends who wouldn't read the DnD players guide
Not necessarily but, in my experience, the people who tend to run around saying it's "just an improv exercise" are doing it in bad faith and are trying to "delegitimize" PbtA games and say they're lesser than D&D or you know whatever
@@tabletopbro that's a fair criticism to make, it's just the impression I've gotten from looking into it, but I reserve judgment for after I've have actually had a chance to run it. Am hoping to be pleasantly surprised!
The thing that always amuses me about this whole kerfuffle is that in many ways PbtA is the most trad of all the narrative systems. It has a standard task resolution system, experience and progression, even a rigid Class system. It's much celebrated/condemned narrative elements are pretty mild compared to something like FATE or My Life with Master. There's nothing wrong with any of that obviously; I've had fun with the system. But it does sometimes feel like the argument between PbtA people and 5e people is mostly based on the narcissism of small differences.
Gaming tribalism is hilarious. It’s mostly based on the need to prove that “we,” like things that are awesome and “they” are clueless idiots who like dumb things.
I think the main reason why so many people dislike PbtA games is that the rules are inherently 4th wall breaking. They have an connotative dissonance in claiming to be 'fiction first' while simultaneously having non-dietetic rules. Examples include using any ability that can be used once per 'scene' or 'session'. A scene is an in-world concept. Even if the result is functionally equivalent, the terminology used is off putting to many. The rules talk about play as if it is a story telling exercise.
for me there are just more engaging systems out there both rules light and not. but the main problem i have with pbta is that the games are fine not outstanding but also not horrifically awful for the most part and in that respect that's the worst thing a game can be. mediocre and forgettable not to mention most pbta games are just 2d6 plus stat and a meaningless mechanic taped on top with minor setting flavouring. my main opinion on pbta is that its a system that ruins plenty of great game ideas not by making them bad but just making them the same as each other.
As a game designer I can absolutely tell you TTRPGs are games. TTRPGs are a crossover between boardgames and collective narrative writing. If you don't have the improv you just have a boardgame.
Perfect video as always. PBTA games are a blast and so much fun since I like narrative. But when I want more "crunch" then I can also have that (like playing chaosium games which have a perfect mix).Also was that a blue lock reference around the 8:00 marker? 🤔
Exactly! Different games serve different purposes and one style isn’t inherently better than the other. And yes it was! I recently rewatched that episode and it was hard to pick just one scene!
Also yeah pbta community can be toxi and mean spirited. Unrelated, have you checked out monsterhearts 2? It is a pretty popular pbta game that has a decently strong community
@@Blerdy_Disposition yeah a lot of the really hardcore PbtA folks love to shit on Dungeon World (I made a video about nbd). I think I’ve seen the Monsterhearts cover but haven’t read it yet!
There are plenty of problems I have with PBTA games. In general I prefer to mine them for ideas rather than to actually play them (mostly to do with me prefering long format 20+ session games and a lot of playbooks in a lot of the versions I have played going "WTF, now what?" after about 10 session). However, the notion that they aren't games or don't have rules is silly.
Dungeon World IMO fulfills the requirements of a game. The pacing seems so much smoother than D&D 5e. The lack of initiative rolls especially makes the games faster. Oh, and I wanted to point out how much I appreciate the use of MapleStory 🍁 music in the background 😀
Isnt that how TSR D&D (B/X, BECMI) were played? The reason for everyone to announce their actions before dice are rolled so that it can be narrated just like in your Dungeon World example? Combat was quick and narrated.
I'd say that a game is (this definition is not mine but I don't remember who created it) basically a set of unnecesary inconveniences that the participants agree to experience just for the sake of experiencing them. So by that definition I would say that PbtA games do at times care less about being games and more about being guides for collaborative storytelling, as the GM and players are (I think, I haven't played a lot of PbtA tbh) encouraged to dismiss the mechanics if they get in the way of the story. Cool video btw 😎
That's honestly not a terrible definition. I think at their core they're games that guide you through collaborative storytelling (yet what TTRPG's aren't?).
@@tabletopbro Well you could say that in D&D the story emerges from the clash between the players' intentions and the mechanics, and that does happen in PbtA but I think the mechanics are less "aggresive"
I haven't read or played a PBTA game that encourages disregarding game mechanics. In fact PBTA game are built to work on those game mechanics and disregarding them may very well break the experience and make a worse story. In fact most games tend to include a "rule 0" telling you to disregard any rules you don't like while most PBTA game have a section explaining how and why to expand the game and discourage doing that until you understand why the different rules are in place and how they work. What PBTAs do is having open ended definitions and concepts that are open to interpretation, so that they can adapt to fit multiple scenarios. For example a weapon being messy as somewhat open ended definition: "It does damage in a particularly destructive way, ripping people and things apart." This might look different depending on the weapon, but once it is established it shouldn't change for no reason.
@@karibui494 yeah sorry I shouldn't have said that the mechanics are to be dismissed, I meant to say that they exist to facilitate the narrative intentions of the players and not so much presenting limitations from which both a challenge and a story emerge.
@@synmad3638 Oh, yeah, the rules are not to present a challenge, the challenge emerges from the fiction and from based on that fiction the rules establish how it develops (in favor of the players, against them or something in between) I do not agree that the rules don't present limitations, but that the limitations they present are more narrative and fictional than mechanical or numeric. For example in masks when [DIRECTLY ENGAGE A THREAT] is triggered you will get hit and choosing the option to avoid it prevents you from doing other things.
That bit with 5E was great, because you were honestly being pretty even handed with both sides. It does take longer for 5E. 5E is probably one of the more intensive monster fighting games. It takes a well oiled party to make that kind of stuff work. And don't get me started on shopping sprees! EGADS! I have never played a game with more bean counting- what are we? Conan the Book Keeper?
To your last point crunchier games also doesn't mean you can't have just as much roleplaying as a PbtA game. Just let people like what they like. Crunch isn't necessary to be a crutch, and light rules doesn't mean you're going to be a better "role player" whatever that even means.
I do not have an opinion on Powered by the Apocalypse games as I have never played one. I do enjoy GURPS and have given up on D&D and all its clones. There are a ton of other games that people can and do enjoy. Play what you enjoy.
What's funny is that, after the DnD combat example, I got hit with an ad for a movie. It said, "100 years," on the screen at the start of the ad and I'm like, "Yeah, it did take that long, tho!" XD BTW, I'm here because I'm looking into buying my first PbtA game (Avatar Legends) and want to get a better feel for how PbtA games flow. That PbtA vs. 5E combat comparison couldn't make it any clearer and I love how you honestly presented that contrast.
I believe most people miss the big difference between narrative systems and trad systems. In trad systems you make a character, and you play the role of a character in a fictional world. The game focuses on you making choices as if you were that character, and the rules are there to determine the consequences of those choices. Since you are trying to simulate a world, you have mechanics that are associated with it. Magic missile hitting automatically, or a longsword dealing 1d8/1d10 slashing damage, these are rules associated with the fictional reality you're playing in. If you look at it like this, those "useless and crunchy" mechanics start making sense. On the other hand, narrative systems require everyone to take on an "authorial" role instead. Narrative games don't focus on in-character choices, they focus on who's controlling the narrative. An example of this is how BitD makes the players actively manipulate the narration through flashbacks and other moves. Characters are there, sure, but they are there as a vehicle of your narrative authority (or lack of thereof): you don't use the mechanics to resolve their actions, but to determine which player gets to decide where and how the narration flows. These games use what are called "disassociated mechanics". Also, and this will annoy some people, that doesn't even sound like roleplaying. You're not playing a character, you're playing the author. So to hear that trad games exist as a crutch for people who do not how to roleplay, well, I don't think so. Roleplaying, after all, is making choices in character. What you do in narrative games is not that. It's improvisational storytelling.
On the topic... I'm kinda searching for a modern and innovative PbtA System, that's very light and setting agnostic... Would you know something of that kind?
So the schtick of PbtA is that its games are VERY focused on a specific thing, so there's not really a generic PbtA system. What sort of adventure are you trying to run/play in?
@@tabletopbro That's what I feared for... I really like the light, collaborative, narrative focus of PbtA (without much numbers or crunch so bye DW), but I want to run something, that can easily fit any setting or focus, since I now have a group, that's basically only short scenarios from completely different settings and foci in gameplay. (For the really f'ed up ideas, like playing as a dragon, as a civil werewolf on the run from hunters in a medieval setting, exploring flying islands like in Castle in the Sky or delving into a Cyberpunk city underwater, because earths surface was scorched by war) And sadly PbtA could be the wrong system... But evaluating unknown agnostic systems like Troika, PDQ, Fantasy Universal, Fate and similar, is kinda hard thanks to not much talk about them...
@@trushreitsam5802 I mean there are PbtA games that exist for all of those somewhat: Epyllion covers dragons, Urban Shadows does werewolves (and other classical monsters), its set in a modern city but I'm sure you can reskin it. Flying Circus is the closest thing I can think of to flying islands though that might be too crunchy for you, and Cy/Borg MIGHT have you covered for Cyberpunk. Cy/borg is a Borg system not PbtA, but still.
@@tabletopbro Thank you for all those options, I'll have a look. But I don't know how realistic it will be to teach my players a new ruleset per scene...
Just found your channel and you just earned a sub. I've been roleplaying for some-odd 30 years now, and I've played *tons* of different TTRPGs ranging from super crunchy (RIFTs, Pathfinder, Shadowrun 5e) to super light (Dungeon World and Feng Shui) - but I've read even more than that. And the fact that this video even needed to be made saddens me. To me, the system that you choose is the vessel and the seasoning for whatever story you want to tell. Some systems are great at one thing and rubbish at other things - some are far more abstract and some are more crunchy simulationist. What truly saddens me is that people just get...stuck in their rut and think that's the world of TTRPGs and that's what they have to play at all times, forever. I always encourage reading more games, more systems, because there are pieces just ripe for the plucking that you can insert into your game. Just my two copper.
I just get so bored playing D&D. There are so many pointless rules and modifiers that take forever to resolve. I've seriously watched fights take five hours to resolve. Never again.
"Roll for initiative" is definitely an initiative killer for me as most of the fights I've taken part in have been endless slogs. BUT some people enjoy the more mechanical, tactical side of the game, and there's nothing wrong with that!
You are with the wrong gaming group or DM then. Play with a group that doesn't do the crunch. Also, for initiative I just go in order of reflex bonus (dexterity) without any rolls. It means characters always go in the same order. I get them to sit in that order, so it's just going clockwise. I don't see why the person with the highest reflexes wouldn't act first (except narrative reasons).
It's fine for someone to say "hey, PBTA games aren't for me" or even "every single game that isn't actually D&D isn't for me". I feel that those two tend to overlap A LOT. But in either case, it's a very different thing to point to a game and say "that's not a real game" or "people who play that game _aren't real gamers."_ That's some in-cel / gamer-bro type sh*t and those people are just the worst. I don't think anyone would want to actually be around either, let alone play at a table with them. --- --- --- --- --- Also, no one should ever want to be called a "gamer". --- --- --- --- --- PbtA and FitD aren't necessarily my favorite type of games, but I do find them quite fun. I'd like to see more of them ease of on the limitation of Playbooks though. It makes sense for some of them, certainly, but I rather like skill-based TTRPGs (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, World of Darkness, etc) as I feel they give more flexibility. And then you can have the special abilities be something you choose _if you want_ and a la carte. A version of Dungeon World (which we'll never get an official "2E") that worked more like that would be fantastic. Narrative-focused games are awesome. Whether they're crunchy (like the basic-roleplaying ones) or moderately light (PBTA, FITD) or very light (Fate, Cthulhu Dark, etc). The narrative is the part most people engage with and will remember later, after all.
Stand up comment, Shawn. I usually get one or two incel gamer bro type shits per video praising a PbtA system. I used to shit on D&D myself until I had a "wait why am I putting down this game system to elevate the system I prefer" moment. PbtA games definitely have their issues. Like you said playbooks being far too narrowly focused and entire games being too narrowly focused. But, also like you said, my campaigns in Dungeon World, Masks, and Cartel are the ones I remember most vividly and fondly.
Also, it's not like pbta games don't have a ton of options... the move sets (I'm thinking of DW here) are huge, and there is plenty of playing off the character sheet in pbta games, you don't need 5e or PF to have too many character options to get in the way of your creativity.
for some people learning, choosing, interpreting and applying those dozen of moves actually is more complicated then just learning a set of 20pages of strict and consistent rules. It all depends. When I play a story I don't like to read even more convoluted rules WHILE playing. It bogs down everything sooo much. I recommend Risus or CortexPrime instead.
I think the criticism of PbtA games is a little mislaid here. The fundamental thing that people don’t like is the tendency of fans from various gaming ‘families’ trying to proselytise their favoured systems. If somebody approaches a happy D&D group and start to insist that Dungeon World is a better RPG, they will almost certainly garner a negative reaction. I would also mention that D&D is not the only RPG out there. While PbtA games may seem like the most innovative games ever to their fans, most of the ideas and mechanics found in them can be found amongst the massive range of RPGs that have been invented over the last 50 years or so. My experience is that some PbtA fans can give the impression that they only have limited experience of other games - which can be grating if, again, they are attempting to proselytise.
