Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.) -

[ZMOT]

The reason PbtA is shit is that when you're working with 2d6 as a task resolution, there is no way to have a subtle impact on odds. +1 or -1 is taking a sledgehammer to the overall probabilities. For D20, +/- 1 is a minor adjustment to difficulty. Fantasy Flight's system, add or remove or upgrade or downgrade dice types, again, minor adjustments. Warhammer Fantasy/40K, percentile-based so you can literally adjust difficulties to an exact percent. It lets the GM work out a very precise reflection of how challenging a given opponent/scenario is supposed to be, and how that fits with a character's expertise.

PbtA on the other hand gives basically no fucks about any of that because what it's aiming for is to force people into shitty half-successes. There's a reason that a big swath of the result probability is, "Well you kinda succeeded, but also your dick just exploded." It gives a semblance of depth because oh haha the GM won't say no but now you have to negotiate how some shitty thing happened to you too, isn't that just so interesting? And I brought up genesys for a reason, because on the surface the whole advantage/threat mechanic's the same, right? But in genesys the players have tools on hand to try to decrease the odds of getting threats on their rolls. In PbtA, there's basically nothing. You could stack every possible advantage, but whoops!, Einstein rolled that 4, so while technically he was able to solve that basic math problem, his dick exploded.

imo the more you get away from RAW and crunch the less important the math becomes and it's more about the ability of the GM (and player) to fudge things in the right way. like einstein's dick exploded and the bloody chunks covered up the right parts of the formula on the board to make it easy to solve. it's less about the absolute resolution and more to nudge you in the direction to "narrate" with some pointers (ofc you could argue if the math isn't as important why have it in the first place, but most people can't improv or freeform roleplay on the fly or even want to).
with that in mind just remember in what context you mostly hear about ptba, good luck getting a proper narrative game going with people who have a mental breakdown after hearing the wrong pronoun, same way you can't expect a good version of anything when it's about the agenda first and foremost.

it's basically the opposite of 5e which is so trimmed down and neutered that any tard can run it, let alone play it, yet there are people that exactly want it that way because it provides the "comfort" of a rigid system - not that I mind, to each his own.

 

[Big Nasty]

Well, thank you. Most informative.

2D6 task resolution and taking damage to stats seems like it has been lifted from old-school Traveller.

 

[Snekposter]

Its been covered by @Fictional Character but:
Firstly the PBTA ruleset isn't as bad as the minimal-effort offshoots would have you believe. Its not great, but its not complete shit either. What makes it complete shit is people just slapping "PBTA!" on a PDF that involves talking and rolling 2d6s.

Secondly, I will preface this by saying I personally fucking hate "Narrative" games, and I really hate the ones with shitty resolution mechanics, but I can respect that are people out there who like them and think that's fine. I will combo that by saying I absolutely loathe "follow these 12 steps to make a creative story!" creativity guides.
PBTA is an unholy combination of all three, and for a traditional game sesssion, sucks at both mechanics and narrative.

We'll start with Mechanics.
Look at the base resolution mechanic; Roll 2d6. 1-6, you fail. 7-9, you succeed "at a cost". 10-12, you succeed exactly as you say - its on the GM to tell you before you roll if what you're saying you do is impossible. On a personal note, I dislike systems that directly put the GM on a confrontational stance with the players with no basis to arbitrate against player arguments other than "cause I said so", especially when the subject matter is weird lands or people with extraordinary abilities, since you don't have "reality" to fall back on. Those debates usually just turns into unfun arguments and players feeling shutdown by GM fiat if they don't get their way, or feel like the GM is being spiteful when something goes wrong for them later on. Maybe you have a group of people who just say "Oh, OK, GM said so, that's fair" - in which case I want their names and contact info so I can verify, and also steal your elfgame friends.
Also I dislike the "happens as a you say" resolution- If your bard walks up to the King and you use your diplomacy to tell him you want him to suck your dick, rolling a 20 does not get you royal blowie, it gets you the King not immediately ordering your arrest and execution.

Lets look at a 2d6 probability table (formatting is probably going to get fucked up and I'm too lazy to tablize properly so it won't get fucked up;just google one if you really care and want to follow along)

# = =< >=
2 2.77 2.77 100
3 5.55 8.33 97.22
4 8.33 16.66 91.66
5 11.11 27.77 83.33
6 13.88 41.66 72.22
7 16.66 58.33 58.33
8 13.88 72.22 41.66
9 11.11 83.33 27.77
10 8.33 91.66 16.66
11 5.55 97.22 8.33
12 2.77 100.00 2.77

