Greetings,
There has been some topic drift happening in regards to gaming systems going on. I dont always start threads, but when I do, I choose interesting topics. To really understand what RPG systems have to offer, you need to understand gamer play styles and gamer mindsets. This helps when moments of cognitive dissonance occur like the E.T. Atari game (WTH was that?). In advance, I'd like to point out this thread is a discussion about systems and not a definitive position on them as the title implies. Please participate appropriately.
It all started with my copy of Nintendo Power's Final Fantasy bestiary. This opened a whole new world to me. Do folks really play games this complex on paper??? I saw commercials for HeroQuest board game and demanded my parents obtain a copy for my brother and I. This would occupy us for months and I couldn't help but wonder; what was next?
My brother and I got a 2E D&D box set, but had no idea how the hell to run a game. My old man was no help, he was already annoyed we didn't spend every waking moment hitting baseballs and shooting pucks. So, our attempts to play the game correctly were short-lived. Though, we always imaged incredible journeys by fantastic heroes in our minds as we feebly tried to play.
Later, in my adult years, I was determined to finally get into a real pen and paper RPG group. Like many, my first and formative RPG experience was D&D. After several years of a regular group of 3E, I was starting to feel like I finally got the fantasy RPG experience that I always read and heard about. Then, the E war broke out and I was introduced to the much disputed gamer community on what exactly D&D was supposed to be. The E war was nasty and tore gaming groups asunder, however, it was during this time that I really begun to understand RPG systems and their impact on the gaming experience.
2008 might seem pretty late in the game to have this awakening, but each gamers journey goes at their own pace. I started catching up on the history lessons of old gamers like Gygax and freelancers dropping nuggets of wisdom in Dragon mags and little known internet forums. Seems the divide begun long ago, and perhaps was evident at the very beginning. Experts tried to understand the differences in games with things like the GNS theory and the Blacow model to determine system design purpose. There was always criticism that nothing really delivered specifics, just generalizations.
Exhausted with the fantasy genre, (D&D/PF in particular) I felt it was time to explore strange new worlds and civilizations and boldly roll in a system I never rolled in before. I'd spend the next several years exploring the horror genre with Call of Cthulhu, sci-fi sim with Traveller, western adventure with Aces and Eights, generic you call it with Savage Worlds, etc.
I discovered a number of things. First, a lot of players take their unique D&D experience and apply it to any and every game they play. Some folks grow out of this with experience and coaching, some just have a well developed wheel house from their first RPG experience. If a system doesn't match, it often sucks in their opinion. The role of a GM is of utmost importance here. The GM needs to set the stage properly. The GM should be able to teach the system and facilitate the feel. The GM also needs to be intuitive of player understanding versus lack of player interest. Some gamers are along for the ride, not the experience.
Another thing I learned, some systems are designed to simulate a feeling, not a world. Dread uses a Jenga tower to add stress to the players as the game progresses. Call of Cthulhu has insanity mechanics to give the feeling of a character losing their mind and grip on reality. Other systems, are generic mechanical resolution systems that were designed to be dropped in any setting. While player understanding of a generic system is a strength, lack of a unique feel can be a weakness in terms of interest.
Ok, that was a lot more than I anticipated coming out of me on a Monday lunch hour. I'mma leave it here for now, I have plenty more to say on the topic. I turn it over to y'all for now to further the discuss. You can find additional food for thought here and there. Cant wait to hear about your journeys!
-Cheers
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as the rules of the game approach a certain level of complexity such that "system mastery" becomes necessary for advanced play, first-person immersion becomes less tenable.I really don't like "first-person immersion" (FPI)because that means entirely different things to me. I'll go with it for now.
Still, keeping in mind how this was used earlier,
I find that too many people tend to see 3.x/PF as being complex and requiring system mastery and thus inhibiting to the idea of FPI.
The real question here is why do they see it that way?
I can think a few reasons folks get away from FPI in systems like 3E/PF1.
The first is formative experiences with games. Folks tend to learn certain routines and gain expectations of how games are supposed to work and play from their earliest experiences. These can be helpful in learning other games, but can also become a major obstacle. For example, if a game doesn't match folks expectations, they could either stop playing it, or they will modify it so it plays as they expect. Folks need both the ability to learn new games and the desire to do it.
Video games tend to be heavy on mechanics and lower on narrative choices. This can train folks to focus more on equipment and abilities than motives and clever ideas. This doesn't make video games bad, they are just limited in comparison to a TTRPG. Some folks have trouble not just seeing the potential to go beyond the basic mechanics, but the reason to do so anyways. Some folks just want Diablo on paper, and thats ok.
One reason 5E seems to have taken off so well, is streaming shows like critical role. Now I find gaming podcasts to be about as interesting as paint drying, but they demonstrate a game in play. It helps folks see the potential, and understand how the system works. Its a much better introduction and guide than just a rule book alone. we didnt have this when I was a kid!
Which leads to presentation. If the rule book has piles of mechanical references, as 3E and PF1 do, it gives an impression that the game is all about mechanics and combat. Yes, I know there might be a paragraph buried in the DMG somewhere that says not to play that way, but most folks will never read the rule books cover to cover. They will use it simply as a reference guide. Players likely will never even read the DMG. Something to keep in mind.
If your going to create a game with mechanical heft, you need to be ready to provide examples of expected play. If you think writing down the rules alone is enough, it isnt. The first several pages should be examples of play. Hell, id even make a how to play video which has gotten quite popular with board games. This instructs people not only in how to use the rules, but the intent of the experience.
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I started playing RPGs in 1981, at the tender age of 12.
