Watched the whole essay, while there were some great points made, the constant snarky comments, personal attacks and overall sarcastic tone made it difficult to watch. It would've been be great to dive into the PbtA principles before starting to criticize the game, at least for the viewers, as I had a feeling at some point that you misunderstood how the game should be played (or it's me 😅) , judging by the way you described it should be played. It would be really fun to watch a video dissecting the PbtA philosophy. I am not sure that the premise that the game should be concerned to be as all encompassing as possible (meaning that it should be support any narrative that can occur at the table). It happens with all systems, be it DND, Mothership or whatever, as we agree upon the vibe and type of story we want to create before committing to the campaign on session 0. So anyone can expect what is not going to happen at the table ever. PbtA games are just explicit about that. People run sci-fi on 5e, is it possible? Yes, is it a good Idea? I do not think so. PbtA games just explicitly tell you that no, you cannot run anything but this type of story using this system. Another point extrapolating The Root RPG experience on all PbtA games is a bit unfair? Like the size, there are hundreds of small indie PbtA games with handful of moves supporting epic and long campaigns. There are good and bad PbtA games, like with any other games. I do agree, that some PbtA are sometimes too wordy and excessive, and the root RPG may be is a such game Additonally, TTRPG experience is something that happens at the table, and what the original creators designers envisioned it be, may be a completely different from the emergent experience at the tables of the majority of players. Personally, I dislike when there is too much setting in the rulebooks, I prefer rules and the setting to be separate, so I can choose what it's going to be in my world, or to avoid situations where prewritten narratives constrict the emergent narrative at the table. So in this case, having a few pages maximum is a huge plus for me. Sometimes it's fun to play in a pre-written setting, but nowadays I prefer where setting, dangers and everything is created at the table And really loved what you said, TTRPGs is a folk art
I cannot imagine being bothered that they don't outline the specifics of who rules the factions in the rulebook, thats there so you can decide amongst your table for fun, lmao makes you sound like someone who plays adventure modules (derogatory)
A minor observation, but I think the vagueness surrounding faction specifics, like who the leaders are, what they believe, what resources they have and so forth, might be a legacy of missaplying features from Apoclypse World. In Apoclypse World such setting details are undefined in the book becouse you can play a local leader, which means some of the most important factions for a campaign might be defined at character creation. This doesn't apply to Root: The RPG becouse your not playing leaders, and players already know the factions before characters are made. Also it hits me that a Root rpg that gives you the option to lead a faction would be much more intresting then one where your restricted to only be adventurers.
I found your behaviour annoying, but, although I think we wouldn't get much along if we met irl, I'm glad I've come across your video. Thanks for the food for thought and for actually preventing me from wasting money on Root: the RPG.
The timing of this video popping up felt wild as I've just recently started loving Root the board game, bought the Root RPG and felt disappointed. I also feel like the algorithm has sniped me as I co-wrote a paper/did a group art project in university centered around agency in games (writing partly about The Stanley Parable), I work with autistic kids as an art teacher and I'm currently creating a TTRPG. Stayed up way too late watching this. Great video!
While the playing of TTRPGs is unquestionably folk art, not everyone playing TTRPGs sees themself as an artist. Maybe that’s a result of the alienation you speak of, but I think it’s more attributable to the broad range of approaches and playstyles in this medium. Some folks need more structure to foster their creativity, and some folks like practicing some degree of agency yoga (AKA system mastery) even if TTRPGs aren’t truly closed suitsian games. And even still, some people like the little accomplishment chemicals from gaining XP or following a rule “correctly”, especially in this late-stage-capitalism world where everything is so complicated that we often don’t have a clue what the “right” thing is anymore. If we can’t defeat an irredeemable monster to save the world in our fictions and get awesome rewards as a result, where can we? Rules, art, microfiction, authorial voice, setting material, random tables, it’s all just creativity prompts. A rule’s impact on a group’s gaming can be just as powerful as the game’s art direction or a pre-written adventure. And in my opinion, game books barely even matter anymore; these days a game is only as good as its printable resources for table use. At least when playing it for the first time. That said, I wholeheartedly agree with your call to arms that more game designers to need to pay attention to the non-rules portions of their games. This is a super thought provoking essay that I keep finding myself returning to. Thank you for making it and I hope you’re able to find more cool ways to make art with your friends!