So from the table, you have about a 17% chance of your action doing off without a hitch (For d20 purists, roughly rolling 18 or better). You've got a 58% (~9 or better) of your action succeeding in general. Only a 42% of complete failure (~8 or below) and the GM gets to fuck with you.
You also usually have Stats of some kind offering a bonus/penalty usually -1 to +2, and often some abilities will give you a +1 for a future roll. That means if you are using something you've got a strong stat in you're looking at 83% odds of success (~3 or better ) and if you line up a +1 bonus from an ability, you're looking at 92% odds of success (~2 or better). If you can scupper an extra +1 from somewhere, like relationships, you're at 97% odds of success, so even better than "Don't roll a one" in d20 land.
On the other side, if you have a -2, your odds of unmitigated success are 3% (So worse than needing to roll a 20) and complete failure rises to 72%. (~14 or better)

Most of the PBTA spawn also include an advantage/disadvantage mechanic, and I'm not even going to bother with the probability there.

This is a long winded autistic way to say that PBTA, like a lot of bell-curve systems, when things go bad they go bad in a big way.
Unlike other 2d6 systems I've seen, PBTA-spawn lean heavily on using pluses and minuses, and constantly adding or removing them. Its got probability scale issues and usually no warning to GMs about how much more powerful a +2 vs. a +1 is (or how much more harmful a -2 vs -1 is)

Because PBTA is primarily a narrative game, it uses a lot of open-ended descriptions for when things apply, including the 'healing' mechanic. In PBTA-spawn, you usually don't have hitpoints, you take damage to your abilities as negative status. You take all the damage check boxes, and you are defeated. So you can relieve your character of these status effects by performing narrative actions; i.e. Remove Fearful condition by being brave in the face of danger.
Again, no real distinction on "Brave" or "Danger" and limited guidelines. This is ripe for arguments and slap fights, and the arguments come down to the GM deciding if they felt that was brave or not.
Its a horrible implementation of Narrative interacting with the Mechanics.


On that note, now lets go over how they fuck with the narrative side of the house.
PBTA-spawn is driven by "moves", both players and GM. There are usually base moves, "Talk to someone" "fight someone" "interact with something" - and then moves based on class. Some of the moves have a "pick from this list" as a result - i.e. if you have a "Punch a dude in th dick move" you might have on 10+ select two from the following list. 7-9 pick one.
- Pisses blood for next week
- Voice becomes high pitched until
- Gets a boner
- Takes -1 to all penis-related moves

You're limited by the choices, some of them leave a lot to interpretation, and not all to the choices are equal, some are clearly better than others. It'd better to just give the Move the best options and say "you can also swap out for this".
On the GM side, the GM "moves" are basically just creative writing prompts "Take their resources", "reveal an uncomfortable truth", etc. Its like one of those books that purports to teach a structured approach to creative writing.

PBTA-spawn don't have turns. Its based heavily on "narrative interuption"; i.e. the GM says what's happening and the players jump in to change the story. Players go when they shout they do a thing, so if you've got shy players (or a particularly enthusiastic player) you can have people getting shut out because they aren't quick enough on the draw.

tl;dr You're getting the worst of both unbalanced mechanics and poorly thought through narrative.


I'll give PBTA some damning praise. I appreciate the way it encourages (read:forces) player character interaction and places a lot of mechanical emphasis on character (and usually NPC) interaction. Narrative games are not my jam, but I appreciate the way the docs (at least of the main line releases) directly encourage the GM to engage with players and encourage them to drive the action. I do like their "Damage manifests as increasing penalties" system, but feel it not properly balanced and leads too quickly to failure cascades.

In short, if you don't care about the fucky mechanics and just want to do a story telling game with your group that involves rolling dice, there is a PBTA-spawn called 'Simple World' which is the closest thing I've seen to a "SRD" for PBTA, and you can just roll your own Lesbian Warrior adventure without needing to give money to some soy-faced feminist ally for his fetish material.
If you want combat to come down to a "and here is how I killed all the monsters", PBTA excels here (and to be clear, I'm not being facetious. Sometimes you want combat with a little crunch ,to exist but for it to be quick and secondary to the narrative).
If you want a traditional hack-cast-slash, PBTA is terrible. And if you try to bring up Dungeon World I will judge you.

I'll now turn it over to @Adamska to re-say most of what I just typed, but competently.

That was a long but informative read, and makes me damn glad I suggested Storyteller as a base to my buddy for his homebrew system.

