Another excellent video Dave, as always! Your list of Seven joys reminds me of LeBlanc’s taxonomy of game pleasures. I tried my best to match your list to his. Challenge (Puzzle Solvers) Narrative (Story Weavers) Discovery, Fantasy (Wanderlusters) Submission, Fantasy (Genre Heads) Challenge (Tacticians) Expression (Hero Crafters) Fellowship (Humanists) Missing from your list is Sensation. I would call this player category Gear Heads. These are the people who enjoy the exotic dice, the miniatures, the Dwarven Forge terrain, even the quality of a well printed rulebook.
I think you might have had a category for Emotional Experiences. Games like Vampire the Masquerade seem explicitly designed to make you uncomfortable in your own skin, and CoC, and Delta Green are adept at making you nervous as you are never sure what is around the corner, but you are absolutely sure you're not equipped to deal with it.
I think this falls under the Genre bulletpoint. Invoking disgust and fear are the authorial intent that define the horror genre. Emotional discomfort can be considered the same for Drama.
@@kylkim93 Except these games aren't interested in recreating Genre Norms. They create challenges to our expectations which enhance the exploration of your personal journey. They could be a subset of the Hero Crafters, but are typically more emotional and liminal. (Call of Cthulhu may be Genre focused. But Delta Green and especially Vampire the Masquerade distort the Genre to focus on Character Transformation.)
Like in Mothership, you know things are going to wrong at any moment, is just the question of how and when, maybe one of the reasons why the videogame Lethal Company became so popular.
I play these games for a handful of reasons but up front for me is character story and mechanics. I just love making characters and building them into a world or building a world around them. And the mechanics of a game just make me happy when I learn them. I love mixing and matching and playing around with the games I own and I am always buying new games to just look at and learn more from.
I think the more varied TTRPG coverage is the better, as people realising it isn’t just a tactical combat genre but a very deep and engaging opportunity for a wide range of interests to participate is for the better of all!
I agree with your introduction that a lot of - especially online - fights about RPGs could be solved by just watching this video. There are, and always have been, different motivations to play RPGs. Most systems serve some, but none serves all these joys equally well. And they do not have to. Each RPG you mentioned is beautiful in its own way.
Love seeing videos like this that highlight the variety in the hobby. There's so many different types of games doing great stuff that they were specially designed for and it pains me when I talk with my D&D group about it and they go "yeah but I don't want to learn a new system though..."
I'm dead center between Story Weaver and Art of War. Me and my group love long character backstories, making a sensible narrative and working through the implications of the PC's actions on the world. Its just that we also love rolling dice and kicking ass
I have the same 3 criteria for rpgs that I have for board games 1. Do I get to feel clever, especially in combining mechanics with logic in a way that does not feel arbitrary (this is why I prefer some crunch; I recently played the Dune game and I spread rumors to create a mechanical advantage. Instead of the results being arbitrary, I was creating predictable traits and using momentum to gain tangible advantages. I vastly prefer that over rewards being purely at the discretion of the GM). 2. Do I feel like a specific, cool character (again, in that Dune game, I am a Bene Gesserit, so the rumor spreading gameplay completely fit the character archetype I wanted to play as). 3. Is it mechanically satisfying, or (in most cases how this translates to RPGs) are the rolls quick, easy to read, and always matter (again, Dune does this excellently with known target numbers that are easily calculated, and with a momentum system that means every success matters; most of the benefit I got from spreading rumors was as a result of the momentum it created which was even more valuable than the traits from simple successes).
It's true, a lot of game critique is just personal preference. This channel really does the solid work of trying to look at what a game is trying to do, what experience is it for, and to evaluate them in that light. So cheers to Dave for that! Was going to say I don't like the rules light PbtA games but had a blast running a little game called "Fluxfall Horizon". Never thought I'd appreciate wargames, but gearing up to play "The Quar's War" and the whole table is pretty jazzed. Even if you always return to your core game, playing a wide range is deeply informative. Burning Wheel broke my brain, doubt I'll get a group to play it again, doubt there will be a game I run that isn't deeply influenced by it. That said, getting "the players" to gell into "the table" is difference between a massive waste of time and a deeply satisfying past time. And to that point, aligning points of enjoyment is a clutch component, to be discussed early, and often.
I would add "The Materialists" as another category. Players who gain their enjoyment from the physical components of the game: dice, miniatures, maps, dice towers, etc.
When I made Eoris Essence, I went for something like a transcendental experience. After all, you play with angelical creatures that can have gifts such as 'all knowledge', 'instant death' (of your opponents, like the forest spirit in Mononoke Hime), etc. I was never sure if I achieved this at all, or if it was just my style of game-mastering, but I made the setting's backstory revolve around deep questions and their moral resolutions, rather than beating monsters, which is awesome, but not the game's focus.
Yep, mostly down for stories, "puzzles", and friends. Great essay, Dave; thank you for sharing your insights into this topic - the things that really bring us together and tear us apart as players. I wonder if world building, apart from the exploration side - like the actual pleasure of creating game content, is its own separate joy?
That last question rings in my own head after watching the video. As a player, I'm mostly a humanist, but way before I joined a table to play I had been worldbuilding - Premises for worlds, pantheons, alternative origins and features for established ancestries... One day I may indeed try my hand at GMing with that material, but for now the act of creation gives me the most joy within the hobby.
> fiction first which means anytime there's a point in the game where a rule conflicts with the story making sense or taking a cool turn you ignore the rule for the sake of the story That's not how I think of Fiction First. For me, that term is less about conflict, and more about the order of things. In a non-fiction-first game, you look down at your sheet and look for a rule that gives you permission to do something (e.g. I can roll a d20 to attack with my club, and it'll do 1d4 damage), and then you add in the fiction (I swing at his head with my club). In fiction-first, you just say what your character does. The fiction determines whether you can do it and if it makes sense. *Sometimes* the fiction triggers some rules.
