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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6680701" data-attributes="member: 996">Maybe by the precise, seeming-intentionally divisive definitions the Forge hammered out.  But, RQ succeeds at being a playable game just fine.  You can use it's resolution systems to play through challenging, interesting scenarios, be they on the scale of single skirmish, or a broad campaign, or solving a mystery, or whatever.  BRP is a fairly straightforward moderately flexible system that way, and it 'balances' by the simple expedient of leaving all choices open to all players (not balanced at all, really, but at least fair, which is sufficient for a playable game).  That's 'gamist' enough for me.  By the same token, you can run RQ as a simulation, in which everyone is quite consciously aware of POW and how much of it their sacrificing to their gods for rune magic and that they only need to participate in a battle until they've hit once to have a chance to get better with that weapon and whatnot - which is no sillier than treating any other RPG as a simulation, even the most 'simulationist' of 'em.  And, you can absolutely use it to build a story in some troupe-style mode, you're just not pushed to do so to avoid dealing with bad mechanics. Aside from encumbrance, those are just stylistic choices.  The DM can stock dungeons or not, create wondering monster tables for an area or not, give players a chance to integrate their characters into the world and craft a story around that or not.  The system doesn't need to force that or block other styles - and, in the vast majority of RPGs, doesn't. Apart from that one, with which I am unfamiliar, none of the above force or block a particular style or 'creative agenda,' either.  When you say that RQ isn't suitable for narrativist play, what you're really saying is that it doesn't force that style, nor block gamist or simulationist play.  It's actually perfectly suitable for all three, like any decent RPG (and, RQ, for it's time, was better than merely decent).There are extreme examples of 'games' that map to the extreme commitment to an agenda that it'd take to find a typical RPG 'unsuitable,' and I wish the folks who were that adamant about it would limit themselves to such games, rather than unduly criticizing perfectly good games that are open to all agendas by virtue of being basically functional RPGs. That's certainly one way of looking at it, and one reason such mechanics needn't be perceived as blocking a reasonable take on the sim agenda.  You could certainly 'try harder' in a game like RQ, you'd just be bucking for a situational modifier, rather than tapping an explicit resource.  The former is more convenient and certain, but that doesn't mean the lack of it stops you.</blockquote>

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