Son of Oak's New Game Engine (:Otherscape and Legend in the Mist TTRPG) 

But the Moves are now just Effects, so what really has changed..? You still roll and apply everything exactly like you always have. Honest question, cause I don't understand how just rebranding the Moves is actually a beneficial thing.

When a player is trying to do something, more often than not play simply stops while we spend minutes going over the checklist that is a Move (and choosing between Moves), which breaks the flow of the game. This change should streamline the process, yielding the same conversation and results without requiring to translate everything into the PbtA codified language of Moves. That, and Moves have the generally issue of removing from the narrative more than they add..@@HeckoX

​@@MultiDarknessXexcept now the question will become "uhhh... I have five power but just want to run in the burning building. Is that buying tags from buffing effects, reducing the fire status or am I weakening the flames??? And do I use one-to-one tags, or do I use 2-to-1 for getting/reducing statuses? Can I just get five 'fire safety class teacher' tags? " I honestly haven't seen any real improvement in understanding or swiftness, whether it's in the playtest documents just released, the earlier versions, or other game systems that do almost the exact same thing. If you notice some improvements, I'd love to pick your brain to see if there's any difference I could do to actually make this work better for my groups

@@noblesseoblige319 That is something I'm wondering as well actually. I want to see a suitable replacement that makes the core mechanics robusta, but that's something we'll have to find out.

@@MultiDarknessX oh, to clarify, I'm referring to the rules they just put out for the Kickstart backers, which is what he was talking about here. So far, the groups I've done them with have the same issues as before that I mentioned. So I'm not sure how different the final product will be if they intend on releasing within a month

While I don't know how it works either, I think you can probably still spend Effect as currency to ask some questions.

That would be the Discover effect. It sounds fairly similar. Use 1 power to discover 1 valuable detail

If you want more detailed info, a lot of the playtesting is being discussed over at the City of Mist Discord right now, best way to describe it while I'm in a hurry.... There's now multiple ways to handle the Investigate Move from CoM, depending on how your going about investigating.

It's the exact same thing. They just call it "discover". You discover one valuable detail per each power you have. It's literally the same thing as getting info per clue.

Dynamite is now called Edge, and it is just very generic "attain greater success without taking consequences, or still take consequences and achieve exceptional success" on quick outcomes and +1 or +2 power respectively on tracked outcomes. The details are up to the game group.

​@@anlumo1 where can one find details of the new system?

@@bryangutierrez5 It was sent out to backers of the Otherscape Kickstarter.

Awesome idea! Even as-is, though, I feel like homebrewing would be super easy! We could just use the ruleset as-is (with tags, power, statuses, progression, etc) and make custom themebooks for the setting we want to use. The real meat would be in adding special rules surrounding themes, like City of Mist requiring the flip-flop between Mythos and Logos tags. As opposed to D&D where there's a bunch of stat crunching to do for a new class in order to balance it with extant classes, themebooks are a series of questions that the player is told to answer (mostly) narrowly. For me, that makes custom theme books super inviting and easy to make. We could even adapt books from across the three games as it fits the setting, which I think is super cool!

It's so fundamentally different to dnd that I recommend that you watch someone play it first. Of all the (mostly dnd) gaming groups I've been in, who also tried the system out, around 10% actually enjoy city of mist. Everyone else wasn't a fan of how it works at the core level (which is understandable).

The change is primarily beneficial for people who spending too much time trying to tie their actions to a move and then overthinking results of a throw. Trust me there’s too many people who new to pbta who does this. Yes the downside that people who get “choice paralysis” now will get it ten fold but at least it will stop debates at the table “Am I doing this move or this move” and made first example just throw the fricking dice!!!

​@@mrksimka1159 But why are the players doing that at all? My understand of how a turn in "Classic" CoM goes is: - Player (cinematically) explains their character's intended actions - MC tells the player what type of move to roll for - Player rolls, adding bonuses/penalties - The move resolves The responsibility of "converting" intent to a mechanical move falls on the MC. This is great for new players, because they don't need to be as well-versed in the rules, and a single-page cheat sheet will help them in understanding their options for the type of roll the MC has asked for. Under the new engine, it sounds the full responsibility falls on the player, which effectively raises the barrier of entry. You need a deeper understanding of the rules, and can't just "give the game a shot" anymore.

