Games that fundamentally changed how you thought about gamin

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:55 am

(unashamingly crossposting from here, because I think this is such an interesting topic)

What were the games that totally changed how you thought about gaming, such that you could never think about gaming in your old thought patterns again? The "Mind Blown!" games. Note this could be games you ran, games you played, or even games you read.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:02 pm

*Doesn't click view post*

Ooh, ooh, does it have something to do with Apokolips World?

*clicks view post*

Oh, hm...

*clicks link*

Well there it is.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:17 pm

Orpheus.

Because before I played it, I was a White Wolf playing goth who didn't care about system as long as your story was good, and after I played it, I realised that system is very, very important to a game. Running that game was a hell of a lot of effort, and the system basically doubled the amount of work I had to do instead of halving it like it should. In every way possible, running Orpheus under its own system is like swimming upstream.

Thereafter, The Dying Earth. Because even though I've never played it (and I am not certain that anybody ever has) it stands as a testament to Robin D. Laws's signature "if you want X to be the central concern of your player characters, build the central mechanic around X" approach, which I find very persuasive.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:25 pm

Interesting. So you think Vampire mechanics dont support its themes well, Laertes ? Or at least not as much as Orpheus and Dying Earth ?

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:30 pm

I can think of several:

* The D&D Basic Set introduced me to the idea of a roleplaying game, versus a board or card game.

* Champions introduced me to the idea that game mechanics and special effects could (and sometimes should) be separated.

* Vampire introduced me to the idea of a game as a vehicle to get hot, or at any rate desperate, goth girls, rather than just, you know, a game.

* Amber DRPG introduced the idea of a game being more of a skeleton for storytelling than a contest of mechanics. Also, diceless.

* Everway introduced me to the idea of highly abstracted character attributes.

* Donjon introduced me to the idea of player narrative control being embedded in game mechanics, rather than being a byproduct of simulation effects.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:35 pm

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:47 pm

In before evocative *World money-shot.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 1:09 pm

Interesting. So you think Vampire mechanics dont support its themes well, Laertes ? Or at least not as much as Orpheus and Dying Earth ?

Vampire mechanics don't support the themes at all well, mainly due to the fact that the system is pretty rickety and poorly thought through. The only mechanic in Vampire that really supports the theme is that combat is something to be recoiled from. In-character that's due to the cowardice of immortality and the self-preserving nature of the Beast. Out of character it's because combat under the old White Wolf system is a horrendous mess that no sane player wants to indulge in. Vampire's system is like trying to build a house with a Nerf hammer.

Orpheus's system is a nightmare hodge-podge. It not only doesn't work with the theme, it doesn't work with the system. The different parts contradict one another, they're poorly thought out, laid out and planned out. There is nothing good about the Orpheus system aside from the fact that spendable-point mechanics suit horror kind of well. But that's largely an accident; to accuse Lucien Soulban of Robin D. Laws style good design is like accusing Justin Bieber of being able to play the drum line from Metallica's One.

If you can overlook the mechanics to get to the actual setting and story of Orpheus, then it's awesome. It's a very fun, if fairly railroaded, adventure which feels like a ghost story. However, using the system in the book to tell that story is very difficult. If Vampire is like building a house with a Nerf hammer, then Orpheus is like building a house while trying to use a live snake as a hammer.

Dying Earth is a fantastic piece of design. It evokes the feel of Vance's stories perfectly. The only problem with this is that I really really dislike Vance's world and every single fucking person who lives in it, so evoking that is something like playing a Stabbing Yourself In The Face Repeatedly simulator. However, for people who enjoy the aimless, amoral, nihilistic world that Vance created, go nuts.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 1:28 pm

Theatrix, 1993.

*Define the scale of numbers that characters can potentially, meaningfully interact with. Anything beyond that is off the scale.
*Example: Average human is 3. If you're playing superheroes, a Strength of 6 might be equal to a locomotive, and a strong, athletic guy might be 3.6. If you're playing Noir, a Strength of 6 might be a strong, athletic guy, 10 is a freakish giant of a man (or a bear), and even a truck is completely off the scale.

*Statements. Anything is open to improvisation from the players, subject to GM veto. Surroundings, mooks, even the reactions of important NPCs to events.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:14 pm

Gumshoe: If the clue is important, don't roll a fucking die to see if the players get it.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:33 pm

rasmuswagner wrote:Gumshoe: If the clue is important, don't roll a fucking die to see if the players get it.

3 clue rule

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:47 pm

I forgot what Trail of Cthulhu does about the clues. I remember you can spend points from skills to deal with them, but for doing what exactly ?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:56 pm

silva wrote:I forgot what Trail of Cthulhu does about the clues. I remember you can spend points from skills to deal with them, but for doing what exactly ?

You can spend them to automatically get the clue without needing to roll or having any chance of failure. Once the players work out that they can solve any scene by the old-school Lucasarts adventure game method of rubbing every skill against every object in the scene in every possible permutation, it gets very dull indeed.

Our GM during that game got really pissed off at that because she's an old-school D&D GM who believed that making players fail rolls and then die was only fair because if she doesn't kill PCs, she loses the game.

I mean, I still think it's the best version of Call of Cthulhu to date, but grinding dully is a weakly dominant strategy.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 3:08 pm

Laertes, last time Ive read it, I had the impression that "solving scenes" is not really the point of the game, so the frustration would be the players own fault in this case.