I had been taking a summer Pascal programming class for kids at the local community college. (In the lab, we used VT-100 dumb terminals connected to a DEC PDP-11 mainframe running VAX, but I digress.) One of our assignments was to write a computer game: The teacher recommended a card game that's easy to simulate mathematically, such as poker or blackjack. One of the other kids in the class wanted to write a "combat simulator," and the teacher agreed. Next class, he brought in a pair of hardcover books with cover pictures of a knight and a wizard fighting a demon and thieves stealing gems off an idol. At our lunch break, I asked about those books, and he told me they were the rules for a game called Dungeons & Dragons, and he invited me to join his group. He was 15, and his group consisted of his 18-year-old brother, and two of his brother's friends who were in college. They played what I know now was a weird hodgepodge of AD&D 1e, the Blackmoor OD&D supplement from the mid-70s, and some Judge's Guild setting material. They were all very, very nice to me, but the age difference was weird and they lived way on the other side of town (too far to bike and requiring two bus transfers if my mom didn't drive me), so I only played with them four or five times. I saved my money from mowing lawns and raking leaves that summer and autumn, and bought a copy the Tom Moldvay D&D Basic Set and Expert Set later that fall. I then started my own group with my own friends from the neighborhood, mostly playing in the basement back room of my grandfather's house. Since I both owned the books and had played before, I was the DM. We ran through The Keep on the Borderlands, In Search of the Unknown, The Secret of Bone Hill, The Isle of Dread, and some original adventures that I penned and are now lost to time. By the time I got to high school, we'd upgraded to AD&D, and I joined the high school RPG club. That's where I first started getting cross-pollination from other games that used different play styles.
Through the mid-to-late 80s, while D&D was still our mainstay, we played many other RPGs, including Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Boot Hill, RoleMaster, Marvel Super-Heroes [TSR/FASERIP version], and Champions. Exposure to different RPG systems made me realize that many of the "givens" I'd come to expect on a diet of D&D were specific to that particular game, and not generally applicable to role-playing games in general. For example, Boot Hill didn't have character attribute scores, just a set of skills. Champions let you define what your own powers however you wanted rather than picking from lists; you also didn't "roll" your character—you built it from a set pool of points. Marvel/FASERIP had a luck mechanic that lets a player take narrative control of the overall situation. Traveller had no hard-coded setting, letting the players and GM define their own. As I played different games with different sets of assumptions, I realized that RPGs could be far more expansive as both a player and a GM than what D&D provided.
When I went away to college in '88, I immediately joined the gaming club. I found that this club had a fascinating play culture: All of the AD&D groups were playing in the same homebrew campaign world that had been developed over the past few years. What one group did in the world impacted what was happening in the other groups. And the GMs of the groups regularly met to plan campaign world-spanning events (e.g. the cessation of a war that had been a campaign backdrop; the assassination of a world leader; astronomical events that affected how magic worked; etc.) I quickly joined the GM ranks, and added my own creativity to the game-world. We planned one event every semester where we'd get all the players and GMs together into one room (a lecture hall) and run a HUGE game where all the characters could interact with each other. We called it the "Ballroom Brawl" after the first such session that took place at a coronation ball. This event allowed groups to break up and new ones form with continuity of characters. I didn't realize it at the time, but we had effectively created a small-scale AD&D organized play group, with 7 or 8 GMs and about 50 players in total.
One other thing that was cool about the college game group: About half of the GMs and more than a third of the players were women.
I also joined the editorial board of the club's newsletter, which had by then evolved into a full-blown gaming magazine called Sorcerer's Almanac.
And while AD&D was still the primary game I played, I joined in several limited series of other games, including WEG d6 Star Wars: The Role-Playing Game; Toon; Call of Cthulhu; FASA's Star Trek RPG; and Paranoia.
After college, I realized I'd pretty much had my fill of fantasy for a while, and had also gotten burned out on GMing. I moved on to other games. Through the 90s, my system of choice was GURPS. I played in several different GURPS campaigns, including a space pirates game, one based on the TV series The X-Files, a pulp adventure game set in the South Seas in the 1930s, a science-fantasy space opera, and a very weird modern-day conspiracy game. I also played a fair amount of Champions, Call of Cthulhu, and Amber Diceless Role-Playing, with a brief foray into World of Darkness (mostly Mage: The Ascension with two or three sessions of Vampire: The Masquerade.) ADRPG and WoD were my initial introductions into story-games, where players regularly take narrative control of the world itself and regularly shift between running their character in a traditional sense and taking some of a traditional GM's world-building responsibilities. And while I didn't GM at all, some of the nontraditional games left a mark on how I approached role-playing.
In 2002, some of my old college friends who lived nearby invited me to try out this new third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, so I gave it a try. I really loved it! We converted our campaign to 3.5 a year later, and that campaign wrapped in 2005. I joined a different 3.5 campaign that year, which ran to 2009. Toward the end of my run with D&D 3.5, I was becoming a bit disillusioned with D&D, mainly due to the proliferation of all the "splat" books, many of which seemed to be lacking in quality, and the rules bloat that all those extra books.
In-between, I still played the occasional game of GURPS and Call of Cthulhu, but another friend invited me to try out this weird "intense" RPG called Sorcerer by Ron Edwards. I didn't really understand that game or what made it tick, but it fascinated me... it was the first true story-game I'd played, where the mechanic was that on a successful dice roll, you, the player, took full narrative control and told the GM what was happening.
We tried out D&D 4e when it first dropped, and it rubbed all of us the wrong way. At the time, we didn't realize that the design goal of 4e was to strip out the extraneous stuff and to bring D&D back to its roots as a game of dungeon-delving. We didn't recognize that as a game of dungeon-delving, 4e delivered the goods better than any iteration of D&D before or since, which is an opinion I've only recently come to.
Since we thought 4e was a dud, we turned our attention to this new iteration of 3rd edition D&D by a little upstart gaming company called Paizo. I decided to run a campaign as the GM for the first time in over 15 years, so in 2011, I started my first run of "Rise of the Runelords." For the next five years, I pretty much only played Pathfinder. But my table was a bit different than many: Due to the influences of all the other RPGs I'd played over the years, I ran a narrative-focused game. I regularly turned narrative control over to the players to let them paint scenes, introduce NPCs, describe how they defeated enemies, or do cool stuff on-camera. I tried to run that game by the "Rule of Cool:" If what the player described sounded cool, I'd say, "You succeed! Roll to see how awesome!". I'd also always roll behind a screen and would sometimes override what I rolled when I decided that I didn't want a bad die roll to negate what was otherwise a cool scene. As time went on, I decided not to roll at all more and more often.
