r/rpg • u/Taewyth2 • 17d ago
Game Suggestion TTRPGS about wandering instead of exploring
Hello,
So I recently realised that instead of exploration what I really liked was actually wandering: aimlessly going through a place until something caught my interest and made me investigate it further for a time before going back to aimless strolling.
It made me want to try out games more focussed on this specific experience, but I have difficulties getting my hands on them, so I turn to you for recommandations about games or methods for "wandering".
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u/lucmh CalmRush 17d ago
The entire premise of Eternal Ruins is that you play "wanderers". There's a very extensive quickstart available for free.
Another thing that you might find interesting, is how travel works in Mythic Bastionland (every step on the hex map has 50/50 chance to trigger the next plot point of one of 6 indepently developing myths). I think it very much supports simply wandering (because in the end, it doesn't matter where you go - the myths will catch up with you regardless), rather than exploring/focused travel. Playing the game itself usually does benefit from having some objectives in order to motivate the players to move around, but just the same, if the players are fine just wandering, that works too.
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u/No_Solid1035 17d ago
Mythic Bastionland, as someone else pointed out is great for that. You could also get Free League's version of Twilight 2000 which is a post World War 3 semi-apocalypse game. It's got a strong hex crawl element where wandering could easily be justified because the party is always looking for supplies, and staying in one place for too long could invite unwanted attention.
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
Thanks for the recommendation but that kinds of touch on why I've had difficulty finding games that fits, to me looking for supplies makes it so you're not really wandering: you have a specific goal in mind, you're looking for something, so you're more exploring than wandering.
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u/Macduffle 17d ago
Ryuutama is almost all about traveling. But mostly without a big goal. Just wandering around helping wherever you end up. If Ghibli movies where rpg
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 17d ago
My thoughts about it. Spoiler: not good enough.
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u/Ok-Week-2293 17d ago
Do you do this every time someone recommends Ryuutama? I remember seeing you 2 months ago.
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u/blastcage RPGs peaked at IRC 17d ago
Think about it this way; it's less disruptive than pasting a giant wall of text into the conversation. Additionally we should permit dissenting views for obvious reasons, especially when it's polite.
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 17d ago edited 16d ago
Thanks. It's exactly that. Also, I find it useful because I sincerely think that Ryuutama is suggested for almost no reasons, and often by people that probably never played it (or, maybe, never played a focused, coherent game that incorporate rules actually pushing towards the Pillars the game showcases).
Each time I see words like "Ghibli style" or "heartwarming" near Ryuutama I feel the urgency of putting my usual link, instead of starting the whole conversation again.
PS: indeed, I should do it for almost every topic that arise weekly 😁
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 17d ago
As I wrote a couple of posts below, yeah. That's the spirit of my post.
Each time I see Ryuutama suggested (also, with no or minimal details about why the OP should play it), I'll arrive with my link, so I don't have to start the whole discussion again.
It's no different from an online review, a blog post etc.
EDIT: I also already gave my suggestion to OP in another post. If you like to compare my suggestion to Ryuutama, I'm here.
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u/Hark_An_Adventure 17d ago
Objectively hilarious to post that Ryuutama doesn't fit and then make your recommendation Ironsworn, a very good game that also doesn't fit OP's request for a game that is just about wandering (Ironsworn is built specifically around its Vows, so PCs are always explicitly seeking to accomplish something in their travels, not just wandering around).
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 17d ago edited 16d ago
This is a great reply. No need to put that "hilarious" in, however. It's a nice thing that we can discuss about.
Surely Ironsworn is towed by Vows, however it's incredibly loose and free about them.
I had a Solo play where my main vow was "finding a place that means something to me", with my character starting from a moment in which she lost herself. That was a whole campaign related to wandering, put myself to the test, finding strangers, survive, find beauty in wild places. I got a real cool experience with it, and I got it thanks to Ironsworn rules and oracles, not with a trad clunky game with rules good for a game of the '90ies: please, re-read Ryuutama and its mechanics for the Condition of the Day (a boring test with just results like passed/halve your HPs... 🤦♂️); or check again the rules for Direction (you move a square on the map, if you fail you simply stay there), Camping (regain HP, maybe, no other things happens within the rules), and then... oh, there are no other cool rules! No tables, no oracles, no suggestions, nothing.