Another aspect to the "Is D&D 5e bad at horror" thingy is that...not all horror is desperate and powerless? Like Aliens is horror, but the aliens get their asses kicked quite a few times. I don't think 5e is particularly good at horror, or particularly bad. You can do horror in 5e perpendicularly to the system, not much supports or prevents it. You can't really make long-term horror in HERO System 6th edition when playing superheroes, at least not very easily: the whole system is about making cool stuff. I still pull it off at least once every three sessions. System matters, but system isn't everything.
Absolutely beautiful and thought provoking video. I'm considering a lot of how I engage with video games, system-guided and systemless roleplaying, metafiction, and fiction in general in the light of the study and analysis put forth in here and I will probably be thinking about that and discussing it with my friends for a very long time; absolutely something I will be obnoxiously sending the link to I'm something that cares a lot about the rules of a game (or similar activity) that I'm engaging with in the name of engaging with the source material as the thing that it is, but I'm also a longtime freeform roleplayer and (I would like to think) am sensitive to the fuzzy realities of that, and by extension how they intwract and do not intwract with a system I might be playing with the paradigm of. These priorities aren't necessarily in conflict, but when and how they come into tension and how I weigh them when they do or don't is something I'm always thinking about, and this has given me a lot of new material and perspective to ponder on. Thank you so much. I have to DM my friends about our pretend game in Minecraft immediately Funnier alternate comment: tabletop guys™ will literally invent ABA before talking to their players
It's wild, I've known about Dread for years (thanks for reminding me that I found it through the Wil Wheaton show). I only ever took the tower and questionnaire from the game, so it's funny just how overwritten it is. I never realized just how weird that first story was either. Thinking of trying new games makes me think when my high school friends and I tried d20modern. Everyone was so nervous cause it wasn't fantasy, and they almost never played it again after an unceremonious TPK. It's funny now thinking about how in our comfort zone that game was mechanics wise.
Hey Vi! I just want to thank you, I just learnt about ROOT THE RPG, and subsequently PbtA games all in all, over the weekend and got super hyped because i recently got into the board game and you have saved me a lot of time, emotions, and money! I was so intrigued initially by the PbtA system and I saw only praise online about it, but goddamn the entire story of the creators, the forge, and the entire mindset this ruleset was made for and shit are a total nightmare, thank you for helping me dodge a bullet! This entire video is amazing and astounding and I hope ur having a good day:):)
I'm having an amazing day :) thank you for this comment, and glad to save you some time emotions and money. It's a funny conundrum, because you can still run a game in the world of Root, it'll just take about the same amount of work whether or not you buy the official book, haha. But good luck with your home games, whatever they may be!
This is both a rambling mess and one of the most interesting things I've seen in years. I don't think it could get to be the latter without the former.
I watched this months and months ago when I was big on ROOT and making my own Root video. Revisiting it now because I love the structure and presentation of this whole video, and I wanted to say that I loved this work!! The way you explore your disparate topics with a strong hold on your central ideas is very satisfying to see. I would describe it as "controlled chaos," the way we fly from show to game to [HORRIBLE THING WE DO TO THE NEURODIVERGENT] to TTRPG. Truly a multimedia clash that I often think back on. Love it!!
These are my favorite comments, I'm so so so honored that this video stuck with you for so long. ^^ I actually saw your Root video when it came out, and it sent a few viewers my way! Loved your writing and I noticed some really nice subtle video editing moments. Ah, anyway, thank you again for your kind words. ^^
Who are some designers / artists / publishers making the types of prosaic games/adventures you wish to see more of? All the people at Melsonian Arts Council are at the top of my list, but I struggle to think of more.
Yeah, they're few and far between, and I'm acquainted with most of them, so recommendations are a bit fraught. But I especially like the work of Luke Gearing (The Isle, Wolves Upon the Coast), Amanda Lee Frank (Vampire Cruise!!) and Zedeck Siew (I made a whole video about his work). Uh... Games Omnivorous has the Manifestus Omnivorous, which is... mixed? I liked Mouth Brood and Bring Me Her Bones, and seeing as I also liked Super Blood Harvest I'd probably recommend Dirk Detweiler Leichty's work. Just realized there's 2 new entries in the series, so I'll have to check those out. I'm excited for the forthcoming Bakto's Terrifying Cuisine, second in Spear Witch's Adventure Writers' Series, which I'm excited for, even if I find it's more fruitful to follow individuals rather than product lines.
