I've had fun playing DW but there's not a damn thing new in it.

TrippyHippy, if you actually read my post, you'll see I never said those things are new.

Quote from: Itachi;1009025TrippyHippy, if you actually read my post, you'll see I never said those things are new.

No, your most recent descriptor is 'unconventional'... which many might read as 'new' but whatever... how it is 'unconventional' if, as Trippy points out, it seems to be made up entirely of 'conventional' elements?
Or is this just 'unconventional' like strange food combinations... bananas & saurkraut? broccoli & jam?

I'd say it's the later, Simlasa.

Quote from: Itachi;1009025TrippyHippy, if you actually read my post, you'll see I never said those things are new.

You had already said this, however:

Quote from: ItachiAbout Apoc World, I don't know about it being the most innovative ever, but the way it meshes a lot of different concepts towards a radical player-driven/anti-railroad style is certainly new.

....and you are wrong about that.

If you are now wanting to revise your arguments to suggest they are "unconventional" instead, then you are wrong about that too.

Apocalypse World is basically the same sort of product as something like All Flesh Must Be Eaten - nothing unconventional, but an eclectic range of sources towards creating a system that can do a specific genre emulation. Nothing wrong with that, and plenty of fun to be had, but nobody ever claimed that All Flesh Must Be Eaten was anything more significant than it actually was.

Oh sure, All Flesh Must be Eaten does genre emulation really well, doesn't it? WEll, does it also do fail-forward well? How about no GM prep play? Or only players roll dice? Or about playbooks? Or player-to-player mediating mechanics, does it have it too? Or explicit GM rules to guarantee the game will be all about whats on the tin? Oh how about being easily hackable to allow a multitude of hacks on other genres and themes?

Yeaaah, AFMbE doesn't do any of those other things, right? That's the point. The combination of those features into a cohesive whole, interesting and novel enough to cause a small explosion of hacks and even bleeding into OSR and other styles (see Mutant Year Zero, Cypher, Beyond the Wall, New Kult, Blades in the Dark, etc). The novelty is, like Simlasa said, in mixing existing ingredients, like bananas with saurkraut. Only the result was good enough to become the new hot for a lot of people. And that's it.

Quote from: Itachi;1009054Oh sure, All Flesh Must be Eaten does genre emulation really well, doesn't it? WEll, does it also do fail-forward well? How about no GM prep play? Or only players roll dice? Or about playbooks? Or player-to-player mediating mechanics, does it have it too? Or explicit GM rules to guarantee the game will be all about whats on the tin? Oh how about being easily hackable to allow a multitude of hacks on other genres and themes?

Yeaaah, AFMbE doesn't do any of those other things, right? That's the point. The combination of those features into a cohesive whole, interesting and novel enough to cause a small explosion of hacks and even bleeding into OSR and other styles (see Mutant Year Zero, Cypher, Beyond the Wall, New Kult, Blades in the Dark, etc). The novelty is, like Simlasa said, in mixing existing ingredients, like bananas with saurkraut. Only the result was good enough to become the new hot for a lot of people. And that's it.

No prep play in any Zombie game I've ever played in. Fail forward is a bogus distinction, when you have degrees of success as mentioned before. Ditto 'playbooks' when you can simply have a printed out pre-gen with traits written on to the sheet. Your distinctions simply aren't that distinctive. Moreover, the point is that both are just systems comprised of gaming ideas established through other games, but AFMBE doesn't need to try and stake a claim that it's reinvented the wheel.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1009024I've had fun playing DW but there's not a damn thing new in it.

Like a lot of that kind of game it's great for absurdist comedy but every damn game turns into absurdist comedy.

DCC I don't get the appeal of running of overly fragile PC's through a deathtrap, like a bunch of sheep through Tomb of Horrors (a friend of mine bought in game a flock of sheep and ran them through the ToH in front of the party...  Was a funny story) and playing the survivor.

Amber what's the point of stats if you can bullshit the GM into letting you win.  If a person has a higher Warfare Stat, and it's a sword fight, sorry, you can't use any other stats, he's going to keep stabbing you until you stopped trying to use your Psyche on him.  I can't wrap my mind around the lack of randomizing agent either.

Fate the aspects, still can't wrap my mind around them.  Doesn't help that most of the games I picked up are highly confrontational between GM and Player.

Transhuman Space there's no conflict in here, what do you actually do???

Most other games, even if they're unplayable messes (Looking at you Exalted, bah, all of White Wolf's line) I can understand.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009079Amber what's the point of stats if you can bullshit the GM into letting you win.  If a person has a higher Warfare Stat, and it's a sword fight, sorry, you can't use any other stats, he's going to keep stabbing you until you stopped trying to use your Psyche on him.  I can't wrap my mind around the lack of randomizing agent either.

Amber isn't my cup to tea either but it's kind of like how I dropped a troll into an intro 1st level adventure. The PCs knew enough D&D to knew they had no chance in hell of beating a troll in a fair fight so they didn't try to beat the troll in a fair fight they did other things. Amber is supposed to be like that all the time.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1008908No one on Earth did.

Indeed, but it was interesting to read a thread on the big purple for a change: some posters were trying to claim it was "interesting". LOL.

Adding to my list of "Nope, wanted to get it, but just don't get it" is Torchbearer. In particular the combat system and the experience system. I just can't get my head around why you would make the first so unimmersive and the latter so unnecessarily complicated.

I think the way to put it Itachi is that with PbtA, it is not the ingredients, but the recipe.

And, despite what others might be saying, the recipe itself is unique in that it begins from the narrative side, includes very strong player-based narrative mechanics, collaborative world-building, and really if played raw, has a setting structure unlike most traditional RPGs, yet when played, can be played simply and close enough to traditional play (if you ignore the moves structure and strict GM limitations and just go commando, which is what Gronan did).

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1009088Indeed, but it was interesting to read a thread on the big purple for a change: some posters were trying to claim it was "interesting". LOL.

Adding to my list of "Nope, wanted to get it, but just don't get it" is Torchbearer. In particular the combat system and the experience system. I just can't get my head around why you would make the first so unimmersive and the latter so unnecessarily complicated.

Consider the intent of the author was to make a snarky hipster version of D&D focused on a mockery of Dungeoneering.  Reread the book.  Make sense now?

Quote from: CRKrueger;1009092I think the way to put it Itachi is that with PbtA, it is not the ingredients, but the recipe.

And, despite what others might be saying, the recipe itself is unique in that it begins from the narrative side, includes very strong player-based narrative mechanics, collaborative world-building, and really if played raw, has a setting structure unlike most traditional RPGs, yet when played, can be played simply and close enough to traditional play (if you ignore the moves structure and strict GM limitations and just go commando, which is what Gronan did).

When it boils down to it, you sit around a table with players and a GM, telling stories with individual actions having outcomes determined by dice rolls. Same as almost every other RPG ever. Everything else is window dressing, and having played PbtA games many times, there is nothing that hasn't been done in other games previous. There is no such thing as a 'traditional RPG'.

Quote from: Daztur;1009080Amber isn't my cup to tea either but it's kind of like how I dropped a troll into an intro 1st level adventure. The PCs knew enough D&D to knew they had no chance in hell of beating a troll in a fair fight so they didn't try to beat the troll in a fair fight they did other things. Amber is supposed to be like that all the time.

Not every GM gets the opportunity to game with perceptive players. They have one tool and it's a hammer. They figure every problem is a nail.