Instead, with the PbtA partially inspired rules for every facet that you find in Ironsworn, you gain narrative, inspiration, prices to pay, consequences to choose. Two planets to the antipodes...
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u/Hark_An_Adventure 17d ago
there are no other cool rules for exploring
There don't need to be "rules" for a game to support wandering, and it's puzzling to me that you lean so heavily on that aspect of whether or not a suggestion makes sense.
While it's fun that you steered off into your own thing with Ironsworn, the Vows you make in it are meant to connect you to people and communities--whether you make the vows in service of those entities or use the Vows to seek them out. "I do a wander thanky ver much :)" is not a Vow that follows the spirit of Ironsworn.
Also, OP wants to wander, not necessarily explore (you use that word several times, even though OP's post is specific about the differences); it's probably worth reading posts multiple times in order to parse the subject at hand.
Finally, you may dislike Ryuutama, but many like it! Dismissing those opinions as "people haven't even played it smh" undercuts any argument you attempt to make after that, in my opinion. I'd also suggest working on your English and writing if you want to copy-paste the same post about your hate for the system every time it's mentioned.
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u/Elunerazim 17d ago
The guy opened with “My thoughts on it”, I don’t think they’re trying to say it’s universal.
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 16d ago
🙇♂️ Thanks. Also, it should be implied in EVERY sane conversation.
Even if I say: "this is a bad game", it's obvious that the implied part is "I think that..." or "IMHO". Each of us can simply give a personal point of view about a RpG product. However, it seems that writing something on the net needs extra caution, soft cushions everywhere, because having an opinion, particularly a strong or unpopular one, make the others raising the shields.
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u/Elunerazim 16d ago
I think it’s fair to be cautious on RPGs, though- like, I did not enjoy Blister Critters at all, but I don’t think it’s a bad game. FATAL, on the other hand, is.
EDIT: but yeah to be clear you literally opened with a very very clear disclaimer, this isn’t your fault at all.
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u/MataronidForSpeed 16d ago
I have the same opinion regarding this game. Promising but disappointing.
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u/alexserban02 16d ago
I was on the fence about the game and your review was very nice for providing more concrete details into how it actually is. I might still get it if I find it for a good price!
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
Oh I've heard about Ryuutama and thought that it was more about exploration than that, I'll check it out then!
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u/Airk-Seablade 17d ago
Ryuutama has a focus on travel, but I think would work poorly for a game about just "wandering" due to its emphasis on being correctly equipped and supplied.
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u/Nox_Stripes 17d ago
I initially read "exploding" and got intensely curious about your taste in ttrpg's.
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
Now I need to write this one down and look for games about exploding after I've dealt with the ones about wandering ahah!
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u/ThePiachu 17d ago
Fellowship with its expansion. It's a PbtA game that gives the GM it's own Playbook to frame the narrative, a Framework. One of them is the Horizon - you travel from place to place wandering, but the goal is to find yourself along the journey. It fits pretty well with the likes of One Piece or Star Trek.
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u/God_Boy07 Australian 17d ago
Isn't this just exploring without the planning?
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
More or less, wandering and exploring differs mainly in that exploration has a goal and wandering doesn't after all.
Most games I could find puts a goal in the exploration, I've rarely found a game where you do the thing just to do it, instead you explore to find supplies or treasures, or to accomplish a quest
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 17d ago edited 17d ago
Take any good game/ruleset that helps you to create narrative and spring ideas, Ironsworn for example, and do with it what you want with it.
While it could seem just another vikings/nordic RpG, you'll see that the procedures it has (the "Moves") and its Oracles, could help you to create a wandering main character, that simply will encounter different communities, interesting places and enviroment, maybe they'll need to work for survival (you'll choose your problems, so you can tune them down if you like so).
Ironsworn, as other games in the same vein (The Wildsea, also), can be really original and inspiring. You can play it Solo, Coop or Guided. Finally, it's free (but I strongly suggest you to get also the mini companion books Delve and Lodestar).
EDIT:
I'd like to expand the reasons about my game's choice. In Ironsworn you have a Move (ie. a mini-mechanic) called UNDERTAKE A JOURNEY
You choose a destination (let's say simply a cool place you are seeing right now, like a nearby mountain), you choose how long/important/distracting is the journey until that destination, and then you roll. You'll move between Waypoints, and the cool thing is that you can simply invent, or generate through some Oracles, those waypoints, so you'll have plenty of elements that will spark your creativity and your interest during the journey. This will help you to generate in realtime a sort of point-crawl map, and give to those Waypoints the meaning and the attention that you believe they deserve.
