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anim-ttrpgs · 8 months

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Clearing Up Some Confusion: Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is Not Powered by the Apocalypse

There has been a little confusion cropping up here and there regarding our game Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and its relationship to the Powered by the Apocalypse system, A.K.A. PbtA, which we would like to hopefully clear up in this post.

PbtA is a very popular system for indie RPGs lately, it’s safe to say most of the indie RPGs we see cross our dashboard use it, in fact, and since Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is an indie RPG that also happens to use 2D6+Modifier dice rolls, we can see where this assumption might come from. However, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is not a PbtA game, nor is it a ‘hack’ of any other game. It is an original from-the-ground-up system that uses 2D6+Modifier because 2D6+Modifier is just a very good way to roll dice. It’s very predictable, and dice results that are randomized yet still predictable are beneficial both for players playing the game and for us designing the game.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually does take inspiration from other games, even PbtA games like Monster of the Week—though in Monster of the Week’s case, that “inspiration” often took the form of doing the opposite of what Monster of the Week does, because we actually found MotW far too restrictive and limiting in its character creation and other elements for the kind of game we wanted to play—but also Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Gumshoe, Shadowrun, AD&D2e, etc, both in the “do what they do” and “do the opposite of what they do” sense. In fact, if your TTRPG doesn’t take inspiration from a good number of other TTRPGs, that’s probably a pretty bad sign.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy also takes a great deal of inspiration from non-TTRPG sources, some of which are probably pretty obvious and some of which might surprise you, such as Blood(1997) and Warhammer 40,000(the tabletop wargame specifically, not so much the lore). Other inspirations include but are not limited to: Kolchak: The Nightstalker, The X-Files, XCOM(the reboots, not so much the originals), Columbo, Hardboiled, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Scooby-doo, too many horror movies to list, etc.

That got a little off-topic, but this is supposed to be a promotional post for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy as well, after all—plus, I get excited.

Anyway, the point of this post is that the 2D6+Modifier dice system is where the similarities between Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and the PbtA system end.

To elaborate, here are some—but not all—of the biggest differences:

No “Classes” or “Playbooks”

All PCs in Eureka draw from the same list of Skills, and spread their skillpoints around them how they see fit; as well as a collection of 3 gameplay-altering Traits that can be mixed and matched in any way, rather than being a set collection of “moves” or “class features”. This does not mean that all PCs are the same, Traits can make them vary wildly in how they play mechanically.

There are what could be considered two or three “categories” of PC in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy(Mundane, Mage, and Monster), but these are not “classes” or “playbooks” in any way, they mostly determine what lists of Traits the PC gets to draw from, and due to the wildly gameplay-altering nature of these Traits, two Monster PCs in Eureka are likely to be far less similar to each other than two PCs both using The Monstrous playbook in Monster of the Week, and far less similar to each other than two Fighters in D&D.

Making Multiple Rolls per Scene

In PbtA games, it is fairly common for a single dice roll and a single “move” to dictate the outcome of an entire “scene”. In Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, this is not the case. PCs may make multiple rolls of different Skills or multiple subsequent rolls of the same Skill within a single “encounter” or “scene”.

NPCs Make Rolls Too

That brings us to our third big difference for this post, the fact that NPCs also make rolls. In most PbtA games, NPCs do not make rolls, only the PCs do, but in Eureka, that is not the case. NPC stat blocks are not as robust as PC stat blocks, but they do still make rolls in the same manner the PCs do, especially in combat, which brings us to the last point I’m going to make in this post because I’m running out of time.

Deep, Intricate Combat Rules

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is not a combat-focused game by any means, the party will probably only get into 1-2 skirmishes across an entire mystery, but when those skirmishes do happen, they will be played out using deep, tactical combat rules with multiple types of attacks and combat moves, including mechanical crunch for things like positioning and cover, multiple types of damage, environmental damage and effects, etc.

All of this should be telling you that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is not only entirely different in its core systems, but also an overall crunchier and less improvisational-ruling system than PbtA, with tons of freedom in its character creation as well as plenty of rules and guidelines to help GMs make fair and realistic resolutions on the fly. That is not to say that Eureka is a complicated TTRPG, nearly everything in the game runs off the same core 2D6 system, making it very easy to learn and memorize—the rules crunch just means that if the outcome or appropriate modifier of a roll is not immediately obvious, you can rest assured that you can find a solid answer or at least a guideline with just a quick flip through the rulebook, either during or after the session, whatever is your preference.