 

[Ghostse]

like you said some people like narrative games, and after that it depends what they bring to the table. [ ... ] the same probably applies to ptba, if not more since it gets heavily abused by woketards and it's apparently easy to misunderstand what it's for which makes the impression people have of it quite bad.
[ ... ]

imo the more you get away from RAW and crunch the less important the math becomes and it's more about the ability of the GM (and player) to fudge things in the right way. like einstein's dick exploded and the bloody chunks covered up the right parts of the formula on the board to make it easy to solve. it's less about the absolute resolution and more to nudge you in the direction to "narrate" with some pointers (ofc you could argue if the math isn't as important why have it in the first place, but most people can't improv or freeform roleplay on the fly or even want to).
with that in mind just remember in what context you mostly hear about ptba, good luck getting a proper narrative game going with people who have a mental breakdown after hearing the wrong pronoun, same way you can't expect a good version of anything when it's about the agenda first and foremost.

I've run a few PBTA-adjacents and... a while back, before the PBTA nonsense, I watched a stream of a of Dungeon World game, was slowly letting myself be convinced to run a game, and then read the SRD until I got to to the part of the the GM moves, and promptly noped out and piped to the whole thing to /dev/null.
Dungeon World has more traditional systems that make it better for hack-cast-slash (real hitpoints [so no bullshit narrative healing], spells, etc) but it is even worse on the "Follow this formula to tell a creative, original story!" aspect, where every adventure is put into a 3 to 4 act narrative arc called a Front. Literally, the rules tell you to to choose 2-3 scenes and run them.

https://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/gamemastering/fronts/

As I said in my spergpost, I don't like narrative games - so my opinion on what's a mostly narrative game should be weighed accordingly - but PBTA takes the worst things of story games with the worst part of crunchy systems, and further fucks the duck by trying to legislate creative writing to a table. Like you said above, why even bother with the dice if its just about telling a story? which is what the writers clearly wanted to do.

I think woketards like playing PBTA because as long as the party cooperates with each other, unless the DM is a massive dick truly lusting for player death, its virtually impossible for player characters to die unless they choose to do so in some epic, noble fashion - you get narrative healing if your party helps you out; they like running PBTA because there is a base 85% chance on any action they get to 'touch' the narrative as either delivering the consequences of failure or adding "costs" to a success. There's also no monster/threat stats to track, most things operate on the "you said it hits, and it hits" model, letting the players try to post-facto try to mitigate the damage.

OTOH, a good thing is you can also shift "combat" to places more than just physical fights. You can have the Big Bad effectively merely convince one/some/all of the PCs that their plan is the best way forward without it being a physical confrontation.

PbtA on the other hand gives basically no fucks about any of that because what it's aiming for is to force people into shitty half-successes. There's a reason that a big swath of the result probability is, "Well you kinda succeeded, but also your dick just exploded." It gives a semblance of depth because oh haha the GM won't say no but now you have to negotiate how some shitty thing happened to you too, isn't that just so interesting? And I brought up genesys for a reason, because on the surface the whole advantage/threat mechanic's the same, right? But in genesys the players have tools on hand to try to decrease the odds of getting threats on their rolls. In PbtA, there's basically nothing. You could stack every possible advantage, but whoops!, Einstein rolled that 4, so while technically he was able to solve that basic math problem, his dick exploded.

That's a better way of saying what I was trying to say before. The Probability is all over the place because the goal is to force your into those TOTES GRITTY AND MATURE half-successes, without giving players or GMs a good way to actually tune probability to reflect unique players or unique circumstances. Sure, the GM can narratively tune things, but there's no consistent measuring stick since their isn't any account for difference for result if you rolled a 7, 8, or 9.

2d6 lacks granularity, and unlike a system like Maze Rats that embraces this lack to make actions resolve quicker (and even then expand into 3d6 and 4d6 for thing with more options), PBTA clearly wants subtlety without wanting to put in the work to make the probability reflect it (because math is racist and transphobic).

 

[Adamska]

Its been covered by @Fictional Character but:
Firstly the PBTA ruleset isn't as bad as the minimal-effort offshoots would have you believe. Its not great, but its not complete shit either. What makes it complete shit is people just slapping "PBTA!" on a PDF that involves talking and rolling 2d6s.

Secondly, I will preface this by saying I personally fucking hate "Narrative" games, and I really hate the ones with shitty resolution mechanics, but I can respect that are people out there who like them and think that's fine. I will combo that by saying I absolutely loathe "follow these 12 steps to make a creative story!" creativity guides.
PBTA is an unholy combination of all three, and for a traditional game sesssion, sucks at both mechanics and narrative.

