I think it means "both" and "it depends."
Obviously, to someone who wants a specific type of story to emerge from play, and wants to play a game made to generate that type of story, system matters a lot. They want to use BitD to tell Leverage-esque heist stories, and Dread to tell looming inevitable doom horror stories (as I understand Dread, anyway), and OSR or actual old D&D to do dungeoncrawls.
To someone who wants the type of story (as well as the story itself) to emerge from play, it probably doesn't matter anything like as much. They pick a game they know well, and they run that for whatever types of story come up.
Now, there might still be reasons for either someone to pick one system over another. Maybe one wants a more-lethal combat system; maybe one doesn't care much for character classes; maybe one prefers dice pools or role-under or some sort of averaging dice or whatever. One can obviously go with mechanics one finds amenable, regardless of whether one is looking for a game tightly focused on one type of story or not.
I've seen people try to play Traveller using AD&D character mechanics. And then seen them use that to justify saying "Traveller Sucks!"
And I've seen both Star Trek and Star Wars done in Traveller (classic and mega) with only trivial modifications t the character rules, and adjusting the ship travel mechanics. (The NCC-1701 is about 17 kTd, with 6x50 Td
Or if it's a longstanding group you try new systems on like clothes. Something fits, or it doesn't.
(A different approach, I think both are plausibly correct.)
Or you offer a game, and see who's interested.
From my perspective the difference between roleplaying games, at least one that are not as similar as say D&D, Pathfinder, Shadow of the Demon Lord and Warhammer is not like the difference between different types of automobiles where one is a comparable replacement. It's more like Risk and Monopoly or Poker and Spades. Playing different games provides an experience that you will never reliably experience in somebody's D&D game without altering the process of play.
Modern D&D is not some middle point. It's a specific game experience that is finely tuned to deliver compelling play to people that want that experience. That's a lot of people in modern D&D's case.
Actually, it's
very much a middle ground - that's the natural and expected result of a process of design whch puts up every decision for public vote.
Progression towards the mean is inherent in democratized processes.
I'm going to only disagree on a technicality here. I'd call 5e intentionally pretty loosely tuned. It's intended to be a game that's driftable and intended to be a game that's never a bad one for anything you'd want to do something you'd use D&D for. The goal is breadth rather than focus.
QFT. But note that it also was intended to be good enough for as many as possible, and written in a clear and easily read style. It's less precise than Moldvay, but 6th, 7th, and 8th graders can read and run it. Without having adult help. I've had a number of middle school kids (7 or 8) show up at AL tables, noting they have yet to actually play, but have read the rules, and the only things I had to coach them on were what AL allowed, as they'd not read the AL season rules.
Especially if you went with your free coupons from reading lots of books.
That really started after I graduated in my home school district. My daughters got a number, tho'.
It is not possible to run a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror game with 5e, though. To do so, you have to make changes to the system or outright ignore the system adhoc. 5e cannot do gritty futuristic sci-fi horror. Some other system you've modified from 5e might do it, to varying degrees of success.
If that futuristic horror doesn't require spaceships, there are zap guns and fear rules in the 5E DMG.
Fear on DMG 266. Laser Pistol, Laser Rifle, and Antimatter Rifle, DMG 268.
If you're going to claim a game can't do X, at least be smart enough to check all the core books.
Saying this without evidence is just handwaving.
Show me, using the PHB, how I would run a computer hacking against a pervasive, mind altering AI consciousness in VR.
Show me, using the PHB, how I would run a multi-ship space battle between multiple factions, including being boarded by eldritch horrors from beyond the rim of the galaxy.
Show me, using the PHB, what the time to travel to the next core system over is.
These are things that are pretty common in a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror game, and yet you cannot do this in 5e without iterating whole sets of mechanics or just ignoring the system and winging it.
Or just treating cyberspace as equivalent to the astral plane, and using the magic item rules to access it. The rules need not change mechanics, only the labels and descriptions. Go read DMG chapter 9, which said, the DMG is part of the core rules, and exculding it from consideration is, bluntly, violation of common decency in discussion. It's like asking for the Starship Combat Rules in Classic
Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat ... they're in B
ook 2: Starships.
I tend to call the one thing an engine and the other a system. The D&D engine is very flexible while the system isn't. To play sci fi successfully you'd need a different system wrapped around the engine.
A good distinction, but, in the case of 5E Core Rules
Yup. This is a huge deal. We talk about authority distribution all the time (and, while certainly related, they aren't exactly the same), but the expectation of how the collective energy is distributed is equally important.
Then (after expectation is established) we can talk about procedurally how to orient toward energy distribution parity (which is, in part, about authority).
Sharing the spotlight is the more conventional term... and it's something few games mechanically address. (The few I've seen are
Houses of the Blooded,
Blood and Honor, and
Burning Empires. HotB and B&H, because they resolve narrative authority, not success, and thus the management of who is in the spotlight naturally by the narration control mechanism. Burning Empires has scene budgets, with each player getting a set number of scenes of specific types each session. A few attempt to do so via rigid turn structures -
Sentinel Comics, FFG Star Wars, Modiphius' Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Marvel Heroc Roleplaying and dozen others, where the design is equal numbers of turns, not equal spotlight time, nor equal story involvement.
It's hard to imagine that the OSR would have any of the momentum or legs to stand on that it did if simply having six attributes and a d20 resolution system was all it takes to be the same system as the WotC era of D&D.
But does it really have a large momentum? Or is it just highly visible?
Personally, I suspect a small amount of momentum across a very loud, proud, and prolific, but fairly small, and highly over-represented online, minority. If they really had been a majority, they'd have dominated the 5E development feedback. The vote totals don't support that contention.
Me. ToE's rules do Equestria as in FIM. Ponyfinder does something... darker. It also doesn't use a system I find worth my time to run. (Not saying PF is bad; I am saying, quite emphatically, I don't like it.)
I’m not engaging in discussion regarding games are aren’t even available to buy or in print. If you have to go so avant garde it isn’t even on DTRPG or Amazon marketplace then it’s probably not a good example. I wasn’t willing to pay £75 for the last copy of Sorcerer to find out.
The thing is, Storygames tend to be sold from their developer's website, and/or on Indie Press Revolution.
BullyPulpitgames.com has Shab Al-Hiri Roach, Fiasco, Grey Ranks, and The Warren available.
Fiasco is to the Storygames movement as Mentzer D&D is to the D&D family... it's the common point of entry, not the first, but definitely very well known, widely played, and very well respected.
Sorcerer is still in print, too. My FLGS sold one a couple months ago as a special order.
Cool, that was about my guess as well but nice to have it confirmed from someone who knows this stuff.
And that's my point: I'd prefer a game be written to that Grade 12/1st-year college level as it'll then at least give me a first impression of not having been dumbed down.
I guess I've just never seen D&D as a kids game, though it seems many here started playing quite young.
AD&D suffered because of it. Gygaxian spew obfuscated rules, and made the game harder to learn; it lead to a whole lot of misunderstood, ignored, and/or misused rules. Gygax very likely held back D&D as much as helping it. I know that 2E was much easier for me to use, and for new players. Like Moldvay, it was written at a 9th grade reading level. (For reference, most newspapers tended to write to a 7th or 8th grade reading level in the US, until the 21st C, when they lost their younger readership to the Net.)
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