saddestrobots ,
@saddestrobots@jorts.horse avatar

🔥 game design hot take:

every PBTA game that only defines the "10+" and "7-9" results for moves (but leaves "6-" blank, making it a GM thing) is catastrophically misshapen

saddestrobots OP ,
@saddestrobots@jorts.horse avatar

why?

• you are piling more work on the GM! — yeah, sure, they've got their principles to work with, but you are straight-up omitting one half of the stakes (even just adding "on a 6-, it's really bad" is something)

• you are neglecting one of the main ways to set risk/reward for moves, e.g. moves that still give you something mechanically when they fail

sexybenfranklin ,
@sexybenfranklin@smores.town avatar

@saddestrobots I don't know if it's really too difficult to look at what the success conditions are and say "what does this look like when it fails".

saddestrobots OP ,
@saddestrobots@jorts.horse avatar

@sexybenfranklin
opinionated follow-up:

if i'm doing that i should toss out Moves and do classic Intent-And-Task opposed rolls!

😈

sexybenfranklin ,
@sexybenfranklin@smores.town avatar

@saddestrobots well, I think that the people that are going to run a PbtA game are probably, by and large, more adept at improvisation in that realm than the people that they are statistically most likely to be running a PbtA game for, people who only play 5e but want to check out that Avatar game their friend kickstarted. For that reason, I understand weighting the writing towards fleshing out successful outcomes, which are more player involved.

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