After the RotL campaign ended in 2014, I immediately started a new one, called "Champions of Old Korovsa." I used TPK Games' mega-module The Reaping Stone as a baseline and central plot, but I raided other modules for (for PF and other systems) for parts, grafting together my own plotline and adventure series. That campaign wound down in 2016, when two of my players moved out of town... and I was starting to tire of fighting the core Pathfinder rules to run the game the way I wanted.
That year, one of my players invited me to join a new group that was playing an RPG called Dungeon World, that used a game engine called "Powered by the Apocalypse." That game broke my brain in a very good way. THIS was the system that provided the style of play I'd been struggling to force Pathfinder into for the past few years. I jumped into this pool with both feet, and I haven't really looked back. That group mostly played short-series campaigns that came to a satisfying conclusion after 8-12 sessions. We played 2 DW campaigns, two games using Fate Core ("Sixguns & Sorcery": a Weird West campaign; and "Marooned on Planet X": a retro-future 1960s-style sci-fi survival game); and Swords of the Serpentine, a swords & sorcery RPG that uses the GUMSHOE game engine.)
Since my shift to story-games, I've completely fallen in love with RPGs again. I've played and GMed many PbtA games, including Spirit of '77 (1970s pop-culture action-comedy), Bluebeard's Bride (supernatural feminine horror), Uncharted Worlds (space opera), Monster of the Week (modern-day monster-hunting), Brindlewood Bay (cozy mysteries crossed with cosmic horror), and others. I've also gotten very into the OSR/story-game hybrid RPG Trophy. I've also dipped my toe back into the OSR scene, with the games The Black Hack, Old School Essentials, Mörk Borg, and SEACAT. I ran a short OSR campaign set in the weird science fantasy setting The Ultraviolet Grasslands. And these days I'm gaming extensively with the online RPG group The Gauntlet.
And at the age of 51, I've finally started writing RPGs with an eye to publication. I'm currently working on four projects: a hard-boiled/film noir detective RPG set in the 1940s called Naked City Blues. I'm polishing a nautical-themed incursion (i.e. an adventure) for the RPG Trophy Gold called Harpy's Maw that I originally submitted for an incursion design contest. I'm taking a new look at a PF adventure called The Toadstool Goblins I wrote 10 years ago as a plug-in for Rise of the Runelords. I'm also looking at re-working an old adventure I co-wrote 30 years ago called The Horror of Castle Nostromo. For the latter, my goal would be to present the castle and situation system-neutral, and to then provide encounter area game stats for and or all of OSR, PF1, PF2, 5e, Dungeon World, Fate, and Trophy.
We are in a true golden age of RPGs. There's a game out there for any taste, any genre, and any preferred play-style.
To begin at the beginning with the system journey approach - my pathway from entry to the Paizo community is maybe a little different than some. While my first attempt at play was in 2nd Edition AD&D - that experience lasted maybe three sessions and didn't really do much to excite me about playing RPG's.
I got my real start in the hobby a year later with West End Game's D6 Star Wars - which was (at the time) a less rules heavy system than D&D that allowed more focus on character and narrative due to a more simplistic and uniform die resolution system. When I graduated high school, I figured I was done with Tabletop gaming and left the hobby behind.
In 2001/2002 I was brought back into the fold by a group of friends who were playing Exalted First Edition and needed a player to step in to replace an outgoing player. I was recruited, joined that group, and have remained an active member of the communities of gamers ever since.
White Wolf's Exalted was based on the Storyteller System used for Vampire: The Masquerade and other such games and was very narratively focused while providing a bit of crunch - and it wasn't long before the launch of Vampire: The Requiem brought along the new Storytelling System which was a much more streamlined mechanical approach to the World of Darkness games.
The groups I played with spent a lot of time playing in that system or in trying things like Cinematic Unisystem, Gurps, Deadlands, WEG Star Wars and D20 Star Wars; Decipher's Star Trek. We never circled back to D&D proper until 4th Edition and while we found it enjoyable to play for the first several months - it quickly lost its luster and we switched to Pathfinder almost immediately once it dropped.
This worked out well for some of the players in group, but not much for me. I'd spent so much time running games set in worlds, settings and systems that leant themselves so easily to a sandbox that 3.X encounter based design felt like a shackle.
The feeling of complexity and the necessity of system mastery in 3.X and PF1 I think simply comes from the wealth of options and the synergies that exist within them being so robustly presented. I know there are many like me who came to 3.X or PF in my case AFTER it was already sort of fully formed. It's easy to forget that 3.5 came out with a HOST of options from 3.0 having already been published and then caught on bigger than its prior edition had. Paizo dropped PF1 and then launched a rather quick option release to get those 3.X options back into play.
For narratively focused players less interested in created the perfect feat synergy - this could feel a bit overwhelming, and did in my case. I continued to prefer more narrative focused games like White Wolf products or Fantasy Flights Narrative Dice offerings. 5e didn't quite fit the bill for me either because it ejected a lot of the uniqueness of the game in favor of a universal simplicity.
PF2 is honestly the first time I've felt a D20 system suits my needs as a player and GM by being balanced enough from class to class while still providing options to players.
I'm not the OP, so I can't speak to it for sure - but this struck me as a thread about our own origins in gaming and our experiences with systems to better understand each others perspectives. I wasn't sure it was intended to be the home of the discussion about the ongoing attempts to define the hobby at large.
As such I'm slugging this into a spoiler.
From many places. I started with people had been playing since the beginning. I also read as many old stories as I can find, such as the first dungeon delve story.
Which story is the first Dungeon Delve story? Which people who have been playing since the beginning have you spoken to?
Do you consider yourself "interfacing" with english? Using rules does not always mean the same thing nor reach the same results.
If I have to purchase Chainmail and Outdoor Survival in order to play OD&D - then the expectation is that those two games are essential to the play of the third.