To me, your example just shows that the DW characters told a cool story (with the help of some random dice prompts), while the 5e characters made choices. Those choices were informed not by what would make for a cool story, but from the players' knowledge of the rules. The wizard chose to move 10 feet in order to avoid being surrounded by zombies; he cares because he's at risk at losing concentration on the Hideous Laughter spell that's keeping the ogre down. The fighter chose to stand his ground to give himself the chance to grapple enemies trying to move past him and get to the wizard; he knows that his AC is high, that he has Second Wind still available, and has a fair chance of his Athletics check succeeding. The extra time taken to adjudicate those choices is well worth it for people who find them meaningful. It's inane to talk about this in terms of "game" and "not game," since the end-result is similar - if you're playing a well-designed RPG (and I make no declaration that 5e is such), the rules, and the choices those rules shaped, will naturally result in a cool story. Many gamers' problem with PbtA games is that they seem to skip over the choices part, beelining right for the _telling_ the the story, in a way which makes it feel unearned. Moreover, for simulationist players, the rules can do so much more than just "enable play," which is what they're mostly used for in PbtA games. Rules can be like a map scale for the secondary world - they tell you how everything compares to everything else; they give you tangible ways to interact with the world; they provide a glimpse at how the world ticks even when no one is playing it. The rules give you measurable values with which you can know - not guess, not negotiate over, _know_ - whether you can or cannot achieve something.
Great breakdown of my example! I definitely do lean more towards the gameplay style of the 5e example when I'm playing gamier systems like Pathfinder. There's is absolutely a sense of satisfaction that can be gained in using the mechanical tools at your disposal to get the best possible result. That's an interesting take about PbtA that I haven't really read before. The problem being that the story is unearned because of a lack of choices and it honestly makes sense from that perspective.
@@tabletopbro Well, "unearned" isn't even a good term for it. It's more like thinking that the story is more legitimate if it _appears_ to emerge spontaneously. The intent of crunchy games isn't necessarily for you to play a plotless tactical sim; instead, the game puts a layer of artifice between you and the narrative. You're not touching the story directly (which is why I kinda agree with your statement that crunch is a "crutch" for newer players unused to roleplaying) - instead, you're handed a controller, an interface. it gives you a frame of reference, an idea of what can or cannot be achieved, what the chances of success are, and what the consequences for failure are - everything you need to stay in character-stance forever. But that interface was still made by RPG designers, and their goal is still for your play to result in a story. And if they do their job right, you sit to play a tactical fantasy game, thinking only in sterile game-terms like AC and HP, but when you look back at the choices you've made, you instead see a rollicking fantasy adventure. Matt Colville often says (paraphrasing), "The story is something we discovered later, when talking about the session." PbtA designers rightfully point out that this all seems like a _very_ circuitous way to arrive at the exact same destination - people narrating a story together. In that sense, rules do seem like an annoying middleman that can be cut out. They're also quick to call bullshit on the idea that game stories are immaculate births, arising from the rules-godhead like Venus from the sea foam - they know very well that GMs were always secretly very busy, acting as writers, producers and directors, working very hard to make it _seem_ like the story just manifested itself out of the ether in response to player actions. To bring those duties out from behind the curtain and into the players' hands seems like an equitable evolution of the hobby! I'm just... not convinced that it works. Yes, I know it's all stage magic; yes, I know you can generate a story by just... telling each other the story. But without the artifice, without the implied simulation, it all just feels very hollow to me.
Good thumbnail bait. ...Anyways while I think you're right that the vast majority of people complaining that PbtA games aren't enough of a competition don't play D&D that way either... D&D *is* sometimes played that way or at least *was*. Not between the GM and players, but between the players. Possibly between tables. Like, why does Tomb of Horrors exist? It was built as a competitive speedrun dungeon, basically. Get a couple GMs and couple groups of players, each group of players possibly consisting of *way more* than four people. Which group will reach the end first (or reach the end at all, actually)? How much treasure will they have found by then? *Most people* didn't play this way because good luck getting that many people together, but it *was* an "intended" way to play the game. Which is sort of where the philosophy of the GM as an arbitrator comes from, as opposed to the GM just looking to make sure the game's fun and doesn't feel too hostile. (Heck it's why the AD&D rulebooks existed). So I think the real clash in styles here is whether the GM is supposed to decide how things *should* go and use dice as a tool in decision-making (Kriegspiel style), as opposed to just letting dice fall where they may and avoiding any decisions the rulebook didn't basically make *for* them. In a game like PbtA the latter is impossible.
Didn´t know where youw ere going but gave it a thumbs up as soon as you started by sharing comments. I knew it was going to be fun even if the conclusion was that my beloved PbtA was plutoe´d out of gamedom.
ITS NOT pass / fail. Think of it as Litmus paper/test. Some RPG's that have more simulation and gameist elements ( D&D , ) are Base side to the opposite end of the acidic side- PbtA has more Narrative and less procedural rules. And not all PbtA games are equal either. All RPG's are on this litmus paper scale - The argument is that Some games ( Games generally speaking ) pretend to be RPG's but are really Story Games - which are games but not in the Tabletop RPG genre. I do consider PbtA games - real TTRPG's ( it still has asort of dice mechanic ) but on the far end of the role playing game litmus paper. Dont forget some PbtA games can really mitigate PC death - it's really hard to die in Monster of the week . It;s as if PbtA games are like playing a character on a TV show being in an adventure rather then actually being in a real adventure- Nuance / hard to detect but that feel is present. The problem with some PbtA games is that players can make decisions , take actions have ideas and - it can JUST happen if its cool or the GM thinks its cool without a " mechanical / rule " getting in the way- just pretend and it happens ( not always but still.. more ) . This can happen in D&D ( more in 5e than OSR games ) too but way less in older NON- PbtA games. A player's PC could get a critical hit in some simulationist game and die very fast ( just like some soldier who just happened to get shot in the head in some war movie ) and thats that. THE SECRET: Does the game KNOW the PC's are the stars of the " show/movie " PbtA does know. 5e D&D is played nowadays like the game knows. Many older or OSR games Don't Know the PC's are the chosen stars of the movie - the story if there is one to be had in simulationist role playing games are told after play is ended ( like going fishing ) you make sense of the game as story only after it's played - Not during
I should add- an old rpg called Toon , you couldn't die but just get put out of action for 3min real time with all your hit points ( health ) fully back- Because the game was Emulating a particular Genre. Bugs Bunny does not die and humor was what players were going for- so Genre Emulation plays a big part of the RPG
Honestly, considering the kinda mocking tone of the D&D combat round skit: Have you considered checking out Mythras? Because I genuinely think it's combat system manages to be rules-y enough to not just "make stuff up" while *also* making sense narratively, being very descriptive and moving pretty fast. The tradeoff is that done people have trouble wrapping their head around it, but once people do... Is very nice.
I have nothing against PBTA , I just can't play it. As much as I like RPG's, I'm just not a good role player. Not good enough for PBTA at least. That said, PBTA is also too rules light for me. Not that I need a rule for every little detail mind you, not, that's not it, but once you add Science Fiction Technology, Magic, Psionics or Superpowers, it's too easy to abuse them without clear guidelines. Clear guidelines come at least with longer explanations, but usually also with some rules. Take a simple ability like telekinesis. It's simple, right`? Be the source magic, psionics or superpowers, you can move objects with your mind. So, what are the limits? Can I lift this truck to throw it at my enemy? Or just a rock? Or can I squeeze my opponents heart/lungs/throat/arteries shut and kill him? Can I move myself? If yes, how fast? Once playing Star Wars (D6) a speeder was hurling towards us and I hit on the idea of using telekinesis to catch it. I got the skill high enough to have a chance and the dice were with me, so with some effort I held the speeder in place before it hit us. Another time I used telekinesis 'pull the pins' of the grenades the soldiers shooting at us were carrying. How do I do that with a system that essentially says 'You can do telekinesis'? And yes, you could create a new power for every detail, but wouldn't that defeat the point of PBTA? Sure, you can decide as a group not to abuse it, but it can happen without even someone noticing it. I played around with D&D 3.5 and just went with some character ideas just for the fun of creating characters, not to play them and accidentally created some very OP characters. As I said, I have nothing against PBTA, but, and that is often forgotten with RPG's, you have to remember to keep it within what is made for. And just to make a point, D&D is great for High and Epic Fantasy, but for Sword & Sorcery? Where people discard their weapons and equipment whenever it is practical? Conan changed his swords and axes whenever he needed. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser may have named their weapons, but they changed them whenever necessary and just kept the names. Can you see that being done with D&D? Leaving your magic sword behind your tavern room with no idea if you will ever find one again just because the guards are after you? Every system has it's limits. PBTA is great for what it does and for people that can work with it. But it's not for everything and everyone.
You assert that crunchy systems are a crutch for those who aren't comfortable with roleplaying. That's a false dichotomy - you can roleplay in a crunchy system just as easily as in a light or narrative system.
Considering I made a video about me discovering they're not mutually exclusive, twas a bit of a misspeak on my part. When I wrote that bit of script I was specifically thinking of my RL friends who don't like PbtA systems because roleplay makes them uncomfortable, I didn't mean to insinuate it's the only reason people should like crunch.
If you enjoy a tactical minis skirmish game that's fine. Just don't confuse other people that's what TTRPGs are about. Having a session of play just be planning a heist or a war and then that plan being completely useless.. killed my enjoyment of those games. By the time you're done with your first combat encounter, I've had far more story and intrigue.
@@NicholasMarshall All I'm saying is that roleplaying can be done in both crunchy and light system. I'm not making any judgements on which is better - that's up to the group and what they want. I've played (and enjoyed, and roleplayed in) games all across the crunch spectrum.
Honestly, I enjoy playing all kinds of games, whether they are crunchy or more rules light and or narrative-driven. Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder, but I also like to switch things up with some OSR stuff. (What's your opinion on Dungeon Crawl Classics and the "Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number" systems if you know them btw?) and some PbtA *games* . Variety is the spice of tabletop gaming after all! I think tabletop gaming is more fun when you explore different options. You never know when you might find your perfect system!
Not to mention, playing other system and expanding your palate often improves the experience of your "main" system! Before my 5e campaign ended I was ABSOLUTELY incorporating lessons I learned from DW, Masks and Pf2e into it! I've heard of DCC but haven't dove into it, and this is the first time I'm learning about Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number.
@@tabletopbro Ohhh you really have to check out some of Kevin Crawford systems! Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number, Godbound, Silent Legions, etc Even if you don't care about the "Without Number" systems, the included worldbuilding tables are _insane_ . Best of all? It's free! There are deluxe editions which add some optional additional stuff though. Not affiliated with him, just a huge fan lol.
I enjoy PbtA games, but I guess if people hate them then they will really hate the system I am working on, which has lead me already to the point that I am not sure if I want to call it a game, since it is really (and I mean REALLY) far to the narrative end of the spectrum that it is indeed more a mix of creative writing and improve theatre than gaming.
The issue is that some DMs just let the players win at everything. That's exactly what's going on here. DMs can do that in probably just about any system (even one lacking dungeons, I just think Game Master sounds like a description of Yugi Moto).
Anyone who thinks PBtA is "soft on rules", I dare them to get a copy of my favorite (BLATANT PLUG) 'Tremulus' and jump into it. Yeah, there is a collaborative "Yes+And" improv feel to the setup, but that happens in a lot of "Here is My Very Special Backstory" sessions of D&D (especially post-Critical Role). The game still uses the "What Do You Do?" gameplay loop of PBtA and still feels plenty crunchy. P.S. Seriously, check the game out over at Reality Blurs. They deserve the business. I ran an entire Call of Cthulhu campaign using the system, and it was super-smooth.
I'm currently playing in a city of mist campaign and for the most part I do enjoy that iteration of powered by the Apocalypse, and have also purchase several other powered by the apocalypse games specifically impulse Drive, Uncharted worlds and root. But I do find That Power by the apocalypse games can be a bit vague for my tastes. If it had a dedicated skill system I might have a different opinion but overall I do enjoy what I played so far. And I am looking forward to the new city of Mist cyberpunk setting Otherworld
I don't want to badmouth games like D&D, so instead I'll paraphrase the words of the people that I know, when I asked them why they don't like games like PbtA or Fate. It was always something like this: "I don't like the freedom to try to do anything I want. I need the game to tell me exactly the things that I can do."
I have not heard of PBTA games until very recently. I like your understanding of the two, how they are similar and what makes them different. This was a very fair assessment of these games. I love crunch, I play PF 1e and I am a DM, [glutton for punishment], but I am open to these other games that are not so rules heavy in genre's other than medieval fantasy. So games I am not so familiar with such as scifi, supers, horror, time travel, etc I would be more inclined to go with a PBTA game than a rules crunchy system. Great video thanks for sharing.
