I've been playing table top RPG's for about three decades now. Over the years I have probably purchased, playtested and poked around at more system than the average devoted RPG fan by about a factor of two.
Remember Teenagers from Outer Space? Metamorphisis Alpha? Gamma World? Traveller? Traveller 2100? Kult? Nephilim? Chill? The Fantasy Trip? Traveller "The New Era"? Serenity the RPG? Battlestar Galactica the RPG? Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk 2010? That Teen Cyberpunk game? These are only a small sampling and the list kind of goes on and on and on...
My interest in table top RPG systems and wanting to see how the imaginations and minds of other creative GM's worked, how they approached the notion of running a cool game in a new way always pulled me into investigating each new game system as it hit the market. Not always to the delight of my local crew of players who would roll their eyes at me as our horror campaign transitioned from Chill to the Hero System to a bastardization of the White Wolf rules mixed with elements from Nephilim to Kult...poor bastards.
What's the point of this rambling? Well...I think I can say that, at least for me, I now have a pretty good grasp of what makes a great table top roleplaying system. I am now in the process of writing my very own. I think that ultimately every die hard table top RPG game master will walk down this path sooner or later. I am taking a little break from that to share my point of view and why I am approaching the creation of my own game system the way that I am...
Dice / Physical Playing Pieces
I think the dice you use in a table top RPG and the physical playing pieces necessary for play are part of what makes a table top roleplaying game get its "Game-y-ness" for lack of a better made up word. From my perspective a certain amount of game-y-ness is good. The funny shaped dice of good old Dungeons and Dragons along with the little metal figures and later the cool battle maps and dungeon tiles, etc...all contributed to giving the game a certain fun a predictable look and feel.
I think the dice and playing pieces in a table top RPG even went so far as to contribute to the element of suspension of disbelief that can be an important element to certain styles of RPG player. "I stab him with my dagger..." Only feels "right" in the context of a D&D game by reaching for that sharp and pointy four sided die.
Now I admit there is a certain creative elegance to a minimalist approach. I certainly tend to be more of a minimalist when it comes to rules and game mechanics than a traditionalist. More on that in a moment. For my part though I know I have more fun at a game where a collection of dice and tokens and various "board game" style paraphenalia litter the table surface like some game of Monopoly gone horribly wrong.
Keep it Simple
The bottom line for me as both a player and as the GM stuck building the adventures and monster encounters and treasure and so forth is "keep it simple". From my perspective Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition) almost had this exactly right in that a four or five hour investment of time by the DM would pay off with a pretty good amount of fairly detailed adventure / play time for the group as a whole.
Combat was fun but also progressed relatively quickly in the old version of the game. A group could plow through a half dozen encounters during the course of a game without much trouble. I like this style of play a LOT both as a player and as a DM. The more modern versions of the game and more modern table top RPG's in general have over all greatly increased the amount of time necessary for combats and even more so increased the time necessar for the poor DM to write the adventure up in the first place.
Where D&D turned left when it should have turned right is in utterly botching the concept of skills and character abilities. These were made needlessly complex in my view and in many cases a character might have a core ability related to their class...take thief skills as a whole...and not be able to succeed at any single one of these core class abilities until many levels of advancement down the road.
To my mind this is bad game design. A character class needs to be fun to play and that means reasonably useful and successful right out of the box. The other cutting edge of this sword is that at later levels the D&D and most other game models that followed made high level characters godlike in that rolling to see if they succeeded at something was largely pointless. To me this should -never- happen in a game system. Rolling the dice and pushing the tokens around to make things happen should -always- retain a certain element of risk otherwise the game looses its edge very quickly...
Goals...
So. Some of my goals in working on my own system have been greatly influenced by my own personal likes and dislikes about various table top RPG's. Some of these goals include making a game where the rules are customized to support the genre being played. I feel that generic rules systems while flexible and cool in a certain way often become exactly what they set out to be...generic. Generic to me = boring. Its like eating the unseasoned food at the nursing home. Sure its food. Sure it won't make my ulcer scream at me later in the evening but for my time and money I'd much rather eat a plate of awesome Thai or Indian food.
Another goal is to support the efforts of the GM in making the adventures detailed, fun and easy to put together. One major goal I've had in this project is allowing a GM to invest about two hours of time to sit down and put together a four to five hour game session for his or her players.
These days I have kids. I know -I- as a DM have a whole lot less time to sit around writing up adventures. The more straight forward and plug it all in and go the thing is the better. This means a system where there is no figuring out xp values for encounters or treasure. An easy way to balance encounters to insure that they remain a challenge but don't become a slaughterhouse for the players unless the DM deliberately makes them that way.
Well that's enough blogging / ranting / blathering for one evening.
