I did a few posts a few years back about system, and how it matters. This weekend, I found myself facing that directly.
You see, I'm running a Cthulhutech game for some friends of mine. And I'm really not using the system right. The game, for those of you who don't know, provides players with a small pool of points that they can spend to add dice to their rolls. That's not at all unusual in modern RPGs. What is unusual is how many points players get - they get ten points per session.
Not per adventure, not per campaign - per session.
This means that I should, if I'm running the system as it's designed to be run, be forcing die rolls pretty regularly. And a few of them should be high-stakes and important to encourage players to spend more points.
As it is, in the game I'm running, players are averaging only one to two rolls per session. In theory, they could blow five points per roll and not sweat it. In practice, however, they've been hesitant to spend their points, because they are afraid of what I have coming.
Now I'm not going to say, "Clearly I'm running the game wrong." Because I'm having fun, and the players seem to be having fun. But it makes me wonder if, perhaps, there is a system which might better fit how I'm running the game.
Some of my friends and I had a brief discussion on Google Plus, because I was already struggling a bit - I have one player who wants a psychological game of personal horror, and one friend who wants action and adventure.
Someone suggested that Gumshoe might be a good system for me. All I'd have to do is mash up Trail of Cthulhu and Ashen Stars. Which, honestly, is easier than it sounds. And my initial reaction was to recoil. I don't know that I could run Gumshoe, I thought, That's a tough game! You need to map out all kinds of clues and ... and ...
At game that evening, one of the players mentioned that the mashup did sound good, and I stammers, "But I can't run Gumshoe!"
"But Eric," he scolded me, "You've never run Gumshoe!"
And it's true. I haven't. I've only played Gumshoe. Only a couple of times, too, with ... mixed results.
So I'm re-reading my Gumshoe books. And a few pages into Esoterrorists, I realized: This is pretty much how I've been running the game already. "Do you have Skill X? Okay, you see ... "
I have one parapsychic player and one sorcerer character, so I'd need to figure out how to adapt that ... but I could run this as a Gumshoe game without even changing the character sheets. I think that may be the biggest secret to Gumshoe: Every game is Gumshoe once you stop rolling the dice.
I think I'm going to keep the game as-is for now. As a proto-Gumshoe game with occasional combat. But I may take a good look at Mutant City Blues to see if maybe a tweak to the skills list might be appropriate.
Wherein Eric discusses Games, the Game Industry, Gamer Culture and anything else which catches his eye.
Showing posts with label System. Show all posts
Showing posts with label System. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Saturday, August 08, 2009
System Still Matters
Here's what we've covered so far:
System Matters because it sets up the expectations of the players.
System Matters because it provides a reward system, impacting the style of play.
Here's today's discussion:
System Matters because the system chosen restricts player choice.
This restriction begins at character generation:
If I tell you "Make a character for a game," you will probably first ask me what game it will be. After all, if we're playing D&D and you show up with a GURPS Traveller character, we have a problem.
If I'm more specific with my request - "Make a GURPS Swashbucklers character," then you have more information, but still not enough to get started. At this point, you need to know what power level the character should be, if there are any off-limits Advantages or Disadvantages, and so on.
Every choice that I, as a GM, give to my players modifies their available choices. "Make me a 150 point GURPS Swashbucklers character. Some GURPS Steampunk and GURPS Space skills and Advantages are available. Disadvantages worth more than 5 points require specific approval. Humans only, unless you have a really cool concept you want me to work in. No magic-users."
I've just told my players what I want - and have given them a clue about the game we'll be playing. I slammed a lot of doors shut - I won't be seeing a party of Elves, for example. But they know to expect Steampunk Swashbucklers in Space. Since magic is not a default in any of these settings, my mention of magic-users hints that magic does exist in the setting. It also suggests that it's rare - or problematic in some way. And non-humans do exist - that is made explicitly clear in my instructions.
System Matters because it can support the setting.
In Dungeons and Dragons, you very rarely see Wizards on the front lines going toe-to-toe with monsters. Instead, Wizards tend to stand back and fire spells from a safe distance.
