The Gaming Den

After reading the encyclopedia-sized volume of various discussions about what makes for good RPGs/gaming systems, it has occurred to me that the "perfect system" is quite the elusive little bugger. So much so that I've come to the determination that such a thing is indistinguishable from Bigfoot.

Hell, I'll even extend the Bigfoot analogy to "RPG system with which even 1 single person is 100% happy".

Across the interwebs, I've seen countless claims of "if I were making an RPG ..." talk, and less than .000000001% of any of that has ever come in to fruition. Sure, hacks of existing systems are all over the place; but that's a very different thing than building something from the ground up.

I'll go even further and say that there isn't/can't be such a thing that does a *particular thing* perfectly.

So, is there actually anybody that actually believes that Bigfoot ever has a chance to be found? This guy thinks not.

Thoughts?

You can also replace the words "RPG system" with anything at all and still have it be true. People in general, are not 100% happy with anything, at all, ever.

ACOS wrote:Thoughts?

Well. Guess everyone better just give up and pack it in then.

We can't make "The Perfect RPG" that no one ever said they were making so lets all stop trying to make any RPGs or house rules or other junk we like better in any and all contexts.

Seriously though. Your entire idea here is premised on uncritically accepting one of the most juvenile of all arguments possible. "Aw yeah well then YOU make something PERFECT!" is not a valid response to criticism, and your entire post wringing your hands over the dreaded impossibility of perfection is basically you slapping a fresh paint of coat on that old kindergarten chestnut and pretending it's big people seriousness.

@Grek
Well yeah, but that's just Normative Discontent.

What I'm talking about (what I've sometimes observed) seems to go further than simple ND, I think.

I've seen a lot of:
"game 'x' sucks because of a, b, and c. game 'y' did those things much better."
"okay, so why not just play game 'y'?"
"because game 'y' sucks at d, e, and f. if they did it like game 'z', that would have been better"
"so why not game 'z'?"
"game 'z'? shit, game 'z' is worse at a, b, and c than game 'x'."
"can't you just hack the various pieces together?"
"well no, because those are 3 separate systems that all work differently."
etc, etc, etc.

At times, it just looks like some cognitive dissonance is at play.

@ PhoneLobster
I think you mistake my tone.
I wasn't saying "YOU may something PERFECT".
The observation that I was making was more along the lines of people's tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

And if this is too childish or low-brow for you, there are plenty of other threads on the board.

Yes, you can't make a game that will be the best at everything as sometimes the things people want are mutually exclusive (e.g. crunchy vs light). However people have different priorities on how much they value the different aspects based on their personalities and quite importantly, their moods. Sometimes they'll care more about a than d and sometimes they'll want b instead. So if there's demand for a game that does a, d and f really well, and the others don't matter as much, and a game like that doesn't exist, it's worth making.

Quoting a friend on his opinion on NEXT:

"You can't please everyone, and some people just can't be pleased."

However, while subjectively one can divide games into "games that work for me, games I can make work for me, and games that just don't cut it for me," it is important to acknowledge game design as an actual discipline, which means there are games which are objectively good, and games which are objectively bad.

Acknowledging truth exist is important, even if we can never reach it.

ACOS wrote:@ PhoneLobster
I think you mistake my tone.

No. Really. I don't think I did. In fact I think I hit the nail very much on the head.

I wasn't saying "YOU may something PERFECT".

That was very much indeed the exact "tone" of your post.

Even the post right before your "nuh ah I'm not attacking critics for not being perfect themselves!" you were STILL responding to Grek and attacking criticism with the same lame ass argument for toddlers.

The observation that I was making was more along the lines of people's tendency to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Maybe you should have included that I don't know... anywhere in your post.

...And then or even when claiming that was what you really meant, actually provided any damned evidence that anyone around here is actually making the perfect the enemy of the good. Because again, I point out who the fuck around here said they were making "The Perfect RPG".