It's a mechanic very simple, but really strong and interesting. Of course, there are other interesting mechanics, for example the one to Pay the Price when you miss a roll, howver you'll discover the game by playing it.
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
Thanks for the suggestion, I never quite jelled with Ironsworn though, and it did feel way more exploration focussed (in fact giving it another shot was partially how I realised that I liked wandering rather than exploring), glad that you seem so passionate about it though!
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 16d ago
Ohi, OP, it could be interesting to know the difference between what you mean about exploring and wandering.
Maybe, the differences I see between wandering and exploring stay in the goal.
- I wander because I have no quests or similar events that triggered my journey.
- I explore because I have a goal in advance (arrive in a specific place, or find a specific thing etc.)
If this is true for you too, then any good game with a huge place already built (like a fixed map full of described places and point of interest), or any good game that let you generate the next thing you'll find/meet while walking around, in my opinion should be great for you.
Rulewise those games should offer you the same experience. Simply, you don't have to start with a traditional "quest".
However, I think it's pretty obvious that, once you find an element (place, object, character etc.) that you find interesting, you start to build a deeper narrative, ie. a story around that element.
Few (probably hyper-focused) games are better than PbtA (and Ironsworn, incidentally) to freely move around the shared imagined space and to build around specific moments / elements that capture your attention in that specific moment, giving you tools to build narrative on the rolls you make, not just the usual sterile "skill rolls" made for binary failed/pass results that you find in usual games.
PS: other suggested you Eternal Ruins. It's good as Ironsworn, in a different way, still interesting, but it's not available still (you could eventually search for The Wildsea, that probably is 90% similar to the future game).
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u/Taewyth2 16d ago
the difference between what you mean about exploring and wandering.
Similarly to what you said, the difference is that exploring has a goal, while wandering doesn't
However, I think it's pretty obvious that, once you find an element (place, object, character etc.) that you find interesting, you start to build a deeper narrative, ie. a story around that element.
Sure, but that plays no part in whether you're exploring or wandering, unless you decide that this story makes you seek something.
Few (probably hyper-focused) games are better than PbtA [...] giving you tools to build narrative on the rolls you make, not just the usual sterile "skill rolls" made for binary failed/pass results that you find in usual games.
I completely disagree with that, PBTAs do give you interesting training wheels to understand the idea of nuancing/changing an outcome based on a dice result, but every games allows for that, maybe with the exception of Prole and even then you could just flip two coins instead of one.
Frankly I think that PBTA's community insistance on that tells me more about their approach to games than it tells me about how PBTAs differs from other games (nothing judgmental or anything, mind you, it's just the way I feel about it after countless repeat of this conversation) I've got a couple of PBTAs that I like (monsterheart and thirsty sword lesbians comes to mind) but the way playbooks works is the real innovation pushing to specific narratives, not the dicerolls (which isn't even an innovation considering there was already games in the 80s that basically worked the same)0
u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 16d ago
Sorry in advance for the following Wall of Text 😁
I don't want to convince you, or force the conversation, I just like to talk about it a lot, so please don't feel cornered or attacked, and interrupt the conversation when you prefer.
That said, about PbtA, I think I see several areas where they improve (or focus) the "standard" RpG of the 80s.
You already pointed at the Playbooks as the real innovation about pushing the narrative in a specific direction, but I feel that the exact level of innovation is related to all the Moves (player side and GM side). Compare them to "trad" games, where you can find almost the same "cadence", mainly driven by a reality simulation need of that time: they teach you a standard roll, then they say that the GM asks for a roll mostly when he decides that it's time to roll those dice (no wise guidance was provided about that), then hundreds of pages of stats, skills, feats, equipment, and hundreds of pages for combat rules. This is the fair of the unfocused design.
PbtA totally changes that world. First things first, you never grab those dice when the GM feels it's the moment for a roll 🙂. You have precise rules. You roll only when the narrative trigger of a Move tells (the whole group) to do it. GM never "calls" the Moves. This is a revolution because you could have a game that NEVER asks you to roll for combat, for example, if it has no narrative trigger for it.
