One of those people are wrong and need to be shot behind the barn.
You know who you are.
I eat Almond Butter.
Oh shi...
*bang bang bang*
+3
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I think D&D is a terrible example of that.
D&D is built from wargames and it has kept that feel for so long that to take it away would mean that it isn't D&D anymore. While something crunchy like EP is built were combat and social interactions are handled the same, which I feel doesn't change the RP potential any more than if you were playing it through FATE or a diceless system.
It depends on what the game focuses on, and what it doesn't that strips the RP from the RPG.
+1
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I feel like we're both saying the same thing. What are you disagreeing with?
It's not about how much crunch a game has, it's about what the game focuses on. If you focus mostly on the combat part of roleplaying, then sure, you are going to get battle simulator table top version. If you focus on just the social aspects of a game, you will get a West Wing RPG.
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I think Admanb would agree with the statement that crunch does not kill RP, as based on this above post.
And I agree with both of you, it's less about how much crunch a game has, and rather what that crunch is about.
For example, 90% of the rules of D&D are focused on combat, doesn't really matter if the total rule set is 50 or 500 pages, it's going to be a combat focused game as a result.
my crunch tolerance depends entirely on if i'm running or playing
playing? i rather like fiddling with bits. in fact, sometimes too much; it can make me competitive and has for me turned my fun against me in the past
if i'm running? fuck that, if i have to carry the weight of shaping the narrative as well as respond to my players and their use of the game mechanics, while also doing quirky voices and making each character memorable and interesting to interact with, forget all that
give me the game that says "push red button and go"
Too much crunch can definitely dampen my enjoyment of a system. That's why I wound up disliking Pathfinder. It was basically 3.5 with even more crunch.
+1
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
All the games I'm running right now are low-crunch but I desperately want to run or play a Burning Wheel system game. I'm just not sure I have any groups that'll tolerate it.
Hey while we're talking about systems and stuff, I found my old Alternity books. I never really got to run a solid game of that and probably never will. That's like my ... off-white whale.
Edit: And Shadowrun. And old-school FACERIP Marvel. And WEG Star Wars.
I have a lot of whales.
Everyone does. Some of mine are Ars Magica and Scion (though I am excited about the reboot there!).
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I have yet to play a crunchy RPG that didn't gleefully sacrifice the RP portion of the acronym on the burning pyre of positional combat modifiers, weapon type bonuses/penalties, and hundreds upon hundreds of pages of spells.
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I have yet to play a crunchy RPG that didn't gleefully sacrifice the RP portion of the acronym on the burning pyre of positional combat modifiers, weapon type bonuses/penalties, and hundreds upon hundreds of pages of spells.
See Burning Wheel. :P
Combat and conversation are equally complex in that system.
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I have yet to play a crunchy RPG that didn't gleefully sacrifice the RP portion of the acronym on the burning pyre of positional combat modifiers, weapon type bonuses/penalties, and hundreds upon hundreds of pages of spells.
I've been watching too much Adam Ruins Everything and with this RPG argument going on, I feel like I need to do a Roleplaying Game episode!
The reason you think Crunch kills Roleplaying is because of the grandfather of the RPG has trained you wrong!
As we all know, Dungeons and Dragons came from war games, where you control armies to fight other armies. D&D brought the scale down to have heroes fight evil guys, but it was created by guys who enjoyed war games, so it was, of course, built around the idea that the most complex part of a playing a game about Heroes saving the World was going to be combat. Because who needs rules on how to convince someone to let you through a gate when as one simple roll would do. Those weren't the interesting moments to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, epic battles were.
RPGs are all built from it and while we are seeing a wave of new games that give combat less emphasis because they either don't focus on it or want to not deal with complex battle simulators, the games still have the same DNA. But while those "narrative-focus" games also use less rules, because of easy of play, they still believe the fact that social interactions are simple, a mind set that comes from their grandfather game that they can't quite shake. So we think that the "Roleplaying" is harmed when we think of adding any complexity to the them but really, we are harming it.
RPGs are made up of 4 parts: Social Interactions, Combat, Exploration, and Progression. A "Crunchy" game that gives all four parts the same amount of attention, customization, and options would be amazing, but we haven't truly explored it. We either dumb everything down or focus on one and forget the rest. And we continue this wrong mindset of Crunch takes away Roleplaying Freedom.
I was part of a Playtest for @The Sauce's game Triptycho, which was a card based RPG where your character was made up of 3 classes, one for social interactions, one for combat, and one for exploring. It was great because when I wanted to talk to someone, I had cards that I could play that I could then improve to something. Like I was a Merchant/Thief/Archer, which pretty much meant Rogue. I could bribe people with something shiny as a Merchant, I could sneak past them as a Thief or I could shoot them as an Archer. Each part had the same amount of rules and dice rolling, and social interactions were as complex, intense, and fun as combat.