If your post isn't using the "you make it perfect then!" defense to rail at criticism of the imperfections in imperfect RPGs... then what the fuck ARE you railing against? Because there is NOBODY on this forum producing rules who is stupid enough to think they are producing or can produce the platonic ideal of RPG perfection.

And as for the "revelation" of the imperfect nature of reality ...

And if this is too childish or low-brow for you, there are plenty of other threads on the board.

... if the entirety of your defensible point once the non-existent previously unmentioned people claiming to be "making the perfect RPG" was "OMFG! The abstract concept of ideal perfection is unattainable in reality! WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN UNTIL NOW???!!!!!" then yes.

Yes. In that case you ARE way too childish and low brow and it is very much necessary to give you a kick to the behind and tell you to get with the program. Because THAT revelation is something you should have achieved by the time you first attended school. Are you four? No? THEN WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE?

But I guess sometimes I like to pick on the weak low hanging fruit like this thread.

The idea that there aren't perfect games is, to be blunt, complete horseshit. There are no perfect rules heavy games, because any complicated system can be improved. But minimalist games can and do achieve perfection for what they are.

Cops and Robbers has two rules ("What you say happens," and "You are a cop or a robber"). It's not my favorite game, and it doesn't work for all groups, but it's not like you could improve it any by tinkering with either of those rules. Improv has three rules ("Don't Deny," "Don't Ask Open Ended Questions," and "Tell a Story"). It can't handle conflicting narrative visions all that well, but for what it is it is perfect. Munchhausen has like five rules and includes a wholly adequate and generally satisfying conflict resolution system.

People frequently throw around "rules lite" as a term to mean books that are over four hundred pages long. And that's fucking bullshit. If your "rules lite" game is more than one hundred pages (not including fiction pieces), you need to rethink your life. But actual minimalist rules games were perfected decades ago. You can't actually make those games better, you can just make them different in ways that handle things the old rules lite games don't really do (like how Munchhausen has a structured method for handling contraction, which Improv and Cops & Robbers have to simply avoid).

-Username17

ACOS wrote:After reading the encyclopedia-sized volume of various discussions about what makes for good RPGs/gaming systems, it has occurred to me that the "perfect system" is quite the elusive little bugger. So much so that I've come to the determination that such a thing is indistinguishable from Bigfoot.

Hell, I'll even extend the Bigfoot analogy to "RPG system with which even 1 single person is 100% happy".

As I noted in another thread, 80% of the entertainment value in an RPG is having good people to play with and the remaining 20% is determined by the game system and everything else. But since you can't really fix anything about the first 80%, all of the arguing and quibbling takes place with the remaining 20%.

FrankTrollman wrote: There are no perfect rules heavy games, because any complicated system can be improved. But minimalist games can and do achieve perfection for what they are.

This is something I hadn't considered; and it strikes right to the heart of my query.
I haven't played much in the way of "rules lite", and I haven't seen much of anything about such games (other than the occasional review on random blogs).
This site in particular doesn't really talk about them, except occasionally in passing. Considering what you've said here, that would seem to be a function of "there's not much in the way of rules, so there's not much to talk about" and/or "game 'a' is good - what else is there to say". Does that seem about right?

hogarth wrote: As I noted in another thread, 80% of the entertainment value in an RPG is having good people to play with and the remaining 20% is determined by the game system and everything else. But since you can't really fix anything about the first 80%, all of the arguing and quibbling takes place with the remaining 20%.

Okay, I can go with that.
I mean, people like Gygax seem to think that you can put social engineering in to a RPG rules book; but that guy was a dick, so we should get our social cues elsewhere.
But yeah, you talk sense.

Dogbert wrote: Acknowledging truth exist is important, even if we can never reach it.

Fair enough.

FrankTrollman wrote: People frequently throw around "rules lite" as a term to mean books that are over four hundred pages long. And that's fucking bullshit. If your "rules lite" game is more than one hundred pages (not including fiction pieces), you need to rethink your life. But actual minimalist rules games were perfected decades ago. You can't actually make those games better, you can just make them different in ways that handle things the old rules lite games don't really do (like how Munchhausen has a structured method for handling contraction, which Improv and Cops & Robbers have to simply avoid).

