Alright Veeky Forums what's your problem with PBTA system or other narrative based games?

Because (For Dungeon World, at least) The narrative can't keep up with the crunch. Too much narrative, not enough crunch. FATE does a lot better way of merging Narrative and Crunch

How about Fellowship? Does it do a good job of 'fantasy with the PbtA engine'?

DW is too derivative. It tries too hard to push the idea that it's "D&D, but PbtA."

What's the point of having stats with with modifiers, when the modifiers are the only thing that matters anyway? It's just there for purely superficial reasons, like a mindless reference on reddit begging for gold.

I can forgive the Vancian Magic, but does damage really need to be based on dice in a PbtA game? Complications in combat (and indeed any situation in a PbtA) should only be left to the 2d6 roll. That's the beauty of games like AW, the player abilities drive the narrative forward even on their own. DW tries too hard to be a PbtA clone of D&D that it get bogged down in derivative references and thus misses what makes the PbtA system so compelling.

DW rips out the core concepts that make AW work and then staples ill-fitting D&Disms to the bleeding carcass.

>Stats
AW's stats each represent a different and distinct approach (with force, composure, smarts, persuasion and weird shit) to any given situation and are tied to one or two of the game's basic Moves each.
DW's stats are blindly copied from D&D with three of them (Str, Dex and Con) covering the same approach and one Move being shared by all the stats, making the separation between somewhat pointless.

>Basic Moves
AW's basic Moves categorize almost every genre-appropriate action the characters can take, taking intent into account, tie them to the stats and provide interesting consequences for them that significantly change the situation they arose in and push the story/game forward, no matter the roll result.
DW's basic Moves that are not just copied wholesale from Apocalypse World are modified or created so that they often fail to produce interesting consequences and for many 10+ results just outright solve problems without giving any new impetus. And then there's the aforementioned Move that is shared by every stat and can apply to almost every possible action in addition another Move, completely missing the point of Moves.

>Experience
AW awards experience for rolling one of your two highlighted stats. Stats are highlighted at the start of each session, one by the GM and the other one by another player. Since stats each represent different approaches, what this means is that you get rewarded for doing what the group wants to see you doing.
DW awards experience for rolling a 6-. What this means is that you get rewarded for ignoring your strengths and intentionally flubbing calculable risks, giving the whole game an unintentional shade of slapstick.

ah yes, the Lovecraftian mystery game which fails to be a good mystery game and fails even harder to be a good Lovecraft game

The PbtA games which are worth playing imo (if their premises interest you anyway):
>Apocalypse World, post-apocalypse action
>MonsterHearts, supernatural teen drama
>Masks, superhero teen drama
>Night Witches, you're playing the Night Witches en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches
>World Wide Wrestling, playing professional wrestlers
>Action Movie World, over the top 80's action movies
>Undying, vampire politics

How about Heroines of the First Age, that new one?

This. Those kind of games were directly born out of GNS/Big Model which is just fucking godawful and needs to die.
Basically, GNS is based on the earlier "Threefold model" which represents patterns of decision making by RPG players. It wasn't that great, especially as the people who defined it were more of the systematic types (makes sense that systematic types would try to make a 'model.') GNS took that and said that those patterns of decision making are the GOALS of RPGs. Which is absolutely mental. It also prompted Narrativism to the apex of the model, and demoted Simulationism to pleb tier.
And then people went and made all the powered by the apocalypse things based on the tenets of GNS/The Big Model.
Pic related.

Autism, mostly.

Case in point: they don't really criticize any other PBTA.

That's... that's really not what PbtA, or its clones are.

PbtA is just a focused system. It doesn't care about physical simulation because it's not one of its goals, but that doesn't make it some sort of forge-spawned narrative schlock.

That is honestly retarded. PBTAs have tighter rules than shit like DND.

Care to give an unenlightened user the basics of where it fails? Never heard about the game before and PBtA + Lovecraft sounds like a good fit to me.

They have one rule, and it's based on a die roll.

Oh yeah, that's going to go over well.
"I rolled a 10+, I killed Cthulhu!"

Well, it's basically COC (which fails hard at Lovecraft anyway, and probably at anything) + shit like rules for threatening people.