I think this is pretty on point! The one that I would personally add, perhaps as a sub-category of Wanderlust, is the joy of simple *Wonder*. For me, it's that feeling of potential when I first discover and start reading through a setting, and start picturing all the varied kinds of adventures the group at my table can have. Rumours of a castle in the sky, wreathed by a great storm. A hollow world, concealing enormous subterranean places, filled with hidden horrors. Sprawling hidden societies of the night; immortals and shapeshifters at one another's throats. A guidestone deep in the desert which whispers of a homeworld far across a sea of stars. Smoke drifting over a wooden palisade, with monstrous gods and demons stalking the forest beyond. A building whose floors only appear at night. Etcetera. Etcetera. It inspires mystery and danger; a horizon full of possibilities of an entire world (and more) to explore.
I would say that the narrative focused games are usually also genre focused, thus I think those might actually be one and the same category. The style I miss and which I am leaning to is thematic play, that revolves like the narrative games around an emergent story, but it does so based on a theme and not based on genre or franchise. I still work on my own system which is about that thematic play, and personally I also like the hero crafter, not so much regarding stats on the sheet or extended backgrounds but the aspect of having characters arcs along the theme, and also rules light for the humanist experience.
Hey up. Another ace video! Could I add the vicarious immersion style of play to that list? Possibly a combination of the categories, but perhaps a category unto itself? Rather than "Fiction First", where the story trumps everything, I have an awesome GM who kinda follows "Reality First", where the verisimilitude of the imaginary world trumps other things. But luckily, we also have homebrew rules that very rarely needs trumping.
Awesome video as always… looking at it this way I guess I’m more of a humanist, I started my alt rpg journey with Fate and still enjoy playing it, but I’ve since discovered the NSR with its mix of puzzle solving and wanderlusting, and I particularly enjoy running those types of games: into the odd, electric Bastionland, mausritter, knave, Mörk and Cy Borg, to name some of the physical games I own… and I’m very much looking forward to the Cairn 2e box set
I am definitely Wanderlusters. I love exploring and interacting with the worlds. And the Humanists. I love spending time with my friends. Which one are you yourself, Dave?
Story player here. Nowadays I just can't go back to tactical rpgs. I found that on story driven games there's much more immersion both from the game and the players. Back on DnD(and clones), I had very little immersion because players kept either speaking and taking decisions like it was a narrated videogame and taking forever on their combat turns like it was a chess world tournament. Also, playing felt like combat was around the corner every time and was the only option always and npcs were just there to quickly tell us where to do more combat
There is a treasure trove of tactical combat that you should know about, and it would add a lot to your experiences, especially for the unique way in which it defines the combat turn and the fighting experience itself: Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game. This RPG is no longer published, but its 20th anniversary edition can be purchased for free on the internet.
I characterize as a story weaver...i use a random idea and build around it if I have the data or I use Castle OldSkull Adventure generator with mythic and unfolding machine to flesh things out as I go. But I normally start with a general skeleton before kicking off the story.
Out of curiosity which RPG is shown early on with an example page showing decision options/suggestions? If it helps the art work was a modern night time cityscape with a woman in the foreground looking out upon it. Also are there any recommendations you can make, beyond World of Darkness, for games where you take on the role of the supernatural, such as a werewolf or vampire etc? I've been looking for alternatives to World of Darkness.
When I first came into the hobby, I struggled to understand why someone would play a TTRPG for the joy of tactics and leveling over just playing a board game (e.g. Gloomhaven, Imperial Assault, Oathsworn, etc). Even today, I kinda still think it's mostly practical considerations (RPGs are less expensive than board games, they're easier to retheme, they tend to support more players and whatnot), and I still personally tend to play less crunchy RPGs and more crunchy board games. But yeah, it might have been fun to see more specific examples from specific games for the different categories. Anyway, thanks for the video! Hope you're doing well!
I don’t think it’s really just practical, it’s a frame work to allow more open ended change and narrative between two instances of combat. If you are skilled or equipped to do it it’s fine, but if not Gloomhaven wouldn’t scratch that itch. P&P sort of draw people in, and especially with DnD, use popularity and group dynamics to get other people to teach new players. Gloomhaven has some flavour text between fights. Not that that’s bad at all. I think an example would be something like narrative crusades in 40k, where they try to mechanically add that sort of “story” to an overarching Wargame. Some people like it, some people don’t. Some don’t think it’s enough. That’s why, for example, me and my group looked at playing Wrath and Glory between big fights. Do roleplay, and have crunchy combat (that we enjoy) in skirmishes, but then ply bigger narrative fights as if playing 40k.
To add to what the other person said, boardgames (even the ones with a narrative element) often don't have the personalized aspect of TTRPGs. Those of us who are really into the combat-heavy side of things still do very much care about the other aspects, its just that this one is fun by itself, in a vacuum, and it can push every other aspect forward. Why is exploration dangerous and exciting? Because (among other reasons) we can fight new things! Why do stories have stakes and tension? Because we know the biggest and hardest fights are at the end, where all the emotions come to the foreground and there's an equally big story climax. And why is fighting good for its own sake? Idk dude, why do people watch Jackie Chan movies? Because its fun to watch characters you care about doing something awesome.
Ahh, thank you ever so much. It looked so familiar. If anyone else is trying to track it down in Inferno, I finally found the image on p147 of Inferno's Virgilio's Untold Tales book if anyone else is tracking it down. I must admit that the only way that 5th edition makes sense to me, is when I play it in one of Acheron's games, (Inferno or Dante's Guide to Hell). I've not played Brancalonia yet.
