Do Settings need Custom Systems?

It was a long standing 'common wisdom' (i.e. not really common, but still accepted by a good number of people) that universal rules such as HERO or GURPS did not serve a setting as well as a set of rules designed specifically for it.

Like many things online, few if any actually backed up this assertion with real examples, and when they did- they often were little more than Chrome style rules and had little to do with the core mechanics themselves. As a result I was always doubtful and I think the passage of time has basically disproved the concept.

Let's talk about a few often quoted examples.

Let's take Call of Cthulhu. This one was a bad example out of the gate as the original system was that from the earlier game (by three years) Runequest which was about fantasy adventure- not 1920s dark investigations. It did introduce the insanity tracking mechanic- but that was just a bit of Chrome easily added to any game. And the monsters were powerful, but that was just powerful monsters. Rules wise, there's really little there really related to the setting and there have been a number of very successful conversions to other game systems including (in the judgement of some people) D20.

The original Deadlands is a better example, sort of. Here you have the use of playing cards and poker chips, which reflects... well a bit of the Old West if your version of the Old West happens the Old TV show Maverick. Actually, it doesn't provide much of even that to be honest. Beyond the cards and the chips, it's just a handful of dice game paired with a magic system offering a high fumble rate. We can see how important all the system flavor was when it was dropped in the newer editions of the game for a universal system with some setting related Chrome.

All in all, I'm at a loss to point out a real example where the rules really reflect and invoke the setting. The actually work is done by setting fluff, renaming common concepts and using them, constructing NPCs to the proper power level, or a bit of Chrome here and there. I'll be interested if anyone can point out a true example.

Thus I've sided with the Universal Systems that I can learn once, take off the shelf and add a bit to. The final result is every bit as good as anything a custom rule set has ever offered- but with additional expandability built right in.

Game Design by Exception

Many RPGs work in a somewhat confused way- they have a small set of core mechanical rules that are applied generally, and then a whole bunch of exceptions to those rules.This is a long standing tradition in RPGs dating back to original D&D and before that to wargames where you had the basic mechanics of the game and then 'Chrome' rules added on top for flavor.

In the days of wargames, designers were careful to keep the amount of Chrome limited. Chrome was to be little highlights to make the core more interesting, i.e. basically the same purpose chrome on a car design served (and hence the name). It wasn't suppose to be key to the game,as the game was to fun and involving itself. The law was simple: Thou shall not use Chrome to support function.

RPGs changed this, basically making Chrome the game itself. Some of this is unavoidable, if you're to have a extensive list of spells for example (as opposed to a spell design system) you end up with more pages describing that 'Chrome' than you do core mechanics. Besides, the very birth of D&D was in Chrome added to the end of a wargame (Chainmail by many accounts).

D&D however took things much farther, with individual rules for individual classes. And then things got worse with various skill or weapon packages that modified things even further. And then on to Feats. As of today, the list of exceptions far outweigh both in number and importance any core values such as stats or basic resolution mechanics.

The reason for this is rather simple, the basic game is... boring. Always has been. So lacking any real interest in themselves, the rules needed Chrome to inspire at all. And over time, it just plied higher and deeper.  It becomes increasing difficult to know how any combination of Chrome will react to another combination. Both the GM and Players ability to judge and thus control results are degraded.

Attempts to avoid this include the OSR method of burying one's head in the sand, i.e. go back to an old edition (with less Chrome) and spend as little time as possible in combat because it's now boring. I suppose a victory dance of some type helps one deal with this self-defeating option.

Another example of this type of design can be found in the 40K RPG products like Only War and Dark Heresey. Limited to a closed ended d100 system, things are only vaguely interesting when effective chances for success hover around the middle of the random number span- say 30-70 percent chances.

This results in a game that represents the mighty genetically enhanced superhuman Space Marines with stats only 10 points higher than normal men... so maybe a base 58% to hit instead of 48%. The mind is underwhelmed by such power. Instead it's 'Talents" (i.e. special abilities, i.e. Chrome) that's suppose to make up the difference. There are more Talents in the game than all the core rules (stats and skills) combined. And once again, the core rules are by themselves, rather boring to play.

