Thomas Shey
Legend
I don't think I'm assuming everyone has the same design goals. I'm just assuming its usually a virtue to have something in terms of what effect decisions make in mechanical expression, and that most of the time that's beyond purely narrative ease.
As an example, there are absolutely some genres where pretty much all combat techniques are, if not the same, of approximately equal value; some wuxia settings are like that. So deciding to do that sort of thing there makes sense.
But I think that's a different situation than going in with an ethos that says any technique a player can imagine should work equally well in any setting/genre, and thus the game system core. I find the latter a pretty hard sell.
As an example, there are absolutely some genres where pretty much all combat techniques are, if not the same, of approximately equal value; some wuxia settings are like that. So deciding to do that sort of thing there makes sense.
But I think that's a different situation than going in with an ethos that says any technique a player can imagine should work equally well in any setting/genre, and thus the game system core. I find the latter a pretty hard sell.