So in short, it's not Crunch that is killing Roleplaying, it's your old D&D training that has you set on old habits that are killing the Roleplaying in RPGs.
Also, every group can role-play a lot/have a great time with any system, or vice-versa. This doesn't say anything about the game. I'd even argue that a lot of groups play in spite of a system instead of with it.
+2
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
But there is value in rules systems that support the parts of a game a group wants to focus on.
But there is value in rules systems that support the parts of a game a group wants to focus on.
Of course. If your group loves to go to dive into dungeons and kill everything for loot and glory, you have games for that.
If you like talking about fake feelings and banging each other with swords and "swords", you have games for that.
If you want rules lite, you have games for that.
You want crunchy, you have games for that.
But the idea that crunchy is bad is bad. It depends on what that crunch is focus on and what kind of players you have.
I mean, @jdarksun, there are a lot of rules for fighting in FFG's Star Wars but in the podcast you are the GM of, they have negotiated deals with the Hutt and First Order as much as they have fought them. But rules for social interactions are not as nearly complex as the rules for combat, right? Crunch isn't stopping the Roleplaying there, and if you listen to OptimusZed talk about character creation, there is a bit of crunch there too.
I wonder if there is any pen and paper RPG system that takes the wargaming idea all the way to the hilt.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
Well, there's always GURPS or HERO system, although admittedly I am still really unfamiliar with how complex those are /can be since that would require a lot of reading for a game that I am probably not going to play anytime soon.
I wonder if there is any pen and paper RPG system that takes the wargaming idea all the way to the hilt.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
Reign does this. It's one of my more favorite incarnations of One Roll Engine. The lore for the world of Reign is utter crap, but the company rules and the way it interacts with the PCs is pretty good. It's just an extension of the RPG Fractal, though, which can be applied to pretty much anything.
When I was running Godlike, I had one adventure that was an extended scenario with objectives and maps, like a board game version of one of the key battles of the Pacific. I interspersed actual battles on the island with PC setpieces that could influence dice rolls on the Japanese and US side. It took an amazingly long amount of prep time, but it was really fun in execution.
I wonder if there is any pen and paper RPG system that takes the wargaming idea all the way to the hilt.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
When I was in the 4th Grade, my friends and I built a Command and Conquer board game. We stated out all the units on the two sides, would use graph paper to make maps and then we had a regional map that had bonuses for owning, like cutting cost for building aircraft or making ships gain bonuses against other ships. When we wanted to invade our friend's region, we would let our "neutral" friend make a map (usually something we made days before at home because we were obsessed with this game), and draw units on paper and cut them out when we made troops, buildings and more. The winner was whoever destroyed the command center, then we would control the region. Later we added upgrade tech trees and hero units. Again, we were in the 4th Grade and didn't know anything about Warhammer or War Games in general. We just knew about Command and Conquer and StarCraft (I was working on StarCraft version when I had to go to a different school...) I still have a copy of one of the unit price list that we made for the Allies for it, although I think Mokoa has the folders that the game lived in.
I wonder if there is any pen and paper RPG system that takes the wargaming idea all the way to the hilt.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
Reign does this. It's one of my more favorite incarnations of One Roll Engine. The lore for the world of Reign is utter crap, but the company rules and the way it interacts with the PCs is pretty good. It's just an extension of the RPG Fractal, though, which can be applied to pretty much anything.
When I was running Godlike, I had one adventure that was an extended scenario with objectives and maps, like a board game version of one of the key battles of the Pacific. I interspersed actual battles on the island with PC setpieces that could influence dice rolls on the Japanese and US side. It took an amazingly long amount of prep time, but it was really fun in execution.
Apparently they have a version of Reign called Reign: Enchiridion now that is Reign with all the lore stripped out for less cash.
I wonder if there is any pen and paper RPG system that takes the wargaming idea all the way to the hilt.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
Reign does this. It's one of my more favorite incarnations of One Roll Engine. The lore for the world of Reign is utter crap, but the company rules and the way it interacts with the PCs is pretty good. It's just an extension of the RPG Fractal, though, which can be applied to pretty much anything.
When I was running Godlike, I had one adventure that was an extended scenario with objectives and maps, like a board game version of one of the key battles of the Pacific. I interspersed actual battles on the island with PC setpieces that could influence dice rolls on the Japanese and US side. It took an amazingly long amount of prep time, but it was really fun in execution.
