What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[overgeeked]

About 25 years ago, modern mechanics (for D&D at least) was the unified mechanic. Roll 1d20 + mods vs TN. Ditching all the different dice used in the various subsystems was considered new, innovative, and modern. But, for some reason, all those subsystems remained.

Now I think modern mechanics is a properly unified system. Don't stop with removing the different dice, remove the different subsystems. Whatever the task or conflict resolution mechanic is, use that for everything. Ditch all the subsystems.

Something like Modiphius' Discworld RPG comes to mind.

That's modern design.

 

[soviet]

About 25 years ago, modern mechanics (for D&D at least) was the unified mechanic. Roll 1d20 + mods vs TN. Ditching all the different dice used in the various subsystems was considered new, innovative, and modern.

I think at the time it was largely considered a copying of Rolemaster, which had already existed in similar structure for some 15 years (and which Monte Cook had produced supplemental material for). I think it was seen as a modernisation, and a welcome one, but innovative would be inaccurate.

 

[SableWyvern]

I wonder if what they are getting at is more along the lines of = "No matter what gun you use in GURPS, the rules make all gunplay feel the same." action cars, spy missions, pirates, civil war, take your pick - the rules are the same with such small nuances that make no real gameplay different. The feel of interacting with the rules is the same, and the roleplay does not feel informed differently by rules for each, since the mechanics are the same - by definition of GURPS.

Where as gunplay in Apocalypse World versus Outgunned make for VREY different gunplay experience. And the rules give players very different play and interactions, not just a few nuanced differences - like sweepingly HUGE different gameplay that feel very much like mad max or die hard. and are in no way interchangeable.

If that is what someone means to say, they should say that.

"This game feels the same to me, even when it's presenting different options" is not remotely the same as claiming "The designer had no real sense of intent when creating this game." (Unless now we're defining valid intent as, "the intent to make a game I like.)

I do feel it's an interesting example you picked, given that I have been referring to Tactical Shooting and Gun Fu, two GURPS products that set out (intend) to model very different ways of handling firearm combat. It would be perfectly valid to claim both products feel much the same in play as a matter of personal experience, but they each have very clear and different authorial intent (and purposes, if you wish). Saying AW and Outgunned feel very different, but Tactical Shooting and Gun Fu feel samey is nothing more or less than a statement of personal preference and experience -- it's not a commentary on the objective usefulness or value of those products for everyone who uses them and it's absolutely not telling us anything about authorial intent.

 

[SableWyvern]

I think at the time it was largely considered a copying of Rolemaster, which had already existed in similar structure for some 15 years (and which Monte Cook had produced supplemental material for).

That was my position, but I'm not sure it was widely held -- I recall getting quite a bit of pushback (some of my earliest posts here are most likely on this very topic).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I find the entire concept of general use games versus specialized games to be one of the more silly ideas in the hobby because it assumes gameplay has no real value on its own (and thus a "general use" game can be a substitute for a "specialized" game if used well).

I think this misunderstands some if not most of the purposes of general use games.

It may well be that there's a theoretical design space for any given campaign one might want to run that would serve it better than a more general use game.

But that game may not exist, you may not be aware of it, or you may not want to take the time to learn it when you already know a game system that is "close enough."

No one will normally say a Swiss Army knife or multitool is a better choice than a dedicated tool. But people have the multitool with them all the time and its often sufficient.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why is support of one specific theme the only valid "intent"?

It isn't automatically. It can be in support of genre, instead for example. But as I said, I think using "intent" for any deliberate design ends up conflating things that don't go together.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Wilderness play, in OD&D and early AD&D, is structured fairly similarly to dungeon-crawling (map-and-key framing and resolution of movement) but with a different resource clock. I don't think it's all that well designed. I also think it's secondary to dungeon-crawling.

I don't think it was clearly intended to be secondary to dungeon-crawling at least, but I agree it wasn't well designed. Which was my point.

I don't think differences of dice rolled speak to issues with the play cycle. They can be connected to a lack of integrated systems (eg how does a thief moving silently relate to the surprise rules?). I don't think these clunky resolution systems detract from the focus of the game, though.

Then we disagree. They scream "system as afterthought" to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can't agree here; oD&D is primitive, not sloppy. Gygax and Arneson were working out things as they went and it shows. (It's also unclear). You need to wait for AD&D before the subsystems multiplied and the design got sloppy.

"Working out things as they went" and not taking time to integrate them is sloppy as far as I'm concerned, and it showed across the evolution of the system.

 

[pemerton]

"Aimless" is my word in this conversation, and I agree there are better words, but I feel like I should mention that my I wasn't using it to castigate specific design intentions or designs (nor did I mention any specific games) as much as describe a creative process that was particularly unfocused or without defined purpose. Although "aimless" might not be the best word, I'm not sure it's particularly unreasonable there.

I can tell you what I took away from your "aimless" comment (and some of the elaboration/discussion it prompted, eg from @Campbell):

A system is aimless, in this sense, if it adds on elements intended to represent this and that component of the fiction - eg encumbrance rules to represent how laden/burdened characters are; ever-more intricate combat rules to represent the tactics and kinetics of small unit, reasonably close quarters, fighting; weather-generation rules; etc, etc - but it does not talk about, or perhaps even really seem to contemplate, how those elements actually get incorporated into the play of a RPG.

The most tell-tale sign, for me, of this sort of "aimlessness" is that the game doesn't talk about how situations are framed or how stakes are established or how outcomes from one moment of resolution feed into or inform subsequent moments of resolution. The game presents itself as an imagined-state-of-affairs-simulator, but doesn't say anything about how a group of people actually go about establishing what to imagine, or how to make it unfold based on the inputs of the various group members. This is all just assumed as "prior knowledge" that the game participants bring with them (probably from their play of mid-80s style D&D).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would liken early D&D to a carpentered box. The initial design might not have been particularly planned, it was made from offcuts found around the convention centre, some of the measurements were wrong, and it uses three different types of wood, but over time it was lovingly shaped and sanded into something that just fundamentally worked and was sorta beautiful.

I don't think I'd characterize that as being an accurate description of OD&D. I don't think I'd even say it "fundamentally worked" except by the perspective of people who had very limited expectations in system. I won't speak personally of later versions.