Conscious design in RPGs

[silva]

I had this thought just now and I would like your opinions to see if it makes sense or not. Basically, it boils down to this:

A. There are games out there which rules seem to have been put together with a lot of thought so each little part has a purpose toward the overall picture or the design goals. Example: Dogs in the Vineyard seems to fit right in this category for me (even if I dont like it that much)

B. On the other hand, There are games which rules seem to NOT have got a lot of thought about its purposes toward the overall picture or design goals and so it seems they were arbitrarily put together. Example: Shadowrun seems to fit this category for me, as both Cyberpunk and Heist genres portray fast and furious action overall, while SR action is slow as a turtle in all its aspects, from combat to car chases to decking to anything else; also, its not clear what advantage dice pool mechanics has over other dice mechanics nor its correlation with the intended design goals. (I admit I like the game though - rolling lots of dice give me this sensation of being powerfull that I like ).

Does it make sense ?

Also, can we say that since the last decade or so we been getting more and more games of the type A above, that is, which are more conscious about the correlation between the tools employed and the goals at hand, instead of following old trends "just because" or just trying to be different or reinventing the wheel or something like that ? I admit having this impression, but I could be wrong.

[fectin]

With smaller projects, you can get away with poor planning and architecture, because the systems V is shallow. With larger or deeper projects, poor architecture is much more obvious.

[Atmo]

Is this another post to "give us insight about the true RPGs: *World games"?

Is this another silva post that he gives a unilateral point of view about something then bashes the main issue with a *World book?

[fectin]

Likely, but I'm hopeful that he'll give us a comic rendition of "what is design?" first.

[TheFlatline]

Seeing that Attention Whore Apocalypse World is the greatest game EVAR this entire thread is kind of pointless.

The only way to redeem it would be to do an actual analysis of other RPGs and show how they're inferior to AWing but then again silva only has experience AWing and no real experience with anything else so that idea is dead before it starts.

[silva]

...or you could look at the games I actually cited (Shadowrun and Dogs ) instead of trying to flame the place down.

With smaller projects, you can get away with poor planning and architecture, because the systems V is shallow. With larger or deeper projects, poor architecture is much more obvious.

Hmmm, dont know if I agree with that. My initial reaction is that the smaller projects tend to make things more obvious/explicit, yes, but both for good and bad. Perhaps I didnt grasp exactly what you wanted to say, though. If thats the case, please, elaborate more.

[hogarth]

I had this thought just now and I would like your opinions to see if it makes sense or not. Basically, it boils down to this:

A. There are games out there which rules seem to have been put together with a lot of thought so each little part has a purpose toward the overall picture or the design goals. Example: Dogs in the Vineyard seems to fit right in this category for me (even if I dont like it that much)

B. On the other hand, There are games which rules seem to NOT have got a lot of thought about its purposes toward the overall picture or design goals and so it seems they were arbitrarily put together. Example: Shadowrun seems to fit this category for me, as both Cyberpunk and Heist genres portray fast and furious action overall, while SR action is slow as a turtle in all its aspects, from combat to car chases to decking to anything else; also, its not clear what advantage dice pool mechanics has over other dice mechanics nor its correlation with the intended design goals. (I admit I like the game though - rolling lots of dice give me this sensation of being powerfull that I like ).

Does it make sense ?

It's not really a fair comparison.

You have a preconceived notion of what "heist" and "cyberpunk" genres should feel like, so you feel critical about how the mechanics work in a heist/cyberpunk game like Shadowrun. That's fair enough. I have similar misgivings about the mechanics in Champions, Toon, Call of Cthulhu, etc.

But it's silly to say that the mechanics of a game with gay cowboys eating pudding must be intentionally designed to precisely fit the "gay cowboys eating pudding" genre if that genre doesn't exist in the first place.

[silva]

Hogarth, lets put it another way:

What Shadowrun tries to achieve, and why did it pick that tools to achieve it ?

Can you answer that question ?

[hogarth]

Hogarth, lets put it another way:

What Shadowrun tries to achieve, and why did it pick that tools to achieve it ?

Can you answer that question ?

I don't think you understood my comment.

I haven't played Shadowrun, so I can't comment specifically on it, but I think it's totally fair to criticize a game's mechanics for poorly matching a particular genre. I'm agreeing with you with regards to whatever you have to say about Shadowrun.