#eureka: investigative urban fantasy #eureka #roleplaying #rpg #coc #dnd #tabletop #indie rpg #ttrpg #monster of the week #motw #motw rpg #motw ttrpg #motw character #call of cthulhu #ttrpg character

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thaumaturgekitchen · 10 months

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Wrangling the Initiative

Initiative in games like D&D is, broadly speaking, a pain. Just as a fight is about to break out, you've gotta kill the momentum to roll up an initiative order. It's staid. It's static. It doesn't radiate joy.

Now, you could try another game that does things differently. (Seriously, go do it - It's a great time!) But sometimes you got an adventure you want to run in D&D or Pathfinder or what-have-you, and suddenly you're scrambling for ways to wrangle the initiative rules into something you're happy with.

Take popcorn initiative - altogether a cool and simple solution that involves each player (or the GM, in the case of the monsters) choosing who to pass the initiative to at the end of their turn. It's easy. It probably works. But I like the idea of making things more unpredictable and less gameable. So how about this:

Whoever makes the most sense narratively goes first.

If a bunch of characters are all wrapped up in a tense standoff with hands over their weapons ready to draw and then suddenly things pop off, an opposed dexterity check might make sense. But usually you're gonna have one party jumping the other, and whoever swings or shoots first is going to take their turn first. When in doubt, err on the side of giving a player the first move if they're willing to take it. No worries if this gives someone an advantage, because odds are it's not gonna last long.

Normally, you get to choose one of your allies to pass the initiative to at the end of your turn, much like in popcorn initiative (Pass it to your foes instead if everyone on your side has already acted this round but some of them still have to go). However...

If you mess up, someone on the other side can steal the initiative if they haven't acted yet this round and they commit to attacking or otherwise targeting you on their turn. They don't have to target exclusively you, but the first move they make should include you as a target. If they have no way of reaching you, they can't steal.

Once everyone has taken their turn, the round ends and a new round begins. Whoever went last either passes the initiative off to an ally to kick off the new round or has it stolen, as normal.

What does messing up mean? For D&D, I'd base it on the last attack roll or ability check you make or saving throw you force your foes to make on your turn. Succeed at that attack roll or ability check, or have over half your targets fail their save (or play it save and do something that doesn't involve rolls at all) and you're golden - pick one of your allies to pass the initiative on to. Fail that roll, or have half or more of your targets pass their save, and you've lost the momentum and left yourself vulnerable.

Why the last roll specifically? Because initiative in this system is a matter of momentum. If you get a bunch of attacks and you miss the first one, it's no big deal as long as you can follow up with a success. But fail the last one and you've left yourself open for that critical half-second.

Who can steal? Theoretically anyone on the opposing side who hasn't acted yet and is in a position to try to hit you, though creatures you failed to hit and ones right up close to you have priority. Someone who's far away and not involved in what you were doing on your turn (or who failed their save against you) should only steal the initiative if all the more likely candidates can't or won't. It's worth nothing that the rules for stealing the initiative are the same for players and monsters. If you mess up you're bound to lose the initiative and get counterattacked, but the same holds true if you can catch one of your foes in a moment of vulnerability.

So there you have it! My goal here is ultimately to wrangle D&D initiative rules into a shape that feels kind of like PBTA rolls, where failure is immediately met with dramatically-satisfying consequences rather than just being a big load of nothing while the initiative continues as normal. All without a single pause for initiative at the start of combat!

Oh, and one more little ability. You can offer this as a consolation prize to characters (or monsters) with abilities like the Alert feat in D&D that specifically buff their initiative rolls, now that those aren't really a thing.

Lightning Reflexes

Once per combat, if an opponent would gain the initiative and you haven't acted yet this round, you may choose to take the initiative instead. If you do, you must commit to targeting them this turn (as per the normal rules for stealing the initiative). Your swift response stops your opponent in their tracks before they can act.