Games exist on a scale, you have massive wargames, strategic, using chits and hex maps. You can create stories in those but its not very immersive. Then there are miniature games where you paint and assemble armies fighting battles. As battles goes on you might create a story in the long run as one minature might either win or lose often, or units being undefeated or something like that. Then you have dungeon crawlers with on table maps either paper or casted. Made to look like an fun dungeon and each player play their own little miniature. Here stories will also be told as an elf might get an lucky crit or an wizard with low strenght always manage to press open the closed doors. Then you have rpgs taking place in the mind. Playing to do quests, getting gold and leveling up. Characters are acted out according to the players wishes and roleplaying is more of an goal. However you still have stats and keep track of xp, hitpoints and treasure. Then you have rpgs that are more improv and roleplaying based. There are still stats or cards or some rules to it. For instance a player can have a "turning of the story" point or an card that let them counter what another player just said. However there are no stats for the actual characters and its all about the role playing and the rules are just there to facilitate that. The board game attempts to simulate a dungeon crawling reality is left behind. Then you have rpgs that are improv sessions. The players agree on a premise and then have fun playing out their characters and their adventures with any rules or props at all. Rpg's can be simpler or more advanced but usually gm's and the players strike a balance between rules and roleplaying they can agree on. Smugly decrying someones else preferred playing style is counter productive and your time will be better spent trying to understand what the other players wants and what they think roleplaying games actually are. What they want might not be what you think. I think that games like PbtA might be seen as too GM dependent in that it will always feel to the players that the GM can just say things work out just fine or dont as strikes his or her mood. People feel more in control with games like dnd. But in the end both games are dependent on GM's good will and the level of rules are just a matter of taste. PbtA might also feel to easy, it wont have the options other more advanced games has. Players in combat use their one or three options they have and then let the GM and dice figure out the result. Thats not enough for some players. Some players might even want a simmulationist game where there are a minuta of details and rules covering each detail all in an attempt to create a survival experience. These players are often also players who love sand box games where the goal is just to survive, explore and maybe also become more powerful. They might thinking having to talk to npcs is a waste of time and not think about roleplaying at all. Its all on a scale
Lol just a few haha. If you're not pissing a few people off you're not having worthwhile takes imo lol. As someone coming from 5e, I'm gonna check out Dungeon World so you converted someone haha👌 @@tabletopbro
I love the PBTA system, the only concern I have with it is game balance. It seems that once characters have leveled up enough, it's difficult to challenge them. Still love the system, but need to hear from experienced players about this.
Depends on which PbtA you're playing. Check out my 16hp Dragon video for pointers for running high stakes Dungeon World combat! (Shameless plug but whatever)
I'd also like to say that this depends on the system. For instance, I'm a big advocate of Deadlands Classic, specifically Classic over the other versions such as Savage Worlds or the 2021 reboot. I love it specifically because all of its mechanical complexity, despite being kind of clunky, actually IMPROVES the flavour of the game and makes it feel more distinctly Western. Sure, the Savage Worlds version is much faster and more streamlined - casting a spell by spending mana points and rolling a single dice is definitely simpler. But casting a spell by rolling a dice to determine how many playing cards you draw, then trying to make a specific Poker Hand to make the spell work *feels* more appropriately Western. There's even special effects that trigger if you draw a Joker! Plus, the different magic systems in Classic feel more special in Classic ("wizards" use the aforementioned poker card system, holy men just use a Faith roll and need to avoid sinning, Indian Shamans need to actually perform elaborate rituals to appease the spirits, etc), while in Savage Worlds every "spell" is just a reskinned version of an ability from a generic list. I appreciate the simplicity of that, but it can sometimes feel hollow when there's no mechanical support for the magic types being different.
I am a 54 year old engineer. I play D&D online with other 50 something engineers I graduated with. We played Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk 2020, back when we were in school together between 1988 and 1993. You would be hard pressed to find a more number crunching, data analyzing, odds calculating group of RPG gamers. We are all looking forward to playing Monster of the Week PbtA later this year. D&D might as well be a mini war game at this point and we do enough real higher math to not need it in our spare time. We play games for FUN and that is what MotW and the PbtA system is calling to us with.
Dang dude, your production value is seriously on par with any big name channel; your editing, framing, and even just the image quality all comes together for a really well polished video man! I don't know much about Pbta and my TTRPG experience is only about a year and half deep at the moment, and only what Rice has taught me lol. I do feel like I learn a good bit of stuff about non-DND games from you, helps me expand my horizons a bit. Good stuff bro!
Its so weird, I feel like I should be feeling some sort of great disrespect to my family when I hear "PBtA arent real games" but it always puts a big smile on my face. Your breakdown of it is also really good! (Off-topic AND a deep-cut, and kind of a flex? but) Cant wait to see what people think of The Demon Tree (working title) on the whole Crunch/Roleplaying thing when it comes out, anyways, great vid!
D&D is structured as a cooperative competition. The GM designs a scenario full of challenges, and the players, facilitated by an impartial GM, engage with those challenges as a team to "beat" the scenario. They're not trying to beat the GM, they're trying to beat the game. Narrative RPGs use game elements and mechanics to facilitate an improv exercise -- the players are playing to "see what happens" and construct a story. Since "losing the game" would interrupt the development of the narrative, there are no winning and losing conditions, just mechanics that influence the direction of the story. For example, in the early Narrative RPG "Life With Master", the PCs are all minions of an evil, abusive NPC "master" -- like Renfield to Dracula, Igor to Dr. Frankenstein, or Quasimodo to his adoptive father, Judge Frollo. They make decisions in a series of scenes that affect their PCs "stats". After a certain number of scenes, the characters' final fates are determined in a final scene, based on how their stats evolved during gameplay. The players are using game mechanics to do this, but there is no competition or adversaries to "beat". They just improv and let the mechanical results serve as guideposts to develop an improv story. This is a sophisticated version of Drew Carey yelling out things that the cast of "Whose Line Is It Anyway" have to incorporate into their improv to make up little sketches. You could say Narrative RPGs are games, where the mechanics serve to facilitate sitting around a campfire and telling a story. D&D uses roleplaying and mechanics to facilitate playing a cooperative strategy game to explore environments and beat obstacles. Both might allow players to experience a setting or genre (like fantasy), but the point of gameplay is different.
Holy smokes. These folks would have lost their danged minds back in the 90s when diceless RPGs hit the scene, from Amber to Everway. Of course, D&D was at a profoundly low ebb in popularity through much of the 90s, culminating in TSR falling apart and being bought by Wizards of the Coast (who used to actually make some good, non-D&D RPG stuff...including Everway, a game where interpreting Tarot cards was the primary mechanic). I haven't even tried Powered by the Apocalypse yet (returned to the hobby in 2019 after a 15 year hiatus, then 2020 happened & I tend to prefer face-to-face gaming), but it seems closer to the mainstream games of the 90s than some of the more fringe ones we were playing. And it looks like today's fringe is even more fringy with a thriving indie scene, which is great. Even back then, though, there were folks who today would be described as "grognards," who were upset by the idea of playing anything other than D&D (or their pet rules system that came out in 70s). As I remember one of them saying without irony, "the only true role playing game is Dungeons & Dragons. All other games are pretenders to the throne. PRETENDERS TO THE THRONE!!!" Somehow that guy had a girlfriend and I didn't, and that made for a very sad & deflated me circa 1997.
I don't really agree with what you say. "PbtA rolls dices therefore it's a game". It would suggest that without rolling or alea there is no game, which is not the case foe belonging outside belonging games, for example.
Totally unrealistic - you forgot the bit were the DnD players have forgotten all the rules and you spend several minutes explaining to them how their characters work. Since the first time I ran a Monster of the Week session - and had a blast - my desire to play DnD has plummeted off a cliff. Great vid, couldn't agree more.
That's so freaking true. I remember a friend of mine pitched an alternate RPG to my group of friends, and one of them said, "I don't want to learn another set of rules!" My friend replied, "you don't even know the rules to D&D! You just rely on D&D Beyond!"
I would say PbtA games tends to be at least designed as medium crunch in spite of how even its own community portrays it. Half the time when I read a PbtA system, there's frequently this ever prevailing sense that the developer had this idea of how entire subsets of mechanics are expected to be used, but then never explain the big picture. It's usually great when it clicks and I get it, but if the GM hasn't gotten it then it's not great. This ends up making the mechanics feel shoe horned in when you're too free form or like a bad version of D&D if you try to handle them with too much crunch, because without the big picture they don't know how checks are supposed to matter. Not every system does this, but too many seem like their afraid of sounding like the sections of D&D where they break down how an encounter works.
The real reason for the ridiculous fake rivalry is just people wanting different games. D&D can be played as a more tactical game or a more narrative game. The detractors play the tactical game, and the criticisms leveled at PBtA are the same ones they probably level at people who play D&D as a narrative game. At the same time, as illustrated by the example in the video, the PBtA fans only see D&D as a tactical game and cannot fathom how to make a narrative game out of it. The two groups want different things, so - given that there are two different systems - there's zero need for any rivalry. It's like going into a coffee shop and haranguing the people drinking tea for doing coffee wrong. I play D&D as a narrative game and my D&D sessions look like your PBtA example (except I let the players describe what happens when they make a roll, rather than telling them). I could play a PBtA game, I just do not need to. On the rare occasion someone wants to get more tactical, say for the big climactic battle, I can do that with D&D because there are rules for that. I actually run into the opposite problem, PBtA players critical of D&D, and trying to persuade us that we should quit D&D because it cannot handle narrative games. That is equally BS. What particularly irks me about the D&D rpg gatekeepers is that their hero, Gary Gygax, constantly advocated that people do what they want with the rules, and that there was no right or wrong way. He was actually quite annoyed that people would call him wanting his interpretation of the rules, and he'd tell them it was their game, not his. Each to his or her own, basically. So, doing the opposite of what he was recommending just shows that certain people have no idea what they are doing, which is why they could easily be running terrible D&D sessions like the one in your example and making stupid remarks about people wanting something different.
Gygax did plenty of Badwrongfun himself. He railed against critical hits as a concept (among many others) and he made more than a few comments disregarding other systems or verisimilitude on the basis of not being 'games'. Much agreed on this largely being driven by self-absorbed people talking past each other, though. While D&D does facilitate roleplay and narrative games differently (and specific types better or worse than other systems), which one you prefer is a matter of personal taste.
@@NevisYsbryd My point was Gygax wanted people to adapt his own system to their preferences, and he was saying that long before D&D had any competition. If, later in life, he was complaining about other systems then that's understandable given that he had a stake in D&D, even if it was just pride. That doesn't give D&D purists who only see TTRPGs being played one way any right to criticize people using the D&D rules in a different manner or other systems - they have no stake, it does not affect them. They're not even following the teachings of their god.
Well said, that coffee shop example is on point. I've also run into PbtA hardos shitting on Dungeon World because they say it's too much like D&D and that it's not "real" PbtA! Just because it's a more niche side of the TTRPG hobby doesn't mean their advocates can't be toxic and obnoxious
I would make the argument that D&D and PbtA are both competitions and games. The GM may not be playing against the players but the monster he controls are. The GM isn't trying to hurt the players but he isn't trying to help them either. He is the ref, hopefully calling it right down the middle as the players compete against the world the gm has created. I would love to have more D&D people come into PbtA by the way. They would bring more Crunch to those games , which I think is needed. The thing about PbtA is that while there may be less rules? They're also BETTER rules. In my opinion. and I feel way too many PbtA GMs and players kinda wave them off. I wish they were as committed to the Rules as Written PbtA stuff the way D&D players commit to 5E. Anyway. Great vid. Good points. There's nothing wrong with using dental dams but I respect you for not doing it, sir.
I'm a newcomer in TTRPG hobby and so far I'm currently playing D&D in a group and Ironsworn solo (it's a PbtA game, BTW), and I can say that both are proper games as far as I'm concerned, just have different styles.
Some of those comments at the start read like the kinds of things you hear from people who play TTRPGs to "win." You can't win something that is open ended by design. Even the crunchiest, most simulationist system doesn't give win conditions. They provide a set of mechanics for resolving actions and the consequences of decisions made, and that's it. Everything else is in service to those two (well, really one,) things. If we accept that a game is an exercise in overcoming challenges that you take on voluntarily, then even "make believe" as these people so derisively call it is a game. The resolution mechanic is agreeing that something happened. In a way, all games are not just TTRPGs, are make believe and storytelling with extra bits added. Chess is about a war between kingdoms waged to the death. Baseball is a contest between two tribes on who can gather the most of three things. Football (either version) is about preventing someone from the other side from getting to their destination with the McGuffin. Poker is a story of high stakes diplomacy and gamesmanship. To deride something as make believe is to not realize that anything we do to entertain ourselves is effectively make believe. We pretend that we are watching or reading something that actually happened or that we were there whenever we watch or read something. We imagine that we are skilled and competent manipulators of people or a master strategist whenever we sit down to play a card game. Some of us are just more ready to accept that than others. To ask if a system is a game is to miss what a game is. It's a way of entertaining ourselves in a way in which we can fail, and by that metric, PbtA games are indeed games. It's okay to not like them or want to play them, but to say that they are just wannabe TTRPGs for theatre kids is, in my mind, hypocritical at best. You can have someone unleash their thespian's talents in any TTRPG, no matter how crunchy. After all, whenever you play a TTRPG, you are playing a role. It's right there in the name, table-top role-playing game. Anyway, these are my thoughts on the matter.
RPGs have duel identifies that sometimes clash - war gaming/simulation and narrative storytelling. DnD fundamentally grew out of war games and has generally stayed true to the war gaming roots. These people tend to value systems and rules. I am not a PbTA guy, but I do like the narrative RPG experiments that have been happening to remove the war game vestiges.
I'm a fan of TSL (Thirsty sword Lesbians; using Powered by the Apocalypse) I don't run it because two of my player's really, really NEED the crunch of Pathfinder 2e. (which I prefer over DND5e ) Someday I will run it; and I'm almost certain it will be fun. But; maybe not with my current group.