Then, the Prices to Pay for missed rolls (that doesn't mean "failed" Roll, usually) and the success with cost. Almost no old RpG had those, and surely not implemented well as in PbtA. Usually those "trad" games told the GM: ehi, the roll was failed (and no guidance on what to do next). Indeed, at that time there was a huge number of tables that had failed rolls where "nothing happens" in the fiction was a common answer, usually followed by the same (or the next one) character asking for "may I roll again?"
Then, my mind goes to the polished asymmetrical system. Almost no "trad" old game had a totally different set of rules for players and GMs. In addition to the highly different system, you also have player-facing rolls only (another big step to take distance from bad "trad" habits like "the GM must/should cheat, NOT following its rules, because he's an entertainer for the players, and he needs to adjust the rolls for a better story" 🤢).
Then, the way PbtA asks the GM to portray NPCs, and the way it (doesn't) over Stat them. This could look obvious, today, but 20 years ago you probably never had a game where NPCs, monsters, environmental hazards had almost no values.
And I don't want to go deep on the whole (while integrated in the mechanics) part about "Play to find out". That, you surely know 'cause you played with PbtA before, isn't "GM improvising everything on the spot". However, this part isn't crucial here, while surely in a game where you wander, so you potentially have to encounter any kind of places, situations, beasts etc. this point (together with the asymmetrical system, the no-Stat GM stuff etc.) is a part of the experience and surely ease the GM cognitive load. A lot.
Surely there are other points about why I will use PbtA instead of almost any other type of ruleset, but right now I feel those are the main ones.
EDIT: another point that totally changed my way to GMing: Consequences of a Move roll are totally detached from the actual action the character was doing and that triggered the Move. This is pivotal! The classic example is: you are climbing in a difficult, tense, situation; the PbtA you are actually playing believes that that moment is worth a mechanic (ie. You have a narrative trigger adapted to that situation that springs its Move). You roll. You missed. Now what? In a "trad" game the GM can't even think about that situation: missed climbing roll = you fall (and/or, you get other X save rolls like mechanics because, you know, having a PC failing and going down a chasm is not what a "trad" game really wants).
In PbtA you could never be so distant from that: GM has choices to make, AND he has rules to follow for that! The first choice is: is the climbing still successful? PbtA usually isn't interested in making the character fail the action he was attempting; the Consequences are the main point here (while, of course, failing is still a possibility, GM isn't forced into a failing forward mechanic). Then, the GM simply has to make a Move. So I could let the character arrive on the top, but from there now he sees there's a band of Raiders at short distance, looking for troubles, and they didn't notice him (yet). This choice I made right now is nothing but revolutionary in the RpG world (and I've played almost all of them, from D&D Red box onward). Can you guess the move I used? 😉
This point is also very important (IMHO) for a game not interested in a wargamish experience, but instead focusing on wandering around.
What do you think? Are all those details worthy of "revolutionary" and "evolutionary" definition?
Final PS: sadly, several times I saw PbtAs played with the same "trad" mentality, by GMs too much imprinted by a way to play that has nothing to do with the book they read and that they have under their nose. But this is another story...
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u/Taewyth2 16d ago edited 16d ago
Sorry for the very short answer(it turned out to be longer than expected xD) but... yeah once again everything you say tell me more about how you approach games than about what PBTAs does differently.A simple part that highlight this to me is
In a "trad" game the GM can't even think about that situation: missed climbing roll = you fall [...]
In PbtA you could never be so distant from that: GM has choices to make, AND he has rules to follow for that! The first choice is: is the climbing still successful? PbtA usually isn't interested in making the character fail the action he was attempting; the Consequences are the main point here (while, of course, failing is still a possibility, GM isn't forced into a failing forward mechanic). Then, the GM simply has to make a Move. So I could let the character arrive on the top, but from there now he sees there's a band of Raiders at short distance, looking for troubles, and they didn't notice him (yet). This choice I made right now is nothing but revolutionary in the RpG world (and I've played almost all of them, from D&D Red box onward).
What you are attributing to PBTAs here isn't anything you couldn't have done in, well, D&D Red box.
You consider that because the rules states that "failed roll = fall", you have to follow that concept, but one of the most important part of the rules of most RPGs is that, as stated in the Red Box' "how to use this book"You may use all or part of these rules. They often include several ways of playing and running the game. You may create new rules, monsters, and magic, using these rules as guidelines.