#d&d #ttrpg #initiative #homebrew #rules

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babsaros · 2 years

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its really interesting to me the way indie ttrpg/anti-dnd twitter just does not believe in playing or exploring morally questionable characters and actions. a lot of people have this perception of dnd as a system where combat is encouraged and that means that PCs must always be bloodthirsty sadistic torturers. obviously the “murder-hobo” trope is widely known, though frowned upon at most tables. in my own personal experiences, this has even been grounds for a player to be kicked from the group. however there seems to be this idea among indie ttrpg twitter users that if a PC ever does anything bad, that means the PC and the Player themself are both bad, irredeemable people and that dnd as a system is irredeemably built on cruelty. and that just. isnt the case? characters making questionable choices is interesting! there can be growth there, in a positive or negative direction. using the spell Modify Memory on an NPC without their consent can have very interesting repercussions for not only the NPC, but the PC, the party and their relationships with each other, the world itself! and dnd as a system does have rules meant to protect NPCs, such as with Modify Memory which first allows the target to try to resist the spell, and second allows the DM complete discretion to accept or dismiss the spell’s affects on the target if it would conflict with their "natural inclinations, alignment, or beliefs.” you can’t make the target believe something illogical or harmful, there are multiple ways to undo this spell’s affects that the DM could very easily give the NPC access to. i think a lot of this perception of dnd as an inherently cruel and violent system is simply due to personal experience with poor dms or groups. i think if you stripped dnd of the combat system and any combat magic, you would end up with a very similar system as PBTA, except that PBTA has dictated consequences, and with dnd the consequences are up to the dm. it’s really not that deep. you guys just need to stop playing dnd with the creepy guy from the games store and your 17 year old brother who still rages at COD in his room at night.

#i swear i would respect indie ttrpg twitter a lot more #if they just stuck to criticizing wizards of the cost as a company #bc everytime i see a critique of dnd as a system and its mechanics im like #welllllll but ur wrong tho #and i dont even like dnd that much!#i mean i probably like pbta less but still #and i understand that the dnd community has an issue with good dm shortages #and im not trying to like victim blame with that last bit #if you have had shitty experiences with dnd bc of the ppl you happened to play with #that sucks and im sorry that happened to you! it's happened to me a lot too!#but finding ppl who know how to run the system well is important before you start criticizing it #thats why i say i dont really like pbta but i dont really say anything besides that #bc i know i probably havent had the greatest dms running my pbta games and dont have much experience with the system #like specifically this one person i follow on twitter who hates dnd #i know their main experience with dnd has been in a game run by their brother that they said was super boring and bad #and i think that game ruined dnd for them #bc before they were actually running their own homebrew game #and as soon as it was over they switched to the anti-dnd camp #and like its fine idc ig really you can like whatever u like #like my feelings are not really hurt by you saying you dont like combat in ttrpg lol #but it is just kinda funny and frustrating that every criticism i see i can refute #but anyway #i think dnd has just as much potential for being cruel as a lot of other systems #its just a matter of who you play with and what you play #and i dont think there's anything wrong with playing 'bad guys'#bad guys have all the fun ;)#i feel like there's more i could say here but i wont #anyway rant over #long post #rant

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utilitycaster · 3 years

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Actual Play: How it works

This is a collection of how I think of actual play as a medium, because TTRPG actual play is a unique one - a combination of improvisation, a rule set, and randomizing elements. This isn’t fully comprehensive, and I may add to it in the future as I come up with more ideas. I’m also thinking of providing some examples/more in-depth stuff for the items in separate posts, so please let me know if that’s something you would want.

Most of the observations here heavily skew towards D&D and Pathfinder actual play, as they are what I know best. Other systems I’ve listened to (PbtA, Cortex, Savage Worlds) fit in here as well, but this may not apply to all actual play, particularly GM-less games or games that are primarily played as one-shots.

Finally, and I say this only because it is a recurring problem on the social media that I happen to find incredibly irritating: you are also welcome and encouraged to have other opinions, disagree with me, dislike all of this, etc. If you have things to say, my inbox is the best place; this is too long for multiple reblogs and this is a sideblog so replies are tricky. However, if you are the kind of person who is inclined to say things like “Actually, there was an exception to this rule! It’s in the backmasked audio at 06:59:32 in the outtakes of episode 192c of Dungeons and Discotheques! :)” I would like to provide you with this actual play line quote from Adaine Abernant in Fantasy High: I think that you feel like you have a lot to offer, and please take this the right way... you don't.

Onto the thoughts, below the jump!

On narrative devices and rules and the random element:

Foreshadowing is possible, but limited to specific circumstances. A GM can (and should) foreshadow! The point of foreshadowing is to set expectations, and GMs should have hints that indicate things about the world that the party may encounter later, provide potential plot hooks, or otherwise provide the party with information. Similarly, players can do things that nod towards as of yet unrevealed elements of their backstories. However, it is impossible to deliberately foreshadow plot resolutions, because it is unknown what they will be. That doesn’t mean that in retrospect things may happen that echo back to earlier events, but the intent to foreshadow was not there - it’s a happy accident.