Bro, just found your channel and lulz you cracked me up 😂 Earned a sub from me and don’t let the trolls get you down. This video could definitely have been an email instead of setting up this meeting, sheesh🤣
I think the better counter argument to PbtA being a game would be other TTRPGs with similar (ish) rules depth, but in a different vein. That is...the OSR movement. Namely retro-clones like Swords and Wizardry, Old School Essentials, or even new stuff like Knave. Then ask...is it a game by the first definition? I would say very few role-playing "games" match the first definition by Webster, except Traveller, Shadowrun, GURPS, and most of the OSR movement. It is rewarding to succeed as well against the challenges you face.
@@tabletopbro of course they did. The bulk of the OSR community is more focused on tribalism than they are on actually playing games. I find it weird that it isn’t enough to have a preference for one game or system over another. For some reason people have to spend an inordinate amount of time justifying their preference/trying to tell other people that their preference is objectively incorrect.
tbf the open-table multi-party many-player experiences of the really old days could hypothetically be somewhat competitive, especially when stronger PCs got into the domain management game to protect their treasure against other players Somehow I don't think these commenters are aware of that sort of thing though, and are probably not the sort of games most of them are playing regularly (though tangentially open tables are something everyone should try to experience at least once).
The difference is that in PBTA games the players are basically the all powerful admin of the game and don't really have any challenge to face, since they can basically say they defeat the enemy or achieve whatever they want. They have control over the script. And this is what absolutely makes it less of a game
lol. A game doesn't need rules or dice rolling. Some Adult's become embarrassed that they are play a roleplaying game, and need rules and dice. Then the question of them playing a child's make believe game can be countered with, it's like Monopoly. Oh, right ok. You can't be pathetic if you play a game with rules like Monopoly and Chess. Nice job on explaining it. This nonsense also annoys me. 😂
Oftentimes when I see outspoken critics of more roleplay heavy games I think, "you're embarassed to roleplay, aren't you squidward." Great breakdown of it though! Adding dice and rules "legitimizes" the experience to said critics. Probably.
I like pbta mostly because I'm not very good with mental math due to dyscalculia and loose interest in the mechanics of other player's turns because ADHD. I grew up on DnD, love DnD, I just get frustrated by numbers and other players get kind of tired of waiting for me to do maths so I tend to chose less crunchy systems. I also like fun stories that can keep momentum rather than crunchy mechanics. Both are valuable systems that serve a wide audience with differing tastes.... and salty bitches are gonna be salty bitches no matter what.
Your thumbnail is such a massive case of Poe’s Law that I expected you to just shit on pbta for the whole video. Really glad you didn’t lol good video!
PBTA games are narrative because their whole point is "the narrative triggers the move", which means "in the appropriate circumstances of the tale we are telling we use mechanics to solve the situation". Like every other RPG,.
How about people just play what they want... There's a huge spectrum of rules and numbers crunching and how much role playing you do is really up to you and not super dependent on rulesets anyways. Having played games all across the spectrum, liking most of them for different reasons. I'll say that one advantage of a more crunchy system is predictability and strategy. The less that's left to the DM, the more the players can strategize and collaborate. I also enjoy wargames and the more (good) systems you have for combat, and the better you set up your encounters, the more it feels like a game. I've run games for many people with many different interest. Some of them hate wargames and want the story to move on because they're not here for the combat mechanics, they're here for the story and the roleplay. Role play I've also found to be independent of crunchy rules. Half of our sessions have always been characters talking to each other, maybe a roll here or there to determine something.
The core of an RPG is imagination + structure. I think the opinion that PbtA is 'not a game' is because those people feel that those games don't have enough structure compared to crunchier games. Hence the comments about it 'just' being make-believe. They're not saying 5E isn't also make-believe, but that 5E has structure to go along with it and PbtA doesn't. Whether you agree with that or not is purely personal opinion, for some people PbtA just doesn't have enough structure to make it a real game, but instead it's an improvisation exercise with a few rules layered over. Considering most people WOULD agree that an improv performance is not the same as playing a TTRPG, there must be a line where after adding enough rules it becomes a TTRPG. Where that line is located is a subjective opinion.
One thing i disagree with is that in DnD the GM isn't the opponent. Thr GM is the adversary in the story, as they control the adversary. This does not make it a bad thing, as a good story generally does need some sort of opposition.
PBTA are not soft on rules, they are among the few games that have HARD rules for the GM and not some recommendations on how to run a game. A well designed PBTA game have all the rules it needs to create a well functioning game (of whatever it's trying to create) and not any more. You don't need rules for space travel on a Victorian era mystery game and you don't need rules for weapons on a teenage super heroes. They don't get in the way of the game, the rules only act when it is thematically and dramatically appropriate for them to do.
Man honestly I don't get why people think pbta isn't a "real game" like d&d, like honestly I'll probably use pbta at any d&d club meetings that I go to and gm at
Well ffffuuuu...here I am 40 years into playing DnD, finally fed up with the nonsense of Wotc and looking at new platforms and systems and I am in full agreement with a "Bro". What has my life become? A lot less usless-rulesy and a lot more fun I would imagine. Subbed, liked and now to browse your other videos.
I took a while to respond to this comment because it made me smile, and I wanted to see it on my “comments” section on my UA-cam app. When you respond, it goes away and you see comments you didn’t respond to, and a lot of mine are shitty. I guess I have divisive opinions. So thank you for your comment! I appreciate you
Hey, hi, hello! I should've elaborated more when I said, "crunchier mechanics provide a crutch for people uncomfortable with roleplaying." That isn't the ONLY reason someone could prefer crunchier systems to more narrative focused systems, it's just a specific example I thought of based on my own experience with friends of mine who don't like PbtA because they're uncomfortable with RP and use crunch as a crutch.
You can like crunch and be comfortable with roleplay, they're not mutually exclusive.
Well played on the click bait part. Before I make my exit probably for good because of that I agree that all RPGs inherit an abstract and vague element.
Of course this was all talked out by everyone already 20 years ago via forums and blogs, it's good you catched up.
This could be a video instead of a comment but to everyone who is interested in the topic: There is a soft demarcation line when these elements become too vague.
That's why the community invented subgenres like "story games", "tactical rpgs", "diceless rpgs" and so on. The difference usually is a (likewise soft) definition of an action (a short incident) and a conflict (a whole series of events in with you could put everything in belonging more of less to the roll).
It all boils down to: how good do you know your players or how submissive are they? Do you know them well enough? => then a story game might work (you might also just not roll and tell them what to do).
Do they argue a lot and want a higher level of reproducibility? => you need a tactical rpg
@@FalkFlak overreact much?
That is exactly what I have going on. Two of my players NEED that crunch for their roleplaying. My other would / does love TSL. (Thirsty Sword Lesbians) I might do a solo game for her.
I... What does this even mean in this context? None of the games you mentioned have any real rules for roleplaying, apart from simple skill checks.
The rules of these systems are almost exclusively limited to combat, with exploration and social encounters being almost entirely improvised. It's not like you have to do a Potionomics-style haggling minigame every time you want to sell your loot, for example and conversations aren't usually held in initiative order either, so I legitimately don't know how D&D's or Pathfinder's rules are supposed to help with roleplaying in any way.
Mostly, the rules of these games are there to make the combat aspect of them a "proper" game by the definition of Bernard Suits (which I'm really surprised you just kinda skipped over during your dictionary bit in the beginning), "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" - or in this case: Providing a challenge to your players. Without clear rules, providing challenges will the limited to exploration (how do we get across this river) or social challenges (how do we convince the king to join our cause), but the third pillar of ttrpg's - combat - usually requires rules of some kind; preferably ones just complex enough to allow for actual strategic decision making on both sides, without being so complex that it becomes needlessly tedious (sweet spot will wary based on group and time of day)
Honestly the main reason I like crunch (not that I don't like pbta or ground itself) is because it lets me feel like I'm solving a mechanical puzzle, like building and playing mtg.
My family was attacked by an ogre IRL and I didn't have any d20s in the house to attack it. I regret it more every day....
Legit laughed out loud
You could have used d4 .much more deadly
"You're just playing make believe" My brother in Christ, YOU ARE ALSO PLAYING MAKE BELIEVE.
No no no but like if they get rid of all the imagination they still have fun rolling dice! (This was their actual response)
Yes, but with conditions and limits. I believe the posters point was "there's a point when you stop playing a game and just start riding on PURE imagination - no math or dice required."
@@Ultrox007 that's the goal.
This reminds me of why I don’t play d and d anymore. I played with kids and it was only through the eyes of 10 year olds did i realize how unnecessarily complicated it is. One internet search for “simplified version of dnd” led me down the path to dungeon world and I will never go back. Thanks Bro for continuing to chat about how PBTA games rock, cause you got me in your corner!
I appreciate you being in my corner, at the same time do me a favor and rewatch 7:17 :)
From my experience, the design of heavy rules systems, like DnD 5e, and PF2E often leads to a contradictory and self-defeating experience for players and DMs alike. On one hand, these systems promise a rich, immersive world, driven by complex rules that lend authenticity and depth to the game. However, the complexity of these rules often creates a steep learning curve and poses a significant barrier for new GMs and even experienced players.
Moreover, the sheer volume of rules, supplements, and expansions can make it feel as though these systems are designed more for monetization than for a user-friendly gaming experience. The continual release of new rulebooks and supplements feels like a business strategy, aimed at milking more cash from players and GMs, rather than enhancing the gameplay experience.
So yes I agree with Tabletop Bro. Some people enjoy being taken for a ride. It happens in every industry.
@@tabletopbro - thanks dude! I agree with the roll dice but I usually do that with OSR games now, like shadow dark. But to each his own!
My 10 year old decided to run D&D for friends. I’ve been playing since I was 8. I saw the pure joy I’d lost touch with years earlier. For several weeks they the most fun ever, making it all up as they went, collaborating on what to roll and difficulties. It did crash eventually, but it’s shaken me a bit. I haven’t tried pbta, but I like what I’m seeing here.
A friend that likes D&D and dislikes games like these, told me why. "I don't like games where I can do anything I want, that feels to open to me. I want the game to show me a list of exactly the things I'm able to do at any given time."
Philosophy PhD and university professor here. I only mention that so I can give y'all a fun fact. The German philosopher Wittgenstein once described how difficult it is to pick out a single feature that all games share, the feature that you can point to and say, "ah, that's what makes this a game." His comparisons were between card games, board games, ring around the roses, etc., but you can imagine countless others. He concluded that we know a game is a game from its "family resemblance" to other games, not any one trait they share with all games. PbtA definitely resembles other roleplaying games and I've definitely seen similar games get accepted as games. Like… is peek-a-boo a game? A staring contest? The floor is lava? Are these all improv exercises? Was my childhood a lie? lol
Honestly, I think this is just a hate bandwagon and probably not worth our attention generally. I found the video helpful nonetheless, so thanks. :)
“Hot” take but the vast majority of PBtA games are certainly heavier rules wise than OSR games like Pirate Borg. PBtA games have dozens of little mechanics and set rules on GM and Player activity more than the average game.
This is an absolutely factually correct take lmao
Even the concept of “Hard MC Moves and Soft MC Moves” is already more rules heavy on GM behavior than any other TTRPG I’ve seen
@@bananabanana484 why do people say MC, that just confuses me with Main Character. Is GM out of vogue?
Sure is hot. Because I heavily disagree. When reading a DnD manual, I feel the game is written for GMs and players to purposefully ignore many of the rules. I mean, you can find videos saying "Top 10 rules you didn't know were in the game".
Meanwhile when reading a PBTA, I feel the game has few rules and a ton of explanation on how to apply said rules. Because these are usually left vague. Of course there are crunchier PBTAs out there (like Blades in the Dark)
Bro, the “win conditions” in D&D? You are trying to hard.
Sometimes in games, you want to feel like more than the result of your roll and there's nothing wrong with that.
PBTA is certainly a game, however I can understand the confusion: it's a game which is far less tactical and simulationist than 5e, meaning players may feel that their decisions don't matter since they usually reduce down to the same dice roll mechanic. And that is simply the trade off of having a lighter more agile system.
I truly appreciate pbtas simplicity and there's a lot to learn from that, but it loses my engagement because it often fails to deliver a more tactical experience.
My suspicion is that PbtHate is from people who like to mix-max characters and otherwise exploit loopholes. Or people who prefer games that are more miniature and combat oriented. PbtA doesn't really have room for that. Some people I've doing that, and there's nothing wrong with that approach. I prefer to tell a story and push mechanics aside, which is where PbtA shines.
You can have a game with crunchy mechanics and still have great stories. One don't cancel the other. The Rules Lawyer even have a recent cut from one of his campaigns with D&D content creators, playing and learning Pathfinder 2e, that is exactly about how rules enhance the roleplay and the story.
@@Nora-sp3gi oh, you can absolutely tell a great story with a rule heavy game. My favorite game I've ever run was using Pathfinder 1e.
I also feel that a rules heavy game CAN get in the way of trying the story. Again, my opinion. Not that it does get in the way, but it can. If you play a rules light game, that possibility is eliminated. Rules can't get in the way if they're not there.
