#11: System Matters?

Thomas Manuel

a reader asks a question and I don’t answer it

Hello, everyone! The newsletter hit 350 subscribers last week! I’m quite happy about that. Hope you had a nice thing happen to you this week too.

I. PbtA and the Purpose of Systems

Really interesting comment from reader, John Wilson, this week:

It seems that PbtA can do anything. Any thoughts on what sorts of genres, stories or play DON’T fit well into the PbtA framework, and what types of systems would serve those better?

I love this question. But I’ve also had one of those weeks that kicked my ass. And will probably have only those kind of weeks till the end of the year so this is a compromised version of the grand article that this could’ve been. Another disclaimer: I’m actually not experienced enough with PbtA games to really analyze them with any confidence. If you’d like to hear someone who can do that, check out the Hard Move podcast. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love this question but I can’t answer it. I can answer a completely different question though. Sorry, John. I’m just not that smart.

A few weeks (days? months? years? what is time) ago, I asked a question on reddit and it resulted in a long conversation about PbtA games. My partner-in-conversation, at some point during the exchange, wrote this:

I’ve played a lot of PbtA games, and most of them are not very good! Even a lot of the really big-name ones! A lot of them misunderstand why design elements they borrowed were set up the way they were. A lot of them would be better games if they weren’t PbtA!

Ouch. Their basic point (which they elaborated generously) was that designers saw Apocalypse World and copied all the superficial elements of the game and ignored the core of what made the game good. While I disagree with almost everything they said, the thing I disagree with the most is the idea that someone can comment on the game design process without thinking about the conditions in which the game designer lived and worked. It’s like talking about a science experiment and forgetting that a scientist had to actually conduct it. Or thinking about software and forgetting that a programmer actually had to write it. These are human processes and will be absolutely suffer from the flaws of humans. If humans can be sexist, then science and software can be sexist. That’s just how it goes. If humans are underpaid and overworked, the science and the software they work on is going to reflect that. So when you think about the science and the software, are you criticizing the abstract concept? Or are you criticizing some material aspect of how it was made?

What does this have to do with games? Sorry, bear with me. Vincent Baker, designer of Apocalypse World, wrote a series of articles for PbtA designers. In the series, he talked about how a lot of what we associate with PbtA games – moves, playbooks, 2d6 – are all “accidents of the system”.

His exact words:

These are all features of Apocalypse World, but it’s only that historical accident that makes them prominent in PbtA. When we created Apocalypse World, we made a million design decision that were specific to Apocalypse World, that served Apocalypse World’s very particular cinematic-post-apocalyptic-narrativist needs. None of these are important to PbtA at large. When you’re working on your own PbtA game, you can and should reconsider each one of them, and only keep the ones – if any! – that serve your game.

In the series, Vincent outlines his process and what he thinks is the core of the PbtA system. But it’s more than that: It’s actually how to design a game from scratch. It’s a conceptual walkthrough of his process. And it’s awesome! But I can’t help but feel it’s also not how most designers made their own games.

You know what I think most designers did? “Hey, moves are cool. They’re like these hackable genre-emulation machines. Let’s use them to make new games. And then rely on Meg and Vincent’s existing system to make sure the rest of the game works.” Is this bad? No! Did it result in games that ‘would’ve been better if they weren’t PbtA’? Maybe. But that’s fine?! And the word “better” is doing a lot of work there. How much better? That’s the rub. If a game works as PbtA for a table, that’s good enough, right? If it doesn’t, does it need optimization? Or an overhaul?

In his article on Shattered City, Paul Beakley of the Indie Game Reading Club wrote:

A good friend snarked that UFO Press designs trad games dressed up like PbtA, and I’m not sure that’s totally wrong.

I know exactly what Paul means. These games strike me as games that probably could’ve been better in their own system. I probably will not play them. But hey, Paul is still going to play them and he’ll probably have a good time. And so can you, maybe!

Okay, deep breath, sorry, John, you had a question about what kind of games are a good fit for PbtA. Alright, so I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good answer. I know the answer for Forged in the Dark. In their panel on FitD games, Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little describe how the system works best for “action-driven narratives” with larger-than-life characters that bend the story to their will. These games are rarely about “Will they succeed?” but rather “How?” and “What will it cost?”. This is a combination of action ratings being cinematic verbs (Sneak, Skirmish, Sway) and the Resistance/Stress mechanic.

And what are FitD games not good at? They’re not very good at games about thinking or feeling specific emotions. They don’t usually help you to tell slow burn, meditative stories.

So as John asked, what is PbtA not good at? Does someone have a good answer? Let him and me know here!

II. Listen of the Week

On the Yes Indie’d podcast, Paul Czege talks about “My Life With Master, The Clay That Woke, and his new game Traverser about women ex-soldiers in a solarpunk future.”

Cartoon headshot of Marx Shepherd, with non-binary flag behind.

Paul Czege says something really interesting and provocative about tabletop RPGs in this lovely interview. He says something along the lines of how while he was designing Traverser, he realized how all TTRPGs so far have been about ‘disagreement’. He means that the players disagree about what should happen next and the mechanics sort of assert who is in control at every point. Traverser is about agreement. I really like the sound of that.

III. Links of the Week

V. Small Ads

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As usual, this newsletter was written by me, @chaibypost. I’m a person.

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