[NOTE: This is another in my ongoing musing threads meant to help me think about my Bucket List RPG. The purpose of the discussion is mainly to see how other folks feel about the subject an dhow it impacts their play and design choices.]
I feel like "Intended Playstyle" has fallen out of the lexicon recently, but it used to be all the rage. It is probably not even a particularly accurate phrase, but it is close enough to at least kick off a discussion, one hopes. The more recent term is "opinionated" I think.
In any case, here is what I mean: some games are intended to be toolkits. You are supposed to use them to build the game you and your group want to play. Sometimes these are "generic" systems, but other times they are more focused games that still allow you to "do whatever" with. But other games really want you to play that game in a certain way. The game is built -- mechanically, aesthetically, and even commercially -- to make you play it a certain way. And some games claim to want you to play it a certain way, and then stop you from doing so with its own rules and mechanics. I'm thinking how Vampire: The Masquerade whispered it wanted you to play Interview With The Vampire, but gave you the tools to play Blade instead. There are, of course, other examples, and well as counter-arguments to the V:tM one.
It seems common for newer games to tell you exactly what you are meant to do with them: not just how they are to be played, but what sorts of stories the game allows you to play. You can't really use Blades in the Dark for regular fantasy adventures in Duskvol without deeply hacking the system. Blades' intended playstyle is baked in. Compare that to Shadowdark, which is very opinionated in its presentation but is trivially easy to play with a heroic tone and outside the dungeon. As one look at the Shadowdark Compatible section on DTRPG will show, you can use SD for nearly anything. Its intended playstyle is really just a vibe.
So when thinking about making a game, I have to think about whether I want to build something with a tight focus and a strongly enforced intended playstyle, or if I want to make something malleable and unconstraining. I think strong foci give modern games real identities, but by extensions inevitably limit their reach.
What do you think about the topic of "intended playstyle"? Or, "opinionated" games, if you will? What is a good example of a game, in your opinion, that had a strong intended playstyle and managed to support it in its overall design? What ones tried and failed? Is it a worthy design goal? Why, or why not?
. I want to create the physical/supernatural setting of Star Wars and everything in it through (at least roughly) simulationist mechanics, and I have several games available that accomplish that goal, to different degrees and in different ways. What do you want out of a Star Wars RPG?