We'll start with Mechanics.
Look at the base resolution mechanic; Roll 2d6. 1-6, you fail. 7-9, you succeed "at a cost". 10-12, you succeed exactly as you say - its on the GM to tell you before you roll if what you're saying you do is impossible. On a personal note, I dislike systems that directly put the GM on a confrontational stance with the players with no basis to arbitrate against player arguments other than "cause I said so", especially when the subject matter is weird lands or people with extraordinary abilities, since you don't have "reality" to fall back on. Those debates usually just turns into unfun arguments and players feeling shutdown by GM fiat if they don't get their way, or feel like the GM is being spiteful when something goes wrong for them later on. Maybe you have a group of people who just say "Oh, OK, GM said so, that's fair" - in which case I want their names and contact info so I can verify, and also steal your elfgame friends.
Also I dislike the "happens as a you say" resolution- If your bard walks up to the King and you use your diplomacy to tell him you want him to suck your dick, rolling a 20 does not get you royal blowie, it gets you the King not immediately ordering your arrest and execution.

Lets look at a 2d6 probability table (formatting is probably going to get fucked up and I'm too lazy to tablize properly so it won't get fucked up;just google one if you really care and want to follow along)

# = =< >=
2 2.77 2.77 100
3 5.55 8.33 97.22
4 8.33 16.66 91.66
5 11.11 27.77 83.33
6 13.88 41.66 72.22
7 16.66 58.33 58.33
8 13.88 72.22 41.66
9 11.11 83.33 27.77
10 8.33 91.66 16.66
11 5.55 97.22 8.33
12 2.77 100.00 2.77

So from the table, you have about a 17% chance of your action doing off without a hitch (For d20 purists, roughly rolling 18 or better). You've got a 58% (~9 or better) of your action succeeding in general. Only a 42% of complete failure (~8 or below) and the GM gets to fuck with you.
You also usually have Stats of some kind offering a bonus/penalty usually -1 to +2, and often some abilities will give you a +1 for a future roll. That means if you are using something you've got a strong stat in you're looking at 83% odds of success (~3 or better ) and if you line up a +1 bonus from an ability, you're looking at 92% odds of success (~2 or better). If you can scupper an extra +1 from somewhere, like relationships, you're at 97% odds of success, so even better than "Don't roll a one" in d20 land.
On the other side, if you have a -2, your odds of unmitigated success are 3% (So worse than needing to roll a 20) and complete failure rises to 72%. (~14 or better)

Most of the PBTA spawn also include an advantage/disadvantage mechanic, and I'm not even going to bother with the probability there.

This is a long winded autistic way to say that PBTA, like a lot of bell-curve systems, when things go bad they go bad in a big way.
Unlike other 2d6 systems I've seen, PBTA-spawn lean heavily on using pluses and minuses, and constantly adding or removing them. Its got probability scale issues and usually no warning to GMs about how much more powerful a +2 vs. a +1 is (or how much more harmful a -2 vs -1 is)

Because PBTA is primarily a narrative game, it uses a lot of open-ended descriptions for when things apply, including the 'healing' mechanic. In PBTA-spawn, you usually don't have hitpoints, you take damage to your abilities as negative status. You take all the damage check boxes, and you are defeated. So you can relieve your character of these status effects by performing narrative actions; i.e. Remove Fearful condition by being brave in the face of danger.
Again, no real distinction on "Brave" or "Danger" and limited guidelines. This is ripe for arguments and slap fights, and the arguments come down to the GM deciding if they felt that was brave or not.
Its a horrible implementation of Narrative interacting with the Mechanics.


On that note, now lets go over how they fuck with the narrative side of the house.
PBTA-spawn is driven by "moves", both players and GM. There are usually base moves, "Talk to someone" "fight someone" "interact with something" - and then moves based on class. Some of the moves have a "pick from this list" as a result - i.e. if you have a "Punch a dude in th dick move" you might have on 10+ select two from the following list. 7-9 pick one.
- Pisses blood for next week
- Voice becomes high pitched until
- Gets a boner
- Takes -1 to all penis-related moves

You're limited by the choices, some of them leave a lot to interpretation, and not all to the choices are equal, some are clearly better than others. It'd better to just give the Move the best options and say "you can also swap out for this".
On the GM side, the GM "moves" are basically just creative writing prompts "Take their resources", "reveal an uncomfortable truth", etc. Its like one of those books that purports to teach a structured approach to creative writing.

PBTA-spawn don't have turns. Its based heavily on "narrative interuption"; i.e. the GM says what's happening and the players jump in to change the story. Players go when they shout they do a thing, so if you've got shy players (or a particularly enthusiastic player) you can have people getting shut out because they aren't quick enough on the draw.

tl;dr You're getting the worst of both unbalanced mechanics and poorly thought through narrative.


I'll give PBTA some damning praise. I appreciate the way it encourages (read:forces) player character interaction and places a lot of mechanical emphasis on character (and usually NPC) interaction. Narrative games are not my jam, but I appreciate the way the docs (at least of the main line releases) directly encourage the GM to engage with players and encourage them to drive the action. I do like their "Damage manifests as increasing penalties" system, but feel it not properly balanced and leads too quickly to failure cascades.