That said, some groups arguably need a game that is more rules heavy because they want that structure. The free form method that PbtA has is hard to get used to if you've been playing rules heavy for decades.
There is no right or wrong, here. Every group is different. I like what PbtA tries to do. I also won't turn down a game of Mathfinder just because of the rules.
Hey I was in that video!
I feel the statement that people need crunch as a crutch because they can't roleplay is a bit ingenuine. I've always held the stance that good crunch improves roleplay. If it makes it worse than that's bad crunch. D&D 5e has bad crunch. I always feel like the mechanics are working against my roleplay in that. Pathfinder on the other hand, is more crunchy but feels like the game is working with me instead of against me.
Also isn't the PbtA license so broad you can have any level of crunch you want? Isn't Flying Circus openly simulationist?
FLYING CIRCUS MENTIONED LETS GOOOOOO its been on my list for absolute ages.
One of the tell tale signs of PbtA is that its crunch averse and I've read Flying Circus's crunchier elements aren't looked highly upon by the PbtA community.
In terms of your first point, I actually made a video talking about how playing Pathfinder with D&D UA-camrs showed me that you CAN have crunch and good roleplay. When I said some people prefer mechanics because roleplay makes them uncomfortable, I was thinking of my RL friends who don't like playing PbtA games with me as the open endedness and reliance on roleplay makes them uncomfortable. I should've been more clear with my following statement, of "people who are cool with it sometimes wanna kick back, relax, and throw some dice," that I don't think that's the ONLY reason you can like crunch!
@@tabletopbroyou should read the actual license for the Pbta label. Literally any game, regardless of the content of said game, can be labeled as Pbta. A card game can be powered by the apocalypse.
I've played both PbtA (specifically Masks and Monster of the Week) and much crunchier games, and I've had fun with both. The main issue I've had with PBTA-style games is the feeling that certain moves aren't "unique". What I mean is that, if there is no mechanical difference between a barbarian attacking with a sword and my weird Bee Priest throwing a swarm of magical bees at the opponent, then it feels like both characters are too "samey", in that they somehow both fight the same way mechanically despite being radically different fluffwise. Maybe it's because of the games I've been playing, perhaps something like Dungeon World would be more up my alley. Also, I don't always like how hyperspecific they can be, sometimes to the point of baking character traits and character struggles into the classes themselves (I'm thinking specifically of Masks and MotW here, don't know if DW is like that). All of that being said, though, I do still enjoy them sometimes, and I can definitely see the merits of them.
I like either crunchy games (like Pathfinder or Shadowrun), or lighter rules games (like PbtA or YZE). What I don't enjoy is the weird in between of 5e and a lot of other "simple" d20 systems
The reason that PbtA and other story games were written is because the crunchy elements of games like shadowrun get in the way of a good story.
Blades in the dark gives the players a better shadowrun experience then shadowrun ever has.
I always hear that but that isn't true for everyone. People who like rules heavy system usually want to just roleplay and let the rules, dice and GM take care of the story. I feel that when I have to care about the story that gets in the way of roleplaying because it takes me out of character.
So TO ME "a good story" gets in the way of roleplaying.
@@Valkyrja90 even more of a reason to play a crunchier game than 5e then. like 4e, pf2, etc.
@@louisst-amand9207 I dont play any of those.
I started playing RPGs back in adnd2nd, and I played mostly 3.5e.
But PF, 4e and 5e feel almost as light as PbtA to me (I am kinda joking here hahha).
Now a days the games I play are Shadowrun and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
@@Valkyrja90 ahhh, i know more about 40k than the fantasy version, although my friends and I don't really use Warhammer for campaigns, and more for a strategy game (one massive battle one shot)
D&D fans: PBTA is way too soft on rules!
Pathfinder fans: Hey there.
D&D fans: 👁️👄👁️
I think Pathfinder and OSR fans are the biggest dickheads to the PbtA community. Most 5e fans aren't invested enough in RPG's to know about or have opinions about other systems
Hey just because PBtA is realistcally a vehicle for improve acting moreso than a game isn't a negative! I plan on trying to run it sometime with my friends who wouldn't read the DnD players guide
Not necessarily but, in my experience, the people who tend to run around saying it's "just an improv exercise" are doing it in bad faith and are trying to "delegitimize" PbtA games and say they're lesser than D&D or you know whatever
@@tabletopbro that's a fair criticism to make, it's just the impression I've gotten from looking into it, but I reserve judgment for after I've have actually had a chance to run it. Am hoping to be pleasantly surprised!
I mean this simply isn’t the case though it’s just as much of a game as DND.😂
The thing that always amuses me about this whole kerfuffle is that in many ways PbtA is the most trad of all the narrative systems. It has a standard task resolution system, experience and progression, even a rigid Class system. It's much celebrated/condemned narrative elements are pretty mild compared to something like FATE or My Life with Master.
There's nothing wrong with any of that obviously; I've had fun with the system. But it does sometimes feel like the argument between PbtA people and 5e people is mostly based on the narcissism of small differences.
Gaming tribalism is hilarious. It’s mostly based on the need to prove that “we,” like things that are awesome and “they” are clueless idiots who like dumb things.
Badwrongfun is cancer and occasionally the tumor turns malignant.
This is so freaking accurate it hurts my soul
I think the main reason why so many people dislike PbtA games is that the rules are inherently 4th wall breaking. They have an connotative dissonance in claiming to be 'fiction first' while simultaneously having non-dietetic rules. Examples include using any ability that can be used once per 'scene' or 'session'. A scene is an in-world concept. Even if the result is functionally equivalent, the terminology used is off putting to many. The rules talk about play as if it is a story telling exercise.
for me there are just more engaging systems out there both rules light and not. but the main problem i have with pbta is that the games are fine not outstanding but also not horrifically awful for the most part and in that respect that's the worst thing a game can be. mediocre and forgettable not to mention most pbta games are just 2d6 plus stat and a meaningless mechanic taped on top with minor setting flavouring. my main opinion on pbta is that its a system that ruins plenty of great game ideas not by making them bad but just making them the same as each other.
Yup, I love both and run Pathfinder 2E while being a player in a monster of the Week game. Both are great for different reasons. :)
I wish more people would realize that 🤷♂️
As a game designer I can absolutely tell you TTRPGs are games. TTRPGs are a crossover between boardgames and collective narrative writing. If you don't have the improv you just have a boardgame.
Perfect video as always. PBTA games are a blast and so much fun since I like narrative. But when I want more "crunch" then I can also have that (like playing chaosium games which have a perfect mix).Also was that a blue lock reference around the 8:00 marker? 🤔
Exactly! Different games serve different purposes and one style isn’t inherently better than the other.
And yes it was! I recently rewatched that episode and it was hard to pick just one scene!
Also yeah pbta community can be toxi and mean spirited. Unrelated, have you checked out monsterhearts 2? It is a pretty popular pbta game that has a decently strong community
@@Blerdy_Disposition yeah a lot of the really hardcore PbtA folks love to shit on Dungeon World (I made a video about nbd).
I think I’ve seen the Monsterhearts cover but haven’t read it yet!
There are plenty of problems I have with PBTA games. In general I prefer to mine them for ideas rather than to actually play them (mostly to do with me prefering long format 20+ session games and a lot of playbooks in a lot of the versions I have played going "WTF, now what?" after about 10 session). However, the notion that they aren't games or don't have rules is silly.
Dungeon World IMO fulfills the requirements of a game. The pacing seems so much smoother than D&D 5e. The lack of initiative rolls especially makes the games faster.
Oh, and I wanted to point out how much I appreciate the use of MapleStory 🍁 music in the background 😀
Isnt that how TSR D&D (B/X, BECMI) were played? The reason for everyone to announce their actions before dice are rolled so that it can be narrated just like in your Dungeon World example? Combat was quick and narrated.
I'd say that a game is (this definition is not mine but I don't remember who created it) basically a set of unnecesary inconveniences that the participants agree to experience just for the sake of experiencing them. So by that definition I would say that PbtA games do at times care less about being games and more about being guides for collaborative storytelling, as the GM and players are (I think, I haven't played a lot of PbtA tbh) encouraged to dismiss the mechanics if they get in the way of the story. Cool video btw 😎
That's honestly not a terrible definition. I think at their core they're games that guide you through collaborative storytelling (yet what TTRPG's aren't?).
@@tabletopbro Well you could say that in D&D the story emerges from the clash between the players' intentions and the mechanics, and that does happen in PbtA but I think the mechanics are less "aggresive"
I haven't read or played a PBTA game that encourages disregarding game mechanics. In fact PBTA game are built to work on those game mechanics and disregarding them may very well break the experience and make a worse story. In fact most games tend to include a "rule 0" telling you to disregard any rules you don't like while most PBTA game have a section explaining how and why to expand the game and discourage doing that until you understand why the different rules are in place and how they work.
What PBTAs do is having open ended definitions and concepts that are open to interpretation, so that they can adapt to fit multiple scenarios.
For example a weapon being messy as somewhat open ended definition: "It does damage in a particularly destructive way, ripping people and things apart." This might look different depending on the weapon, but once it is established it shouldn't change for no reason.
@@karibui494 yeah sorry I shouldn't have said that the mechanics are to be dismissed, I meant to say that they exist to facilitate the narrative intentions of the players and not so much presenting limitations from which both a challenge and a story emerge.
@@synmad3638 Oh, yeah, the rules are not to present a challenge, the challenge emerges from the fiction and from based on that fiction the rules establish how it develops (in favor of the players, against them or something in between)
I do not agree that the rules don't present limitations, but that the limitations they present are more narrative and fictional than mechanical or numeric. For example in masks when [DIRECTLY ENGAGE A THREAT] is triggered you will get hit and choosing the option to avoid it prevents you from doing other things.
That bit with 5E was great, because you were honestly being pretty even handed with both sides.
It does take longer for 5E. 5E is probably one of the more intensive monster fighting games. It takes a well oiled party to make that kind of stuff work.
And don't get me started on shopping sprees! EGADS! I have never played a game with more bean counting- what are we? Conan the Book Keeper?
To your last point crunchier games also doesn't mean you can't have just as much roleplaying as a PbtA game. Just let people like what they like. Crunch isn't necessary to be a crutch, and light rules doesn't mean you're going to be a better "role player" whatever that even means.
💯
Well... The mechanics are the fun. And the dice is the interface to the other world
According to one UA-camr, D&D isn't a game it is a self help system!
Back in the 80's, the "theater" kids played Basic D&D and AD&D!
I do not have an opinion on Powered by the Apocalypse games as I have never played one. I do enjoy GURPS and have given up on D&D and all its clones. There are a ton of other games that people can and do enjoy. Play what you enjoy.
100%
Man those youtube comment people seem really self absorbed
Ill update you all if SwingRipper is mentioned
1:49 top left corner
I audibly chuckled
What's funny is that, after the DnD combat example, I got hit with an ad for a movie. It said, "100 years," on the screen at the start of the ad and I'm like, "Yeah, it did take that long, tho!" XD
BTW, I'm here because I'm looking into buying my first PbtA game (Avatar Legends) and want to get a better feel for how PbtA games flow. That PbtA vs. 5E combat comparison couldn't make it any clearer and I love how you honestly presented that contrast.
I’m so glad my kinda silly example was so helpful!
I was on the fence about this one, until that "SHHHHkblblblblblblblbl!" at the end. That earned the thumbs-up.
Thanks I try 😂
I believe most people miss the big difference between narrative systems and trad systems.
In trad systems you make a character, and you play the role of a character in a fictional world. The game focuses on you making choices as if you were that character, and the rules are there to determine the consequences of those choices.
Since you are trying to simulate a world, you have mechanics that are associated with it. Magic missile hitting automatically, or a longsword dealing 1d8/1d10 slashing damage, these are rules associated with the fictional reality you're playing in.
If you look at it like this, those "useless and crunchy" mechanics start making sense.
On the other hand, narrative systems require everyone to take on an "authorial" role instead.
Narrative games don't focus on in-character choices, they focus on who's controlling the narrative. An example of this is how BitD makes the players actively manipulate the narration through flashbacks and other moves. Characters are there, sure, but they are there as a vehicle of your narrative authority (or lack of thereof): you don't use the mechanics to resolve their actions, but to determine which player gets to decide where and how the narration flows. These games use what are called "disassociated mechanics".
Also, and this will annoy some people, that doesn't even sound like roleplaying.
You're not playing a character, you're playing the author. So to hear that trad games exist as a crutch for people who do not how to roleplay, well, I don't think so.
Roleplaying, after all, is making choices in character. What you do in narrative games is not that. It's improvisational storytelling.
On the topic...
I'm kinda searching for a modern and innovative PbtA System, that's very light and setting agnostic...
Would you know something of that kind?
So the schtick of PbtA is that its games are VERY focused on a specific thing, so there's not really a generic PbtA system. What sort of adventure are you trying to run/play in?
@@tabletopbro That's what I feared for... I really like the light, collaborative, narrative focus of PbtA (without much numbers or crunch so bye DW), but I want to run something, that can easily fit any setting or focus, since I now have a group, that's basically only short scenarios from completely different settings and foci in gameplay.
(For the really f'ed up ideas, like playing as a dragon, as a civil werewolf on the run from hunters in a medieval setting, exploring flying islands like in Castle in the Sky or delving into a Cyberpunk city underwater, because earths surface was scorched by war)
And sadly PbtA could be the wrong system... But evaluating unknown agnostic systems like Troika, PDQ, Fantasy Universal, Fate and similar, is kinda hard thanks to not much talk about them...
