Quote from: Jaeger;1095954But both are still very niche systems, and when compared to D&D fantasy elf games - no one really plays them much anymore.

A large part of that is simply because nobody knows that they exist anymore.

I never use the Wild die in D6. I love the concept in theory, but not how it plays at the table.

Quote from: jeff37923;1095814More popular? Or more current?

Popular and current.

BTW, I meant that we don't see NEW RPGS based on WEG's D6 or Trav's 2D6 systems that have become successful (aka popular and current). And yes, I know there's plenty of D6 and 2D6 games on DriveThruRPG (and some are awesome), but I mean RPGs sold at your FLGS.

Of course, both D6 Star Wars and Classic Traveller continue to kick ass. They're still common games at the big cons, and many regional cons have THAT GM who runs one or the other like clockwork at each event. I'd know about that!

Quote from: Jaeger;1095788Actually, I would argue that The new genre of "Apocalypse World" games has proven that former Forge Story Game designers  have had to adopt the Traditional RPG GM-Player division paradigm, in order to be successful.

The rules themselves are just clever exception based mechanics that hyper focus on low prep GMing. (With a few narrativist bits for the players thrown in to keep their street cred.)

Exactly. AW isn't the Triumph of Storygaming and GNS theory; it's the Forge/Storygaming crowd admitting defeat and trying to create a conventionally-designed gateway-drug into Storygaming. It succeeded as a game because it doesn't follow the conceits of Storygaming or Forge Theory, and it failed at making anyone want to play actual storygames or forge games.  Its most popular variant, Dungeon World, went even more into becoming a kind of twisted parody of the D&D experience.  It's the entire Storygames movement giving up and trying to Sell Out.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1097318Exactly. AW isn't the Triumph of Storygaming and GNS theory; it's the Forge/Storygaming crowd admitting defeat and trying to create a conventionally-designed gateway-drug into Storygaming. It succeeded as a game because it doesn't follow the conceits of Storygaming or Forge Theory, and it failed at making anyone want to play actual storygames or forge games.  Its most popular variant, Dungeon World, went even more into becoming a kind of twisted parody of the D&D experience.

I think you're half-right here. You're right that Apocalypse World isn't entirely a narrativist game in the GNS sense - it deals in established genre tropes which somewhat undercuts the narrativist priority of playing.
But it still has presented successfully a radically different approach to role-playing games. (So different that it needs its own containment forum for storygames?) I can't think of any successful RPG that has deviated as heavily from the paradigm introduced by D&D. Can you?

For me, it's the most significant RPG system of the 21st century so far, purely from a game design perspective. From a POV of personal taste, however, it's not my cup of tea - even though I'd like to try it at least once.
Anyway, I did a comparison of AW&DW with Trad Games on a German RPG forum recently. I'll put some of the findings up here. It should help place AW/DW in the overall spectrum of games.

And since it is about how those two games stack up to normal RPGs, I hope that thread can remain in this forum.

As someone who knows D&D, it's hard to imagine not being familiar enough to consider it in design, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.

I do think it's possible to come up with a decent structure for a gaming system without reference to D&D - and a lot of 'D&D-ims' creep into games that they probably shouldn't.  Like a spy game probably shouldn't have 10th level characters with 10 HD capable of straight up taking a bazooka blast to the chest.  There's a certain amount of insight to be gained by comparing a large number of games mechanically.  Ultimately, they've all had to address the same general things...  How do you make a character that represents someone 'genre appropriate' with skills and abilities that allow them to succeed?  How do you determine action resolution so people can feel confident that they are good at the things they are supposed to be good at but you can't know whether the character is going to succeed or fail at any given moment?  How do you decide on what 'appropriate death' looks like and how durable characters are from one game to the next?  How do you handle injuries and healing in a way that the game remains fun?  

D&D isn't the only game that answered those questions, and if you DIDN'T look at D&D, but you did look at 4-5 other random games, you'd probably be alright.  But excluding D&D (the granddaddy of them all) seems a little remiss.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1095796Which always makes me wonder why we don't see more popular RPGs using those rules.

IMHO, largely because WEG did not make a good original setting / system variant that they could push while their SW IP was hot.

