Thread #97631330
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What’s with people confusing narrative games with rules light games? You constantly see people recommending stuff like Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse world to people as “rules light and easy to learn” when they actually have a lot of rules systems. Like Blades in the Dark actually have a ton of subsystems that aren’t really all that easy for someone new to RPGs to really learn and unlike some “crunchier” trad-games where you can usually strip away more complex mechanics until you’ve learned the basics stripping systems from Blades in the Dark just breaks the system.
I think a lot of people just confuse narrative games with rules light even when in my experience most new players usually learn easier with a trad-game where they just gotta worry about playing their character in the world itself without worrying about “fiction first” meta-mechanics. Something like Mothership is rules-light, Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark are not.
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>>97631330
Honestly some systems aren't necessarily rules light but the rules are a lighter burden in some way, you know?
Like Ryuutama. The rules never feel like a hassle and having stuff to the players to take care of and track makes it soooo much easier to GM.
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>>97631369
Moves very much are mechanics, especially since you have GM and player moves as a separate thing. It’s much easier for a player to just go “I wanna jump over that chasm” and the GM asking the player to roll an athletics check or whatever instead of trying to figure out what weird move that would correspond to specific actions.
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>>97631980
Mind you, they mostly are, but most wargames feature much randomization. If boardgamers can get that this doesn't mean much random shit=wargame, rpg gamers should get that simulationism is not a clue of the game being heavy or vice versa.
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>>97631330
Like >>97631980 said, there is a degree of correlation, so people tend to extrapolate that in the other direction. It's also hard to think of games that are simulationist but rules-light (FUDGE maybe?) which further reinforces the idea
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>>97631330
I've come to learn that lot of people don't actually play games, or interact with this hobby aside from discussing it, and thus only learn about systems by osmosis.
Combined with the current era of seeking validation online, they hear something is something, and hurry to give that answer if the question is asked again.
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I started playing Pathfinder about a month ago. The most surprising thing about playing a tabletop rpg for the first time has been realizing the shocking lack of understanding of the rules a huge portion of the playerbases seem to have. This isn't even just people who are only in the community for the media like OotS, this is people who observably do actually play these games, and they don't grasp some of the most basic parts of the rules, frequently things that would be understood if they just read a single paragraph of text in the core rulebook, clearly labeled. Like you clearly know what the mechanic is called. Just read the fucking paragraph a single time before you start posting online about it.
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>>97631630
let's not pretend PbtA doesn't have a massive presentation problem with its overly stylized garbage like "act under fire" or "go aggro" that conveys absolutely nothing intuitively. anyone with half a brain could fit the entire system on a single page, like just group them into descriptive clusters (aka a fucking skill list) and slap the 6-/7-9/10+ outcomes right next to them. but nooo, let's have bloated, repetitive flavor text spread across pages that forces everyone to rely on fucking cheatsheets just to translate the jargon. a completely pointless cognitive drain with zero actual design rationale behind it other than trying to sound entirely unique from D&D.
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>>97631330
You aren't even trying, mate
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>>97631330
A narrative system involves a group of people creating a progressing narrative.
This is a form of collaborative storytelling.
Quests are collaborative storytelling at their essence.
Quests are not /tg/, they haven't been since 2018.
Therefore, narrative systems aren't /tg/.
Since they aren't /tg/, they aren't tabletop games.
If there's a problem, forward your complaints to RapeApe. I'm sure he will listen respectfully and rectify the error at his earliest convenience.
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>>97631330
I actually see the other version of this more often, where people act like a game cannot be narrative unless it is rules light, as they think any bit of crunch is antithetical to narrative and that anything can be narrative as long as the players are on the same homebrewing page.
I think the biggest issue overall is that most gamers don't know other words to use to describe rules and styles of play. Almost everything in tabletop gaming seems to be divided colloquially now into "narrative" or "game-y" but both of these, particularly narrative, make no fucking sense anymore. If someone says they enjoy narrative games it could mean simulationist games, gamist systems they apply their own external narrative houserules and framework onto, rules light games, rules heavy internal narrative framework systems, high amount of customization options, no customization options to let you make it up yourself, etc.
So what the fuck is narrative at this point? It's a useless term and we need to start bringing back player type models like we had 20-30 years ago
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>>97636587
i like the Carved from Brindlewood approach. they cut down the basic moves list to about 4 all encompassing moves on the player side, plus 1-2 unique character specials. on the GM side, it's just a suggestion list of complications rather than separate moves. the rulebooks still lack good play examples, they read more like the personal notes of someone who already has the PbtA playstyle internalized, but still a good overall direction.
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>>97638021
GNS terms are largely worthless, too.
A game is an activity whose resolutions are determined through challenges to player skill and luck, according to a consistent rules structure.
An activity that isn't that isn't a game.
