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I don't want to put words into your mouth, but the general problem sounds like a perennial one: a lot of stuff is not well-designed.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on AW's mechanics: Game mechanics The system uses the Powered by the Apocalypse engine. It features dice-rolling checks for challenging situations of 2d6 plus a relevant stat. Results of 10+ are successes, while 7 to 9 are partial successes or hard choices, and...

Yes, this. I've tried to convey a similar idea upthread. I don't know Apocalypse Keys other than your posts about it. But drawing on RPGs that I do know, I can say that Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer 2e are not just tools for exploring a particular genre or fictional situation. I...

A few more RPGs that are not narrowly focused on a single thing: *Burning Wheel *Torchbearer 2e *Cortex+ Maybe also 4e D&D. But I would think of the above being "modern" in a way that (say) GURPS, or 3E D&D, are not.

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...

What are the "meta-mechanics" in Apocalypse World?

I'm not sure what you mean by "style". But your first sentence in the second quote seems to identify the theme/goal of GURPS. It expresses a certain way of thinking about the world, and how action within the world produces results.

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 differences...

I'm on the side that thinks that OD&D (and Gygax's AD&D, at least up until the end of the PHB and for good chunks of the DMG) had a clear focus and associated intention: namely, skilled-play dungeon-crawling, with map-and-key as the core method for establishing what scenes the GM presents to the...

I think of "modern" more as pertaining to a RPG's overall design, rather than its mechanics. To me, a game feels "modern" if (i) it is clearly not a wargame or wargame variant, but (ii) it does not rely on unmediated GM curation/decision-making to ensure that the game "goes". The earliest RPG I...

There are other FRPGs that use a "fade away"-style rule. For instance, ere is the Torchbearer 2e rule for an absent player (from the Scholar's Guide, p 25): If your group plays an ongoing game and a player misses a session, they get a little boost to help them catch up when they come back...

Have you been reading my old posts?

I've got the Dragon Archive - I think I know where the CDs are, but all the PDFs are on a hard drive too. But Dragon had the most influence on me in the mid 80s (issues from around about 90 to about 110 or thereabouts). I remember the Gygax article on demi-human level limits; Tables and Tables...

To add a bit to what's been posted: I see Dark Sun as D&D's version of sword-and-planet fantasy. The overall vibe is S&S, but the substantial foregrounding of psionics adds a sci-fi twist. Sorcerer-Kings, their Templar servitors, etc can (in my view) be portrayed as if they just stepped out of...

There can also be more to it than the quality of performance. When watching a film or a theatrical performance, I don't have the opportunity to intervene and diffuse whatever tension might be rising. The performance may generate pathos, or may incline towards bathos, but either way I have to...

Agreed! One technique that I use as GM - and it's hardly revolutionary - is to ask each player how their PC came to be in <the situation>. I'll work with them to help, if useful/necessary. This can help establish a bit more backstory, and also connections between the PCs.

Crooks gather in back rooms, sure. But they're generally already known to one another.

To me, it seems that a lot of RPGers identify resemblances based on features like names, appearances, and the like, rather than by reference to theme, the way events are framed and resolved, etc.

I don't know sci-fi literature well enough to know how many sci-fi stories start with the PCs as mercenary-types who are hired in a starport dive. I don't think I've ever seen it in a sci-fi film, but maybe I've forgotten some example of it. I don't know how important inns are to the...

Keep on the Borderlands is an example of a module where the intended play is pawn stance, and the starting point is low(ish) stakes. But the players are still given the full set-up from the outset: they know that they are at the Keep to defeat the humanoids of the Caves. Acquiring further...