|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Sept 16, 2012 8:48:17 GMT -8
This is a spin-off from the Matters of System thread, started at the indirect request of ericfromnj. He wanted to talk about how different mechanics can affect how a player reacts in a different system with all other things being equal By extension, from a GM's standpoint, it would also be a good place to trade suggestions on how to steer those reactions in the direction which will be best for your game. Have at it!
|
|
|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Sept 17, 2012 15:53:25 GMT -8
Okay, here's a question to get us started: Let's say you have flexible players and access to a wide variety of game sourcebooks. What are your main criteria in choosing which mechanics/system to use in order to tell a given story?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2012 16:11:04 GMT -8
Sure, let's see how long this stays on topic. Okay, here's a question to get us started: Let's say you have flexible players and access to a wide variety of game sourcebooks. What are your main criteria in choosing which mechanics/system to use in order to tell a given story? Primarily, what the players want out of the game. If we're exploring a genre, it's usually a bit easier. For a horror game, use a horror system. For a western, use a western system. If it's a little less defined then that, then you need to explore a bit. Find out what people want to do. Even in a fantasy game, if people want it to be less like D&D and more like Game of Thrones, a system like Houses of the Blooded might be better. Find out what the players are interested in. But honestly, it is seldom presented that way. Usually people either want to try a specific system, and we play that out. Sometimes that leads to people wanting to do more with that system.
|
|
|
Post by Kainguru on Sept 17, 2012 16:49:24 GMT -8
Yeah I have to agree with Beerngaming . . . It's usually the system first then the adventure ideas grow from that. For example I remember many moons ago (when Kurt Cobain was still relevant though no longer with us) I bought my first copy of Shadowrun . . . I 'had' been looking for something cyber punk to feed my growing William Gibson fetish. I'd never thought about 'modern fantasy' at all but there it was on the shelf of my local FLGS (which was not really all that friendly now I come to think of it, or local . . . It was sort of just 'there' . . . Part of a nationwide franchise which catered mainly to exotic chess sets and 'executive toys' with RPG's squeezed into the far corner). It was a real "fuck me!!!" moment when I looked through the first few pages . . . 2nd ed Shadowrun . . . 'cyberpunk with freaking elves and dwarves and magic and all sorts of crazy shit' . Of course I bought it, and still have the same copy to this day, but I didn't look for that system to fit an idea . . . I had ideas because I found that system. It was the fluff rather than the crunch that sold me on it . . . Because that's what I saw first in that FLGS . . . Deconstructing the crunch came later (sat in bed that night with my lovely new gaming book and the stereo playing a Concrete Blonde CD in the background). How important would the crunch (as mechanics) be if it had been different, based on say the Traveller rule set? I can't say to be honest . . . Because the fluff was first - like I said 'freaking elves and dwarves with cyber decks and wizards for hire . . . Awesome!!!' and I was already designing/planning/imagining campaign/adventures before I'd even got home let alone had time to digest its mechanics for conflict resolution/adjudication. The other thing that happens, on a personal level, is how I'll let the system mechanics inform my world design because I 'really' like internal consistency and this includes having the milieu evolve out of the various pseudo Eco systems the mechanics regulate. For example: standard 1e AD&D world assumes that magic users are rare, why and how? . . . I construct my rationale for my AD&D1e worlds thus: magic users need to be educated and able to read . . . Thus rarely from the lower classes . . . They need to to be apprenticed and trained and that is expensive plus access to a suitable mentor or place in a college is restricted by virtue of the laws of supply and demand (remember magic users are rare) . . . Once in you've got to have the intelligence to learn enough spells to be useful and pass the grade . . . Then, once you can use magic you've got survive and that's the final decider and why magic users are so rare - because at low levels they're so weak that without backup they just end up as so much fertiliser on a dungeon floor. 10 yr reunions at Wizard University in my AD&D 1e worlds would resemble more a gathering of the few that have survived ("soo out if a graduation class of 20 there's just us 3?" "yep Gronar the Gesticulating Gonad Caster bit it last yr on The Mountain Pass of Doom . . . Owlbear ate him while he was having a pee" . . . "Tim was beheaded by a vorpal bunny years ago" . . . "can't remember the names of that group that used to sit together but they all died within the first year out: food poisoning, rusty nail, fell off a horse while drunk, burnt at the stake for heresy and a crime of passion")
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2012 17:27:15 GMT -8
I'm with you there, Kainguru. I've certainly bought systems because the idea behind it sounded really cool to me. While a setting, not a system, Darksun comes to mind. I've purchased quite a few books over the years because I was interested in the fluff.
These days, though, the crunch gets me more interested. That might sound strange. Let me give you an example.
Don't Rest Your Head is a game where the players can be very powerful with ease, but put their characters at great risk to do it. It can represent someone being pushed to the brink of madness or death, and the tools for doing it are entirely in the player's hands.
