What is a "Light" RPG? What is a "Crunchy" RPG?

[Umbran]

I'm not sure "it gets easier after a lot of practice" is a point in its favor.

Was I supposed to be giving "points in its favor"?

I was making a note relevant to how "crunchy" some of the narrative games seem, because from what people say, I gather that people's estimation of it seems largely about how often they have to stop and think about rules.

And yeah, if you are very used to some styles of rules, they will tend to become familiar and intrude less. Pick up a different style, they will intrude more.

The better measures come when you are highly (or at least equally) familiar with multiple styles, so that the experience difference isn't so much of a factor in perception.

One could argue the same thing about flying a spaceship.

RPGs are not rocket science. While I don't mind analogies, I don't find hyperbolic ones to be particularly valuable.

Do TTRPG newbies find PbtA intuitive?

I don't think anyone's done real study on that.

In my experience & observation, as far as that is indicative, newbies find PBTA (or BitD, or Fate) as intuitive as more traditional games.

Mind you, traditional games like D&D aren't all that intuitive.

 

[pemerton]

Tell me what happens when the first one succeeds at 'belch forth flame', and then tell me what happens for the second one...

This doesn't quite make sense, because in Dungeon World the GM doesn't declare actions for their characters/creatures that might then succeed or fail. It's the players who declare actions, and the GM makes moves as appropriate in accordance with the general rules of the game.

I don't know DW well enough to know what is implied by "Belch Forth Flame." Is that a Hard GM move? Is it something I am supposed to just make up on the spot? Are there rules for how much damage that sort of thing is supposed to do?

"Belch Forth Flame" is a description of what, in the fiction, a chimera does (or tends to do). And it also serves as advice, in the rules of the game, to the GM as to how to colour their moves. If the GM opts to deal damage as a move, then "The amount of damage is decided by the source" (p 167). In the case of a monster, the damage entry in its stat block "is a measure of how much pain the monster can inflict at once. Just like player damage it’s a die to roll, maybe with some modifiers. A monster deals its damage to another monster or a player whenever it causes them physical harm" (p 222).

There are many ways the GM could use the presence of a chimera in the fiction to make moves in play. For instance, suppose that the GM has described the chimera standing in a cavern with a great statute behind it. The players say "We advance towards the statute." That's not a player-side move, so triggers no roll; it invites the GM to make a soft move in response. Maybe the GM says "As you advance towards it, the chimera belches forth flame. What do you do?" This is putting them in a spot.

The players are free to respond as they wish. One might declare "I dive out of the way of the flame!" That would be Defying Danger based on DEX ("When you act despite an imminent threat": p 62). If the player misses the roll (6 or less) the GM can make a hard move in response - perhaps dealing damage: "The flame sears you as you tumble across the floor. Roll d10+1 to see how much damage you take" (in DW, the player always rolls the damage their PC suffers).

Another might declare "Heedless of the flame, I charge the chimera and chop at it with my halberd!" That is handing the GM a golden opportunity, and so the GM might make their hard move - "Roll damage to see how much the flame burns you" - before then calling on the player to resolve Hack and Slash ("When you attack an enemy in melee": p 58).

My point is that it does not prescribe what happens at all, it leaves it wide open for the GM, and that is what makes it narrative.

I think you are exaggerating this difference between DW and 5e D&D. The rules of 5e D&D don't tell us what happens when the PCs encounter a chimera in a chamber standing between them and a great statue. Maybe it breathes fire on them. Maybe it ignores them. Maybe it flees from them. The GM has to make those decisions, based on their sense of the fiction and any relevant mechanical processes (eg maybe a player declares that their PC casts Cause Fear on the chimera).

The difference isn't about "prescription" vs "wide open", it's about the process of play used to prompt and resolve declared actions.

In my view, what makes Dungeon World "lighter" in its rules, compared to 5e D&D, is not the length of the rulebook (my copy, from which I've quoted above, is a 410 page PDF) but the fact that it has fewer sub-systems or specialised processes. The version of D&D that comes closes to that is 4e D&D, but it still has more distinct processes than DW (especially its very different processes for resolving combat vs non-combat).

 

[mamba]

This doesn't quite make sense, because in Dungeon World the GM doesn't declare actions for their characters/creatures that might then succeed or fail. It's the players who declare actions, and the GM makes moves as appropriate in accordance with the general rules of the game.

