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.
That's really cool. Making a new system for every campaign is the most DIY thing I can imagine. I love that.
I think the best thing I read about "systems matter" on twitter was from @hebemachia who said something like, the problem with system matters is that we can't decide on the meaning of "system" and "matters". Which is perfect, no? :D
A simple example is my system I made called Here there be Dragons. I wanted a system that players could:
- Run exciting 1-hour games at work (lunch hour)
- Possible to learn the rules, build a character, and play a satisfying adventure in 1 hour.
- Be a great first system to GM, and make players excited to try out the GM role
- Deliver on a sense of cinematic battles, mixing Shadow of the Colossus with Monster Hunter: everything should be focused on hunting giant, mysterious monsters
Doing this in D&D 5e for example would obviously not work well. My system I made explicitly for this purpose worked so well that we got tons of first time GMs and lots of people got into ongoing TTRPG campaigns in other systems afterward. And we had a lot of fun at lunches.
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,
I respect Mark a lot. He knows a lot more about PbtA than I do. But at the same time, I have to disagree with him here! I'm sure there is a great PbtA Star Trek game out there. "Following orders" sounds like it takes away agency but I don't that needs to be the case.
The issue here is that some people define quality by what something could be and some people define quality by something's inherent value.
For comparison, is it possible to make a great pickle-lightbulb? I mean, it's impressive to make a lightbulb out of a pickle, and maybe if you're really good you can make one that works well enough to read by. But pickles aren't ideal components to make lightbulbs out of. The fact that the light bulb could be *better made* is the point of the criticism.
Here's something PBtA is really bad: tactical combat. Another thing, game-to-game consistency. If you want to run a game where players gain mastery over a deep combat system and feel like tactical masterminds, PBtA isn't a great choice. The huge amount of GM interpretation required also makes it very hard to standardize modules to a set level of challenge. I know many gamers that like to know they triumphed over a dungeon with a set difficulty level through their skill and knowledge against a benchmark of other players having a similar experience, that's not really the point of PBtA games. They're meant to be thematic and expressive, not strict combat systems.
Additionally, the emphasis on "moves" works great when there's a move custom-tailored to what you want to do but there is often a lot of fuzzy debate about where certain moves begin and others end, or which moves to use in which situations. Players often have extremely strong mechanical incentives to desire some interpretations over others as well. Running a PBtA game with a highly difficult adventure where the consequences for failing are dire with players that care deeply about their characters' success can be a recipe for endless arguments and arguing with the Ref.
PBtA is a really cool system with lots of awesome ideas, but it's a good example of why system definitely matters: Because its designer had a specific vision and designed a system that supported those experiential goals. This led them to creative solutions that had other applications as well. Some people used them for good, others just happened to know PBtA already and warped it to do what they wanted. This is the height of evil. Just kidding, it's also great they're doing that - but it's less likely to work well. Probably don't try to build Super Mario Odyssey in Skyrim Creation Kit. It's not going to work well, but it might make people smile anyway.
Well said. There are lots of "playstyles" that PbtA is bad at. It can't do tactical combat, like you said, or problem solving. But I think John was asking about what kind of stories can't it tell. In the sense of fictional genres, etc.
I won't speak for another commenter, but 'genre' is different than 'story' when it comes to games especially. You can tell a thematic narrative-driven mechanically squishy story in any theme, even verging on parody if you like. However, if you want to create the *player experience* of feeling like tactical military squads in a warzone - with explicit objectives and sharp constraints - then PBtA is more limited.
For example, I recently jammed out a system called "Justice For All" with someone over a weekend to give players the experience of being a resistance fighter in a dystopian city ruled by evil supervillains. You were supposed to feel like a tactical infiltration team, carefully planning attacks on bases with military precision.
When we started, I'd planned on using PbtA for system inspiration because I figured it'd be easy to represent super-powers as a series of custom moves. Once we realized we wanted to emphasize this tactical experience so clearly, PbtA was clearly not a good fit for the type of game we wanted to make and the type of story we wanted the players to experience. I'm sure you can think of ways to make PbtA less squishy and more tactically rewarding, but it was better to just embrace grid combat and lean into something that felt more like a mix of Into the Breach and X-Com.
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.
That's really cool. Making a new system for every campaign is the most DIY thing I can imagine. I love that.