@@DaveThaumavore Can I take this opportunity to personally thank you for your channel. 👏 I've experienced so many wonderful journeys that started with watching a video review from you. An unfortunate side effect is that I now have more unread pdfs in my TTRPG folder, than unplayed games in my steam library. 😭
I think I'm a little bit of all of these lol. Over the years I'm much less into the Tactician side though. Thats weird to say considering I mostly run Pathfinder 1e games. Combat is integral to the system but it doesn't have to be murder hobo haven lol. I have so many games that focus on a story moreso than clunky mechanics and I cant find, in any groups, more than two people that understand the mechanics lite games. I don't mind teaching but its harder to find players that want to learn.🤷🏻♂️ Oh well. Im stuck in limbo, waiting to run L5R, Batman, The End of the World, World of Darkness, Star Trek, or G.I. Joe and all anyone else wants to do is loot corpses🤦🏻♂️🙄🤣. Anyway, thanks for the video!
Maybe you may need to force your characters to act in situations were combat isn't viable, like political maneuvering, palace intrigue or the like. Once they realize they can solve problems with words, and feeling clever in the process, they may be less prone to draw their weapons at first chance. If their characters aren't suited for a "sophisticated" environment, a "man in the middle" situation with two opposing forces might be an interesting scenario (Think Yojimbo / A fistful of dollars)
I'm gonna go the other way around and ask, instead of trying to find scenarios where combat isn't a viable solution, why do people not try and make the combat progress the story more? That feels like the easier answer
Any chance you'll review OSR-ish game Whitehack? There isn't a lot of content about it on RUclips and it may be in line better with your tastes than most OSR games
It's 2, 3 and 6 for me. It's rare to find a fellow 6 type of player. Most of my friends don't understand my personal appeal for wanting to started small (lvl 0 maybe?) and maybe even owning a kingdom or company and fighting big wars.
Awesome video, Dave! Not sure if the word to describe this should be "enjoyments". Probably closer to "affordances", but that's neither here nor there. Again, great video!
This was a good video. If I had to guess I would say the creator of the video favors story games and world exploration over tactical focused RPG. The reason I say that is in little tells the author gives . For example, when mentioning tactical the author went out of his way to point out they these games can lack some story elements, etc. Yet when he did story games, OSR, etc he didn't mention that those game can really feel empty in terms of tactical.combat decision making. 😂 I started playing DnD back in early 2E. In my experience it is only one type of RPG fan: the "deep" role-player, story weaver types that tend to knock other gamers particularly tactical RPG lovers. To be absolutely clear, I am not saying this author did that. Instead I am giving my observation on the comment regarding RPG fans deriding other games. I mean, yeah back in the day you may have had some standard D&D fan think some of the larping WoD people were weird, but tactical S&D lovers generally understand what WoD games are and respect that lane. I jave never heard a hardcore tactical D&D fan say Vampire needs more rules mechanics or a grid should be mandatory. I have heard many of times however, well of the main focus of the game is just combat or technical character building then then are tons are video games that do that better and give you more of a tactical experience. Another one, "well if you just want to push models around in combat why don't people just play Warhammer.". To these people, I have replied, "Well if story and focus is your bag and not rules and tactics then there are genres of gaming that do that much better such as story teller games and larping." Even this vid creator in a non-malicious way pointed out the "flaw" of tactical play, yet he didn't really give a "flaw" to story focused game like Blades In The Dark. Anywho, this is just my experience. I could be wrong but from what I have seen the deriding as far as styles of play seems to be predominantly one group and it is not the tactical folks.
Nah I agree with you on this, its definitely not malicious or intended to be insulting, but it does feel a bit dismissive. I've heard the argument that tactically-focused games can be shallower than narrative-focused games a lot as well. For a turnabout, narrative RPGs often have flaws in that sometimes you're interested in the "Game" part of the game, which is not lesser than the story, and there's not a lot to bite into nor a lot of fun to be had if the story is less than entirely thrilling. Its like how visual novels often have very boring gameplay loops and a lack of immediate feedback that lets you enjoy of the game for its own sake, as well as lacking the simplicity and thrill of combat. But nobody points that out as a flaw with visual novels cause their entire focus is put on the narrative being told, and it seems like the understanding doesn't go the other way around.
I think your joys are incomplete, I play for 25 years now and my joy has been subcreation all the way and through this immersion. This requires simulationist games like Gurps, BRP, Rolemaster or Harnmaster since they create suspense of disbelief that is the core of immersion.
I started playing rpgs with a group of friends at the age of 11 in Brazil, and we were all from a VERY humble neighborhood. Not only we played system from books that we bought, but also I made my own systems and worlds. Picture a skinny ass little boy, with a thick notebook filled with pencil notes and shitty drawings of monsters, weapons, maps, and heroes. We were very complex individuals, and if anything a lot of us had very strong social lives and were very different from one another. Putting us in a box assuming that we are all "with rich inner lives" is pretentious and ignorant, and sure as hell none of us were looking for a “mating partner”. Today Im 43 and happily married and still love playing them. Rpgs are for everyone.
TLDR: Seperating the two main styles of TTRPGs into distinctly different games, "TTRPGs" and "Story Games" instead of conflating them into a single catchall term would help in potential discourse. I will push back on the 'there's no objectively 'bad' TTRPG, just different playstyles' comment by saying that FATAL exists, on top of the terrible editing/formatting and streamlining they did to Shadowrun 5th edition. Though I do agree with you that a lot of disagreement does come mostly with the fact that we are lumping very distinct and different playstyles into this same "TTRPG" umbrella. To the point that I think "Storygames" are 'not' TTRPGs, due to the fact that, TTRPGs are Simulationist, replicating a world you play 'in', while the "StoryGame" is more of a narrative framework. The differenc between the emphasis on Simulation rules vs Narrative rules. Because Puzzleheads, Tacticians, and Wonderlusters kind of fit in the TTRPG category as thats all about simulating the world around them, and the 'stories' that come from that tend to come 'after' the campaign is finished. While the Story Weavers and even the Genre Heads are in a Storygame camp as the world needs to kind of twist and cater to the stories they are being prompted to tell. Hero Makers and Humanists kind of fit in both camps. I'll also add that Solo and Journaling RPGs kind of split the difference because you can have a very narrative focused Solo game where its less a 'game' and more just a creative writing exercise, and then there are others where your almost playing as your own GM and have to follow dice rolls where your like, playing chess with yourself. So you can have 'Solo StoryGames' and 'Solo TTRPGs'.
