What are the rules for?

Thomas Shey · 2026-04-21T02:31:59+0100

I don't think I'm assuming everyone has the same design goals. I'm just assuming its usually a virtue to have something in terms of what effect decisions make in mechanical expression, and that most of the time that's beyond purely narrative ease.

As an example, there are absolutely some genres where pretty much all combat techniques are, if not the same, of approximately equal value; some wuxia settings are like that. So deciding to do that sort of thing there makes sense.

But I think that's a different situation than going in with an ethos that says any technique a player can imagine should work equally well in any setting/genre, and thus the game system core. I find the latter a pretty hard sell.

Micah Sweet · 2026-04-21T03:27:23+0100

soviet said:
You said in the other thread you don't think play is a priority and that RPGs are designed just to be read.

No, I don't think play is necessarily the highest priority. I still like to play when I can, and when I do, simulation and verisimilitude are my priorities.

Fenris-77 · 2026-04-21T06:16:50+0100

A_Carrington said:
There's no reason at all that a character who invests the same amount of resources in wrestling as I do in swordfighting shouldn't be as effective in a fight as I am.

Reach comes to mind. Actual killing ability too. There a reason history isn't full of armies marching forth to wrestle their foes to death.

A_Carrington · 2026-04-21T16:05:15+0100

Micah Sweet said:
I'd prefer it to work a little closer to reality than that.

And you're free to make your dull games repeat garbage that already exists, far away from me.

Fenris-77 said:
Reach comes to mind. Actual killing ability too. There a reason history isn't full of armies marching forth to wrestle their foes to death.

Good thing I don't have to simulate real life, and can do something that doesn't blow major ass instead!

Thomas Shey said:
At which point you don't really have separate attack methods; you have a singleton with a bunch of different coats of paint.

Fortunately, there are many more interesting options available to players than attacking. And more importantly, there are several hundred different boons and drawbacks you can apply to attacks to differentiate them, which enable players to simulate any sort of attack they can imagine, while retaining balance.

Micah Sweet said:
That is wholly untrue in my opinion. Some options are, by the logic of the setting and the reality it simulates, more or less effective than others. That is life, which games often try to simulate to one degree or another. To have options of realistically unequal quality be equal anyway is not fun for me.

Simulationism is trash.

Micah Sweet said:
Because they would logically exist, for a multitude of reasons.

So what?

Micah Sweet said:
Because I prioritize setting logic over game balance and PC specialness.

Embarrassing.

Pedantic said:
So everyone clearly has incompatible design goals in mind here. This is all just churn where arguing about effective implementation of design goals is avoiding arguing about the design goals themselves.

A single attack stat is fine if you don't care about player decision making around attacks. It's bad if you want players to make decisions about different approaches strategically. It could go either way tactically, depending on how the rest of your action system works. A single stat is great if you don't want the player to have to decide between weapons, and very bad if you want them to make decisions upfront that constrain/inform their later combat tactics.

The only thing less useful than Micah reminding us of his incredible well understood perspective is pretending we all have the same commonplaces about what the games are designed for. We don't, and it's more practical to just jump to the goal the mechanic is supposed to achieve, instead of arguing it fails to achieve some goal it was never proposed to answer for.

A single attack stat does not prevent player decision making. You can make different decisions about approaches. You can have different weapons that give the players reasons to choose between them without making some weapons just suck for no reason.

Once again, if you disagree, provide a SPECIFIC EXAMPLE of a decision you think you can't make, and I'll show you why you're wrong.

Umbran · 2026-04-21T16:49:42+0100

A_Carrington said:
And you're free to make your dull games repeat garbage that already exists, far away from me.

Mod note:

Easy-peasy. You need have no fear of exposure to it, since your post here was so incredibly rude, you've earned a ban from the thread.

Be better to people.