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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 2790086" data-attributes="member: 13892">Even in d20 communities, I've seen very few people excited about the mechanics in and of themselves, as opposed to what those mechanics facilitate. Many games at the Forge are far more concerned with how to do things, than with getting things done. This is what truly sets apart most Forge games from the commercial mainstream of our hobby (i.e., publishers who sell thousands of products every fiscal quarter). Look at the design of the d20 System, Storytelling System, Basic Roleplaying System, GURPS, etc. All of these systems are unconcerned with 'gimmick' mechanics - very little (if anything) is there just for 'flash value' - it all serves a defined purpose other than to titillate the reader or differentiate the game from the status quo. This even holds true for Palladium. The same can't be said of very many Forge games. Look at Fastlane (I hate to pick on Fastlane, but it's the most obvious recent example of flash over function that I'm familiar with). Why does Fastlane use a roulette wheel to resolve action? The author of the game freely admits that there is no mechanical reason to use a roulette wheel, but that he implemented this choice merely to be different (i.e., he opted for the roulette wheel over a simple, functional, dice mechanic in order to differentiate his game from the staus quo). That kind of design is great if the primary goal of a game is to be different (in that respect, many Forge games can be considered a conceptual success), but a game whose primary goal is to be functional should be more concerned with functional mechanics as opposed to flashy ones (this may be common sense, but it's something that a lot of designers seem to overlook). All of the flash in the world won't trump tried and true function in the grand scheme of things. As a general rule, games that implement gimmicky mechanics simply for the sake of implementing gimmicky mechanics don't appeal to as wide an audience as those games whose mechanics have a reason to exist outside of 'looks cool'. For many Forge-created games, however, the focus isn't on achieving different results, but achieving fairly commonplace results differently (such was the case with Burning Wheel, IMHO). The truth is, however, for most people outside of the Forge roleplaying is about what they can do with a game, not how they can do it.</blockquote>

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