What makes for a good game?

[Kemper Boyd]

Looking at the threads on this forum, it seems that the opinions about most games are overwhelmingly negative, even about games that elsewhere get a good reception (Apocalypse World, Unknown Armies, Orpheus, Pathfinder) so I thought to ask you Den posters, what makes for a good game?

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

[OgreBattle]

Rules that accomplish the objective of the RPG that are better than "Let's tell a story and if I disagree with you we play rock paper scissors". The things that get hated the most are rules which are inferior to that.

SR4 is what some members of TGD have actually worked on, they have their own house rules that seem to improve on the game. D&D3e is hateloved. The Den is kind of like a tabletop bondage dungeon where folks joust with their hate-ons.

RIFTS has a fun setting. I buy RIFTS books 'cause they're fun to read. I enjoyed ACKS as a fast to generate dungeon crawl.

[Username17]

Citation Needed

Where the fuckity fucksticks did Orpheus get well received? It was a financial bomb for a dying company using an archaic system that even fans of the company admitted was a bad set of game mechanics. Amazon has 12 new copies of Orpheus you can buy right now. Amazon only has five reviews up for Orpheus, and they are all five star reviews from ad bots.

Orpheus was released to deafening silence from gamers and critics alike, it has no particular fan base, and no one cares about it. Under what possible interpretation of the word could Orpheus be considered "well received" anywhere on the internet? It generated so little interest that the only thing you can even find is a couple of 5-out-of-5 fake reviews created as advertising copy. There's no actual Orpheus discussions... anywhere.

-Username17

[Kemper Boyd]

That wasn't the question though.

[hogarth]

I thought to ask you Den posters, what makes for a good game?

Having a GM who shows up regularly with a positive attitude: 80%
Everything else, including the mechanics of the game system: 20%

[Korgan0]

Your argument cited it as an example, establishing the premise that you're using as a starting point for your inquiry.

I want clear, consistent rules that clearly set out to facilitate a particular kind of storytelling, and do so through demarcating inputs and outputs, and establishing clear relationships between said inputs and said outputs, with a minimum of hassle and fuss. I don't give a shit about fluff, when it comes to considering what makes a "good" game. Eclipse Phase is a fucking awful game, but I so deeply want to play it, due to the setting, it's not even funny. Same with Unknown Armies- it's a shitty game, but the fluff has hooks deep within me. Hell, I'm a sucker for post-apoc settings, but that doesn't in any way make AW a good game; the same goes for westerns and DiTV/Aces.

[fbmf]

That wasn't the question though.

No, but it was the premise of your question.

Game On,
fbmf

[Kemper Boyd]

No, but it was the premise of your question.
f

I think I mentioned four different games that have threads on the front page of the subforum, all of which have been elsewhere been rather well-received, or well received when published. Granted, Orpheus is probably the most obscure one but back when it was released, the overall reception for it was positive.

[Drolyt]

Looking at the threads on this forum, it seems that the opinions about most games are overwhelmingly negative, even about games that elsewhere get a good reception (Apocalypse World, Unknown Armies, Orpheus, Pathfinder) so I thought to ask you Den posters, what makes for a good game?

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

Tall order much? First, there are a lot of posters on this forum and they don't agree on everything, but the most fundamental conceit of the den hivemind is that mechanics matter. Let's go with an example. If you want to make a superhero game then the mechanics must support the genre conventions of superheroes. Death needs to be rare, Batman needs to be able to adventure with Superman, super speed and super strength need to be supported etc. If for example your mechanics don't allow characters to pick up cars or it is impossible for a gadgeteer to even contribute on a team with a flying brick then your game has objective problems. You can apply this analysis to any system.

As it turns out pretty much every TTRPG has lots of flaws. The most obvious example would be the various editions of D&D, with AD&D, 3e, and 4e failing in surprisingly different ways. Let's use 3e to flesh out an example. I love this game, but there are tons of problems. The most famous one is the severe class imbalance, especially in the latter levels. A 10th level fighter and a 10th level wizard are supposed to be equal but they are not. The second most famous is probably the various ways the economic system and wealth by level fall apart, eg with infinite wishes. Another big one is how the iconic D&D wizard is supposed to throw around fireballs and lightning bolts but the mechanics actually strongly discourage that. None of these things make the game unplayable or keep me from having fun, but I'd probably have more fun if the game worked as intended.