I believe that Design by Exception is by its nature poor design. Instead the core mechanics themselves should scale from the lowest creature to the mightiest. Chrome should be just that, little things that makes those core mechanics pop just a bit more, not be something that buries them.

To pull this off those core mechanics need to be interesting of and by themselves. A fact that is basically impossible individually, but quite obtainable in combination. Consider the individual chess pieces, by themselves their movement rules are simple and boring, but in combination against the board the result is vastly more engaging.

I don't see any modern designer attempting such outcomes. Raised on endless D&D editions, they are only recycling failed concepts while wondering why their market is shrinking. They have only themselves to blame.

Sandboxes are to be Outgrown

Sandbox campaigns are so... boring.

We played in that concept back in the mid-70s after wandering around pointlessly in a dungeon crawl exploring and looting- all to no real end except imaginary fame and imaginary fortune.

A bit before Judge's Guild started producing their products, we wandered out of the dungeon into a huge map, and basically treated it like another dungeon bounded by hex lines instead of the interior D&D grid. We wandered and explored, and looted. I suppose the imaginary fame and fortune was greater.

I liken the experience to most of Arthur C. Clark's books. We went interesting places, met interesting people, and (unlike Clark's books) may or may not have killed them and took their stuff- but really nothing special happened. With ultimate freedom comes ultimate meaninglessness.

And certainly nothing happened that matched the epic fantasy works that had captured our imagination and caused us to play these silly games in the first place. The hopes of recreating them died with every roll of a d20.

We wanted Lord of the Rings, and what we got was Conan (in Platemail because you needed the AC in those days)- who's age of 'adventure' is in the source materials rightly forgotten, for in the end he didn't matter.

Sandboxes are without exception amoral, for to enforce morality is to raidroad the sandbox. They are without exception small minded, for to add an epic overarching story to is to destroy the sandbox. They are without exception meaningless, for no man can define true meaning on his own.

As the decade closed, we burned all the old material, never to return. The past was wasted and it was time to move on to better things.

We traded large random hexmaps for for larger worlds with many stories on different but yet interrelated levels. Like an extensive web, they will ensnare those who pass by and they will deal or not according to their talents. We traded useless freedoms for purpose searched for and found. We put pointed questions to the adventurers, and didn't meekly respond to their base passions.



You couldn't pay me to play in a sandbox. The mere talk of them, and the old school play example threads that I encounter on the web confirm our decisions to toss it all into the fire. If that was the whole of gaming, I'd stay home to watch NCIS repeats.

These days I don't think people can outgrow D&D and sandboxes on their own. The hobby doesn't have the experimental air that resulted in other options back in the 70s and 80s, and the internet wars have hardened people to cling thoughtlessly to what they used to do as if that's was all there is. The OSR buried themselves in the trenches they dug defending against change, be it from the Forge or WotC, or well- anything.

Look at the hobby, its corpse is fossilizing.

Balance and Choice Where Balance and Choice Shouldn't Exist

Been spending some time playing Star Trek Online of late. Over its three year life, they've done some interesting things. Perhaps the most worthwhile was creating a number of different play modes- you can do nothing but ground missions (typical MMO stuff), or nothing but Space Missions (fly a starship), or nothing but order your crew around in Duty Officer Missions (compared to a type of farmsville by some players).

Or do a mix. And while doing any of the above, you can help your guild (called a Fleet in this game) build their Starbase and other things. For an MMORPG, the ability to play in so many different ways is a welcome change from everyone doing the same thing.

One of the downsides is that it's a textbook case of 'game balance', 'assumed advancement' and 'player choice' destroying the realism of the setting.

-Everyone gets to be a vice-admiral. And vice-admirals still command single ships, just like captains, or Lieutenants for that matter. You can't swing a cat without hitting a dozen vice-admirals.

-At the top end, all the ships have to be roughly equal. No matter what they should actually be. This becomes more strange when (due to the need for player choice), you have ships in play with service dates that are hundreds of years apart according to the official timeline. Small ships, medium ships, huge ships, old ships, new ships, future ships- all the same.

