Any good examples of TTRPGs with high degree of "Asymmetry" I might have missed?

[happyhermit]

So first off let me explain what I mean by "Asymmetry". I am not saying this is the correct definition and if anyone knows better terms to describe what I am referring to I would appreciate the ideas, but it's the best fitting commonly used term I know.

The particular "Asymmetry" I am referring to is maybe a bit less problematic to explain through other games, the epitome of this might be the recent board game "Captain Sonar" (another example would be "Space Cadets"). In this game individual players are essentially each "playing a different game" by engaging with different mechanics and resource constraints, but they are all working toward the same goal. If you haven't seen a game like this imagine one person on a team playing yahtzee, another playing poker, and the third "Jenga", but they all were interacting in a way that made sense and working together. Contrast this with games that have lessor degree of this flavour of asymmetry such as games that have "variable player powers" such as "Pandemic", or with games that have little to no asymmetry such as checkers or most abstract games.

Now, what I am explicitly NOT talking about is balance, it is harder to balance a symmetrical game than an asymmetrical one, but it's possible to have very poorly balanced games with very little asymmetry and well balanced games with lots. Differing power levels in games is essentially the same thing and not what I am looking for examples of. For example, a high level PC and a low level PC playing together might indeed be very asymmetrical, but that is not what I am looking for.

Hopefully I have explained what I'm looking at enough that the following TTRPG example doesn't cause any issues. The most obvious example for me is D&D, so take 5e and the Wizard vs. the Champion Fighter for an example, at mid-levels. The Wizard has a huge variety of defined abilities written down on their character sheet, they have to choose which abilities (spells) to prepare the day before, they have several resources to manage (spells known, spell slots, concentration, etc.). In contrast the Champion Fighter has almost nothing on their character sheet, aside from HP they have almost no built-in resources to manage. Now once again, all of this is setting balance aside completely, it is entirely possible to make a PC like the Wizard that is under-powered but that is neither here nor there. As an aside I actually like both of these classes a lot, and have had great experiences with the Champion. When I play one I find myself almost never checking the character sheet and improvising a lot of actions, and I have observed similar things in many players, whereas the Wizard spends a lot more time reading.

The most obvious example (to me) then of less asymmetry would be 4e. The Wizard and the Fighter have much more similar resource structures for instance as well as defined abilities or powers on their sheet. If it's not clear, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it just illustrates my point, please don't get hung up on this example and instead try to understand what I am getting at. Maybe this will help, in 4e an example of the type of asymmetry I am looking for could be the "roles" wherein one player could be playing the "control" game and another could be playing the "defender" game, it's just that I am looking for examples in this vein but with for example, widely varying resource structures as well.

Anyways, I know this is a long post, but if anyone does bother to read it I would appreciate any good (or not good) examples of this type of design I missed over the years.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If I understand you correctly, every edition of D&D prior to 4Ed was pretty asymmetrical. Warrior types ad little if any innate magic, casters were all about kewl powerz. And depending on edition & class, the mechanics could be very different indeed: in 3.5Ed, standard Vancian magic shared the stage with warlock invocations, psionic powers, incarnum, shadow powers, and the martial whatsits from Tome of Battle- all of which had different mechanics- as well as minor subsystems like ki powers, spellfire, feats that granted spell-like abilities, and probably a few others.

 

[TwoSix]

A crossover game of World of Darkness, maybe? The most recent games of WoD are all crossover-compatible, as they use the same underlying rules, but the characters would have wildly different abilities and resources to draw on.

 

[happyhermit]

If I understand you correctly, every edition of D&D prior to 4Ed was pretty asymmetrical. Warrior types ad little if any innate magic, casters were all about kewl powerz. And depending on edition & class, the mechanics could be very different indeed: in 3.5Ed, standard Vancian magic shared the stage with warlock invocations, psionic powers, incarnum, shadow powers, and the martial whatsits from Tome of Battle- all of which had different mechanics- as well as minor subsystems like ki powers, spellfire, feats that granted spell-like abilities, and probably a few others.

Ack! Even with that long a post I didn't mention that important thing, I mean non-D&D based games.