Apparently they have a version of Reign called Reign: Enchiridion now that is Reign with all the lore stripped out for less cash.
They've had that for a while, actually. That's generally the version we used for actual play, anyway. Just like we would use Wild Talents: Essentials Edition instead of the Wild Talents book (which, lore-wise, isn't too bad and exists as an extension of Godlike's universe).
Crunch and RP are not at odds -- see Burning Wheel -- it's just that the more crunch a game has the more likely it is to push you towards certain styles of playing, potentially at the expense of RP -- see D&D.
I have yet to play a crunchy RPG that didn't gleefully sacrifice the RP portion of the acronym on the burning pyre of positional combat modifiers, weapon type bonuses/penalties, and hundreds upon hundreds of pages of spells.
It really depends on the group and their tolerance for ignoring rules minutiae, in my experience.
As I note, any Story-system game can be fun provided you're ignoring a lot of the rules; there's a lot of meaty (if typically contradictory and/or recursive) lore for the games built on those engines. Shadowrun is the same way: there's a metric crap ton of lore for the game.
The difference is a lot of people play Story-system settings with other game engines, while Shadowrun to some extent has resisted this. I say to some extent because it's become clear that very good game designers have targeted its oeuvre with stripped-down mechanics and an emphasis on inhabiting that world for characters. (e.g. Overwatch. It's basically Shadowrun minus out-and-out mages, but there are definitely PhysAds in the Shimata Bros -- and if you don't think Blizzard won't jam an RPG out the door, you don't know Chris Metzen.)
This is why when someone says "I like crunch" I tend to parse that as "I enjoy ignoring crunch." To some extent, yes, there is definitely a revelation involved in game crunch and less is more game design, but if your group is a bunch of "let's dice and dice them" players, then you're going to think the modicum of RP enforced by the Story-system games is great. Or whatever you're eking out of your reskinned 3:10 to Yuma. (Oh come on -- you're playing Shadowrun and you haven't done a maglev heist? idontbelieveyou.gif)
There are certainly people out there who are definitely in gaming for the dice; but they tend to be mediocre role-players and thus not the type of player I'm interested in running games for. I'm somewhat more tolerant of them as a player. But the key thing to note here is that GMs tend to hate running these crunch-intensive games, meaning they will inevitably die off as crunch-light versions reach the broader consciousness.
I don't mind running crunch intensive games. Like D&D and 13th Age, as a DM, I love to create monsters and fights, looking at how the classes work and seeing what strengths and weaknesses they have.
It's the lore that puts me off on running certain games. Like I said something about an idea I had for a Vampire game once where New York had a Toreador Prince who got blown up by a bomb in his office and suddenly people jumped down my throat that no Toreador, much less a Prince, would ever die to a bomb. Why? Can't vampires be stupid as people too? Do Toreador have some sort of anti-bomb power that I don't know about in the splat books I've never read? I get scared to run those games because I don't know enough about the setting and there is so much of it that trying to do so will upset some snobby neckbeard who has read ever splat book, played the LARP, and watched the show and they are an expert on the game. I rather deal with massive amounts of complex rules than to deal with a complex story that I can't mold my way because everything is cannon and what I have in mind isn't and breaks everything they ever knew or loved and I should be killed because of it.
0
Options
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Violating the understood "rules" is a big part of writing good fiction, so I would say your problem there was playing with neckbeards, not playing a game with heavy fiction.
Violating the understood "rules" is a big part of writing good fiction, so I would say your problem there was playing with neckbeards, not playing a game with heavy fiction.
Yeah, but there are certain games that always seem to have one. I've never been in a Vampire game that doesn't have one, for example. 3.5 D&D always has a Advance D&D neckbeard for some reason. So I just avoid running those games. It's not the systems fault, per say, but I don't feel comfortable about running them because I don't want to deal with the drama that comes when someone goes "But X is Cannon" and it doesn't fit what I make. Same with Star Wars. There are times in Jdark's Podcast where the group start talking about people and I sit there going "Wait... did we met these people? Oh, they are from some book series I never read."
I rather have little to no core story for me to GM it. 13th Age has a general story that gives me just enough to build from but not enough to clog down my imagination nor give Neckbeards power to ruin my fun. Eclipse Phase kinda scares me to run because of how much setting there is, but it's just so general that I could get away with it, I think...
Basically, I just don't like trying to create a game out of other people's settings most of the time. It chokes my creativity and sometimes attracts people I rather not deal with and I hate it when someone say "X is Cannon, how did you not know that?" because I really hate feeling stupid when running things. I already get enough of it when I forget stuff like tracking Escalation Die or Physical Stress or poison damage that seems to always come up.