@@HeckoX to answer the question at beginning. Because it’s the players who doesn’t read rules look at the moves sheet and do it backwards from how you described (which is intended way) they always go “I wanna apply move x now how I’d do that?” It’s board game junky munchkin gamers who do that, I have friends like that and speak from experience they usually despise any rules light from get go and wanna go back to PF/D&D ASAP. Story driven ttrpg players don’t think mechanics and just describe actions applying “what can I do” not “what am I allowed to do” logic and would not feel like they have barrier of entry because of this change. Hopefully I explained it clear.

​@@mrksimka1159 I get what you write, I just disagree. The new engine, as I see it, now puts added stress on exactly the storydrive TTRPG player. Describing actions have gone from "what can I do?" to "what can I do, and which Effect allows me to mechanically accomplish that?" If it sounds familiar, it's because it's the exact behaviour you were trying to avoid; focus shifts from cinematic shenanigans to mechanical "what actions to I need to take to apply effect X?". It saddens me, because part of the charm of CoM for me was that players had complete freedom to think only of "what would my character do in this situation?" No rules, no mechanics; just complete immersion. It also meant the a fresh-of-the-street player on session 1 could be almost as proficient as a 5-year veteran on session 1000, and everyone could have fun. This seems to have be done away with, and instead the system is being catered to those who we playing it "incorrectly" (based on intent)

@@HeckoX funny how we see same issue from two different perspectives. I guess it depends on a players and Master mostly because your experience says it will create problems meanwhile mine says it negates it. Well this is rhetoric by this point (I hope I use word rhetoric correctly in this context lol) because we both said our pieces the only way to actually see it to try this new engine.

City of Most already was blend of this two. They just now realized they need to lean more towards Fate and leave out the most tiresome pbta mechanic.

The entire purpose of the tag based system is that every tag has equal weight. Hercules and a bartender can have the exact same number of tags to duck and cover from a drive by shooting. One may have "god like reflexes" and the other "oh great, another shooting", but they have the same mechanical benefit. There is no "stronger tag". "Bullet proof" and "indestructible" tags are the same as "old dusty Kevlar vest". It's weird and just means you need to get creative with describing the action. Strong as ox means you throw a chair at someone. Herculean strength means you throw half the room at them. As for your assault rifle example... That would be where a weakness comes in. Maybe the larger weapon has a "hard to hide" weakness. Otherwise.... They are the same.

@@noblesseoblige319 Well, Kevin said in the video that they intended to make the system less handwavey. Adding ratings or adding multiple tags that would boost certain activities would support that intention.

@@ruemere he said that, sure, but they released most of the book for backers already, and it is just as handwavey as normal, if not a lot more so. They say it's for "playtesting", but they made it very clear that they fully intend to start their next kickstarter in February, which they promised they won't do until the pdf for otherscape is done. Meaning there's basically no way they would make any big changes at this stage. It's mostly to see if there's typos or if they need to clarify a tiny thing here or there.

@@noblesseoblige319 Thanks for the heads-up. Haven't had the time to review the materials yet. I'm fine either way, I can also house rule things if I need to.

No, the tag system already takes care of that. Power=narritive significance, not absolute power. You can punch a zombie across the room, but only dealing a teir 1 status because you only grazed him. You character is massive strong, but its such a small part of his character he can never utilize it as well, or it ends up going wrong more then right. Its like watching batman fight Solomon grundy. Grundy should obliterate batman in one punch, but only manages to land glancing blows or swat him away. Do you want it to be +2? +3? Just pick extra tags that compliment it. "Hurculean strength", "mighty punches", and "Crushing grip" are going to give you that +3, and the tradeoff is that you spent 3 tags on it. This has the side benefit of making high powerd moves more specific. If I have "strength +3" that means anything I can add strength to is automatically +3, which is very easy to do. However if I use the above examples, I'll get a +1 to throwing objects, moving objects, or breaking through walls, a +2 to grapling, climbing, but a +3 to fighting. That way the stronger the move, the narrower the application, and less characters who are "Hurculean strength+3", "invisible +3", and "Super genius +3 "

It doesn't have any of those whatsoever. At best, you can turn them into themes for one of your four themes, but it wouldn't be any different than a normal theme.

truer words have never been spoken

That would actually be better. A lot of things are just given different names but are functionally the exact same. They "removed moves" but have effects that are just moves. If anything, they are worse moves because there's no difference for the type of hit you get (just "consequence or no consequence"), and there's no variations of moves. You don't need to change the game to hit with all you got. You just... Do "toe to toe" for everything, essentially

You can mix and match. The same roll can hurt an enemy and help an ally if you have enough power and describe the move in a way that allows for that

I agree. The purpose of com is basically that using your tags and doing things is secondary, and the main game is swapping themes. They want you to hate using the same tags over and over, because they want you to lose and gain themes with wildly different tags. Everything else about the game, even things people like about it, all seem like extra add-on features to the core game. And I feel like that core is not something some people will like doing long-term. Probably the nicest way I can word that lol

How though? Moves still resulted in tags, didn't they?