I think the best thing I read about "systems matter" on twitter was from @hebemachia who said something like, the problem with system matters is that we can't decide on the meaning of "system" and "matters". Which is perfect, no? :D
A simple example is my system I made called Here there be Dragons. I wanted a system that players could:
- Run exciting 1-hour games at work (lunch hour)
- Possible to learn the rules, build a character, and play a satisfying adventure in 1 hour.
- Be a great first system to GM, and make players excited to try out the GM role
- Deliver on a sense of cinematic battles, mixing Shadow of the Colossus with Monster Hunter: everything should be focused on hunting giant, mysterious monsters
Doing this in D&D 5e for example would obviously not work well. My system I made explicitly for this purpose worked so well that we got tons of first time GMs and lots of people got into ongoing TTRPG campaigns in other systems afterward. And we had a lot of fun at lunches.
Systems matter.
Not really. I think we can define both pretty cleanly.
System: The rules of the game.
Matters: The experience the players (including the GM) is in line with their goals.
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.
Hey John,
I respect Mark a lot. He knows a lot more about PbtA than I do. But at the same time, I have to disagree with him here! I'm sure there is a great PbtA Star Trek game out there. "Following orders" sounds like it takes away agency but I don't that needs to be the case.
Thanks for your question!
The issue here is that some people define quality by what something could be and some people define quality by something's inherent value.
For comparison, is it possible to make a great pickle-lightbulb? I mean, it's impressive to make a lightbulb out of a pickle, and maybe if you're really good you can make one that works well enough to read by. But pickles aren't ideal components to make lightbulbs out of. The fact that the light bulb could be *better made* is the point of the criticism.
Here's something PBtA is really bad: tactical combat. Another thing, game-to-game consistency. If you want to run a game where players gain mastery over a deep combat system and feel like tactical masterminds, PBtA isn't a great choice. The huge amount of GM interpretation required also makes it very hard to standardize modules to a set level of challenge. I know many gamers that like to know they triumphed over a dungeon with a set difficulty level through their skill and knowledge against a benchmark of other players having a similar experience, that's not really the point of PBtA games. They're meant to be thematic and expressive, not strict combat systems.
Additionally, the emphasis on "moves" works great when there's a move custom-tailored to what you want to do but there is often a lot of fuzzy debate about where certain moves begin and others end, or which moves to use in which situations. Players often have extremely strong mechanical incentives to desire some interpretations over others as well. Running a PBtA game with a highly difficult adventure where the consequences for failing are dire with players that care deeply about their characters' success can be a recipe for endless arguments and arguing with the Ref.
PBtA is a really cool system with lots of awesome ideas, but it's a good example of why system definitely matters: Because its designer had a specific vision and designed a system that supported those experiential goals. This led them to creative solutions that had other applications as well. Some people used them for good, others just happened to know PBtA already and warped it to do what they wanted. This is the height of evil. Just kidding, it's also great they're doing that - but it's less likely to work well. Probably don't try to build Super Mario Odyssey in Skyrim Creation Kit. It's not going to work well, but it might make people smile anyway.
Well said. There are lots of "playstyles" that PbtA is bad at. It can't do tactical combat, like you said, or problem solving. But I think John was asking about what kind of stories can't it tell. In the sense of fictional genres, etc.
I won't speak for another commenter, but 'genre' is different than 'story' when it comes to games especially. You can tell a thematic narrative-driven mechanically squishy story in any theme, even verging on parody if you like. However, if you want to create the *player experience* of feeling like tactical military squads in a warzone - with explicit objectives and sharp constraints - then PBtA is more limited.
For example, I recently jammed out a system called "Justice For All" with someone over a weekend to give players the experience of being a resistance fighter in a dystopian city ruled by evil supervillains. You were supposed to feel like a tactical infiltration team, carefully planning attacks on bases with military precision.
When we started, I'd planned on using PbtA for system inspiration because I figured it'd be easy to represent super-powers as a series of custom moves. Once we realized we wanted to emphasize this tactical experience so clearly, PbtA was clearly not a good fit for the type of game we wanted to make and the type of story we wanted the players to experience. I'm sure you can think of ways to make PbtA less squishy and more tactically rewarding, but it was better to just embrace grid combat and lean into something that felt more like a mix of Into the Breach and X-Com.
I probably misunderstood him or have misquoted him ;-)