What Makes One System Better Than Another?

[rogueboy]

As the title suggests, I'm trying to get at a fairly simple, although potentially hard to define, concept: what makes System A better than System B? I'm looking for answers as basic as "it should be balanced" or more involved, such as whether it's an advantage or disadvantage to have 3 different skills that are all similar enough that any can be used to jump, but each is better than another in different situations (from one narrow ledge to another vs. across a chasm vs. up to the rafters).

A couple of key points I've come up with so far are as follows:
*Balance - the game shouldn't favor one class over all others, though whether having all be equal or a rock-paper-scissors aspect is less clear to me
*Speed of Play - if it takes an hour for each person to take a turn (especially if it's in the D&D sense of 6 second turns), there's a problem.
*Flexibility - is it an advantage or disadvantage to have 15 classes that can be described as a "nature-based warrior"? Should there be a massive number of classes, a couple fairly basic classes that combine to cover almost any concept you can come up with, or one ultimately flexible class?
*Customizability - similar to flexibility, I see this as being a little different: is reducing the number of skills an advantage or disadvantage? Does this change if you reduce it past a certain point? Is it good or bad to make simplifications to the skill selection system, such as was made with the change from 3.x (skill points every level) to 4e (flat +5 to 'trained' skills, all skills improve as you gain levels).

What other general categories are there that should be considered? What do you consider to be a draw for a system? What other considerations are there to picking one system over another?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

* Comprehensiveness - do the mechanics cover the bare minimum, i.e. actions which can't/shouldn't be acted out by the players (magic, combat) or do they sport systems for a lot of situations (social interaction)?

The thread title seems misleading, as these points are clearly subjective. A game system is a tool to tell stories with. As fantastic as a system might be when telling certian types of stories, it can be totally inappropriate for other types.

 

[jdrakeh]

Opinion

 

[Mr. Wilson]

The flavor of the game should match the rules as well.

For example, the Deadlands system won't work for many games outside of Deadlands, but in that setting the game system worked extremely well.

 

[Hjorimir]

Opinion

I was gonig to say taste, but opinion works just as well.

 

[Henrix]

It maximizes the fun the players have. What is fun is of course subjective.

Many games people have lots of fun have nothing to do with the points brought up earlier. (And that includes most previous incarnations of D&D.)

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I gotta go with taste/opinion here. Rifts is probably one of the least balanced systems out there, yet there are Rifts gamers who swear that they are having fun playing the game.

I wouldn't play a Rifts game again for pretty much any reason.

SO, I'm going to answer your question with an additional bit.

What makes one system better than another FOR ME

• Rules that are clear.
• Rules that are as simple as possible to get the job done without sacrificing too much on the altar of speed/abstraction
• Rules that focus on game play without focusing too much on (what are for me) nebulous concepts like "feel" or "genre"
• Good editing
• A good table of contents/index
• Rules that are layed out in a logical fashion
• Rules that don't take things too seriously, and accept what the game is AND what the game is not
• Rules that focus on what happens at the table

For me, this would be the criteria that I judge a game by.

 

[Evil DieM]

I like a system that is efficient; whichever one that can average the most number of player character deaths in the least amount of dice rolls will always get my vote.

 

[resistor]

I'm not sure one can define a "good system" in the abstract. A good system is one that supports the game I want to run/play, whatever that may be at the moment.

Sometimes that means quirky, weird systems for quirky weird games. Sometimes that means rules lite systems for cinematic games. Sometimes that means genre-specific systems to games where the feel matters. And sometimes it means highly meta-level narrative systems when the story is all I care about.

Any system that fulfills a niche in my gaming spectrum is a good system.

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I think a lot of what people have been pointing out are what I would call "aesthetics" of games: design points that serve to differentiate games within a niche from each other.

For instance, "balance" only matters in games with a decent gamist element. It's irrelevant in strongly narrativist systems, at least in the normal sense. (Narrative balance remains important.) In strongly simulationist systems, it's practically antithetical.

Similarly mechnical elegance and/or weight. Lots of crufty systems do good jobs of fulfilling their niches in the gaming spectrum. Rifts and older versions of D&D come to mind.

 

[Hand of Evil]

FUN -

Okay, you can call it comfort factor, it is the system where you (DM or player) find the most enjoyment. This is not balance of game but more style of play, it has a lot of elements; backstory, cool monsters, easy to learn rules, rules that cover an event, it has rewards and growths, etc. that best meet your expectations.

Each game has pros and cons but it comes down to the game you have fun playing.