Now, there is some really cool fluff to this game, but I knew none of that when I bought it. I just wanted to learn about that mechanic, and wanted to see how it would affect play.
|
|
|
Post by CreativeCowboy on Sept 17, 2012 22:48:16 GMT -8
Okay, here's a question to get us started: Let's say you have flexible players and access to a wide variety of game sourcebooks. What are your main criteria in choosing which mechanics/system to use in order to tell a given story? The fluff, the story on the back of the guidebook, is the thing that brings the game to my attention. Thousand Suns attracted me because of its pulp science fiction premise. I started reading it and its mechanics jumped out at me. Its concept of degrees of success was rather deadly but also exciting. It appealed to me because every roll of the dice yielded a different result. I market my games to new-to-the-hobby people, so classes make sense. They are instant stereotypes. I reach back onto my shelf and grab the mechanics for race as class and level caps. If a player wants to play something non-stereotype – great! That is what makes a PC a PC and not an NPC. But classes give a good gateway to my players. Since I am not married to any one game's mechanics, I create the game for the group. But framing (a psychology term) is important. It is kind of like mental scaffolding to stereotype. It presupposes your experience to be based upon your previous experience of the game. A system = game belief will influence how likely you are to play a "game system" of mechanics. (A different paradigm than my GM = System.) So beerngaming has a different frame for D&D than kainguru. As you can see they view the game differently. I play a Game of Thrones theme in the D&D game. That is exactly my elevator pitch. I am not a slave to GRRM, the author of the book series, but I explain if you have seen GoT then you know what type of game we play. My world is gritty, Harn-like. As you play... you learn the magic is plentiful with magical races but not so plentiful in non-magical races - just like in our own real world mythology. And Wikipedia is our Deities and Demigods book. I like a dangerous game but not too dangerous. I like the new people to have meaningful dice: crits, degrees of success. This makes them pay attention. So I use mechanics from Thousand Suns. My frame of AD&D 1e was playing generations of characters in a world where the players were the most advanced apart from the major NPCs (usually the villains). It was a game (system) about disease, psychosis, magical herbs, specific weapon mechanics, and a gritty world with defined power structures, governments and social status. It was about player skill so the DM created challenges for the people at the table and players played the game to overcome their PC's limitations, often collaboratively together, to succeed. I perpetuate that frame in my system in how I have skills role-played. So my answer is: when choosing a game/system to play ask, what is everyone's collective frame of mind? You’re best to cater to that.
|
|
|
Post by Kainguru on Sept 18, 2012 0:58:18 GMT -8
So my answer is: when choosing a game/system to play ask, what is everyone's collective frame of mind? YouÂ’re best to cater to that. Lol . . . Yeah the group is an important factor . . . I still remember being 14 and buying the 1st ed Chivalry & Sorcery and loving the magic system and the combat system (especially the rules for 'The Joust'). I also remember being figuratively kicked in the nuts buy my gaming buddy's for defiling their gaming table with a non-TSR game . . . I never got to play C&S to my long regret. Similarly, years later, I bought this 'odd game' called Vampire set in TWoD . . . I was never able to convince anyone to get on board with it as the StoryTelling element and the whole 'Playing a monster in search of their humanity' was just too far outside their expectations with RPG's . . .
|
|
|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Sept 18, 2012 7:27:07 GMT -8
If we're exploring a genre, it's usually a bit easier. For a horror game, use a horror system. For a western, use a western system. So, what's your reason for going to a genre-dedicated system over a generic system?
|
|
|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Sept 18, 2012 7:29:21 GMT -8
The fluff, the story on the back of the guidebook, is the thing that brings the game to my attention. Thousand Suns attracted me because of its pulp science fiction premise. I started reading it and its mechanics jumped out at me. What do you do if you come up with a story idea on your own and just have to choose a system for it?
|
|
|
Post by CreativeCowboy on Sept 18, 2012 7:49:58 GMT -8
The fluff, the story on the back of the guidebook, is the thing that brings the game to my attention. Thousand Suns attracted me because of its pulp science fiction premise. I started reading it and its mechanics jumped out at me. What do you do if you come up with a story idea on your own and just have to choose a system for it? I am the system. I have a living Wiki to cover it. The base is AD&D 1e as a way to be simple in answering system. But I use known mechanics from other games on my shelf; innovations like the order of declaration being based on WISDOM which affects the seating order at my table. My "Game of Thrones" story is a game set in the Elven kingdom. My players know that, like a synopsis from the back of a module. There are 7 Dukes, a host of Barons and one Queen in a plot that is destined to shake up the Elven world or see it destroyed depending upon the players' decision. Alfheim, Aesir, Vanir all exist in my world. www.pantheon.org/articles/a/alfheim.htmlA timeline of events and rumours keeps me on track for starting rumours at the table while the characters sandbox and (from my social contract) look for opportunities/hooks to involve themself into the politics of the Elven kingdom - NOT so easy because the Elves trust no one. But the players will discover things about the Elves while they move up from level 1 to levels approriate for the diplomacy and sudden death of courtly life in Alfheim - a place player do not yet know exists unless they are Faerie Elves. In which case they are privately told the secret and given ridiculous powers with the level cap. Not sure I understand the question.