Have a good night folks and you gamers roll some funny shaped dice for me!
Ed
Remember Teenagers from Outer Space? Metamorphisis Alpha? Gamma World? Traveller? Traveller 2100? Kult? Nephilim? Chill? The Fantasy Trip? Traveller "The New Era"? Serenity the RPG? Battlestar Galactica the RPG? Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk 2010? That Teen Cyberpunk game? These are only a small sampling and the list kind of goes on and on and on...
My interest in table top RPG systems and wanting to see how the imaginations and minds of other creative GM's worked, how they approached the notion of running a cool game in a new way always pulled me into investigating each new game system as it hit the market. Not always to the delight of my local crew of players who would roll their eyes at me as our horror campaign transitioned from Chill to the Hero System to a bastardization of the White Wolf rules mixed with elements from Nephilim to Kult...poor bastards.
What's the point of this rambling? Well...I think I can say that, at least for me, I now have a pretty good grasp of what makes a great table top roleplaying system. I am now in the process of writing my very own. I think that ultimately every die hard table top RPG game master will walk down this path sooner or later. I am taking a little break from that to share my point of view and why I am approaching the creation of my own game system the way that I am...
Dice / Physical Playing Pieces
I think the dice you use in a table top RPG and the physical playing pieces necessary for play are part of what makes a table top roleplaying game get its "Game-y-ness" for lack of a better made up word. From my perspective a certain amount of game-y-ness is good. The funny shaped dice of good old Dungeons and Dragons along with the little metal figures and later the cool battle maps and dungeon tiles, etc...all contributed to giving the game a certain fun a predictable look and feel.
I think the dice and playing pieces in a table top RPG even went so far as to contribute to the element of suspension of disbelief that can be an important element to certain styles of RPG player. "I stab him with my dagger..." Only feels "right" in the context of a D&D game by reaching for that sharp and pointy four sided die.
Now I admit there is a certain creative elegance to a minimalist approach. I certainly tend to be more of a minimalist when it comes to rules and game mechanics than a traditionalist. More on that in a moment. For my part though I know I have more fun at a game where a collection of dice and tokens and various "board game" style paraphenalia litter the table surface like some game of Monopoly gone horribly wrong.
Keep it Simple
The bottom line for me as both a player and as the GM stuck building the adventures and monster encounters and treasure and so forth is "keep it simple". From my perspective Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition) almost had this exactly right in that a four or five hour investment of time by the DM would pay off with a pretty good amount of fairly detailed adventure / play time for the group as a whole.
Combat was fun but also progressed relatively quickly in the old version of the game. A group could plow through a half dozen encounters during the course of a game without much trouble. I like this style of play a LOT both as a player and as a DM. The more modern versions of the game and more modern table top RPG's in general have over all greatly increased the amount of time necessary for combats and even more so increased the time necessar for the poor DM to write the adventure up in the first place.
Where D&D turned left when it should have turned right is in utterly botching the concept of skills and character abilities. These were made needlessly complex in my view and in many cases a character might have a core ability related to their class...take thief skills as a whole...and not be able to succeed at any single one of these core class abilities until many levels of advancement down the road.
To my mind this is bad game design. A character class needs to be fun to play and that means reasonably useful and successful right out of the box. The other cutting edge of this sword is that at later levels the D&D and most other game models that followed made high level characters godlike in that rolling to see if they succeeded at something was largely pointless. To me this should -never- happen in a game system. Rolling the dice and pushing the tokens around to make things happen should -always- retain a certain element of risk otherwise the game looses its edge very quickly...
Goals...
So. Some of my goals in working on my own system have been greatly influenced by my own personal likes and dislikes about various table top RPG's. Some of these goals include making a game where the rules are customized to support the genre being played. I feel that generic rules systems while flexible and cool in a certain way often become exactly what they set out to be...generic. Generic to me = boring. Its like eating the unseasoned food at the nursing home. Sure its food. Sure it won't make my ulcer scream at me later in the evening but for my time and money I'd much rather eat a plate of awesome Thai or Indian food.
Another goal is to support the efforts of the GM in making the adventures detailed, fun and easy to put together. One major goal I've had in this project is allowing a GM to invest about two hours of time to sit down and put together a four to five hour game session for his or her players.
These days I have kids. I know -I- as a DM have a whole lot less time to sit around writing up adventures. The more straight forward and plug it all in and go the thing is the better. This means a system where there is no figuring out xp values for encounters or treasure. An easy way to balance encounters to insure that they remain a challenge but don't become a slaughterhouse for the players unless the DM deliberately makes them that way.
Well that's enough blogging / ranting / blathering for one evening.
Have a good night folks and you gamers roll some funny shaped dice for me!
Ed
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