In short, if you don't care about the fucky mechanics and just want to do a story telling game with your group that involves rolling dice, there is a PBTA-spawn called 'Simple World' which is the closest thing I've seen to a "SRD" for PBTA, and you can just roll your own Lesbian Warrior adventure without needing to give money to some soy-faced feminist ally for his fetish material.
If you want combat to come down to a "and here is how I killed all the monsters", PBTA excels here (and to be clear, I'm not being facetious. Sometimes you want combat with a little crunch ,to exist but for it to be quick and secondary to the narrative).
If you want a traditional hack-cast-slash, PBTA is terrible. And if you try to bring up Dungeon World I will judge you.

I'll now turn it over to @Adamska to re-say most of what I just typed, but competently.

Honestly, you covered everything that I'd cover. You got the part where you almost never can actually succeed on a roll without some issue occuring. That's a mechanic so bad that when reduced to its stupidest level, it means you can actually struggle and get into a massive fight over making a sandwich. Why? Because getting 10 or better is superhard on 2d6. There's a reason I much prefer dice pools and successes if you're going to do something like that.

You also covered how the system basically forces the DM to complete it. Your complications will either be you as the DM making tables for when it happens, or in my case make shit up on the fly. The former is extra work you shouldn't have to do for a narrative. The latter can result in you dicking your players.

You also got how the system basically forces you to take specific "actions", like I'm playing some Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy or some shit. To me, that's actually legit stupid, since only having that select set cripples what you can do, since your actions are just based on your "moves". You can't change and evolve like you can in other systems.

What you missed include how the system is very prone to killing characters just by breaking them emotionally. Al from my podcast said it best: You can kill people in PbtA games by calling them faggot enough times. This is... well it's something.

I also enjoy narrative games; I like the ST system which does anything you'd want for a narrative roleplaying game but better in every way. That's because the crunch is solid and simple and clear cut for all players; it gives you abilities, strengths, customizable builds, and defines basic things like initiative. It also equally applies penalties based on injuries in a smarter way. It lastly assumes you the player have some magical brain creativity and you can decide what to do; not input a move from the imaginary machine.

PbtA is the poor man's ST, and most of the time only the shittest of the shit designers use it.

Ya did a lot better than I'd do on analyzing that; I usually save that crunching for the Diopsid or Tech since my big thing is setting, basic design, and concept usually.

And as for why these idiots like the system... it's free to use and simple. They don't like any form of complexity whatsoever and crunch is haaaaardd.

 

[anti SJW]

Well, thank you. Most informative.

2D6 task resolution and taking damage to stats seems like it has been lifted from old-school Traveller.

Did they also take the old-school Traveller rule that you could die during character creation?

 

[Ghostse]

You also got how the system basically forces you to take specific "actions", like I'm playing some Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy or some shit. To me, that's actually legit stupid, since only having that select set cripples what you can do, since your actions are just based on your "moves". You can't change and evolve like you can in other systems.

Small quibble, in the 'official' system I worked with (and a few others), there was limited player progression. It mostly took on the form of new moves or new options for moves, or additional NPC 'ties'.
My Simple World custom didn't have a 'level up' mechanic because I didn't want to spent time on it when I (rightly) surmised it was unlikely there would a second adventure. But I believe Simple World had suggested rules for progression, but usually it was only lvl 5 or so.
I don't want to belabor the point because no one should play any PBTA long enough to progress a character (and also the progression system was sort of dumb, which was you gained XP when you took damage) but just FYI.

What you missed include how the system is very prone to killing characters just by breaking them emotionally. Al from my podcast said it best: You can kill people in PbtA games by calling them faggot enough times. This is... well it's something.

Really? Maybe I'm just too nice, but in my 1 and (Third? Half?) real games, and a handful of white-boarded solo scenarios to try to see if the mechanics could just get a quick fix (spoiler: they can't) the problem I had was it was nearly impossible to kill the players because of special moves and all the narrative heals that party members could do on/for each other. Granted I also didn't "deal damage" on a low-peril roll, or usually deal damage on a 7-9 unless it was against a target that could 'hit back'.

But yes, if no one helped, you could just call them faggot to death. ("Make them question their competency" or someshit)

I also enjoy narrative games; I like the ST system which does anything you'd want for a narrative roleplaying game but better in every way. That's because the crunch is solid and simple and clear cut for all players; it gives you abilities, strengths, customizable builds, and defines basic things like initiative. It also equally applies penalties based on injuries in a smarter way. It lastly assumes you the player have some magical brain creativity and you can decide what to do; not input a move from the imaginary machine.

