Setting or Mechanic

[Sadrik]

What is more important Setting or Mechanics? Does this change from the perspective of the DM and the Player?

So what adds more to the game? What makes the game a success by your account?

To put this in relation with the recent Mearls articles, and harkening to a simpler system that focuses on ease of play. It is not such an easy thing to choose, many games simply because of the mechanics give a feel to the game, D&D has a feel because of the mechanics. Then again the Setting gives a feel also. The setting can get in the way of the mechanics just as the reverse is true. So what would the impetus of a highly speculated 5e be?

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Voted Mostly a GM: Mechanics. I can make my own settings, and always have. But I've been a player a lot too, not sure which way I'd vote then. It would pretty much depend on how much I like which.

 

[jedavis]

So what adds more to the game? What makes the game a success by your account?

A game system with good mechanics and a poor built-in setting is usually easier to salvage than a game with good built-in setting and poor mechanics. Further, I find that players tend to gloss over setting detail, and while I might enjoy reading it, it does very little for the game as it's played. Ergo good mechanics are more useful to me that good setting data.

 

[Sadrik]

A game system with good mechanics and a poor built-in setting is usually easier to salvage than a game with good built-in setting and poor mechanics. Further, I find that players tend to gloss over setting detail, and while I might enjoy reading it, it does very little for the game as it's played. Ergo good mechanics are more useful to me that good setting data.

Hmm, but I think you make the condition of a good setting to be one with a high volume of fluff and chaff. I don't see it that way. A good setting is one that is easily understood and does not require volumes of books to grasp its basic concepts and what you as the player or DM are trying to accomplish in it.

In game it is important "what" the characters do (setting) and "how" they do it (mechanics). This may be a chicken and the egg sort of scenario.

 

[El Mahdi]

I am mostly a DM, and both are crucial and interdependent.

 

[DragonLancer]

For me, as DM, the setting is the most important element.

 

[DM Howard]

I voted for Player: Setting. For instance I'm currently playing in a Fantasy Craft campaign that has a very interesting setting and even though I really, REALLY don't like Fantasy Craft for various reasons, I enjoy the game because the DM makes the setting come alive and makes it fun.

 

[Stormonu]

A game system with good mechanics and a poor built-in setting is usually easier to salvage than a game with good built-in setting and poor mechanics. .

I feel I must disagree, putting Rifts up as a model of a system with poor mechanics but a fascinating setting. I could simply swap out Palladium system for SW, SAGA, 4E, d20 modern or Alternity with ease.

 

[Jack7]

I'm with El Mahdi. In constructing a game both elements are crucial and interdependent.

But in playing a game, either as DM or player, setting makes the game interesting to me. Or not.

But a good mechanic where the DM can construct his own highly individualized setting/milieu/world is even better.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Setting isn't that important.

I've run d20 games in the modern world, real-world history, and in various parts of my homebrew campaign setting that I make up as I go. I have plenty of setting ideas derived from my non-D&D knowledge, and the rules lend themselves to many more. You could take away every piece of setting material and setting creation advice ever published and just hand me a rulebook and my experience with rpgs would be essentially the same. My setting is uneven in quality but it doesn't matter because I run character-based drama, not exploration.

However, mechanics are tremendously important.

My group's style of play changed dramatically with the introduction of 3e, and my own conceotion of what an rpg is was greatly developed by my interpretations of the basic mechanics. If I had never read 3e, I would never have been a DM. If I had read 4e during my early stages as a gamer, I would never have become involved in rpgs. The flexibility to create a character that does what I want it to and the ability to interpret that character's actions in a way that makes sense are absolutely essential to a good roleplaying experience. Some rules are better at doing these things under certain circumstances. Some are just better period. In any case, the rules are tools that enable players and DMs to create a good game.

D&D is a set of rules, not a setting.