How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Campbell]

All editions of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Marvel FASERIP, classic Deadlands, and WEG Star Wars are not the same game with minor variations.

My experience is that the core gameplay of many of these games does not significantly vary. Different sorts of fiction, but at the end of the day we are dealing with teams of specialists going on adventures presented to them by the GM. In the grand scheme of things playing Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings or sometimes even Vampire often did not feel that different from D&D because the core activity and structure of play was not that different.

I likely made my case too strongly. What I would say is that the adventure game subset of roleplaying games is much more akin to area control boardgames than it is boardgames.

 

[James Gasik]

All this complicated jargon, man. "Hit points?" "AC?" "Thac0?" "Dungeonmaster?" Don't get me started on "Level"!

 

[soviet]

All this complicated jargon, man. "Hit points?" "AC?" "Thac0?" "Dungeonmaster?" Don't get me started on "Level"!

My level 5 character can only cast level 3 spells no matter what level of the dungeon they are on.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not convinced this opinion is any less subjective than mine is.

Really? I'd be willing to bet that it's not even the jargon that's keeping you from these games, is it? You said earlier that your main reason for not wanting to play them is because they take away the worldbuilding aspect of the GM role.

So are you saying that if they changed the phrases they use, then you'd suddenly be willing to play such a game?

Come on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well ackshually... isn't it dissociated mechanics?

The two versions of that word are linguistically interchangeable.

 

[soviet]

The two versions of that word are linguistically interchangeable.

Do you not understand the purpose of smiley icons and the deliberate misspelling of actually?

 

[Thomas Shey]

First if all, if the game pushes PCs as SFHPs, then that's just as constricting in a way you favor as forcing Bob the Farmer would be in a way I favor, so let's try to be fair to all parties here.

But for the most part, this isn't going to be an area where a game is going to be fair to all parties. Only a relatively small subset of games (usually universal systems) try to target options for different starting power levels. So this is absolutely a case where someone's ox is going to get gored, the only question is who.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience is that the core gameplay of many of these games does not significantly vary.

The problem for this sort of discussion is the word "significantly" is doing heavy lifting in this sentence. And perhaps "core".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Do you not understand the purpose of smiley icons and the deliberate misspelling of actually?

No, I just frequently find that sort of joke annoying.

 

[soviet]

To be fair I think it would be fairly straightforward to build this stuff in at chargen. The ship has sailed on what a level 1 character looks like, but it would be simple to have an optional level 0 starting point that is more like being an apprentice.