Not casting too much shade on narrative games, and I've heard good things about ST, just not my jam. I tend to be absolute shit at adjusting bonuses/penalties on the fly, so I like having a nice solid frame work to work my decisions around, and a way for them to call me on a bad (or just perceived bad) ruling that isnt just "nuh-uh! I would to know that!" "No you wouldn't!" "Yes I would!"

Ya did a lot better than I'd do on analyzing that; I usually save that crunching for the Diopsid or Tech since my big thing is setting, basic design, and concept usually.

Well, thank you.
I happened to have numbers handy. When I was trying to tweak Simple World after the abysmal failure of Masks (a superhero/teen titans PbtA clone), I was crunching the numbers trying to get things adjusted to a "Harsh but fair" probability since there is fuck-all in the PBTA resources about when, how, and how often you should do things handing out things like circumstance bonuses or how powerful they should be, and trying to tweak the effects of a status effect. I concluded no one who understood numbers had been anywhere near their resolution mechanics.

All my efforts it did was give the game a veneer of complexity by making it complicated, not deep.

I tried to give a "Resource Pool" (basically use abilities and do mission prep to get a pool of one-time-use counters to boost a roll), I tried adding more granularity to the dice results, along with shrinking the 10-12 and 2-6 ranges and breaking the 7-9 into 9-11 and 5-8. I even tried "Cataning" it with the unmitigated "GM fucks with you" only being on a 7 - which at that point I realized to leverage one that, I was going to be moving to 2d6 with non-sequential numbers... and that's the point you need to accept the machines are doing the breathing and you need to do the merciful thing, which is let go and simply mark down the time.
(I did not try dice pools)

And as for why these idiots like the system... it's free to use and simple. They don't like any form of complexity whatsoever and crunch is haaaaardd.

Pretty much.

Honestly, you covered everything that I'd cover. You got the part where you almost never can actually succeed on a roll without some issue occuring. That's a mechanic so bad that when reduced to its stupidest level, it means you can actually struggle and get into a massive fight over making a sandwich. Why? Because getting 10 or better is superhard on 2d6. There's a reason I much prefer dice pools and successes if you're going to do something like that.

I like how Maze Rats handles this sort of thing, where every character is considered a seasoned adventurer, and if a seasoned adventurer could do it reliably, they can just do it. If its something with some risk, its 10+ on 2d6, but its easy as hell to get advantage and tilt the odds in their favor heavily.
It removes some of the more fun edge cases, but since the system is meant to be streamed lined (and lethal to characters), I'm ok with it.

But yeah, if you want to do a more a reasonable implementation of "Everything and not just combat is combat" resolution mechanics, dice pools and successes is a better way to go.

Did they also take the old-school Traveller rule that you could die during character creation?

Sort of. Its not in the rules, but for the intended audience for most of these there is a 41% chance the player will die before they create a character.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

I tried to give a "Resource Pool" (basically use abilities and do mission prep to get a pool of one-time-use counters to boost a roll), I tried adding more granularity to the dice results, along with shrinking the 10-12 and 2-6 ranges and breaking the 7-9 into 9-11 and 5-8. I even tried "Cataning" it with the unmitigated "GM fucks with you" only being on a 7 - which at that point I realized to leverage one that, I was going to be moving to 2d6 with non-sequential numbers... and that's the point you need to accept the machines are doing the breathing and you need to do the merciful thing, which is let go and simply mark down the time.
(I did not try dice pools)

Addressing the bolded part, but that's not a good idea in a system using 2d6. 7 is the most common result on 2d6. Even HoL (remember HoL?) didn't buttfuck you unless you rolled an absolutely abysmal critical failure (snake eyes, I believe).

 

[Ghostse]

Addressing the bolded part, but that's not a good idea in a system using 2d6. 7 is the most common result on 2d6. Even HoL (remember HoL?) didn't buttfuck you unless you rolled an absolutely abysmal critical failure (snake eyes, I believe).

It was a failure of an idea to try to salvage a bad system but you seem to misunderstand:

RAW was 2-6 is unmitigated failure. 7 has a ~17% chance, 2-6 has a ~42% chance.

The idea was 7 would be the sole "GM fucks you, sans lube" number, making the system more gentle (but feel nastier since, as you point out, it is the most common result).
2-5 would occupy a "No, but.." range where you fail but with reduced consquences, 6&8 would be "Yes, but" territory, where 6 was a success with a major set back, 8 was a success with a minor set back, 9 to 11 was "Success with a set back only under certain conditions, like attacking a powerful enemy" and 12 was the only unmitigated success. I realized that sequential numbers were not putting the probabilities where they should go, to say nothing of trying to figure out how bonuses/penalties would go. To get the probabilies adjusted would be non-sequential result blocks. And as I said, at that point you've got to accept this just is not a salvagable system.

