zarionofarabel
Hero
For me it's pretty much all bad, sorry. I'm definitely not a fan of metacurrency being central to gameplay. I don't understand the need of GM metacurrency except for extra dice on rolls, which is a cheesy use of metacurrency IMHO. In the versions I have read (from what I remember) most of the attributes and skills are some kind of ephemeral things like concepts or ideas, which makes what attributes and skills apply in any given situation obtuse and the interpretation of that invites debate. The Dune version, which I read and watched an AP for, has the "sentence of description as bonus" and "scene tags/aspects give bonus" things, which is even more obtuse and invites even more debate. The AP I watched had the participants spend far more time discussing rules and whatnot, as opposed to the PCs actually doing things within the narrative. To watch it was very confusing, I can imagine trying to play it would be extremely frustrating. Which is too bad cause on the tin it sounded awesome, but once I dug into the mechanics it quickly became apparent that the mechanics are a confusing mess. Watching the AP just confirmed my suspicions. I did have a discussion with a "OSR Grognard" that has used the Fallout game and says it's pretty traditional if you ignore the metacurrency. The attributes and skills in Fallout are far more concrete and usable than the ones in Dune though. I also started watching a Star Trek 2d20 AP but immediately after the GM described the opening scene, before the PCs did a single thing within the narrative, the players immediately got into a rules debate so I gave up. I would much rather use something with the YZE system like Twilight 2000, or Bladerunner. YZE seems about as complex, but is much more straightforward and concrete in it's execution. The YZE games I have watched AP for, feature most of the runtime being the PCs actually doing things in the narrative, rather than the players debating mechanics. I want to play a game, not discuss rules.
