Different Games for the Referee and Players

[Micah Sweet]

Wild. My last thoughts on the idea were that you'd need to stick with the same or similar genre to avoid tonal whiplash. D&D is D&D after all. But old-school fantasy crossed with superheroes seems like it would be crazy to deal with.

System-wise it wouldn't be that hard generally. Most systems are overly complicated yes-no generators. You can leave that to the player and only ever have to deal with the result as the referee. Even more interesting results like "yes, but" or "no, and" or PbtA results of mixed success or hard-soft moves would be simple enough to handle.

New school fantasy mixed with superheroes would probably be easier. A lot of modern fantasy characters are on par with superheroes in power and tone anyway.

 

[kronovan]

Back in the day -like way back in the 1980s- I played at a table where the GM homebrewed a campaign that used AD&D1e, Traveller and Gamma World. IIRC there was some mechanism for dimensional time shifting and distance Universe travel. So the early history era used AD&D and distant future used Traveller. Gama World was a different dimension/plane of existance, that you could access from the other 2. It was a college group and the party of PCs tended to fluctuate in size, so there were times when the party was split up with some playing AD&D1e, some Traveller or some GW, all at the same table.

Very ambitious and seriously crazy for sure, but the GM Michael was one of the cleverest and most skilled I've had the pleasure to sit down at a table with. So against all odds, it worked.

 

[Piperken]

...we'd be talking about playing D&D and Pendragon and Fate at the same table. Now that would be trickier!

Would love to see that as a mash up!

 

[Scribe]

Would take a better DM than me to do this lol

 

[mamba]

The game the players are using doesn’t have to be the same as the referee is running. Further, the players don’t even have to be playing the same game as each other.

Take that a step further and you could fairly easily have PCs from any edition in the same game. The trick is translating things from the disparate systems for the players into a common rule or system for the referee then translating them back to the individual systems for the players.

that trick being much harder to pull off once you use games that have more differences than 5e has from A5e and ToV. Combining these is pretty simple, but combining 1e and 4e with 5e will be a lot harder.

If you are looking for a common rule between these three, is what you are playing still any of these editions?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you are looking for a common rule between these three, is what you are playing still any of these editions?

It’s system gumbo.

 

[GMMichael]

The game the players are using doesn’t have to be the same as the referee is running. Further, the players don’t even have to be playing the same game as each other.

This would take experienced players. Because I have to look up everything for the inexperienced ones, and there's no way I'm doing that through two or more rule books.

Very ambitious and seriously crazy for sure, but the GM Michael was one of the cleverest and most skilled I've had the pleasure to sit down at a table with.

Yeah, we get that a lot

 

[Thomas Shey]

My own feeling on it is (ignoring the genre mix part of the question) is that at some point you need to deal with the places where the systems actively rub up against each other. What I mean by this usually is there are mechanics where values are designed to interact with other values, not just themselves. These are often, but not always combat situations.

To use a couple examples I'm familiar with:

I want to let Player One use a Fantasy Hero character and fight a Runequest monster. The former is going to have a combat value that needs to be compared to another combat value, and a set of damage values that assume certain numbers that are present in the target; the latter doesn't directly interact with the defender in attacking, but its assumed that the target will have a defensive skill (a Parry or Dodge depending on the particulars of that version of RQ) that is rolled against the attack; its damage doesn't also likely map up against the passive defenses of the target properly.

In addition, as mentioned by someone upthread, the two system's initiative/combat time management are vastly different, and at least the Hero System character may be partly dependent on some of the structure of that to work right.

I can see it being much more possible to butt up characters from different characters in the D&D and D&D adjacent spheres.

 

[overgeeked]

Back in the day -like way back in the 1980s- I played at a table where the GM homebrewed a campaign that used AD&D1e, Traveller and Gamma World. IIRC there was some mechanism for dimensional time shifting and distance Universe travel. So the early history era used AD&D and distant future used Traveller. Gama World was a different dimension/plane of existance, that you could access from the other 2. It was a college group and the party of PCs tended to fluctuate in size, so there were times when the party was split up with some playing AD&D1e, some Traveller or some GW, all at the same table.

Very ambitious and seriously crazy for sure, but the GM Michael was one of the cleverest and most skilled I've had the pleasure to sit down at a table with. So against all odds, it worked.

I imagine that’s where games like Torg came from.

 

[overgeeked]

This would take experienced players. Because I have to look up everything for the inexperienced ones, and there's no way I'm doing that through two or more rule books.

Or utterly inexperienced players. It’s far easier to run things, I’ve found, as improv with dice rather than strictly by the book with new players.

Experienced players would likely complain more about the experiment rather than help make things go smoother.

Or rules light games. Not as much to look up so there’s no problem in the first place.