@@collabswithoutpermission That’s a longer list than I expected! Thank you! Troika is a wonderful game that you’re likely to be familiar with. It’s my favorite game because of all the things it *doesn’t* have, and I think it’s the one I’ve run that most closely aligns with the words/wishes in your closing remarks. (Highly recommend checking it out for others reading this) And yes, Luke Gearing’s about to launch the Swyvers kickstarter which looks like it will be so much fun. Not to just talk about things to buy, of course. But it does feel good to support excellent artists in the hobbyspace.
Hey Amato, I haven't addressed it in public yet, but yeah, I removed my old videos (~60 I think). No secondary channel or anything, and I don't think they're coming back. I'm sorry if you enjoyed or wanted to revisit some, I know you've been with the channel for a while.
@@collabswithoutpermission yes i enjoyed your content, in any case I wish you all the best for the future. ps They will always have a little space in my brain, enven if in not on the web.
Late reply, but unfortunately yes, the referenced video was either about the "Be Gay, Do Crime" zine (excerpts from Queer Ultraviolence), or "Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture" which... I think were mostly just summaries? I deleted like 60 old videos last summer, it's a bummer but it's what it is. Those are fun publications though, I'd recommend checking them out.
@@collabswithoutpermission definitely! I wasn't expecting a recommendation for a 3hr video on a topic I hadn't put much thought into at the end of a video about content mills, but glad to have followed. Definitely going to be watching more (though since this is the first vid of yours I've seen, I'm sorry to say I did not complete the homework)
Separating the Woodland Alliance and the denizens was actually a good move, though i wouldn't have made the denizens their own "faction" with reputation tracking and all. Whilst insurgent groups obviously do like to claim they are the voice and arm of the people, it would be ridiculous to claim that afghanis are all represented by the taliban or that the irish are all represented by the IRA. This both erases the agency of the people, and politicises their very existence. How many massacres have been justified on the grounds that entire settlements were resitants or collaborators? Assigning the WA the role of "the people" is tacitly substantiating this mindset. How many conquests and regime changes have only been successful because of the engagement of locals dissatisfied with the status quo? Basically all of them, but by making the WA "the people" the ones in the marquisate are all helpless victims waiting to be liberated by your flavour of insirgent, rather than people living their lives and having nuanced opinions on one regime or another. The WA deserves to be a complex movement that a table can interact with intelligently. Whether it's spanish liberals being forced to choose between fighting to become a soviet puppet or abandoning the cause, panafrican socialists destroying local institutions and cultures thst survived colonial rule or Indian resistants having to fight for caste-believing bigots, most insurgencies have depths that can be fun to explore at a gaming table. By making them the sole legitimate representative of the people you're just arbitrarily assiging them the "good guy" status and calling it a day (assuming your table believes sovereignty is derived from the will of the people lol). Good bits in these essays tho keep it up 👍
Been thinking about this since you posted it. I think my point was that rebels are often the "good guys" in media, and Root: The RPG wants you to tell good guy stories, to be unlikely heroes. It's everywhere in the text. So it surprised me that they didn't make the WA the "good guys," and that they used a lot of uh... weird centrist arguments to avoid doing so. All sides being morally gray conflicts with their goal of encouraging you to be heroes. It also begs the question: Can you be heroes of imperialism? Heroes of fascism? The answer seems to be yes! Which is also weird! Funny fact: it also led to forced conflict, like in Gelilah's Grove. The writers need every faction to be morally gray, right? So they made the Woodland Alliance NPC like... a prohibitionist. XD Which is weirdly out of left field. Also, I cracked the book open to reread this bit, and they don't even list which NPCs are part of which faction in their stat blocks! Maybe because it'd be weird to portray denizens who directly oppose each other as belonging to the same "faction!" Which leads me to: I agree with your first point in particular, the problem comes from trying to describe all the individuals across the disparate clearings (the "Denizens") as an institution. That's a big reason I put Seeing Like A State on screen near the end, because like... idk, that's the whole idea. It's also my problem with the Woodland Alliance being described as an institution. It's like they want the idea of 1) a big disorganized mob of protestors, but also 2) a unified political party? I don't know. It's just weak writing, because as much as I would've loved a genuinely complex political ecosystem evoking the ones you mentioned, there are "no goals, leaders, tactics, resources, knowledge or worldviews." :P
