How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

[Micah Sweet]

Like the combat just completely didn't work with spy genre stuff on a very basic level, for an easy example. You couldn't behave remotely like anyone in James Bond or Mission Impossible, or even The Man from UNCLE in combat, you'd just die if you did.

And "rules widgets" is actually a great example supporting my point. You can't just slap "rules widgets" on top of a system designed for one specific thing (to play D&D) and then expect it to work well as a completely different genre. Realistically you need to take away and change as well as add, which these systems are almost never prepared to do to - either at all, or to the necessary degree, depending on the system.

Instead you just get D&D wearing a dinner jacket, but still behaving like D&D!

(Sometimes with genres with tropes fundamentally much closer to D&D things can work out - the SW d20 RPGs for example were not amazing but also not awful.)

Fair enough. I suppose I just make whatever changes I want myself if the game doesn't. I'm so used to doing it by now I treat it as part of running a game.

 

[Reynard]

Like the combat just completely didn't work with spy genre stuff on a very basic level, for an easy example. You couldn't behave remotely like anyone in James Bond or Mission Impossible, or even The Man from UNCLE in combat, you'd just die if you did.

And "rules widgets" is actually a great example supporting my point. You can't just slap "rules widgets" on top of a system designed for one specific thing (to play D&D) and then expect it to work well as a completely different genre. Realistically you need to take away and change as well as add, which these systems are almost never prepared to do to - either at all, or to the necessary degree, depending on the system.

Instead you just get D&D wearing a dinner jacket, but still behaving like D&D!

(Sometimes with genres with tropes fundamentally much closer to D&D things can work out - the SW d20 RPGs for example were not amazing but also not awful.)

I forget: was Spycraft pre-d20 Modern. D20M could do action adventure spies pretty well. I have never encountered a game that actually does realistic espionage well, tho.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I forget: was Spycraft pre-d20 Modern. D20M could do action adventure spies pretty well. I have never encountered a game that actually does realistic espionage well, tho.

Both are 2002. I think Spycraft came out first but I don't think there was a whole lot in it, so both were presumably designed without knowledge of the other (and both had a couple of good ideas the other could have used!).

In my personal experience, d20 Modern didn't do anything "cinematic" well at all despite claiming directly to be designed for that, because it had basically no rules concessions at all in that direction (despite there having been extremely well-designed cinematic games like Feng Shui for several years at that point), and instead, like 3.XE, hard-penalized PCs acting like they were in a movie or just didn't let them do it. So James Bond, Mission Impossible (movies), even stuff like Die Hard was not a good fit for d20 Modern.

However, d20 Modern did at least do "low-octane", non-cinematic, more "procedural-oriented" TV stuff decently. Like, maybe it couldn't do Mission Impossible (movies), but it could kinda sorta just about handle The Man from UNCLE or most of Burn Notice or similar. Which put it ahead of Spycraft imho which couldn't even do that, and at best, tended to devolve into Archer-esque farce.

 

[Umbran]

Tropes are discrete packets of expectations which can either be embraced or subverted. As such they are very gameable.

Unless your game has explicit trope-based mechanics, then you are more playing games with language.

And that is fine if you do that with yourself.

But pretending that someone else's words mean something else because you are playing word games is not appropriate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Both are 2002. I think Spycraft came out first but I don't think there was a whole lot in it, so both were presumably designed without knowledge of the other (and both had a couple of good ideas the other could have used!).

In my personal experience, d20 Modern didn't do anything "cinematic" well at all despite claiming directly to be designed for that, because it had basically no rules concessions at all in that direction (despite there having been extremely well-designed cinematic games like Feng Shui for several years at that point), and instead, like 3.XE, hard-penalized PCs acting like they were in a movie or just didn't let them do it. So James Bond, Mission Impossible (movies), even stuff like Die Hard was not a good fit for d20 Modern.

However, d20 Modern did at least do "low-octane", non-cinematic, more "procedural-oriented" TV stuff decently. Like, maybe it couldn't do Mission Impossible (movies), but it could kinda sorta just about handle The Man from UNCLE or most of Burn Notice or similar. Which put it ahead of Spycraft imho which couldn't even do that, and at best, tended to devolve into Archer-esque farce.

Cinematic isn't really what I'm looking for. I just want the rules widgets for genre material not commonly included in fantasy RPGs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Cinematic isn't really what I'm looking for.

But that's my point. It can't do spy stuff - it's obviously not capable of doing "realistic" spy stuff, that's outside the purview of level-based RPGs entirely, and into GURPS territory or the like (if anything). And it also can't do cinematic spy stuff. So what it is covering exactly lol?

In practice, my experience was that it was basically just D&D but with actual rules (albeit not very good ones) for car chases and a few other things. And as such the only spy media it even resembled was Archer, and not in a good way!

 

[prabe]

But that's my point. It can't do spy stuff - it's obviously not capable of doing "realistic" spy stuff, that's outside the purview of level-based RPGs entirely, and into GURPS territory or the like (if anything). And it also can't do cinematic spy stuff. So what it is covering exactly lol?

In practice, my experience was that it was basically just D&D but with actual rules (albeit not very good ones) for car chases and a few other things. And as such the only spy media it even resembled was Archer, and not in a good way!