A modern example would be the Stargate: SG-1 RPG from the early 2000's which required the purchase of Spycraft in order to play. More than simply using the OGL it used specific Spycraft content and the character creation rules used in that book were not at all reprinted in the SG1 core. You needed both books to play the game, without Spycraft - the SG1 core was not entirely useful.
That's one of the reasons why 10' poles, string, etc were more common back then, because the players interacted with the world like it was the real world.
OD&D relied much more on the concept of traversing the dungeon than modern editions of D&D. Players more commonly used 10 foot poles and string because there were more traps to outwit and disarm in the dungeon that traversed multiple levels of play than there are now.
The main crux of play then was getting through the dungeon that the DM created, than playing a particular character.
Modern players, even the freeform ones, tend to more often interact like a protagonist interacts with a story rather than like a person in a real world.
I'm not entirely clear what your definitions are for "Modern players" "freeform players" or how a protagonist interacting with their in-story world differs with how we interact with the real world.
I'm not the OP, so I can't speak to it for sure - but this struck me as a thread about our own origins in gaming and our experiences with systems to better understand each others perspectives. I wasn't sure it was intended to be the home of the discussion about the ongoing attempts to define the hobby at large.
As such I'm slugging this into a spoiler.
** spoiler omitted **...
My aim is to discuss TTRPG systems, experiences, and perspectives to help in understanding. Discussing how systems originated seems appropriate. A little topic drift is ok.
This is a bit like saying that if you need a hammer it can only be because there are nails.
What I'm saying is that they needed a tool and they happened to have a hammer laying around so they used it.
If the kit contains a hammer, nails and a level - the core assumption of the product is not that you would use a screwdriver to hang the picture.
To take that analogy further - the existence of new wall anchoring tools that do indeed use a screwdriver do not change the orginal products intent to be used with the hammer. The hammer was an integral part of that product, even if it is not included in the companies current product offerings.
My Dad bought a Basic D&D set while overseas before any were on shop shelves in NZ. I read it and got a few other people slightly interested just in time for D&D to become a brief craze which lots of people took an interest in. Being popular was a unique experience for me.
I played D&D and a couple dozen other RPGs, including 3rd ed D&D when that came out. I wasn't an early adopter of PF1 as it didn't initially look enough different from D&D 3.5 to be worth spending on new books.
My friends and I bounced off the story-first games (FATE, Amber, PbtA etc.) as none of them suited our senses of verisimilitude. I've come to the conclusion that's likely to be true of any such.
What has worked well for us is games with a lot of content to explore and a setup which lets a single game keep running a long time. PF1 has filled that role in the past, so has Rolemaster, Shadowrun, the Storyteller games (Vampire and Werewolf mainly), Savage Worlds and most recently GURPS. PF2 might work but a number of the design choices are fingernails on a chalkboard to me.
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I'm fairly sure the drow were made to be dark reflections of the PCs, with equivalent armour and weapons which couldn't be looted because they'd disintegrate.
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BTW Interesting Character, I think the OP was an invitation to share your roleplaying history. Care to share?
However, finding players who do that is increasingly more difficult as trends move towards gamism where it's all about system mastery, or story based in one way or another where progressing the story or being cool or similar are the focus and thus ignoring the real and plausible consequences of thinking of the fictional world as a real one.
Those trends moved in that direction twenty years ago.
The same idea applies here, in the early days, players thought in terms of function of things being the same as in the real world, but modern players tend to think of things as either a videogamer or a moviemaker, instead of as real objects. This is why no one bats an eye at murderhobos, because they treat the characters in the game like the npcs in a videogame, aka, enemies to be destroyed or background decoration, or narratively important with plot armor.
Murderhobo is a term that goes back to the very beginnings of the hobby, and no on batted an eye at them then either.
I think you're letting your conclusions about the hobby as it exists today color your interpretation of information about the hobby in its nascent form in the 1970's.
You presume the hammer was designed from the ground up for hanging pictures, but in reality, the hammer was what was available and not only did it do an alright job, ir also became what they were used to as they made minor adjustment after minor adjustment until packaging and selling it.
The analogy here is long lost, but the reference to "minor adjustment after minor adjustment" isn't relevant because the "hammer" was packaged in the ORIGINAL version prior to any adjustments being made.
D&D (or rather Greyhawk and Blackmoor) were created as expansions for Chainmail. It was meant to give you more options for your wargame, there are multiple books available about this origin. The resulting game grew into the creation of megadungeons for players to attempt to last through. Playing a character as if they were in the real world is a conceit that came later. Much later.
You want to describe how strong your character is. You can have a back and forth discussion about what exactly "very strong" means. A problem that can be solved by making a table and listing out various strengths and simply reference which entry on the table is the one you mean. Use numbers and you can generate the table algorithmically. And the final result looks like a game stat even though it is just about description. Take that concept and apply it across the board of things you want to describe about characters.
Gygax wasn't looking for a system to describe how strong his character was, he had that in his existing wargame. He was looking for a system to take his character and make him an individual rather than a single unit inside of a larger army. This goes back to the idea that you are shoehorning your personal system search onto the origin of the game itself.
Having a desire to use dice for an unbiased random element to add risk and tension to choices can easily allow traits to have an influence, even without trying to have a game about system mastery or wargaming yey just from this little bit, it is clear that such a thing would look very much like a wargame or game focused on system mastery.
It didn't "look very much like a wargame" it literally was taken from a wargame.
Yea, the other side of the divide, which I believe Gygax referred to as the folks who "played the rules instead of playing the game."
Those folks who saw it as an expansion to chainmail are the ones who "played the rules."
Gygax had a problem with those who "played the rules." > Those who saw it as an expansion to Chainmail are the ones who "played the rules."> Gygax saw it as an expansion to Chainmail. > Gygax had a problem with himself?
Those who "played the rules" was a reference to Rules Lawyers, who existed even then to argue the letter of the rule rather than make a ruling at the table that led to the most enjoyable outcome. It was not a reference to those who played D&D like a wargame, because many people played it like a wargame.