This was a really good video. I kept thinking of Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground which includes a pretty robust rebuttal to the idea of scientific positivism. Essentially, even if scientists could prescribe all manner of behaviora that would be good for the human being, some people would choose to reject "good" behaviors just out of a desire for freedom, or a rejection of being controlled in some way. Even if they know those behaviors are good for them. It also reminds me of the poitical school of theories 'economic democratism'. Basically using economic models of behaviorism to explain democratic behaviors like voting. The problem is there are so many unaccountable variables that mess up their simple equations, they have to dump all that stuff (like emotions, beliefs, ideologies, etc) into something they call the 'D' term. All that stuff is super important and relevant to the decision to politically participate though, so when I was reading these theories in grad school I remember just complaining all the time that if you have to put 80% of what makes a human, human, into an unmeasurable term just to fit in your exonomic model because otherwise you can't explain why people are unpredicatable, maybe you needed an entirely new theory.
Coming back to this vid after a few months to say thank you for making this. It’s a hard watch. It pushed me to really consider how I was letting game design and ABA type behaviors permeate within me and in the ways I interact with the world. Have a great day ❤
You Died! was a game I kinda hated on my first run, but its grown on me. I think you can adjust the feel of it by ignoring the 1+1/2 your Attribute rule and just do 1+Attribute instead and/or making damage 1+Attribute, there's also rules at the end of the book to make the game easier/harder by giving normal enemies faction abilities or increasing/decreasing the HP you get back from your Blackened Blood Vials. I understand your criticism, the game is very swingy, but its enjoyable enough for a Free soulslike experience
Thank you for your comment! It's interesting, bc I don't uh... Like, as a reviewer, I'm not very invested in hacking the game to make it fun. To me, the most interesting things about "You Died" are that it's free, that it has good layout and art, that it's a lightweight solo board game tagged as a TTRPG, that it's a bad board game (as written), and that it's poorly organized. I think that's all VERY, VERY interesting and applicable to TTRPGs in 2023. It puts it in conversation with RUNE, Dice Souls, Invisible Sun, Apothecaria, the IGDN awards and more. Oh! And it's a CaltropCore game! Like, all that sets my brain on fire. I'm very glad you enjoyed playing past the first run, though. Amabel Holland recently started making RU-vid videos about board games, and in one she says board games don't need to be well designed, that frustrating or janky rules can be good, if the designer is trying to create a frustrating experience (sounds kinda Soulslike to me). All very fascinating stuff, cool to see it in practice. ^^
I've been watching this in sessions, and I just got through the ABA section. And oh my _God_ that is everything I put myself through as a child. I tried everything I could to make myself less "strange" in ways people would like, to become like a neat package of a human person rather than who I was. Hell, I even glorified acting robotically and thought of what would happen if I made a button to make my voice go away that people could press whenever I talked too much. I just wanted people to stop being mad at me, or maybe even smile when I started going on tangents about things I loved, stimming and all. I slip back into old habits sometimes and go back into acting robotically, or just acting how I think "normal" people act/want me to act for the sake of acceptance or to avoid punishment. It hurt me as a child, and still hurts me now. That entire segment helped me understand what I was putting myself through, and I can't thank you enough for making this video.