@@trushreitsam5802 I mean there are PbtA games that exist for all of those somewhat: Epyllion covers dragons, Urban Shadows does werewolves (and other classical monsters), its set in a modern city but I'm sure you can reskin it. Flying Circus is the closest thing I can think of to flying islands though that might be too crunchy for you, and Cy/Borg MIGHT have you covered for Cyberpunk. Cy/borg is a Borg system not PbtA, but still.
@@tabletopbro Thank you for all those options, I'll have a look.
But I don't know how realistic it will be to teach my players a new ruleset per scene...
@@trushreitsam5802You might just wanna do improv then 🤷♂
Just found your channel and you just earned a sub. I've been roleplaying for some-odd 30 years now, and I've played *tons* of different TTRPGs ranging from super crunchy (RIFTs, Pathfinder, Shadowrun 5e) to super light (Dungeon World and Feng Shui) - but I've read even more than that. And the fact that this video even needed to be made saddens me. To me, the system that you choose is the vessel and the seasoning for whatever story you want to tell. Some systems are great at one thing and rubbish at other things - some are far more abstract and some are more crunchy simulationist. What truly saddens me is that people just get...stuck in their rut and think that's the world of TTRPGs and that's what they have to play at all times, forever. I always encourage reading more games, more systems, because there are pieces just ripe for the plucking that you can insert into your game. Just my two copper.
Basketball and Poker are both games. It's possible to enjoy both.
I just get so bored playing D&D. There are so many pointless rules and modifiers that take forever to resolve. I've seriously watched fights take five hours to resolve. Never again.
"Roll for initiative" is definitely an initiative killer for me as most of the fights I've taken part in have been endless slogs. BUT some people enjoy the more mechanical, tactical side of the game, and there's nothing wrong with that!
You are with the wrong gaming group or DM then. Play with a group that doesn't do the crunch. Also, for initiative I just go in order of reflex bonus (dexterity) without any rolls. It means characters always go in the same order. I get them to sit in that order, so it's just going clockwise. I don't see why the person with the highest reflexes wouldn't act first (except narrative reasons).
It's fine for someone to say "hey, PBTA games aren't for me" or even "every single game that isn't actually D&D isn't for me". I feel that those two tend to overlap A LOT. But in either case, it's a very different thing to point to a game and say "that's not a real game" or "people who play that game _aren't real gamers."_
That's some in-cel / gamer-bro type sh*t and those people are just the worst. I don't think anyone would want to actually be around either, let alone play at a table with them.
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Also, no one should ever want to be called a "gamer".
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PbtA and FitD aren't necessarily my favorite type of games, but I do find them quite fun. I'd like to see more of them ease of on the limitation of Playbooks though. It makes sense for some of them, certainly, but I rather like skill-based TTRPGs (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, World of Darkness, etc) as I feel they give more flexibility. And then you can have the special abilities be something you choose _if you want_ and a la carte. A version of Dungeon World (which we'll never get an official "2E") that worked more like that would be fantastic.
Narrative-focused games are awesome. Whether they're crunchy (like the basic-roleplaying ones) or moderately light (PBTA, FITD) or very light (Fate, Cthulhu Dark, etc). The narrative is the part most people engage with and will remember later, after all.
Stand up comment, Shawn. I usually get one or two incel gamer bro type shits per video praising a PbtA system. I used to shit on D&D myself until I had a "wait why am I putting down this game system to elevate the system I prefer" moment.
PbtA games definitely have their issues. Like you said playbooks being far too narrowly focused and entire games being too narrowly focused. But, also like you said, my campaigns in Dungeon World, Masks, and Cartel are the ones I remember most vividly and fondly.
Also, it's not like pbta games don't have a ton of options... the move sets (I'm thinking of DW here) are huge, and there is plenty of playing off the character sheet in pbta games, you don't need 5e or PF to have too many character options to get in the way of your creativity.
EXACTLY
for some people learning, choosing, interpreting and applying those dozen of moves actually is more complicated then just learning a set of 20pages of strict and consistent rules. It all depends.
When I play a story I don't like to read even more convoluted rules WHILE playing. It bogs down everything sooo much. I recommend Risus or CortexPrime instead.
I think the criticism of PbtA games is a little mislaid here. The fundamental thing that people don’t like is the tendency of fans from various gaming ‘families’ trying to proselytise their favoured systems. If somebody approaches a happy D&D group and start to insist that Dungeon World is a better RPG, they will almost certainly garner a negative reaction.
I would also mention that D&D is not the only RPG out there. While PbtA games may seem like the most innovative games ever to their fans, most of the ideas and mechanics found in them can be found amongst the massive range of RPGs that have been invented over the last 50 years or so. My experience is that some PbtA fans can give the impression that they only have limited experience of other games - which can be grating if, again, they are attempting to proselytise.
Well said. The PbtA community can be a bit... insufferable at times (I say that as someone who considers himself mildly active in the PbtA community)
To me, your example just shows that the DW characters told a cool story (with the help of some random dice prompts), while the 5e characters made choices. Those choices were informed not by what would make for a cool story, but from the players' knowledge of the rules. The wizard chose to move 10 feet in order to avoid being surrounded by zombies; he cares because he's at risk at losing concentration on the Hideous Laughter spell that's keeping the ogre down. The fighter chose to stand his ground to give himself the chance to grapple enemies trying to move past him and get to the wizard; he knows that his AC is high, that he has Second Wind still available, and has a fair chance of his Athletics check succeeding. The extra time taken to adjudicate those choices is well worth it for people who find them meaningful.
It's inane to talk about this in terms of "game" and "not game," since the end-result is similar - if you're playing a well-designed RPG (and I make no declaration that 5e is such), the rules, and the choices those rules shaped, will naturally result in a cool story. Many gamers' problem with PbtA games is that they seem to skip over the choices part, beelining right for the _telling_ the the story, in a way which makes it feel unearned.
Moreover, for simulationist players, the rules can do so much more than just "enable play," which is what they're mostly used for in PbtA games. Rules can be like a map scale for the secondary world - they tell you how everything compares to everything else; they give you tangible ways to interact with the world; they provide a glimpse at how the world ticks even when no one is playing it. The rules give you measurable values with which you can know - not guess, not negotiate over, _know_ - whether you can or cannot achieve something.
Great breakdown of my example! I definitely do lean more towards the gameplay style of the 5e example when I'm playing gamier systems like Pathfinder. There's is absolutely a sense of satisfaction that can be gained in using the mechanical tools at your disposal to get the best possible result.
That's an interesting take about PbtA that I haven't really read before. The problem being that the story is unearned because of a lack of choices and it honestly makes sense from that perspective.
@@tabletopbro Well, "unearned" isn't even a good term for it. It's more like thinking that the story is more legitimate if it _appears_ to emerge spontaneously. The intent of crunchy games isn't necessarily for you to play a plotless tactical sim; instead, the game puts a layer of artifice between you and the narrative. You're not touching the story directly (which is why I kinda agree with your statement that crunch is a "crutch" for newer players unused to roleplaying) - instead, you're handed a controller, an interface. it gives you a frame of reference, an idea of what can or cannot be achieved, what the chances of success are, and what the consequences for failure are - everything you need to stay in character-stance forever. But that interface was still made by RPG designers, and their goal is still for your play to result in a story.
And if they do their job right, you sit to play a tactical fantasy game, thinking only in sterile game-terms like AC and HP, but when you look back at the choices you've made, you instead see a rollicking fantasy adventure. Matt Colville often says (paraphrasing), "The story is something we discovered later, when talking about the session."
PbtA designers rightfully point out that this all seems like a _very_ circuitous way to arrive at the exact same destination - people narrating a story together. In that sense, rules do seem like an annoying middleman that can be cut out. They're also quick to call bullshit on the idea that game stories are immaculate births, arising from the rules-godhead like Venus from the sea foam - they know very well that GMs were always secretly very busy, acting as writers, producers and directors, working very hard to make it _seem_ like the story just manifested itself out of the ether in response to player actions. To bring those duties out from behind the curtain and into the players' hands seems like an equitable evolution of the hobby!
I'm just... not convinced that it works. Yes, I know it's all stage magic; yes, I know you can generate a story by just... telling each other the story. But without the artifice, without the implied simulation, it all just feels very hollow to me.
Good thumbnail bait.
...Anyways while I think you're right that the vast majority of people complaining that PbtA games aren't enough of a competition don't play D&D that way either...
D&D *is* sometimes played that way or at least *was*. Not between the GM and players, but between the players. Possibly between tables.
Like, why does Tomb of Horrors exist? It was built as a competitive speedrun dungeon, basically. Get a couple GMs and couple groups of players, each group of players possibly consisting of *way more* than four people. Which group will reach the end first (or reach the end at all, actually)? How much treasure will they have found by then? *Most people* didn't play this way because good luck getting that many people together, but it *was* an "intended" way to play the game.
Which is sort of where the philosophy of the GM as an arbitrator comes from, as opposed to the GM just looking to make sure the game's fun and doesn't feel too hostile. (Heck it's why the AD&D rulebooks existed).
So I think the real clash in styles here is whether the GM is supposed to decide how things *should* go and use dice as a tool in decision-making (Kriegspiel style), as opposed to just letting dice fall where they may and avoiding any decisions the rulebook didn't basically make *for* them. In a game like PbtA the latter is impossible.
Solid analysis Colby!
Didn´t know where youw ere going but gave it a thumbs up as soon as you started by sharing comments. I knew it was going to be fun even if the conclusion was that my beloved PbtA was plutoe´d out of gamedom.
ITS NOT pass / fail. Think of it as Litmus paper/test. Some RPG's that have more simulation and gameist elements ( D&D , ) are Base side to the opposite end of the acidic side- PbtA has more Narrative and less procedural rules. And not all PbtA games are equal either. All RPG's are on this litmus paper scale - The argument is that Some games ( Games generally speaking ) pretend to be RPG's but are really Story Games - which are games but not in the Tabletop RPG genre. I do consider PbtA games - real TTRPG's ( it still has asort of dice mechanic ) but on the far end of the role playing game litmus paper. Dont forget some PbtA games can really mitigate PC death - it's really hard to die in Monster of the week . It;s as if PbtA games are like playing a character on a TV show being in an adventure rather then actually being in a real adventure- Nuance / hard to detect but that feel is present.
The problem with some PbtA games is that players can make decisions , take actions have ideas and - it can JUST happen if its cool or the GM thinks its cool without a " mechanical / rule " getting in the way- just pretend and it happens ( not always but still.. more ) . This can happen in D&D ( more in 5e than OSR games ) too but way less in older NON- PbtA games. A player's PC could get a critical hit in some simulationist game and die very fast ( just like some soldier who just happened to get shot in the head in some war movie ) and thats that.
THE SECRET: Does the game KNOW the PC's are the stars of the " show/movie " PbtA does know. 5e D&D is played nowadays like the game knows.
Many older or OSR games Don't Know the PC's are the chosen stars of the movie - the story if there is one to be had in simulationist role playing games are told after play is ended ( like going fishing ) you make sense of the game as story only after it's played - Not during
I should add- an old rpg called Toon , you couldn't die but just get put out of action for 3min real time with all your hit points ( health ) fully back- Because the game was Emulating a particular Genre. Bugs Bunny does not die and humor was what players were going for- so Genre Emulation plays a big part of the RPG
Umm yeah, TTRPGs are playing make believe. I like playing make believe with dice.
Honestly, considering the kinda mocking tone of the D&D combat round skit:
Have you considered checking out Mythras? Because I genuinely think it's combat system manages to be rules-y enough to not just "make stuff up" while *also* making sense narratively, being very descriptive and moving pretty fast.
The tradeoff is that done people have trouble wrapping their head around it, but once people do... Is very nice.
Sounds OSR-y. Which is usually where I go for a bit more structure
I have nothing against PBTA , I just can't play it.
As much as I like RPG's, I'm just not a good role player. Not good enough for PBTA at least.
That said, PBTA is also too rules light for me. Not that I need a rule for every little detail mind you, not, that's not it, but once you add Science Fiction Technology, Magic, Psionics or Superpowers, it's too easy to abuse them without clear guidelines. Clear guidelines come at least with longer explanations, but usually also with some rules.
Take a simple ability like telekinesis. It's simple, right`? Be the source magic, psionics or superpowers, you can move objects with your mind. So, what are the limits? Can I lift this truck to throw it at my enemy? Or just a rock? Or can I squeeze my opponents heart/lungs/throat/arteries shut and kill him? Can I move myself? If yes, how fast?
Once playing Star Wars (D6) a speeder was hurling towards us and I hit on the idea of using telekinesis to catch it. I got the skill high enough to have a chance and the dice were with me, so with some effort I held the speeder in place before it hit us. Another time I used telekinesis 'pull the pins' of the grenades the soldiers shooting at us were carrying. How do I do that with a system that essentially says 'You can do telekinesis'? And yes, you could create a new power for every detail, but wouldn't that defeat the point of PBTA?
Sure, you can decide as a group not to abuse it, but it can happen without even someone noticing it. I played around with D&D 3.5 and just went with some character ideas just for the fun of creating characters, not to play them and accidentally created some very OP characters.
