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

[Thomas Shey]

Misaligned PbtA games have already been mentioned.

Yeah, I responded to a poster (Loverdrive I think) earlier on that; I just wanted to make it clear I wasn't personally qualified to say if it was true or to what degree.

Same is true for FitD games. People don't necessarily understand why the original games work well for that they do. They may misunderstand the underlying principles, design choices made, game mechanics, and how those things contribute to the overall whole. Misunderstanding Moves in PbtA is a particularly egregious issue. They don't necessarily understand how some changes made to the game can have other knock on effects to the game's feel. So for every good non-AW PbtA game out there (e.g., Stonetop, Masks, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, etc.) there are nine half-baked ones. So Sturgeon's Law and all that.

I do think that an increased trend of some contemporaneous games (obviously not all: e.g., OSR, D&D, etc.) has been the authors sometimes saying "please play this game rules as written first before making changes all willy nilly." It's an appeal to understand the game on its own terms. Some people make changes to a game, say that the game played horribly, but when you find out what they changed, it's pretty clear why they had a horrible time. (Those aforementioned knock on effects caused by changes to the game.)

Yeah, while I have a tendency to occasionally put my oar into a game system rules-wise before playing it, I try to see if I understand the purpose of a rule before doing so, and tend to limit it to individual rules liable to go over badly with my group in a rules set I otherwise think will go well, and try to avoid doing it with rules that seem heavily load-bearing.

 

[mamba]

I haven't mentioned anything of the sort.

This (more narrative games, players having more control over the fiction) falls under modern mechanics, doesn't it?

What game would you choose to play for a Lara Croft Tomb Raider style game? And why would you say that system would be preferrable to a game designed specifically to deliver a Tomb Raider like experience?

Not a space I am that familiar with, but Outgunned Adventure seems to be pretty well regarded, so that would be the first one I would look at more closely.

As to why not a Lara Croft game, because I want to be able to do more than just Lara Croft stuff in the Lara Croft universe. The game should also be able to cover Indiana Jones and other things that fall into the same genre or branch out a bit towards James Bond for a few sessions or a bit of supernatural stuff. Basically I do not want to tell the same story over and over again, so if the game only allows me to tell one story, it is not as flexible as I would like it to be.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I guess my problem with this is that it assumes that the only possible intent can be to want to create a particular, narrow experience. I do not think that is a valid assumption at all…

This is what I see as a huge difference between the Forge games of the 2000s and the post-Forge games of the 2010s (I count both Fate and Burning Wheel as Forge-adjacent; they used the Forge as an indy RPG incubator and publisher as it was intended but as games were doing their own things and weren't there so much for the theory).

The Forge games, like My Life With Master, Dread, Polaris, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Wushu Open were all tightly focused on very specific experiences and were basically about that one experience. Post-Forge games learned from that narrow focus how better to focus on wide experiences but are often pretty broad and comprehensive games that foreground elements.

 

[Deadstop]

This (more narrative games, players having more control over the fiction) falls under modern mechanics, doesn't it?

Yes, but hawkeyefan was specifically talking about improvements in presentation, organization, etc., as things that are generally better in newer games, even if they are re-presenting older rules (as with OSE vis-a-vis B/X). He specifically didn’t propose that mechanics had gotten better or worse, just more varied or more or less fashionable at a given time. So your citation of modern mechanics that are not universally accepted as improvements was kind of a non sequitur in context.

 

[SableWyvern]

What game would you choose to play for a Lara Croft Tomb Raider style game? And why would you say that system would be preferrable to a game designed specifically to deliver a Tomb Raider like experience?

The question wasn't directed at me, and I'm not all that well versed in Tomb Raider so I don't have a specific answer to this question ready. However, it is entirely possible that I might choose a game that wasn't designed specifically to offer a Tomb Raider experience, because there is no single "Tomb Raider Experience".

A dedicated Tomb Raider game will be designed to offer the author's idea of the ideal Tomb Raider RPG experience. If that idea closely matches my own, then I'm likely to pick that game up if I want Tomb Raider. However, if that idea doesn't match my own, the dedicated game is offering me little of value, and is potentially working actively against me, especially if it's tightly designed and not easy to modify or has made fundamental assumptions at odds with what I want.