Im sorry but i am struggling to understand what you are saying in this video. What are you railing against other than ttrpgs being corporatized? Like what are you saying about "story games" and other games that take inspiration from them? This video has some beautiful moments but i cannot for the life of me understand your thesis, if i am missing something please tell me cause i genuinely find this video moving
No apology needed! I tried to state the thesis all at once at 2:44:22, but it's definitely a bit dense: "Forge ideology is a mind control facility that never worked in the first place because it's really just a smokescreen for using behaviorism and board game logic to market systems, with the promise that systems create reproducible experiences." That's like 7 big ideas right in a row, but I'll try to break it down. So... agh. When I say "Forge Ideology," I'm putting a label on a category of TTRPG thinking so I can talk about it. Like, at 2:44:44 when talking about how the Good Time Society AP is a piece of advertising, I say, "This is Forge ideology" NOT because those people are associated with (or know about) the Forge, but because it fits my new category. Things are more or less "Forge-y" (for my purposes) depending on how much they have qualities such as: Does it use behaviorist language or logic? Does it focus too hard on the rules? Does it promise to "create" an experience? Those qualities might be central to board games, but they make for BAD tabletop roleplaying game books, especially those that strongly hit all three (this can apply to all kinds of systems, not just storygames). This is important because when you hit all three, you can act like all of Play is visible by looking at the rules, which lets you make a lot of really marketable claims! You can claim your game "tells stories" or is "about" something. You can claim you've manipulated probabilities and incentives to make sure people always play nice, share the spotlight evenly and only tell The Correct Story, and that if they DON'T do those things, it's because they're breaking the rules. Are those things true? No, of course not. That's why I say it "never worked in the first place" and is just used to "market systems." It might seem like old news, talking about obscure podcast episodes and dusty old forums, but it's on like _every single page_ of Root: The RPG, which came out last year. It's in everyone's marketing, it's all over TikTok and Twitter, it's getting shoved into textbooks and TTRPG design courses, and of course corporations LOVE IT for all the reasons stated above. As I say in the video, "I hate it, it's everywhere, and it's making books worse." My optimistic fix for this is acknowledging that play is radically transformative, to EXPECT rules will shift and change during play, and to give players things that are actually useful at the table (see: high-quality adventures, not additional rules). That's the TTRPG bit in a nutshell, even as it's still pretty dense. There's also a lot more stuff in the Footnotes video and the Cut Context video linked in that vid's description, but I hope this helps! ^^
Ah cool! I'm glad that helped. :) If you prefer reading to watching, there's also a full transcript linked in the description, if you're interested in any of the other bits.
I'm a highschool student currently taking psychology. This is the first time i've ever heard of ABA and it's absolutely blowing me away that this even exists. While taking my course, I never even considered how behaviorism, hell psychology as a whole could've been so strained and mangled into this hellish concept. I'm currently only an hour in to this video. But I had to pause it just to comment this. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I'm a massive fan of severance and I had this video saved in my watch later for a while. Thank you for making this video. It's amazing.
I think you are just a creative and experienced RP/story telling person (based on your skill of engagement in this 3 hour video). if someone has no Game master experience, no player experience, doesn't read books and doesn't intellectually watch movies. Abstracting fantasy on unlimited amounts of actions (like real life RP) you need a game like this that has as many rules as possible
First off! Thank you for making such a engaging 3h long video. It's not something i'd normally watch with ADHD, but you had me all the way through even though i''m not a theatre or phyc or lit student who know wtf you are talking about. Im just some league of legends player trying to find out how to play TTRPGs so i can stop being a league of legends player XD. I found this video from a top comment on "Are Dungeon Masters CHEATING in Dungeon World" comparing this video to the one i was originally watching. I have never played PBTA and only know about it from Me Myself and Die Real play of IronSworn, a free to play PBTA clone that does 2d10 vs 1d6+ ability score to resolve how many successes you rolled. Such a wierd rabbit hole i found.
Thank you for mentioning that other video, and I'm glad you enjoyed all 3 hours! I tried really hard to make it engaging all the way through, and approachable for people who are outside the TTRPG scene. Glad to hear it worked out for you. :3 Best of luck weaning yourself off League, and please believe me when I say my name is unrelated to League of Legends. 🫡😹
My brother got the avatar the last airbender ttrpg books and looking back on all his forking out about it, he really only talked about the rules, about specific scenarios where you had to play certain characters. When he brought up the idea of running something for it and I could not imagine a character I wanted to play within the rules even with my lack of knowledge, I think I now get why. Thank you for rotting my mind to the point where I want to start out my gming with a better focus on the players and their desires first
I ran the Root Quickstart and really liked the way it felt for the most part. I'm disappointed to hear that the full release core rules are so cluttered and badly written, and they they require the second book. I was hoping not to have to read two novels in order to run the game effectively.
