Initial emphasis his, additional emphasis mine.Jeff Grabowski wrote:Any RPG worth playing will fall into one or more of these categories.
The tildeer on that second quote is that "Stupid" games would be better tagged as "Silly". Which IS a meaningful difference in interpreting this "model".Jeff Grabowski wrote:Stupid games do not take themselves seriously. PCs can die horrible deaths and other grim stuff, but that horrible death might involve being eaten by a horde of zombie chickens. Big dice charts, such as wandering monsters or random mutations, are often associated with this style of game. Most comedy games fall into this category, as do all the good versions of Gamma World.
Context: I am the line developer for at least THREE actively supported game lines. Since some of you know how bad Jason M Hardy (the M is for MORMON) fucked up jus the one, you understand how crazy this be.
This post is not meant as an advertisement but if you want to actually buy one of my games, don't let me stop you.
SPLINTER - You know it's cool because the name is in ALL CAPS. Also you can be a motherfucking were-lich with a motherfucking plasma rifle more or less as a starting character (or within 30 real-time minutes of chargen, which should take less than an hour). The high-concept of SPLINTER--an RPG within an RPG, randomly generated dungeon crawls are the bread and circuses of dystopian future Earth, it's a deconstruction of violent entertainment that is also a pulse-pounding example of same--is Pretentious. The execution of the game-within-a-game is intentionally Retro in feel, but not in mechanics. It's D&D with dice pools, which is pretty cool, but it's also a deconstruction of Gygaxian fuckery that is also a prime example of same.
Conclusion: SPLINTER IS R + P
The Singularity System - I am positive that the Singularity System is neither Retro, nor Pretentious. I pitch it as a setting-neutral sci-fi RPG that is a reaction to everything I liked about Traveller and everything I hated about Traveller. Mechanically, it's what I think SR5 should have been. But with fucking spaceships instead of goddamn elves and magic.
If you just want to tell me you think it's Stupid, please instead a) find the nearest barrel of cocks, b) suck.
If you actually have constructive criticism* why you think it's Stupid, that I want to hear, but I'd ask you to hold off until if/when I have sold enough copies to justify the second edition. Because until then, even if tere is Stupid in there, my hands are tied to fix it.
Psionics - Good news: you have enormous psychic powers. Bad news: you are a teenager (probably, or an adult if you really want to be) with serious emotional problems. Good news: you have enormous psychic powers. Bad news: there are six Conspiracies trying to indoctrinate and/or vivisect you, they secretly control most of the world's LEOs, and none of this is going to help the aforementioned serious emotional problems. Good news: AGAIN, enormous psychic powers. They'll let you push-back against the fucked up system. They'll let you push back hard.
Tildeer: roll dice, cars explode. The thing I am most happy about in this system is that a starting character can easily throw an armored SWAT APC at the SWAT guys that just piled out of it (just like bowling!), and it shouldn't take more than 15 seconds of real time to resolve how hard they get smushed.
If a game where getting XP for incinerating cops with your mind offends you, then Psionics is not for you. If on the other hand an RPG where getting XP for incinerating cops with your mind is something you want to stick your proverbial dick in (thanks Prak), Olidamarra bless you and the download link is back up there.
Conclusion: Psionics is Pretentious because it's a dead fucking serious exploration of where psionic powers, serious emotional problems, and drug abuse meet, both mechanically and thematically. As a "rules-medium", it is also the rules lightest of my games, and thus I do try to sell it to the storygame swine set.
You might think it's also "Stupid" because it strongly encourages you to play as a teenager, but that's just like, your opinion, man.
The Secret Fire by George "Boy Did I Fuck Up The Dragonlance Cartoon" Strayton: Grudge disclosure warning: when I was young, scrappy, and hungry, this overpaid incompetent asshole paid me $100 measly dollars to write basically his entire fucking Monster Manual in 24 goddamn hours. I agreed to do this because he promised me that "with jacket quotes from Monte Cook, my game is guaranteed to be a best seller" and then I could "have as much work on the inevitable sourcebooks as I wanted, paid at AT LEAST $0.07 a word".
Like I said, I was young, dumb, and full of...optimism.
Having written this shit-eating moron's Monster Manual in 24 hours for sub-minimum wage, I emailed him a week or two later asking "What's the deal with that follow-on work which will pay real money**?". He ignored me for 48 hours, then told me he had a really bad migraine, and since then I have never heard from him or successfully gotten through to him again. This was back in 2011.
As for his game? Well unlike any of mine, there's a good reason you (probably) haven't heard of it.
It's Retro as fuck, and at the same time Pretentious for its laughably serious efforts to merge the mechanics of AD&D and 4E (keep in mind, this was back in 2011 when people were like...actively rioting over 4E and it wasn't just a bad memory) and to declare assertively that AD&D was about the Lovecraftian outer gods and gosh-darn-it-always had been.
Conclusion: Burning a hole in the corner of Retro and Pretentious, executed in a very stupid way. There are salvageable ideas, but the best parts of the game are probably the inside jokes I snuck into the "bestiary" chapter.
Shadowrun 5E - Mormon Game Labs LLC. Stephen "Rat" Bullkovic wanted to dig all of the dirty Adam Jury era transhumanism out of the game with a rusty spoon (thematically Retro + Stupid) because nanoware was "OP" and he didn't want players to have nice things. Aaron "Gully Dwarf" Pavao was ever-so-convinced that his Matwix Math would "just work", and could not have been more wrong (mechanically Pretentious + Stupid). Jason Hardy provided the strong editorial direction of a mildly retarded corgi: adorable, but functionally useless (Stupid).
Conclusion: The ? in the center of Jeff G's Pretentious + Retro + Stupid model? That's SR5.
* By normal human standards, not Den standards.
** By RPG industry standards.