This is where I go to school.

I've no joke DM'd over 3,000 miles of Hex Crawling in the past 2 years and I've naturally begun to "montage" travel. I still track food rations and roll for getting lost, weather and daily encounters but I roll them all in advance and narrate the travel until something happens. Rations get subtracted in days worth between happenings.

The EDM system: exciting, dilemma-inducing, memorable. Great stuff, as usual.

Players like rules- regardless if they ever use them- like a safety life preserver, knowing that the “rules” are available ( break glass if needed) - how many pages of the 5e rules do you actually refer to constantly? Rules “lite” games are growing because players are realizing most mechanics are just fluff for game writers and statisticians

I think checkbox 2 and 3 I agree with regardless of circumstances. If a mechanic is gonna complicate a roll or add additional things to track, but it doesn't add to or change how player makes decisions, it's worthless. If the rules say that in spaceship combat one guy is the designated pilot and makes a piloting check every round, it doesn't matter if you then modify that roll based on ship's speed, current damage, position of enemies and whatever. If at the end of the day the player has no influence over what he rolls or what modifiers he gets, you just needlessly complicated the game. On a similar note, just including something in the mechanics is cool. Going into great details and requiring charts for it? Not really. If you want tools to matter, a mechanic saying that any check without appropriate tools suffers a penalty (or like in ICRPG, tools roll better Effort) gets the message across. Having a massive table stating how much of a penalty each individual type of tool has, that's a lot of effort for little to no gain compared to that initial simple rule. Where I'd disagree is 1, cause that only applies to "action movie" games. I just don't think that excitement is the only emotion people play RPGs for and also I find that just skipping from one epic setpiece to another... makes you numb to them, especially when everything between those scenes is basically filler. Travel mechanics are an example, cause personally I do find them interesting. Not immediately exciting, but a) those decisions like whether you hire help, take extra supplies or what road you pick do add up and can be satisfying. You don't get immediate gratification, but 2 sessions later when you either are grateful that you planned it well or curse your short-sightedness, it's far more impactful then any single action scene b) they allow you to build challenge and drama whilst often changing the direction of the story without a need for GM to plan branching paths in advance. Random encounters that players then take interest in, running out of money so you decide to look for side quests etc. It's not just a GM shoving a hook in your face cause that's what's prepared for today, it just naturally happens cause you spent 5 minutes in a session on something other than just skipping to the next scene in the main quest

People like to have an "authority" my homebrew system was a lot like EZD6 and many of my players weren't interested at all in playing with a D6 or without the 6 core D&D attributes. But then EZD6 came out and KZreadrs were talking about it, and suddenly they like it, no attributes is suddenly such a great idea! Its great when it's official, but homebrew is somehow scary. :^)

@RealMrTea

19 күн бұрын

I think homebrew have a bad rep because of the amount of bad homebrew you can easily find.

I have to go to the office to work on Tuesday and it's always a fucking delight to have this to listen to on the way in.

Man this is a top-notch video! I'm really digging these RPG mainframes. I'm just glad there's another DungeonTuber out there still making videos that are actually about the hobby and not just news. Thanks for what you do hankerin!

The only person in the hobby / industry in our day that tells it like it is, asking the real questions people don't like hearing and giving them answers they don't like. Decades of indoctrination with older players, and lack of background knowledge and a "consume product" attitude for younger players are both one hell of a drug.

@Runehammer1

4 ай бұрын

high praise! thank you!

Definitely going to write “Do These Mechanics Matter?” in big, bold letters at the top of my RPG design notebook. To remind me to make it exciting and meaningful. 📖 Thanks for the incite into this reflective exercise!

RUNEHAMMER NEVER MISSES

I love camping and travelling in games! 😝 I also wonder around Fallout for DAYS just exploring though 😂

Fantastic episode. These are things I sort of knew somewhere in my brain, but having them pulled out and put center stage is definitely eye opening. This was one to take notes on. Thank you sir!

Such a great question! I find it closely related to why people play TTRPGs in tbe first place. The excitement and surprise, the choices that are unparalleled, and playing to take a break from screens or books. Generally I agree - if you need the rulebook out to play, its probably too bogged down. I do agree with some of the comments here reminding me that some players love the charts, keeping track of supplies during travel, and making perfectly optimized choices (mathematically). Definitely keep track of why your players play too!

Damn, now I do wonder what the 3 criteria for content would be... Not because I imagine I would ever be able to use the advice, but, just cool to know.

Ive been pondering some these issues myself (but you seem to phrase them better)....great video, very thought provoking. Carry on Sir

I have some pretty fun vehicle mechanics in Project SunFlower, but it is a post-apocalyptic game, and it needs fun vehicle/chase mechanics. However as noted in the book, if you don't have an event occurring during the travel, then skip the travel and just get to the fun part!

15:58 is a great nugget - The “Piccardian Demonstration” 😂 And of course the follow up deconstruction of stat VS target!

Thank you for this criteria of examining RPG mechanics. I think this is an excellent way to look at new and old games a like. I want to play "X" and all these new rules/old rules make the game feel "Y" do we need them at my table? 1. Is it fun/exciting? 2. Does it present a delema/challenge? 3. Is it easy to remember?