No, the analogy works, what you are missing is that Chainmail, and wargames in general, are the hammer that was picked to be used in a nonstandard way.
The hammer analogy absolutely does not work, even when I added extra constraints to it in an attempt to make it fit - it didn't. What you're missing is that Gygax and Arneson didn't pick Chainmail to play in a nonstandard way - they chose a nonstandard way to play Chainmail.
You're saying that the goal was to create D&D and they chose to use Chainmail to do that and thus D&D has the appearance of a wargame. The reality as recounted by both men is that the goal wasn't to create D&D, the goal was to create expansion rules for Chainmail and that ended up leading to D&D. Hence why Gygax refers to Chainmails Fantasy Supplement as "the progenitor of D&D."
As for your comments about realism being the intended way to play the game... do they jibe with Gygax's own statements
It is important to keep in mint that, after all is said and done, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a game. Because it is a game, certain things which seem "unrealistic" or simply unnecessary are integral to the system.
You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma, no ponderous combat systems for greater "realism", there isn't a hint of a spell point system whose record keeping would warm the hard of a monomaniacal statistics lover, or anything else of the sort.
He doesn't seem overly concerned with "realism."
If this were Twitter, I'd be blocking Interesting Character right about now...
I was thinking about the formative element I mentioned earlier in the thread. I remember a good example of this when I first started branching out from D&D. I had a friend I met for a pick up group. After playing for a year or two, we decided to give a new game a shot. My buddy was really into Call of Cthulhu and so we handed the GM reins over to him.
I picked up a copy of the CoC rulebook. I read a few of Lovecraft's short stories. I got this idea that it was a pulpy 1920's horror game and was really excited to try something not fantasy medieval Europe. Not only that, but a dangerous mystery that my character would have to tread lightly about or get killed and perhaps worse, go insane.
Chargen turned out to be interesting. I rolled up a middle aged Doctor, my GF rolled up a flapper the daughter of a bootlegging mobster. Another player rolled up a WWI solider and the final guy a farmer. A weird assortment of characters but the GM did a good job of putting them together.
Right off the bat things started going pear shaped with what im going to call solider guy. The player insisted that the character would carry a B.A.R rifle with them every where they went. The GM mentioned this would be impossible to conceal and he was pretty sure that civilians wouldn't have access to it. Soldier guy kept insisting so we just went with it. Oh, and the character also kept a pouch of T.N.T and several pistols on him...
It didnt take long for us to start running afoul of things. Solider guy just went to the trigger at the slightest provocation. So our characters were not only dealing with mythos cultists but the local authorities as well. When we eventually had encounters with mythos creatures, solider guy just tried to kill them with bad results. After each death, solider guy would just make increasingly better armed and experienced soldiers. This eventually wore on everyone.
When the game finally went belly up, we had a discussion. Soldier guy couldnt fathom that his character wouldnt enter combat on a regular basis. Not only that, but he expected to kill mythos monsters on a regular basis. Not Cthulhu, at least not at "first level" but at some point he expected to open up a machine gun on Cthulhu itself and kill it. The player couldnt fathom a game where his character was helpless against the antagonist forces. It just didnt compute that a game would not function in a kill monsters and gradually kill stronger monsters fashion.
I would try one or two other games with this player and the results were similar. The player wanted each game to be about ego tripping big damn heroes going around kicking ass and taking names. Nothing wrong with that, but not every game is a progressive murder fest. D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.
D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.Interesting that dnd was so different for me, don't you think?
Heck, I'd been playing dnd for years before I actually gamed with someone who was even a tiny bit like soldier guy.
And now, so many talk like that is the only way to play the dnd system.
I should have written it as "solider guy's D&D experience made a considerable mark on the player's impression of what a game should be."
Mechanically, dnd was an expension, but as a game, they way you played was not an expansion.
You keep telling everyone they're confusing things, so here I'll let you know that you are confusing the RESULT of D&D with the INTENT of D&D.
An accident midway through cooking may result in my having a calzone, but that doesn't change that my intent was to make a pizza.
Contrary to both of these, "playing the rules" is those who can't see past the rules.
No, he was actually talking about Rules Laywers:
It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. NEVER hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, IF it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters give in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Volumes, YOU are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a WHOLE first, your CAMPAIGN next, and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as it was meant to be. May you find as much pleasure in so doing as the rest of us do.
The people who see an anti-trap skill or ability and therefore no longer think of nor consider ant other way to bypass/disable a trap other than the skill/ability is someone that is playing the rules.
Fascinating, what did Gary have to say about traps?
if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door... Mocking their over-cautious behavior as near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the results are negative, and statements to the effect that: "You detect nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far -", might suffice. If the problem should continue, then rooms full with silent monsters will turn the tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.
Seems he wasn't a big fan of the 10 foot pole that was so integral to the way you claim the game is meant to be played.
It is a difficult distinction to communicate, which is probably why so many, even today, fail to understand the difference. That difference is a purely mental one, and that difference is the difference between playing the rules and playing the game.
I imagine that communicating this distinction is made harder by the fact that no one seems to have officially communicated it in the terms you use at any point in the past.
I would try one or two other games with this player and the results were similar. The player wanted each game to be about ego tripping big damn heroes going around kicking ass and taking names. Nothing wrong with that, but not every game is a progressive murder fest. D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.
Not every game is for everybody.
RPG Table culture and play styles matter at least as much as the system matters... and probably more so.
Your story about Soldier Guy also sounds like a conflict of expectations. Call of Cthulhu is, ultimately, a "play to lose" game.... and Soldier Guy had no intention of playing to lose.
If you're not accepting the fundamental premise of a game, you shouldn't play it!
A CATS discussion during Session Zero can really help to make sure everyone is on the same page about the game... and can also help a player decide whether the game is for them.
Of course, no safety tool is foolproof. And some people engage with safety tools in bad faith. (And nobody should play with such people.)
I would try one or two other games with this player and the results were similar. The player wanted each game to be about ego tripping big damn heroes going around kicking ass and taking names. Nothing wrong with that, but not every game is a progressive murder fest. D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.Not every game is for everybody.