Smoke less weed, user.

d20+ modifiers vs. a target number is a pretty limited system, now that you mention it.

>"I rolled a 10+, I killed Cthulhu!"

That's the exact opposite of how PbtA works. You follow the fiction, this triggers a move. Attacking Cthulhu with a butter knife does not trigger an 'Attack' move because it is meaningless in the fiction.

This is the exact equivalent of DnD memes where rolling a 1 on intimidate means you turn gay and fuck the orc. A misinterpretation based on either poor understanding of the rules or a deliberate attempt at discrediting/making a joke of the game.

>Monster Musume: the PBTA

I didn't expect that.

Retarded system. Interesting overall concept, but so poorly executed that it doesn't feel good when you are playing or GMing it.
Also has a following of rabbid autistic fans who defend it as if it was the second coming of Jesus Fucking Christ, and wanting to transform any an all rpg's concept they can get their clutches on into PBTA games.
I simply hate it.

I haven't had a chance to really get a good look at it yet, but it seems in some ways like it's Gilgamesh/Indian mythological bullshit with monstergirls. The Kickstarter fiction got pretty odd in places.

Because DW is shit compared to other pbta. It's also shit compared to d&d. Play literally anything else.

>implying violence isn't done by both Cool and Hard in AW
And let's not get started with the substitution moves

>failing to produce consequences
As in?

>oh noes, the dreaded Do Something Under Fire with more than one stat
I genuinely don't get the problem here. I mean, I do feel it's too broad, but "in addiction"? Dude, you didn't get Unde Fire.

>6-
6- is one of the few honestly interesting mechanics DW brought to the table, actually. In a game of high stakes (in which having underlined stats would be stupid) you aren't really supposed to try to fail, so there is an interesting mechanic when failing.

What is the real problem with DW? The relationships. THAT is lazy. Pretty hard for the GM, as well.

Be a brainlet somewhere else.

Shill for the worst pbta and worst d&d imitator somewhere else.

The existence of narrative games is predicated on the idea that people play RPGs in order to create stories, and they are certainly well-suited to that sort of play.

However, not everyone plays RPGs for that purpose, and if, for example, you play RPGs because you like to RP, narrative games don't support that well because you constantly have to make decisions at the meta-level.

There's nothing wrong with having different games for different playstyles, of course. It's just that people who like narrative games often present them as the be-all end-all of RPGs, and imply that you have to be a retard not to like them.

I see from you veritable cornucopia of rebuttals how much you can rationally criticize and judge RPGs.

Not trolling.

What the fuck is a "narrative" game?

The mechanical crunch doesn't re-enforce the narrative, there's a complete detachment from what's actually happening and what people thinks happening.

You can't even touch the mechanics until you have established what is happening. That's one of the basic rules of all the PbtA games.

Give us an example.

Fucking /thread

>What the fuck is a "narrative" game?
>PBTA system or other narrative based games?

When do you make a choice in PbtA on the meta-level? All I can think of is the choice at the beginning of the session to decide "what awards XP", but that's a one time deal.

You literally used the word brainlet. You have no leg to stand on.

Exactly. What is a narrative game, of which PBTA are a part (you're saying)?

I don't want to be nice to idiots: I want to make them mad, they shouldn't be talking.

It's got nothing to do with being nice. Brainlet is a retard word. Learn to use real words that don't sound like they were made up by a frat boy's younger brother.

I think he means you are angling for playbook moves and trying to trigger rewards. Engaging Game part of RPGs so to speak. If you think about it, in simulationist games you are kind of free to RP however you like because it's purely for flavor / fictional positioning and doesn't touch game mechanics until you are actually do something that system have a rules for, that kind of thing.

In the fiction, the good guys consistently lose.

In that case, use arguments. If not, enjoy your frustration.

>If you think about it, in simulationist games you are kind of free to RP however you like because it's purely for flavor / fictional positioning and doesn't touch game mechanics until you are actually do something that system have a rules for, that kind of thing.

I mean, that's the same in PbtA. That's what "trigger a move" means.

