Play Something Else

[Celebrim]

Now I need to think how many I've played that are different. I go to Cons so this year I have probably played 15 already

Well, I'm planning on being back at Origins this year and I still hope to hit up GenCon one year. But, while Cons are nice, I still feel that overall the world does not need more systems. The world needs more good games, and that's a very different thing. I think of making new systems as a sort of lonely fun that designers do but now that we have so many open gaming licenses and so many systems to build off of you really aren't doing yourself or the games a favor by making a whole new system. Tweak the ones you've got and build new little minigames to aid your core gameplay and focus on communicating a great game session or extended number of great game sessions.

 

[Reynard]

Well, I'm planning on being back at Origins this year and I still hope to hit up GenCon one year. But, while Cons are nice, I still feel that overall the world does not need more systems. The world needs more good games, and that's a very different thing. I think of making new systems as a sort of lonely fun that designers do but now that we have so many open gaming licenses and so many systems to build off of you really aren't doing yourself or the games a favor by making a whole new system. Tweak the ones you've got and build new little minigames to aid your core gameplay and focus on communicating a great game session or extended number of great game sessions.

I agree that many games could be well served by taking an existing system and adjusting it to fit a particular play loop, such as the way PbtA games have done. But, without designers creating new systems, there would be no PbtA in the first place. Good systems will be adopted and adapted and thrive. Bad or bland systems won't.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

It would be like if most homes only had exactly one board game, and it was always Monopoly.

Ah, memories of the south wing of my dorm in 1987. There was essentially a 24/7 game of monopoly going in the study lounge there all year. North wing had poker instead.

Most RPGs do take significantly more investment of time to really experience than boardgames, though. That tends to lead to sticking with them longer, and coming back to systems you're already familiar with - although obviously how much you do so varies from person to person.

If you want to see people who really pick a system (or at least subject/genre/time period) and stick to it like glue forever, the best examples are usually in the miniatures community. The time, effort and money involved in just prepping to play some of those games can be enormous, and once you've got an force of figures ready to go there's a real temptation to keep using them as much as you can. And then you start to paint "opposition forces" to lend out to get other folks to try your pet game, which also double as more factions to play yourself to keep things fresh longer. And new sculpts come along, and now there's 3D printing giving you more choices than ever.

Most minis gamers IME tend to be easily distracted by new hotness and don't stick like that, but the ones who do can wind up with some impossibly huge armies. It's not really a joke that some people have more (say) Napoleonic Old Guard minis than ever existed historically, even in a system where the figure : head count ratio is one : one.

 

[wicked cool]

Amen!

When I started in the hobby in 1977, there weren’t a lot of choices. AD&D was first, and that was my ONLY for at least a year. Then I moved and got introduced to Traveller and The Fantasy Trip/In the Labyrinth.

Another period of experimentation stagnation followed until Champions was released. And I got Stormbringer soon after. And I didn’t buy or try another RPG until 1990. I started law school in Austin, TX and got into buying some games from a shop’s discount bin- SSI’s Universe was first; others followed.

Shortly after that, I found a game group in my new city. Because of a particular set of circumstances*, we tried dozens and dozens of systems over the next few years, including some playtests. By the time I moved away in 1994, my RPG collection had ballooned to more than 100 games.

And I can absolutely discern a difference in the way I designed & played characters or approached running a game.





* I can explain if asked.

Traveler in the 80’s was fun. I remember playing an aslan? How different is traveler now from that

There’s a few threads like this 1 but I’m sticking with this

COC-problem with coc is it’s a big investment if you want to run a group of 5-7 and it really doesn’t work. The starter adventures and most revolve basically fighting cultists and then hoping to survive the bad. The starter set is tailored for really 2-3 players. There’s also very little world building. How much does a newspaper cost in the 20’s or a hotel. Not in the starter box so it’s search engine time etc

Plus almost every space game stinks when it comes to combat etc. Star Wars by wotc was fun but i constantly had to keep the players on 1 planet as just like starfield the video game its hard to plan for multiple planets

Most of these RPGs are not fully fleshed out rules or the rules are clunky or overly complicated . We are on another version of pathfinder because rules are clunky. Or I go to rpg website and research some kickstarter type game and nobody is talking about here
When I was young I went to my local store store and Star frontiers/gamma world was mixed in like comic book shops of old. That doesn’t exist anymore

 

[TwoSix]

Most RPGs do take significantly more investment of time to really experience than boardgames, though. That tends to lead to sticking with them longer, and coming back to systems you're already familiar with - although obviously how much you do so varies from person to person.

To an extent, sure. I'm generally of the opinion that even a one-shot is a pretty good way to get a feel for the game. And you don't really need more than 3-5 sessions to get an overall sense of what the game offers.

For me personally, if my group meets for 20 sessions a year, I would much rather try out 4 games for 5 sessions each than do 1 game for 20 sessions.

 

[Reynard]

To an extent, sure. I'm generally of the opinion that even a one-shot is a pretty good way to get a feel for the game. And you don't really need more than 3-5 sessions to get an overall sense of what the game offers.

For me personally, if my group meets for 20 sessions a year, I would much rather try out 4 games for 5 sessions each than do 1 game for 20 sessions.

I suffer from GM ADD pretty acutely, so I prefer to plan "limited engagement" campaigns: a rule set I want to try out, a concept I want to explore, and a group of players excited about both. I do this a lot at cons, but that only gives me 3 or 4 sessions worth (but compressed, which is nice). I am going to endeavor to do it more outside of cons this year.

 

[TwoSix]

I suffer from GM ADD pretty acutely, so I prefer to plan "limited engagement" campaigns: a rule set I want to try out, a concept I want to explore, and a group of players excited about both. I do this a lot at cons, but that only gives me 3 or 4 sessions worth (but compressed, which is nice). I am going to endeavor to do it more outside of cons this year.

Sounds like a solid plan. I'm very similar in my DMing style; I generally get the itch to try something else after a dozen sessions or so, but I'll press on if everyone is enjoying it. The max number of sessions I've ever done for a continuous campaign is 26.

It's always puzzling to me when I see people gushing over campaigns that ran for 10 straight years; to me, that would be something to be endured, not celebrated. (Maybe "puzzling" isn't the right word, it's just totally contrary to my own preferences.)

 

[Reynard]

Sounds like a solid plan. I'm very similar in my DMing style; I generally get the itch to try something else after a dozen sessions or so, but I'll press on if everyone is enjoying it. The max number of sessions I've ever done for a continuous campaign is 26.

It's always puzzling to me when I see people gushing over campaigns that ran for 10 straight years; to me, that would be something to be endured, not celebrated. (Maybe "puzzling" isn't the right word, it's just totally contrary to my own preferences.)

I ran a campaign (really 3 linked campaigns) that went for 20 years, but the majority of those years were me travelling 500 miles to the city where everyone else lived and us cramming 36 hours of table time in to a 4 day weekend, 3 or 4 times a year. The foundation was a year of weekly college-era sessions though that would sometime run 12 or more hours, because young.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

It would be like if most homes only had exactly one board game, and it was always Monopoly.

I spent a week in that home one evening.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Totally agree. People are allowed to like what they like, but my feeling is that if you don't play other games from time to time, you are missing out on growth opportunities as a player or GM.

It would be like if most homes only had exactly one board game, and it was always Monopoly. And if you pulled out, say, Scrabble on game night, people would be like "Woah, woah, woah! Where's the dice? Where's the tokens? This game doesn't even have hotels, is it even a board game?!"

I have not played Monopoly since I was a little kid and at a family game my uncle made a deal with me and then went back on the agreement when his turn to honor it came along.