If I was to design a RPG that has equal complexity to all aspects of a character, I might do a Skyrim like talent tree system, where you aren't a class but you could pick to put skills in a certain tree or three to create Archtypes. Some trees would be for combat, some for social interactions, and others for exploring. Maybe if you feel the need to be all Tolkien about it, have Races with similar structure, so you can explore the culture aspects of the races themselves.
Violating the understood "rules" is a big part of writing good fiction, so I would say your problem there was playing with neckbeards, not playing a game with heavy fiction.
My experience is that White Wolf fans in general skew a lot towards the LORE IS SACRED camp. I have never had a player in a D&D game tell me "but dragons don't work that way!" in eight years of continuous DMing with multiple groups, but I have seen STs in Exalted get literally bitched out of running a PbP game from people getting into a huge argument OOC about how a specific homebrew power made a detail in the lore completely impossible and therefore it couldn't and shouldn't exist, and I have seen people literally correct other people's Vampire stories by going "but that cool thing you said couldn't have happened because [Lore Reason X] and your ST was clearly a hack".
We ran our first Savage Rifts session. I had a lot of Savage Worlds experience so I helped the GM with the rules questions that came up.
I believe he's running a adventure that came with the kickstarter. After a bit of character background, group dynamic, setup bits we had a small combat to get everyone used to the system. I'm looking forward to our first challenging combat because we tore through them like nothing. After that it was RP and setting up the first real adventure. I'll leave the details out since it's a published adventure and I don't want to spoil anyone.
The starting group: Human Cyberknight, Centaur Mercy (Me), Full Conversion Borg, Dwarf Operator in an Mountaineer ATV, and a Dragon Hatchling (because of course there is). Obviously we are not going to be popular with the Coalition.
@Grunt's Ghosts you'll have to pull that person aside and say, "in this story we are all playing together, X happened."
And when they say it could never happen then say, "inorite? Nobody thought it could, but it just fucking did. Put on your sleuth hat and get cracking."
Then OOC say, this is the story I'm telling, you can play along or find another. The published books are not iron clad and dipped in gold in games I run. The published books are what the general public thinks at large. Not what can actually happen or be in the games I run.
There is a lot to being the guy that runs the game, but if the players aren't willing to meet you halfway, fuckem.
I think people who think crunch hurts games forget that there's a G in RPG. Super light games will never satisfy me and the people I play RPGs with because we don't only play to sit around and act. If we did, we could do it without a game in the first place and just play improv games or freeform it.
What we want is to roleplay characters, and have fun mechanics that supply gamist customization and conflict resolution. Sure, we'll throw down with some light games for a one shot or a party game or something, but when we're playing an ongoing game, we want mechanics that offer customization, unique roles in the party, combat that is satisfying on a mechanical and not just flavor level, etc.
13th Age and FFG Star Wars are my two favorite games out right now, and they both offer what I want me and my players want out of games, though for 13A I did have to tailor how to use icon relationships to be more than what the book gives as its defaults.
I used to be very strongly in the camp that heavy rules crunch was purely a positive in a game as long as that crunch was thoughtfully put together and balanced. This feeling was in full swing for me during the days just before 4E D&D dropped, and for a couple of years after. I had enough free time and was comfortable enough with numbers to really tear into that kind of system and get some great stuff out of it. And I had access to people with similar interests and backgrounds to play with. It was great.
Since then, my situation has changed to the point where I don't have time to parse systems that are several college credit hours deep and finding players for them is a crapshoot. New players are hell to train on a big, mathy system, so I avoid them for the most part. It's much easier and more effective to have players sit down and effectively tell stories to each other within a largely transparent framework, and I've got a kid to keep alive during that free time I used to use building encounters.
Really, though, I think the crunch debate comes down to what a game wants you to do with it, and what you want to do with it instead. The more crunch there is for a system, the more tightly defined the potential actions of the characters are, generally speaking. PCs in hefty systems are restrained more by the rules than those in lighter systems, almost by definition. Rules seek to circumscribe potential points of failure for characters, to provide some degree of cover for the GM/DM/Storyteller to push them with adversity without them feeling personally wronged. The rules prevent hard feelings, in essence, during conflicts between player desire and storyteller decree. More rules = more buffer.
At the same time, rules light systems aren't typically great at communicating real risk to the characters, leaving that up to the storyteller and the story being told. This was an issue I had with Fate for quite a while, until I came to the realization that Fate a) wasn't a game in the sense of D&D; and b) isn't rules light so much as rules optional. Fate can be run very freeform with a ton of player agency, or a couple of tweaks can bring it all back in to make it more confining and restrictive to player action. But that's exactly the slider; rules make things harder for player characters.
