Hi Thomas. This is a fun question, and I think it's weird how people struggle to answer it.
Systems obviously matter. If they didn't, nobody would use systems. If any ruleset was equally valid, no one would spend hours reading hundreds of pages of rules or $30+ for a rulebook. We'd all be using a free 1-page PDF ultra-lite system by now, because the barrier to entry would be the lowest for it.
So the first question is really, WHY do systems matter? There are several reasons for this, because systems are more like game engines than games. D&D and PBtA are more like Unity vs Unreal than they are like WoW vs Dark Souls. Different game engines are better at different types of games. Their rulesets are like the physics engine in a game engine. The Frostbite engine is very, very good at making First Person Shooters and not nearly as good at other games. You CAN make a third person RPG in it but it's a lot more work than otherwise, and it won't run as well as an FPS would.
Also like the videogame world, it's much more efficient to use an existing engine than make your own from scratch each time. People warping a PBtA game into a new genre for their home game are doing the equivalent of modding Skyrim. They make a few new moves, some new enemies, change the names and images for some existing ones, etc. PBtA is extremely fluid and expressive, it's easy to make stuff for it. It's a user-friendly system.
However, different TTRPG systems create wildly different experiences. I make a new system for nearly every RPG campaign I run because I have very specific design goals and I want to focus on different elements of the experience. This isn't an efficient use of time, but I enjoy the design process and I also enjoy the feeling of running a system perfectly set up for the experience. It's fluid and beautiful.
A good example of this is my current TTRPG campaign, which is best described as "Breath of the Wild meets Diablo". Players are rediscovering a post-post apocalyptic world and hunting for treasure. I wanted the system to accomplish several specific goals:
- Emphasize treasure hunting as the core of everything
- Learn all the rules + make a character in less than 15 minutes if someone's helping you
- Deep min/maxing opportunities for theorycrafters (without overwhelming newbies)
To fit these goals, I decided to focus on the "loot" part of the system. Instead of players gaining the vast majority of their power from a single class, players would rely on the loot they got each session to build their characters. If you have a cool suit of armor, you can just put it on and start tanking. If you have a cool wizard's robe, you can put it on and gain bonus spell slots. You don't gain a Fireball spell automatically from levelling up, you've got to find a scroll in a dungeon and you're the only one in the party that is going to know Fireball (unless someone else finds another scroll of the exact same spell, which is very unlikely). You can't cleave unless you have an axe that says "you can Cleave with this axe". It's more like how weapons in dark souls determine your moveset.
This would let me solve all three of my main goals. Loot mattered a huge amount, because it determined your build options. New players weren't overwhelmed because they'd explore different builds as they gained loot, they didn't need to commit to any large 'package' of powers at level one. Min/Maxers players had tons of unique build options every time they played because the loot distribution would never be the same. They could put together temporarily OP builds that would get levelled out in a few sessions and it was highly rewarding.
This also pushed me into a focus on fast-paced tactical combat, because I needed enough design space to make each item feel unique and special. I also knew players would want a lot of opportunities to use their cool new toys, so tactical combat had to be a major focus of the system. This further adjusted the design. The game was focused on exploring ruins, getting loot, and fighting monsters with that loot. I even created a new dice pool attack system (at least I haven't seen it used before) in order to make weapons feel more distinct from one another while minimizing the 'mathiness' of combat.
When I first set the game up, I focused on this element of innovation and ported mechanics from other TTRPGs over for the rest, like the 13th age background system and the 5e death system. However, as the game evolved over hundreds of sessions of testing, these mechanics started getting replaced with custom-crafted mechanics that fit better with they system's unique goals. Each change usually had dozens of sessions of playtesting between them. The improvements were obvious and noticeable, because they were changes to the system.
Hello Thomas, thanks for considering my question! You say you didn't answer it, but I didn't expect you to pull an answer fully-formed from your head. You researched it and presented a few different views on the subject, and how could I ask for more.
I've been meaning to read Vincent's articles which you quoted. I should do that now ;-)
My question was inspired by something that Mark Diaz Truman of Magpie Games said recently. He mentioned (without elaboration) that PbtA is not suitable for all genres; and he gave one example: the military genre, for example Star Trek. He explained it this way: shows like Star Trek are strongly episodic, meaning each episode tells a tight story in a set amount of time (say, one gaming session). This requires some tight scripting or story steering, whereas PbtA gives a lot of control to the players over the direction (and length) of the story. The other hitch is that military stories tend to involve people following orders and set procedures in aid of a common goal, but again PbtA tends to encourage players to break the rules and follow their own agenda. So that was one example, and it got me wondering: what genres is PbtA particularly suited for, not suited for, and where are the boundaries?
Thanks for your interesting newsletter. Looking forward to more. All the best,
Hi Thomas. This is a fun question, and I think it's weird how people struggle to answer it.