Essentially, the question seems to presuppose that there is some Platonic ideal of a Tomb Raider game and we can all agree what it is. However, the reality is that no one out there, other than me, is ever designing any game with the intent that it is needs to specially deliver the experience I want. To me, every game is a took kit, and if it's built to function as a toolkit, that is likely to make it easier for me to use it as one.

Going back to X-Com, I looked at numerous games that actively supported alien invasion scenarios and base building when trying to decide what system I would use. I ultimately discarded them as options because they didn't adequatley support my own vision for an X-Com RPG.

If I ever get around to running A|State again, I won't use the 1st edition rules because they're just not that good (the author's skill was in the world-building, not the system building), but I also won't use the FitD 2nd edition rules because the narrow focus and style chosen is based on a fundamentally different style of game to what I'm looking to do with the setting next.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

This is what I see as a huge difference between the Forge games of the 2000s and the post-Forge games of the 2010s (I count both Fate and Burning Wheel as Forge-adjacent; they used the Forge as an indy RPG incubator and publisher as it was intended but as games were doing their own things and weren't there so much for the theory).

The Forge games, like My Life With Master, Dread, Polaris, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Wushu Open were all tightly focused on very specific experiences and were basically about that one experience. Post-Forge games learned from that narrow focus how better to focus on wide experiences but are often pretty broad and comprehensive games that foreground elements.

I feel like this is a little reductive or suggests that the Forge was more of a monolith than it was. For BW, by the time of BW Revised, the game is no longer Forge-adjacent -- it's heavily influenced by the Forge and clearly in dialogue with the folks there. They're all over the game and its credits. Also, this would seem to discount Universalis, which is clearly a Forge game, even if it's very early in the Forge's timeline, and is not focused on one specific experience.

 

[SableWyvern]

Speaking generally, the longer this thread goes on, the more I feel that the most distinctive defining feature of modern RPG design philosophy is the idea that the mechanics should drive play (as opposed to supporting or enabling play, such as through simulating a world).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Speaking generally, the longer this thread goes on, the more I feel that the most distinctive defining feature of modern RPG design philosophy is the idea that the mechanics should drive play (as opposed to supporting or enabling play, such as through simulating a world).

I agree. Since I strongly disagree with that idea, it really explains why I don't care for most modern mechanics. Thanks!

 

[Neonchameleon]

As to why not a Lara Croft game, because I want to be able to do more than just Lara Croft stuff in the Lara Croft universe. The game should also be able to cover Indiana Jones and other things that fall into the same genre or branch out a bit towards James Bond for a few sessions or a bit of supernatural stuff. Basically I do not want to tell the same story over and over again, so if the game only allows me to tell one story, it is not as flexible as I would like it to be.

I haven't played the modern Tomb Raider games so I'm going to switch to James Bond as I know that subject better. And if a James Bond game can only do James Bond things then so what? James Bond things include everything from stealth to seduction to sledding down a mountain on a cello case while being shot at. And there is more than one story even if there are only about six.

The key thing about a James Bond game is that when you do things you need to have James Bond like consequences. If you tried to sled on a cello case in a James Bond game it's going to go very differently from in a Cohen Brothers movie.

 

[thefutilist]

Speaking generally, the longer this thread goes on, the more I feel that the most distinctive defining feature of modern RPG design philosophy is the idea that the mechanics should drive play (as opposed to supporting or enabling play, such as through simulating a world).

Here's an open question to anyone.

Say I get sick of Apocalypse World's nonsense. I decide that the failure mechanics don't allow me to disclaim decision making enough. You know what does though? GURPS.


So I decide to run an Apocalypse World game in GURPS. I create templates for the various classes and port over what I consider the essential GM tech (page 86 in 2e for anyone interested). Stakes, NPC decisions, fronts.

GURPS 4E is a ruleset that doesn't want you to use it. Really it's the GM section that's holding it back though. If I decide not to fudge the dice or use fiat to save the PC's...

Have I now made GURPS into a modern game?

It seems a bit silly to say yes but if I say no, then what is a modern game?