Mechanics Dogma - Requirements for a system

[Storm Gorm]

Or to be more precise, reqirements for a Gormfavoured and Gormflavoured system. I realized that discussing particular systems' strengths and weaknesses is too difficult, because it has some objectivist undertone, and thats far from my position. I accept all (...) other mech-preferences, but that is not inconsistent with my proclaiming mine as the best one. That is, of course, why i chose it. So this is an attempt to capture my system ideal in a few words. There might be some repeating myself, id like you to comment.



1. Mechanics shalt not distract the players from role-playing. Not too heavy mechanics - in fact, the system should be a little boring, and classes are tabu. The mechanics are meant only to be coldly effective, built-in flavour (like the system of classes) functions against their intentions

2. Mechanics shalt not be tight. A system must never try to reflect reality perfectly, for then it will limit the players' imagination to the possibilities of the laws of the system, not the laws of nature.

3. Mechanics shalt encourage imagination ...in the same way as books do compared to television. If a miniature dungeon board game is analagous to television, then role-playing should be analagous to books. The system should be so tranquil and holeful (...) that the players and the GM needs to add a lot. Because in this added world is where role-playing has its stage. Note point 1, the system itself should not try to present too much colour, just an ease for us in presenting such.

4. Mechanics shalt strive for less nuance, to make it easy to make up new rules. Making up new rules, rules that are not covered by your system rulebooks, is vital for a good system. If there is not room for spontanious rules that function satisfactorily, then the mech is flawed, then it tries to be the Mirror of Nature (see 2.). Translated into practical language; the system can not have too much detail, nor too many nuances. E.g. a skill shouldnt have too many numbers between being "weak" and "superb", and HP need not more than a couple of levels, like "hurt, wounded, heavily wounded, incapacitated" or so.

5. Combat is irrelevant. There is no good enough way to combine miniature dungeon board games and role-playing (the way i want to). Both are fun, i admit, but the combo falls between two chairs. Combat should be easy and undetailed, for a large proportion of the rules i feel distract are made to make sense of combat. Which is not needed. Combat can be played the same way as any other element of a story, with as little as no rolls at all. That does not mean that this is how its played best. I would recommend reading an example of an alternative combat resolution in Children of Clay chapter 8.3 and 8.4, and the Story Element Combat suggestion of Fudge to better get my preference.

6. Not to orbit round the axis of challenge vs. ability. That games in which players, with their ability, try to beat the GMs challenges, and where the GM tries for it to be challenging, but not deadly - are poor games with my measure. This is a wrong (according to my dogma) and very boring (according to me) way of playing. It should be the same kind of cooperation between players and GM as there needs to be between a film director and its actors(&co-directors).

7. All the regular stuff. If there's something that i havent covered, then my opinion is probably generic.

 

[Belen]

See...on the other thread I had your back; however, on this one I have to ask...."why are you playing DnD?"

 

[WizarDru]

I'm really having a hard time seeing a game here, beyond a collective version of charades, or a round-robin version of 'let's pretend'.

If I understand correctly, you don't want the rules to involve combat, other than as a descriptive metaphor or paragraph discussion; you don't want the DM to create a scenario or adjudicate, but act as a more senior storyteller/actor; you don't want any specificity in your rules.

I'm a little confused, frankly, as to why you're even concerning yourself with a ruleset at all. The primary necessity of rules in an RPG is to grant conflict resolution, something you specifically are trying to avoid as a function of anything other than the participants agreed cooperative effort.

This sounds more like theater improv with some extra elements added in. This is fine, but it doesn't really lend itself to anything resembling a regimented game, so much as a shared acting environment. The more you describe it, the more it sounds like you're looking for a loose set of adaptable LARP rules, without so much live-action.

 

[herald]

My opinion, it doesn't work for me. And here is why.

1, 2, 3,& 4) Mechanics are locked in place for a reason. As long as people understand that a mechanic means one thing and one thing only. Then they know it's fair.

By having a system where mechanics are few and not well defined, it doesn't give many people a place to go, it actually prevents creativity.

When your playing a game, you need to have a common imaginary space. Some whould call this fluff, the who and the what and the where and the why. But it is also the crunch, the details of how things work. The how is very importaint to most players. If the how is left to be too nebulus, then oft times you will see that people get too locked up inside to roleplay externally.