 

[Corn Flakes]

It was a failure of an idea to try to salvage a bad system but you seem to misunderstand:

RAW was 2-6 is unmitigated failure. 7 has a ~17% chance, 2-6 has a ~42% chance.

The idea was 7 would be the sole "GM fucks you, sans lube" number, making the system more gentle (but feel nastier since, as you point out, it is the most common result).
2-5 would occupy a "No, but.." range where you fail but with reduced consquences, 6&8 would be "Yes, but" territory, where 6 was a success with a major set back, 8 was a success with a minor set back, 9 to 11 was "Success with a set back only under certain conditions, like attacking a powerful enemy" and 12 was the only unmitigated success. I realized that sequential numbers were not putting the probabilities where they should go, to say nothing of trying to figure out how bonuses/penalties would go. To get the probabilies adjusted would be non-sequential result blocks. And as I said, at that point you've got to accept this just is not a salvagable system.

I commend your attempts at polishing that turd. I would have run out of patience halfway through trying to understand what the intent was.

Upon reading what everybody has posted so far, PbtA feels less like a "standard" RPG and more like a game of cops-and-robbers with sadistic arbitration. "I shot you!" "No, I shot you first!" "Now now, children. Roll off and-- ooh, you two shot each other simultaneously, too bad."

 

[Techpriest]

That was a long but informative read, and makes me damn glad I suggested Storyteller as a base to my buddy for his homebrew system.

The storyteller system (at least in the chronicles variant) is a very intuitive one. A simple scale and dice pools means you can model a lot of things without going too crazy. You can further modify things by adjusting dice rules such as the target number and exploding dice or dice that subtract from the total successes.

 

[BScCollateral]

Did they also take the old-school Traveller rule that you could die during character creation?

That's what I hate about modern role-playing -- namby-pamby "hold my hand" rules that let you survive character generation. Game masters who do that shit probably have them start with oxygen.

 

[ZMOT]

Small quibble, in the 'official' system I worked with (and a few others), there was limited player progression. It mostly took on the form of new moves or new options for moves, or additional NPC 'ties'.
My Simple World custom didn't have a 'level up' mechanic because I didn't want to spent time on it when I (rightly) surmised it was unlikely there would a second adventure. But I believe Simple World had suggested rules for progression, but usually it was only lvl 5 or so.
I don't want to belabor the point because no one should play any PBTA long enough to progress a character (and also the progression system was sort of dumb, which was you gained XP when you took damage) but just FYI.

I've never seen anyone even considering ptba for campaign play. that would be like trying to run a high-level campaign in dnd.

Honestly, you covered everything that I'd cover. You got the part where you almost never can actually succeed on a roll without some issue occuring. That's a mechanic so bad that when reduced to its stupidest level, it means you can actually struggle and get into a massive fight over making a sandwich. Why? Because getting 10 or better is superhard on 2d6. There's a reason I much prefer dice pools and successes if you're going to do something like that.

and in d20 you can roll a 1 while making a sandwich and accidentally cut of your hand. every system has stupid shit like that, just because there's a related skill doesn't mean it applies every time, and then it comes down to simulation vs roleplay where someone can inevitably scream about fudge with "no no, he HAS to test for it!11" if the GM skips it.

and for the record, massive fight over making a sandwich sounds metal af. I wouldn't even see that as a negative, any sensible GM would just wave making a sandwich through if he wants to, but if he wants the chance for LOL WHAT happening (or however you want to explain the dice roll) the option is there.

 

[Corn Flakes]

and in d20 you can roll a 1 while making a sandwich and accidentally cut of your hand.

That's just a house rule. A 1 while making a sandwich simply results in a 1 + Stat + Proficiency (if 5e) + Skill result. Assuming your average sandwich is a Very Easy task (DC 5), your average Level 1 adventurer (14 Dex, +2 proficiency) would never fail at making a sandwich.

A 1 is only an automatic failure (not even a critical failure) on attack rolls. You could consider a 1 on a death save to be a critical failure but it's the only such rule in 5e. And 3.5e as well, if memory serves.

 

[Randall Fragg]

That's just a house rule. A 1 while making a sandwich simply results in a 1 + Stat + Proficiency (if 5e) + Skill result. Assuming your average sandwich is a Very Easy task (DC 5), your average Level 1 adventurer (14 Dex, +2 proficiency) would never fail at making a sandwich.

A 1 is only an automatic failure (not even a critical failure) on attack rolls. You could consider a 1 on a death save to be a critical failure but it's the only such rule in 5e. And 3.5e as well, if memory serves.