Does that help? Perhaps you want a rundown of what exactly is wrong with the four games you mentioned (I kind of already covered Pathfinder since it has almost all the flaws of 3e D&D, but I can go into more detail)?

[Kemper Boyd]

Tall order much? First, there are a lot of posters on this forum and they don't agree on everything, but the most fundamental conceit of the den hivemind is that mechanics matter. Let's go with an example. If you want to make a superhero game then the mechanics must support the genre conventions of superheroes. Death needs to be rare, Batman needs to be able to adventure with Superman, super speed and super strength need to be supported etc. If for example your mechanics don't allow characters to pick up cars or it is impossible for a gadgeteer to even contribute on a team with a flying brick then your game has objective problems. You can apply this analysis to any system.

Thank you, and I agree, it's a tall order. I'd agree with your idea that mechanics should support the core concept of the game. Personally I don't care much for generic systems because of that reason.

Perhaps you want a rundown of what exactly is wrong with the four games you mentioned (I kind of already covered Pathfinder since it has almost all the flaws of 3e D&D, but I can go into more detail)?

Well, if you want to and if it's not too much trouble, and I agree with your analysis on 3E/PF: it's a system which claims to do one thing but actually works completely differently.

[deaddmwalking]

You must understand that it is possible to have fun with a bad game. It's also possible to enjoy a bad movie. The single biggest factor is going to be the people that you play with. Even using bad rules, but playing with people that you get along well with and have similar play styles, you're likely to have fun.

I think you can talk about 'good games' in opposition to 'bad games'. Even if a particular game has flaws or 'bad aspects', it probably has elements that are good, and at least if you take those and extract them, you can make a good game at the core.

I like having clear success/failure conditions prior to the roll. I like having clear rules so if something 'seems wrong', the GM can account for it. I like open rolls and letting dice fall where they may. I like fluff and crunch to support each other - if you are 'really good' at a task, I expect you to be able to succeed on it more than 50% of the time. I expect the game to understand ititerative probability such that terrible, terrible things are not justified because they only happen 1% of the time.

There are no 'perfect games'. I think 3.x had a lot of positive aspects, but there were some critical design issues that get in the way - especially beyond level 12. Recently on this thread there was a discussion about how 'catching on fire' works and in 3.x the rules for it are really robust and tend to produce reasonable results - when a game has rules for some unexpected actions and they 'just work', that makes me happy.

I also like customization and character options. I don't want to randomly roll a character - I want to choose a character that sounds interesting to me. I want to be able to support my character choices with mechanical functions. If I conceive of a character as a 'master swordsman', I need to be able to realize that vision so that another character who is a 'buffoon' isn't a better swordsman than I am.

This again tends to be something that 3.x does well (to a degree). There are too many feats, and many of them are repetitive. If you're only getting 7 Feats, two-weapon fighting shouldn't take multiple feats just to add secondary and tertiary attacks with your off-hand (at -5 and -10, etc).

So a good game is one where the rules are clear to all parties so everyone knows what needs to be done to succeed (or fail) at a particular action. The GM creates situations but doesn't have to create resolutions for those situations on an ad-hoc basis as the primary method of resolution. Each player has a character that they have been able to customize to represent what they imagine would be fun. The character rules support those options - the crunch supports the fluff. Finally, the rules are easy enough to understand that very few actions require reference back to the rules.

I currently play a homebrew game that used 3.x as a starting off point, but it is very different at this point. Perfect? Probably not. But it is a good game since it serves the needs of my regular gaming group.

[Atmo]

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

• Light and unified rules, those where you roll the same if in combat or trying to open an adamant door being pulled by a silver dragon at the other side;

• Illustrations that passes the feel of the game (preferably no WoD, supers or "gritty and dark 80's not-D&D");

• A party that likes and thinks different things, but that can understand what i talk (and don't scream like little girls/"enter SJW mode" when R-18 things happen);

• Confuses and difficult the "work" of any rules-lawyer to a "whinny garden gnome" degree.

And probably other things, but i'm working now.

[silva]

the most fundamental conceit of the den hivemind is that mechanics matter. Let's go with an example. If you want to make a superhero game then the mechanics must support the genre conventions of superheroes. Death needs to be rare, Batman needs to be able to adventure with Superman, super speed and super strength need to be supported etc. If for example your mechanics don't allow characters to pick up cars or it is impossible for a gadgeteer to even contribute on a team with a flying brick then your game has objective problems. You can apply this analysis to any system.