I think the idea of a narrative Storygame as distinct from a TTRPG is pretty interesting and I see where you're coming from, but I also see some problems with it. For example, I disagree with the idea that "[Tacticians] kind of fit in the TTRPG category as that's all about simulating the world around them, and the 'stories' that come from that tend to come 'after' the campaign is finished." That's certainly a kind of enjoyment, but in some other cases, the fights work as dramatic climaxes to the story being told all throughout. That's personally how I run my home game, we've got a narrative-heavy campaign with several-session-long fight scenes.
@@kaleidoslug7777 TLDR: TTRPG's can 'have' narrative, but that narrative isn't baked in the rules, but instead constructed and played out by the GM. The game doesn't say 'you need a climactic incident now because it would be dramatic', instead, thats all your GM's doing. That's the difference, TTRPG's has 'rules to tell you how the world operates', while Storygames has 'rules to tell you how the narrative operates." I can see what you mean, but I disagree. TTRPGs 'can' tell a narrative story through out a campaign, but they don't have 'rules' for how you tell that story, but instead they have rules to simulate how the physics work. Thus why the GM exsists, to make 'rulings' because its 'practically impossible' to have a rule for everything. Lets look at a Storygame example (btw, when I say Storygame I dont mean it as a derogation), take any kind of Powered by the Apocalypse system, just about every rule in the game deals with the 'narrative' or 'meta' of the game. Instead of HP they use scars that don't impact the character physically, but emotionally, changing how they act. The GM actively has to use 'moves' themselves, meaning that the GM is relegated to certain story telling beats. Storygames 'cant' do tactical combat in the way most people think of it. Because in a Storygame, for narrative sake, combat is treated like a narrative beat as opposed to a combat game of sorts. You can have combat specific moves but even then, by its very core Storygames treats it more like a stationary dodgeball match where the balls you throw are how plot relevant it is for you to win. Which in itself is a game, but it isn't what people are thinking when they think of tactics, they think about being in range, about exploiting the rules, about leveraging the odds in ways that apply to the battle 'right now' in a more physical sense (it still applies to Theater of the Mind games, but by physical I mean, 'in the game world'.) With a Storygame, you might have a move called "Using the Environment" because your character uses the "Swashbuckler" playbook. You use it, and you basically summon a chandelier to swing around on. Because thats story relevant, thats something you'd see in a movie or read in a book, it fits narratively even if the environment might not have one. "The Priest" Playbook doesn't have this move so they cant do it, cause they are the type of character who just 'doesn't do goofy stuff like that in a battle'. Which is fine, it makes sense 'in a story' for characters to fit various narrative steriotypes. While with a TTRPG, the Cleric asks the GM, "hey, does this room have ceiling mounted lighting, like a chandelier?" The GM says yes and the Cleric says, "I want my character to run off the balcony swing on the chandelier so that I can land behind the bandit and I can smack him with my staff." GM asks to roll a fairly high agility check, and even if the Cleric doesn't have good stats, they succeed, and a risky maneuver allows them to get an advantage on defeating a bandit cause they are now behind them and gain some kind of attack bonus. I WILL NOTE THOUGH, this is merely an example of what would be two 'pure' examples of a 'pure' storygame and a 'pure' TTRPG. There are always exceptions, hybrids, and wolves in sheeps clothing of sorts. Lancer is notorious for having a very crunchy tactical combat game system, only for it to have a very flimsy storygame esque 'role play' system that's just tacked onto the game like a stickynote saying "if your outside of your mech, just roll 2D6." There's also "Dungeon World" that is basically a TTRPG masked in the trappings of a Powered by the Appocolypse game, using a 2D6 resolution system, renaming the classes into Playbooks, while also removing a majority of the 'narrative' rules and replacing them with traditional simulationist game fodder, including reinstating the use of an HP system. There's also games that mix both simulationist and narrative systems, like Paranoia where its got various in world simulations and proper combat, while also having a card system that allows players to spawn things in world because its 'narratively relevant'. So the exsistance of a narrative or a story 'during gameplay' doesn't make a TTRPG a story game, its purely what the 'in the book rules' emphasize for gameplay.
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I appreciate the fact you have made the list based on JOYS and not GAME TYPES
To be fair I've not even read all the rpgs I own... I believe I am not alone in this... 😂
Word
@@scottishguard to your mother.
I've been trying but my library keeps growing 😅
I have ... an excess of physical books.
we will not discuss my PDF collection.
I’ve not read most I own haha
Another excellent video Dave, as always!
Your list of Seven joys reminds me of LeBlanc’s taxonomy of game pleasures. I tried my best to match your list to his.
Challenge (Puzzle Solvers)
Narrative (Story Weavers)
Discovery, Fantasy (Wanderlusters)
Submission, Fantasy (Genre Heads)
Challenge (Tacticians)
Expression (Hero Crafters)
Fellowship (Humanists)
Missing from your list is Sensation. I would call this player category Gear Heads. These are the people who enjoy the exotic dice, the miniatures, the Dwarven Forge terrain, even the quality of a well printed rulebook.
That’s a great addition. I’m actually a bit of that myself. I obsessively 3d print terrain and minis!
I think you might have had a category for Emotional Experiences. Games like Vampire the Masquerade seem explicitly designed to make you uncomfortable in your own skin, and CoC, and Delta Green are adept at making you nervous as you are never sure what is around the corner, but you are absolutely sure you're not equipped to deal with it.