It's probably worth pointing out, here, that most of the tropes one would expect in a "Spy TRPG" are probably cinematic in nature, with apologies to Fleming, Bond, Le Carre, et al.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But that's my point. It can't do spy stuff - it's obviously not capable of doing "realistic" spy stuff, that's outside the purview of level-based RPGs entirely, and into GURPS territory or the like (if anything). And it also can't do cinematic spy stuff. So what it is covering exactly lol?

In practice, my experience was that it was basically just D&D but with actual rules (albeit not very good ones) for car chases and a few other things. And as such the only spy media it even resembled was Archer, and not in a good way!

Why is realistic spy stuff "obviously" outside the purview of level-based RPGs? And what cinematic stuff can't it do anyway? I'm seeing a lot of general assumptions based on your preferences (and perhaps your personal experience) being presented as objective truths here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's probably worth pointing out, here, that most of the tropes one would expect in a "Spy TRPG" are probably cinematic in nature, with apologies to Fleming, Bond, Le Carre, et al.

Indeed, and if it's not good at any of them, doesn't give the vibes, just "technically has rules for" them (in the way literally any RPG can technically have rules for literally anything, even if it's inherently terrible at them), I have to wonder what the point is. And I guess I know what the point was - cash in on the d20 craze!

It's kind of sad for us because we were pretty hyped for both Spycraft and d20 Modern (I was super-nuclear-hyped for the latter, even!), and both were disappointing in the end, mostly for similar reasons.

Why is realistic spy stuff "obviously" outside the purview of level-based RPGs?

Because the PCs all start at low level and slowly work their way up, and they're so profoundly incompetent at low levels in most level-based RPGs (certainly all D&D-based ones, albeit 4E had the problem less than others), that it's completely implausible they'd be sent on missions (you could perhaps make it plausible by setting in wartime France and have the PCs as La Resistance or something, but that wasn't the general assumption).

You could in theory make a level-based game which worked with this, but it'd be a weird kind of level-based, I suspect, or high-starting power, narrow range of levels (like only 1-5 or maybe 1-10).

And what cinematic stuff can't it do anyway?

Any kinds of stunts or behaving like a character from movie will just get you killed at low and low-mid levels in those two d20-based games. 3.XE is fundamentally mechanically hostile to that kind of behaviour, including in 3.XE itself, because it has so many specific rules, those rules generally amount to "make the player roll multiple times, if any of the rolls fail, they're screwed" with any kind of dramatic action. Whereas games like Feng Shui actually had rules to make this stuff work, and in 1996 even.

Also, as I noted above, your PC is profoundly incompetent even at stuff they are explicitly trained in at low levels (let alone general spy skills, which they won't have all of!), so quite aside from getting killed, you just fail at stuff constantly, over and over. Low-level badguys also tend to fail at stuff a lot, so even in combat you get some really funny farcical stuff, but you don't get "spy action".

You seem to be under the deep, deep misapprehension that we didn't play these games significantly, that we weren't excited for them. We were excited, and we did play them a lot for a few months trying to get them to work ("Maybe if we just get to higher levels?" etc.). I'm not speaking theoretically (though it's been a long time, obviously, over 20 years).

You've already said you don't care for or about cinematic action, so I'm not expecting you to suddenly turn around on that, and it's fine, but it is a thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Indeed, and if it's not good at any of them, doesn't give the vibes, just "technically has rules for" them (in the way literally any RPG can technically have rules for literally anything, even if it's inherently terrible at them), I have to wonder what the point is. And I guess I know what the point was - cash in on the d20 craze!

It's kind of sad for us because we were pretty hyped for both Spycraft and d20 Modern (I was super-nuclear-hyped for the latter, even!), and both were disappointing in the end, mostly for similar reasons.


Because the PCs all start at low level and slowly work their way up, and they're so profoundly incompetent at low levels in most level-based RPGs (certainly all D&D-based ones, albeit 4E had the problem less than others), that it's completely implausible they'd be sent on missions (you could perhaps make it plausible by setting in wartime France and have the PCs as La Resistance or something, but that wasn't the general assumption).

You could in theory make a level-based game which worked with this, but it'd be a weird kind of level-based, I suspect, or high-starting power, narrow range of levels (like only 1-5 or maybe 1-10).


Any kinds of stunts or behaving like a character from movie will just get you killed at low and low-mid levels in those two d20-based games. 3.XE is fundamentally mechanically hostile to that kind of behaviour, including in 3.XE itself, because it has so many specific rules, those rules generally amount to "make the player roll multiple times, if any of the rolls fail, they're screwed" with any kind of dramatic action. Whereas games like Feng Shui actually had rules to make this stuff work, and in 1996 even.

Also, as I noted above, your PC is profoundly incompetent even at stuff they are explicitly trained in at low levels (let alone general spy skills, which they won't have all of!), so quite aside from getting killed, you just fail at stuff constantly, over and over. Low-level badguys also tend to fail at stuff a lot, so even in combat you get some really funny farcical stuff, but you don't get "spy action".

You seem to be under the deep, deep misapprehension that we didn't play these games significantly, that we weren't excited for them. We were excited, and we did play them a lot for a few months trying to get them to work ("Maybe if we just get to higher levels?" etc.). I'm not speaking theoretically (though it's been a long time, obviously, over 20 years).

You've already said you don't care for or about cinematic action, so I'm not expecting you to suddenly turn around on that, and it's fine, but it is a thing.

Totally fine. What you are saying is that it doesn't work for you and your group, not that it doesn't work period.