What do you, personally, need a system to do for you?

[Celebrim]

At a very basic level, it's pretty simple.

Players will repeatedly throw at me doubtful propositions where the outcome isn't obvious or necessarily predictable. I need the system to provide strong guidelines for resolving those propositions in a way that is plausible and supports creation of a story in which the players have agency and their characters feel to them like unique and valuable possessions.

That basic level hides just how much complexity is being demanded of the system.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I need a system to give me the tools I need to run it then get out of the way. A basic mechanic for resolving interactions and character types or archetypes or classes or whatever to behave in that environment. I don't mind multiple systems or subsystems, mostly as examples of ways to do things, but what I didn't need is tons and tons of rules.

An excellent example of the approach I love is Dungeon Crawl Classics, especially given their robust and enthusiastic support of their party publishers. Though I do think they could have provided a bit more in their core book regarding magic items and skills.

 

[aramis erak]

As player or as GM, what aspects or elements of the activity of engaging in a roleplaying game do you, personally, need the system to support or do with mechanics and rules? What parts of play do you NOT need the system to do, or actively do not want the system involved in? What game systems are good examples of what you prefer from that perspective?

Five key things at a flat minimum:
Character Gen which doesn't incentivize inappropriate tropes
A consistent mechanical resolution method; I can accept 2 if one's combat and the other's non-combat.
Mechanics in general supporting the tropes of the setting.
Personal Combat & Injury Mechanics.
Healing rules.

Preferred to add:
Social Conflict
Extended tasks
Character gen enforces setting tropes
Lists of appropriate adventure seeds.
Vehicles and/or Mounts, and their combat uses
Overland Travel
Enough setting fluff to use it.

 

[dbm]

From my perspective, an RPG system provides the game bit of the role-playing game.

As with all games, the system should be understandable and fun to use. The rules should also support the narrative effectively. So, typically that would involve a core mechanic which is used in a pretty consistent fashion and a set of procedures which use that mechanic to support the kind of things we will be doing in our role-playing.

A good system has a range of procedures that will cover the main kind of ‘scenes’ we would have in our game, and a really good system will also let you zoom-in or zoom-out on those scenes depending on how much of a focus we want to give it.

Savage Worlds hits all those marks for me pretty consistently, which is why it is my default system. Even though it is genre agnostic, it is designed to give an ‘action adventure’ feel which is my baseline for all the kinds of games I run. So ‘system matters’ but that can still mean a system can be a great fit without having to be laser-focused on a particular game world or concept.

 

[TiQuinn]

As player or as GM, what aspects or elements of the activity of engaging in a roleplaying game do you, personally, need the system to support or do with mechanics and rules? What parts of play do you NOT need the system to do, or actively do not want the system involved in? What game systems are good examples of what you prefer from that perspective?

Just by way of a very basic example that I think most folks have experience with: do you need the system to help you determine whether a character is able to find and disarm a trap? In its most basic sense, this means some sort of skill or ability check to determine success. As opposed to the player describing where they are looking or how they are searching, and then (if a trap is found) how they will disarm it? (Note that i don't want this thread to be about finding traps, DM-may-I or pixlehunting. This is just an example. Feel free to start that thread if you really want to dive into that subject.)

Another example would be social situations: do you want the system to get involved in convincing NPC X to do Y?

As a GM, I want to know how the designers envisioned the gameplay. If it’s a 1930s Pulp Action TTRPG, I’m going to expect some sort of vehicle and chase system, and want to know how that works, for instance. If it’s a mystery game, I want a good amount of guidance on how the game treats clues, deductions, and especially important, failed rolls. Does the game fail forward? Are adventures structured linearly?

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a difficult question to answer on a couple grounds.

First, "need" is doing some loadbearing in the question. There are a number of things I want a game system to do for me but can live without. For example, I really prefer that a system have a lot of character definition toggles, including many things outside of just attributes and skills, and would rather not be constrained by class structures. But that said, I ran RuneQuest based games for years, and most of those lacked anything but skills and attributes, and was able to play Pathfinder 2e and Shadow of the Demon Lord even though they have (somewhat flexible) class systems.

Second, to some extent it depends on the focus of the game. Chill 3e lacked a lot of support I'd generally want in a game, but it was a game sharply focused on investigative horror. To some extent some of the things I normally would want would have taken up mindspace without serving the game any better.

Generally, I want about three things in a game:

1. The core system to be coherent, pretty easy to cover uncommon ground without playing a lot of guessing games about the right way to do it, and minimize the amount of one-off exception based mechanics (I've heard the counter argument for the latter over the years, and honestly, I don't care; they're look-and-feel arguments and I don't find being coherent in such things harms my look-and-feel so its irrelevant to me).

2. Character generation to be design based as a basic structure (though there's no harm having an archetype based overlay for convenience) and provide the tools to define elements of the character both good and bad outside the basics with actual teeth. This includes physical, mental and social capabilities and problems.

3. Game mechanics that provide some serious mechanical game engagement. Ideally this should cover a lot of ground, but honestly getting decent ones that cover just combat and maybe some other area specifically significant to the game/setting is about all you can get. Ideally it'll support quality teamwork but not demand it, but that's a hard line to thread sometimes.

In the past I'd have used the Hero System for an example here, but its a little busy for my group these days. The game I've read most recently that hits most of the points is Eclipse Phase.