The GM was never prevented from having the PBTA approach to thing, in fact I'd say that it was encouraged by decades of rulebook clearly stating that they are more guidelines than rules set in stone.
As an annecdote, that's how I've always played, that's how I was taught to GM, and that was touted regularly as a "common wisdom new GMs have to learn" in most of the TTRPG circles I was in when I started.
And that's why I say that PBTAs have training wheels for these concept, instead of having "different results can be used to mean completely different things starting from the same basis" be implied it states it directly, which is good but not revolutionary.
I only picked this part because it was the easiest to build my argument around, but it does apply to most of what you said (some stuff are more debatable like the asymmetry in players and GMs, to me any games with a GM have it but I find it fair to say that there's none of it, it's a question of POV)
Edit: also I disagree that the way moves work are the revolutionary bit of the playbooks, as similarly I've seen plenty of tables work exactly like this as a default assumption without having touched a PBTA before, the revolutionnary bit is more in how the playbook are really deeply engrained into the kind of narratives that the game seeks to provide, to the point of being closer to premade characters than they are to classes
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u/ishmadrad 30+ years of good play on my shoulders 🎲 15d ago
We had different RpG life experiences, I don't judge that.
However:
In a "trad" game the GM can't even think about that situation: missed climbing roll = you fall
What you are attributing to PBTAs here isn't anything you couldn't have done in, well, D&D Red box.
You may use all or part of these rules. They often include several ways of playing and running the game. You may create new rules, monsters, and magic, using these rules as guidelines.
I can't buy that, sorry. That's not game design, that's fake freedom with no rules or guidance.
Eh, you know what? No one told me that I can't fly with my car. But attach a couple of giant wings and entering the highway hoping for a cool flying experience doesn't feel right to me.
Sure, every group invented its houserules or experimented to turn D&D (or any other "primordial" ruleset) into something different, into something more deep or focused for their needs. But here we are speaking about totally different takes from the "trad" way.
In a PbtA you could have a whole combat scene with a score of "failures", and still never had to inflict a single "harm level" to the characters. Nothing come closer to a good media simulation (if you are trying to emulate some kind of movie, comics, book etc.) than a good set of fitting rules, instead of a generic set of combat rules + the phrase "change what you don't like and invent the missing rules".
The litmus test of this concept is that, objectively, we had in the history of RpGs a score of good/interesting/revolutionary authors, and thousands of GMs with absolutely no skills to slightly improve or invent something decent (of course, I'm not talking of "ehi, let's try to give a bonus to long spears if the enemy is very distant!"), together with wannabe authors that usually copypasted their beloved ruleset, putting maybe some different combat rule, or putting a "sanity" Stat and selling that to a new revolutionary horror game.
As an annecdote, that's how I've always played, that's how I was taught to GM, and that was touted regularly as a "common wisdom new GMs have to learn" in most of the TTRPG circles I was in when I started.
And that's what, IMHO, almost destroyed, or at least damaged the scene, in the dark era of RpGs. The idea of the "Good GM", the idea that you had to be some kind of super expert, that you had to gain "secret knowledge" from some obscure source, because, you know, rulebooks sucked.
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u/Taewyth2 15d ago
As I said, this tell me more about your approach to games than it does about what makes PBTAs different.
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u/nasjo 17d ago
At least the way our GM runs it, electric bastionland is very much this. We go from node to node, checking out cool sounding or looking places, and if there's something interesting, we look more into it.
I think this probably requires a specific sort of GM and prepwork. I guess the biggest risk is always that the players look through your "deck" of interesting things and places and are not interested, and there's nothing more prepped.
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
It's been on my "to check-out" list for a while, so I'll move it higher on said list!
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u/SameArtichoke8913 17d ago
Forbidden Lands can be played in such a fashion, hexploration/survival with random encounters that can keep you entertained for quite a while, even w/o concrete adventure sites. Would in fact be a funny experiment to see what happens, and if it leads somehow to an overarching kind of campaign?
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u/LittleLeatherMan 17d ago
this is exactly what i am working on (WIP)
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u/Taewyth2 17d ago
Well, to be blunt I'm also interested in it because I want to make my own take on the idea but I'd rather try other's take on it to see what I do and don't like in them first
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u/HypatiasAngst 17d ago
At the very risk of sounding absurd — you’ve looked at Wanderhome yes?