The point is that it is not defined what 'belch forth flame' does. Also, that is perfectly in line with using it during a soft or hard move by the DM, as mentioned in my next post (as that was a quote, it was referring to the Acid Spray of the Ankheg, but it is the same principle of its effects being undefined)

"When the GM is entitled to make a move, then if the fiction includes an ankheg it includes a voracious giant arthropod with an acid spray that eats away metal and flesh. This could inform a a soft move - "The ankheg sprays acid on your armour, which starts to fume and bubble - what do you do?" - or a hard move "The ankheg sprays acid at you, and your sword dissolves away in your hands - what do you do?""

"Belch Forth Flame" is a description of what, in the fiction, a chimera does (or tends to do). And it also serves as advice, in the rules of the game, to the GM as to how to colour their moves. If the GM opts to deal damage as a move, then "The amount of damage is decided by the source" (p 167). In the case of a monster, the damage entry in its stat block "is a measure of how much pain the monster can inflict at once. Just like player damage it’s a die to roll, maybe with some modifiers. A monster deals its damage to another monster or a player whenever it causes them physical harm" (p 222).

'belch forth flame' is not under the damage entry

I think you are exaggerating this difference between DW and 5e D&D. The rules of 5e D&D don't tell us what happens when the PCs encounter a chimera in a chamber standing between them and a great statue

but it tells us exactly what its Fire Breath does, there is no room for interpretation / improvisation, whereas the exact same feature of the DungeonWorld chimera leaves it wide open

If to you that is not the difference between narrative and not narrative, then I am not sure what you think it is

 

[pemerton]

but it tells us exactly what its Fire Breath does, there is no room for interpretation / improvisation, whereas the exact same feature of the DungeonWorld chimera leaves it wide open

I don't think this is accurate, for several reasons:

(1) Suppose the players in a game of D&D have their PCs sailing in a ship, and the GM decides a chimera swoops down and breathes on the ship to set it aight. What happens? Does the ship catch fire? Its sails? If the captain was standing on the deck consulting some maps, do the maps turn to ash? The entry for a chimera in the 5e MM doesn't answer those questions.

(2) Suppose, in a game of D&D, the GM decides that a chimera breathes fire on a group of PCs. Which ones are caught in the AoE? The game rules don't prescribe this. (Contrast, say, 13th age which does prescribe this for AoEs.)

(3) The Dungeon World rules for the GM dealing damage are quite clear: they explain how the die to be rolled is identified, who rolls it, how it interacts with armour values and hp totals, etc.​

I could give more examples, but I think these are enough to show why I think you are drawing a false contrast.

 

[bloodtide]

I'm not sure "light or crunchy" is really the right way to think about things. It is more about Game Flow.

In both types of games, you will always get the huge number of players that don't really go with the game flow. For the crunchy games they either don't know the rules or don't understand them...and they wait until the first round of combat to ask the DM questions. The light games have the blank freedom problem, where the player does not understand they can have their character at least try to take an action.

But what is really, really comes down to is: How does the DM run the game.

If the DM just lets the players do whatever and slow down or ruin the game play flow, then everything is a mess.

If the DM has just a couple strict House Rules, the game flows on nicely like a stream of pure water.

I say this as a DM that runs any RPG with some basic house rules to make the game flow. Like two big ones are no goofing around and my infamous three second action statement.

 

[mamba]

I don't think this is accurate, for several reasons:

fine, so let's say a lot less defined than in D&D, and in D&D the impact on a character is completely defined whereas in DW it is completely undefined

(1) Suppose the players in a game of D&D have their PCs sailing in a ship, and the GM decides a chimera swoops down and breathes on the ship to set it aight. What happens? Does the ship catch fire? Its sails? If the captain was standing on the deck consulting some maps, do the maps turn to ash? The entry for a chimera in the 5e MM doesn't answer those questions.​

agreed

​

(2) Suppose, in a game of D&D, the GM decides that a chimera breathes fire on a group of PCs. Which ones are caught in the AoE? The game rules don't prescribe this. (Contrast, say, 13th age which does prescribe this for AoEs.)​

the 15ft cone should make it pretty clear, unless your concern is the direction of the cone being determined by the DM

​

(3) The Dungeon World rules for the GM dealing damage are quite clear: they explain how the die to be rolled is identified, who rolls it, how it interacts with armour values and hp totals, etc.​

then I do not understand your reply to the ankheg, because here it sounds like you say the opposite of what you said there

I could give more examples, but I think these are enough to show why I think you are drawing a false contrast.

when where do you draw the line between narrative and not narrative?

