Jon Peterson: Does System Matter?

D&D historian Jon Peterson asks the question on his blog as he does a deep dive into how early tabletop RPG enthusiasts wrestled with the same thing.

Based around the concept that 'D&D can do anything, so why learn a new system?', the conversation examines whether the system itself affects the playstyle of those playing it. Some systems are custom-designed to create a certain atmosphere (see Dread's suspenseful Jenga-tower narrative game), and Call of Cthulhu certainly discourages the D&D style of play, despite a d20 version in early 2000s.

Does System Matter?

Dungeons & Dragons started out as a game with such an adaptable and open-ended set of rules that early adopters questioned whether any fur...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[TheSword]

Eh. One of my table has two players new to the game. They both have their own copies of the PHB, and they both have done some thinking about their characters away from the table. I'll admit, my tables started at stores (and will, inshallah, be in stores again, someday), which is a condition you admit is different. Also, the more veteran players at both tables do put a fair amount of away-from-the-table thought into their characters, which does go some way toward setting a tone/expectation.

FWIW, I was attempting to explain others' thinking, not argue with you. It is possible to play TRPGs you don't own the book/s for; I've done it.

Do they know you well. The only reason I say, is that if I was joining a group I didn’t know well, then I would probably prepare more than a group of mates I was already really comfortable with.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I'm not sure I agree with this, especially with the number of people that fail to grasp how a number of games function when reading them. Usually this is due to bringing prior experience forward, and expecting the new game to operate largely as a previously learned game does. This is fine when moving among the game systems that are similar to D&D -- ones that feature GM as the primary, if not sole, author of world fiction and adjudication of said world. The number of people that have trouble moving from a D&D-like experience in games to something like the PbtA games is markedly high -- because they're not actually reading the rulebooks to learn to play but assuming they know how to RPG and this is just a new way. Hence the large amount of confusion on how certain mechanics can possibly work.

I'm speaking from experience, here -- my first attempt to move away from the D&D sphere into Burning Wheel was a complete disaster of failure to understand how the game even worked, despite the rulebook being pretty clear on how it does work. I kept trying to fit that into my then understanding of how RPGs worked, and it didn't fit. I can mostly learn a new game from a rulebook now, though, because I make sure to leave everything else at the front cover.

You're certainly not wrong, and I've experienced similar misunderstandings before, too. I remember struggling with the phases of play in One Ring. But I also think it's at least a little beside the point. In the absence of an actual play, often the only way to learn a new system is from the book. Or if not the book, from a quick start kit of some kind... written by the same people who wrote the book. Either way, your ability to grok the new system is reliant on a designer-author's ability to convey the means and the ways to play the game.

Yes, you might misread the whole system -- it doesn't need to be a new system to do that -- and a new player needs to be willing and able to absorb the differences in the system that might run very contrary to their stablished play norms. However, it's still that book that stands as the primary window into the mind of the designer. If the book doesn't convey the new systems or play processes or doesn't do so particularly well due to organization, the new systems might as well not exist.

In other words, a well written book is necessary but not sufficient for adopting a new system.

...the Table of Contents, which I can read for free on DriveThruRPG or flip through in a hobby store.

My post did elaborate further. It explained why a cursory glance doesn't actually give you a complete impression of what you might need to know to run a system. It's kind of ironic because you skipped the meat of my argument in a post about how new players to a system need to read the whole system at least once so that they don't mistakenly skip the meat of the system.

 

[prabe]

Do they know you well. The only reason I say, is that if I was joining a group I didn’t know well, then I would probably prepare more than a group of mates I was already really comfortable with.

The new-to-the-game players? They didn't--part of why I wanted to run at a game store was to have an opportunity to game with (at least some) different people. There are a few other players at the tables who've known me for a while, one of whom is married to me.

 

[Aldarc]

My post did elaborate further. It explained why a cursory glance doesn't actually give you a complete impression of what you might need to know to run a system. It's kind of ironic because you skipped the meat of my argument in a post about how new players to a system need to read the whole system at least once so that they don't mistakenly skip the meat of the system.

You presume a little too much here.

 

[TheSword]

The new-to-the-game players? They didn't--part of why I wanted to run at a game store was to have an opportunity to game with (at least some) different people. There are a few other players at the tables who've known me for a while, one of whom is married to me.

It’s fair to assume I think, that if I’m playing with strangers, particularly a new group I’m joining. Then I’m gonna turn with a book, character sheet, prepped character, and having done a ton of research to not look like an idiot.

If I’m playing at my mates house instead of Lords of Waterdeep then I don’t care if I look an idiot.

 

[prabe]

It’s fair to assume I think, that if I’m playing with strangers, particularly a new group I’m joining. Then I’m gonna turn with a book, character sheet, prepped character, and having done a ton of research to not look like an idiot.

If I’m playing at my mates house instead of Lords of Waterdeep then I don’t care if I look an idiot.

That possibly depends on the expectations among your group/s of friends. The people I game with as friends, I wouldn't want to show up half-assed.

Also, the two newest players have started DMing their own campaigns, so they plausibly aren't typical new players, either.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You're certainly not wrong, and I've experienced similar misunderstandings before, too. I remember struggling with the phases of play in One Ring. But I also think it's at least a little beside the point. In the absence of an actual play, often the only way to learn a new system is from the book. Or if not the book, from a quick start kit of some kind... written by the same people who wrote the book. Either way, your ability to grok the new system is reliant on a designer-author's ability to convey the means and the ways to play the game.

Yes, you might misread the whole system -- it doesn't need to be a new system to do that -- and a new player needs to be willing and able to absorb the differences in the system that might run very contrary to their stablished play norms. However, it's still that book that stands as the primary window into the mind of the designer. If the book doesn't convey the new systems or play processes or doesn't do so particularly well due to organization, the new systems might as well not exist.