That’s assuming that you even have them roll for it. If a player is making a sandwich in a well stocked kitchen or camp, they shouldn’t even roll for it, because there’s no real chance of failure (unless it would be really funny to watch them set the tent on fire trying to make a grilled cheese sandwich).
Now, if a PC was trying to make a sandwich with limited ingredients, or without a proper workspace, or while being shot at, that would require a roll.

 

[Brain Problems]

and in d20 you can roll a 1 while making a sandwich and accidentally cut of your hand. every system has stupid shit like that, just because there's a related skill doesn't mean it applies every time, and then it comes down to simulation vs roleplay where someone can inevitably scream about fudge with "no no, he HAS to test for it!11" if the GM skips it.

and for the record, massive fight over making a sandwich sounds metal af. I wouldn't even see that as a negative, any sensible GM would just wave making a sandwich through if he wants to, but if he wants the chance for LOL WHAT happening (or however you want to explain the dice roll) the option is there.

Not sure if this is what you're referring to or not but something that has driven me crazy in my years of D&D are DMs obsessed with checks for basic shit that you would imagine a seasoned adventurer would be able to do. I get it's kinda funny to roll a check on making a sandwich or even possibly (UNDER SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES) important, but I've always resented pointless ability checks that exist only for dice-chucking purposes and to let the DM fuck with me because I rolled poorly climbing a ladder at lvl 5.

 

[Dunsparce]

That's just a house rule. A 1 while making a sandwich simply results in a 1 + Stat + Proficiency (if 5e) + Skill result. Assuming your average sandwich is a Very Easy task (DC 5), your average Level 1 adventurer (14 Dex, +2 proficiency) would never fail at making a sandwich.

A 1 is only an automatic failure (not even a critical failure) on attack rolls. You could consider a 1 on a death save to be a critical failure but it's the only such rule in 5e. And 3.5e as well, if memory serves.

While I am only familiar with 3.5, only Attack Rolls and Saving Throws can auto-fail on a 1 or auto-succeed on a 20. For Ability checks, Skill checks, and most other d20 rolls what you roll on the die doesn't matter, only the resulting number after all modifiers are added. As stated previously in this thread, if you get a certain skill check high enough, you don't even have to roll because even a 1 would succeed just with the modifiers on their own.

Also critical failure/success tables are entirely homebrew, and in practice they are more a pain than anything, and in 3.5 in particular mostly punish Martials(Especially ones with sub-optimal battle styles that use a bunch of weaker attacks like archery and two-weapon fighting) who are already significantly weaker than casters, who can just prepare spells that don't require the caster to roll any d20's at all to avoid the table entirely.

 

[Ghostse]

Not sure if this is what you're referring to or not but something that has driven me crazy in my years of D&D are DMs obsessed with checks for basic shit that you would imagine a seasoned adventurer would be able to do. I get it's kinda funny to roll a check on making a sandwich or even possibly (UNDER SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES) important, but I've always resented pointless ability checks that exist only for dice-chucking purposes and to let the DM fuck with me because I rolled poorly climbing a ladder at lvl 5.

As @Corn Flakes and @Dunsparce pointed out, a natural one is usually supposed to only be an automatic failure on an attack.

I had the fortune of having "You have a 5% chance of forgetting how to breathe" pointed out to me early in my GM career.
I usually arbitrate critical success/failure through some combination of the below, depending on system
- Just give me the result - Does your base skill check + 1 still beat the DC?
- "Roll to confirm" - Basically have them reroll their skill check to see how badly they fucked up or how awesomely they succeeded, comparing the new result against the original DC.
- Roll for bonus; for success, roll again and add 1/2-1/4 the new roll. For failure, reroll the check with a harsh penalty, usually -5 to -10 depending on the system (this is statistically unsound, but it FEELS correct)
- If there's a save mechanic, I'll usually grant a save vs. Critical Failure to see if they fail or critically fail.

In regards to your ladder example, I'm assuming the ladder is difficult to scale in some manner (or you are climbing like a re-re), so you roll a one and I'd probably just have you give me the check result and see if you beat the climb DC or not.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

I remember Monsterhearts being big at Gencon for a year or two but I've never played it or any of the Pbta offshoots.

My uninformed opinion - it seems like a passable "convention" /one shot game.

In general, I am seeing a definite imbalance between the players' power vs the GM's at the table. It's tipped too far towards the players, which is not surprising given these dark, narcissistic times.

Nobody want a return to the days of a railroading GM acting out his inner turmoil/fantasy with zero regard for the players. But a table full of entitled brats who are apt to say "no, that doesn't happen" is just as bad.

As always there should be a healthy balance between the two.

 

[Big Nasty]

Did they also take the old-school Traveller rule that you could die during character creation?

There are a bunch of current Traveller clones that have this, but as an optional rule. A failed survival roll gives you a roll on the injury chart instead if you drop the chargen instant death rule.