-It's very common for Federation Captains to use non-Federation Ships. They might be Breen, Ferengi, or Jem'hadar. Whatever the case, they make up half the Fleet. But no Klingon ships... because... well... it beats me why that is now that I think about it. It's likely to make sure that there is some difference in PvP... yes, the PvP that most agree doesn't work well (IMO it's because the Klingons just flatly have better ships so there's no reason for a Federation player to go in there- unless of course he's flying a non-Federation ship).

-While everything is roughly equal, the truth is that small advantages are big deals for many players. So the 'uber' players chase those small advantages. Oddly enough for a Federation centric TV show and game, those small advantages are found on the non-Federation ships. The fact that those ships can only be gained by buying 'keys' for random content 'lockboxes' is perhaps the biggest money maker for the makers of the game. And the reason so many Federation players fly ships that don't belong to the Federation.

All the above is frankly silly at best. Downright stupid in fact when matched against any standard of simulation and realism.

But in the end I think it's unavoidable. It's driven both by the needs of a MMORPG and by the sheer size of the setting that it's attempting to model. How does the game attract players like me who liked the TOS but not the latter stuff? Simple, by having some of TOS stuff in the game that's playable (this needs more work actually as they really don't have anything outside the uniforms and ship interiors). And the reverse applies.

In a real sense, the game can't ever make sense due to the requirement to appeal to too wide of a user base with multiple subgroups thereof having serious expectation differences. Add in the need for MMO 'balance', and realism/simulation is not just dead- it's been buried, dug up by ghouls, and eaten.

But that's been the case with Star Trek for decades now. One just ignores it and plays the game.

There's a advantage and lesson here for players of table top PnP RPGs.

The advantage is that their settings can be alter to make sense to the players that make up the group, they are not bound by the concerns that bind an MMO- and for that reason they are very different hobby.

The lesson is to be careful of the holy concepts of balance and choice- it is often little more than deciding to be dumb.

A Stream of Thought...

Been spending some time with the new Rohan expansion for Lord of the Rings Online (mounted combat is nicely done) and with Star Trek Online (liking their changes, which seem mostly to benefit small groups like mine). In general I enjoyed the time spent, but as always I find how other people react and certain elements of the game designs to be... interesting.

So a stream of thought post, that while spawned by MMORPGs tend to also apply to PnP RPGs as well:

- There is a odd belief among players that playing until you get a random drop indicates more player skill than grinding until you get a fixed price item. Unlike the case of Santa, I've never figured out the basis for this belief or any use for it.

- Game designers like to hit people coming and going. Not only does it cost more to level up something in obvious terms- like more Starbase XP for the higher Fleet Base tiers in STO online, it also costs more at each tier to get the same amount of Starbase XP. It like saying the next level costs $5, but each $1 costs you $3 now. Very odd, it's like designers are trying to hide something- and end up doing it very poorly.

- Game designers like large numbers. In Lord of the Rings Online you earn a certain token in batches of 5, and spend them in batches of 5. Why not earn them as single items and spend them as single items? After all *everything* is in groups of 5. When did inflation become game feature? Silly question, it was that way from the beginning of the hobby. I think they are just trying to look impressive, and (for me) failing.

- Speaking of player skill, generally it isn't. Most players are just spending their time and using the gear and abilities that gains them in simple ways. A small bit of the content is memorizing fixed tactics that haven't changed since that content was introduced. Skill has about as much to do with it as the weather. The same is true of PnP RPGs, for after all the GM in one way or the other will conform his game to his players (and yes that includes the so-called Sandbox GMs). The truth is that the player will naturally play at the level that interests him, and no other- thus he's always doing skilled play, but only by his own definition.

- Speaking of Sandboxes, they aren't. At best, they're just the offloading from the GM the work of determining the adventure to the players determining the adventure- or they're random encounters. Neither one impresses a person playing attention. Most Sandbox fans don't pay attention.

- Much of the hobby (MMORPGs and PnP RPGs) is an illusion, little lies we tell ourselves. But like watching TV or Movies (to name a couple of other things that aren't real), such things are fun. But we should keep it in mine that it's smoke and mirrors and not take it too seriously. And at the same time, we shouldn't do it poorly, but should strive to do it well. A bit of tightrope that.