Say you have a move that specifies the Approach "A", as a player you would probably angle you actions to trigger that move, because it's beneficial in some way. Either gives you different set out outcomes, or you get to mark XP / meta currency or whatever.
Purely In fiction however, Approach "A" doesn't stand out from Approach "B" or "C" or "D", that are all valid and in character. So there is often a situation, where if you wouldn't have the move specific to "A", you would probably go with say "B", because you feel it's a bit more fitting to you character.

But user, everyone has all the moves that they need to progress and no one ever gets pigeonholed or suffers from character based trap moves, because...uh...BECAUSE!

I'm not hugely familiar with *World games specifically (though does sound like the sort of stuff I'm talking about) but a good example would be the Fate point economy in Fate:

"Do I want to panic/get drunk/be a shithead now so I can shoot better/drive better/suddenly walk into a friend later" is not a roleplay decision, it's a meta-decision.

>Say you have a move that specifies the Approach "A", as a player you would probably angle you actions to trigger that move, because it's beneficial in some way. Either gives you different set out outcomes, or you get to mark XP / meta currency or whatever.

Oh no, this person who is really good at dealing with problems in some way really wants to deal problems this way!

You may as well argue that a barbarian is only making melee attacks because he has high strength and that benefits him because he gets XP if he kills things.

As far as I'm aware, PbtA doesn't have that.

Well, one could say that the "take XP if you do this" (see particulary Monsterhearts) is kinda similar.

That's fine, but using XP as motivator/reward for the players/characters had been in since OD&D, (when you got XP for gold).

Its explicit purpose is to guide players/characters towards a certain behaviour (which should be in line with what their character would want to do in-fiction).

You don't deserve arguments.
DW is shit.

>Oh no, this person who is really good at dealing with problems in some way really wants to deal problems this way!
Not a person, a player taking directors stance directs his character in the direction that would trigger a move. In that one specific way and not in any other viable in fiction way, yes, that's the point. There are people who don't like playing an characters author. There is not need to be a dick about liking different things.

I'm here to play games, problem solve and plot against NPCs.
Not act like we're in a drama class where everyone gets a fiat because that's more "democratic". (nevermind the fact that none of the PbtA twinks would qualify for a vote under a genuine democracy)

Eh, I dearly love MH, so it's not really an issue.

Perfect. Stay buttmad.

In that case, PbtA are the final choice, considering how much the roles are "contained" with the fictional elements. Hell, Fellowship has even players' agendas.

Okay, sorry, I really don't get this.

I imagine the steps go like this:

1. You create a character.
2. You want him to solve problems with violence, 3. You make him good at solving problems with violence.
4. During play, it'd make sense for the character to want to solve problems with violence.

Where exactly is the problem?

>Fellowship has even players' agendas.
So does every other RPG.
It's called letting the players control their characters.
Fucks sake.

You know, usually it's the person who throws pointless and stupid insults after dumping three paragraphs of defense who is buttmad.

And the character having a defined agenda stops you in that how?

You probably should not say anything about games you don't know, user.

Except that's not how it actually works in PbtA. Triggering moves don't always let you select how you get to solve the problem, which restricts how you can play your character effectively, which is the exact opposite of how a narrative game should work.

Realistically, the only actual narrativist game is Amber Diceless.

You shouldn't use terms that you don't know, like narrativism.

>Triggering moves don't always let you select how you get to solve the problem,

Could you make an example?

>which restricts how you can play your character effectively,

When you roleplay, you sometimes have to go against what would be effective for your character. Which makes sense. Your convictions SHOULD override what would be the easiest way.

>which is the exact opposite of how a narrative game should work.

And that is...?

Maybe you want him to be good at solving problem with violence, without game encouraging you to default to that approach every time.
Maybe you like making choices purely on fiction and not be nudged in one direction by mechanical candy.
Maybe you believe that you are good enough at roleplaying to act true to your character without game pigeonholing you into predetermined mode of action.

>using the terms the book uses is bad
Okay.

AW or DW don't use the word "narrativism.

Dungeon World is actually my first foray into the PbTA systems, and I'm loving it compared to my 20 years of d&d. What am I missing out on in other versions?

>Maybe you want him to be good at solving problem with violence, without game encouraging you to default to that approach every time.