Drolyt, dont know if I can agree with you on this. All the games cited (except Orpheus which I dont know) have "rules that matter" in regard to promoting thair intended themes and agendas. Unknowns Armies has "social/mental dysfunctional through the acquire of power" all over the place. Apocalypse World has "hard choices in a hard world" + "player-driven gameplay" all over the place too. And Pathfinder, by his own DNA (from D&D) has heroic tactical combat all over the place. So they do accomplish their design goals, even if all of them has their parcel of problems as any and all games do. (compare that to Shadowrun and you will see the difference. I love playing SR to this day - its the game I most played in my entire life - but its system is so convoluted no one can even agree on what are its design goals in the first place)

So, I definitely think that "system that matters for promoting themes" has nothing to do with why the Den see those games (or any other) in negative light.

[Drolyt]

the most fundamental conceit of the den hivemind is that mechanics matter. Let's go with an example. If you want to make a superhero game then the mechanics must support the genre conventions of superheroes. Death needs to be rare, Batman needs to be able to adventure with Superman, super speed and super strength need to be supported etc. If for example your mechanics don't allow characters to pick up cars or it is impossible for a gadgeteer to even contribute on a team with a flying brick then your game has objective problems. You can apply this analysis to any system.

Drolyt, dont know if I can agree with you on this. All the games cited (except Orpheus which I dont know) have "rules that matter" in regard to promoting thair intended themes and agendas. Unknowns Armies has "social/mental dysfunctional through the acquire of power" all over the place. Apocalypse World has "hard choices in a hard world" + "player-driven gameplay" all over the place too. And Pathfinder, by his own DNA (from D&D) has heroic tactical combat all over the place. So they do accomplish their design goals, even if all of them has their parcel of problems as any and all games do. (compare that to Shadowrun and you will see the difference. I love playing SR to this day - its the game I most played in my entire life - but its system is so convoluted no one can even agree on what are its design goals in the first place)

So, I definitely think that "system that matters for promoting themes" has nothing to do with why the Den see those games (or any other) in negative light.

I'm confused. What else could you possibly base an analysis on if not the mechanics? Why do you think the Den doesn't like Apocalypse World or Pathfinder?

[John Magnum]

Silva thinks that if the game has a ton of mechanics about "hard choices" or "mental dysfunction", then they all support whatever themes about "hard choices" or "mental dysfunction" the author was going for. It doesn't matter what the actual content of the rules are, or how well they structure play toward those themes. If there's a ton of wordcount in the book describing rules that say they're about some particular theme, that counts as mechanics supporting the theme.

If Shadowrun had a ton of text next to each rule saying "This is about gritty problemsolving in a complicated magitech age", he'd love it as a game with an incredibly rich theme that had a billion mechanics supporting its theme, even if all the mechanics were the same. (Unless he continued disliking it to be contrarian.)

[tussock]

What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?

Rules need to resolve the conflicts that come up between what a player wants and however the game world and genre is supposed to react to that via the GM. Or you were in early like D&D or maybe Shadowrun and it's a thing of it's own and the rules just have to let you play it without grinding to a halt. Note, most games fail at both of those, so not usually failing for all the common cases is the goal. 3e grappling is slow as fuck, but you can just all agree to not grapple and it's fine, but 3e at high levels is a disaster because everything is terrible and also grinds to a halt.


I buy games because ... these days I hope they'll solve particular problems that are bugging me about the games I already have. Also, buzz. Word of mouth. The idea that I might get to play it, or if need be that people will appreciate when I run it. Or good advertising and art tricks me into thinking any of the above when they aren't true.


Reading big settings for me is basically work that I don't care to do, but a detailed local thing is great. I love Sandpoint, I hate Golarion. I mean, when the players go to Magnimar and want to fucking explore a city or whatever, it's nice there's a book for that, I might even get it. But probably not. Just grab a module set in Magnimar or some other city on the sea and run that.

Little plot hooks are fantastic, the 3e FRCS is full of them where you can go to some place you don't really care about but there's something in your face strait away that you can play D&D with. But the histories and stories and myths and lists of gods and who is on who's side I could not care less about. Did someone invade some other fucker on the other side of the map two centuries ago? Really? Because if the PCs aren't butting heads with it right this minute, I do not care to know that, and am offended at paying money for it.

[silva]

I'm confused. What else could you possibly base an analysis on if not the mechanics? Why do you think the Den doesn't like Apocalypse World or Pathfinder?