RPG Table culture and play styles matter at least as much as the system matters... and probably more so.
Your story about Soldier Guy also sounds like a conflict of expectations. Call of Cthulhu is, ultimately, a "play to lose" game.... and Soldier Guy had no intention of playing to lose.
If you're not accepting the fundamental premise of a game, you shouldn't play it!
A CATS discussion during Session Zero can really help to make sure everyone is on the same page about the game... and can also help a player decide whether the game is for them.
Of course, no safety tool is foolproof. And some people engage with safety tools in bad faith. (And nobody should play with such people.)
Right on. I agree that session zero and GM involvement are huge. The problem with solider guy is he wasnt quite honest with his answers. Every time we would discuss trying a new type of game or system, he would sound off as totally on board. Though when dice hit the table it was always the same combat fest ego trip. The GM of the CoC game would sort of shrug it off when he probably should have made more of a discussion about it. The real lesson I learned is that folks dont always know their gamer selves as well as they think they do.
Right on. I agree that session zero and GM involvement are huge. The problem with solider guy is he wasnt quite honest with his answers. Every time we would discuss trying a new type of game or system, he would sound off as totally on board. Though when dice hit the table it was always the same combat fest ego trip. The GM of the CoC game would sort of shrug it off when he probably should have made more of a discussion about it. The real lesson I learned is that folks dont always know their gamer selves as well as they think they do.I would try one or two other games with this player and the results were similar. The player wanted each game to be about ego tripping big damn heroes going around kicking ass and taking names. Nothing wrong with that, but not every game is a progressive murder fest. D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.Not every game is for everybody.
RPG Table culture and play styles matter at least as much as the system matters... and probably more so.
Your story about Soldier Guy also sounds like a conflict of expectations. Call of Cthulhu is, ultimately, a "play to lose" game.... and Soldier Guy had no intention of playing to lose.
If you're not accepting the fundamental premise of a game, you shouldn't play it!
A CATS discussion during Session Zero can really help to make sure everyone is on the same page about the game... and can also help a player decide whether the game is for them.
Of course, no safety tool is foolproof. And some people engage with safety tools in bad faith. (And nobody should play with such people.)
Either that, or he was engaging in bad faith: Agreeing to changing things up with no intention of actually following through.
Either that, or he was engaging in bad faith: Agreeing to changing things up with no intention of actually following through.Right on. I agree that session zero and GM involvement are huge. The problem with solider guy is he wasnt quite honest with his answers. Every time we would discuss trying a new type of game or system, he would sound off as totally on board. Though when dice hit the table it was always the same combat fest ego trip. The GM of the CoC game would sort of shrug it off when he probably should have made more of a discussion about it. The real lesson I learned is that folks dont always know their gamer selves as well as they think they do.I would try one or two other games with this player and the results were similar. The player wanted each game to be about ego tripping big damn heroes going around kicking ass and taking names. Nothing wrong with that, but not every game is a progressive murder fest. D&D had made a considerable mark on this player's impression of what a game should be.Not every game is for everybody.
RPG Table culture and play styles matter at least as much as the system matters... and probably more so.
Your story about Soldier Guy also sounds like a conflict of expectations. Call of Cthulhu is, ultimately, a "play to lose" game.... and Soldier Guy had no intention of playing to lose.
If you're not accepting the fundamental premise of a game, you shouldn't play it!
A CATS discussion during Session Zero can really help to make sure everyone is on the same page about the game... and can also help a player decide whether the game is for them.
Of course, no safety tool is foolproof. And some people engage with safety tools in bad faith. (And nobody should play with such people.)
I dont believe it was bad faith. We did discuss the differences after a few attempts and came to the conclusion that his play style didnt match the rest of us. It happens, and its not always easy to find out. I mean, I couldnt really articulate my style and approach to RPGs until years after I got into the hobby. It's discussions like this that helped me really know myself. Also, its helped me become acutely aware of play style in others.
If gaming was like soda pop, than Coke Cola would be the D&D. To me I will always love coke, its classic. However, sometimes I want a sprite or maybe a Dr. Pepper. Solider Guy wants coke, diet coke, cherry coke, etc.
The D&D gravity well is hard to escape. I started a few months ago with a Traveller campaign. Before it, we ran thru a 5E campaign. The entire group, aside from myself, only had D&D experience. There was a lot of questions and expectation setting. I was happy to be experienced enough to answer most of them.
It was a little slow going at first, but now these guys are loving it. They no longer look at their character sheet when coming up with plans. They dont worry about feats or spells. It's been a real eye opener for them. I'm so glad to be on this journey right now. More importantly, im glad I'm at this point to be able to lead them. Its not something I had very often in my gaming past.
I agree play style is just as important and as variable as RPG system. You just never know until you try something different.
@markhoover welcome to the party.
Your post reminds me of a GM I had. He was a great guy and fun gamer but at times he drove me nuts. He was always punishing our characters for things the players didnt know. I remember one time in a Call of Cthulhu game the party was travelling to London on a steamer. We get off the boat and the GM triumphantly claims that one of our party had a pistol which is illegal in 1920's England and he was a stupid idiot for trying to bring it with him. Now the character was English so surely they would have known this, even if the player didnt.
As GM I am always informing the players about things their characters would likely know. Especially, in my recent Traveller game. I love it when the players are exploring a space faring setting and looking for everything their imagination can think of. I do my best to allow rule of cool to reign. Instead of straight up yes though, I often find myself saying yes, but... It usually leads to an adventure itself in doing what the player wants to accomplish.
Curious how player and character knowledge are handled in various systems. Would love to hear from folks on that topic.
It was a little slow going at first, but now these guys are loving it. They no longer look at their character sheet when coming up with plans. They dont worry about feats or spells. It's been a real eye opener for them.Are you saying that you had to go to a new system to get this, or just that you've finally reached this stage with the new system?
To really answer that I have to stroll down D&D memory lane.