By creating a game where mechanics are not solid, you actually put more focus on them because you will be constantly re-interpreting them.

5) Combat is a form of conflict. There is not much point of playing a game if conflict is marginalized. If you leave this too open then ther will be little sense of fairness. Could there be less complication in D20 or many other games? Yes. Should I stop playing D20 because of this. No, I feel that the way the rules work suits my imagination.

6) Speaking a a person who gets paid professionally to act; (Both scripted and improvisationally) bad metaphor. I'm assuming that think that actors often have alot of control over what they can do in a production, when very often they have little to no control. The can interpret a script, but the dialog has well been agreed upon long before the actor gets it. In the end, a player should feel that thier words were spoken by their character and it lived or died because of their choices. When a character dies in a show, its has nothing to do with actor.

 

[Desdichado]

I'd say, along those lines, WizarDru, that Storm Gorm's best bet is to pick up one of those extremely rules light games like The Window, Amber Diceless, or even some LARP rules, but without the costumes and the running around outside looking silly.

Also, there's probably be a much better discussion about this on the rpg.net forums rather than here, for that matter. By default, everyone here has at least some connection to D&D which isn't really the kind of system that you're wanting. That doesn't mean there isn't a fairly broad spectrum of tastes within D&D, but at the very least, everyone here has to some extent accepted the paradigm of D&D-style roleplaying; otherwise they wouldn't be hanging around here.

So to come to this board and say you want the opposite experience as D&D provides could be considered trolling. I don't think you do this intentionally, I just think you're at the wrong place. Again, http://www.rpg.net is probably a better home for this discussion, and you're much more likely to get the kinds of responses you want.

 

[silburnl]

I reiterate the point made upthread by BelenUmeria - why are you playing D&D?

Sounds like you should be looking at Heroquest, Unknown Armies, Over the Edge or, as Joshua Dyal suggests, something even more freeform. Rpg.net is a better forum and you should also check out the game design fora at The Forge (www.indi-rpgs.com)

Regards
Luke

 

[WizarDru]

I'd say, along those lines, WizarDru, that Storm Gorm's best bet is to pick up one of those extremely rules light games like The Window, Amber Diceless, or even some LARP rules, but without the costumes and the running around outside looking silly.

My thoughts exactly. Such a system allows for only the lightest of combat resolutions, while providing what Storm Gorm apparently wants, which is primarily character social interaction. It's clear that most of what Storm Gorm is looking for is the complete antithesis of D&D's roots, and to a lesser degree it's current state. And rpg.net is a much better place to get such suggestions.

 

[Nightfall]

I agree with all you just cause common sense tells me so. That and the fact I know that what SG is proposing isn't D&D just some other system and thus is ranting. Ranting is good, but propoganda is not.

 

[Desdichado]

Just to show that I can be a helpful guy, and to hopefully give Storm Gorm what he wants so he can stop trolling the D&D message boards, here's a link to The Window. The system sounds very similar to what he is looking for, and I've been pretty impressed with some of the more elegant solutions in it, although it's not nearly as generic as it claims to be, in my opinion, and in particular it does Supers very poorly. However, it is completely free, and like I said, it does do some genre very well with very few rules. It's really only for a) fairly sophisticated roleplayers who don't need many rules to have a good game, or b) n00bs to RPGs that don't have preconcieved notions (I've actually thought about trying these out on my wife, to be honest with you.)

It suffers because it also contains a lot of that really pretentious "we are superior roleplayers" kind of tripe, especially in the introduction. Then again, from what I've seen here, Storm Gorm, you'll probably eat that right up, though.

http://www.mimgames.com/window/

 

[Dogbrain]

Storm Gorm: This Irish stout is horrible, it doesn't taste a thing like strawberries.

Reality: So? It's not strawberries, it's stout.

Storm Gorm: But the whole POINT of drinking is to taste strawberries. Anybody who gets the point knows that, and this stout is horrible because it doesn't taste like strawberries.

Reality: So, why are you drinking Irish stout? Why not just have a strawberry dacquiri?

Storm Gorm: Because this beer is so horrible. It should taste like strawberries.

Reality: But it's an IRISH STOUT, it's not supposed to taste like strawberries. If you want strawberries, drink a strawberry drink.

Storm Gorm: Obviously, you just can't understand me.