Advice for players and designers with a focus on Practicality-at-the-Table, imagine that. RPG Mainframe is what I look forward to, every week. Rock On, Hankerin.

This podcast gave me flashbacks to reading The Burning Wheel. . .

First impressions: Jack Black has a gaming podcast!?!? :p

WotC has a problem. They know they cannot sell the books as technical manuals (which is what they are) so they must sell "play" via AP videos. Teaching the crap they expect consumers to do is actually something they refuse to do...Why should any potential player/DM buy into these crazy collections of "rule books". I prefer the first example. It is how I generally play and it is how I designed, developed, and published my own game. I prefer to describe, invite players to describe and all we need is a way to determine the result of actions based on a stat or attribute/skill, etc. How they actually play never meet the "rules" and mechanics they publish, and if they did? Risk/Reward is a basic thing and it drives conflict and narrative. It is not complicated. Great podcast.

This is an extremely valuable lesson for gamers of any stripe. It's so hard to admit that the mechanics are not easy or interesting. Vehicle combat is often boring as hell because it is distant from the more flexible human or cavalry TOTM concepts. I like the idea of ship battles and its just not worth the juice since I am not familar with naval history or sailing etc - and it should be reasonably figure out how to drive a boat via the mechanics.or a car... the mechanics are more simuation than fantasy and I'm not a general, armchair or otherwise. its all minigames.

I can't think of a single mechanic that fits all 3 criteria, but I also can't think of a Dilemma. For me, it may be enough for a mechanic to work on 2 criteria. All 3 sounds very difficult

@Runehammer1

4 ай бұрын

the greater the challenge, the more worthy the undertaking!

😂 I've got a player who will do ANYTHING to make sure his character goes first in combat no matter what kind of character he's playing! He's never played an assassin but he just cannot accept that initiative just doesn't matter that much. When we switched to a different system where it mattered even less he still had that same attitude! It's maddening! 🤣

@Runehammer1

5 ай бұрын

that speaks to a impatient, or selfish, mind

I love this ❤

I've been giving this video considerable thought, and would like to pass along an insight: Is there not a spectrum of RPG gaming styles? One end has stripped back Rules with just enough frame work to allow for open free wheeling RPG action which is where you and PDMaster, ShadowDark, and EZD6 are at...... With the other spectrum, involving robust rules, and complex combat encounters, that are valued as narratively rich, BECAUSE they are more simulationist.... (Looking at Roll Master, Harn Master, 5e/3.5/Pathfinder and others...) And it is understood by experienced players that the often clunky rules complexity will have to be distilled to find and discover quality gameplay....sessions and moments. I've experienced seriously amazing multisession epic battles with 5e no less...... 5e is franking painful to play tho, but we endured to milk it for greatness... Given many rpgs have combat centric, rules then you need to qualify your aesthetic: 1st Question: Honestly are you looking to explore Combat as a rich simulationist narrative in and of itself? Then find a rules set that allows for this appropriately, and enjoy...... If you want quick narrative combat then..... that is an exciting potential that is not without issues as well....

In defense of Genesys/Star Wars dice symbols: You have positive dice with it's 3 symbols, and negative dice with it's 3 symbols, so 6 total symbols that cancel down to the final result (with 23 possible combinations due to the cancellations). From that result it is simply degrees of magnitude. The bounded range is 1 to perhaps 5 or 6, and can be played off of how difficult the check was to begin with (average being 2 dice difficulty). From that you can get your data in which to inform the narrative, just from that one dice pool you get all the meaningful results for the check. Could this be done with simpler dice, like 2d6+mod in Traveller and PbtA games? Absolutely! Do people poo-poo those Genesys/Star Wars proprietary dice because they are unfamiliar (and perhaps unwilling), and also approach the whole system incorrectly? Absolutely!

I'm often baffled by the knocks on NDS. Our group got used to the system's dice within the first two sessions. The dice are color coded: bright/warm colors for the players and dark/cool colors for the GM. There are only three die types; d6, d8 and d12, with each die type result canceling each other out. The game is NOT designed as a fast, simplified dice system due to the final call on the result. I know that the complaint about interpreting the symbols comes up often, but there are 26 letter in the alphabet and chances are that you understood each word in theses sentences without much trouble. To each their own though.

@Runehammer1

5 ай бұрын

what is NDS?

@stochasticagency

5 ай бұрын

@@Runehammer1 Genesys RPG or Narrative Dice System

Know who doesn't matter? Jeremy Crawford. So tired of that guy. He's so dull and his game design leaves a lot to be desired.

@megatroymega

5 ай бұрын

...and he designed one of the most popular roleplaying game of all time.

@parttimed.m.1111

5 ай бұрын

​@@megatroymegajust because it's popular DOES NOT make it good.

@thegrandwombat8797

5 ай бұрын

???

@mAcChaosCh

5 ай бұрын

it was actually mike mearls who designed it, crawford was just the rules lawyer @@megatroymega

@allenyates3469

5 ай бұрын

​@@parttimed.m.1111 I'm more than a little curious how you would define "good" as an objective term for a game system. I don't like 5e either but it's very well assembled and clearly hooks in and keeps new players.