@@HeckoX Now tags and the dice roll become result tags. Simple and direct. Though really the 2D6 could be simpler.

​@@HeckoXit's just condensed. For example, the investigation and take the risk moves don't give tags. They just give info or.... Let's you do something silly, I guess. At least now any move gives you the option to get tags or statuses, no matter what the move is

@@noblesseoblige319 Doesn't the Discover Effect also only give info?

@@HeckoX kind of, yeah. It's slightly different because the discover move CAN give tags/statuses (like "weakness discovered"), or just info. And you can in the same move and same roll, use some power on getting info from discover and getting tags from any other effect. It just basically shoves all moves into the "change the game" list of effects. Don't get me wrong. I'm very much in the "this is not a new game engine. It's the same damn thing" camp. But that teeny tiny difference is how it's different than before. It's not much different, at all, but that's the biggest one

It's the net. There is still a minimum power but... It's buried in the rules and super easy to miss.

@@noblesseoblige319 Thank you for answering my question 🙂

@@noblesseoblige319 If net power is what's used to determine effect potential, that creates a couple of strange situations. The first is that having a low net power (+1 or less) makes it more difficult to apply the weakest of effects (one tier-1 effect), while applying stronger effects or more effects simultaneously is easier to accomplish. In essence, potency is tied to accuracy. As a consequence of potency being tied to accuracy, it seems like there's no way to, for example, apply a tier-3 or tier-4 effect when your modifier to the 2d6 roll is 0. In other words, there doesn't seem to be a mechanical representation of high risk for high reward when net power is used to buy effects. This is actually quite a different paradigm from how other PbtA games usually handle potency, which is that the more favorable the outcome, the stronger the effect that you can apply. Blades in the Dark handles this with the pre-dice roll discussion of what a character's position and effect would be given the current situation and action being used; it's kind of loosey-goosey, but it works due to inductive reasoning and established precedents.

​@@quickanddirtyroleplaying to clarify, with power you can buy a tag for one power, or a tier of a status for two power per tier. If you get 7-9, you have a minimum of one power, and 10+ is a minimum of two power. Yes, this means if your net power is less than two, you can't get a tier 4 status on your enemy. However, just like city of mist, there's a system for adding one status to another. So getting "bruised-2" and then "bruised-2" again means you now have "fracture-3" (or whatever silly word you want for being hurt). So it IS still possible, just more time consuming. It's not different to how City of mist already worked. They just say it is, but functionally, it's the same thing, just a little bit worse, since "hit with all you got" doesn't exist and was the best way to quickly get a danger out of the game

I'm excited too and hope my family will be interested in trying it

The new rules DEFINITELY streamline and make things go much quicker.

Given how they are both Going to use this same engine, the answer is probably a large "yes". They really, really don't want crunch in their games.

It does, the playtest is almost fully complete but yes, counterattacks are still available.

@@NomadOfEndings How? There is no special move for attacks, so the list of options for attacks that's in CoM is also gone. Note that I have access to the playtest and have read through the rules many times.

@@anlumo1 You can go check out the action directory. Basically, now we don't have the set list of consequences for different actions, but rather the MC choose what could be potential consequences depending on what they established and the narrative of the player action. If they score a miss or a mixed success, a consequence can happen, and counterattack is one of them. The difference now is that a counterattack always happened in previous Moves system, now it's more up to the MC to make it happen, or choose something else as a consequence, or just not bother with it at all. So there's more flexibility to it, but it can still happen.

@@peppa4412 Yeah, so the automatic counterattack is gone, it only happens on a 9 or lower result.

The counter is if you roll 7-9. That's it. I guess technically you can willingly get a counter even on a 10+ by choosing "take the consequence for an additional power", but that is really, really undesired for the player.