The setting1 says, "Wizards are not melee fighters - they are support characters." In response, the rules give wizards fewer hit points and it's harder for them to wear armor.
Many games have system "tweaks" to respond to specific setting differences. The Fuzion system is an excellent example of this: Even with the same rules, a Champions: New Millennium character would not fit into a Bubblegum Crisis campaign - even if you ignored the setting clash.
Why? Because Bubblegum Crisis is a fairly gritty setting where guns are a thing to be feared. Superheroes, by contrast, don't usually use guns (or fear guns). Because of this, the Champions character will eat most Bubblegum Crisis adventures for breakfast. And a Dragonball Z character will overpower a Champions character without breaking a sweat.
In general, I'm not fond of universal systems in part because people will inevitably try crossovers between two very different settings, and then get upset when it doesn't 'Work.' This is partly because of publishers who get lazy and don't tweak their engine for different settings - In my Fuzion example above, the system is tweaked for each setting.
Part of my general dislike for universal systems is because of this lack of subtle setting reinforcement - a GURPS Swashbucklers character will be equally as effective against a sword-wielding medieval knight out of armor as against a WWII soldier in the trenches. In theory, any 100-point GURPS character is on par with any other 100-point GURPS character.
This is one of the few areas where I give credit to Palladium Books. If you look at the Rifts setting and all of the hundreds of thousands of available character options, it rapidly becomes clear that certain character options are dramatically more powerful than others. The various authors and designers involved don't even try to maintain balance. There are character races which are clearly better than others. I'd go so far as to guess that there are options that less than 1% of Rifts players take because they are so dramatically inferior. At the core of this inferiority is the Mega-Damage settings, where some character are 100x as tough as others just because they're from a different universe. There's actually a decent rant on this here.
I've got more to say on this, but this post is long enough already, I think. I'll be at GenCon next week and will be spending my normal writing time packing. This means a two-week disruption in posting here2. In the meantime, feel free to watch my Twitter feed, which will be active next week.
I'll see you after GenCon.
1 I say "The Setting" - the same applies to all published D&D settings I can think of, many of which are virtually identical.
2 The Wednesday AFTER GenCon may just be an overview of my haul.
System Matters because it sets up the expectations of the players.
System Matters because it provides a reward system, impacting the style of play.
Here's today's discussion:
System Matters because the system chosen restricts player choice.
This restriction begins at character generation:
If I tell you "Make a character for a game," you will probably first ask me what game it will be. After all, if we're playing D&D and you show up with a GURPS Traveller character, we have a problem.
If I'm more specific with my request - "Make a GURPS Swashbucklers character," then you have more information, but still not enough to get started. At this point, you need to know what power level the character should be, if there are any off-limits Advantages or Disadvantages, and so on.
Every choice that I, as a GM, give to my players modifies their available choices. "Make me a 150 point GURPS Swashbucklers character. Some GURPS Steampunk and GURPS Space skills and Advantages are available. Disadvantages worth more than 5 points require specific approval. Humans only, unless you have a really cool concept you want me to work in. No magic-users."
I've just told my players what I want - and have given them a clue about the game we'll be playing. I slammed a lot of doors shut - I won't be seeing a party of Elves, for example. But they know to expect Steampunk Swashbucklers in Space. Since magic is not a default in any of these settings, my mention of magic-users hints that magic does exist in the setting. It also suggests that it's rare - or problematic in some way. And non-humans do exist - that is made explicitly clear in my instructions.
System Matters because it can support the setting.
In Dungeons and Dragons, you very rarely see Wizards on the front lines going toe-to-toe with monsters. Instead, Wizards tend to stand back and fire spells from a safe distance.
The setting1 says, "Wizards are not melee fighters - they are support characters." In response, the rules give wizards fewer hit points and it's harder for them to wear armor.
Many games have system "tweaks" to respond to specific setting differences. The Fuzion system is an excellent example of this: Even with the same rules, a Champions: New Millennium character would not fit into a Bubblegum Crisis campaign - even if you ignored the setting clash.
