I think you raised Call of Cthulhu earlier in the thread and I think there's a case that the Sanity rules represents another 'stake' outside of life/death. Just that one extra mechanic takes CoC to a whole new place which would disappear if the game was simply a 'setting and flavour' rewrite of BRP.
Agreed. That's why I didn't put CoC in my list with RQ and Stormbringer.
I suspect it's also probably part of why CoC has stood out, for all these years, as contrasting so strongly with mainstream fantasy RPGs.
:the game doesn't actually come prefurnished, and there's no one living there when you arrive, and there's rarely enough guidance for how to set up a home except from your parents or some friend who has already been through that struggle. This is why I think a new rule set could use more focus on RPing in a D&D RPG. I get the feeling that some designers either don't understand this at all or are afraid to put this into the rules because it might not be well received universally.
I agree with this. I think we probably have slightly different preferences as to what one might want to see in that sort of discussion, but even a clear explanation of how to use the rules to play a game that isn't my
preferred game would be better than what we currently have - and it might help the designers think more clearly about what sort of play they are trying to support with their rules.
I think Gygax had a reasonable go at this with his advice at the end of his PHB, and his discussion of monsters responding to lair-invasions in his DMG. But these discussions are, in my view, buried in a lot of
other stuff whose importance to the game is probably less, but which seems to get the same degree of prominence. Just to give an example off the top of my head - the DMG devotes about as much space to discussing forms of government as it does to discussing how monsters respond to lair invaders, but the game can proceed very well without anyone having given much thought to whether the country is an absolute monarchy or a military-feudal society or even a feudal society with elements of magocracy. Whereas AD&D won't proceed as smoothly if the GM isn't thinking about how to adjudicate the response of a dungeon to being invaded. And in the PHB, there are some oddities as well - for example, there is no explanation of how some of the more thematically laden sub-classes (eg paladin, assassin, and to a lesser extent monk, druid) are to be brought into the sort of "skilled play" that those final pages make it clear the game is meant to be about.
In 4e, I think more effort has been given than Gygax gave to making the priorities of play clear in the rulebooks. But there are probably more gaps than in Gygax's rulebooks. For example, there is no discussion of how paragon paths and epic destinies - gaining them, exploring them, drawing ramifications from them - is meant to fit into the game. And the core rulebooks incorporate only a very small part of the Worlds and Monsters discussion of the thematic rationale for various story elements, and the relationship between theme and mechanics that is discussed in W&M.
I just picked up the Adventure Burner for Burning Wheel yesterday. I haven't read it all yet, but am making my way through bits and pieces of it. As far as a clear commentary on the game mechanics, their rationale, the way the designers expect them to be used both by GMs and players, and the sort of play experience that might be expected to result, the contrast with D&D couldn't be more marked.
It's easier to prepare a fun combat that is to prepare a fun adventure, at least with modern versions of the game.
So they focus on combat because they can reach more people and it takes the DM less work. Get an xp budget, follow the guidelines and you have a nifty and violent scenario to be entertained for a couple of hours.
OK, but at that point we really
are talking about playing a tactical skirmish game, aren't we?
What dissapoints me a bit is that the core setting for 4e, plus the monsters and the lore that accompanies them and integrates them into that core setting, actually make it
very easy to build a scenario that will not only be exciting but thematically/dramatically/narratively engaging. Worlds and Monsters comes close to providing this sort of guidance. If the material from Worlds and Monsters were combined with the tactical advice in the DMG, and if the monster entries in the MM/MV contained not only ingame flavour but metagame discussion of the Worlds and Monsters variety, then a GM
wouldn't have to find it hard to set up a compelling scenario. As with the tactica/XP budget stuff, there would be guidelines to help out. I really don't think it's that hard.