Ok, so, putting aside the ABA stuff, because that's a little over my head: Are you saying that it's wrong for a tabletop RPG to tailor its rules systems around what the writer wants the players to want to do? Like, is it wrong for a TTRPG about fishing to include indepth fishing rules and reward XP for acting out the 'fantasy' of being a fisherman? Does that game need to have rules for fistfighting and flying a plane, otherwise it's manipulative? The reason I pick up something like Tiny Taverns is because I want a game that wants me to play a tavern owner and has rules for owning and running a tavern, if I wanted to run/play a wasteland survival campaign, I'd go grab something like Fallout, Mutant: Year Zero or Tiny Wastelands. I've been hung up on this ever since the bit where you criticized the observation that D&D creates murder hobo players because most of its rules revolve around and reward Combat... Because I've played a lot of D&D and Pathfinder and have that the heavy emphasis on combat rules *does* make players *want* to fight more, and they get antzy when they *don't* get to, at least at my tables.
Hey Min! I'm in good faith mode here, because I think this is important stuff (for people who care about TTRPGs). Up front, I'm definitely _not_ saying it's wrong to focus your game on specific activities. My core argument is that there's an artistic imperative for TTRPG books to be more than just mechanisms, and more than just social contracts. This argument is based on my belief that social contracts are flexible (and not set by the system), and that you cannot see TTRPG play by looking at a game's rules. Take your fishing example, and presume there are no fistfighting rules. Is a fist fight possible in that system? To me, that question almost doesn't make sense, because it's positioning "system" as the arbiter of what can and cannot happen during play. It's using the rules as a window into play. This is where we get the (very popular) idea that there's no roleplaying in D&D. It's also, regrettably, how most people talk about TTRPGs (see: as if they're Suitsian). Instead, what if we asked, "Is it possible for 'I get in a fist fight' to become part of the fiction, during play?" I would argue, if the game is a tabletop roleplaying game, the answer is inherently yes, because we're not talking about the bounds of _the rules_ anymore, we're talking about the bounds of make-believe. Where does that lead us? Imagine you grabbed the Fallout TTRPG, like you posed. What are you expecting to find? Rules? A social contract? Official permission from Bethesda? Think about that hypothetical fishing TTRPG. How would you feel if it was just a bunch of rules? "On 10+ you catch a fish." I opened up Root: The RPG and those things were all I found. But I don't need permission. I don't care if a designer thinks my group's creativity is "wrong." And I need WAY more than rules. I want a Root book to DESCRIBE what moose and deer and factions and ruins are like. I want a fishing RPG with 100 fish categorized by habitat, with fishing master NPCs who teach special fishing skills, with magical fishing rods hidden around a detailed world. I want locations, NPCs, timelines, avatars, _adventures._ I want flexible tools that can be radically appropriated through play. Writing that stuff is hard, but it's trusting players to decide what the game means to them, rather than the designer deciding what it means ahead of time.
@@collabswithoutpermission Maybe you could make a video that explores the distinction between role-playing (RP) and tabletop role-playing game systems (TTRPGs). My perspective is that TTRPG systems (games) like PBTA, DND or even GURPS, aim to simulate the real world and immerse players within the fantasy setting with rules and probablity. Some games have rules for specific real world actions you could perform and to immerse a player, the porbablity of sucess needs to be simulationist. Some rules are based on fantasy actions that cannot be performed in real life, but need to be abstracted in a way that makes them feel like how we would do them in the real world to allow for immersion in the reverse. The role of rules/moves is to help GMs abstract actions and determine the outcomes in the fantasy setting. I think rules help players who may not be game designers make decisions and progress in the game, and help GMs abstract the palyers action within the fantasy so they can narrate the outcome with specifics. When it comes to D&D, it's primarily a game focused on character progression in a fantasy setting. You play dnd so you can act as a fantasy person/creature, with Fantasy people, in fantasy places using fantasy things. It abstracts real-world actions through d20 dice rolls using probablity and the player's character enhances the probility during abstraction. Then depending on the player, they can get creative with role-playing through voice acting, live acting, method acting or simply just narrate the outcome of their actions if they aren't a theatre kid. I believe rules are there to help players make RP decisions. However, the dice, setting and context of the story determine the results. Systems like PBTA provide MOVES as guidelines for actions they pre-emptively thought about