Why? Because Bubblegum Crisis is a fairly gritty setting where guns are a thing to be feared. Superheroes, by contrast, don't usually use guns (or fear guns). Because of this, the Champions character will eat most Bubblegum Crisis adventures for breakfast. And a Dragonball Z character will overpower a Champions character without breaking a sweat.
In general, I'm not fond of universal systems in part because people will inevitably try crossovers between two very different settings, and then get upset when it doesn't 'Work.' This is partly because of publishers who get lazy and don't tweak their engine for different settings - In my Fuzion example above, the system is tweaked for each setting.
Part of my general dislike for universal systems is because of this lack of subtle setting reinforcement - a GURPS Swashbucklers character will be equally as effective against a sword-wielding medieval knight out of armor as against a WWII soldier in the trenches. In theory, any 100-point GURPS character is on par with any other 100-point GURPS character.
This is one of the few areas where I give credit to Palladium Books. If you look at the Rifts setting and all of the hundreds of thousands of available character options, it rapidly becomes clear that certain character options are dramatically more powerful than others. The various authors and designers involved don't even try to maintain balance. There are character races which are clearly better than others. I'd go so far as to guess that there are options that less than 1% of Rifts players take because they are so dramatically inferior. At the core of this inferiority is the Mega-Damage settings, where some character are 100x as tough as others just because they're from a different universe. There's actually a decent rant on this here.
I've got more to say on this, but this post is long enough already, I think. I'll be at GenCon next week and will be spending my normal writing time packing. This means a two-week disruption in posting here2. In the meantime, feel free to watch my Twitter feed, which will be active next week.
I'll see you after GenCon.
1 I say "The Setting" - the same applies to all published D&D settings I can think of, many of which are virtually identical.
2 The Wednesday AFTER GenCon may just be an overview of my haul.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
System: Player Expectations and Style of Play
Since I'm going to be talking about system and how it impacts games for a bit, I think that it would be good to start by defining system.
For role-playing, I define a system as follows:
The most common core mechanisms involve dice, and can be summed up in a single sentence - "Roll one die, add appropriate modifiers and compare to a target number." "Roll a number of dice. Count the number of those dice which equal or exceed a certain number."
Systems also provide reward systems. Most of the time, this takes the form of experience points which allow characters to change and grow.
Each system brings with it certain expectations, which can drastically color how players react to it.
Where do the expectations come from? A variety of sources.
The most important and influential piece of the player expectation puzzle is the game's reward system. In Dungeons & Dragons, defeating monsters1 and disarming traps give you experience points which are added to your total. At certain threshholds, you gain more abilities which make you more effective at defeating monsters and disarming traps. The system doesn't spell out rewards for outwitting NPC's or avoiding combat. This leads to a specific style of play.
In the Tribe 8 (and other Silhouette-system games), you gain experience for being involved with the game, for advancing the story, for staying in character, and for working as a team. Yes, you can get experience for defeating enemies, but you can potentially obtain more experience for a dramatic act of self-sacrifice than for that defeat.
In other games, survival is its own reward. Call of Cthulhu is probably the most infamous game in this respect.
Other games provide additional rewards - King Arthur Pendragon, with its Winter Phase allows players to build dynasties, not just characters.
While it's the major contributor, a game's reward system is not the only element which impacts a game's style of play. So what else influences player expectations?
Rules focus. In Ars Magica, for example, devotes more than two-thirds of the rules to the magic system. Not surprisingly, the game focuses on magic. In fact, the combat system is almost underdeveloped by comparison.
Skill Lists. Tales From The Floating Vagabond had a skill list which included, "Swing Nasty Pointy Thing with Panache." With a list like that players knew from the outset that the game didn't take itself too seriously. It's worth noting that the game (and a number of its supplements) are now available at Drive Thru RPG.
Interior Art. CthulhuTech is illustrated throughout, and there are a number of images that make me think, "I wanna be that guy."