And when for various embezzlement related reasons they lost the core IP, they had no popular evergreen game to fall back on to sell their system to a wider audience.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1096022I never use the Wild die in D6. I love the concept in theory, but not how it plays at the table.
...!

Exactly! There were other issues with the SW d6 system that needed to be addressed, but they just plastered over them with the wild die in 2nd edition and figured no one would notice.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097515I think you're half-right here. You're right that Apocalypse World isn't entirely a narrativist game in the GNS sense - it deals in established genre tropes which somewhat undercuts the narrativist priority of playing.
But it still has presented successfully a radically different approach to role-playing games. (So different that it needs its own containment forum for storygames?) I can't think of any successful RPG that has deviated as heavily from the paradigm introduced by D&D. Can you?.

Radical in the sense that they do hyper focus on low-prep, quick set-up play.

The Gm rolls nothing. The players have all the rules for their PC's on the character sheet itself. And Literally all the rules needed for play can be had on one or two reference sheets. So no long pauses to "look up a rule in the book".

They are also very rules light. I would call them descriptive more than narrative. Yes the player can narrate the outcome if they get a good success on certain moves. But that is more of the exception in these games, not the general rule.

But they still very much have the standard GM / Player dynamic where the GM runs the virtual world that the players get to run around and have adventures in.

Now they are not suited to long multi-year campaigns like more conventional RPG's - but that is not their design goal.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097515For me, it's the most significant RPG system of the 21st century so far, purely from a game design perspective. From a POV of personal taste, however, it's not my cup of tea - even though I'd like to try it at least once.
Anyway, I did a comparison of AW&DW with Trad Games on a German RPG forum recently. I'll put some of the findings up here. It should help place AW/DW in the overall spectrum of games.

And since it is about how those two games stack up to normal RPGs, I hope that thread can remain in this forum.

What makes Apocalypse World style games work is precisely because they are very much normal RPG's! They are not really storygames!

They like to use code language by calling the Game Master anything but the GM in their books, and using words and phrases like: 'Fiction first' when they really mean genre  first. But that is just to keep their old forge street cred.

But, they are rather good at emulating certain types of play similar to more rules heavy games without all the rules crunch baggage that comes with them.

And that is where I think these kind of games do add something to the wider RPG hobby. You don't need the level of crunch in Shadowrun 6 to play a "Shadowrun' style game. If a GM wants to run a short 1-3 month campaign for his players why bother with all the rules crunch of the latest edition of Shadowrun for a short campaign? Just break out The Sprawl and you are off to the races with much less prep!

For me, they caused me to rethink the real level of crunch needed in my home brew system for my Starwars campaign.

I have become focused on how things really work during actual play with my players. If an action or subsystem isn't really being used at the table - then it needs to be re-written or thrown out. And I have found out that I can get away with a good bit less crunch than I initially had in, and still be playing the same game!

So for me, system crunch has to justify itself at the table. And when I look at new games coming out, if they are more crunchy than the level of complexity I'm running at now,(Rules medium - about SWd6 complexity) it better be some clever shit to get me to take a second look.

Tangentially, I think that the OSR movement has had a similar effect on D&D. A few holdout fans aside, D&D will never go back to 3.5 levels of complexity. Pazio is playing to a gradually shrinking audience. HERO and GURPs are now playing to their niche and nostalgia bases.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1097318... Dungeon World, went even more into becoming a kind of twisted parody of the D&D experience.  It's the entire Storygames movement giving up and trying to Sell Out.

This struck me as funny.

When you really look at Dungeon world, and all the effort that went into creating the game, they could have turned out a well produced OSR game variant that did basically the exact same thing.

But I guess it is a way to play D&D, without having to actually say that you have played D&D.

Quote from: Jaeger;1097534Tangentially, I think that the OSR movement has had a similar effect on D&D. A few holdout fans aside, D&D will never go back to 3.5 levels of complexity. Pazio is playing to a gradually shrinking audience. HERO and GURPs are now playing to their niche and nostalgia bases.

More and more people are playing RPGs and at the same time the audience is shrinking.

Thats a real head scratcher that one.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097515For me, [Apocalypse World] is the most significant RPG system of the 21st century so far, purely from a game design perspective.