I don't think it's fair to give the mechanics for Dogs in the Vineyard credit for being "put together with a lot of thought so each little part has a purpose toward the overall picture" when you have no preconceived notion of what the "overall picture" is.

[silva]

Hogarth, it seems to me you dont know neither Shadowrun nor DitV, so it would be really difficult for you to criticize them. If thats the case, please, just discard the examples and focus on the descriptions. Have you seen cases similar to what I described in points A and B above ?

*EDIT*

Alternatively, I could give you more examples that, I think, fall in that categories:

A. Gurps seems to me a piece of coherent design, where each piece have clear purposes in promoting its overall design goals, from its high modularity, to the bell curve produced by the dice, to the granularity, etc.

B. Vampire, on the other hand, seems a confusing piece of design, since its text advocates more or less railroady stories of personal horror, while its rules promote a "super-heroes by night" kind of game.

Do you agree with that ?

[TheNotoriousAMP]

I would say that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a good example of where the rules fit the game well. Definitely agree that Shadowrun has a huge disconnect between its genre and the atmosphere it wants and the atmosphere it actually produces. Deadlands classic also had a huge problem combining over complex systems with what is supposed to be a tense horror game.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Edit: accidental double post. Please accept this photo as my apology:

[silva]

Small butt, but the tits compensate.

[tussock]

What Shadowrun tries to achieve, and why did it pick that(sic) tools to achieve it?

They copied the two big games of 1988 (D&D and Cyberpunk) and made a "D&D meets Cyberpunk" game. All the mechanics are just whatever was popular in the mid-late 80's. So fistfulls of d6, complex character building mini-games, and a near-complete disregard for option balance. Basically, you win by going first, dropping your target numbers to a 2, raising your opponent's resistance numbers to 6+, and throwing 5 or 6 dice, and every other option in the game is a trap (almost all of them).

Ideally you can be an astral mage and not be there, but then there's spirits or whatever, I don't know, because they're only there if you have astral mages or whatever, and if they lose everyone dies, so you just don't bother. That was my experience, might just be the GM fudging to keep everyone in the game.

[Chamomile]

Edit: accidental double post. Please accept this photo as my apology:

Apology is not accepted. I demand either a blonde, or hentai with dialogue taken from Den posts.

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Small butt, but the tits compensate.

Let me rectify this problem then, not the best photo, but it gets the point across.

[silva]

LARIATOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Now we are talking!

[OgreBattle]

What Shadowrun tries to achieve, and why did it pick that tools to achieve it ?

Heists are about planning, a heist film is mostly about getting everyone with the unique skillsets together to crack the target that they've gathered lots of info about.

Operators Operating with SpecOps Gear is all about planning+the mods on your tacticool weaponry

Shadowrun is about heists with tacticool future gear and gun catalogues that give you a laundry list of firearms and parts to choose from, with the book even written in a manner as if it was a catalog for the player to make purchases.

So I'd say that Shadowrun being filled with fiddly choices that snowball a bunch of fiddly modifiers together with big buckets of dice was more intentional than not.

As for conscious design candidates...

RIFTS. Siembieda straight up says the game is not 'balanced', so that is conscious.... but I don't think any two writers for RIFTS can interpret the actual rules the same way. I read Eric Wujcik's writing and he seems to have a coherent way of looking at the portions of the game he wrote, but then you have dozens of other writers adding on to it with their own ideas (that they don't explicitly express either).

D&D3e: Nothing above level 6 was intentional.
Pathfinder: They added fiddly house rules to the market's most popular system, so they succeeded in their goal as well as carying on D&D3e's bugs, which at that point people thought were features.

D&D4e: It's such a transparent system that it's... kind of baffling that some of the designs still found it 'too hard' to figure out how the math worked.

[fectin]

...or you could look at the games I actually cited (Shadowrun and Dogs ) instead of trying to flame the place down.

With smaller projects, you can get away with poor planning and architecture, because the systems V is shallow. With larger or deeper projects, poor architecture is much more obvious.

Hmmm, dont know if I agree with that. My initial reaction is that the smaller projects tend to make things more obvious/explicit, yes, but both for good and bad. Perhaps I didnt grasp exactly what you wanted to say, though. If thats the case, please, elaborate more.

You are incorrect. Larger projects show problems; smaller projects can hide them.

[hogarth]

Hogarth, it seems to me you dont know neither Shadowrun nor DitV, so it would be really difficult for you to criticize them. If thats the case, please, just discard the examples and focus on the descriptions. Have you seen cases similar to what I described in points A and B above ?