I don’t want to say normal narrative rules don’t apply because what are the normal narrative rules, really? However, I think an important thing to emphasize is that narrative satisfaction is not guaranteed. This is especially true if the cast has agreed character death is an option, but even beyond that, an unlucky or lucky roll can seemingly cut an arc short or take things in a weird and unforeseen direction. Because there is an element of randomness, randomness will occur. This, along with the character agency I discuss later, is one of my favorite things about actual play. It strips out the need for a moral or message or specific beats - not that those can’t arise, but they can’t be forced - and as such it can make for unusual, creative, and very true-to-life stories even in a fantasy setting.

On character role, viewpoint and agency:

Actual play stories have an ensemble of viewpoint characters (the PCs). This is perhaps the clearest restriction that exists, at least in all of the game systems I’ve mentioned. There is no good way to depict NPCs acting on their own unless the PCs have a way to observe them, unseen (magical or mundane). It is extremely difficult to have one player play multiple PCs, and if a player leaves there is not a good way to recast their PC. This doesn’t mean NPCs can’t do things with each other offscreen that have implications for the story, nor that PCs can’t come and go or become NPCs, but it does mean a good GM is very careful about NPC interactions because it gets very boring and non-collaborative very quickly to watch someone talk with themselves.

The PCs hold a level of agency that characters in other media do not. Statements about how the characters have a mind of their own in original fiction aside (sidebar: I am team ‘they don’t, you just didn’t realize that the way you wrote their personality and the way you wrote your plot conflicted until you actually started writing it out, which is very understandable’) PCs do in fact have a mind of their own separate from the GM and from each other.

Something I like about this is that unless you are coming up with conspiracy theories regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the players themselves (in which case I think you’re both a creep and a weirdo (derogatory)) or if the GM is not respecting player agency (which I feel is usually very easy to see; see below for more on that) you do not get cases of “these characters are together simply because the author felt like pairing them off” as can happen in scripted media. Any romantic relationship is, inherently, a mutually agreed choice between the originators of these characters, and more generally any plot or relationship necessarily needs to have something that appeals to all characters involved. It may be as simple as “these are my friends and I want to keep hanging out”, but, despite this being improv, it’s a medium where saying “no” is always an option.

With that said there is still room for players to be uncooperative or selfish. It’s rare, but it does exist, and I’m personally of the opinion that it’s in part the GM’s responsibility to have a conversation with that player and to not play into their attention grabbing. That said, with one notable exception, all the accusations I’ve seen about this have seemed to me to be more “I don’t like this player/character/ship/arc and I am going to claim they are stealing focus, despite it being justified,” and not genuinely about a player being obnoxious.

Agency separate from the person who creates the world is perhaps the most unique element of actual play and at this point I’m going to talk a little about how a good GM fosters that.

I’ve said before that when a GM has things happen that are not at least mostly a direct response to character actions, they are typically either world-building or a hook, and can be both. I think of this sort of as a variant on Chekhov’s gun, actually; the gun doesn’t have to go off, ultimately, in actual play, but it is saying the following:

This is a world where there are guns hung on the wall sometimes.

Someone else might do something with this gun.

You can attempt to do something with this gun before they do.

And then the players decide how they want to interpret it and what they want to do, and the dice indicate the level of success in doing so.

A good GM should encourage the players to explore and be creative, and more than anything, reward agency. This doesn’t mean rewarding it with success; rather, it means if someone explicitly indicates they want to interact with an element of the world, you should give them the tools such that eventually, they can try to do so. You can also give them reasons in-game why they should change their mind, or make it so that it’s almost certain to fail if that is reasonable, but if you are trying to flat-out shut it down without providing an in-world reason why, the cracks will almost certainly show.

One important thing to remember about GM-ing: GMs will probably come into the game with some ideas of what’s going on in the world, and some level of understanding of what the world looks like. That will be influenced by the players, both in terms of the consequences of their actions and choices, and also by what the players are interested in. Which is to say: even if there is a session zero, and the GM states a specific premise, that can change! Characters develop, player interests change, dice rolls do weird things, and so a good GM absolutely must if not kill their darlings at least remove, recycle, and adapt them based on the direction of the game and motivations of the characters. Even in a plot-driven campaign, the players and GM and what makes them happy needs to drive the story, because fundamentally, this is a game that should be fun. Which brings us to...

On the Watsonian and the Doylist in actual play:

Stepping back for a second: the context in which people are creating fiction influences them. End of sentence. It’s ridiculous to think it doesn’t. This means everything from political events and worldwide trends, to the media the creator is consuming or has consumed, to personal life events. There are always going to be in- and out-of-universe explanations for choices in fiction.

