What dead game would you resurrect?

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. Plenty of RPGs have a single "fight" skill, eg Torchbearer; Prince Valiant (mostly); B/X D&D (no weapon proficiency system).

But I don't know of any RPG that treats surgical and medical specialisations, or academic specialisations, with the same sort of detail that plenty of RPGs seem to treat weapons and weapon training.

Of course I'd argue that's just a general tendency for game systems, if they're going to have any detail in a subsystem, to have it in combat primarily. You have to hunt around to find one that goes into as much detail about almost anything as that, even outside the skills involved. You're more likely to find one that collapses combat than expands anything else--and when you do, its usually something combat adjacent like hacking.

 

[pemerton]

I'd argue that's just a general tendency for game systems

And I infer that's because (as a generalisation) RPGers, in their game play, simply don't find technical specialisation as exciting as distinguishing rifles from pistols.

 

[Autumnal]

Since I brought it up: Ringworld was a BRP game, with a broadly familiar set of skills. But any skill could get nested subspecialties. Up to, IIRC, 50%, you just used the base skill. Above that, things branched:

History
-Pre-spaceflight history
—Pre-Anthropocene (1700-1950) history

Planetology
-Atypical planets
—Rogue/isolated planets

Acting
-Live performance
—Method acting

And so on. I think the further skill thresholds were 75% and 90% but am not sure. And there was the option of adding a second specialization at the existing tier rather than tunneling down more.

History
-Pre-spaceflight history
-Second colonization wave

In theory both of those could get subspecialties and on and on, but that would take many skill points indeed.

The rulebook provided a bunch of example branchings but explicitly didn’t even try to be exhaustive, so skill development in play folded in some elements of world building.

These days I prefer not to have discrete skills, folding it all into backgrounds and professions and such, but Ringworld worked very well for the kinds of adventures it did, and David Dunham made great use of it in cyberpunk along with Pendragon personality traits and passions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And I infer that's because (as a generalisation) RPGers, in their game play, simply don't find technical specialisation as exciting as distinguishing rifles from pistols.

I'm just suggesting its broader than that; they don't find distinguishing much of anything outside combat and combat-adjacent things worthwhile (and sometimes not even then).

(The one possible exception is games that are technically focused on something that is not, at least, avowedly, combat: magic, say).

 

[Autumnal]

I agree. Non-combat-oriented play is in practice a separate community threaded through the population of RPG players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

These days I prefer not to have discrete skills, folding it all into backgrounds and professions and such, but Ringworld worked very well for the kinds of adventures it did, and David Dunham made great use of it in cyberpunk along with Pendragon personality traits and passions.

There's a somewhat obscure game called Everyverse that takes kind of a fractal approach to such things; it progressively branches out finer and finer, and one of the (at least theoretical) virtues of the system is that if you didn't need to fine down things all the way you could stop at any branch in campaign definition.

 

[Autumnal]

That sounds cool!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree. Non-combat-oriented play is in practice a separate community threaded through the population of RPG players.

You'll sometimes see more attention given to some things in specific genres--post-apocalypse games that are not just Mad Max wannabee situations will not-infrequently give some attention to community management on some level for example, and ancillary things like construction--but they seem to be the exception.

 

[aramis erak]

Some "ordinary people" modern RPGs that look super cool:

• The Job
• Deathmatch Island
• HOSTILE

Broken Compass is also an ordinary people game that was all the hotness a few years ago.

Classic Traveller - CT's concessions to PCs abnormality are that they're part of the 0.1% who ever leave their homeworld, and don't need to make morale tests. Otherwise, they're joe normal.

The End of the World system not only presumes normal people, but has you build yourself....

 

[aramis erak]

I am actually kind of amazed there hasn't been an American Civil War RPG made yet that I am aware of.

Nor I. But there is a good reason for that: while the killing may be mostly over, the fighting still goes on in society and the courts. Equality yet remains elusive in the US.