Over in this thread the following came up while talking about heist mechanics.
How do you feel about specific mechanics to force or encourage genre trope or elements? In the heist example, games that focus on them include things like "flashbacks" that make it easier to create the illusion of the kind of planning heist books and movies highlight. Other elements could be tightly focused roles (the boss, the heavy, the safecracker, whatever) as well as genre-appropriate methods for dealing with combat, injury, death or whatever. Games with narrative bents often use these kinds of mechanical tools, such as PbtA, FitD and Fate games (among others). But sometimes more traditional RPGs fold these kinds of mechanics into a broader general core mechanic. An example of this might be Journeys from The One Ring.
Do you think focused mechanics are better in games built for that one thing, or do you like focused mechanics within more broadly applicable game systems? Do you not like these kinds of specific mechanics and think you should be able to use the core mechanic to accomplish these things?
For my part, while I enjoy some games designed with a laser focus, I generally prefer medium crunch highly applicable rules systems. I can do a heist in D&D or Savage Worlds as well as I can in Scum and Villainy. It just means conducting play in a way that feels like the heist genre and using the tools you have to make it happen. That said, I will adapt things like SWADE's "dramatic tasks" for whatever the thing is I am trying to emulate and tweak the rules if need be.
Thoughts?
I wanted to move it to its own thread and out of D&D-land so we could discuss it more broadly.And that could be said for almost any game. But D&D doesn't model heist in any way, mechanically speaking. It simply becomes a matter of playstyle.
In which case, I prefer a game that gives me the instruments to play on the strengths of the heist.
How do you feel about specific mechanics to force or encourage genre trope or elements? In the heist example, games that focus on them include things like "flashbacks" that make it easier to create the illusion of the kind of planning heist books and movies highlight. Other elements could be tightly focused roles (the boss, the heavy, the safecracker, whatever) as well as genre-appropriate methods for dealing with combat, injury, death or whatever. Games with narrative bents often use these kinds of mechanical tools, such as PbtA, FitD and Fate games (among others). But sometimes more traditional RPGs fold these kinds of mechanics into a broader general core mechanic. An example of this might be Journeys from The One Ring.
Do you think focused mechanics are better in games built for that one thing, or do you like focused mechanics within more broadly applicable game systems? Do you not like these kinds of specific mechanics and think you should be able to use the core mechanic to accomplish these things?
For my part, while I enjoy some games designed with a laser focus, I generally prefer medium crunch highly applicable rules systems. I can do a heist in D&D or Savage Worlds as well as I can in Scum and Villainy. It just means conducting play in a way that feels like the heist genre and using the tools you have to make it happen. That said, I will adapt things like SWADE's "dramatic tasks" for whatever the thing is I am trying to emulate and tweak the rules if need be.
Thoughts?
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