Game Mechanics & Lore

[Ruin Explorer]

It's generic playbooks seemed to lend it to whatever you wanted to shape it in supernatural episodic TV sphere.

I mean, there's kind of a paucity of "generic playbooks", looking at the consolidated playbooks. That's my issue looking at those.

My understanding is that it was meant to be Supernatural, specifically, originally, but is frequently stated to encompass Buffy/Angel (and from S5 of Supernatural onwards, the difference between Supernatural and Angel/Buffy is not huge), and like, if you don't even have a Buffy/Slayer-type class (not exactly an uncommon trope in this kind of fantasy), but are having 5-6 different but overlapping spellcasters and 3 different detectives and 3 different holy warriors, and bunch of near-one-off-character playbooks (most of which are also covered by The Monstrous) that seems like, extremely weird to me.

 

[payn]

I mean, there's kind of a paucity of "generic playbooks", looking at the consolidated playbooks. That's my issue looking at those.

My understanding is that it was meant to be Supernatural, specifically, originally, but is frequently stated to encompass Buffy/Angel (and from S5 of Supernatural onwards, the difference between Supernatural and Angel/Buffy is not huge), and like, if you don't even have a Buffy/Slayer-type class (not exactly an uncommon trope in this kind of fantasy), but are having 5-6 different but overlapping spellcasters and 3 different detectives and 3 different holy warriors, and bunch of near-one-off-character playbooks (most of which are also covered by The Monstrous) that seems like, extremely weird to me.

Gotcha. I had no idea exactly what it was trying to do so was ok making it up as I went along. I wasnt really a Supernatural or Buffy fan. So, my take on it isnt looking for those specifics. Though, ive always got strong serial numbers filed off feeling from it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I had no idea exactly what it was trying to do so was ok making it up as I went along.

Makes sense - you said your game ended up as X-Files meets Fargo and honestly that seems like a pretty natural direction it would go from the playbooks!

Though, ive always got strong serial numbers filed off feeling from it.

Yeah this is one of the rare cases where I wish it was more "serial numbers filed off" and less "original"/focused on the edge cases. I should probably buy the actual PDF and see if they present like the "normal" playbooks (which I'd expect to be The Expert, The Monstrous, The Mundane, and one of the spellcasters, probably The Hex, and maybe The Searcher and The Spooky) and "the rest" or whether they treat them all as much of a muchness (which would suck imho).

 

[dragoner]

Seeing quite a few posts about artwork matching mood and tone, game mechanics matching mood and tone, and even verbiage matching mood and tone - it got me thinking. I know it's an age-old debate. It is basically the equivalent of do lyrics matter in a song. But I am curious to see what everyone on here thinks: Do the mechanics of a game need to support the lore? Lore, of course, being the primary driver of mood and tone.

I think of D&D, and how they often try to let it fit into the narrative of whatever is popular in the cultural zeitgeist. Incorporating things like Rick and Morty, Acquisitions Inc, Strixhaven, etc. all leave a mark on mood and tone. Yet, despite always fitting into the culture, the game mechanics haven't changed a whole bunch for decades. They seem to have found a sweet spot. So, when you look at D&D, it seems to not really matter.

Then I think of a game like The One Ring or Vampire the Masquerade, and my thoughts shift. These games definitely seem to create mood and tone through game mechanics. Even older games like MERP and Earthdawn seemed to steer in that direction.

So, I guess I am a fence rider on this one. I am interested in where others stand.

Yes, definitely on the fence as far as the game, I mean average person vs the universe is a very different style of game than heroic fantasy. I guess in a way, the lack of mechanics to make a character specicial in the average person style game, the mechanics are reinforcing the theme. So that is interesting.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Ah. I have all AEG and WotC L5R books in physical form. Collected them as they were released, and stopped when FF bought the IP.

My library of printed RPG works, which at one time was vast, is gone to the Great Landfill, but of the dozen or so books remain, City of Lies still hangs on. That is what got me interested in L5R in the first place; I bought it after seeing the ad for in in White Dwarf.

But now I only game online, so print works are largely useless to me.

 

[Theory of Games]

I thought this recent article by Monte Cook was relevant

Using Rules to Define Genre

Last time, I covered some changes we might make on how to track damage a player character sustains.

montecook.substack.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For example, there are like 5 (arguably 6) different "spellcasters" with huge conceptual and thematic overlap. There are essentially 3 "detectives" who also have big conceptual and thematic overlap. There are 3 "warrior angels"/"holy warriors", similarly (not even counting the Chosen).