In other words, a well written book is necessary but not sufficient for adopting a new system.

I don't agree with this either. For starters, there's lots of resources out there now to help learn games, from forums like this or ones dedicated to the game in question. There's Let's Play videos, or videos from the designers.

And, finally, you can absolutely learn a game from a rulebook -- what I was pointing out above is that there are issues with this that come from the assumption set of the reader, but I've learned a game or two from nothing but the book.

I guess I'm not agreeing with the extremes, here. I'll agree that it's much easier, and success likelier, to learn a game with help, but I can't agree that it's not possible otherwise.

 

[pemerton]

People aren't playing Cthulu Dark. It's a game with exactly one mechanic. That's barely enough to be a one-shot. They're playing Call of Cthulu, which is a couple hundred pages. We know that because that's what's been in the top 5 of the sales charts and in the top 5 of the roll20 campaigns for the past couple of years. Unless they were in the KS, people aren't playing Prince Valiant, either. You can't get that anymore, including the 2018 edition; it's not on DriveThruRPG or Chaosium's site. They're playing Pendragon because that's what Chaosium is still selling, which clocks in at at 220 pages.

I think these points are highly relevant to the idea that system matters.

I will assert, unequivocally, that Cthulhu Dark is a better RPG system both in general, and for the special case of Mythos RPGing, than CoC. Yet as you note the latter is far more widely played.

I will also assert, but a bit more hesitantly as I know I'm disagreeing with Greg Stafford, that Prince Valiant is a better system both in general, and for the special case of Arthurian/knightly romance RPGing, than Pendragon. (And to the extent that someone wants to use the Winter Phase stuff from Pendragon that can easily be folded back into Prince Valiant. We've used those charts to determine whether the knights in our Prince Valiant game have children following their marriages.)

Part of the virtue of both systems is that they're shorter and mechanically more straightforward. They also more reliably produce experiences, in play, that emulate the source material.

So why are they not more widely played?

People still seem to mostly be interested in RPG games with significant heft to them to simulate a real world.

This is one possible answer. To the extent that it is true, it shows that system matters a lot.

(There are also marketing/commercial dynamics that help feed into system choice, which probably also play some explanatory role here.)

 

[pemerton]

On the issue of how to learn new processes of play:

* By reading and doing what you're told to do;

* By watching other people doing it (either hanging out with them, or watching recordings etc);

* By intuiting it.

The first requires complete and well-thought-through instructions. I think Burning Wheel comes pretty close, but would benefit from more examples. The Adventure Burner (or Codex for Gold edition) provides this but that does then turn it into a pretty lengthy rulebook.

A nice example of this for a mechanically less intricate game is In A Wicked Age. It's account of the set-up process even tells you that if you finish your set-up before everyone else at the table, maybe you can pour the drinks!

But a problem for the players of both BW and IaWA is that the rulebooks tell you, at certain points, that in response to certain prior "moves" made in the course of play you have to make some stuff up. I think this can be a challenge for a lot of people. One strength of those chunky systems with those long rulebooks is that they need less of this - eg a whole combat can often be resolved in D&D play without anyone having to make up any fiction; detailed rules for travel mean that the fiction can be read of the rules without anyone needing to make stuff up; etc.

Rulebooks can help with the need to make stuff up by providing examples, but ultimately it's a skill that needs to be practised. This is probably a place where seeing others do it can help, just because a picture is worth a thousand words.

I think relying on intuition can be a problem, for the reasons that @Ovinomancer has described - "intuition" often reflects prior experience and baggage. Or the lack thereof.

For instance, the original three black books for Classic Traveller have a lot of amazing content in them, and - in my view - a remarkably well-designed game when one considers it was written in 1977. But while it talks about how to build PCs, and how to build words and lay out starmaps, and has encounter tables, and even makes reference to "the adventure" or "the situation" that the referee is administering, at no point does it actually describe the process of collectively establishing a shared fiction, the players making "moves" for their PCs within that fictional space, the referee responding, etc. Which I think makes it almost impossible to pick up and play without some prior sense of what a RPG or wargame plays like; and that prior sense will then inform the use of the Traveller rules. (As it happens I think they work best for a PbtA-type approach, but that probably wasn't quite what the designer had in mind in 1977.)

Moldvay Basic remains a touchstone, in my view, for a book that does set out the procedures of play very clearly, but it won't support the sort of fiction/narrative-oriented RPGing that BW and IaWA aspire to. It succeeds by radically narrowing the scope of the fiction it is concerned with, and then setting out very concrete procedures for establishing the consequences, in the fiction, of the players "moves" - it relies heavily on GM judgement in adjudication, but doesn't require very much making stuff up.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Pathfinder 1e, D&D, WFRP have all released great stories. I don’t think it’s coincidence that we’ve played adventures written by each of them in each of the other systems (with the exception of PF adventures in WFRP rules - just because it’s newer). The system wasn’t as important as the stories we were telling.

The thing is that D&D started life as a hacked tabletop wargame with the GM there to enable you to step outside the wargame rules. Pathfinder is a direct D&D offshoot. And WFRP is a hacked tabletop wargame even if it uses a different wargame and a slightly grittier aesthetic. The design goals of all three are very similar - and the methodologies are similar enough that in one notorious review Ryan Dancey claimed that WFRP 2e had clearly been taking notes from D&D 3.X with examples that had all been in WFRP 1e almost two decades earlier.

Those are three very similar systems with similar design assumptions you have there. I'm not surprised adventures for one work in the others.