I'd hardly say the rules lite RPG has been perfected. And by rules lite I don't mean something like Cops and Robbers (which is close to no rules at all), I mean something like BESM, FATE or d6 Star Wars. Rules lite games still have rules, but a fairly minimal set with a lot of allowance for improvised actions.

Cyberzombie wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: People frequently throw around "rules lite" as a term to mean books that are over four hundred pages long. And that's fucking bullshit. If your "rules lite" game is more than one hundred pages (not including fiction pieces), you need to rethink your life. But actual minimalist rules games were perfected decades ago. You can't actually make those games better, you can just make them different in ways that handle things the old rules lite games don't really do (like how Munchhausen has a structured method for handling contraction, which Improv and Cops & Robbers have to simply avoid).

I'd hardly say the rules lite RPG has been perfected. And by rules lite I don't mean something like Cops and Robbers (which is close to no rules at all), I mean something like BESM, FATE or d6 Star Wars. Rules lite games still have rules, but a fairly minimal set with a lot of allowance for improvised actions.

But improv and Munchhausen have rules. Munchhausen has conflict resolution rules that are piss-easy. BESM and FATE are not rules light games, they're narratively driven games due to the adoption of MTP out of necessity (BESM) or as an accepted part of the rules (FATE). You can say there's no perfect melding of standard RPG crunch with narrative aspects, but there sure as shit are games light on rules that work.

I've been reading TheRPGSite a bit recently, and it really drives home how much of gaming is personal taste. In some ways that place is like a mirror image of here - they treat it as trivially obvious that less rules makes for a better game, and anyone stating otherwise gets a similar reaction to how He Who Must Not Be Named did here. So of course there can be no one "Perfect game", everyone has different standards for what that game would look like.

Every design decision has negative outcomes aswell as positives, closes doors aswell as opens them. Now, that doesn't mean that there's no point taking about game design. There can be such a thing as "Perfect for you", and any new game that is closer to that ideal than any current offering is a net improvement for you personally. I can imagine a game that I like more than any current RPG - so I read game design forums and talk about RPG's in the hope I or someone else will come up with something I like better than what we have.

But I don't pretend it will be The One RPG To Rule Them All and sweep every other game aside in a flurry of awesomeness.

Red_Rob wrote:He Who Must Not Be Named

Who?

Cyberzombie wrote:
I'd hardly say the rules lite RPG has been perfected. And by rules lite I don't mean something like Cops and Robbers (which is close to no rules at all), I mean something like BESM, FATE or d6 Star Wars. Rules lite games still have rules, but a fairly minimal set with a lot of allowance for improvised actions.

Having read and played two of the three samples of "rules light" RPGs I've come to the conclusion that your "average" complexity ruleset must be somewhere around Advanced Squad Leader.

The dice mechanics are simple, but fuck so is D20's dice mechanics system.

D6 Star Wars had like eleventy billion expansion books.

I tend to refer to FATE as a rules-light game, but I'm fully aware that that's only a valid comparison by contrast to, say, GURPS (those are the two I tend to go for if choosing a system, depending on how much crunch I want).

I should probably stop using the term that way, because yeah, if asked to choose an actual rules-light system, I'd probably look to Risus first. Not that I've ever actually played a rules-light game in that system or any other.

My point is that I have contributed to the terminology problem here where FATE is considered "not very many rules" just because it's compared to systems that have bookshelves of material.

TheFlatline wrote: D6 Star Wars had like eleventy billion expansion books.

True, but the core system was very simple and intuitive. It was a game that any beginner could pick up very quickly and play and it was a game you could play without constantly referencing the book.

it's not uncommon for an RPG to be called perfect by it's fans, who then try to use that system for everything else.

A good game master is the key to any fun game session though.

