RPG Thoughts: One System, Two Countries

That title is going to fall flat for those not interested in Asian security issues. It amuses me and that’s all that matters.

I’ve already waded into the ‘system matters’ discussion, and made my assertion that complex or robust rule sets are their own kind of genre. Now, I want to dig into my own current play test to provide some observations—and how I’m seeing sub-genres inside that robust system genre.

As I mentioned, I’m developing my first robust system, very loosely based on two simpler systems I’ve already developed (and published)—Starship Commandos (Aliens the movie meets Starship Troopers the book) and Riggers (dystopian super-heroes). It is a system based on rolling low (under a target number), with progressively smaller dice replicating progressively greater acumen.

In designing the system, the goals were all mechanics based. This is in contrast to every other design I’ve undertaken where the design goals were all narrative—film noir sword & sorcery, Viking epics, action movie Egypt. This altered how I approached the playtest. In previous designs, I would eject components that did not replicate the feel or veracity of the goal. Now, I’m trying to get all the components to work together to deliver an enjoyable play experience.

And here is where I am hitting the first sub-genre of the robust system—what is an enjoyable play experience. I have players who like to consistently win and players who like to consistently face a challenge. Thankfully, that describes two different groups.

To consistently desire something is not to want it all the time. Players who like to consistently win I think of as action movie players—in many action movies, there are a lot of extras whose role is to get removed by the hero until the boss fight which challenges the hero. Players who like consistent challenge, I think of as thriller players—the characters constantly face new and more difficult challenges, never really winning because that just opens the door to more challenges, until the biggest challenge at the climax.

There’s overlap for certain—as there is with most genres—but these are the two groups I am facing. The settings are almost immaterial, but reflect the interests of the players, and chosen to get them enthusiastic about a playtest. One is high fantasy Arthurian Britain, where the characters are slowly being drawn into the political competition between Ambrosius Aurelianus, Arthur, and Morgana. The other is a cyberpunk thriller, in which the characters are burned operatives of a security corp called back in by the current CEO off the books to investigate the murder of the former CEO—possibly an inside job.

They started out with the exact same rules, but now there is a variation in the Arthurian game—the action movie players. The Arthurian characters have one extra field—one extra stat—which means they regularly have access to a particularly good extra die when working within their niche. As should be expected, this does mean they get to be superheroes rather than just heroes. An easy way to rein in their power would be to change that die (it’s a d6, which means that when you are trying to roll under, you almost always do).

That extra die does cause a design challenge in creating real obstacles, but it is not overwhelming—hordes are tough, or even just two obstacles of relative difficulty. In the end, the same system is running both games. I am facing similar problems and similar successes in each. Because the system itself incentivizes a style of metagame (how the players use the mechanics) rather than a style of narrative (what the characters do in the game and how they do it) I can run these two very different games successfully as the only genre imperative I have is that the components are internally consistent and mutually supportive. During the game, I am taking notes about mechanical options, but I am not leaning on the mechanics to make the story work. That is all happening in the narrative.

I know that I could run a Sword Noir game or a Nefertiti Overdrive game with this system, but I also know those games would not truly be film noir sword and sorcery or action movie Ancient Egypt—at least not as truly as were I using the rules designed for those genres. The thing is, I think using a robust system is about the interplay with the mechanics as much as it is about the story. The fun is making the mechanics work to do what you want. In a simpler system—let’s say a genre forward game—the mechanics are already focused on doing what you want, and you are left with mostly building the narrative around it.

I think I prefer genre forward design, but I don’t half wonder if that is because robust systems are hard—and mine is particularly robust. I have the added challenge of scaling a system with a finite target limit (the lowest target is a 0—which the game makes possible—and that’s it).

But I set that for myself, and that’s my problem. 😉