OSR and older editions of D&D didnt have a rule for everything. The GM was more empowered to adjudicate situations that lacked a consistent rule set. Players often relied more on their imagination and abstract levels of RP, as opposed to the realistic simulation of modern D&D. The rub here was that the GM had to be good with the improv skill, clever when it came to on the fly resolutions, but most importantly, they had to be fair. Modules had a focus on exploration and puzzle solving along with combat.
Modern D&D has a lot of crunch. The rule books have hundreds of pages devoted to combat and hundreds more to spells and class abilities related to combat. Even things outside of combat like trap disarming and social encounters are given mechanical heft that really makes folks think the rules are all encompassing. Some folks can grok all that easily and not break a sweat. Most folks, in my experience, find it a little intimidating. Shortcutting RP into dice rolls and decision making into character sheet scanning just helps folks get through it all. It feels consistent and when all else fails, you can always reference the rulebooks.
This all is, of course, anecdotal experience on my part. Experience will vary, especially, on forums where everyone started playing D&D back in '77 and knew Gygax personally. I was more of a Arneson guy myself didnt get the love he deserves IMO. It seems the rise of organized convention play and video games may have shifted the focus for the general D&D player. Expectations are laid heavy at the feet of killing things and taking their stuff. Rinse and repeat.
5E has tried to take a step back to the good old days with a rulings over rules philosophy. My experience is that it has mildly reduced the crunch heavy expectations of D&D, but folks still seem content on rolling for everything. Your miles may vary.
Moving into other systems can remove some of those expectations on rules heavy combat focused play. You can argue if that impression is fair of D&D or not, but it seems to have held steady for at least a few decades now in my opinion.
This is why earlier I stressed the need for a realistic simulation heavy rule set to say loudly, clearly, and often that the game is supposed to have an abstract role play sensibility. As thejeff mentioned earlier, a crunchy system is going to push away from abstract roleplaying and into a more realistic wargaming expectation. So, yeah, for many modern D&D players leaving the D&D system is necessary to branch out into role playing narratively speaking.
Curious how player and character knowledge are handled in various systems. Would love to hear from folks on that topic.
Powered by the Apocalypse
First of all, PbtA is an RPG framework, not a ruleset. There are some common mechanical conventions for PbtA play, but they aren't universal.
The central premises of PbtA game design are...
1. The game is a conversation between the players and the GM.
2. There exists a fiction in which the game itself resides. Player characters exist within the fiction while the players themselves exist outside the fiction looking in.
3. During the game, play shifts back and forth between decisions being made by the characters themselves within the fiction and by the players talking about the fiction.
In play, the GM explains what's happening and asks the players, "What do you do?" The players then tell the GM what their characters are doing. The game mechanics aren't used until a player makes a Move: They must do a certain thing in the fiction that triggers engagement of a game mechanic.
Most of the time in most PbtA games, a Move is structured as...
When you [do something in the fiction] state what you wish to accomplish and, roll 2d6 plus [relevant stat]. On a 10+ you get what you want. On a 7-9 you get some of what you want, or you get what you want but there's a complication or cost. On a 6- the situation gets worse: The GM will tell you what happens.
But some moves are structured with a pick-list: There are prescribed general outcomes, and the player must choose which one(s) they want to happen, based on what they think will be the best or most interesting outcome for their character.
For example, in Dungeon World, one of the most frequently-triggered Basic Moves is Discern Realities:
When you closely study a situation or person roll +WIS. On a 10+ ask the GM three questions from the list below. On a 7-9 ask only one. Take +1 forward when acting on the answers.
• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who's really in control here?
• What here is not as it appears to be?
This is DW's version of a Perception check. It's further explained in the rulebook that the GM will always answer the questions truthfully. There's a reason the player must choose from a prescribed list: These are the kinds of genre-appropriate things fantasy adventurers are going to find, so the player gets a certain degree of narrative control over the nature of what their character finds.
I could go on for hours about PbtA game design, theory, and play culture, but I'm going to leave it here.
I'm examining classless options. etc
I've had some experience here. It can be a doozy.
Story time. So its clear by now that im a big Traveller fan. Chargen is quite interesting. You start with high school education and work your way through several careers (sometimes many) and at the end you have a PC with skills and contacts to start the game.
The careers have options to gain certain skills, encounter different NPCs, and have life events. You are rolling dice throughout this process. Well some folks confuse career for class. They think they want to be a pilot so they join the navy. Thats a good place to gain piloting skills. However, its also difficult to stay in the navy and collect those skills for years. You might wash out early (bad rolls) and have to take a different career path. Some folks see this as forced multi-classing.
The truth is you gain piloting skills in any number of careers. So your navy pilot washes out and then becomes a merchant marine, imperial scout, or even a pirate. The career path isnt so important as the skill opportunities. You are really aiming to build a skill package and gain some useful contacts along the way.
This can be hard to explain to folks who have the impression that class is important in a RPG. Not just class but role too. Not all games require the fighting man, mage, cleric, and thief paradigm. D&D has trained many a folk into believing these things are core RPG elements, when the truth is, many games do not use them.
This can be hard to explain to folks who have the impression that class is important in a RPG. Not just class but role too. Not all games require the fighting man, mage, cleric, and thief paradigm. D&D has trained many a folk into believing these things are core RPG elements, when the truth is, many games do not use them.
Very true!
Lots of RPGs, going back to the early days of the hobby, do not include the concept of character class. Skill-based character design lets any character choose from a list of skills and abilities that are available to any character. It's the character's skill list and how good they are at various skills that sets a given character's uniqueness.
Games that don't have character classes at all include GURPS, Fate, Champions/HERO System, Mothership, Troika!, Star Frontiers, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cortex, GUMSHOE, and Trophy.
Another game design element that many RPGers think is a necessary component of an RPG, but isn't, are character ability scores.
Most games have them, certainly.
And D&D still casts a long shadow with the six scores (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma). Lots of games more-or-less use the same scores.
GURPS uses 4: Strength, Dexterity, IQ, and Health.