I would certainly agree about previous editions of D&D, but I am somewhat familiar with all of them and most OSR and d-20 based games.

 

[happyhermit]

A crossover game of World of Darkness, maybe? The most recent games of WoD are all crossover-compatible, as they use the same underlying rules, but the characters would have wildly different abilities and resources to draw on.

Hmm, I don't remember all that much about WoD and know little about the newer versions. Are the games particularly asymmetrical outside of a "crossover"?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not really. But the asymmetrical nature of the WoD games is IMMEDIATELY obvious if you try mixing and matching. Vampires & Werewolves have some similarities but even those two are different enough to play very differently. Add in Mages, Mummies, Changelings and the like...

GURPS, despite its name, can be asymmetrical across its splatbooks. The magic system in the core rule book is pea-shooter stuff compared to the stuff in the magic sourcebooks. The reason is they use different mathematical assumptions for modeling the spells. So it isn't just that the splat book spells are more powerful, they're actually using different math to make them more powerful.

 

[happyhermit]

Not really. But the asymmetrical nature of the WoD games is IMMEDIATELY obvious if you try mixing and matching. Vampires & Werewolves have some similarities but even those two are different enough to play very differently. Add in Mages, Mummies, Changelings and the like...

GURPS, despite its name, can be asymmetrical across its splatbooks. The magic system in the core rule book is pea-shooter stuff compared to the stuff in the magic sourcebooks. The reason is they use different mathematical assumptions for modeling the spells. So it isn't just that the splat book spells are more powerful, they're actually using different math to make them more powerful.

GURPS is a tough one for me to think about probably mostly because I never really looked at it as a unified game (for a variety of unimportant reasons) and the variable power levels doesn't help. Would you (or anyone familiar with the system) say that a typical game would approach the 5e lvls of this type of asymmetry. For instance, I know the 5e Wizard and Champion work fine together, the Wizard having; prepared spells, spell slots, abilities that require the NPC to save, abilities that roll to hit, etc. Would that sort of thing happen easily in GURPS? Would Chargen likely need to be steered that way to make it happen?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Are you purposely disregarding the different roles of the dungeon master (or whatever it is called in the specific game) and the rest of the players? That is the most extreme example of play asymmetry. The game that the game master is playing is vastly different from that of the other players.

 

[Celebrim]

Ars Magica

D&D never gets highly 'assymetrical', in that even in the non-caster vs. caster case, everyone is playing the same game, loosely described as "Kick the doors down, kill the monsters, and take their stuff." You might have slightly different mechanics for how you kick down doors and kill monsters depending on your class, but there isn't really an expectation you are engaged in a different game. And while the power differences depending on edition can be large, they aren't necessarily as large as a typical late game Jedi vs. Non-Jedi situation in a Star Wars RPG.

In Ars Magica, you essentially have a situation where one player is playing a 'super' and other players are potentially playing a mundane. It would be like playing a Supers RPG where each session, one players super was featured, and the other players were playing the equivalent of Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, or Aunt Mae.

As Dannyalcatraz pointed out above, GURPS and WoD can generate the same sort of scenario if you mix and match splatbooks. You have the same system, but the balance expectations are very different. A psionic for a sci-fi game, a wizard for a fantasy game, a special forces soldier for a modern survival game, and a super for a comic book super hero game use compatible systems, but have wildly different power scales for the same point buy. Similarly, as any MUSH judge can tell you, just because Changling and VtM use the same system, doesn't mean those systems are truly compatible and have the same assumptions.

 

[Celebrim]

Would that sort of thing happen easily in GURPS? Would Chargen likely need to be steered that way to make it happen?

As long as everyone is building characters for the same setting, you'll be perfectly fine albeit with people using widely different game subsystems. But as soon as you mix and match settings, things will not get along well. Not only will you be using widely different game subsystems, but they don't work on the same assumptions. Low level abilities for a magic using wizard are balanced with a guy wielding a dagger, and scales up to a guy who is wearing armor and using a sword and shield. Low level abilities for a psionic are balanced for a guy using a .45 caliber revolver, and quickly scale up to a guy using an assault rifle or a raygun. And how different subsystems interact won't necessarily be specified.