In actual play, the players and GM know the underlying rules of the world, and it’s difficult to truly split the party and have everyone not involved leave in a way that feels fun, so everyone always has information that they can’t really use in-game. Also it’s a fully improvised medium that is primarily theater of the mind, so unconscious choices, misunderstandings, and accidents are frequently not edited out, and people are human. Which is to say I think it’s important to take this into consideration in one’s analysis; it’s not that you can’t incorporate a Watsonian reason for something that happened, but Doylist reasons are given a weight that they may not have in an edited work.

Three of the Doylist reasons beyond the misunderstandings and accidents I wanted to cover are metagaming, awareness that this is for an audience, and character knowledge.

Metagaming exists in many TTRPGs, and it’s not actually inherently bad. When a DM in D&D says “that just hits” you get an idea of the AC of the creature, and you know your own attack rolls, and you can make decisions based on that, when, in a ‘real’ fantasy battle scenario, you probably wouldn’t gain all that insight from a single hit. The rules of the TTRPG are considered part of normal acceptable metagaming. There’s also the more general one; if you start the first session in a tavern, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will interact and form an impromptu group and not just quietly drink their ale and leave - basically, the rules of improv still apply. This is a good thing. And finally, there’s the acknowledgement that you are people with feelings and this is a game and so if someone is upset you stop, or you have discussions about consent between sessions that inform actions in-game. Metagaming just gets obnoxious when someone rolls a nat 1 and then argues that this is obvious information and they should know, or looks up every monster in the manual when you encounter it instead of playing true to the character’s knowledge.

In actual play, the ‘hey fellow tavern-goers, would you like to be a group’ form of metagaming, the “oh right this is a story and we should move the story forward,” is even more important than in home D&D games. This is where I recommend listening or reading some Q&As or watching some after shows, because you’ll hear players talk about this. A 5-hour shopping episode or extensive foraging can get boring to watch or listen to (and unlike accidentally boring or frustrating things, are pretty easy to predict and avoid). On the flip side, a risky choice might seem more appealing when you know there’s an audience who would love the payoff.

I am personally, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I said about player dynamic conspiracy theories and randomness (or, outside of this post, my strong dislike of certain popular fan theories), not a big fan of creators catering to audiences’ every whim...but it’s unavoidable that they will take the audience experience in mind.

Finally, character knowledge, which is the opposite of metagaming - when a character knows something the player doesn’t. This is sometimes covered with, for example, GM statements like “you would know, as a person with history proficiency, that this country is actually in a regency period.” If the character had, in improv, before the GM had a chance to say that, mentioned the king, that’s just because the player did not know that and had made an assumption.

Personally I find going deep down the rabbit hole with things like this - “why doesn’t this character, who CLAIMS to be from this country, not know this?”, or clearly OOC statements - tends not to actually spark any interesting theories, but that is, ultimately, an opinion.

A few final thoughts on different formats of actual play

True livestream/live-to-tape (Critical Role, Into the Motherlands, and the second season of Fantasy High): the main thing to keep in mind is Doylist explanations are even more important because there is quite literally no editing. Also, there will possibly be some of those more boring stretches or even a little OOC metagaming discussions within the structure of the game, because there’s no way around it.

Editing, but primarily just to remove long explanations/math and doing soundscaping (NADDPod, Rusty Quill Gaming): Pretty similar; a lot of them even make the choice to leave in OOC metagaming discussions, so it’s mostly that there are fewer cases of people slowly adding numbers.

More extensive editing and possibly some predefined other elements (TAZ, most Dimension 20 shows): this may fall into a more traditional story structure. It’s not to say that there won’t be surprises, because the players do still have agency, but the ‘rails’ might be a little more apparent; there might be some DM monologuing done after the fact (beyond just cleaning up the audio) or choices that were not scripted per se, but not exactly improvised either (think how D20 tends to have pre-set battle maps and earlier seasons had a pretty strict RP/Battle structure.

Somewhat relatedly there are broad story structures, which is more of a spectrum, ranging from sandbox (Critical Role) to very clearly GM-driven missions (TAZ Balance and, to an extent, Amnesty); nearly all of the other shows here fall into a structure of “here is your overall goal, how precisely you get there is up to you although, like any GM, I will provide in-story information on where it may make sense to go that will often funnel you towards specific places.”

I do have a theory that since TAZ Balance in particular was an entry point for so many people, it takes them time to adjust to the more sprawling, unpredictable, and difficult-to-organize stories other actual play can have, but ultimately it is a matter of personal preference and all of these still fall into the category of actual play.

#long post #today in: unsure if anyone wants to read this but that has also never stopped me not even once #and writing this was fun

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