Out with the old (Game design traditions we should let go)

[Endroren]

Are there aspects of RPGs that you think it's time to let go? Especially if it's something you think "How could we live without it??" We were brainstorming about this and had a pretty heavy debate. Everything from "dice" to "the gamemaster" came up as things that a traditionally important to RPGs but that MAYBE we should consider moving beyond.

One of the first things that comes to my mind is character advancement. It sounds nuts, but it's not something that comes up in many of the prose/comic/movie stories we enjoy - and if it does it's pretty minor in terms of change.

What do you think? What would you put out to pasture?

P.S. I know that there are LOTS of games doing lots of cool stuff, and I've played many of them. I'm mainly talking "RPGs as a whole - what does the hobby/industry in general seem too attached to."

 

[timbannock]

Definitely advancement. It's great for some games but not for all of them, yet it's way too prevalent.

 

[kenada]

Setting DCs and similar mechanics, especially when they’re designed to track the PCs’ expected rate of advancement (creating a progression treadmill and effectively only an illusion of advancement).

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Game design that keeps everything hidden from the players. As an example rather than playing the "guess the stats" game every combat just show the players their target numbers and let them have at it.

 

[overgeeked]

Any rules beyond "let the referee decide" and "roll opposed 2d6, higher roll wins." Everything else is extraneous. Even the dice are extraneous. You could sub in the table for the referee, but then you have more moving parts and more possible points of failure.

 

[niklinna]

Are there aspects of RPGs that you think it's time to let go? Especially if it's something you think "How could we live without it??" We were brainstorming about this and had a pretty heavy debate. Everything from "dice" to "the gamemaster" came up as things that a traditionally important to RPGs but that MAYBE we should consider moving beyond.

One of the first things that comes to my mind is character advancement. It sounds nuts, but it's not something that comes up in many of the prose/comic/movie stories we enjoy - and if it does it's pretty minor in terms of change.

Fate is pretty good about that. You can "advance", but it's usually by just shuffling your skill rankings around so that you're best at something else now, and not so good at what you used to be best at: the "stat array" remains the same. Or changing your aspects out, or adding a few. But it's not much of a thing to add or ratchet up skills.

That said, I think advancement is useful for some games/campaigns, and not so much for others, in both broad and narrow terms.

What do you think? What would you put out to pasture?

I'm really not a fan of dice rolls that simply whiff. Something interesting should always happen when things come to the point you roll dice. We have enough games that handle this (with varying degrees of crunch), that it should be doable in just about any system.

 

[ninjayeti]

I'd say dice pool mechanics (as in roll x dice to hit a target of y at least z times). They are clunky and I have never seen one that accomplished anything in terms of probability you couldn't get from a regular roll vs. a target number.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Class. Level. Zero to Hero. Readily available magic. Thousands of monster species. Multitudes of PC races.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'd say dice pool mechanics (as in roll x dice to hit a target of y at least z times). They are clunky and I have never seen one that accomplished anything in terms of probability you couldn't get from a regular roll vs. a target number.

That's an interesting claim. I'm very interested in how you might model the Alien dice mechanic as single roll + modifier. If you aren't familiar, the salient aspect is you build a pool of d6's, and each 6 is a success. Additional successes can be spent for stunts that can significantly alter the outcome.

 

[niklinna]

That's an interesting claim. I'm very interested in how you might model the Alien dice mechanic as single roll + modifier. If you aren't familiar, the salient aspect is you build a pool of d6's, and each 6 is a success. Additional successes can be spent for stunts that can significantly alter the outcome.

That's a little more than just a dice pool to determine success, though. I love this sort of thing, where you can trade off the binary or scalar success for side effects!

I think the closest I've seen to this with a single die roll is in 13th age, where if you roll an even number you get to do something extra? But that's clearly not the same as having the option.