Adventure Game Engine (AGE) uses 8: (Accuracy, Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting, Perception, Strength, Willpower)
Amber DRPG uses 4: Strength, Endurance, Warfare, Will.
Call of Cthulhu uses 8: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Size, Intelligence, Power, Appearance, and Education.
But some games use stats that measure different things:
Apocalypse World uses 5: Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, and Weird.
Bluebeard's Bride has 3 stats: Blood, Carnality, and Resiliance
Honey Heist uses 2: Bear and Criminal
Lasers & Feelings uses 2: Lasers and Feelings
But plenty of RPGs don't have ability scores at all.
Many games simply use skills to show what you're good at in some way or other. RPGs that use skills instead of ability scores include Fate, GUMSHOE, Trophy, Cthulhu Dark, Troika! and the "Belonging Outside Belonging" family of RPGs.
And some games use neither ability scores nor skills.
In Pasión de las Pasiones (PbtA), when you make a Move, you must answer three questions about your own motivations for your action. For every "Yes," take +1 on the roll.
Necronautilus uses WORDS. You character has a number of Words of Power they have learned, and can use these words to shape what they are doing. So if they know ACCURACY, they can invoke it to improve their aim, or to find truth from lies, or make calculations. You can also split a word by dropping a letter and anagramming the remaining letters into one or more different words, which replaces that Word of Power with a diffent one.
Fall of Magic simply uses story-prompt questions to guide your role-playing and world-building when you take control of the narrative.
I recently started a face to face group that is just 3 of us. We decided to keep it small on purpose for covid reasons and just to try out a smaller gaming group experience. We didnt want to do another round of fantasy gaming. After kicking a few ideas around, we decided on a cyberpunk theme. The GM had a copy of Carbon 2185, which is a reskinned version of 5E. We decided it was different enough, but the system familiar enough that we didn't have to learn anything new.
Fairly quickly out of the gate I realized we already ran afoul of many D&D-isms I was hoping to avoid. Namely the concept of leveling. The other player and I kept coming up with cool cyberpunk answers to problems we had, but the GM kept shutting them down. We either lacked the skill or the money and often both. In his mind we were still in the "kill rats in a basement" phase of the game. We had to level up to cyberpunk stuff.
Point is, its not always a player side problem getting out of the D&D mindset. It often impacts GMs as well. Leveling is another strong D&D concept that has always worked for D&D, but for many systems its not even a thing. It can be hard for gamers to imagine a game in which there is less rewarding systemically built into the system. That achieving goals and moving the narrative along can be a reward all in itself.
For cyberpunk RPGs, my favorites are The Sprawl and The Veil.
Both are PbtA, but the games are very different and explore very different cyberpunk themes.
The Sprawl is a game about taking jobs for shady characters that you can't trust and how those jobs affect huge megacorps that the GM and players create at the start of the game. It's a more "traditional" cyberpunk game that treads similar territory to Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun without the magic.
The Veil is a game that explores the idea of transhumanism in a society that's just on the edge of the Singularity. This is a game of identity, emotion, and what it means to be "human".
Point is, its not always a player side problem getting out of the D&D mindset. It often impacts GMs as well. Leveling is another strong D&D concept that has always worked for D&D, but for many systems its not even a thing. It can be hard for gamers to imagine a game in which there is less rewarding systemically built into the system. That achieving goals and moving the narrative along can be a reward all in itself.
My current RPG fascination is the game Trophy Gold. If I had to pick my favorite RPG at the moment, that would be it. [I backed the KS at the $150 level.] The Kickstarter Preview edition is still live at that link (and free), and is a fully-playable game.
One of the things that's fascinating about TG is how such bare-bones rules and paper-thin characters produce such a rich and rewarding play experience.
In TG, characters don't have stats and don't have levels. Your character has an Occupation which gives you 3 skills, and a Background which gives you 1 more. You also have a Drive, which both is why you're adventuring and what you're ultimately trying to accomplish. There are some rules for Rituals (which are magic spells), equipment, treasure, and debts, and that's about it.
The game has a sense of advancement, where events in-play can have long-term effects on your character. You can also explore more of your backstory and how you're trying to achieve your Drive. And while your character gets weirder with time and experience, they never really get more powerful: You're just as (in)effective in combat on your tenth adventure as you were in your first. And using magic always comes with a cost.
If you attempt to play Trophy with a D&D mindset, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Point is, its not always a player side problem getting out of the D&D mindset. It often impacts GMs as well. Leveling is another strong D&D concept that has always worked for D&D, but for many systems its not even a thing. It can be hard for gamers to imagine a game in which there is less rewarding systemically built into the system. That achieving goals and moving the narrative along can be a reward all in itself.
Leveling has always felt a little antiquated to me. My earliest days playing were spent mostly in West End Games D6 or WW's Storyteller System, and an Experience Point expenditure system that lets you put points where you want them not only gives you greater freedom to direct how your character grows - it better serves narrative play.
"Our party just defeated Mathen the Insatiable and his horde and as such are now stronger, better at casting spells and I personally am now better at Acrobatics and have learned a new language of my choosing" is certainly not as immersive or as intertwined with the ongoing story as:
"I have spent the last several weeks spying on the motorcycle gang that uses the warehouse on Cedar lane, more than once I've just barely avoided their notice so I'm using my XP to buy myself a fourth dot of Stealth."
I dont mind leveling in D&D. I'd prefer a 1-10 paradigm as opposed to the classic 1-20 or even the dreaded 1-30. I just dont care for that much of a crawl or power disparity between characters. It hurts my immersion trying to come to terms with a world where level 1s exist with level 20s. Part of the reason PF2 was a major bummer for me. I vastly prefer the bounded accuracy approach of 5E.
In my Carbon 2185 game I believe the GM is trying to come to terms he can understand. What do level 1 cyber punks do? What are their capabilities? What are we working towards as characters in the traditional leveling sense.
We set out to avoid the D&D fantasy experience, but are using the same system. I believe the GM is trying to emulate that without it being obvious D&D. I assumed much more of an abandonment of the D&D way. We are discussing it right now and getting our bearings. After all, Systems are a journey!