I posted in another thread about this somewhere, but the original’s D&D 3.x ruleset was bizarre and, frankly, awful. I don’t want to play that again.
A larian-style turn based RPG could be interesting, if the system was solid. But I feel like there’s still this lingering idea that players don’t want complexity, despite the continuous success of Larian. But maybe disney is looking to aim higher? Meh.
Unknown Armies will live on forever in my head. It was such a cool setting and the book had such great writing. There’s a third edition, but I only really read 2nd.
Sadly, I could never get anyone to play it. I’ve been cursed with “everyone only wants to play D&D” most of my life. I still remember trying to sell Mage to a college friend and he was like “You can just cast spells whenever? That sounds totally broken”
Seems like a recipe for subtle bugs and unmaintainable systems. Also those Eloi from the time machine, where they don’t know how anything works anymore.
Management is probably salivating at the idea of firing all those expensive engineers that tell them stuff like “you can’t draw three red lines all perpendicular in yellow ink”
I’m also reminded of that ai-for-music guy that was like “No one likes making art!”. Soulless husk.
…yeah so if you’re the kind of player who argues and fights at the table. Maybe stick to structured games with clearly defined rules.
You ignored the “or play a game I don’t like” part. That is what this process is extremely likely to create. Go look at the blog post again. Go look at those rules.
Furthermore, the process described in the blog post is
When a rule is needed, everyone at the table quickly discusses what the gameplay should feel like and what rule(s) would support that. If a majority of players agree on the rule (voting is necessary only if there is dissent)
Arguing is built right into the process! Someone proposes a rule, and you talk about it. And you know what I don’t want to do? Discuss the merits of rules mid-session. Especially large systems like “how does magic work?” or “can you change someone’s mind?”. That sounds awful. It’s one thing to do a quick “Do you think Alex can climb a ladder with this ‘Broken Arm’ consequence?” discussion in Fate. It’s a whole other thing to invent aspects whole cloth, and then try to integrate them with whatever else people came up with this week.
Or, if I pass on discussing why (for example) dropping your sword on a low roll is going to have weird effects, then I end up playing a game with rules I don’t like. Why would I want that? What don’t you get about this? Do I need to make you a flow chart?
System doesnt know how to handle something
|
|-- Propose a new rule
|- is the rule good? --> yes --> oh that is surprising. carry on
| no
|
discuss <-- the void of wasted time
|
| - were they convinced? --> yes --> go back to 'propose a new rule'
|
|-- no --> keep discussing? -- yes --> well this sucks
|-- no --> give up --------^
Ironically, the game I mentioned as an example of what I do like (Fate) is very light weight. But not so light weight that it doesn’t exist, and I have to deal with Brian trying to introduce hit locations mid session, again.
You seem to be imagining this like perfectly spherical frictionless group of players that are all super chill, on the same page about everything, and happy to just do whatever. I’m imagining what has been more typical in my experience, which is not that.
Again…this isn’t your scenario. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re conflating taking game systems and adding other mechanics to it and just goofing around and making it up as you go.
The blog post is about building a game system! Look at all the weird rules they made up! This whole blog post is about taking game systems (ie: rules people know from other games) and smushing them together! Anyone doing this process is going to start with some baseline system(s) in their head. Even if it’s just “let’s rock paper scissors for it” or “flip a coin”. It is in fact taking game game systems and adding other mechanics to it.
They certainly had fun, but as I said that sounds like my personal hell.
It’s okay to say “I need a game with explicit structure and rules”. That’s fine too, but maybe don’t argue with your players though.
Arguing is built into the process described into the blog post. Unless you’re splitting hairs and saying “argue” isn’t the same as “discuss”.
I have a daydream where we set up honey pots for this kind of thing. We invite people who think company towns are a good idea to come to a convention and make their pitch. And then they don’t leave.
I think there’s a famous quote from some right-winger about how they need to oppose social programs because people like them, and once they see how good they can be it’s really hard to repeal them. Can’t find it right now, or I might have imagined it.
This has nothing to do with builds. Fate, the game I said I’d play, doesn’t really have builds.
