Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8804830" data-attributes="member: 4937">Quite often a disconnect between the designer's intention and what game the rules actually create is at fault.VtM described a game of personal horror, but none of the examples of play in the books provided that experience and the rules themselves did little to force players to do anything but indulge their own egos.  The actual functional game that the players and GMs made out of the rules was a game of Machiavellian politics in which the fact the characters were vampires was not only not a source of horror but played relatively little role.If you want a game that prioritizes style over substance, then that game must give you massive rewards for style so that the players are encouraged to prioritize it.  If the mechanics prioritize pragmatic substance, well then expect the players to do the same.Honestly, I feel this way about the venerable CoC game.  Despite my admiration for it, in practice, if you are playing anything but a one shot the game ceases to capture the feel of CoC.   Typically in my experience the PC's will load for bear, and in a typical CoC game the police represent a bigger problem than the horrors from beyond time and space.  It becomes a game of smuggling weapons past the authorities and not facing down cosmic horrors, and this happens precisely because only by being as well armed as a small army do you have much of a chance.  All your research is not nearly as important as being a crack shot with a high-power rifle, or having a pump action shotgun with a bayonet lug, or a case of grenades.  CoC seems to be recognizing this and moving to settings like Pulp Cthulhu or Delta Green where you have a frame work for being mercenaries and so can focus on actually fighting the horror, but even so this moves away from the tropes of the game and stories.One of the earliest times I encountered this concept was in a Gary Alan Fine's "Shared Fantasy" that documented as social history the early days of RPGs.  He mentions watching sessions of (IIRC) DC Heroes game where session after session was spent on soap opera like melodrama, with the group deliberately avoiding ever getting into combat because the rules for combat were so complex that they made combat no fun for the group.</blockquote>

Verification