Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[Ourph]

Now who's being elitist?

I'm not being elitist, I'm being provocative.

Besides, I don't want all games to use the Warhammer mechanics. Just one. I don't assume that just because I believe the Warhammer mechanics are inherently better that everyone else will agree (or that if they don't agree they are simply fooling themselves out of nostalgia or a disinclination to accept change). OTOH - the d20 elitists seem to think that because d20 can "do" system X that d20 should "do" system X (as if system X could never have any inherent value of its own).

Snobbery I say, snobbery and condescension!

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Snobbery I say, snobbery and condescension!

Shenanigans!

 

[SweeneyTodd]

The argument at the core of the thread is that rules-light systems aren't quicker or easier to use than rules-heavy systems. All I'm trying to say is I grant that's true, if you use them both the same way.
If your group plays a certain way, adopting a system that has different priorities is going to be unsatisfying. I don't dispute that.

But there are a lot of ways to play. I have a player who tried D&D once and hated it. Hated it. She wasn't interested in combat, didn't grok how to do things with simmy task resolution mechanics, didn't even get why you'd want to have a group of adventurers go through a dungeon.

She figured, "Oh, no rules at all is better," and tried freeform forum-based roleplaying. She wasn't happy there either, because the rules of "what you could do" were solely based on seniority and unstated assumptions. She was creatively blocked there as well.

I talked her into playing with our group, and something "clicked". The character sheet was a clear statement of player goals and interests, expressed through the character. There were clear rules for scene framing and conflict proposal. Disputes on "what happens next" were resolved by setting stakes for the conflict, choosing the relevant traits on the character sheet, rolling against the opposing side, and narrating the results.

And the thing is, by the second session she was doing a lot of things that we consider GM skills: Framing scenes, proposing conflicts, introducing NPCs, and more. Wait, I thought I was supposed to put her through a dungeon first, and let her slowly learn the ropes?

I still maintain that, if you divorce it from things like game balance and world building, coming up with an interesting story is something that almost anybody can do. It's only when you make the additional caveats that story must be expressed through interactions with a detailed environment, and that that environmental challenges must be checked for game balance, that you make injecting creative content into the game so daunting.

 

[JohnSnow]

OTOH - the d20 elitists seem to think that because d20 can "do" system X that d20 should "do" system X (as if system X could never have any inherent value of its own).

I think in most cases you're mistaking "observation" with opinion. People who do marketing have to look at the systems and what *most* people actually play. To say that more people play d20 than any other system is not exactly a matter for debate. If you asked marketing people why, most of them would have to conclude, as Ryan did, that it was because most of the people playing decided it was "better." That doesn't necessarily mean there isn't room for other systems. I suppose you could draw the computer OS analogy here, with d20 being Windows and Warhammer being the Mac OS. Personally, I think that analogy's false, as I think the Mac OS is superior, but don't feel the same way about Warhammer.

I played Warhammer with my group for the first time a few weeks ago. It was okay, but learning the system was a barrier for me. In fact, I was able to make a character without having the slightest idea how the system would work in play. We played a simplified version because we didn't know it. And for me, I don't see what the system added to my gaming experience. As an aside, our group has sorta decided that we only need one dark fantasy game - and we really like Midnight (two of us were eager to DM it), so we'll be shelving Warhammer except for sub-in games.

And that's the point. We're making the decision to play Warhammer based on its setting, not its system. I'd say the same thing is true for all but the most diehard of the old WFRP fans.

 

[buzz]

But just because you can trick ignorant consumers into accepting something inferior, doesn't mean you should.

This assumes that the d20 (or GURPS, or StoryTeller, or etc.) implementation would be "inferior", which I guess steers us into discussion best saved for a different thread, ideally on a different Website.

 

[buzz]

I don't believe that going into a dungeon is an easier thing to grasp for everyone than something like "We're going to play an episode of Buffy." It's easier to grasp the dungeon thing if you've already got a gamer mindset, but then aren't we talking about how to make people who already think like gamers into gamers?

The dungeon scenario is, as its core, being a piece on a contained board moving from location to location, dealing with the rules that apply to where you "land", and working towards goals similar in many ways to victory conditions. This is part of the reason why it's so easy to turn the dungeon experience into a video, board, or card game, and thus why I think it's a good starting point for people who have no experience with RPGs. It's inherrently gamist.

Buffy is narrativist, and thus, IMO, a little more obtuse for someone who's never roleplayed before; i.e., Drama Points are a bigger conceptual hurdle than, "land on the room with the statue and fight the ogre". Granted, Buffy has an advantage in that you have seven seasons worth of episodes to point players to as a reference ("Now, you get to decide what Buffy does instead").

 

[buzz]

I think the dungeon is a help for the fledgling GM, because he doesn't have to deal with the trouble of guiding his troupe through the scenario; a dungeon is more or less self-guiding. This part is not true for a TV episode.

Very good point, and what RyanD was alluding to above.

 

[buzz]

the d20 elitists

What? Where?

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Buffy is narrativist, and thus, IMO, a little more obtuse for someone who's never roleplayed before; i.e., Drama Points are a bigger conceptual hurdle than, "land on the room with the statue and fight the ogre". Granted, Buffy has an advantage in that you have seven seasons worth of episodes to point players to as a reference ("Now, you get to decide what Buffy does instead").

We're just talking about our opinions, so I won't try to dissuade you.

I talked to my fiancee about Drama Points, and she went, "Well, yeah, obviously characters should succeed when it's dramatically appropriate." Before she started playing in our group, she'd never touched a roleplaying game. She keeps telling me five pages of rules is too crunchy, and we should try to get it down to one. But she has no problem at all coming up with interesting things that could happen and possible outcomes.

Talk to a woman. Ask her how her day went. I promise you if she had a bad day, you'll see that she doesn't need to learn narrative structure, focus on conflict, or characterization. She already has those tools

(If anything, the guys I had to keep working on till they "got it" were the D&Ders. They were the ones who were weirded out by scene-level resolution or an explicit session structure. The newbies went, "Oh, so if I want my character's troubled family life to be important, I should spend more points on it? That makes sense." The vets probably spent more time unlearning stuff than the newbies did learning.)

I'm just trying to say that if you think imagining people dealing with conflicts with other people in an everyday environment is less intuitive than dungeon crawling, you're coming at it from a very specific mindset. People who've never gamed before in their life can tell you an interesting/funny/sad story about when somebody they knew ran into trouble and had to deal with it.

 

[Ourph]

And that's the point. We're making the decision to play Warhammer based on its setting, not its system. I'd say the same thing is true for all but the most diehard of the old WFRP fans.

The collective sigh of relief in the WFRP fan community when it was announced that WFRPv2 would NOT be d20 would lead me to believe otherwise. The attitude that most Warhammer fans were fans simply because of the setting, not the system, is the elitism I'm talking about. I've had tons of discussions with people about Warhammer with other Warhammer fans and while the setting is always part of the appeal, the combat, skill and career systems are also major parts of what people talk about enjoying about Warhammer. I can certainly understand that not everyone feels that way, but to assume that the majority of people could care less about the system is, IMO and IME a stretch.