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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4802806" data-attributes="member: 80487">Adding rules-heaviness in other areas is probably not very much to the point. Are you PLAYING in those areas, with or without "game systems" for them? Try just doing it first, then see whether your target audience calls for more dice rolls and number crunching.I really don't see anything mechanically special about White Wolf's "Storyteller" games. What stands out is attitude, and a lot of game fiction in the rule books. Attitude matters!Old-style D&D awarded XP chiefly for wealth acquired. If a magic sword can be a treasure, why not a garden? The "problem" is that what you get by gaining levels is more stuff to do with "dungeons" and "dragons" -- funny how it works out that way, eh?If one really has no interest in "killing monsters and taking their stuff", then it's really beside the point to get -- or NOT to get -- more "hit points" and other stuff that has nothing to do with building relationships, falling in love, growing a garden or a business, and so on. It doesn't take a "roll to hit or save" to accomplish goals via role-playing; in an old fashioned dungeon game, you either learn that or you just keep rolling up new characters to replace the casualties of fickle fortune. And the accomplishments can be plenty rewarding in themselves, just as they are in real life.Writing up non-combat skills goes all the way back to Empire of the Petal Throne (1975), in which a character could be a cook, grocer, perfumer, scribe-accountant, artist, author, botanist, dancer, musician, physician, poet, and so on. Traveller (1977) and RuneQuest (1978) dispensed with classes and levels and introduced the ratings and rolls that are pretty synonymous with "skills systems" in RPGs today.Traveller (like the earlier sci-fi game Metamorphosis Alpha) greatly de-emphasizes increasing "stats", although it is possible (with investment in training) to do so. Your character enters play with a skill set; the big question is, "What will you do with it?"In RuneQuest, you tend to get better at doing whatever it is that you do a lot (provided you succeed at it in significant situations, demonstrating that if you've made mistakes then you have in fact learned from them). It's the same whether your adventures involve sword-swinging or customer-charming, burglary or writing, medicine or child-wrangling.But people who are not "gamers" in the RPG sense, even if they are avid players of board games, may be indifferent to -- or even turned off by -- the dice-fetishism that so many of us take for granted. It really is the difference between "a miniatures game" and "playing with dolls", between "an RPG" and "let's pretend".</blockquote>

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