Zak S wrote:
If the phrase "my footsteps" is interpreted as: "Do what I do now" then you are right.
If the phrase "my footsteps" is interpreted as: "Pay a lot of attention to your own game group and devise rules and ways of dealing with them because you're likely not the only people who have the same profile" then you are wrong. Skepticism about published products, and a willingness to think hard about local circumstances are important tools to both good GMing and designing anything interesting and useful. Most of the best games were made so the people designing them could play with their own group and then made this locally useful tool available to whoever in the wider audience wanted a bite.
I meant the first interpretation, and I was specifically thinking of your earlier statements about never looking up rules in play and your rulings being set in stone. Several other posters on this board have presented counterarguments that I feel make a good case that isn't generalizable. Personaly, I handle rules arguments with on-the-spot rulings as well, but the ruling doesn't automatically become universal law. Rules disputes and unknown rules are discussed at the end of the session, and the ruling only becomes a new house rule if nothing better could be found or agreed upon before the start of the next session. The one time a given spot ruling has to be made might be inconsistent, but this method has the advantage of keeping the game moving without having to be perfect on the first try.
That said, I mostly agree with your thoughts regarding the second interpretation. Published rules are not automatically better for any given gaming group, and one's personal gaming group can provide valuable information about how a system can work. However, when one takes that step of making their game available to others, it's equally important to question why the rules that work with one's group work so well, and whether it would work as well for anyone else.
To continue with the simultaneous declaration example in this thread, I can believe that there are groups that would genuinely work faster with a secret declare-ahead system. However, it would only be faster if each player usually takes longer to figure out what to do than it takes for their turn to come around again (including not paying attention when it isn't their turn) and the players do not want or need to spend appreciably more time considering hypothetical situations to determine their actions. If those conditions are not met, the extra overhead in recording intent and resolving actions will result in a slower game than "I go, you go." A game designer trying to make a game with fast combat
without knowing who will play it has to make some assumption about how likely those conditions are to be met. If his assumption is wrong, it will be harder for his game to meet its goal because more groups that try it will take more time to play than he expected.
Cyberzombie wrote:
All I have been saying is that simultaneous declaration isn't always a bad system for RPGs, and can be faster than the current system in certain groups. I can say this with 100% certainty because I've actually witnessed it personally. But that doesn't mean it's always a good system either.
You posted while I was composing this post. I'll definitely read through both your posts and PhoneLobster's more thoroughly before I respond further, but I can agree with this sentiment. Almost nothing in game design is universally bad. I still feel it's important to point out the potential costs of rules like that when someone suggests them, especially in threads where the original poster seemed interested in writing something for a general audience. In this case the main costs are additional possibilities to consider each round and resolution time, which as PhoneLobster pointed out is more of an issue for humans than computers making most computer games poor examples in a TTRPG context.