Whether or not an activity is "thimulathionitht" doesn't change whether or not it follows a game structure, and focusing on sitting and telling stories actively ignores game structure (often times, activities focused on collaborative storytelling will ENCOURAGE ignoring a game structure).
It's either a game or it isn't.
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>>97639413
I think you are ignoring that there are plenty of storytelling games that have a very specific structure, and there are plenty of "trad games" or however you want to think of them that have fuck all for structure. Fiasco is a lot more structured than any of the -Borgs, for example.
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>>97640112
>there are plenty of storytelling games that have a very specific structure
Is this a structure that's codified in the rules for easy reference, or is it left to the storyteller's biases on what he thinks the "structure" should be?
The difference is more important than you think.
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>>97640152
>Fiasco
>HOW TO WIN: Everyone wins if an interesting (if often fatalistic) story is told and/or acted out at the table.
So, what consistently counts as "interesting" in terms of playing multiple "games" of Fiasco with different groups, keeping in mind that different people are interested in different things?
In case you're too inept to understand, this is a rhetorical question.
There is no win condition, and what decides the challenge is met is up to what the biases of the group think it "should" be, not a codified structure established in the rules.
0 : 1
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>>97640152
>PBTA
I don't know about that, but I know that "PbtA" is a term for "Powered by the Apocalypse", which boils down to being inspired by Apocalypse World. PbtA is, in essence, a design philosophy moreso than its own system, and it is often described as fiction-first.
What do you suppose "fiction-first" means? Because in my experience, and from what I've heard, that tends to mean the rules (ergo, the GAME STRUCTURE) are encouraged to be IGNORED for the sake of the STORY, which is subject to the biases of whoever is running the group, whether it's a single arbiter or the group themselves.
0 : 2
Don't waste any more of my time, retard.
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>>97640327
Okay, so now your definition of "has a structure" is "has a win condition?" Congratulations, now roleplaying games aren't games.
>>97640360
>I'm going to post a bunch of words that could just be summed up as "I've never actually even looked at a single PbtA game, I'm justing basing all of my complaints on 3rd hand misconceptions.
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>>97640475
>crying about me bringing up win conditions
What do you suppose a challenge is, good Anon, something you engage with that has no chance of failure? With no clear line between winning and losing?
>crying I didn't cite a specific PbtA system when no specific PbtA system was specified in the post I previously responded to
If you can give an example of a specific PbtA system that has CLEARLY DEFINED RULES set on the basis of an UNBIASED STRUCTURE, then feel free to provide one.
If you either have no examples, or your only examples point to systems that leave it up to the biases of one arbiter or of the insular group, then don't bother.
I asked you not to waste my time.
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>>97640360
>I don't know about that, but I know that "PbtA" is a term for "Powered by the Apocalypse", which boils down to being inspired by Apocalypse World. PbtA is, in essence, a design philosophy moreso than its own system, and it is often described as fiction-first.
>What do you suppose "fiction-first" means? Because in my experience, and from what I've heard, that tends to mean the rules (ergo, the GAME STRUCTURE) are encouraged to be IGNORED for the sake of the STORY, which is subject to the biases of whoever is running the group, whether it's a single arbiter or the group themselves.
It's all a circlejerk anon. Don't listen to people, AW and all PBTAs I can think of are pretty rigid in their rules and structure and can't really be "ignored".
Don't take my word for it, the books are pretty clear on this point.
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>>97631330
>What’s with people confusing narrative games with rules light games?
Conflating
>indi
and
>rules lite
and
>narrative
through inexperience, not reading the fucking manual, not playing the games and grifters marketing their slop as both things not caring at all about what it means.
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>>97631330
>rules light games
It's RULE OF COOL, man.
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>>97640571
Dwarf Fortress has no win condition, though it does have a lose condition. It's definitely very much a game. Games are just structured play, and that covers a vast, vast number of extremely different activities that are still all recognizably games.
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>>97649578
Don't even bother, he went from "games have to have structure" to "games must have win conditions" to "succeeding at any given roll is a win condition."
He doesn't actually have a point, he just wants something to be angry at.
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>>97650429
"Rule 0" is a choice, not a rule.
It isn't the fault of a game if you choose to ignore its rule structure, just as it isn't a signpost's fault you chose to step on the grass like a retard who can't read a sign.
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>>97631330
I also think it's the other way around as well. A lot of rules light games are called narrative because they're rules light, but there are no rules for the narrative. This means that it's basically just free form "do whatever you want" with some light guidance on resolving choices, but there's nothing in the game to push interesting narrative twists and turns.
I think a good narrative game partially leads the narrative in the same way that a good combat game has interesting combat.
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>>97636378
Quests aren't played at a table so they're not tabletop games. Plenty of actual tabletop games are narrative games. Quests are never coming back and the board is better for it and there is nothing you can do about it.
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>>97640327
What determines if you've won a game of D&D? Remember to cite a page number in your answer, and it must contain the exact wording : The game is over when (condition) and the victor is determined by (method).
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