No frills system design

[Kzach]

My mind is often boggled by what I read on these forums. So many people constrict themselves to what a book says in a game that exists in the imagination. I find that simply odd.

Often a system will suffer from many design problems due to bloat and a lot of that bloat can be attributed to fluff. Sure, there are system mechanics attached to it, but at the end of the day, there are only so many ways in which you can do roll dice.

So, I've often wondered about a no-frills system. A lego-like design where you can add whatever fluff you like to a set of system mechanics that is built to be simple, effective, and solid. No classes, no races, you just build the character you want, the way you want it, with the system pieces you have at your disposal.

In a way there have already been systems like this in place but I've never managed to find one that did it well. GURPS comes close but even it suffers from an immense amount of unnecessary bloat. Whether labelled a magical bolt of lightning or an arrow or a gun, the mechanics behind each would be mostly the same (perhaps with just a few different modifiers to give the right feel to each, like 'energy' damage vs. 'physical').

Anyway, I thought I'd see what people thought of such an idea and also see whether it's been done already; I don't really make much effort to look at every system out there so may have missed something brilliant.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Old school Champions. You basically just bought mechanics and it was entirely up to you to figure out what it meant or how it worked. Of course it was a horribly broken game in various ways, but there was basically close to zero fluff attached directly to specific mechanics.

I'm not sure why you consider classes to be right out of a system like this though. There's no reason why a system can't simply say "you can combine X, Y, and Z like so, but not with A, B, or C".

The thing is, systems that are devoid of any kind of fluff or inspiration don't really inspire players and don't really sell. Honestly there are 1000's of people who can design these kinds of mechanics. There are free systems out there that will give you the basics ready-made too. What people want is evocative fluff. Looking at criticisms of 4e vs 3.5 a lot of them also want specific types of mechanics for specific things, or at least mechanics that match closely to specific fluff.

Really, look at GURPS. It has been around for ages and does pretty well, but it has always been mostly not the most popular system or even the 2nd or 3rd most popular. It endures but it never captures enough people's imaginations to surpass more genre-specific systems.

 

[Dausuul]

For my part, I consider that only half a system. WotC tried to move in that direction with 4E; after observing the result, I think it was a bad direction (YMMV of course).

If all I want is a set of abstract game mechanics, I'll play chess. The point of RPG rules is that they hook up to an imaginary game world, and in order to do that, "fluff*" is indispensable--it's the interface between rules and fiction. Making up that interface is at least as much work as making up the rules engine, so I'm not about to pay more than half price for an RPG that doesn't do it.

[size=-2]*Side note: I really, really loathe the dismissive attitude implied by this term.[/size]

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The problem with generic systems is that they are generic systems. And even a generic system has to have a common resolution system or other unifying construct, and that unifying construct is thus automatically not entirely generic.

Or rather, making a passable generic genre system is easy enough if you don't try to cover too much, but making a good universal systems is difficult. So difficult that some folks think, "in practice, impossible." I'm in that camp, even though I enjoy both GURPS and Hero.

The more success you have on the generic genre implementation side, the more work the GM/players will need to fill in the flavor, or the more supplements you will need to do the filling for you.

Now if all you wanted to do, for example, was design a game where you use some modular building blocks to get a rules light Basic D&D-ish style game that supports a particular play style, ignoring all others? That would be doable.

 

[Kzach]

I must say that I've never understood why there is a need for different mechanics for different genres. I've never seen a need for it. I can use 4e D&D for a sci-fi game just as easily as I can for a fantasy medieval game just by changing the fluff and with no additional rules. And it would work just fine. I know this, because I've done this. And I did it with AD&D as well. And other systems. No shoe-horning or forced situations to fit rules, just... well... imagination.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Take it to the extreme. I don't know, maybe consider Toon on one hand and something like heavy duty Rolemaster on the other. (I wanted to say Phoenix Command, but I've never read it.) You could do a fantasy game with Toon or Rolemaster. You can do a sci/fi game with either. You can do (stretching a bit now) a Sherlock Holmes game with either. You could even do a comedy game or a horror game with either. Toon Horror, The Dark Side of Tweety.

But if you think for one minute that Toon Horror plays like Rolemaster Horror or Toon Sci/Fi plays like Spacemaster--then you must not have played one or both of them.

And in the above, I haven't even touched things like Burning Wheel or Fate-based systems or such.

Likewise, just because you can play 1st ed. AD&D sci/fi or 4E D&D sci/fi, it does not follow that the experiences will be identical. And they won't, any more than D&D 1E and 4E are identical. Both D&D, but not identical experiences. Some people value the differences.

I really enjoyed running "D&D" using Fantasy Hero. I enjoyed it so much, that I did it almost exclusively for a decade. I might do it again some time. But it wasn't the same thing as using 1E or 3E or 4E (or Arcana Evolved). Some of the differences in those other options are fun, too.

 

[LostSoul]

You could try looking at the Solar System, which is a more generic, revised form of The Shadow of Yesterday. It's not a "generic" game - it's aimed at a specific style of play - but you are expected to build your own genre and setting with it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I must say that I've never understood why there is a need for different mechanics for different genres. I've never seen a need for it. I can use 4e D&D for a sci-fi game just as easily as I can for a fantasy medieval game just by changing the fluff and with no additional rules. And it would work just fine. I know this, because I've done this. And I did it with AD&D as well. And other systems. No shoe-horning or forced situations to fit rules, just... well... imagination.

Having played a wide variety of systems and genre I don't agree with this. I mean, sure, you can make a sci-fi game based on 4e, but it won't feel like Traveler. You could make a horror game out of it, but it won't feel like Call of Cthulhu. This is NOT just a matter of 'fluff'. The mechanics contribute to the feel of the game.

A CoC character is on a very different power curve and has a very different type of capabilities than a 4e character. You simply can't get the feel of being a feeble ordinary human sniffing around the edges of cosmic mysteries and meddling with forces which can crush you like a bug as easily as look at you using 4e. The 4e mechanics model super heroic to mythic figures capable of arm wrestling gods and coming out on top. Cthulhu is an automatic d100 san loss (instakill, no hit roll, you see it you just 'die'). Insane depraved cultists are ALWAYS a dire threat, you never 'level up' and suddenly cultists are minions and you can get it on Cthulhu. Again, this is mechanics, not fluff.

The stories you tell in one genre are different from the ones you tell in another and the supporting mechanics need to be different as well. No one system will ever cover all the bases, and that's really fundamentally why a GURPS never quite makes it as a big hit in any genre, it does them all, sort of, but will never do most of them well.

 

[RangerWickett]

Have you seen Gamma World?

Melee combat lets you make light or heavy unarmed attacks, light or heavy melee attacks, and light or heavy ranged attacks. Light attacks use Int or Dex and do less damage with higher precision (i.e., attack bonus). Heavy attacks use Str or Con and do more damage with lower precision.

The rules actually tell you, your light melee weapon could be a sword, or a whip, or a radioactive light saber, or your psychic chi given physical form. A heavy ranged weapon could be a machine gun, a magical returning bowling ball, a harpoon, or a cannon.

 

[delericho]

I must say that I've never understood why there is a need for different mechanics for different genres.

It shouldn't matter, and yet somehow it does. I found that with any d20 game, my players tended to always think "D&D in space" or "D&D meets Cthulhu", and play accordingly. They just couldn't get horror in the d20 system, no matter how the rules were changed from D&D.

And yet, as soon as we went to a d% system, the issues just went away.