As I said, I have nothing against PBTA, but, and that is often forgotten with RPG's, you have to remember to keep it within what is made for.
And just to make a point, D&D is great for High and Epic Fantasy, but for Sword & Sorcery? Where people discard their weapons and equipment whenever it is practical? Conan changed his swords and axes whenever he needed. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser may have named their weapons, but they changed them whenever necessary and just kept the names.
Can you see that being done with D&D? Leaving your magic sword behind your tavern room with no idea if you will ever find one again just because the guards are after you?
Every system has it's limits.
PBTA is great for what it does and for people that can work with it.
But it's not for everything and everyone.
You assert that crunchy systems are a crutch for those who aren't comfortable with roleplaying. That's a false dichotomy - you can roleplay in a crunchy system just as easily as in a light or narrative system.
Considering I made a video about me discovering they're not mutually exclusive, twas a bit of a misspeak on my part.
When I wrote that bit of script I was specifically thinking of my RL friends who don't like PbtA systems because roleplay makes them uncomfortable, I didn't mean to insinuate it's the only reason people should like crunch.
If you enjoy a tactical minis skirmish game that's fine. Just don't confuse other people that's what TTRPGs are about.
Having a session of play just be planning a heist or a war and then that plan being completely useless.. killed my enjoyment of those games.
By the time you're done with your first combat encounter, I've had far more story and intrigue.
@@NicholasMarshall All I'm saying is that roleplaying can be done in both crunchy and light system. I'm not making any judgements on which is better - that's up to the group and what they want. I've played (and enjoyed, and roleplayed in) games all across the crunch spectrum.
Honestly, I enjoy playing all kinds of games, whether they are crunchy or more rules light and or narrative-driven.
Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder, but I also like to switch things up with some OSR stuff. (What's your opinion on Dungeon Crawl Classics and the "Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number" systems if you know them btw?) and some PbtA *games* .
Variety is the spice of tabletop gaming after all! I think tabletop gaming is more fun when you explore different options. You never know when you might find your perfect system!
Not to mention, playing other system and expanding your palate often improves the experience of your "main" system! Before my 5e campaign ended I was ABSOLUTELY incorporating lessons I learned from DW, Masks and Pf2e into it!
I've heard of DCC but haven't dove into it, and this is the first time I'm learning about Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number.
@@tabletopbro Ohhh you really have to check out some of Kevin Crawford systems! Worlds/Stars/Cities without Number, Godbound, Silent Legions, etc
Even if you don't care about the "Without Number" systems, the included worldbuilding tables are _insane_ . Best of all? It's free! There are deluxe editions which add some optional additional stuff though.
Not affiliated with him, just a huge fan lol.
I enjoy PbtA games, but I guess if people hate them then they will really hate the system I am working on, which has lead me already to the point that I am not sure if I want to call it a game, since it is really (and I mean REALLY) far to the narrative end of the spectrum that it is indeed more a mix of creative writing and improve theatre than gaming.
"I used the... dictionary because it shows you words." I literally LOL'ed!!
The issue is that some DMs just let the players win at everything. That's exactly what's going on here. DMs can do that in probably just about any system (even one lacking dungeons, I just think Game Master sounds like a description of Yugi Moto).
Anyone who thinks PBtA is "soft on rules", I dare them to get a copy of my favorite (BLATANT PLUG) 'Tremulus' and jump into it. Yeah, there is a collaborative "Yes+And" improv feel to the setup, but that happens in a lot of "Here is My Very Special Backstory" sessions of D&D (especially post-Critical Role). The game still uses the "What Do You Do?" gameplay loop of PBtA and still feels plenty crunchy.
P.S. Seriously, check the game out over at Reality Blurs. They deserve the business. I ran an entire Call of Cthulhu campaign using the system, and it was super-smooth.
Sounds fun!
I'm currently playing in a city of mist campaign and for the most part I do enjoy that iteration of powered by the Apocalypse, and have also purchase several other powered by the apocalypse games specifically impulse Drive, Uncharted worlds and root. But I do find That Power by the apocalypse games can be a bit vague for my tastes. If it had a dedicated skill system I might have a different opinion but overall I do enjoy what I played so far. And I am looking forward to the new city of Mist cyberpunk setting Otherworld
Glad you're enjoying what you've experienced so far!
I don't want to badmouth games like D&D, so instead I'll paraphrase the words of the people that I know, when I asked them why they don't like games like PbtA or Fate. It was always something like this:
"I don't like the freedom to try to do anything I want. I need the game to tell me exactly the things that I can do."
A couple of my friends said the same thing
I have not heard of PBTA games until very recently. I like your understanding of the two, how they are similar and what makes them different. This was a very fair assessment of these games. I love crunch, I play PF 1e and I am a DM, [glutton for punishment], but I am open to these other games that are not so rules heavy in genre's other than medieval fantasy. So games I am not so familiar with such as scifi, supers, horror, time travel, etc I would be more inclined to go with a PBTA game than a rules crunchy system. Great video thanks for sharing.
Great comment, thanks for sharing! I agree PbtA is a great way to explore genres other than fantasy
Games exist on a scale, you have massive wargames, strategic, using chits and hex maps. You can create stories in those but its not very immersive.
Then there are miniature games where you paint and assemble armies fighting battles. As battles goes on you might create a story in the long run as one minature might either win or lose often, or units being undefeated or something like that.
Then you have dungeon crawlers with on table maps either paper or casted. Made to look like an fun dungeon and each player play their own little miniature. Here stories will also be told as an elf might get an lucky crit or an wizard with low strenght always manage to press open the closed doors.
Then you have rpgs taking place in the mind. Playing to do quests, getting gold and leveling up. Characters are acted out according to the players wishes and roleplaying is more of an goal. However you still have stats and keep track of xp, hitpoints and treasure.
Then you have rpgs that are more improv and roleplaying based. There are still stats or cards or some rules to it. For instance a player can have a "turning of the story" point or an card that let them counter what another player just said. However there are no stats for the actual characters and its all about the role playing and the rules are just there to facilitate that. The board game attempts to simulate a dungeon crawling reality is left behind.
Then you have rpgs that are improv sessions. The players agree on a premise and then have fun playing out their characters and their adventures with any rules or props at all.
Rpg's can be simpler or more advanced but usually gm's and the players strike a balance between rules and roleplaying they can agree on.
Smugly decrying someones else preferred playing style is counter productive and your time will be better spent trying to understand what the other players wants and what they think roleplaying games actually are. What they want might not be what you think.
I think that games like PbtA might be seen as too GM dependent in that it will always feel to the players that the GM can just say things work out just fine or dont as strikes his or her mood.
People feel more in control with games like dnd. But in the end both games are dependent on GM's good will and the level of rules are just a matter of taste.
PbtA might also feel to easy, it wont have the options other more advanced games has. Players in combat use their one or three options they have and then let the GM and dice figure out the result. Thats not enough for some players.
Some players might even want a simmulationist game where there are a minuta of details and rules covering each detail all in an attempt to create a survival experience.
These players are often also players who love sand box games where the goal is just to survive, explore and maybe also become more powerful.
They might thinking having to talk to npcs is a waste of time and not think about roleplaying at all.
Its all on a scale
Love your channel bro. Can't believe the dislikes on your videos, people have no sense of humor. Keep doing what you're doing.
TIL my videos have a lot of dislikes😂
Lol just a few haha. If you're not pissing a few people off you're not having worthwhile takes imo lol. As someone coming from 5e, I'm gonna check out Dungeon World so you converted someone haha👌 @@tabletopbro
Mission accomplished😎
I love the PBTA system, the only concern I have with it is game balance. It seems that once characters have leveled up enough, it's difficult to challenge them. Still love the system, but need to hear from experienced players about this.
Depends on which PbtA you're playing. Check out my 16hp Dragon video for pointers for running high stakes Dungeon World combat! (Shameless plug but whatever)
@@tabletopbro No shame. If it works I wanna see it.
I'd also like to say that this depends on the system. For instance, I'm a big advocate of Deadlands Classic, specifically Classic over the other versions such as Savage Worlds or the 2021 reboot. I love it specifically because all of its mechanical complexity, despite being kind of clunky, actually IMPROVES the flavour of the game and makes it feel more distinctly Western. Sure, the Savage Worlds version is much faster and more streamlined - casting a spell by spending mana points and rolling a single dice is definitely simpler. But casting a spell by rolling a dice to determine how many playing cards you draw, then trying to make a specific Poker Hand to make the spell work *feels* more appropriately Western. There's even special effects that trigger if you draw a Joker! Plus, the different magic systems in Classic feel more special in Classic ("wizards" use the aforementioned poker card system, holy men just use a Faith roll and need to avoid sinning, Indian Shamans need to actually perform elaborate rituals to appease the spirits, etc), while in Savage Worlds every "spell" is just a reskinned version of an ability from a generic list. I appreciate the simplicity of that, but it can sometimes feel hollow when there's no mechanical support for the magic types being different.
I am a 54 year old engineer. I play D&D online with other 50 something engineers I graduated with. We played Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk 2020, back when we were in school together between 1988 and 1993. You would be hard pressed to find a more number crunching, data analyzing, odds calculating group of RPG gamers.
We are all looking forward to playing Monster of the Week PbtA later this year. D&D might as well be a mini war game at this point and we do enough real higher math to not need it in our spare time. We play games for FUN and that is what MotW and the PbtA system is calling to us with.
Can you make a video comparing and contrasting a combat scenario in D&D and DW? Basically a longer encounter similar to 2:54
Dang dude, your production value is seriously on par with any big name channel; your editing, framing, and even just the image quality all comes together for a really well polished video man! I don't know much about Pbta and my TTRPG experience is only about a year and half deep at the moment, and only what Rice has taught me lol. I do feel like I learn a good bit of stuff about non-DND games from you, helps me expand my horizons a bit. Good stuff bro!
Thankya sir! I try!
Its so weird, I feel like I should be feeling some sort of great disrespect to my family when I hear "PBtA arent real games" but it always puts a big smile on my face. Your breakdown of it is also really good! (Off-topic AND a deep-cut, and kind of a flex? but) Cant wait to see what people think of The Demon Tree (working title) on the whole Crunch/Roleplaying thing when it comes out, anyways, great vid!
You’re a better person than I 😂
D&D is structured as a cooperative competition. The GM designs a scenario full of challenges, and the players, facilitated by an impartial GM, engage with those challenges as a team to "beat" the scenario. They're not trying to beat the GM, they're trying to beat the game. Narrative RPGs use game elements and mechanics to facilitate an improv exercise -- the players are playing to "see what happens" and construct a story. Since "losing the game" would interrupt the development of the narrative, there are no winning and losing conditions, just mechanics that influence the direction of the story.
For example, in the early Narrative RPG "Life With Master", the PCs are all minions of an evil, abusive NPC "master" -- like Renfield to Dracula, Igor to Dr. Frankenstein, or Quasimodo to his adoptive father, Judge Frollo. They make decisions in a series of scenes that affect their PCs "stats". After a certain number of scenes, the characters' final fates are determined in a final scene, based on how their stats evolved during gameplay. The players are using game mechanics to do this, but there is no competition or adversaries to "beat". They just improv and let the mechanical results serve as guideposts to develop an improv story. This is a sophisticated version of Drew Carey yelling out things that the cast of "Whose Line Is It Anyway" have to incorporate into their improv to make up little sketches.
You could say Narrative RPGs are games, where the mechanics serve to facilitate sitting around a campfire and telling a story. D&D uses roleplaying and mechanics to facilitate playing a cooperative strategy game to explore environments and beat obstacles. Both might allow players to experience a setting or genre (like fantasy), but the point of gameplay is different.
Holy smokes.
These folks would have lost their danged minds back in the 90s when diceless RPGs hit the scene, from Amber to Everway. Of course, D&D was at a profoundly low ebb in popularity through much of the 90s, culminating in TSR falling apart and being bought by Wizards of the Coast (who used to actually make some good, non-D&D RPG stuff...including Everway, a game where interpreting Tarot cards was the primary mechanic).
I haven't even tried Powered by the Apocalypse yet (returned to the hobby in 2019 after a 15 year hiatus, then 2020 happened & I tend to prefer face-to-face gaming), but it seems closer to the mainstream games of the 90s than some of the more fringe ones we were playing. And it looks like today's fringe is even more fringy with a thriving indie scene, which is great.
Even back then, though, there were folks who today would be described as "grognards," who were upset by the idea of playing anything other than D&D (or their pet rules system that came out in 70s). As I remember one of them saying without irony, "the only true role playing game is Dungeons & Dragons. All other games are pretenders to the throne. PRETENDERS TO THE THRONE!!!" Somehow that guy had a girlfriend and I didn't, and that made for a very sad & deflated me circa 1997.
"Pretenders to the Throne" that's so hilariously cringe😂
I don't really agree with what you say. "PbtA rolls dices therefore it's a game". It would suggest that without rolling or alea there is no game, which is not the case foe belonging outside belonging games, for example.
Totally unrealistic - you forgot the bit were the DnD players have forgotten all the rules and you spend several minutes explaining to them how their characters work.
Since the first time I ran a Monster of the Week session - and had a blast - my desire to play DnD has plummeted off a cliff.
Great vid, couldn't agree more.