I think the point is not if the mechanics promote intended themes or accomplish their design goals well, but in how they do it - the fact Unknown Armies uses percentile roll-under with a free-formish skill system bothers a lot of people here, idem for Apocalypse World with its improvising-heavy nature. People here dont like certain type of rules, specially freeformish/improvising types. The more theyre told by a game to trust themselves and each other, the less they like it because they want the rules to give as little margin as possible for inter-players argument/"gentlemen´s agreement".

And I can totally undestand that. I see where theyre coming from. I just dont share those preferences myself, dont get bothered by that sort of thing. I get much more bothered by complex and convoluted systems that take 2 hours of my real-life time to resolve 20 minutes of in-game combat, or 2 minutes of real-life consulting modifiers/spells tables for a 2 seconds long in-game task.

[Blade]

From what I've read here, a good game is "a game I designed" (or "a game Frank designed" for the members of the Church of Frank).

To me a good RPG needs a good setting, decent rules, with each in line with the other.

I tend to measure the quality of the setting first by how many character concepts, situations and adventure ideas I get when I discover it. Then I need the setting to make enough sense for the world to hold together, otherwise problems soon start to appear with the characters or adventures and the more you play the worse it gets, until things start to break down.

For the rules, I don't need them to be perfect. I just need them not to get in the way of my fun. It means mostly that they have to be in line with the setting, so that all the aforementioned character concepts can act as expected and so that the adventures can be in line with the tone they were supposed to have.
They also need to be simple enough. If 90% of the game session is spent rolling dices, looking at charts and computing results then the rules get in the way of the enjoyment of the game.

There are other factors that can make a game better, but these are the prerequisites for a "good game" to me.

[Drolyt]

I'm confused. What else could you possibly base an analysis on if not the mechanics? Why do you think the Den doesn't like Apocalypse World or Pathfinder?

I think the point is no if the mechanics promote intended themes or accomplish their design goals well, but in how they do it - the fact Unknown Armies uses percentile roll-under with a free-formish skill system bothers a lot of people here, idem for Apocalypse World with its improvising-heavy nature. People around here dont like those kind of freeformish/improvising rules.

Of course how they do it matters, how they do it determines whether they do it well or not! If I understand you correctly you don't care whether the rules actually work as long as they are thematic! I'll go ahead and assume I don't understand what you're saying and politely request that you patiently explain it to me.

As a side note, the basic advantage of percentile roll-under is that your likelihood of success is expressed as a percentage. It is also fast if you have the target number predetermined but typically quite slow if you have to determine the target number at the table. Opposed rolls tend to be complicated. So on and so forth. These are all real consequences of the given mechanic that have actual effects on your game.

[silva]

Of course how they do it matters, how they do it determines whether they do it well or not! If I understand you correctly you don't care whether the rules actually work as long as they are thematic!

Sure Drolyt. "How the system do it" matters, and I didnt say the contrary. I like the way Apocalypse World "do it" because its in-line with my own personal preferences these days (simple, fast and player-driven) at the same time its hard-coded with themes I appreciate dealing with (hard choices, intra-party conflicts, etc). And this is great cause I value these qualities much more than mathematical precision, power balance, completeness of skills, or something like that.

So, what Im trying to say here is: there are a myriad ways for "doing it" ( ). From roll-under to roll-over to narrative-sharing to bean-counting to cards to rock-paper-scissors to tables-consulting to improv, etc. Any of those methods will find players that appreciate them and that dont. Whats important for a game, in my view, is not trying to please everybody, but establishing clear goals/themes and accomplishing them. How they get there is with them.

[erik]

That wasn't the question though.

No, but it was the premise of your question.
f

I think I mentioned four different games that have threads on the front page of the subforum, all of which have been elsewhere been rather well-received, or well received when published. Granted, Orpheus is probably the most obscure one but back when it was released, the overall reception for it was positive.

That's cool. I didn't know you could just make up your facts for a premise to a question and then insist that only the question be addressed?

Let me try- Anusworld, Orpheus, UA, and Pathfinder have been universally reviled and are the worst selling games ever. So what makes a good game?

Doesn't that come off a bit douchey or at least irritating and taint the rest of the question?

Fine if you don't want to derail your overall question, I'll move on and just note "hey, I do not accept your premise".

Pathfinder gets hate here not because it is tragically bad. It's a rebranding of 3.5, and 3.5 isn't horrific. What garners the ire is that they promised to do an open playtest which was just a veiled marketing scheme and not actually soliciting analysis. And unsurprisingly it is no improvement overall over 3.5 or 3e... so just another version of 3rd edition rules for D&D.

