Let's Talk About "Intended Playstyle"

[Gorgon Zee]

What is a good example of a game, in your opinion, that had a strong intended playstyle and managed to support it in its overall design?

Alien by Free League leans into the idea of being in a stressful situation. The PC's focus sharpens, but they also are prone to panic states. The mechanics do a good job of reinforcing the idea, feel, and execution of the intended experience.

This is a very interesting example. About half the people find this a very cool mechanic and love it. But another half find that the implementation is a real problem. I was in the second group as I found myself annoyed by the mechanics and doing very non-genre things to avoid auto-failing future actions (such as never being near a team-mate to avoid gaining stress when they fail rolls, not searching a dead body in case I rolled badly and became so stressed that in the next combat I’d be useless). If you don’t learn the system, it can be fun. But once you do, you end up metagaming it or deliberately choosing bad options so you DON’T meta game it. 2e fixes some of this, but for me I suspect it’s a system where seeing how it works makes the fun go away.

I will say that classic D&D has an intended play style of “you are a random collection of zeroes and by killing monsters and gaining loot you will become a random collection of heroes” and it does a great job. Specifically it’s one of the very few systems where very disparate characters can play together and it feels natural, fun and well-supported.

Another system that captures its style well is Night’s Black Agents. Its intended style is “Jason Bourne / John Wick vs. Dracula” and it has a bunch of mechanics that make you really feel like a bad-ass spy hero. It balances mundane spy work with action rules very nicely, and has bonus mechanics (like one where you have a specialty and once a session, if it could possibly work, it works) that allows for cinematic coolness. Plus it has the single best skill in all of RPG history, preparedness. You can use this to ensure you always have the tool you need, and at higher levels can state how you prepared for events; for example, when you realize vampires are invading the safe house, you can spend points and say “I expected this sort of trouble, so I wired white phosphorous grenades on the stairway”. Cue explosion, heroes looking highly competent and general fun.

 

[Reynard]

Another system that captures its style well is Night’s Black Agents. Its intended style is “Jason Bourne / John Wick vs. Dracula” and it has a bunch of mechanics that make you really feel like a bad-ass spy hero. It balances mundane spy work with action rules very nicely, and has bonus mechanics (like one where you have a specialty and once a session, if it could possibly work, it works) that allows for cinematic coolness. Plus it has the single best skill in all of RPG history, preparedness. You can use this to ensure you always have the tool you need, and at higher levels can state how you prepared for events; for example, when you realize vampires are invading the safe house, you can spend points and say “I expected this sort of trouble, so I wired white phosphorous grenades on the stairway”. Cue explosion, heroes looking highly competent and general fun.

Interesting. I find the investigative stuff and conspiramids and such from NBA to be great, but the actual combat system is a slog and is not Jason Bourne or John Wick for me.

 

[payn]

This is a very interesting example. About half the people find this a very cool mechanic and love it. But another half find that the implementation is a real problem. I was in the second group as I found myself annoyed by the mechanics and doing very non-genre things to avoid auto-failing future actions (such as never being near a team-mate to avoid gaining stress when they fail rolls, not searching a dead body in case I rolled badly and became so stressed that in the next combat I’d be useless). If you don’t learn the system, it can be fun. But once you do, you end up metagaming it or deliberately choosing bad options so you DON’T meta game it. 2e fixes some of this, but for me I suspect it’s a system where seeing how it works makes the fun go away.

I will say that classic D&D has an intended play style of “you are a random collection of zeroes and by killing monsters and gaining loot you will become a random collection of heroes” and it does a great job. Specifically it’s one of the very few systems where very disparate characters can play together and it feels natural, fun and well-supported.

See, I tend to find the fun vanishes in D&D because of its generality and lack of any specificity. It does a lot of things, but nothing particularly well. I do think its a good general system for fantasy RPG play if you dont have an intended campaign/genre to lean into. However, Alien I found to be good specifically, though yes it does have diminishing returns on fun. Alien isn't something I want to play in perpetuity. I certainly dont want to run a traditional RPG campaign with it. Though, some folks never tire of the play loop so you really cant account for "fun".

The real test is what type of tool works for you. Some folks are firmly in one camp or the other. Some, like myself, are in the right tool for the job kind of mindset. Sometimes I envy folks that find the right fitting slipper though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't need opinionated games, though that could be fun. But I prefer if a game has a play style it wants to provide and then actually lives up to that, instead of accidentally turning your romance and intrigue story into murderhobo dungeon runs - or the other way around!

That can be very frustrating particularly because you might buy into a game because of the promise on the cover and the blurb, but it turns out to be something else and you spend money and time on a system that doesn't do what you wanted.

That said, it seems there is also value (and success!) for games like D&D that do not actually match any other play-style and themes then D&D, always having something of everything, but never quite going all the way... Maybe sometimes happy compromises are okay?

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't think that too many mainstream games lean so far into doing one thing that they can't do anything else. Even Alien can be used to a lot of different things in the scifi-horror space.

 

[payn]

I don't think that too many mainstream games lean so far into doing one thing that they can't do anything else. Even Alien can be used to a lot of different things in the scifi-horror space.

Im actually repurposing Alien for a Battletech con game I plan to run later this year. Stress piles up as your mech takes damage in combat and you are pushing yourself to the limit to win the day. Action dialed to 11 instead of horror.

 

[Fenris-77]

Im actually repurposing Alien for a Battletech con game I plan to run later this year. Stress piles up as your mech takes damage in combat and you are pushing yourself to the limit to win the day. Action dialed to 11 instead of horror.

This is a great example of my point. Also one of the strengths of the YZE system generally - it's very hackable.

 

[Reynard]

Im actually repurposing Alien for a Battletech con game I plan to run later this year. Stress piles up as your mech takes damage in combat and you are pushing yourself to the limit to win the day. Action dialed to 11 instead of horror.

That sort of repurposing is the YZ engine working as intended: it has a strong framework for general play, and then tools to dial it into a specific genre and/or playstyle. It is what makes it a good house system. As opposed to, say, d20 which was not as good of a house system.

 

[Reynard]

This is a great example of my point. Also one of the strengths of the YZE system generally - it's very hackable.

Ninja'd by @Fenris-77

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't need opinionated games, though that could be fun. But I prefer if a game has a play style it wants to provide and then actually lives up to that, instead of accidentally turning your romance and intrigue story into murderhobo dungeon runs - or the other way around!

That can be very frustrating particularly because you might buy into a game because of the promise on the cover and the blurb, but it turns out to be something else and you spend money and time on a system that doesn't do what you wanted.

That said, it seems there is also value (and success!) for games like D&D that do not actually match any other play-style and themes then D&D, always having something of everything, but never quite going all the way... Maybe sometimes happy compromises are okay?

You can find or create subsystems if you want to take a D&D-style game farther. I do it all the time