This is all about not wanting to have to spend a lot of time arguing with people, or playing a game I don’t like. Those are the two most likely outcomes. People will propose bad rules, and we either argue or I suck it up. There are so many common ideas in RPGs that I really don’t enjoy, but are popular nonetheless. I don’t want to stop the game and argue that “save or die” kind of sucks, and if we kill Alex’s character now like that a. they’re probably going to be unhappy just look at their face and b. what are they going to do the rest of the night?
(Or I’ll propose rules that won’t achieve the desired goals very well, because I’m also not such a good designer I can nail things on the first try)
Maybe with some hypothetical spherical frictionless group of players that are all on the same page about rules and design it would be fun. But that doesn’t seem to exist in the real world. We live in a world where people go “Let’s use D&D for a game of political intrigue! Wait, why does the fighter barely have anything to do and gets bad results on every check he does make? Why weren’t they scared when the antagonist pulled a knife on them??”
Good. Escalate further. I want to see musk sobbing in fear before the lights go out of his eyes.
I feel like a lot of people are closer to ready than they’ve been. When Luigi allegedly murdered that scumbag CEO, people were celebrating.
Is there a call to action? Are we going to storm something?
System: Fate
Concept: “What if we fix the world with violence?”. Sort of the non-sephiroth parts of FF7. Near future cyberpunk ecoterrorism. The villains have money and the power that brings, but they’re still mortal. Find when their board meeting is happening, set off a bomb in the office. Find where the CEO gets lunch, shoot him in the back of the head. Senator voting to defund public education? Wow what are the odds he’d drown in his bathtub?
I did sort of get a game of this going for a while, but the players ended up being a little weaker than I wanted, and the “make allies with other people who hate your enemies” was slow to catch on.
I also probably let too many tangents sprawl out.
One of them also rolled well below average, based on analysis one of the players did of the dice bot.
I always set a quorum for my groups. Usually it’s like “If there’s 4 players, we play with 2”
The whole “most startups lose a lot of money and fail, but some will be wildly successful” model is kind of rotten. Especially when the "wild success " often means breaking laws or becoming consumer hostile.
As I said, it sounds like my personal hell. I do not believe the average person is good at making up rules, and thus many bad outcomes are more likely.
If the other people are proposing bad rules, it’s probably some combination of
I really don’t want the game to grind to a halt because we realized mid session that the interaction of rules is making Bob super effective, and now we need to untangle this in a way that Bob won’t feel attacked and Alice won’t feel useless.
If I just wanted to fool around with some friends, and we wanted to do an RPG, Fate is right there. It even encourages you to build on top of it.
Yes. Unfortunately, if you try to slug a nazi a bunch of pearl clutchers will pop up saying violence is never ever ever acceptable oh dear we need to compete in the marketplace of IDEAS and follow the LAW we might not like that the law says the [outgroup] are to be forcibly relocated but it is what it is oh dear.
I don’t expect everyone to be on the front line throwing a molotov, but I would like if more people wouldn’t actively support the oppressors.
It’s like some eternal September shit. Of course a private for profit entity like discord is going to eventually turn to shit*. It’s like the scorpion and the frog fable**. People should know that. But there are just so many people who this is their first time ever encountering these ideas.
And some people just don’t care about things. I had that galaxy brain realization a couple months ago. Imagine if everyone cared just a little more. So many problems would just go away.
*Valve arguably being an exception so far, but that could change on a whim
** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog
You have to remember a lot of people are colossally stupid, but still are in positions to make decisions.
I often feel like we as a society let “everyone is entitled to their opinion” go too far. Like when it’s “I like vanilla and you like chocolate” that’s fine. Let people enjoy their flavor of choice. But when it’s like “I don’t think those foreign people should live” that’s just the same kind of thing at all.
And closely related, when someone’s like “I just don’t believe in vaccines” we shouldn’t just let that be.
I believe French does this as well. To answer in the affirmative to a negative question, you use “si” instead of “oui”
“Si” is also the word for “if”, which has probably confused people.
(top search hit, not sure if good, but on a quick glance it looks correct https://www.commeunefrancaise.com/blog/si-in-french )
There’s a shared theme with like all of humanity’s woes: people don’t care that much.
From pollution to injustice to shitty websites, if people cared just a little more the problem would be dramatically reduced or even eliminated.
But so many people are just apathetic. Overwhelmed and checked out.