I think this falls under the Genre bulletpoint. Invoking disgust and fear are the authorial intent that define the horror genre. Emotional discomfort can be considered the same for Drama.
@@kylkim93 Except these games aren't interested in recreating Genre Norms. They create challenges to our expectations which enhance the exploration of your personal journey. They could be a subset of the Hero Crafters, but are typically more emotional and liminal. (Call of Cthulhu may be Genre focused. But Delta Green and especially Vampire the Masquerade distort the Genre to focus on Character Transformation.)
Like in Mothership, you know things are going to wrong at any moment, is just the question of how and when, maybe one of the reasons why the videogame Lethal Company became so popular.
1) 1:29 puzzle solver
2) 3:29 story weaver
3) 5:14 wanderlust (included licensed properties)
4) 7:20 specific genres (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, modern/urban, historical, superhero, western, mystery/investigation, survival, comedy, romance, solo play, etc...)
5) 8:57 tactical combat
6) 10:05 hero crafting
7) 12:30 human connection
I play these games for a handful of reasons but up front for me is character story and mechanics. I just love making characters and building them into a world or building a world around them. And the mechanics of a game just make me happy when I learn them. I love mixing and matching and playing around with the games I own and I am always buying new games to just look at and learn more from.
I think the more varied TTRPG coverage is the better, as people realising it isn’t just a tactical combat genre but a very deep and engaging opportunity for a wide range of interests to participate is for the better of all!
This list is great! Bring to the table "what joy do you want to play today?", and give this seven options.
I agree with your introduction that a lot of - especially online - fights about RPGs could be solved by just watching this video. There are, and always have been, different motivations to play RPGs. Most systems serve some, but none serves all these joys equally well. And they do not have to. Each RPG you mentioned is beautiful in its own way.
Love seeing videos like this that highlight the variety in the hobby. There's so many different types of games doing great stuff that they were specially designed for and it pains me when I talk with my D&D group about it and they go "yeah but I don't want to learn a new system though..."
Thanks for the video Dave! Very interesting
Glad you enjoyed it
I'm dead center between Story Weaver and Art of War. Me and my group love long character backstories, making a sensible narrative and working through the implications of the PC's actions on the world. Its just that we also love rolling dice and kicking ass
I have the same 3 criteria for rpgs that I have for board games
1. Do I get to feel clever, especially in combining mechanics with logic in a way that does not feel arbitrary (this is why I prefer some crunch; I recently played the Dune game and I spread rumors to create a mechanical advantage. Instead of the results being arbitrary, I was creating predictable traits and using momentum to gain tangible advantages. I vastly prefer that over rewards being purely at the discretion of the GM).
2. Do I feel like a specific, cool character (again, in that Dune game, I am a Bene Gesserit, so the rumor spreading gameplay completely fit the character archetype I wanted to play as).
3. Is it mechanically satisfying, or (in most cases how this translates to RPGs) are the rolls quick, easy to read, and always matter (again, Dune does this excellently with known target numbers that are easily calculated, and with a momentum system that means every success matters; most of the benefit I got from spreading rumors was as a result of the momentum it created which was even more valuable than the traits from simple successes).
It's true, a lot of game critique is just personal preference. This channel really does the solid work of trying to look at what a game is trying to do, what experience is it for, and to evaluate them in that light. So cheers to Dave for that!
Was going to say I don't like the rules light PbtA games but had a blast running a little game called "Fluxfall Horizon". Never thought I'd appreciate wargames, but gearing up to play "The Quar's War" and the whole table is pretty jazzed. Even if you always return to your core game, playing a wide range is deeply informative. Burning Wheel broke my brain, doubt I'll get a group to play it again, doubt there will be a game I run that isn't deeply influenced by it.
That said, getting "the players" to gell into "the table" is difference between a massive waste of time and a deeply satisfying past time. And to that point, aligning points of enjoyment is a clutch component, to be discussed early, and often.
I would add "The Materialists" as another category. Players who gain their enjoyment from the physical components of the game: dice, miniatures, maps, dice towers, etc.
When I made Eoris Essence, I went for something like a transcendental experience. After all, you play with angelical creatures that can have gifts such as 'all knowledge', 'instant death' (of your opponents, like the forest spirit in Mononoke Hime), etc. I was never sure if I achieved this at all, or if it was just my style of game-mastering, but I made the setting's backstory revolve around deep questions and their moral resolutions, rather than beating monsters, which is awesome, but not the game's focus.
I like GM Blades in the Dark (a lot) and I use it not only for crime-gang-simulation but for heroic fantasy in a crime setting. I love it.
Man, this video hit me in the feels at the end.
Yep, mostly down for stories, "puzzles", and friends. Great essay, Dave; thank you for sharing your insights into this topic - the things that really bring us together and tear us apart as players.
I wonder if world building, apart from the exploration side - like the actual pleasure of creating game content, is its own separate joy?
That last question rings in my own head after watching the video. As a player, I'm mostly a humanist, but way before I joined a table to play I had been worldbuilding - Premises for worlds, pantheons, alternative origins and features for established ancestries... One day I may indeed try my hand at GMing with that material, but for now the act of creation gives me the most joy within the hobby.
> fiction first which means anytime there's a point in the game where a rule conflicts with the story making sense or taking a cool turn you ignore the rule for the sake of the story
That's not how I think of Fiction First. For me, that term is less about conflict, and more about the order of things. In a non-fiction-first game, you look down at your sheet and look for a rule that gives you permission to do something (e.g. I can roll a d20 to attack with my club, and it'll do 1d4 damage), and then you add in the fiction (I swing at his head with my club).
In fiction-first, you just say what your character does. The fiction determines whether you can do it and if it makes sense. *Sometimes* the fiction triggers some rules.
I think this is pretty on point! The one that I would personally add, perhaps as a sub-category of Wanderlust, is the joy of simple *Wonder*. For me, it's that feeling of potential when I first discover and start reading through a setting, and start picturing all the varied kinds of adventures the group at my table can have.