Yet there's no Buffy-type at all! Instead their "Chosen" is all about a special magic weapon which is kind of strange, because whilst "Chosen"-themed characters are not uncommon in modern supernatural stuff, they almost never start with a special magic weapon (albeit they often acquire one later in their career - even Buffy does but in like, what her last season?).

And basic, common concepts which you might to see multiple different ones of are all jammed into "The Monstrous" and "the Expert" meaning like, potentially you might have as many as three PCs with the same playbook and similar mechanics. I could easily see a group where every PC mapped to The Expert or The Monstrous.

Monster of the Week is explicitly about a later-season monster of the week procedural. During character creation, everyone's playbooks references previous adventures where everyone met up and gained experience and traits, etc.

So this would be a group with a Chosen (or two or three), an Expert, a Professional (justice for Riley!), maybe two Monstrous characters (which is not suggested by the designer, but the Monstrous has a pretty big range and you can model both Angel and Oz with the playbook), the Mundane and a Spell-Slinger, all of whom would have come into their full power and all of whom, based on the rules of the game, are slowly ticking down until they run out of luck and retire or die.

It's not a game that works as well if everyone goes off into their own silo and comes up with their own character concepts and then tries to figure it out at the table. Not only is there mechanical overlap, but the story will keep getting wildly jerked back and forth, rather than staying in a thematic range that makes sense for everyone.

I guess what I'm saying is I feel this looks (superficially) like an RPG (again just based on the playbooks) desperate in need of a new, better-thought-through edition. Perhaps not surprising as I believe it was last updated in 2015.

Yeah, it does and it seems very much like the designer has moved on emotionally. That said, Evil Hat just put out two new books for it, and it seems like they want to make this a franchise game, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bigger update coming in the future. (They did update it since 2015, but mostly to incorporate some stuff from their first sourcebook.)

I'm guessing there are non-official playbooks out there that take a shot at opening up that space more. Like if you're going to have multiple overlapping playbooks it should be for core concepts/tropes to give players different takes, rather than for weird ones.

Yep, lots of unofficial playbooks of wildly varying quality and yes to some of the official ones being weird ones. The updated corebook now has a carnival-based supernatural hunter which feels extremely niche to me, although maybe I'm just not watching the right TV shows.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Was Monster of the Week supposed to be Buffy? It ended up x-files meets Fargo at my table. It's generic playbooks seemed to lend it to whatever you wanted to shape it in supernatural episodic TV sphere.

It started off as an unofficial Supernatural RPG. Once you know that, those playbooks jump right out at you.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, there's kind of a paucity of "generic playbooks", looking at the consolidated playbooks. That's my issue looking at those.

My understanding is that it was meant to be Supernatural, specifically, originally, but is frequently stated to encompass Buffy/Angel (and from S5 of Supernatural onwards, the difference between Supernatural and Angel/Buffy is not huge), and like, if you don't even have a Buffy/Slayer-type class (not exactly an uncommon trope in this kind of fantasy), but are having 5-6 different but overlapping spellcasters and 3 different detectives and 3 different holy warriors, and bunch of near-one-off-character playbooks (most of which are also covered by The Monstrous) that seems like, extremely weird to me.

The detectives and spellcasters thing seems to be that they started with a very specific type of spellcaster (a D&D sorcerer, essentially) and then people wanted different archetypes and then made very specific playbooks for that, which then didn't cover other characters.

The detective thing followed a similar trajectory, I think. ("Hey, why can't I play Kolchak?" someone's dad asked.)

If they were starting from scratch, I agree they should have gone with broader archetypes that could have been customized by the choices in each playbook. I think there's probably room in a redone Professional book to cover Mulder, the Men in Black, Agent Cooper and Riley, for instance.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah this is one of the rare cases where I wish it was more "serial numbers filed off" and less "original"/focused on the edge cases. I should probably buy the actual PDF and see if they present like the "normal" playbooks (which I'd expect to be The Expert, The Monstrous, The Mundane, and one of the spellcasters, probably The Hex, and maybe The Searcher and The Spooky) and "the rest" or whether they treat them all as much of a muchness (which would suck imho).

I don't know if they still do, but the Evil Hat website used to have all the core book playbooks available to download for free, as they're essentially player character sheets and players might reasonably need a bunch of them but not want to buy the hardcover.