Thread by @lumpleygames

Good morning!

I have an #RPGTheory thread for you.

I'm kind of serious about it, but I want to offer it for what it's worth, not to convince you, just for your consideration. Maybe you'll find it useful or interesting too.

It's about #PbtA, but PbtA games don't have any kind of lock or monopoly on it, at all. Take this idea and use it in every way that serves your own games, PbtA, non-PbtA, or anti-PbtA!

Here goes.

A normal roleplaying game models objects and entities in the game world. Sometimes in significant detail.

For example: Here's my dude, he's x-much strong, he's x-much skilled, he's got x-many hit points. He owns a sword that's x-much sharp and armor that's x-much hard.

Most of the actions that a normal rpg models are comparisons between these objects and entities, along the requisite axes. They use some combination of number crunching and odds playing to determine whether, this time, x-much is effectively more or less than y-much.

For example: Here's my dude, he's x-much strong. Here's a cliff, it's y-much steep. COMPARE! Result: the cliff is too steep for my dude to climb. This gives us the old binary succeed/fail.

For outcomes beyond succeed/fail, normal rpgs mostly handle it by simply improving or degrading the objects and entities they model, along those same axes.

For example: Here's my dude, he's x-much skilled, with his x-sharp sword. Here's a biting lizard, it's y-much dangerous, with its y-many teeth and claws. COMPARE! Result: the biting lizard degrades my dude to the tune of 3 HP.

In sum: a normal rpg describes objects and entities in some detail. It works by comparing their qualities, relatively statically. It accumulates outcomes to their detriment and benefit, along the axes of comparison.

Apocalypse World made its bid for an alternative model.

It describes actions in more detail than items and entities. It still models items and entities, but relatively simply, mainly as the subjects and objects of action.

Here's my driver. She can make all the basic moves, and she has a suite of moves that she can make more or less uniquely. She owns a car, which lets her make these additional moves, and a crowbar, with which she can do violence in these ways.

Apocalypse World only rarely compares characters, and mostly indirectly: we both do seize by force. We don't compare our characters; instead, what are the combined effects of our actions?

Apocalypse World still tracks some outcomes to the detriment and benefit of the items and entities, but it also asserts outcomes more directly into the action of the game.

For instance, Apocalypse World says that dismaying your enemy, or seizing definite hold of something, is as valuable and as real an outcome as degrading your enemy's hit points. The game's action, it says, must continue from this new, changed situation.

Now, this is all fine: two models, somewhat overlapping, somewhat different, in ways interchangeable or translatable into each other, each offering its own angle on the problems of rpg design. So what?

So what, is: if you're playing a game for the fiction it creates - a big if! - but if you are, these two models also represent two different approaches to analyzing and synthesizing fiction.

A normal rpg conceives fiction it terms of characters with qualities you can compare, to their advantage and disadvantage.

Like whacking two action figures together until one breaks.

Apocalypse World conceives fiction in terms of characters who do things.

Like this:

That's what I've got! This is why, I think, Apocalypse World inspired so many new games, with such an amazing diversity of subjects, with such amazing emotionality.

It's also why PbtA is so completely unsuited to so many other games' needs.

Thanks for reading!

I cheerfully admit all quibbles and disagreements. Like I say, I'm not here to convince you of this, just to offer it as an idea to consider. I hope you find it useful, or failing that, interesting, or failing that, not too annoying.

I'm also always happy to answer questions, so if you have any, please feel free!