Rumours of a castle in the sky, wreathed by a great storm. A hollow world, concealing enormous subterranean places, filled with hidden horrors. Sprawling hidden societies of the night; immortals and shapeshifters at one another's throats. A guidestone deep in the desert which whispers of a homeworld far across a sea of stars. Smoke drifting over a wooden palisade, with monstrous gods and demons stalking the forest beyond. A building whose floors only appear at night. Etcetera. Etcetera.
It inspires mystery and danger; a horizon full of possibilities of an entire world (and more) to explore.
Storyteller and Wanderluster here⚔️
I would say that the narrative focused games are usually also genre focused, thus I think those might actually be one and the same category. The style I miss and which I am leaning to is thematic play, that revolves like the narrative games around an emergent story, but it does so based on a theme and not based on genre or franchise.
I still work on my own system which is about that thematic play, and personally I also like the hero crafter, not so much regarding stats on the sheet or extended backgrounds but the aspect of having characters arcs along the theme, and also rules light for the humanist experience.
Hey up. Another ace video!
Could I add the vicarious immersion style of play to that list? Possibly a combination of the categories, but perhaps a category unto itself?
Rather than "Fiction First", where the story trumps everything, I have an awesome GM who kinda follows "Reality First", where the verisimilitude of the imaginary world trumps other things. But luckily, we also have homebrew rules that very rarely needs trumping.
Burning Wheel is now available as a pdf, too (this only happened recently)
Great video!! I think it's important to remember people are looking for different things out of their TTRPGs.
Thanks! You have verbalized many things in this video that l have thought and you have made my consider more ideas that are new to me. 👍
Awesome video as always… looking at it this way I guess I’m more of a humanist, I started my alt rpg journey with Fate and still enjoy playing it, but I’ve since discovered the NSR with its mix of puzzle solving and wanderlusting, and I particularly enjoy running those types of games: into the odd, electric Bastionland, mausritter, knave, Mörk and Cy Borg, to name some of the physical games I own… and I’m very much looking forward to the Cairn 2e box set
LoL you had way too much fun with the AI art generator.
Thank you putting together this nice comprehensive list of what drives most ttrpg players.
Points for me:
-Simulations
-Choices with meaningful consequence.
Simulation could be a joy found in ttrpgs.
I think this could be a very interesting tool for Session 0 or pre 0. Maybe even a questionaire could be derived from it.
love it! Love this Video!
I am definitely Wanderlusters. I love exploring and interacting with the worlds.
And the Humanists. I love spending time with my friends.
Which one are you yourself, Dave?
I’m a humanist for the most part, mostly interested in telling cool stories.
Great video. A good breakdown
Very good video, made me think which is always a good reaction.
Story player here. Nowadays I just can't go back to tactical rpgs. I found that on story driven games there's much more immersion both from the game and the players. Back on DnD(and clones), I had very little immersion because players kept either speaking and taking decisions like it was a narrated videogame and taking forever on their combat turns like it was a chess world tournament. Also, playing felt like combat was around the corner every time and was the only option always and npcs were just there to quickly tell us where to do more combat
There is a treasure trove of tactical combat that you should know about, and it would add a lot to your experiences, especially for the unique way in which it defines the combat turn and the fighting experience itself: Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game. This RPG is no longer published, but its 20th anniversary edition can be purchased for free on the internet.
This video was fun to watch. I think I'm more of a story weaver.
Was that a "Record of Lodoss War" clip? That series doesn't get enough credit, so good 👍
Yes it was.
I characterize as a story weaver...i use a random idea and build around it if I have the data or I use Castle OldSkull Adventure generator with mythic and unfolding machine to flesh things out as I go. But I normally start with a general skeleton before kicking off the story.
Out of curiosity which RPG is shown early on with an example page showing decision options/suggestions? If it helps the art work was a modern night time cityscape with a woman in the foreground looking out upon it.
Also are there any recommendations you can make, beyond World of Darkness, for games where you take on the role of the supernatural, such as a werewolf or vampire etc? I've been looking for alternatives to World of Darkness.
Is there one for the sadistic joy I feel whenever I sow paranoia in my players around what could happen next session?
When I first came into the hobby, I struggled to understand why someone would play a TTRPG for the joy of tactics and leveling over just playing a board game (e.g. Gloomhaven, Imperial Assault, Oathsworn, etc). Even today, I kinda still think it's mostly practical considerations (RPGs are less expensive than board games, they're easier to retheme, they tend to support more players and whatnot), and I still personally tend to play less crunchy RPGs and more crunchy board games. But yeah, it might have been fun to see more specific examples from specific games for the different categories.
Anyway, thanks for the video! Hope you're doing well!
I don’t think it’s really just practical, it’s a frame work to allow more open ended change and narrative between two instances of combat.
If you are skilled or equipped to do it it’s fine, but if not Gloomhaven wouldn’t scratch that itch. P&P sort of draw people in, and especially with DnD, use popularity and group dynamics to get other people to teach new players.
Gloomhaven has some flavour text between fights.
Not that that’s bad at all.
I think an example would be something like narrative crusades in 40k, where they try to mechanically add that sort of “story” to an overarching Wargame. Some people like it, some people don’t. Some don’t think it’s enough. That’s why, for example, me and my group looked at playing Wrath and Glory between big fights.
Do roleplay, and have crunchy combat (that we enjoy) in skirmishes, but then ply bigger narrative fights as if playing 40k.
To add to what the other person said, boardgames (even the ones with a narrative element) often don't have the personalized aspect of TTRPGs. Those of us who are really into the combat-heavy side of things still do very much care about the other aspects, its just that this one is fun by itself, in a vacuum, and it can push every other aspect forward.
Why is exploration dangerous and exciting? Because (among other reasons) we can fight new things!