If you are good at some thing, you are encouraged to try doing that thing over things you are not as good as. "Being good at X but not being mechanically encouraged to do X" is basically impossible to design for (but you are welcome to show me an example or explain where I'm wrong).

>Maybe you like making choices purely on fiction and not be nudged in one direction by mechanical candy.

The only other candy is that you actually succeed in what you set out to do, which is the point of being good at something. Or is this about the XP thing? Fair enough I guess. I do prefer leaving players to their own devices over mechanical meta-reward encouragements like that.

>Maybe you believe that you are good enough at roleplaying to act true to your character without game pigeonholing you into predetermined mode of action.

The "predetermined modes of action" are all mechanical resolutions. You are not pigeonholed into them. You are free to roleplay however you like.

It sounds to me you want some sort of roleplaying game where your character can always act in an optimal way (rolling his best stats) without having to compromise his ethics, essentially eliminating many hard decisions you'd have to make.

Actually the first one is easily resolved in play by the (majority of) PBTAs with the underline a stat thing.

This builds one two assumptions

1. That you should play out Lovecraft’s fiction when roleplaying. What I meant by fiction is the fiction of the game you you are playing. If in the game you are attacking an elder god with a bitter knige it does not make sense for you to roll an attack. The situation is hopeless.

If you are fighting an unarmed, delerious cultist in melee it makes more sense. You might be able to overcome the guy, so you make the roll and see what happens.

2. Lovecraft’s protagonists always lose. Everything about Lovecraft has already been meme’d to death. This is jist one more case of reading ABOUT Lovecraft’s fiction rather than reading it. People in Lovecraft’s stories often come into contact with the unkn9wn and survive, fight it and win. Not always, but often enough I would not say Lovecraft’s protagonists uniformly die/go mad.

The only real "win" is probably Dunwhich horror. But that's really not the issue, it's the game structure that is sketchy. If you want something not really purist (like Lovecraftesque) you probably are good using Chthulhu Grey.

>If you are good at some thing, you are encouraged to try doing that thing over things you are not as good as.
That's true, but the point was that moves encouraged you to take a specific approach distinct from the general move. Approach that in fiction, while plausible, might not be true to how you see your character would act in that situation. But game encourages you to take that approach.

>The only other candy is that you actually succeed in what you set out to do, which is the point of being good at something.
XP yes. Also Some books have moves that add additional options to predetermined list, or degrees of success (if you roll 12+ for example), thus encouraging you to angle for them instead of generic version. And there is also some pbta playbooks that use meta currency acquired by moves.

>It sounds to me you want some sort of roleplaying game where your character can always act in an optimal way
More like a game where you character acts true to how you see he would act without game mechanics interfering in decision making.

>"Being good at X but not being mechanically encouraged to do X" is basically impossible to design for
In burning wheel write a believe how you won't answer violence with violence, while being very good at violence. Get artha for following it.

>That's true, but the point was that moves encouraged you to take a specific approach distinct from the general move. Approach that in fiction, while plausible, might not be true to how you see your character would act in that situation. But game encourages you to take that approach.

Would you give an example?

>XP yes. Also Some books have moves that add additional options to predetermined list, or degrees of success (if you roll 12+ for example), thus encouraging you to angle for them instead of generic version. And there is also some pbta playbooks that use meta currency acquired by moves.

Yeah, but then you chose that option yourself, and it isn't a system.wide thing. You chose a mechanical option that was an encouragement in the first place, it'd be weird to then turn around and say that actually, you don't want to be encouraged, and this game is shit for pigeonholing you.

>In burning wheel write a believe how you won't answer violence with violence, while being very good at violence. Get artha for following it.
That doesn't mean you are not encouraged to use violence, you just have a separate bonus for avoiding it. In AW,

Hard is for directly dealing with a threat, Cool is for specifically NOT dealing with a threat. That's a pretty big difference. And the substitution moves are explicitly there to change the base assumptions.

