Game systems
This week’s writing exercise is casting bouquets and brickbats at game systems. I have very carefully avoided reading the other contributions thus far so as not to sully my opinions.
Since we have to do three, I’ll do what the question says: pick one system with very few redeeming features, one with very few faults, and one in the middle.
The single worst system I have ever seen was that of the first RPG I ever played, Living Steel. In my single experience with it, resolving much less than one minute of combat game time took over three hours. Enough said. To some extent, nearly all games based on futuristic combat machines (e.g. Robotech) suffer from this malady; I think it took the cyberpunk games (e.g. Shadowrun) to break it.
I am ridiculously fond of White Wolf’s general approach to game design, if not necessarily of their chosen milieux. I played Vampire before the concept got diluted with werewolves and mages and whathaveyou. Loved it. The best thing about it, speaking as a longtime D&D player, was the versatility built into character creation. Because there are so many choices to be made to create a Vampire character, there is really not much profit in min-maxing (unless your Storyteller is more predictable than any Storyteller I’ve ever seen), nor is there any single path to creating a successful character. This leaves worlds more freedom to come up with memorable, distinctive characters. The advancement system is similarly flexible.
My only complaint is fairly minor. One of the tests of a Vampire-like system, one in which the characters created explicitly mimic real people in real life (as opposed to being Chosen Heroes, set apart from the madding crowd), is that real people should be able to acceptably counterfeit themselves within the strictures of the character creation mechanism. I can’t do it in Vampire. I know too much. Any college-educated person knows too much. The basic stats are fine, but the point-pool for Knowledges/Talents/Skills is ludicrously small.
Increasing it raises the possibility of min-maxing, I admit. I have toyed with the idea of dividing such things into obviously-game-useful and merely-character-enriching, with the aim of increasing skill points for the sake of well-rounded characters while depriving min-maxers of anything to min-max. Tough thing to work out, though, and inevitably the line will be misdrawn.
And the system with which I have a love-hate relationship is… d20. I hate the rigidity of character construction, and the absolute requirement that any party wishing to survive two encounters have The Cleric, The Fighter, and The Magic-Slinger. D20 is an advance over second-edition D&D in this respect, since multi-classing is easier. However, prestige classes completely obliterate the usefulness of multi-classing (since so many of them are munchkin-bait), and they also force characters to be evaluated teleologically from their very creation—to earn a prestige class, you typically have to choose the right feats and skills right from the start. Seems a shame to force characters into a mold rather than letting them grow as their experience leads them.
On the other hand… the combat system is quick and useful once you become accustomed to it; the silly second-edition saving-throw and armor-class systems have been reduced to something downright sensible; monster levels are a brilliant cure for the “oh, just another kobold” blues; when properly designed, prestige classes can be clever and interesting. The rules have enough wiggle-room to fit plenty of situations, and are modular enough to be rewritable at need. (The ranger class is a frequent rewrite target; my group is working on that right now. I am considering giving Rat a level or three of ranger, as a situation just arose in-game in which she might learn appropriate skills.)
The most important benefit to d20 is, of course, the network effect. Most gamers know it, at least a little. Scads of sourcebooks and modules have been written for it, considering its relative youth. Creaky at the joints though the system is, it’s still playable and worth playing.
Update: I see a lot of anti-Ars-Magica sentiment. Find it odd. The character creation system is really not much different from Vampire, which is getting generally positive remarks. The milieu is playable with minimal history knowledge, though the more you know the richer your game environment, just as with most games. The magic system is by and large sensible, and vastly more flexible than a rigidly spell-based one such as that for d20. What’s the beef?
Would like to try: Nobilis, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia
Probably won’t try: Godlike (too tightly tied to its repulsive milieu)
Powered by FireStats