I remember the point of resource alocation was dealing with the clues/info in some way. Perhaps the re points you allocate, the more info is revealed ? Or perhaps alocating points allows you to suggest interpretations that the GM could accept as canon or something like that ?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 3:45 pm

silva wrote:Laertes, last time Ive read it, I had the impression that "solving scenes" is not really the point of the game, so the frustration would be the players own fault in this case.

...it's an investigative game. The purpose of an investigative game is for the players to solve the mystery.

I'm not saying that in abstract "there is no way of winning RPGs" sense. I mean it in hard serotonin-release terms. When you are playing an investigative game, and you succeed in finding a clue to get closer to the final scene, your brain thinks "Aha! Score! I have succeeded!", it releases serotonin and you feel good about yourself.

If you invent an investigative game in which investigation does not result in players feeling good about themselves, you have not only failed as a designer but also as a human being. Because the reason those players gave you that finite slice of their lives was under the solemn trust that you would entertain them, and if you have not entertain them, you have decreased the total amount of fulfilment that those players will receive during their lives.

I remember the point of resource alocation was dealing with the clues/info in some way. Perhaps the re points you allocate, the more info is revealed ? Or perhaps alocating points allows you to suggest interpretations that the GM could accept as canon or something like that ?

You ask the GM, "I examine the paintings; is there something there that I can spend a point of Art on?" The GM replies with "No." You respond "Is there something there that I can spend a point of history on?" He responds "Yes, here's the clue. The scene is now finished." The book actually encourages the GM to hold up a physical sign saying "clue" to demonstrate this point and help the players understand that they need to move on.

The prewritten campaigns don't have anything about allocating more points or suggesting interpretations. It's just a case of "Here's a policeman. If you rub one of your Cop Talk points against him, he gives you the following clue. Move along, citizen." This isn't Apocalypse World where the story is built as you go along. GUMSHOE encourages prewritten, railroady investigations.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:48 pm

RIFTS

It gave me a lot of great ideas and told me how not to do them.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 5:00 pm

D&D/AD&D: Roleplaying.

RQ: It showed me that classes and levels like D&D had were not needed for a game.

Bushido: It showed me that really bad mechanics can still result in a fun game if everyone wants to have fun.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 5:21 pm

M&M: Got me into roleplaying in general.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:07 pm

Shadowrun changed the way I think about RPGs in two distinct moments:

- First when I had 12 years old, it was my first full-fledged tabletop rpg (I had played Fighting Fantasy books before), and it opened my mind to this wonderful hobby.

- Second, a decade ago, when I tried to go back to it after having met tens of other games, it showed how badly designed could a game be, to the point of being one of the worst examples of design in the industry.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:20 pm

D&D taught me fundamental imbalances and how emergent gameplay can drastically change the world and assumptions of gaming.

Fiasco taught me you don't need to hit stuff to have an RPG, whereas Munchausen taught me you don't need much more than imagination and some way to deal with conflicting stories. Also booze makes things better.

FATE taught me there's a long way to go in making freeform stuff work with mechanical stuff without just relying on Magical Tea Party.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 10:50 pm

D&D 4th started me with the idea of roleplaying

D&D 3.5 got me into thinking that a class was more than a set of +2s.

D&D 3.tome was the solution to the shitty fighter.

BRP showed me how much a 3.5 port to a percentile game can suck. My party failed every roll for the first 3 sessions. Then I quit, so I don't know what happened.

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:06 pm

Yeah, I see how coming to BRP with a D&D mindset can be fatal.

Cyberzombie · Post by **Cyberzombie** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:35 pm

Mutants and Masterminds: I really loved the idea of the caps for attack/damage, toughness/dodge, etc. It allowed you to have the flexibility of a point-based system without worrying about people just powergaming one stat to some super level. You ended up with accurate characters versus heavy hitters.

I also really loved the approach to complications. Instead of taking flaws like most RPGs where you try to take the least likely flaw to come up, M&M complications only come up with they actually impact you in the story. So that encourages people to take real flaws as opposed to fake ones.

The idea of power stunts are also really cool, allowing you to do a bunch of stuff with a relatively simple character.

AD&D: This game just got me into RPGs and it has concepts that were addictive then and now. The idea of going into a dungeon, fighting monsters and finding treasure is a style I just keep going back to.

Vampire: The first RPG I played that wasn't combat-centric. The whole concept of going several sessions without ever fighting anyone was amazing to me at the time.

Miryafa · Post by **Miryafa** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:46 pm

Two things that really opened my mind and made me think things I never thought before:
1. Theoretical D&D 3.5, played by reading and replying to posts about optimization on the GiantITP forums. Before I started reading handbooks, in-jokes, polarizing personalities, etc. I had no idea D&D wasn't a balanced game, or that a magic-fighter was terribly gimped. I never thought about optimization in other games either. Then I started reading, tested out a few ideas, eventually participated in the Iron Chef Optimization Contest. Watching RPG speed runs helped me along this path too. Now I think about optimization, rather than just "what type of character do I want to play?"

2. Then my world changed again when I read the Tome stuff. Frank talks about how game mechanics should be, to maximize fun, and I like that, although I don't agree with everything he says like the people on this board seem to. Now when I play/watch/design a game, I focus on what's fun, and how to maximize that.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:24 am

Champions:

You can have whatever you want, as long as you pay for it.
If an ability is potentially overpowered, putting a warning label on it is a sign of strength, not weakness.