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<blockquote data-quote="PsyzhranV2" data-source="post: 8136344" data-attributes="member: 7015332">Only if you intend to make a generic toolkit right from the word go (FATE Core, Genesys, Savage Worlds, Cortex Prime, etc.).If that isn't what you're doing - if your game comes with a setting attached - then what I've observed of the current design zeitgeist is that people are aiming to make their games as distinctive as possible, focused around a well-defined concept, both in mechanics and in fluff. Rather than trying to make a game in which the players can be anything and do anything, the pathos they're appealing to is &quot;this character and these adventures can only exist in our game.&quot; This holds true even with games that use similar mechanical resolution systems - the huge family of PbtA games comes to mind, and is probably the exemplar of this design approach.This ties into another design philosophy shift:Game creators nowadays, especially smaller studios, aren't designing games with the expectation that their game will be the only game that a particular group ever runs, or that said game system will be used to run campaigns over and over again in succession, or for super long periods of time. One shots and super short campaigns are huge these days.Off the top of my head, I'd guess that designers are anticipating their games being used by an average group maybe for about a year or two at most, before the group moves onto something else, usually of a different genre than what they were playing before. Keeping this in mind, the contemporary designer finds a niche and corners it, and accepts that players who don't fit the niche they're designing for will be better off going elsewhere, and that the industry as a whole will be better off for it. Rising tide lifts all boats.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="PsyzhranV2, post: 8136344, member: 7015332"] Only if you intend to make a generic toolkit right from the word go (FATE Core, Genesys, Savage Worlds, Cortex Prime, etc.). If that isn't what you're doing - if your game comes with a setting attached - then what I've observed of the current design zeitgeist is that people are aiming to make their games as distinctive as possible, focused around a well-defined concept, both in mechanics and in fluff. Rather than trying to make a game in which the players can be anything and do anything, the pathos they're appealing to is "this character and these adventures can only exist in [I]our [/I]game." This holds true even with games that use similar mechanical resolution systems - the huge family of PbtA games comes to mind, and is probably the exemplar of this design approach. This ties into another design philosophy shift: Game creators nowadays, especially smaller studios, aren't designing games with the expectation that their game will be the only game that a particular group ever runs, or that said game system will be used to run campaigns over and over again in succession, or for super long periods of time. One shots and super short campaigns are huge these days. Off the top of my head, I'd guess that designers are anticipating their games being used by an average group maybe for about a year or two at most, before the group moves onto something else, usually of a different genre than what they were playing before. Keeping this in mind, the contemporary designer finds a niche and corners it, and accepts that players who don't fit the niche they're designing for will be better off going elsewhere, and that the industry as a whole will be better off for it. Rising tide lifts all boats. [/QUOTE]

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