*EDIT*

Alternatively, I could give you more examples that, I think, fall in that categories:

A. Gurps seems to me a piece of coherent design, where each piece have clear purposes in promoting its overall design goals, from its high modularity, to the bell curve produced by the dice, to the granularity, etc.

B. Vampire, on the other hand, seems a confusing piece of design, since its text advocates more or less railroady stories of personal horror, while its rules promote a "super-heroes by night" kind of game.

Do you agree with that ?

I have certainly seen examples of type "B" games, where the rules are in conflict with the setting they chose.

• Champions: The rules (back when I was playing in the '80s) led to various consequences that are at odds with how comic book superheroes generally work. For instance, it was impossible to kill an ordinary human with a single gunshot, and fights often involved enemies getting knocked unconscious and then waking up again.
• Toon: Toon has an ordinary combat system like D&D, with attack rolls and hit points and whatever, but cartoon fights rarely feel anything like D&D (with attacks going back and forth until one combatant gets worn down first).
• Call of Cthulhu: As I noted in a previous thread, Call of Cthulhu is full of skills that H. P. Lovecraft never considered using in his stories.

As for type "A" games, there's a paradox. If you use an established genre, then you're always going to have conflicts between the rules and the genre because there are essential differences between a game and a work of literature (in my opinion, at any rate). If you don't use an established genre, you can always claim that your rules exactly match your chosen setting and no one can disagree with you because your setting doesn't exist anywhere else; it's a tautology to say that the rules for Dogs in the Vineyard exactly match the setting for Dogs in the Vineyard since there are no Dogs in the Vineyard books or movies to say otherwise.

I think GURPS is a fairly poor example of a type "A" game; playing a game of GURPS Supers doesn't feel much like reading a comic book, for example.

[kzt]

Champions: The rules (back when I was playing in the '80s) led to various consequences that are at odds with how comic book superheroes generally work. For instance, it was impossible to kill an ordinary human with a single gunshot, and fights often involved enemies getting knocked unconscious and then waking up again.

...
I think GURPS is a fairly poor example of a type "A" game; playing a game of GURPS Supers doesn't feel much like reading a comic book, for example.

Champions actually does a pretty good job with certain types of comic books, not killing people commonly and people waking back up seemed common.

GURPS Supers was not generally regarded as a success, I don't know anyone who liked it. V&V was the only alternative to Champions that people seemed to play.

[hogarth]

Champions actually does a pretty good job with certain types of comic books, not killing people commonly and people waking back up seemed common.

I can't think of any comic book fights where the heroes knocked out a villain and he woke up a couple of panels later and then the heroes knocked him out again. I'm sure you could find one if you searched hard enough, but that happened way, way too frequently in Champions.

Examples of comics where all regular people are ludicrously unkillable are hard for me to come up with as well.

Don't get me wrong: I loved Champions and I still think it's a good RPG. As far as failing at "conscious design", I don't think it's any worse than any other RPG that's based on a popular genre.

[Username17]

Characters getting knocked out of the fight and making a dramatic re-entrance is and was pretty standard in the comics genre. Guy climbs out of some rubble after he's been gone for a few pages, says something pithy, and then things are on again.

It's so amazingly standard that I'm honestly surprised you or anyone would call the trope out as weird.

-Username17

[silva]

Hogarth, not all games try to emulate specific literary genres, but all games have (or should have) intended design goals. DitV design goals are related to emulating a specific theme of hardline authorities in a corrupted environment, and how they deal with this power they got in their hands.

Thats the reason for my Shadowrun question: what does it try to accomplish as a game ? And why it uses that tools to do it ? Its not clear for me. Ogrebattle argues its trying to do "gun-porn in tactical action". Tussok argues that its "D&D + Cyberpunk" in flavour with whatever mechanics were popular at the time (I like this theory more). Anyway, thats my point. You argue that Gurps dont accomplish its design goals - being generic and universal - while I think its moderately successful at it. Regardless, at least Gurps make it clear what its design goals are - something Shadowrun isnt even capable to do.

[Cyberzombie]

Thats the reason for my Shadowrun question: what does it try to accomplish as a game ?

Shadowrun is about getting into secure locations, accomplishing an objective and getting out before reinforcements arrive. The encouraged playstyle is to covertly infiltrate instead of kicking the door down. If you get in a firefight, the idea is to do so tactically, using cover, surprise, etc. as opposed to just tanking bullets.