"What sort of rules do you want to see, what makes you buy a game, do you like strong setting flavor?"

It depends.
I want mechanics that reflect the goals of the game.
And I don't want mechanics that give counter-indicated results to what the game is looking for.
If characters are disposable then they should be simple.
If combats are going to last a while then please let them have some interesting choices during combats.
If there is a strong setting flavor then I want it to not make me feel dirty and for it to be fairly easy to understand.

We had a thread somewhere that various denners noted the stuff they like personally. Mebbe I can find it later. It was varied but almost everyone liked things beyond their own homebrews. (p.s. Blade, troll harder)

[Maxus]

You must understand that it is possible to have fun with a bad game. It's also possible to enjoy a bad movie. The single biggest factor is going to be the people that you play with. Even using bad rules, but playing with people that you get along well with and have similar play styles, you're likely to have fun.

So much this.

See, a game designer has the least control over table experience. I've played games in 3.5, a system I otherwise like, that I absolutely hated because of other players or poor DMing. And if you've got good company, anything is enjoyable. Playing awful multiplayer games on XBox live, attending a wake, getting your balls pounded flat, whatever it is, it will be improved by the addition of friends talking and bullshitting.

But a game designer can get the mechanics right. They can do their best to make sure tabletime is spent playing and not debating poorly-worded mechanics, or arguing over results, or one player just kinda hanging back and bullshitting or playing a quick round of solitaire because there's nothing for their character to contribute because they're the combat beast and they're not in a fight.

Some of 'em go for the Rules Lite way, and that's fine. But when a rules-heavy game has boneheaded contradictory rules that do the opposite of what's intended, that stuff needs to be fixed and game designers shouldn't resent players for identifying and isolating these.

[Cyberzombie]

I'm confused. What else could you possibly base an analysis on if not the mechanics? Why do you think the Den doesn't like Apocalypse World or Pathfinder?

For Apocalypse World, it's basically about many posters in the Den hating on anything that gives the DM power. The biggest complaints about AW aren't about the poor mechanics, like being unable to set a difficulty for a given task, but rather that it gives the DM too much control over the game. Many people here believe the DM will inherently turn sadist and be an obstacle to fun, so the primary goal of a rules set is to straitjacket the DM until he's no more than a computer game engine mindlessly following the rules.

As for Pathfinder, I don't really feel PF is hated like AW and other rules-lite games are. Granted it has problems, but then people complain about 3E's problems too. It's just that all 3Es problems are documented by now and argued to death. Pathfinder gives people new material to complain about. That being said, Pathfinder is a game that people here would play, despite having issues with it. Granted there's a lot of design mistakes, but that's true of any RPG, and all in all PF isn't that much different from 3E. It just has some small nuances that you have to learn. Pathfinder is one of the more playable rules-heavy RPGs out there.

[Pixels]

I think the main beef that folks have here is that Pathfinder claimed that it would Fix 3.5 D&D And Make You Delicious Toast Too. Problem is, it burned the toast and didn't fix a damn thing about 3.5. Quite a few of the problems that 3.5 had were actually exacerbated, such as the power gap between primary casters and spell-less plebeians and the explosion of fiddly minor options (most of which are traps).

Hypocrisy would of course be met with the disdain it deserves, but even worse is that a lot of the Pathfinder designers do not seem to understand what they have done wrong and will defend their mistakes to the death. That really gets folks going on the Den.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I like:

• Combat that isn't fucking slow (fiddly parts are fine as long as they don't slow the game down once you learn them). GURPS and Dark Heresy are too slow, because you're playing rocket tag and have to get every situational advantage you can find. 4e is too slow because the fiddly bits are still in the way after you've learned the system.
• Skills that have explicit effects when you have X degrees of success, that you can look up on a table. but allow for some creative Mother May I when the situation calls for it.
• As a GM, I want at least a framework of an idea of what's "fair". 3.PF Challenge Ratings have been heavily criticized for being unrealistic to the actual party compositions you'll end up with, and/or being mostly eyeballed, but that doesn't excuse systems that give you nothing at all (at least, when combat is fiddly enough that you can TPK without even trying).
• Proper content creation tools. Don't make me eyeball everything in an attempt to coerce me into buying published adventures/settings. Give me a robust DMG. Don't give me a fish, teach me to fish.