Game Fiction. I'm not talking about the Dragonlance novels, here. Nearly every game includes one or more bits of introductory fiction. These are frequently incomplete and end with a cliffhanger of sorts before introducing the rules elements demonstrated by that fiction. More importantly, they give you an idea what the setting is.
So what about Universal Systems? That is: systems which don't tie to a specific setting or genre. Universal systems generally lack a specific rules focus, they have very diverse skill lists, and the interior art and game fiction are all over the map in terms of quality and flavor. GURPS, FUDGE, Silhouette, and d20 have all tried to be completely universal systems - how well do they succeed? I'll talk about universal systems next week.
1 Until fairly recently, "Defeating" always meant "killing." Now, if you can force them to retreat or flee, you get credit for defeating them.
For role-playing, I define a system as follows:
System: A set of rules used to determine the success or failure of characters within a role-playing game.There are other elements which nearly every system has, but they are all designed to support the core success/failure mechanism of the system. For example, most games have a character generation system of some sort.
The most common core mechanisms involve dice, and can be summed up in a single sentence - "Roll one die, add appropriate modifiers and compare to a target number." "Roll a number of dice. Count the number of those dice which equal or exceed a certain number."
Systems also provide reward systems. Most of the time, this takes the form of experience points which allow characters to change and grow.
Each system brings with it certain expectations, which can drastically color how players react to it.
Where do the expectations come from? A variety of sources.
The most important and influential piece of the player expectation puzzle is the game's reward system. In Dungeons & Dragons, defeating monsters1 and disarming traps give you experience points which are added to your total. At certain threshholds, you gain more abilities which make you more effective at defeating monsters and disarming traps. The system doesn't spell out rewards for outwitting NPC's or avoiding combat. This leads to a specific style of play.
In the Tribe 8 (and other Silhouette-system games), you gain experience for being involved with the game, for advancing the story, for staying in character, and for working as a team. Yes, you can get experience for defeating enemies, but you can potentially obtain more experience for a dramatic act of self-sacrifice than for that defeat.
In other games, survival is its own reward. Call of Cthulhu is probably the most infamous game in this respect.
Other games provide additional rewards - King Arthur Pendragon, with its Winter Phase allows players to build dynasties, not just characters.
While it's the major contributor, a game's reward system is not the only element which impacts a game's style of play. So what else influences player expectations?
Rules focus. In Ars Magica, for example, devotes more than two-thirds of the rules to the magic system. Not surprisingly, the game focuses on magic. In fact, the combat system is almost underdeveloped by comparison.
Skill Lists. Tales From The Floating Vagabond had a skill list which included, "Swing Nasty Pointy Thing with Panache." With a list like that players knew from the outset that the game didn't take itself too seriously. It's worth noting that the game (and a number of its supplements) are now available at Drive Thru RPG.
Interior Art. CthulhuTech is illustrated throughout, and there are a number of images that make me think, "I wanna be that guy."
Game Fiction. I'm not talking about the Dragonlance novels, here. Nearly every game includes one or more bits of introductory fiction. These are frequently incomplete and end with a cliffhanger of sorts before introducing the rules elements demonstrated by that fiction. More importantly, they give you an idea what the setting is.
So what about Universal Systems? That is: systems which don't tie to a specific setting or genre. Universal systems generally lack a specific rules focus, they have very diverse skill lists, and the interior art and game fiction are all over the map in terms of quality and flavor. GURPS, FUDGE, Silhouette, and d20 have all tried to be completely universal systems - how well do they succeed? I'll talk about universal systems next week.
1 Until fairly recently, "Defeating" always meant "killing." Now, if you can force them to retreat or flee, you get credit for defeating them.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
System Matters
Let's get to the meat of the discussion, shall we? I have two words for you - they are words that the large sections of the RPG publishing industry spent the better part of a decade trying to convince you were incorrect. Words that the rest of the industry spent the same amount of time trying to reinforce and remind you of.
These two words?
