System is everything in most games. System is what translates the artwork and crappy corebook fiction into player experiences (or fails to).
I'll never forget one of my earliest experiences (in Traveller) when my PC, with great dramatic flair, shot an NPC with a weapon that was described as 'equal to a .44 Magnum', and did two points of damage.
Seven rounds later, after shooting the guy six times (and another PC shooting him the same number of times) the NPC fled.
I nearly quit the hobby after that session, and I did give up on Traveller black box. I never forgot it, though.
If the mechanics cannot deliver, the game will fail.
Some setting, Call of Cthulhu being a prime example, are different; in those games the system is less important than the GM's ability to set and maintain a tone.
Having run a bunch of CT back in the day... that on its face feels fishy as hell.
No corebook for CT has an 'equal to a .44 Magnum' pistol. In fact, Neither does Mercenary.
In the editions I've run, only one pistol, a 5mm body pistol, can do 2 points, as it's a 2d6 damage; the two others are 9mm pistols doing 3d6, and there are no damage modifiers.
So, I decided to do some rules archeology.
The CT 1E damage and listed caliber for the 3 pistols: Body Pistol: 3d6-6 5mm; Autopistol 3d6-3 9mm; Revolver 3d6-3 9mm.
The CT 2E LBBs as presented on the CT CD: Body Pistol 3d6 5mm; Autopistol 3d6 9mm; Revolver 3d6 9mm.
CT's Traveller Book: Body Pistol 2d6 5mm; Autopistol 3d6 9mm; Revolver 3d6 9mm.
So... you GM mis-described the weapon and/or made a poor choice in up-rating to reflect the redesignation.
System does indeed matter—obviously, trivially—unless the GM is only pretending to use the system in question and is actually using the game rules as a cover/pretense for running a freeform game (which I hate—just a bit of personal trauma from my earliest days in the hobby, when I played with a DM who ostensibly ran D&D but clearly didn't care to bother with any rules at all).
Not just yours...
That said, I do take issue with "system does matter" as a slogan, because all too often it's a brickbat being swung at GMs who prefer one system. The unspoken assumption behind "system does matter" is that everyone ought to be using different, bespoke systems for different genres of RPG, and if you use GURPS for everything—or, heaven forbid, D&D for everything—you're some sort of heretic. Variety is a fine thing and all, but I nevertheless get sick of the attitude that playing a variety of RPGs is some sort of gamer-geek requirement.
The thing is, the phrase "system matters" is the shortest phrase that holds the semantic connotations that rules influence play."
Is there any evidence at all to suggest a player is conditioned by the first set of rules they learn to play with? Or is that just one game designers opinion as I suspect it is.
Very little valid evidence, but tons of anecdotal support.
It's not just the rules, tho' - if the group was a "barely uses the rules" GM and players who spent most of the session in character voice, it's going to be a different situation from a "D&D as a tactical miniatures game" with players who describe their characters in the 3rd person.
It's not a straightjacket, but it does have lasting effects - both in terms of expectations, and of how relevant rules are to the playstyle. Not always good ones. For example, me... I started with AD&D ... and with a not-quite minis game approach, and dungeons as press-your-luck. I find that less than interesting these days.
Does 5e really teach people that everything can be killed/overcome? Or is that more of a case of adventure design?
[snip]
It seems to me, that 5e can have level appropriate challenges and particularly difficult challenges just like any other system. It’s adventure writers and DMs that decide difficulty level.
5E isn't "everything can be killed" in any way that all prior D&D's aren't.
It is, however, far more forgiving of allowing yourself to stay in combat at low HP totals than all prior D&D editions...
In prior editions, 0 HP is out and dying. In 5E, there's slightly better than 50% odds of survival without intervention or magic. That has lead to some seriously reckless play.
Nobody said people cannot learn new approaches. That’s a straw man. The essay suggests that often they do not, not that they cannot. Of course they can.
I disagree that people are always capable of learning new approaches; it's sad to say, but there are some who are sufficiently inculcated to ways of thinking that they cannot escape their prior experiences' effects, and those experiences blind them to present room for change.
There aren't that many of them, but... there are reasons the aphorisms "a lion cannot change his spots" and "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" have lasted a long time.
Further, as age progresses, the ability to process text slows down, per recent research. (SciShow Psych ep in last 4 days.)
Yes, system matters.
That's why we have different preferences of editions, some of us play 5e, some play 3.x, some play OD&D, some play AD&D 1e, some play everything in between.
However, I will say that there's a reason that D&D has been so widely adapted to other purposes. . .because while it's not the best possible game for every situation, it usually works at least adequately.
That was the whole point behind so many of the d20 games of the early-to-mid 2000's, that it's quicker and easier for gamers to learn and play a game that's much like a game they already know. . .and if I may be quite blunt, a LOT of games out there have been just awful with their rules.
More than once have I bought a game and thought it had an awesome setting, but the included system was unplayable or generally awful. Designing a game system and designing a setting are two completely different skill sets, and there have been games with good rules, games with good settings, but rarely one with both.
A lot of d20 adaptations of games, like Call of Cthulhu, may not have been perfect, but they were pretty good. . .they were pretty good at getting people to pick up games they never would have looked at before, and they were pretty good at adapting the existing system to the setting and making it work better than whatever they'd try to cobble together on their own.
Oh, it is still false. Time learning the first game is already spent, just like dollars spent. It is gone. Staying with the first game will not get you that time back. The question of how much fun you have in the future is not really related to how much time you spent learning a game in the past.
However, getting over the sunk cost fallacy of learning time is part of what I'm talking about - how do you present or structure your game to not elicit the sunk cost fallacy reaction?
In the case of learning a new game, it isn't always a fallacy, tho'.
In any given case, the question is, "Can the old game do the new setting/campaign/path to an acceptable level?" If yes, then the sunk cost isn't a fallacy; one has a net time cost for the new system which is already paid for the old one.
If no, then the sunk cost is irrelevant.
But as general rule, the knowable answer is "maybe." And so the sunk cost still isn't a fallacy, and doesn't collapse to one until it is tried and fails.
Incidentally, cavegirl has made comments that she's sick of the toxicity of the OSR community and her current
Kickstarter ("Dungeon Bitches") runs on PbtA.
The title alone was enough to make me say, "Nope!"
The hover-text blurb reinforced that; not a genre I'm interested in playing. My kids might... but only if they find it from persons other than me. Due to the name, I'm not even going to mention it to my teen nor 20-something.
I really wish people would stop with the intentionally offensive titles and cover art. From where I sit, her work appears just as toxic as several noted OSR authors. Sufficiently so as to not bother looking any deeper.
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