This isn't universal, obviously. A rule can be introduced to a game that is explicitly or implicitly a power-up to players and their characters. Many houserules, especially of the "I just ignored that thing the one time because it was going to be awesome" variety, fall into this category. But the more rules a game has, the more it is going to tend toward the table-conflict-heavy, player-agency-restricting end of the spectrum. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that kind of game. We use different systems to get different things out of them, none of which are implicitly better than the other. It's really about the stories we end up telling about the game after the fact. Rules heavy games tend to generate stories about weird rules interactions or characters/players succeeding against all odds due to a particular dice result. Rules light games tend to get story synopsis with an emphasis on player character actions. Which stories you prefer to have to tell is a purely personal thing.
It's all about what you want out of your RPGs. I don't buy that it's too hard to build encounters for the right game. For D&D 5 which has shit mechanics for encounter building, sure. For 13th Age, I can put together a balanced encounter or a hard one in a couple minutes max, despite the game's more crunchy combat rules. In fact, it's easier to put together a good encounter for that game than it is for say FFG Star Wars, which does a really terrible job of giving the GM tools for building good encounters but still wants you to play in a turn based combat engine. I love that game, but it's its biggest flaw imo.
I also don't play with strangers or brand new players so I can definitely understand people who do wanting games that are very light to just pick up and play. Some of the people I play with are not so much the types to read rulebooks and such, but that's fine even in heavier games. I can teach someone to play 13th Age on the fly without any real trouble, and as long as they're willing to learn how their own character works as we progress then they're good.
Again, it really just comes down to how much G you want in your RPG. There's nothing wrong with liking gamist mechanics, and nothing wrong with just wanting a more light game. Hell, one of the games I'm most excited to try out is Reflections, a game about dueling samurai where you make precisely one die roll at the end to see who lives after just doing an hour of pure storytelling/RP scenes. It's just not what I want out of my ongoing games where I prefer more gamist mechanics alongside the storytelling.
Honestly I think there is really too much variety between systems to meaningfully speak in generalities.
For example, the two systems I've worked with most recently are Shadowrun and Mouseguard. Of the two, Mouseguard is by far the much more rules light game. It is also, by far, much more constraining in terms of what the players are allowed to do, while Shadowrun is immensely free form in comparison.
Also, groups vary too much to speak meaningfully in generalities. For example, I have never once had hard feelings be a concern in my roleplaying group. The idea of anyone feeling personally wronged via what happens during a session is an alien concept to my group.
Everything varies too much. Systems vary incredibly, groups vary wildly, GMs vary deeply (apparently my word choice for "a lot" also varies :P). That's what is great about there being so many different systems. If you look, odds are you can find something that fits your style and your group. But honestly I think there are too many variables to make meaningful generalities like "The crunchier the system the more restrained the player is."
+1
Options
VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I would say that if your game is at a point that there are stats for every physical thing, the rules (assuming you play RAW) are likely a drag on the game. If you don't play RAW, I would question why you're bothering with a particular system and not one of the others that probably does exactly what you want without opening up the hood.
Shadowrun is absolutely a system where a) player actions are expected to fall within established bounds and b) conflict and death are an everpresent threat. The entire conceat of the game is that you are building characters who might die horribly in a corporate controlled techno-punk dungeon full of traps and armed enemies. You can do other things with the setting and materials, sure. But every rule is leveraged toward that experience, and to make it feel fair when your character bleeds out in an Ares-owned basement.
Posts
Oh shi...
*bang bang bang*
I think D&D is a terrible example of that.
D&D is built from wargames and it has kept that feel for so long that to take it away would mean that it isn't D&D anymore. While something crunchy like EP is built were combat and social interactions are handled the same, which I feel doesn't change the RP potential any more than if you were playing it through FATE or a diceless system.
It depends on what the game focuses on, and what it doesn't that strips the RP from the RPG.
It's not about how much crunch a game has, it's about what the game focuses on. If you focus mostly on the combat part of roleplaying, then sure, you are going to get battle simulator table top version. If you focus on just the social aspects of a game, you will get a West Wing RPG.
I think Admanb would agree with the statement that crunch does not kill RP, as based on this above post.
And I agree with both of you, it's less about how much crunch a game has, and rather what that crunch is about.
For example, 90% of the rules of D&D are focused on combat, doesn't really matter if the total rule set is 50 or 500 pages, it's going to be a combat focused game as a result.
playing? i rather like fiddling with bits. in fact, sometimes too much; it can make me competitive and has for me turned my fun against me in the past
if i'm running? fuck that, if i have to carry the weight of shaping the narrative as well as respond to my players and their use of the game mechanics, while also doing quirky voices and making each character memorable and interesting to interact with, forget all that
give me the game that says "push red button and go"
Ars Magica.