The fact that the core mechanic is simple does not make for a rules lite game. Shadowrun's core mechanic is that you roll a pile of dice and count fives. D&D's core mechanic is that you roll a d20 and add a static number. NWoD's core mechanic is that you roll a pile of d10s and check to see if any of them are showing 8 or higher. Eclipse Phase's core mechanic is that you roll percentile dice and check to see if your result was under your magic number. These are all simple as shit, you can explain them in forty five seconds, and people who have never played an RPG before can grasp the basic how-tos almost immediately.

But that does not, in fact, make any of those games "rules lite" by any meaningful definition of the term. All of those games have hundreds if not thousands of pages of special cases and rules content. nWoD and 4th edition D&D were both longer than the complete works of the Wheel of Time.

Now, there are games where the basic resolution system is a convoluted and perplexing ordeal. Cthulhutech, Unknown Armies, ORE, Savage Worlds, and so on. But while I would say that having to perform arcane entrail readings on every fucking die roll does disqualify a game from being rationally considered as a "rules lite" game, it does not follow that every game with a coherent and simple resolution engine is lite in its rules.

Claiming that any game with dozens of sourcebooks and thousands of pages of rules is "rules lite" just because it has coherent and explainable quickstart rules is essentially insane. Star Wars d6 is not a rules lite system, and anyone who claims it is has cotton between their ears.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:The fact that the core mechanic is simple does not make for a rules lite game. Shadowrun's core mechanic is that you roll a pile of dice and count fives. D&D's core mechanic is that you roll a d20 and add a static number. NWoD's core mechanic is that you roll a pile of d10s and check to see if any of them are showing 8 or higher. Eclipse Phase's core mechanic is that you roll percentile dice and check to see if your result was under your magic number. These are all simple as shit, you can explain them in forty five seconds, and people who have never played an RPG before can grasp the basic how-tos almost immediately.

I'm not talking core mechanic, I'm talking the combat system as a whole. In Shadowrun, you've got rules for movement, rules for full auto, rules for short bursts, rules for wide bursts, rules for damage by distance from grenades, rules for smartguns, rules for melee combat (which works different from gun combat), rules for surprise, rules for shooting through cover, rules for firing at multiple targets with a burst, rules for suppressive fire, rules for grenade scatter, two different types of armor ratings, rules for knockdown, rules for AP rounds, and so on and so on.

In Star Wars d6, you basically had only a handful of mechanics and numbers you needed to know. Your blaster skill, your dodge skill, your strength and the damage of your weapon. There were 3 actions that were largely important. Moving, dodging and shooting. The rest was up to GM discretion.

SWd6 was also minimalist on modifiers (another hallmark of a rules lite system), where Shadowrun is not. Shadowrun is all about modifiers from your gun attachments, modifiers from your special ammo, modifiers from your cyberware, modifiers from your spells, modifiers from your race, and so on. And then of course, we get into worrying about stats on how hackable your cyberware/guns are. What's the rating on your commlink? What devices are slaved to what? What devices are running in hidden mode? There's just a mountain of detail in Shadowrun that you've got to keep track of, where as in Star Wars d6, your character is simple.

And all the stuff mentioned above isn't from a bunch of SR splatbooks, that's right in the core rules.

Now it can certainly be argued that SWd6 still had quite a few rules, but it's far far less than D20, Shadowrun or GURPS.

cyberzombie wrote:
SWd6 was also minimalist on modifiers.

This is a joke, right? Off the top of my head:

Scopes, retractable stocks, cover, scale, character points, and modifications can add to-hit bonuses.

Modifications, jury rigging, and cover, scale, character points( for melee damage) can add to damage.

Some species have skill bonuses or unique skills only they get. Armor servos and cyber ware could enhance attack, damage, and skill use.

In Lightsaber Combat, Jedi added Force skills to attack and damage.

Many Force skills difficulties were modded by Range and Relationship.

Now I've never played Shadowrun, so I can't compare the two, but I wouldn't say D6 is light on modifiers.

Game On,
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