Why do stories have stakes and tension? Because we know the biggest and hardest fights are at the end, where all the emotions come to the foreground and there's an equally big story climax.
And why is fighting good for its own sake? Idk dude, why do people watch Jackie Chan movies? Because its fun to watch characters you care about doing something awesome.
Awesome!!!
From which RPG is the image of the horned woman in the middle of the thumbnail taken?
Inferno by Acheron. I reviewed the game on this channel.
Ahh, thank you ever so much. It looked so familiar.
If anyone else is trying to track it down in Inferno, I finally found the image on p147 of Inferno's Virgilio's Untold Tales book if anyone else is tracking it down.
I must admit that the only way that 5th edition makes sense to me, is when I play it in one of Acheron's games, (Inferno or Dante's Guide to Hell). I've not played Brancalonia yet.
@@DaveThaumavore Can I take this opportunity to personally thank you for your channel. 👏
I've experienced so many wonderful journeys that started with watching a video review from you. An unfortunate side effect is that I now have more unread pdfs in my TTRPG folder, than unplayed games in my steam library. 😭
I think I'm a little bit of all of these lol. Over the years I'm much less into the Tactician side though. Thats weird to say considering I mostly run Pathfinder 1e games. Combat is integral to the system but it doesn't have to be murder hobo haven lol. I have so many games that focus on a story moreso than clunky mechanics and I cant find, in any groups, more than two people that understand the mechanics lite games. I don't mind teaching but its harder to find players that want to learn.🤷🏻♂️ Oh well. Im stuck in limbo, waiting to run L5R, Batman, The End of the World, World of Darkness, Star Trek, or G.I. Joe and all anyone else wants to do is loot corpses🤦🏻♂️🙄🤣. Anyway, thanks for the video!
Maybe you may need to force your characters to act in situations were combat isn't viable, like political maneuvering, palace intrigue or the like. Once they realize they can solve problems with words, and feeling clever in the process, they may be less prone to draw their weapons at first chance.
If their characters aren't suited for a "sophisticated" environment, a "man in the middle" situation with two opposing forces might be an interesting scenario (Think Yojimbo / A fistful of dollars)
I'm gonna go the other way around and ask, instead of trying to find scenarios where combat isn't a viable solution, why do people not try and make the combat progress the story more? That feels like the easier answer
Any chance you'll review OSR-ish game Whitehack? There isn't a lot of content about it on RUclips and it may be in line better with your tastes than most OSR games
I feel like both Questing Beast and Dungeon Craft covered it pretty well.
Love that you added some clips of my favorite fantasy anime!
10:20 "Elron Hubbard" XD
It's 2, 3 and 6 for me. It's rare to find a fellow 6 type of player. Most of my friends don't understand my personal appeal for wanting to started small (lvl 0 maybe?) and maybe even owning a kingdom or company and fighting big wars.
Very interesting
Awesome video, Dave! Not sure if the word to describe this should be "enjoyments". Probably closer to "affordances", but that's neither here nor there. Again, great video!
Gah, day late to this from work.
This was a good video. If I had to guess I would say the creator of the video favors story games and world exploration over tactical focused RPG. The reason I say that is in little tells the author gives .
For example, when mentioning tactical the author went out of his way to point out they these games can lack some story elements, etc. Yet when he did story games, OSR, etc he didn't mention that those game can really feel empty in terms of tactical.combat decision making. 😂
I started playing DnD back in early 2E. In my experience it is only one type of RPG fan: the "deep" role-player, story weaver types that tend to knock other gamers particularly tactical RPG lovers. To be absolutely clear, I am not saying this author did that. Instead I am giving my observation on the comment regarding RPG fans deriding other games. I mean, yeah back in the day you may have had some standard D&D fan think some of the larping WoD people were weird, but tactical S&D lovers generally understand what WoD games are and respect that lane. I jave never heard a hardcore tactical D&D fan say Vampire needs more rules mechanics or a grid should be mandatory.
I have heard many of times however, well of the main focus of the game is just combat or technical character building then then are tons are video games that do that better and give you more of a tactical experience. Another one, "well if you just want to push models around in combat why don't people just play Warhammer.". To these people, I have replied, "Well if story and focus is your bag and not rules and tactics then there are genres of gaming that do that much better such as story teller games and larping."
Even this vid creator in a non-malicious way pointed out the "flaw" of tactical play, yet he didn't really give a "flaw" to story focused game like Blades In The Dark. Anywho, this is just my experience. I could be wrong but from what I have seen the deriding as far as styles of play seems to be predominantly one group and it is not the tactical folks.
Nah I agree with you on this, its definitely not malicious or intended to be insulting, but it does feel a bit dismissive. I've heard the argument that tactically-focused games can be shallower than narrative-focused games a lot as well.
For a turnabout, narrative RPGs often have flaws in that sometimes you're interested in the "Game" part of the game, which is not lesser than the story, and there's not a lot to bite into nor a lot of fun to be had if the story is less than entirely thrilling. Its like how visual novels often have very boring gameplay loops and a lack of immediate feedback that lets you enjoy of the game for its own sake, as well as lacking the simplicity and thrill of combat.
But nobody points that out as a flaw with visual novels cause their entire focus is put on the narrative being told, and it seems like the understanding doesn't go the other way around.
videogame worlds are so static and limited in their interactivity
I think your joys are incomplete, I play for 25 years now and my joy has been subcreation all the way and through this immersion. This requires simulationist games like Gurps, BRP, Rolemaster or Harnmaster since they create suspense of disbelief that is the core of immersion.
Rpgs are there for people with rich internal lives to find mating partners.
I started playing rpgs with a group of friends at the age of 11 in Brazil, and we were all from a VERY humble neighborhood. Not only we played system from books that we bought, but also I made my own systems and worlds. Picture a skinny ass little boy, with a thick notebook filled with pencil notes and shitty drawings of monsters, weapons, maps, and heroes. We were very complex individuals, and if anything a lot of us had very strong social lives and were very different from one another. Putting us in a box assuming that we are all "with rich inner lives" is pretentious and ignorant, and sure as hell none of us were looking for a “mating partner”. Today Im 43 and happily married and still love playing them. Rpgs are for everyone.