Hack'n'Slash deals damage; monster does not die. No meaningful change in situation.
Volley deals damage; monster does not die. No meaningful change in situation; ammunition is a purely reactive resource used only for avoiding consequences.
Defend is a buff. No meaningful change in situation; buff helps avoid consequences.
HP are plentiful, as is healing. HP damage to PCs is near meaningless as a consequence.
Spout Lore lacks Open Your Brain's inherent danger and does not make up for it in any way.

Defy Danger overlaps with every single other Basic Move. Every trigger for the other Basic Moves is included in Defy Danger's trigger. Do Something Under Fire is separate from the other Moves, as it should be.

Getting XP on a fail is not an interesting mechanic, it's a consolation prize. Highlighting stats allows MC and players alike to influence the tone and direction of a session with incentives. DW's equivalent just invites attempts to exploit the lack of consequences for easy XP.

As a GURPSfriend, I acknowledge their merits but would definitely recommend FATE rather than PbtA.

>answered the wrong post
derp
Take for example this move from urban shadows "The vessel" playbook
>When you persuade an NPC by revealing your inhuman face and threatening their interests, roll with Spirit instead of Heart.
While it's certainly cool to have that as an option for approaching the situation, Vessels heart is -2, spirit is +2, so from now on in every situation where this move is viable in fiction, game strongly encourages you to use it, instead of maybe more appropriate to your character mode of persuasion, that would fall into default persuasion move, that you roll with -2.
You can say, well don't take it then. But if i like it and want it to to be an option, i have to. And if i took it i'm nudged to use it.

>That doesn't mean you are not encouraged to use violence, you just have a separate bonus for avoiding it.
Yes it does? if you were to solve situation in a peaceful way you would be rewarded with artha, if you were to use violence you won't get a mechanical reward. While both approaches would move the story forward one is rewarded and other is thus discouraged.

fuck

"Approach" here meant "with violence". Cool is with violence.

The substitution moves mean that every stat might change its usual approach.

Pretty often in AW itself you don't resolve shit with the battle moves.
>tough yeah, you can make the argument that DW "deal damage" is less definitive anyway

Open your brain isn't dangerous per se. If you mean that fictionally it's easier to to jusitfy MC harder moves with the Maelstrom if the character fails, that's true, but I wouldn't say it's a real problem, honestly.

Do something Under Fire overlaps with any move as well.

In my experiance the failure with XP is interesting. No character wanted to fail, evidently my stakes as MC were great enough.

Don't think of it as an encouragement to roll big numbers so you can win the check, think of it as a description of the character's innate attitude that reflects how they tend to act. So if you chose to make your guy with Hard+3, and ingame you would succeed more often with battle moves if you descided to trigger them, the real question for you is not "why is the game encouraging me to use my big number all the time?", its " why am i conflicted about choosing to describe my PC as being violent?"

And some people only have one foot to hop around on because some assholes set off a bomb where they happened to be standing but hey, I guess we're all fucked up and deranged too, right?

Again, it's not about the stats, or general tendencies, but the move structure that encourages you to direct narrative in a ways that would trigger those moves. Thus meta - player level decisions, instead of doing what you think best aligned with how you see your character would act. That what initial user was complaining about.
Also burning wheel is it's own system and isn't really relevant to the point, i was just trying to in passing show that there are games that have mechanism to discourage using something you are good at, without connecting it to pbta in any way.

Either they're crap or a one trick pony. Some of them can still be fun, but with a very small handful of exceptions they suck mechanically, and therefore as games.

Oh hey, this thread again! So issues with PbtA and other narrative games is that I like crunch. Narrative games make everything so simple that I don't feel like I have many options to really explore cool stuff for my character.

Now DW is a unique situation as it fails at being a good narrative game since it doesn't understand what Moves are in other PbtA games and fails at being a D&D game because of lackluster combat.