Systems obviously matter. If they didn't, nobody would use systems. If any ruleset was equally valid, no one would spend hours reading hundreds of pages of rules or $30+ for a rulebook. We'd all be using a free 1-page PDF ultra-lite system by now, because the barrier to entry would be the lowest for it.
So the first question is really, WHY do systems matter? There are several reasons for this, because systems are more like game engines than games. D&D and PBtA are more like Unity vs Unreal than they are like WoW vs Dark Souls. Different game engines are better at different types of games. Their rulesets are like the physics engine in a game engine. The Frostbite engine is very, very good at making First Person Shooters and not nearly as good at other games. You CAN make a third person RPG in it but it's a lot more work than otherwise, and it won't run as well as an FPS would.
Also like the videogame world, it's much more efficient to use an existing engine than make your own from scratch each time. People warping a PBtA game into a new genre for their home game are doing the equivalent of modding Skyrim. They make a few new moves, some new enemies, change the names and images for some existing ones, etc. PBtA is extremely fluid and expressive, it's easy to make stuff for it. It's a user-friendly system.
However, different TTRPG systems create wildly different experiences. I make a new system for nearly every RPG campaign I run because I have very specific design goals and I want to focus on different elements of the experience. This isn't an efficient use of time, but I enjoy the design process and I also enjoy the feeling of running a system perfectly set up for the experience. It's fluid and beautiful.
A good example of this is my current TTRPG campaign, which is best described as "Breath of the Wild meets Diablo". Players are rediscovering a post-post apocalyptic world and hunting for treasure. I wanted the system to accomplish several specific goals:
- Emphasize treasure hunting as the core of everything
- Learn all the rules + make a character in less than 15 minutes if someone's helping you
- Deep min/maxing opportunities for theorycrafters (without overwhelming newbies)
To fit these goals, I decided to focus on the "loot" part of the system. Instead of players gaining the vast majority of their power from a single class, players would rely on the loot they got each session to build their characters. If you have a cool suit of armor, you can just put it on and start tanking. If you have a cool wizard's robe, you can put it on and gain bonus spell slots. You don't gain a Fireball spell automatically from levelling up, you've got to find a scroll in a dungeon and you're the only one in the party that is going to know Fireball (unless someone else finds another scroll of the exact same spell, which is very unlikely). You can't cleave unless you have an axe that says "you can Cleave with this axe". It's more like how weapons in dark souls determine your moveset.
This would let me solve all three of my main goals. Loot mattered a huge amount, because it determined your build options. New players weren't overwhelmed because they'd explore different builds as they gained loot, they didn't need to commit to any large 'package' of powers at level one. Min/Maxers players had tons of unique build options every time they played because the loot distribution would never be the same. They could put together temporarily OP builds that would get levelled out in a few sessions and it was highly rewarding.
This also pushed me into a focus on fast-paced tactical combat, because I needed enough design space to make each item feel unique and special. I also knew players would want a lot of opportunities to use their cool new toys, so tactical combat had to be a major focus of the system. This further adjusted the design. The game was focused on exploring ruins, getting loot, and fighting monsters with that loot. I even created a new dice pool attack system (at least I haven't seen it used before) in order to make weapons feel more distinct from one another while minimizing the 'mathiness' of combat.
When I first set the game up, I focused on this element of innovation and ported mechanics from other TTRPGs over for the rest, like the 13th age background system and the 5e death system. However, as the game evolved over hundreds of sessions of testing, these mechanics started getting replaced with custom-crafted mechanics that fit better with they system's unique goals. Each change usually had dozens of sessions of playtesting between them. The improvements were obvious and noticeable, because they were changes to the system.
And system matters.
Hello Thomas, thanks for considering my question! You say you didn't answer it, but I didn't expect you to pull an answer fully-formed from your head. You researched it and presented a few different views on the subject, and how could I ask for more.
I've been meaning to read Vincent's articles which you quoted. I should do that now ;-)
My question was inspired by something that Mark Diaz Truman of Magpie Games said recently. He mentioned (without elaboration) that PbtA is not suitable for all genres; and he gave one example: the military genre, for example Star Trek. He explained it this way: shows like Star Trek are strongly episodic, meaning each episode tells a tight story in a set amount of time (say, one gaming session). This requires some tight scripting or story steering, whereas PbtA gives a lot of control to the players over the direction (and length) of the story. The other hitch is that military stories tend to involve people following orders and set procedures in aid of a common goal, but again PbtA tends to encourage players to break the rules and follow their own agenda. So that was one example, and it got me wondering: what genres is PbtA particularly suited for, not suited for, and where are the boundaries?
Thanks for your interesting newsletter. Looking forward to more. All the best,
-John W.