I wish I could play that more.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
See Burning Wheel. :P
Combat and conversation are equally complex in that system.
I've been watching too much Adam Ruins Everything and with this RPG argument going on, I feel like I need to do a Roleplaying Game episode!
The reason you think Crunch kills Roleplaying is because of the grandfather of the RPG has trained you wrong!
As we all know, Dungeons and Dragons came from war games, where you control armies to fight other armies. D&D brought the scale down to have heroes fight evil guys, but it was created by guys who enjoyed war games, so it was, of course, built around the idea that the most complex part of a playing a game about Heroes saving the World was going to be combat. Because who needs rules on how to convince someone to let you through a gate when as one simple roll would do. Those weren't the interesting moments to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, epic battles were.
RPGs are all built from it and while we are seeing a wave of new games that give combat less emphasis because they either don't focus on it or want to not deal with complex battle simulators, the games still have the same DNA. But while those "narrative-focus" games also use less rules, because of easy of play, they still believe the fact that social interactions are simple, a mind set that comes from their grandfather game that they can't quite shake. So we think that the "Roleplaying" is harmed when we think of adding any complexity to the them but really, we are harming it.
RPGs are made up of 4 parts: Social Interactions, Combat, Exploration, and Progression. A "Crunchy" game that gives all four parts the same amount of attention, customization, and options would be amazing, but we haven't truly explored it. We either dumb everything down or focus on one and forget the rest. And we continue this wrong mindset of Crunch takes away Roleplaying Freedom.
I was part of a Playtest for @The Sauce's game Triptycho, which was a card based RPG where your character was made up of 3 classes, one for social interactions, one for combat, and one for exploring. It was great because when I wanted to talk to someone, I had cards that I could play that I could then improve to something. Like I was a Merchant/Thief/Archer, which pretty much meant Rogue. I could bribe people with something shiny as a Merchant, I could sneak past them as a Thief or I could shoot them as an Archer. Each part had the same amount of rules and dice rolling, and social interactions were as complex, intense, and fun as combat.
So in short, it's not Crunch that is killing Roleplaying, it's your old D&D training that has you set on old habits that are killing the Roleplaying in RPGs.
Of course. If your group loves to go to dive into dungeons and kill everything for loot and glory, you have games for that.
If you like talking about fake feelings and banging each other with swords and "swords", you have games for that.
If you want rules lite, you have games for that.
You want crunchy, you have games for that.
But the idea that crunchy is bad is bad. It depends on what that crunch is focus on and what kind of players you have.
I mean, @jdarksun, there are a lot of rules for fighting in FFG's Star Wars but in the podcast you are the GM of, they have negotiated deals with the Hutt and First Order as much as they have fought them. But rules for social interactions are not as nearly complex as the rules for combat, right? Crunch isn't stopping the Roleplaying there, and if you listen to OptimusZed talk about character creation, there is a bit of crunch there too.
Like, yeah, sure, Dungeons and Dragons has its roots in wargames, but as far was wargames go it's a very light system, just with lots of character customization. What about a pen and paper system that gets into the nitty gritty of logistics and supply lines. I wonder how that would work.
I guess Battletech with enough splat books thrown in would come really close.
Actually now that I think about it I remember hearing about a system called Legion of Honor where you start off as a French sous-lieutenant trying to make a name for himself starting in 1792. I think it was called Legion of Honor.
When I was running Godlike, I had one adventure that was an extended scenario with objectives and maps, like a board game version of one of the key battles of the Pacific. I interspersed actual battles on the island with PC setpieces that could influence dice rolls on the Japanese and US side. It took an amazingly long amount of prep time, but it was really fun in execution.
When I was in the 4th Grade, my friends and I built a Command and Conquer board game. We stated out all the units on the two sides, would use graph paper to make maps and then we had a regional map that had bonuses for owning, like cutting cost for building aircraft or making ships gain bonuses against other ships. When we wanted to invade our friend's region, we would let our "neutral" friend make a map (usually something we made days before at home because we were obsessed with this game), and draw units on paper and cut them out when we made troops, buildings and more. The winner was whoever destroyed the command center, then we would control the region. Later we added upgrade tech trees and hero units. Again, we were in the 4th Grade and didn't know anything about Warhammer or War Games in general. We just knew about Command and Conquer and StarCraft (I was working on StarCraft version when I had to go to a different school...) I still have a copy of one of the unit price list that we made for the Allies for it, although I think Mokoa has the folders that the game lived in.
