payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
I'm to blame. I put a TL;DR in the front instead of the back and didnt label it.
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The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
The "G" in RPG
- Thread starter payn
- Start date
ichabod
Legned
I prefer the TL;DR in the front. It's nice and obvious, and I can just read it and move on.
payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
I could see some folks worrying that with an upfront TL;DR, then their post wont be read, but thats the point of a TL;DR anyway.
I think some people just like to argue with premises.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
I need a good amount of "G" in my RPGs...otherwise it's just an improv storytelling exercise. (Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just not why we're here.) But I don't want so much G that it overwhelms and distracts from the plot. And I truly, deeply hate tactical combat simulations that take so long to resolve that everyone forgets why they were fighting a dragon in the first place.
Gamey things I need:
Gamey things I need:
- Dice
- A unified resolution mechanic
- Hit points, XP, other "points"
- Stats
- Levels
- Core rules
- Grids and battle mats
- Minis
- Additional non-core rules
- A hundred subclasses
- A dozen flavors of Elf
- Discussing everything in terms of "squares" and "actions"
- "Builds"
- Rewards for optimization
- "Decision by committee" on every turn of initiative
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Wolfpack48
Hero
For me, I like the gamey aspects to disappear or at least be so unobtrusive that they are for all intents and purposes invisible during game play. I don’t mind the up front before game investment in game mechanics for character creation and establishing core rules (and even more complex systems), but during play I like to keep from looking up rules and look to the character sheet for dice resolution. I do like dice for resolving complex interactions like combat and tests, but I prefer a singular resolution system that handles virtually all situations.
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payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
As much as I want to agree, I find its all relative. For example, I find Aces and Eights based on Hackmaster to be infinitely too mechanical to be a good RPG for me. However, my current favorite fantasy RPG is PF1. Though, if I think about it, if it was released today it would probably be too much for me. I jumped into 3E back in the early aughts and powered through it. After 20 years with the system it is second nature now that the mechanics fall into the background seamlessly. I for sure know it wasnt always that way and all the struggles led to place where it works fine tuned for me.
I think many folks go through the above process with D&D, which is why its often labeled "medium" ruleset. I think it gets a slight downgrade becasue of the familiarity with the mechanics and ease of which they can be applied after so much experience. YMMV.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
Yep, it really is all relative. And D&D, for better or worse, is the baseline by which all other TTRPGs are judged. I really can't speak for anyone else (and I hope my post didn't come across as one of those tiring 'Here's The Right Way To Play' monologues.)
I do like the Game aspects of an RPG, but I don't want it to overwhelm the whole experience. (And my experience is colored by a long and frustrating history with 3E/Pathfinder.) Like garlic in a pasta sauce: I know lots of people say there's no such thing as "too much garlic," but I still want to be able to taste the pasta and the meatballs.
Wolfpack48
Hero
I missed a key word in my sentence:
Yeah, I tend to agree -- one reason we've settled on BRP is it's the easiest for us to translate between implementations (RQ, CoC, etc) and has the "right" amount of gameyness for us (roll under your skill for most things). It gets us that adrenaline surge when you succeed, but usually doesn't require looking up tables once you know the core system pretty well. We also find the ramp up time to be pretty low. That could be just because we're familiar with it by now -- I'm guessing the somewhat involved character creation could be a bit mathy to some, but not terrrible.
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I'm generally running into RPGs that aren't sufficiently games, not the other way around.
I'm a little annoyed by conflation of mechanism and gameplay in general. You can drown in maps, grids, extremely specified stats and still fail to present a meaningful set of gameplay decisions to the player. RPGs most often fall down on that front through poor use of randomness; they like to call for too many die rolls, and like to weigh the results of those die rolls more heavily than the player decision making that prompted them.
It's honestly very easy to be an RPG without being a very good game, and there's a tendency to silo your design, so gameplay only happens in some specific context, usually combat.
I'm a little annoyed by conflation of mechanism and gameplay in general. You can drown in maps, grids, extremely specified stats and still fail to present a meaningful set of gameplay decisions to the player. RPGs most often fall down on that front through poor use of randomness; they like to call for too many die rolls, and like to weigh the results of those die rolls more heavily than the player decision making that prompted them.
It's honestly very easy to be an RPG without being a very good game, and there's a tendency to silo your design, so gameplay only happens in some specific context, usually combat.
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