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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9310542" data-attributes="member: 7026617">I thought about this a bit while showering tonight, and I managed to get my thoughts organized on how I feel about it.  At first I had a really extended analogy, but I decided to only take up a large space in my post instead of a huge one.First, this is my view of the subject.  I don't expect everyone to agree with it.  In fact, part of my view is based on the fact some people don't agree with it.To me, game systems tend to have two major components.  I'll call these the "handle" and the "working surface".  These are analogous to the handle and the head on any other tool--the part that allows the manipulation and the part that actually gets the work done.Really dedicated systems have very carefully crafted handles and working surfaces.  If they land proper for you, they will do the specific purposes they serve better than any other tool you could have.  An example I'd give of this is Monsterhearts.But of course there's some limitations intrinsic to this.  It requires that the handle suits you, and the working surface has to be covering the ground you want covered.  There's no assurance this will be the case for everyone in either case.  There's no real reason it should, of course.  That's no criticism of the design, its just a case of not serving all the needs of some users.At the other end of the design space, you have generic systems.  They usually either have a deliberately versatile working surface, multiple attached surfaces, or both.  What they do have, however is a singular handle.  There may be some attachments designed to make the handle a bit more versatile, but its still fundamentally the same handle.  They are unlikely to be able to do everything the dedicated system does--but they'll likely cover some ground that no extent system, dedicated or not already does, and may well cover some better than some dedicated ones do for some users by nature of the handle.  An example I'd give here is The Hero System.In the middle are systems with a particular design.   Like the previous case, they'll probably have a specific handle, but probably not one designed for as broad a use.  They'll also have a head design that's probably got a broad but still kind of specific head, with perhaps some flanges and parts intended for specific sub-purposes.  Its more broad in its function than the dedicated head, but isn't really designed for an extremely specific experience; as such its functionality is broader but probably not as well focused on any  one thing.  Because people will get used to it, they'll probably try and use it for things it really wasn't designed for, and the working surface isn't likely to particularly well serve overall.  Maybe they'll end up producing an adapter for the working surface to adapt it a bit better to other purposes, but at the end there's going to be limits because of the underlaying working area.  But it may seem still worthwhile because of the familiarity of the userbase with the handle.  An example I'd give of this is D&D 5e.There is, of course a spectrum here; there are games that are more dedicated than D&D, but not as much so as something like Monsterhearts; the are generalized systems that are still mostly aimed at, say, a given genre.  But these three cases I think pretty much present the main cases, and at least imply why some people prefer some over others.</blockquote>

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