 

[pemerton]

the 15ft cone should make it pretty clear, unless your concern is the direction of the cone being determined by the DM

Together with other questions, like whether the sails and the maps are both within the cone; or whether the sails shield the maps. I mean, those are questions to which - within the causal framework of the fiction - there are definite answers dictated by physical "reality"; but in the context of gameplay there is almost never sufficiently specific information about the size, shape, composition and location of the sails, the maps, etc to apply purely physical reasoning.

Stuff has to get made up. I think in your contrast you are pointing to parts of D&D that have mechanistic processes (like attack and damage rolls) but ignoring the bits that don't (like positioning, targeting, many if not most non-hp-depletion effects); while you are doing the opposite in relation to DW, pointing to bits which require the GM to make decisions (like what move to make) but ignoring the bits that have mechanistic processes (like the rolling of player-side moves or the rolling of damage).

This is why I am saying that the deep contrast is between processes of play - they locate the need for decision-making in different places. A secondary contrast, which is more relevant to this thread's topic, is that the mechanistic processes in D&D are often more complicated than in DW.

then I do not understand your reply to the ankheg, because here it sounds like you say the opposite of what you said there

I'm not sure what you think is the opposite. From the point of view of how the creature description interacts with the game rules, the ankheg's acid and the chimera's flame are basically identical.

when where do you draw the line between narrative and not narrative?

Well it's not a description that I use. I don't find it very helpful, because to me it doesn't seem to provide very useful groupings of RPGs in terms of the relevant techniques and play experiences.

For instance, Fate and Apocalypse World have very little in common, in terms of the relevant techniques on either player or GM side, but they both get bundled as narrative. 4e D&D and Moldvay Basic likewise have very little in common, in terms of relevant techniques, but they both get bundled as non-narrative.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I think of it as a philosophical difference. In crunchy RPGs the crunch mechanics are an integral part of the character and world descriptions. They're armatures, often hidden from the characters themselves, but still a real part of the characters. And because they're part of the characters' descriptions, it's reasonable for them to be thick and sturdy.

In light RPGs the mechanics are not an integral part of the character, but rather something that gets in the way of describing the "real" character. They're scaffolds rather than armatures, and are treated as a necessary evil due to pure free-form improv not being practical. And because they're considered distracting and obscuring add-ons, it's desirable to make them light and minimal.

Overall, I favor crunch: "Listen to the dice. They speak truths about the game world." Now there are unusual cases where I find the best mechanic to be "GM whim" or even "player decides," but they're just that: Unusual. I mark them as anomalies in my house rules and campaign notes, as places where the usual crunchy mechanics vote "present" rather than either "aye" or "nay."

 

[Aldarc]

I'm not sure "it gets easier after a lot of practice" is a point in its favor. One could argue the same thing about flying a spaceship.

Do TTRPG newbies find PbtA intuitive? As in, is it easy to pick up if you're not deconditioning yourself from years of D&D? It's an experiment I can't perform on myself, having gamed since the 1980s.

Disclaimer: This is anecdotal. My partner only began trying TTRPGs shortly before the pandemic. We started with D&D 5e, but they kind of bounced off of it pretty hard. There was a lot of "what do all these numbers mean?" and "which of all these number on this sheet do I use?" and "what does this spell do?" They liked the adventure and the story - Sunlesss Citadel dropped into the Nentir Vale - but they didn't seem to like the game itself.

Despite that, my partner was willing to give TTRPGs another go, so I pitched a few other games, and they picked Dungeon World (actually Homebrew World). In contrast to before, my partner found Dungeon World much easier to play than D&D 5e because they felt that there was less that they had to manage and less floating numbers and math, so we ended up switching to that to much better results.

I have also had similar experiences running different TTRPGs for other TTRPG neophytes or sitting at tables with TTRPG neophytes. A bit like @Umbran, I think that traditional D&D tends to be a little less intuitive for new players than we sometimes take for granted here. There have definitely been tabletop games that I have often found over the past ten years that have a lower entry point of ease for new players than 5e D&D. Some neophytes request D&D because that is what they have heard about and can name, but if I can, I often default first to these other games.

 

[John R Davis]

I find crunchy games both a mix of rules and setting. That is you refer to the setting to make sure stuff fits as well as getting the mechanics correct.
How much juggling am I doing to make the game work!!
I find say Apocalypse World pretty crunchy as you need to juggle a lot, especially remembering all the moving parts players have introduced over the last few hours. PF1 also crunchy as rules for most things plus an awful lot of lore n plot quite often.