abstracting, they list possible outcomes based on success levels so the GM doesn't have to. While D&D often follows a binary success/failure approach, which allows the DM to say "nothing happened try again later" or they can narrate success with a negative outcome (not stated in DND Rules because it's based on the DM and the context). Just because their isn't a MOVE or RULE about the action doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means they haven't got a mechanical abstraction and the GM must decide the outcome with the context and their gamedesign/story telling ability. RP is something I don't have much knowledge on but it seems like you are very much in the OSR/NSR camp where you want a rules lite game where you can narrate/RP anything you want to do in the setting and the GM needs to be skilled enough to roll with the punches and keep the immersion/fantasy in their players heads while they decide the outcome of you actions, maybe using dice to inspire them on the levels of success. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and where you stand in the RP vs. RP Game discussion
Unfortunately, I disagree with all those ideas on a pretty fundamental level, so I think _you'll_ have to make that video, haha. Or rather, my take on those ideas is THIS video? Maybe Google search "Jared Sinclair cohost, rules elide" for a good alternate perspective on what rules can do... but more than anything, I want to stop talking about rules. Rules have been so overemphasized throughout TTRPG history, I'd rather finally talk about adventures.
Hey thanks a lot for changing how I perceive TTRPGS forever with this vid. Blades in the dark always intimidated me with its rules and procedures but this made me realize I can just roll the dice pools and ignore everything else and the game will be fine and fun because I like my gaming group as people and collaborators.
ROOT RPG is basically a batteries not included box set. It gives you all the cool mechanics, but you have to supply your own world for them to be used in. Then again, that’s not very bad because getting a toy with no batteries in it on Christmas is still dope because you just need to go grab some batteries, the mechanics of it are still fun. What magpie games doesn’t realize is that even when you encourage people to make their own world, you still have to give them a platform to start with
This was an absolutely WILD ride, since I have been cautiously waiting on a friend to start up GMing a game of Root, and have personally only read the first bits of the book. I do think some of the criticisms aren't warranted; there IS some new lore, and the restrictions against deer are (as you discovered later) something in line with how they are already presented in the existing material or the board game. Plus, the fact that moose are the in-setting equivalent for dragons is absofuckinglutely hilarious. But that aside, this was a wonderful rollercoaster of emotions you took me along, and I'll never look at these cute animals the same again.
Haha, thank you for riding the rollercoaster! ^^ I agree, "moose are dragons" is a super fun idea, it reminds me of uh... Over The Hedge. Like, the bear literally has a dragon's hoard of junk food! I hope the video communicated how much I crave useful ideas like that. Like, "moose are like dragons" is a good whiteboard idea, but it needs a little bit more before it reaches peak usefulness for a GM.
This was such an amazing video. Not only an amazing explanation of all these topics, but as someone who wants to be making content about rpg’s this was very inspiring. Can’t wait to check your other videos out! ❤❤
Great video. I happened upon it because I love Severance and the original Root game. I was intrigued, but never tried the Root TTRPG. I'm a bit older now (I'm 40) and I haven't played TTRPG since I was in my 20s, but they were an very formative part of my life. I remember when I was very young, maybe 13 or 14, we played D&D, but from the beginning we generally took the rules very loosely. Some of the most magical moments of playing those games in my childhood/adolescence were when the players became so immersed in the story, that the DM/GM (who was sometimes myself), intuitively knew to drop all the restraints of rules and completely rely on the natural unfolding of the story. In the most immersive moments, we would just stop rolling dice and just wing-it, dictating and speaking the story from our imagination. In was a magical, and I would even say spiritual experience where the personal/collective unconscious dictated and expressed itself spontaneously. They were some of the most precious experiences in my life. In my opinion a true RPG should facilitate that kind of emergence--the structure of the game mechanics and rules are only be there to fall back on when the storytelling is in need of prompts and structure to harmonize the player's imaginations. I haven't played TTRPGs in over a decade at this point, but it saddens me to hear that it seems like the general games of the industry have lost this quality. I feel like video games have had a negative influence, as they enforce these sorts of incentives and expectations for game mechanics that leave little room for the imaginal.
