Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6011752" data-attributes="member: 4937">There is something else that the example systems (FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, Nobilis, Mouse Guard) have in common - almost no one but the hardest of hard core RPGers have even heard of them, much less play them.  No system like that ever seems to be enduring and to capture the imagination of a large number players and story tellers in the long run.  Maybe that is the result of obscurity, but as much as I love the design of those games from the perspective of a designer I find that's not what I run and play.  And, as much as I like the designs of those games, I'm not sure I would care much to play them especially for a lengthy time.  Partly this is because I think that the rules have glaring problems as well.  Partly this is because I think that there is something inherently incoherent in having a game where you try to pretend that it isn't about 'winning' (at some level).  In RPG's, 'winning' is always inherent to the game.  You can tell who the winners are because they accumulate resources of some sort.  Because almost all RPGs let you accumulate resources, players that make the decision to accumulate resources (as opposed to whatever behavior doesn't allow optimal accumulation of resources) end up with more and more narrative control.  And thus, over time the game always becomes dominated by the optimizer - even if it is a 'story based' game - because it is the optimized character that can grab spot light, determine goals, provide resolution, and so forth.  The less optimized character ends up becoming something other than a protagonist.In the long run, a game that doesn't recognize this doesn't work.  Games that don't deal with potential for character growth to translate into greater narrative control, don't work as long term campaigns.  They may be great for one shots or minicampaigns, but you don't invest 100 or 500 hours into playing them through a single continious story the way you do with the games that supposedly, by being gamist or simulationist and encouraging 'good characters' are not focused on creating a 'good story'.  But I would suggest that for the most part 'good story' is something of a myth here.  Very few if any RPG games are going to be directly novelized.  The sort of story interesting in an RPG isn't necessarily the same sort of story with the same sort of pacing and conflicts that is interesting in a novel, but that doesn't mean that an RPG story is any less artful.   The measure of an RPG story ought to be how much its participants enjoyed it.I would suggest that classic simulationist and gamist style games incorporate their own mechanisms for ensuring characters have flaws.  One of the more obvious and successful mechanics is simply to reward players for taking flaws by providing them with resources that they can use to optimize.  If encouraging flaws is sufficient for the system to help in "creating interesting characters and interesting stories, instead of detracting from it.", then classic gamist and simulationist games are already on top of that.In my experience, system doesn't really matter here.  If the group has as its goal creating a story and creating interesting characters and exploring that 'character' and 'narrative' space, then that is what will happen.  And if they don't (or can't, because of lack of player or narrator skills in those areas), then they won't - regardless of what the system intends.</blockquote>

Verification