|
|
juberberry
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 132
Preferred Game Systems: Traveller, VANGUARD, Shadowrun 4, CP2020
Currently Playing: Traveller - rarely
Currently Running: Traveller, Shadowrun 4, VANGUARD
Favorite Species of Monkey: Ressus
|
Post by juberberry on Sept 18, 2012 9:43:00 GMT -8
What do you do if you come up with a story idea on your own and just have to choose a system for it? I ran across just this quandry just a month ago or thereabouts. I have to agree with the statement that "I am the system". I wanted to run a sandbox campaign with some very specific flavor and D&D 3.x was just too crunchy. I started looking for a clean system that I could hodgepodge together with the pieces I wanted. Microlite20 was too simple, requiring too much footwork to get it where I wanted. I had to stick with a D20 system for the main reason that one of my players has very significant Short Term memory issues. As a result she plays strictly Archer/Ranger types in any game we play and it's got to be a D20 system so she can remember what dice to role for what. Through the podcast I found Beacon v5 which was a system expanded off the ML20. I've added a fair number of house rules that enhance the elegant system and I'm pretty happy with the result. The mechanics for everything is still the same but some are used a little differently. I've started recording my campaign world on Epic Words and so far it's going excellent after only a single session.
|
|
|
Post by kaitoujuliet on Sept 18, 2012 9:47:08 GMT -8
I am the system. I have a living Wiki to cover it. Yes yes, I should have known better than to use the "S" word to you. ;D I should have said "mechanics." I'll try rephrasing it. Let's say you wake up tomorrow with an awesome new story idea for a campaign. How do you decide which set of mechanics you're going to use for it? What criteria do you use? How do you decide which rules can be used straight out of the book and which ones will need tweaking? And so on.
|
|
|
Post by Stu Venable on Sept 18, 2012 10:31:59 GMT -8
I think the comments about how it's normally "we want to try X system" that causes people to try a particular game is common, yes.
In the convention games I run, specifically, I normally have the story concept first, then I start surveying the systems I own and am familiar with.
At the last con, I ran GURPS exclusively, because I had been informed that some of the GURPS being run at the previous con wasn't being run well. In that case, I chose the genres of the games for the system I was using: a low-level fantasy game and a cosmic horror game.
At the next con, I'm going to run the next installment of Ghostbusters LA. This is a comedic game, where a group of incompetents go up against something they have no chance of beating (but often do). The combination of the exploding dice mechanic, along with bennies, gives the players those wilds swings in probability necessary to grab victory from the clutches of defeat (or sometimes vice versa).
I do not have a lot of different systems that I both own and have enough familiarity to run at a convention. In fact, I've only run two at cons: GURPS and Savage Worlds.
Thinking back on the games I've run, I either want something gritty and realistic, or I want something heroic and/or comedic (which turns out to be almost the same thing, at least when I run them).
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2012 10:38:01 GMT -8
So, what's your reason for going to a genre-dedicated system over a generic system? Because the mechanics will support the story. There are so many examples great examples of this. But my favourite is Dread, because it's simple to explain. Dread, of course, doesn't use dice. It uses the Jenga Tower. If you want to do something difficult, you make a pull from the tower. Maybe more than one, depending on what you're doing. If the tower falls, you're out. Left, captured, insane, or probably dead. Now, I've seen people worry about rolling the dice before. But compared to pulling from a shaky Jenga tower? You know that it's coming down. Maybe it will be your pull, maybe you will just make it that much worse for the next person. And when two players have a conflict? Turns into a game of chicken using the tower, and everyone loses. That adds a great element of desperation. So yeah, why would I use a generic system? I could find ways to modify it and make it do what I wanted, or I could just use the system that fits the type of game I want to have.
|
|
|
Post by ericfromnj on Sept 18, 2012 18:45:11 GMT -8
Outside of familiarity of the system, I am curious how systems can affect players. The example on the podcast of guns out in a GURPS standard level of gritty game versus a Savage Worlds game for example comes to mind.
Yes, I understand you can houserule a system. I understand you can go with a system you feel more comfortable with. I understand you can homebrew.
Thing of all the gaming systems that have some sort of modern setting. How would a potential showdown when people realize both sides are armed go down depending on the actual system, be it D20 Modern, Savage Worlds, GURPS, FATE, World of Darkness,BRP, Unknown Armies, etc.? If you house ruled something like Savage Worlds to make it gritty (as the Call of Cthulhu Savage Worlds game has done) how does that stand up to the other grittier systems and what does that bring to the table?
I am not sure if I am trying to get my point across or not, but every time I have tried to house rule things, there turned out to be a system out there that did what I needed anyway.
|
|