I agree.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097515I think you're half-right here. You're right that Apocalypse World isn't entirely a narrativist game in the GNS sense - it deals in established genre tropes which somewhat undercuts the narrativist priority of playing.

Are you sure you're not conflating Apocalypse World with Dungeon World here? Despite sharing the same engine, they're different beasts. AW is a firm example of narrativism, IMO, with it's gameplay driven by the PCs personal dramas & issues (and some hacks take it even further, like Monsterhearts). But Dungeon World is pretty trad, I agree.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1097515Anyway, I did a comparison of AW&DW with Trad Games on a German RPG forum recently. I'll put some of the findings up here. It should help place AW/DW in the overall spectrum of games. And since it is about how those two games stack up to normal RPGs, I hope that thread can remain in this forum.

Please do. I'm curious on your thoughts!

Quote from: Shasarak;1097551More and more people are playing RPGs and at the same time the audience is shrinking.

Thats a real head scratcher that one.

I assumed Jaeger was referring to the audience for complex / heavy crunch RPGs.

While D&D might never go 3.5 again, there's always been players who enjoy crunchier RPGs and I could see players new to RPGs who came in via 5e possibly defecting to PF2e as they might see crunch as a novelty and try it for a while.

We will see how PF2e does six months post launch. I'm not a Paizo fan, but they are good at marketing. And in the RPG world, "good at marketing" is x1000 better than most of the other publishers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1097574I assumed Jaeger was referring to the audience for complex / heavy crunch RPGs.

While D&D might never go 3.5 again, there's always been players who enjoy crunchier RPGs and I could see players new to RPGs who came in via 5e possibly defecting to PF2e as they might see crunch as a novelty and try it for a while.

We will see how PF2e does six months post launch. I'm not a Paizo fan, but they are good at marketing. And in the RPG world, "good at marketing" is x1000 better than most of the other publishers.

So what signs are you looking for six months post launch to indicate a yeah or a nay?

My personal feeling is that six months wont be able to tell you anything one way or another.  Even 4e managed to get through the first 2 years.

Quote from: Jaeger;1097547This struck me as funny.

When you really look at Dungeon world, and all the effort that went into creating the game, they could have turned out a well produced OSR game variant that did basically the exact same thing.

But I guess it is a way to play D&D, without having to actually say that you have played D&D.

That's a reason for it too. Actually fucking playing D&D would be admitting defeat.

If you truly believed that, PbtA wouldn't be relegated to a containment forum with other narrative games.
"It's not really a role-playing game." - "It's basically D&D."
You can't have it both ways.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1097318Exactly. AW isn't the Triumph of Storygaming and GNS theory; it's the Forge/Storygaming crowd admitting defeat and trying to create a conventionally-designed gateway-drug into Storygaming. It succeeded as a game because it doesn't follow the conceits of Storygaming or Forge Theory, and it failed at making anyone want to play actual storygames or forge games.  Its most popular variant, Dungeon World, went even more into becoming a kind of twisted parody of the D&D experience.  It's the entire Storygames movement giving up and trying to Sell Out.

Oh, bullshit. It's just another way to run a fantasy campaign. Read the introductory material. It's just another way to run a game. You have no grounds to make an honest appraisal of the system because you've never run it. It's just a convenient target for you to tout your narrow-minded conceptions of what "real" gaming is. Believe it or not, it's possible to enjoy both DW and D&D -- unless you've tragically and foolishly locked yourself in the cage of your own orthodoxy. You can't even see the irony in your shrill and impotent protests. The DW designers DID consider D&D when they designed the game. What more do you want, man?

Quote from: Shasarak;1097594So what signs are you looking for six months post launch to indicate a yeah or a nay?

My personal feeling is that six months wont be able to tell you anything one way or another.  Even 4e managed to get through the first 2 years.

  I have a feeling the bean counters at Paizo have a good idea what to look for in the first 6 months, and it will tell them a whole lot.  As a man on the street, I dont know what to look for, but as a layman's guess I feel they will have a VERY good idea how they are doing by February.  That will have been through both the holiday season for retail and the after christmas gift money use for their materials.  They will know if they have a hit or if they have to course correct....fast.