Apparently they have a version of Reign called Reign: Enchiridion now that is Reign with all the lore stripped out for less cash.
As I note, any Story-system game can be fun provided you're ignoring a lot of the rules; there's a lot of meaty (if typically contradictory and/or recursive) lore for the games built on those engines. Shadowrun is the same way: there's a metric crap ton of lore for the game.
The difference is a lot of people play Story-system settings with other game engines, while Shadowrun to some extent has resisted this. I say to some extent because it's become clear that very good game designers have targeted its oeuvre with stripped-down mechanics and an emphasis on inhabiting that world for characters. (e.g. Overwatch. It's basically Shadowrun minus out-and-out mages, but there are definitely PhysAds in the Shimata Bros -- and if you don't think Blizzard won't jam an RPG out the door, you don't know Chris Metzen.)
This is why when someone says "I like crunch" I tend to parse that as "I enjoy ignoring crunch." To some extent, yes, there is definitely a revelation involved in game crunch and less is more game design, but if your group is a bunch of "let's dice and dice them" players, then you're going to think the modicum of RP enforced by the Story-system games is great. Or whatever you're eking out of your reskinned 3:10 to Yuma. (Oh come on -- you're playing Shadowrun and you haven't done a maglev heist? idontbelieveyou.gif)
There are certainly people out there who are definitely in gaming for the dice; but they tend to be mediocre role-players and thus not the type of player I'm interested in running games for. I'm somewhat more tolerant of them as a player. But the key thing to note here is that GMs tend to hate running these crunch-intensive games, meaning they will inevitably die off as crunch-light versions reach the broader consciousness.
It's the lore that puts me off on running certain games. Like I said something about an idea I had for a Vampire game once where New York had a Toreador Prince who got blown up by a bomb in his office and suddenly people jumped down my throat that no Toreador, much less a Prince, would ever die to a bomb. Why? Can't vampires be stupid as people too? Do Toreador have some sort of anti-bomb power that I don't know about in the splat books I've never read? I get scared to run those games because I don't know enough about the setting and there is so much of it that trying to do so will upset some snobby neckbeard who has read ever splat book, played the LARP, and watched the show and they are an expert on the game. I rather deal with massive amounts of complex rules than to deal with a complex story that I can't mold my way because everything is cannon and what I have in mind isn't and breaks everything they ever knew or loved and I should be killed because of it.
Bury me with my dozens and dozens of cross referenced tables.
Yeah, but there are certain games that always seem to have one. I've never been in a Vampire game that doesn't have one, for example. 3.5 D&D always has a Advance D&D neckbeard for some reason. So I just avoid running those games. It's not the systems fault, per say, but I don't feel comfortable about running them because I don't want to deal with the drama that comes when someone goes "But X is Cannon" and it doesn't fit what I make. Same with Star Wars. There are times in Jdark's Podcast where the group start talking about people and I sit there going "Wait... did we met these people? Oh, they are from some book series I never read."
I rather have little to no core story for me to GM it. 13th Age has a general story that gives me just enough to build from but not enough to clog down my imagination nor give Neckbeards power to ruin my fun. Eclipse Phase kinda scares me to run because of how much setting there is, but it's just so general that I could get away with it, I think...
Basically, I just don't like trying to create a game out of other people's settings most of the time. It chokes my creativity and sometimes attracts people I rather not deal with and I hate it when someone say "X is Cannon, how did you not know that?" because I really hate feeling stupid when running things. I already get enough of it when I forget stuff like tracking Escalation Die or Physical Stress or poison damage that seems to always come up.
My experience is that White Wolf fans in general skew a lot towards the LORE IS SACRED camp. I have never had a player in a D&D game tell me "but dragons don't work that way!" in eight years of continuous DMing with multiple groups, but I have seen STs in Exalted get literally bitched out of running a PbP game from people getting into a huge argument OOC about how a specific homebrew power made a detail in the lore completely impossible and therefore it couldn't and shouldn't exist, and I have seen people literally correct other people's Vampire stories by going "but that cool thing you said couldn't have happened because [Lore Reason X] and your ST was clearly a hack".
I have essentially given up on talking about Exalted online, which is a shame since there's a lot of cool stuff to discuss.
I believe he's running a adventure that came with the kickstarter. After a bit of character background, group dynamic, setup bits we had a small combat to get everyone used to the system. I'm looking forward to our first challenging combat because we tore through them like nothing. After that it was RP and setting up the first real adventure. I'll leave the details out since it's a published adventure and I don't want to spoil anyone.