That's so freaking true. I remember a friend of mine pitched an alternate RPG to my group of friends, and one of them said, "I don't want to learn another set of rules!" My friend replied, "you don't even know the rules to D&D! You just rely on D&D Beyond!"
I would say PbtA games tends to be at least designed as medium crunch in spite of how even its own community portrays it. Half the time when I read a PbtA system, there's frequently this ever prevailing sense that the developer had this idea of how entire subsets of mechanics are expected to be used, but then never explain the big picture. It's usually great when it clicks and I get it, but if the GM hasn't gotten it then it's not great. This ends up making the mechanics feel shoe horned in when you're too free form or like a bad version of D&D if you try to handle them with too much crunch, because without the big picture they don't know how checks are supposed to matter. Not every system does this, but too many seem like their afraid of sounding like the sections of D&D where they break down how an encounter works.
That’s…. actually a pretty solid breakdown!
The real reason for the ridiculous fake rivalry is just people wanting different games. D&D can be played as a more tactical game or a more narrative game. The detractors play the tactical game, and the criticisms leveled at PBtA are the same ones they probably level at people who play D&D as a narrative game. At the same time, as illustrated by the example in the video, the PBtA fans only see D&D as a tactical game and cannot fathom how to make a narrative game out of it. The two groups want different things, so - given that there are two different systems - there's zero need for any rivalry. It's like going into a coffee shop and haranguing the people drinking tea for doing coffee wrong. I play D&D as a narrative game and my D&D sessions look like your PBtA example (except I let the players describe what happens when they make a roll, rather than telling them). I could play a PBtA game, I just do not need to. On the rare occasion someone wants to get more tactical, say for the big climactic battle, I can do that with D&D because there are rules for that. I actually run into the opposite problem, PBtA players critical of D&D, and trying to persuade us that we should quit D&D because it cannot handle narrative games. That is equally BS.
What particularly irks me about the D&D rpg gatekeepers is that their hero, Gary Gygax, constantly advocated that people do what they want with the rules, and that there was no right or wrong way. He was actually quite annoyed that people would call him wanting his interpretation of the rules, and he'd tell them it was their game, not his. Each to his or her own, basically. So, doing the opposite of what he was recommending just shows that certain people have no idea what they are doing, which is why they could easily be running terrible D&D sessions like the one in your example and making stupid remarks about people wanting something different.
Gygax did plenty of Badwrongfun himself. He railed against critical hits as a concept (among many others) and he made more than a few comments disregarding other systems or verisimilitude on the basis of not being 'games'.
Much agreed on this largely being driven by self-absorbed people talking past each other, though. While D&D does facilitate roleplay and narrative games differently (and specific types better or worse than other systems), which one you prefer is a matter of personal taste.
@@NevisYsbryd My point was Gygax wanted people to adapt his own system to their preferences, and he was saying that long before D&D had any competition. If, later in life, he was complaining about other systems then that's understandable given that he had a stake in D&D, even if it was just pride. That doesn't give D&D purists who only see TTRPGs being played one way any right to criticize people using the D&D rules in a different manner or other systems - they have no stake, it does not affect them. They're not even following the teachings of their god.
Well said, that coffee shop example is on point.
I've also run into PbtA hardos shitting on Dungeon World because they say it's too much like D&D and that it's not "real" PbtA! Just because it's a more niche side of the TTRPG hobby doesn't mean their advocates can't be toxic and obnoxious
I would make the argument that D&D and PbtA are both competitions and games. The GM may not be playing against the players but the monster he controls are. The GM isn't trying to hurt the players but he isn't trying to help them either. He is the ref, hopefully calling it right down the middle as the players compete against the world the gm has created.
I would love to have more D&D people come into PbtA by the way. They would bring more Crunch to those games , which I think is needed. The thing about PbtA is that while there may be less rules? They're also BETTER rules. In my opinion. and I feel way too many PbtA GMs and players kinda wave them off. I wish they were as committed to the Rules as Written PbtA stuff the way D&D players commit to 5E.
Anyway. Great vid. Good points. There's nothing wrong with using dental dams but I respect you for not doing it, sir.
Yeah, dnd's combat rules are crunchy. But I like this crunchiness because it is helping me to believe that my actions carry more weight.
I'm a newcomer in TTRPG hobby and so far I'm currently playing D&D in a group and Ironsworn solo (it's a PbtA game, BTW), and I can say that both are proper games as far as I'm concerned, just have different styles.
💯
Some of those comments at the start read like the kinds of things you hear from people who play TTRPGs to "win."
You can't win something that is open ended by design. Even the crunchiest, most simulationist system doesn't give win conditions. They provide a set of mechanics for resolving actions and the consequences of decisions made, and that's it. Everything else is in service to those two (well, really one,) things. If we accept that a game is an exercise in overcoming challenges that you take on voluntarily, then even "make believe" as these people so derisively call it is a game. The resolution mechanic is agreeing that something happened.
In a way, all games are not just TTRPGs, are make believe and storytelling with extra bits added.
Chess is about a war between kingdoms waged to the death.
Baseball is a contest between two tribes on who can gather the most of three things.
Football (either version) is about preventing someone from the other side from getting to their destination with the McGuffin.
Poker is a story of high stakes diplomacy and gamesmanship.
To deride something as make believe is to not realize that anything we do to entertain ourselves is effectively make believe. We pretend that we are watching or reading something that actually happened or that we were there whenever we watch or read something. We imagine that we are skilled and competent manipulators of people or a master strategist whenever we sit down to play a card game. Some of us are just more ready to accept that than others. To ask if a system is a game is to miss what a game is. It's a way of entertaining ourselves in a way in which we can fail, and by that metric, PbtA games are indeed games. It's okay to not like them or want to play them, but to say that they are just wannabe TTRPGs for theatre kids is, in my mind, hypocritical at best. You can have someone unleash their thespian's talents in any TTRPG, no matter how crunchy. After all, whenever you play a TTRPG, you are playing a role. It's right there in the name, table-top role-playing game.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on the matter.
RPGs have duel identifies that sometimes clash - war gaming/simulation and narrative storytelling. DnD fundamentally grew out of war games and has generally stayed true to the war gaming roots. These people tend to value systems and rules. I am not a PbTA guy, but I do like the narrative RPG experiments that have been happening to remove the war game vestiges.
what do you think about EZD6? I connected EZD6 to the PBTA dice mechanic. It works great. i love your videos greetings from Germany
PbtA Games are real games! See - it's in a UA-cam comment - it MUST BE TRUE!!! :D
I cannot argue with that logic!
Pirate Borg is a great game though and the creator is a really cool guy. I definitely recommend checking it out, it's also a rules lite game.
I skimmed through a copy and it does actually look pretty cool
I'm a fan of TSL (Thirsty sword Lesbians; using Powered by the Apocalypse) I don't run it because two of my player's really, really NEED the crunch of Pathfinder 2e. (which I prefer over DND5e ) Someday I will run it; and I'm almost certain it will be fun. But; maybe not with my current group.
I've heard only good things about TSL! Try and find a group who would enjoy it!
Can confirm, our group had a great time with TSL!
Its awesome there is a plethora of different games. I have not tried any pbta games yet but it seems like a good time.
What do you think about FATE system?
I’ve watched a couple videos on it and from my very limited understanding it seems super versatile but kinda complicated
Bro, just found your channel and lulz you cracked me up 😂 Earned a sub from me and don’t let the trolls get you down. This video could definitely have been an email instead of setting up this meeting, sheesh🤣
Thanks Jake! For the most part they don't but after I was SO stoked about Rapscallion, they got to me 🤷♂️
I think the better counter argument to PbtA being a game would be other TTRPGs with similar (ish) rules depth, but in a different vein. That is...the OSR movement. Namely retro-clones like Swords and Wizardry, Old School Essentials, or even new stuff like Knave.
Then ask...is it a game by the first definition? I would say very few role-playing "games" match the first definition by Webster, except Traveller, Shadowrun, GURPS, and most of the OSR movement. It is rewarding to succeed as well against the challenges you face.
Love me the OSR. Funnily enough a couple of the comments shitting on PbtA came from OSR hardos who were fans of Pirate Borg
@@tabletopbro of course they did. The bulk of the OSR community is more focused on tribalism than they are on actually playing games. I find it weird that it isn’t enough to have a preference for one game or system over another.
For some reason people have to spend an inordinate amount of time justifying their preference/trying to tell other people that their preference is objectively incorrect.
tbf the open-table multi-party many-player experiences of the really old days could hypothetically be somewhat competitive, especially when stronger PCs got into the domain management game to protect their treasure against other players
Somehow I don't think these commenters are aware of that sort of thing though, and are probably not the sort of games most of them are playing regularly (though tangentially open tables are something everyone should try to experience at least once).
I would honestly love a borderline competitive experience like that!
Just found this channel. Keep going!
Thanks!
The difference is that in PBTA games the players are basically the all powerful admin of the game and don't really have any challenge to face, since they can basically say they defeat the enemy or achieve whatever they want. They have control over the script. And this is what absolutely makes it less of a game
lol. A game doesn't need rules or dice rolling. Some Adult's become embarrassed that they are play a roleplaying game, and need rules and dice. Then the question of them playing a child's make believe game can be countered with, it's like Monopoly. Oh, right ok. You can't be pathetic if you play a game with rules like Monopoly and Chess. Nice job on explaining it. This nonsense also annoys me. 😂
Oftentimes when I see outspoken critics of more roleplay heavy games I think, "you're embarassed to roleplay, aren't you squidward." Great breakdown of it though! Adding dice and rules "legitimizes" the experience to said critics. Probably.
Honestly, I love PBTA and other “simplified” games, I also love DND, it just doesn’t work for all games
This is the internet damn it you’re not allowed to like more than one thing!!!
I like pbta mostly because I'm not very good with mental math due to dyscalculia and loose interest in the mechanics of other player's turns because ADHD. I grew up on DnD, love DnD, I just get frustrated by numbers and other players get kind of tired of waiting for me to do maths so I tend to chose less crunchy systems. I also like fun stories that can keep momentum rather than crunchy mechanics. Both are valuable systems that serve a wide audience with differing tastes.... and salty bitches are gonna be salty bitches no matter what.
Your thumbnail is such a massive case of Poe’s Law that I expected you to just shit on pbta for the whole video. Really glad you didn’t lol good video!
Gotta get the clicks somehow😂 Glad you enjoyed it!
Playing legacy life amongst the ruins which is a pbta and having a blast. Same with blades in the dark that game is excellent
PBTA games are narrative because their whole point is "the narrative triggers the move", which means "in the appropriate circumstances of the tale we are telling we use mechanics to solve the situation". Like every other RPG,.
What is this “diversion and amusement”? As a forever DM, I play DnD for the masochism.
How about people just play what they want... There's a huge spectrum of rules and numbers crunching and how much role playing you do is really up to you and not super dependent on rulesets anyways.
Having played games all across the spectrum, liking most of them for different reasons. I'll say that one advantage of a more crunchy system is predictability and strategy. The less that's left to the DM, the more the players can strategize and collaborate.
I also enjoy wargames and the more (good) systems you have for combat, and the better you set up your encounters, the more it feels like a game.
I've run games for many people with many different interest. Some of them hate wargames and want the story to move on because they're not here for the combat mechanics, they're here for the story and the roleplay.
Role play I've also found to be independent of crunchy rules. Half of our sessions have always been characters talking to each other, maybe a roll here or there to determine something.
The core of an RPG is imagination + structure. I think the opinion that PbtA is 'not a game' is because those people feel that those games don't have enough structure compared to crunchier games. Hence the comments about it 'just' being make-believe. They're not saying 5E isn't also make-believe, but that 5E has structure to go along with it and PbtA doesn't. Whether you agree with that or not is purely personal opinion, for some people PbtA just doesn't have enough structure to make it a real game, but instead it's an improvisation exercise with a few rules layered over.
Considering most people WOULD agree that an improv performance is not the same as playing a TTRPG, there must be a line where after adding enough rules it becomes a TTRPG. Where that line is located is a subjective opinion.
Well said!
One thing i disagree with is that in DnD the GM isn't the opponent. Thr GM is the adversary in the story, as they control the adversary. This does not make it a bad thing, as a good story generally does need some sort of opposition.
PBTA are not soft on rules, they are among the few games that have HARD rules for the GM and not some recommendations on how to run a game.
A well designed PBTA game have all the rules it needs to create a well functioning game (of whatever it's trying to create) and not any more. You don't need rules for space travel on a Victorian era mystery game and you don't need rules for weapons on a teenage super heroes.
They don't get in the way of the game, the rules only act when it is thematically and dramatically appropriate for them to do.
Preach
I love the spite at 4:40
Man honestly I don't get why people think pbta isn't a "real game" like d&d, like honestly I'll probably use pbta at any d&d club meetings that I go to and gm at
Well ffffuuuu...here I am 40 years into playing DnD, finally fed up with the nonsense of Wotc and looking at new platforms and systems and I am in full agreement with a "Bro". What has my life become? A lot less usless-rulesy and a lot more fun I would imagine. Subbed, liked and now to browse your other videos.
I took a while to respond to this comment because it made me smile, and I wanted to see it on my “comments” section on my UA-cam app. When you respond, it goes away and you see comments you didn’t respond to, and a lot of mine are shitty. I guess I have divisive opinions.
So thank you for your comment! I appreciate you