System Matters
In 2000, Dungeons & Dragons released its third edition. The game was a huge step forward for D&D - it transformed the game, and advanced the system so it was almost caught up to the rest of the industry1. But it did one thing that advanced the entire industry - it opened its system up to third-party publishers, with a few restrictions. This meant that anyone could publish product that used the same system as the best-selling game in the industry. They were even allowed to claim compatiblity. Did I say allowed? I mean "required." Each book said on the front, "Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook." Sales exploded. For everyone. We saw d20 Superhero games, d20 Pulp Noir Detective games, d20 Cyberpunk games, d20 Horror games ...
For the first few months, all you needed to do in order to sell product to a distributor was slap that d20 logo onto the product.
And everyone that produced d20 product spent time telling you, "System doesn't matter. The flavor of the game comes from the Game Master (GM)." In essence, "The d20 Version of Game is just the same as the non-d20 Version of Game. If you are noticing a difference in your game, it's all your GM's fault." More on this later. And by "later," I mean, "Probably next week."
What these publishers forgot - and hoped you would forget - is that each system brings with it its own set of player expectations. Someone who enjoys GURPS is probably not going to enjoy a system with fewer rules, such as Vampire: The Masquerade, because each game has a completely different reward system. And yes, I know about the train wreck known as GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade. It took the Gothic Punk setting of the one and shoehorned it to the system of the other. The problem was that most GURPS players weren't interested in the setting, and most V:tM players preferred the system they already had. Steve Jackson Games published a few other World of Darkness adaptations
In fact, I suspect that GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade is a large part of why White Wolf and Steve Jackson both approached the d20 system the way they did - White Wolf published a series of settings and adventures that were completely unrelated to their World of Darkness setting (and didn't use the White Wolf name), and Steve Jackson Games waited a few years, and then began mocking d20 with The Munchkin Player's Guide.
Meanwhile, other games quietly started to take advantage of a growing d20 backlash. In 2001, Sorcerer (a game which had existed since the mid-90's) was a success in its print incarnation - not a huge success, but enough that smaller independent publishers started to take note. Discussion of game theory on the Forge took off. A few years later, the Indie Press Revolution took off. While they haven't billed themselves as such, these groups are to role-playing what the Punk movement was to music. But that's another subject for another time.
Is this to say there is no such thing as a functional universal system? No. Not at all. I'm also not saying d20 was a bad game - I thought some a few d20 versions were actually superior to the "original" versions of some games. I'll talk more about both of these later, as well.
I know it seems like I spend more time talking about what I'm going to talk about instead of just talking about it.
Here is why:
Every sentence I type spills fifteen more ideas into my notebook. Just in the last few paragraphs, I've realized that I have six different Cthulhu games (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Toon2, Call of Cthulhu d20, GURPS Cthulhupunk, and CthulhuTech), that I have two different universal systems within arms reach (GURPS and FUDGE), and that I haven't played a White Wolf game in nearly a decade.
And, once I start to talk about one of those, they spill even more ideas. For example, it occurs to me that the Cthulhu games are a perfect example of how system matters. Each has their own way of dealing with sanity, and each has a different "feel" to it which is based in large part on the system. I am also aware that d20 tried to be a universal system, and it succeeded to a limited extent, but it still isn't as universal as FUDGE. I should write about universal systems and where they succeed and fail.
...
So join me next week, when I continue talking about system and how it matters. And, in a few weeks, I'll talk about setting and how it matters and how it interacts with system.
I'll get back to boardgaming, I promise. In fact, next week - despite what I've said here - I'll probably have an entry about Dungeon Twister. Or Ghost Stories: White Moon, which I've now seen the rules to. If, of course, I'm allowed to say anything about it.
It's also worth mentioning that Asmodee Editions and Repos Productions are sharing a booth at GenCon this year. I'm looking forward to meeting the Repos team.
1 Care to see the history of the d20 system? Check out Talislanta sometime. Especially the 3rd edition, written by Jonathan Tweet and published by Wizards of the Coast.
2 The Tooniversal Tour Guide has a section entitled "The Crawl of Catchoolu." It's a parody, but it's a functional parody.
These two words?