The starting group: Human Cyberknight, Centaur Mercy (Me), Full Conversion Borg, Dwarf Operator in an Mountaineer ATV, and a Dragon Hatchling (because of course there is). Obviously we are not going to be popular with the Coalition.
Comics, Games, Booze
And when they say it could never happen then say, "inorite? Nobody thought it could, but it just fucking did. Put on your sleuth hat and get cracking."
Then OOC say, this is the story I'm telling, you can play along or find another. The published books are not iron clad and dipped in gold in games I run. The published books are what the general public thinks at large. Not what can actually happen or be in the games I run.
There is a lot to being the guy that runs the game, but if the players aren't willing to meet you halfway, fuckem.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
What we want is to roleplay characters, and have fun mechanics that supply gamist customization and conflict resolution. Sure, we'll throw down with some light games for a one shot or a party game or something, but when we're playing an ongoing game, we want mechanics that offer customization, unique roles in the party, combat that is satisfying on a mechanical and not just flavor level, etc.
13th Age and FFG Star Wars are my two favorite games out right now, and they both offer what I want me and my players want out of games, though for 13A I did have to tailor how to use icon relationships to be more than what the book gives as its defaults.
Since then, my situation has changed to the point where I don't have time to parse systems that are several college credit hours deep and finding players for them is a crapshoot. New players are hell to train on a big, mathy system, so I avoid them for the most part. It's much easier and more effective to have players sit down and effectively tell stories to each other within a largely transparent framework, and I've got a kid to keep alive during that free time I used to use building encounters.
Really, though, I think the crunch debate comes down to what a game wants you to do with it, and what you want to do with it instead. The more crunch there is for a system, the more tightly defined the potential actions of the characters are, generally speaking. PCs in hefty systems are restrained more by the rules than those in lighter systems, almost by definition. Rules seek to circumscribe potential points of failure for characters, to provide some degree of cover for the GM/DM/Storyteller to push them with adversity without them feeling personally wronged. The rules prevent hard feelings, in essence, during conflicts between player desire and storyteller decree. More rules = more buffer.
At the same time, rules light systems aren't typically great at communicating real risk to the characters, leaving that up to the storyteller and the story being told. This was an issue I had with Fate for quite a while, until I came to the realization that Fate a) wasn't a game in the sense of D&D; and b) isn't rules light so much as rules optional. Fate can be run very freeform with a ton of player agency, or a couple of tweaks can bring it all back in to make it more confining and restrictive to player action. But that's exactly the slider; rules make things harder for player characters.
This isn't universal, obviously. A rule can be introduced to a game that is explicitly or implicitly a power-up to players and their characters. Many houserules, especially of the "I just ignored that thing the one time because it was going to be awesome" variety, fall into this category. But the more rules a game has, the more it is going to tend toward the table-conflict-heavy, player-agency-restricting end of the spectrum. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that kind of game. We use different systems to get different things out of them, none of which are implicitly better than the other. It's really about the stories we end up telling about the game after the fact. Rules heavy games tend to generate stories about weird rules interactions or characters/players succeeding against all odds due to a particular dice result. Rules light games tend to get story synopsis with an emphasis on player character actions. Which stories you prefer to have to tell is a purely personal thing.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I also don't play with strangers or brand new players so I can definitely understand people who do wanting games that are very light to just pick up and play. Some of the people I play with are not so much the types to read rulebooks and such, but that's fine even in heavier games. I can teach someone to play 13th Age on the fly without any real trouble, and as long as they're willing to learn how their own character works as we progress then they're good.
Again, it really just comes down to how much G you want in your RPG. There's nothing wrong with liking gamist mechanics, and nothing wrong with just wanting a more light game. Hell, one of the games I'm most excited to try out is Reflections, a game about dueling samurai where you make precisely one die roll at the end to see who lives after just doing an hour of pure storytelling/RP scenes. It's just not what I want out of my ongoing games where I prefer more gamist mechanics alongside the storytelling.
For example, the two systems I've worked with most recently are Shadowrun and Mouseguard. Of the two, Mouseguard is by far the much more rules light game. It is also, by far, much more constraining in terms of what the players are allowed to do, while Shadowrun is immensely free form in comparison.
Also, groups vary too much to speak meaningfully in generalities. For example, I have never once had hard feelings be a concern in my roleplaying group. The idea of anyone feeling personally wronged via what happens during a session is an alien concept to my group.
Everything varies too much. Systems vary incredibly, groups vary wildly, GMs vary deeply (apparently my word choice for "a lot" also varies :P). That's what is great about there being so many different systems. If you look, odds are you can find something that fits your style and your group. But honestly I think there are too many variables to make meaningful generalities like "The crunchier the system the more restrained the player is."
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.