The Ultimate System

[Kzach]

This is a fantasy 'what if' scenario.

Basically, if you got the best game system designers on the planet and put them all together into a room and took away all the things that force systems one way or another, like sacred cows, corporate interference, the need to constantly push out product, satisfying one genre over another, etc. what do you think the system would look and play like?

Would we end up with something like Rulemonster? Or Magic: the Money Printer? Would it be similar to D&D or GURPS? Champions or Deadlands? What aspects of any current system would it borrow from and what new things would it bring into being? Without limits, what would the ultimate system look and play like?

 

[mneme]

That's easy. We'd end up with a lot of different systems.

There's no "ultimate system". Different players are looking for different things. The same players are looking for different things at different times.

Sometimes, I want D&D. Sometimes, I want Nobilis. Sometimes, I want Over the Edge, or Prime Time Adventures or Fate or "systemless" PBEM.

No system can be the ultimate system, because your choice of system dictates the central rules of engagement--and as a result, the overall goals for your experience. If you (like me) see D&D's central themes being heroic adventure with tactical combat, you can come up with an ultimate expression of that [but even there, I could enjoy a much more roleplay-y D&D with, say, Fate style Aspects that generate extra Action Points, or one closer to 4e with more streamlining] -- the same for the goals of a "all director stance, nearly all the time" concept like Prime Time Adventure, or an economy-based drama based game like Fate.

But an ultimate system? For what?

 

[Kzach]

Ah crud, I had meant to post this in general, not 4e discussion.

D'oh!

 

[Dice4Hire]

There is no ultimate system and never will be. Too many people want too many different things. And I do not think politics et al are as strong a motivator as the OP seems to assume they are.

If we put designers in a room, they would come up with something like there has been before, most likely.

What we need is a single prodigy to come up with something new and then the designers to make it work.

 

[twilsemail]

<insert obligatory "there is no perfect system" line>

I think you'd wind up with something diceless (and cardless and so on). Afterall, if you can find the best designers. You also find the best players. If you find the best players, you revert to 10 years old and play pretend for a few hours and have an absolute blast.

Alternately, something akin to a refined Nobilis.

 

[RangerWickett]

If you extend the thought experiment to ridiculous parameters -- aliens hold the designers at raygun point and give them 30 days to design the best system possible, which Mankind will never be allowed to deviate from -- . . . well, you'd probably get a game about rising up and killing alien overlords.

 

[twilsemail]

If you extend the thought experiment to ridiculous parameters -- aliens hold the designers at raygun point and give them 30 days to design the best system possible, which Mankind will never be allowed to deviate from -- . . . well, you'd probably get a game about rising up and killing alien overlords.

I'd play that game...

GM: Alright guys, you're game designers. You've been kidnapped by aliens...

 

[Kzach]

Bloody hell, talk about kill-joys. Do you people know what hobby you're even in? I'll give you a hint: it requires imagination.

 

[the Jester]

Much like spaghetti sauce, different people want different things out of a game.

My ideal system? It's in progress, but to make it perfect for me I have to be the one to design it.

Your ideal system? Probably different than mine- maybe you don't need high and low level pcs to be able to hang out together, maybe you like more strict balance between the classes. Who knows- but there's gotta be something I like that you don't and vice-versa.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Bloody hell, talk about kill-joys. Do you people know what hobby you're even in? I'll give you a hint: it requires imagination.

Some of us have imagination. And analysis. And empathy. And that's why we think there is not and can not be an ultimate system. Dread is an amazing game. Very possibly the best system ever invented for playing one shot horror RPGs. But I am very glad not all games are like Dread. You could never play a Supers game using Dread rules. And Leverage using Dread rules would be ... interesting at best. Fiasco again is an outstanding game for doing what it does best. But I'm going cross-eyed at the idea of trying to run the Tomb of Horrors using rules resembling Fiasco. D&D Tomb of Horrors and Fiasco are such fundamentally different games that trying to use the same game for them is silly. (One's based on making sure to get everything right or else, and the other gets its fun from things going wrong.)

My imagination extends to more than cookie-cutter games. Although I think RangerWickett is probably right at what would come out of the room.