System Matters
In 2000, Dungeons & Dragons released its third edition. The game was a huge step forward for D&D - it transformed the game, and advanced the system so it was almost caught up to the rest of the industry1. But it did one thing that advanced the entire industry - it opened its system up to third-party publishers, with a few restrictions. This meant that anyone could publish product that used the same system as the best-selling game in the industry. They were even allowed to claim compatiblity. Did I say allowed? I mean "required." Each book said on the front, "Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook." Sales exploded. For everyone. We saw d20 Superhero games, d20 Pulp Noir Detective games, d20 Cyberpunk games, d20 Horror games ...
For the first few months, all you needed to do in order to sell product to a distributor was slap that d20 logo onto the product.
And everyone that produced d20 product spent time telling you, "System doesn't matter. The flavor of the game comes from the Game Master (GM)." In essence, "The d20 Version of Game is just the same as the non-d20 Version of Game. If you are noticing a difference in your game, it's all your GM's fault." More on this later. And by "later," I mean, "Probably next week."
What these publishers forgot - and hoped you would forget - is that each system brings with it its own set of player expectations. Someone who enjoys GURPS is probably not going to enjoy a system with fewer rules, such as Vampire: The Masquerade, because each game has a completely different reward system. And yes, I know about the train wreck known as GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade. It took the Gothic Punk setting of the one and shoehorned it to the system of the other. The problem was that most GURPS players weren't interested in the setting, and most V:tM players preferred the system they already had. Steve Jackson Games published a few other World of Darkness adaptations
In fact, I suspect that GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade is a large part of why White Wolf and Steve Jackson both approached the d20 system the way they did - White Wolf published a series of settings and adventures that were completely unrelated to their World of Darkness setting (and didn't use the White Wolf name), and Steve Jackson Games waited a few years, and then began mocking d20 with The Munchkin Player's Guide.
Meanwhile, other games quietly started to take advantage of a growing d20 backlash. In 2001, Sorcerer (a game which had existed since the mid-90's) was a success in its print incarnation - not a huge success, but enough that smaller independent publishers started to take note. Discussion of game theory on the Forge took off. A few years later, the Indie Press Revolution took off. While they haven't billed themselves as such, these groups are to role-playing what the Punk movement was to music. But that's another subject for another time.
Is this to say there is no such thing as a functional universal system? No. Not at all. I'm also not saying d20 was a bad game - I thought some a few d20 versions were actually superior to the "original" versions of some games. I'll talk more about both of these later, as well.
I know it seems like I spend more time talking about what I'm going to talk about instead of just talking about it.
Here is why:
Every sentence I type spills fifteen more ideas into my notebook. Just in the last few paragraphs, I've realized that I have six different Cthulhu games (Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Toon2, Call of Cthulhu d20, GURPS Cthulhupunk, and CthulhuTech), that I have two different universal systems within arms reach (GURPS and FUDGE), and that I haven't played a White Wolf game in nearly a decade.
And, once I start to talk about one of those, they spill even more ideas. For example, it occurs to me that the Cthulhu games are a perfect example of how system matters. Each has their own way of dealing with sanity, and each has a different "feel" to it which is based in large part on the system. I am also aware that d20 tried to be a universal system, and it succeeded to a limited extent, but it still isn't as universal as FUDGE. I should write about universal systems and where they succeed and fail.
...
So join me next week, when I continue talking about system and how it matters. And, in a few weeks, I'll talk about setting and how it matters and how it interacts with system.
I'll get back to boardgaming, I promise. In fact, next week - despite what I've said here - I'll probably have an entry about Dungeon Twister. Or Ghost Stories: White Moon, which I've now seen the rules to. If, of course, I'm allowed to say anything about it.
It's also worth mentioning that Asmodee Editions and Repos Productions are sharing a booth at GenCon this year. I'm looking forward to meeting the Repos team.
1 Care to see the history of the d20 system? Check out Talislanta sometime. Especially the 3rd edition, written by Jonathan Tweet and published by Wizards of the Coast.
2 The Tooniversal Tour Guide has a section entitled "The Crawl of Catchoolu." It's a parody, but it's a functional parody.
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