TLDR: Seperating the two main styles of TTRPGs into distinctly different games, "TTRPGs" and "Story Games" instead of conflating them into a single catchall term would help in potential discourse.
I will push back on the 'there's no objectively 'bad' TTRPG, just different playstyles' comment by saying that FATAL exists, on top of the terrible editing/formatting and streamlining they did to Shadowrun 5th edition.
Though I do agree with you that a lot of disagreement does come mostly with the fact that we are lumping very distinct and different playstyles into this same "TTRPG" umbrella. To the point that I think "Storygames" are 'not' TTRPGs, due to the fact that, TTRPGs are Simulationist, replicating a world you play 'in', while the "StoryGame" is more of a narrative framework. The differenc between the emphasis on Simulation rules vs Narrative rules.
Because Puzzleheads, Tacticians, and Wonderlusters kind of fit in the TTRPG category as thats all about simulating the world around them, and the 'stories' that come from that tend to come 'after' the campaign is finished.
While the Story Weavers and even the Genre Heads are in a Storygame camp as the world needs to kind of twist and cater to the stories they are being prompted to tell.
Hero Makers and Humanists kind of fit in both camps.
I'll also add that Solo and Journaling RPGs kind of split the difference because you can have a very narrative focused Solo game where its less a 'game' and more just a creative writing exercise, and then there are others where your almost playing as your own GM and have to follow dice rolls where your like, playing chess with yourself. So you can have 'Solo StoryGames' and 'Solo TTRPGs'.
I think the idea of a narrative Storygame as distinct from a TTRPG is pretty interesting and I see where you're coming from, but I also see some problems with it.
For example, I disagree with the idea that "[Tacticians] kind of fit in the TTRPG category as that's all about simulating the world around them, and the 'stories' that come from that tend to come 'after' the campaign is finished." That's certainly a kind of enjoyment, but in some other cases, the fights work as dramatic climaxes to the story being told all throughout. That's personally how I run my home game, we've got a narrative-heavy campaign with several-session-long fight scenes.
@@kaleidoslug7777 TLDR: TTRPG's can 'have' narrative, but that narrative isn't baked in the rules, but instead constructed and played out by the GM. The game doesn't say 'you need a climactic incident now because it would be dramatic', instead, thats all your GM's doing. That's the difference, TTRPG's has 'rules to tell you how the world operates', while Storygames has 'rules to tell you how the narrative operates."
I can see what you mean, but I disagree. TTRPGs 'can' tell a narrative story through out a campaign, but they don't have 'rules' for how you tell that story, but instead they have rules to simulate how the physics work. Thus why the GM exsists, to make 'rulings' because its 'practically impossible' to have a rule for everything.
Lets look at a Storygame example (btw, when I say Storygame I dont mean it as a derogation), take any kind of Powered by the Apocalypse system, just about every rule in the game deals with the 'narrative' or 'meta' of the game. Instead of HP they use scars that don't impact the character physically, but emotionally, changing how they act. The GM actively has to use 'moves' themselves, meaning that the GM is relegated to certain story telling beats. Storygames 'cant' do tactical combat in the way most people think of it. Because in a Storygame, for narrative sake, combat is treated like a narrative beat as opposed to a combat game of sorts. You can have combat specific moves but even then, by its very core Storygames treats it more like a stationary dodgeball match where the balls you throw are how plot relevant it is for you to win. Which in itself is a game, but it isn't what people are thinking when they think of tactics, they think about being in range, about exploiting the rules, about leveraging the odds in ways that apply to the battle 'right now' in a more physical sense (it still applies to Theater of the Mind games, but by physical I mean, 'in the game world'.)
With a Storygame, you might have a move called "Using the Environment" because your character uses the "Swashbuckler" playbook. You use it, and you basically summon a chandelier to swing around on. Because thats story relevant, thats something you'd see in a movie or read in a book, it fits narratively even if the environment might not have one. "The Priest" Playbook doesn't have this move so they cant do it, cause they are the type of character who just 'doesn't do goofy stuff like that in a battle'. Which is fine, it makes sense 'in a story' for characters to fit various narrative steriotypes.
While with a TTRPG, the Cleric asks the GM, "hey, does this room have ceiling mounted lighting, like a chandelier?" The GM says yes and the Cleric says, "I want my character to run off the balcony swing on the chandelier so that I can land behind the bandit and I can smack him with my staff." GM asks to roll a fairly high agility check, and even if the Cleric doesn't have good stats, they succeed, and a risky maneuver allows them to get an advantage on defeating a bandit cause they are now behind them and gain some kind of attack bonus.
I WILL NOTE THOUGH, this is merely an example of what would be two 'pure' examples of a 'pure' storygame and a 'pure' TTRPG. There are always exceptions, hybrids, and wolves in sheeps clothing of sorts. Lancer is notorious for having a very crunchy tactical combat game system, only for it to have a very flimsy storygame esque 'role play' system that's just tacked onto the game like a stickynote saying "if your outside of your mech, just roll 2D6." There's also "Dungeon World" that is basically a TTRPG masked in the trappings of a Powered by the Appocolypse game, using a 2D6 resolution system, renaming the classes into Playbooks, while also removing a majority of the 'narrative' rules and replacing them with traditional simulationist game fodder, including reinstating the use of an HP system. There's also games that mix both simulationist and narrative systems, like Paranoia where its got various in world simulations and proper combat, while also having a card system that allows players to spawn things in world because its 'narratively relevant'.
So the exsistance of a narrative or a story 'during gameplay' doesn't make a TTRPG a story game, its purely what the 'in the book rules' emphasize for gameplay.