Hack Or Heartbreaker?

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How best to structure your own RPG? It’s not a new dilemma. Back in the day games publishers always sought to innovate, whether that be a relatively small change, like adding spell points to a D&D chassis, or something more fundamental, like dispensing with class and level entirely, making skills more central to the game. Turning over the box or book of a game in the 80s you would usually see an excited description of the unique innovations within; no alignment! Personalised magic! Just d6s! Play an animal! Be evil!

Later, publishers hit upon the notion of a core system that could power multiple games. The next step was to open up that system for others to play with, in the hope that eventually there might be one game system to rule them all. D20 looked like it might actually achieve that at one point, but soon enough other companies followed suit. Now there are dozens of open games systems that the nascent publisher can use to boost their ideas into reality.

As a first step for me and my homebrewed game, I had to decide which route to take. Early on it became clear to me that my best system ideas were built on the shoulders of games I’d played over the years. Like many gamers I have binders full of house rules and other things I had done to tinker with my engine of choice. I had fewer ideas about systems built from the ground up. My decision was clear; I was going to work with an open gaming template.

Perhaps the most appealing thing about pre-existing mechanics is the mental space it gives you to apply your creativity to the things outside of the rules. The story, the flavour, the setting and the presentation. These are the parts of the game where the adjectives come to life. The rule themselves are merely the nuts and bolts, that’s why they call them mechanics.

Having made that decision, the harder decision presented itself; which licence to go with? Wizards of the Coast supplied the hobby with the OGL back in 200O, and that’s powered so many other options. In the end I wanted to stay close to fantasy, and my favourite relation in the D&D family has long been 13th Age. This game has its own SRD, called the Archmage Engine, and it’s one I'm more than passingly familiar with. So, that has become the skeleton of my system.

Staying true to that choice hasn’t always been easy. Every time I pick up a new game I find something interesting that I want to paste into my work. I love the downtime activities in Blades in the Dark. I love the equipment packages in Into the Odd. It’s easy to get distracted and end up with a game burdened like the mule in Buckaroo. Must resist!

So with the SRD in one window, and a blank doc in another, it was time to bring it all to life.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm a strong proponent of the school of thought that system should fit the story/setting/game you want to play. While it was probably good that the d20 OGL saved D&D (since I enjoy D&D), the side effect was discouraging creativity in role-playing technology. Before there were OGLs (and before "game rules can't be copyrighted" became clearly established/known in the US) creating your own game required innovation. Necessity was the mother of invention, and I loved seeing the inventions.

With OGLs available, people think less about their systems. They consider what's out there to be close enough, tweak it, and run with it. Then they end up with a system that, in many cases, doesn't really fit their setting material (unless that setting is a close replication to the setting the OGL derives from, if there is one).

If this sounds like over-analyzing it, consider times when you've played really well-made role-playing games with their own unique custom systems. Would those games be anywhere near as good if they were just the setting slapped onto someone else's OGL?

Using an existing OGL is really only beneficial if you only want to produce a setting. If you basically want to play whatever the OGL was based on, and just want other people to enjoy your world, then it's fine. If you want to create a smooth experience with a new setting, you're significantly better off custom designing a setting that fits that.

I should also point out that there are multi-genre systems that can actually work well for more than one setting--because they were designed for a specific play experience which is a goal of those settings. But no system works well for every setting.

 

[Brodie]

But no system works well for every setting.

D20 comes close, though. So does GURPS. And Fate Core. And others, I'm sure. I think the reverse of that statement holds true, also: No setting works well for every system.

The space bounty hunter game I'm working on is going to use a heavily modified D20/D20 Modern system. Could I easily make my own system? Maybe, but probably not. I'm extremely familiar with D20 and D20 Modern (preferring the latter) and I know how to hack the system to fit my needs. Such as a weapon system that let's PCs customize their weapons. Now, I'm also really familiar with Fate Core and know how and feel comfortable with hacking that system, too. But my space bounty hunter game would NOT work with that system.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

let's hear the story - looking foreward to it!

 

[pemerton]

IWhile it was probably good that the d20 OGL saved D&D (since I enjoy D&D), the side effect was discouraging creativity in role-playing technology.

Is this really true? A lot of pretty innovative games came out in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

 

[pemerton]

no system works well for every setting.

D20 comes close, though.

D20 has some pretty significant limits even on its home terrain. Here are just three:

* No default mechanic for resolving social conflict;
* No mathematical concordance between combat stats and other stats, which can make mechanical transitions/interactions between combat and non-combat hard to manage;
* A lot of scope for actions to become auto-successes (due to the interaction between bonuses and DCs).

 

[Hussar]

Just to add to that, I cannot imagine that if I wanted to go the seriously simulationist road, d20 is not going to do it for me. Far, far too random. And the combat system is so abstract that you'd more or less have to completely rewrite it in order to go that road. Meaning that you'd then have to rewire a fair chunk of the rest of the game since so much rests on the combat system - class design for a big one.

Imagine a game where you are serious about diplomacy. This is a game where combat plays a very back seat and you are expected to talk, make deals, lie, whatever, to achieve in game goals, but, combat is to be avoided wherever possible. D20 is not going to work at all for that. The HD vs Damage mechanics alone make it too wonky.

I think an excellent example of what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is talking about would be the d20 World of Darkness conversions. They just really failed to capture WoD feelings.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

D20 comes close, though. So does GURPS.

I would say that these two systems are iconic for being non-interchangeable. D&D is known for not being able to pull off realism, and that's the main thing that GURPS is known for; meanwhile, GURPS is known for making combat incredibly lethal, to the point where D&D-style heroism is nearly impossible under that ruleset.

Even D20 Modern can't really pull off a realistic modern setting. The closest it can come is action movies.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If this sounds like over-analyzing it, consider times when you've played really well-made role-playing games with their own unique custom systems. Would those games be anywhere near as good if they were just the setting slapped onto someone else's OGL?

In the sake of fairness, you should also consider the games that you gave up on after just a few sessions because the mechanics just did not work. Or games that you never started, because you could tell just by reading, that it wasn't going to work out.

The OGL lets someone get their own setting out there, so you can play in it at all, without suffering through the bad mechanics of designers who don't know what they're doing. Even if d20 isn't the ideal system to perfectly capture the experience of Synnibarr, it's still probably better than the proprietary systems they actually published using.

 

[JeffB]

I'm thankful for the SRD, but 3.x version of d20 is probably the worst "generic" rule set out there. I did not even like it for D&D let alone Star Wars, Gamma World, CoC, Modern, Spycraft, WoT, T20, etc.

There have been some decent hacks..M&M, DCC, & C&C for example..but that system was responsible for a great number of really good games not because the system was great, but because it was such a hot mess. Very little high level playtesting in 3.0 and then tons of modification/houserules by the freshman team for 3.5 with very little to no playtesting at all.

And Paizo just keeps beating that poor dead horse.

No thanks.

I'm also a proponent of developing the system around the story. Not the opposite.