Okay time for some complaints about PbtA that comes off as a troll answer, but they're my own personal complaints. I'll start off by saying my personal favorite system is FFGs Narrative Dice System (inb4 proprietary and overpriced, because true), which is also narrative with the secondary advantage/disadvantage metric going into every roll.
I bring up FFG to give some context to what I don't like about PbtA, which is scalability. PbtA seems to have three difficulty ratings
>you automatically succeed (GM fiat)
>roll for it
>you automatically fail (GM fiat)
There's no "going for the 1 in 100 chance" like in other systems or making some adjustment to difficulty. The closest thing is adding up to +/-3 to a roll (optional rule?) but that's clunky and not very granular.
Another thing is character skill differentiation. Let's say you have, I don't know, a doctor. Two doctor characters will have the exact same skill level (2d6+Brain), no matter how you build them. You can't do a super surgeon vs a general doctor who put some points into mechanics on the side.
Fortunately the talents/feats/perks are so much fun (FFG has a problem with really boring feats). The Sprawl increadibly evocative and interesting skills to invest in. And plus the book feels cyberpunk (a huge accomplishment in and of itself). Even if two doctors have the same % of doing their medicine stunts, they feel very different because of their toolkits and character packages. I really applaud that.
And, I'll be honest, another thing PbtA has is speed. Just keep jamming those 2d6 rolls, see the result near instantly, onto the next thing.
Over, I give it an ehhh?/10

tl;dr - it's a fast, story centered system but suffers from inescapable "flatness" of dice probability and character builds, good for certain groups but not for my personal autism

cue the defense force claimign you're misunderstanding, doing it wrong, or are suffering from some nebulous and badly contrived inability to understand the game so they can summarily dismiss your issues as nonexistent.

Sounds a lot like 4e D&D players,
doesn't it?

I think its a matter of goals and bias. You are free to say your character acts however you want. The moves and numbers are there to resolve outcomes. If you truely want to have your character act in a way that will probably not result in a good outcome, you can still do it. In fact, you could intentionally want a bad outcome for your PC if it would be more dramatic. You don't have to bias toward successful rolls, just accept the outcome as a natural consequence of your character's action. Pretend you don't even have stats, if the numbers distract you.

Narrative systems:
>Make decisions FOR your character

Other systems:
>Make decisions AS your character

I think it's really that simple. Does a player want to play the guy in the dungeon, or that guy's manager? Do you want your game experience to be "I grab him by the lapels and scream in his face" or "It's been six Story Beats since a Catharsis so I Trigger my Vice of Rage for a Composure Break."

I love narrative, and I love systems. But narrative isn't something you need a system for. It just gets in the way. I guess I can understand why some people like it, but I truly and deeply do not.

Considering that I'm about to publish one soon, I don't really have problems with them.

The game is entirely arbitrary and predicated on 'mother may I' design. There's a total disconnect between what you say you want your character to do, what they actually do and what consequences occur as the DM has explicit license by the rules to insert endless FIAT and 'suddenly bears'.

I do like Apocalypse World for encouraging groups to ERP in a far more subtle way than FATAL ever managed but that's about it.

The further you get from simulationist, the less it feels like I'm playing a game and the more it feels like I'm playing pretend, if that makes sense.

Lets complete the analogy:
>I roll an intimidate check because my class feature gives me +4 to overcoming social manipulation encounters

It does, with the caveat that it's super focused on a single kind of narrative. Porting fellowship's combat engine to DW fixes almost all of the problems, though.

Look into Fellowship and its combat.

This.

Also it's damn hard to find a good group, where everyone plays for the narrative purpose. The meta I can deal with if everyone is on board.

The magic isn't that Vancian, more so outside of the core classes. And I find rolling for damage more interesting then just flatly saying "I do 2 damage" for every attack for the entire session, maybe asides from the one time you say "I do 4 damage."

And yes the stats are dumb and not needed, but I don't think they ruin the game.

You're so wrong it's funny. Where do you get off criticizing a game when you don't even know what it's like? You're just parroting some made-up stereotype of what a "narrativist" system is, when the games don't even describe themselves as narrativist.

They are misunderstanding, because FFG narrative dice do something completely different to what PbtA is trying to achieve with its 2d6.

FFG Dice are rolled in all challenging situations, PbtA handles all challenging situations without rolling at all until a move is triggered. Moves make it so genre-appropriate things get genre-appropriate outcomes. Outside of moves, PbtA stays out of the players' way, while putting most of its bulk into limiting the GM so that most of what they introduce is genre-appropriate and has good timing. If you don't understand how to GM PbtA, you don't understand half the system.