Jon Peterson: Does System Matter?

D&D historian Jon Peterson asks the question on his blog as he does a deep dive into how early tabletop RPG enthusiasts wrestled with the same thing.

Based around the concept that 'D&D can do anything, so why learn a new system?', the conversation examines whether the system itself affects the playstyle of those playing it. Some systems are custom-designed to create a certain atmosphere (see Dread's suspenseful Jenga-tower narrative game), and Call of Cthulhu certainly discourages the D&D style of play, despite a d20 version in early 2000s.

Does System Matter?

Dungeons & Dragons started out as a game with such an adaptable and open-ended set of rules that early adopters questioned whether any fur...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[pemerton]

Do you understand the point though that all game systems are good or bad in relation to other systems?

Better and worse are comparatives. That's why I used them, upthread:

I will assert, unequivocally, that Cthulhu Dark is a better RPG system both in general, and for the special case of Mythos RPGing, than CoC. Yet as you note the latter is far more widely played.

I will also assert, but a bit more hesitantly as I know I'm disagreeing with Greg Stafford, that Prince Valiant is a better system both in general, and for the special case of Arthurian/knightly romance RPGing, than Pendragon.

You then posted:

I think part of the problem is how reductive the argument gets.

It is often claimed that X game is better at Y because of Z.

I don't understand how my claim is reductive, but your judgement that D&D would not be good for gritty futuristic sci-fi horror is not.

There is a spectrum between ‘does exactly what you want’ and ‘does nothing of what you want’ and that no roleplaying game does nothing of what you want because they all at least have a player character even if nothing else about the game is right. All we debate is where on the spectrum a particular game system falls.

So the argument against system matters is that every RPG is a RPG? Who do you think hadn't noticed that tautology? How does it have any bearing on judgements of which systems are better or worse than others?

 

[Manbearcat]

Yes, but not all negotiation of fiction is GM Decides or Group Decides. Even these two systems alone are vastly different and produce profoundly different experiences at the table in regards to agency, distribution of authority, expectations of play, and so on.

In this case, its more like taking a taxi vs carpooling with some buddies to get somewhere. Even if its the same vehicle and we're going to the same place, the ride there is going to be a totally different experience!

This is a really good exchange by you and TwoSix. I’m enjoying it. But I figured enough is enough. Time to enlighten you guys.

What you guys are missing is this.

It’s more like eating tacos and shoveling snow.

Everyone likes snow. But no one likes shoveling it.

Everyone likes tacos. But no one likes cleaning up their messy hands.

So shovel tacos.

You get the tacos. You get the nice crunch of the snow. You don’t get messy hands. You get exercise. And everyone is all “holy crap that person has an entire shovel worth of tacos...I want to be that person.” So you get status increase. Someone probably films it and puts it on social media and it goes viral. Now you’ve got tacos and shovels for life and and endorsement package. You invest that in tacos and shovels and the positive feedback loop runs away netting you $47,342,675,345. You use your wealth to influence govt to impose a regime of tacos and shovels and snowball fights on the populace. Everyone is happy and adores you. You ruled the world. Win Con achieved. Start over.

It’s really straight-forward. I’m surprised you guys didn’t think of this yet.

 

[pemerton]

Intelligence would be used for piloting ships and operating computers. You'd gain a bonus to your hit roll with blasters if you were proficient in blasters. I don't think there's any such thing as an archery fighting style in 5e.

Not trying to claim that 5e would be a great system for science-fiction, but the fact that you would need to replace proficiencies referring to medieval stuff with proficiencies referring to sci-fi stuff is obviously not a stumbling block.

According to p 25 of the Basic PDF, one of the choices for a fighter's fighting style is Archery: You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with
ranged weapons.

And now D&D does sci-fi because I can graft on new categories of weapon, new proficiency rules, etc? I think everyone here can write up a simple RPG that will do that. By those lights Classic Traveller can do dungeon investigation because I can add swords and flails to the weapon list and use INT checks for detecting traps.

Is this supposed to be the argument that system doesn't matter, and will have no effect on the play experience?

 

[TheSword]

Better and worse are comparatives. That's why I used them, upthread:



You then posted:


I don't understand how my claim is reductive, but your judgement that D&D would not be good for gritty futuristic sci-fi horror is not.


So the argument against system matters is that every RPG is a RPG? Who do you think hadn't noticed that tautology? How does it have any bearing on judgements of which systems are better or worse than others?

Kinda over this argument. But essentially I’m saying the argument is reductive because it generally picks a few traits identified by the poster and ignores everything else.

 

[TheSword]

According to p 25 of the Basic PDF, one of the choices for a fighter's fighting style is Archery: You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with
ranged weapons.

And now D&D does sci-fi because I can graft on new categories of weapon, new proficiency rules, etc? I think everyone here can write up a simple RPG that will do that. By those lights Classic Traveller can do dungeon investigation because I can add swords and flails to the weapon list and use INT checks for detecting traps.

Is this supposed to be the argument that system doesn't matter, and will have no effect on the play experience?

No. Only that it was possible to run a game, however unsatisfactory, with that system.

 

[Fenris-77]

@pemerton - at what point is Starfinder essentially D&D does sci fi? I feel like you're making a different point, something about using the 5E PHB to play Sci Fi, but I thought I'd ask.

 

[pemerton]

Which is, unsurprisingly, not entirely dissimilar to what happens when you talk to experienced gamers about different systems. Some people come to the gaming table wanting (or at least willing) to decide what sort of story is most-likely to emerge from play, and choose a game they feel is best-suited to that. Some people come to the gaming table wanting (or at least willing) to have the type of story that will emerge from play, emerge from play, and choose a game that is less tightly focused on one type of story. Some people are better than others at keeping multiple systems in their head at the same time. Some people are more likely than others to dive deeply into a single system at a time. All of these are mostly goods, arguably; they're just different goods that probably cannot all live inside the same person or be served by the same games.

But to the extent that all this is true, is it a reason to suppose that system doesn't matter?

 

[pemerton]

If I had to make a cogent argument for the "System doesn't matter" perspective, it would be this.

"The heart of RPGing is based on negotiation between the players as to the fictional state of the characters and their environment. All any system does is codify expectations to remove the need to negotiate certain states in the story. As such, any game can be used for any narrative by simply removing rules that codify those expectations and moving back to negotiation between participants."

I've bolded the bit that seems to me to refute the assertion that system doesn't matter.

 

[TwoSix]

I've bolded the bit that seems to me to refute the assertion that system doesn't matter.

For what it's worth, I agree.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No. Only that it was possible to run a game, however unsatisfactory, with that system.

It is not possible to run a gritty futuristic sci-fi horror game with 5e, though. To do so, you have to make changes to the system or outright ignore the system adhoc. 5e cannot do gritty futuristic sci-fi horror. Some other system you've modified from 5e might do it, to varying degrees of success.