RPG Question

[ShogunPat]

I have some questions for all you RPGers out there in cyberspace.

What do you think makes a great RPG system?

What is your favorite system and why? (mechanics, adventure support, artwork etc)

What is your least favorite system and why?

What is one aspect of RPGing that you believe most systems do not adequately address in the rules?

[Primarch]

1. The system has to have enough flexibility to cope with whatever the players decide to throw at the DM, whilst maintaining a level of balance both in terms of players vs enemies but also in terms of player vs player. E.g. I played a game of D20 Deadlands back when it first came out. All the players had a pistol, a knife and a leather jacket, except the 'mad scientist' character who had a gatling gun and body armour.

2. I really like D&D 3.5. As much complexity as you like and a tonne of support. It does tend to have problems at the higher end of the scale though with level 15 and above encounters sometimes taking hours to play through. At lower levels (especially levels 5-10) is where it works well.
I also love the Fantasy Flight Warhammer 40k systems. The books themselves are amazing, beautifully made and high quality. The games have some flaws (Dark Heresy's money/reward system is poorly thought out), but since I love the 40k fluff they are perfect for me.

3. Whilst there have been games I haven't enjoyed, this was often down to the DM rather than the system. If I had to choose one system I disliked, it would be Shadowrun. This comes down to just a few points that can be worked around quite easily, rather than a problem with the game itself. Firstly the Real World/Hacking/Astral stuff means that some party members aren't interacting with the rest of the group. Secondly the game REALLY rewards min/maxing. Players who spread their skills out aren't as effective as players who focus on one thing. Various races emphasise this even more, (e.g. Trolls for combat). Thirdly, as a DM it can be hard to find a balance for the monsters/bad guys the players face as there is no real 'level' system. Finally, it is VERY VERY hard for players to advance. Gaining new skills takes ages. Once your characters are created you're pretty much stuck with what you've got.

4. That’s a tough one. I think that RPGs rules can be incredibly complex or really simple and the game will be just fine. One problem I have encountered with all of the games I have played/DMed is keeping players focused on the story rather than the game, whilst still keeping the game within the rules.
For example if you focus on the game, every interaction with NPCs becomes a series of dice rolls. If you focus on the story, why bother putting skills into interaction abilities? Of course, you can offer bonuses to the skill rolls for good roleplaying, but I have had players who had no charisma scores and no diplomacy skills acting as the face for the party, whilst the players who have high fellowship and bluff stats sit quietly in the corner, because they cant think of anything to say.

[me_in_japan]

I dont know if my opinion is worth much here, but it might be interesting for a newbie perspective. Ive only ever role played once (Call of Cthulu), and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I went into this game having not actually read the rules particularly well, but I nonetheless felt like I was "playing the game." I suspect this had a lot to do with the GM being good.

Of the rpg systems I know anything about, I think the key deciding factor is fluff (background and setting), and focus on story.

Shadowrun: read the rulebook ages ago. Fluff seems interesting, but all the stuff about players not interacting seems like a no-brainer bad idea.

CoC - I like Lovecraft's stuff, so the setting is good. Its also nice because the PCs tend to be normal chaps with no super powers facing up to orrible great googling mooglies. This imbalance seens to push the game towards the story element rather than the combat element, as when it gets right down to it, PC vs Shub Niggurath is only ever going to end one way.

D&D - never played it, and dont know much about it. Looks very generic fantasy, thus Im not so interested. Not dark enough.

Dark Heresy, and all the 40k stuff: Im a long time 40k fan, and I largely play for the background and setting, so Im quite keen to try this. Again, reading through some of the books (which I am doing now) I really want to design my own scenario and tell a story. What this means is that rpging for me is driven by the story, and finding out/letting the players find out what happens next. A system that allows me to do that smoothly is a good system. A system that gets bogged down in rules or which takes an hour for one round of combat is not good.

[Moyashimaru]

I feel I should warn you I've had a sip of the story gamer Kool-Aid, so if i start to sound like I have my head up my ass that is likely the reason.
I like systems that promote that as well as reward character development and storytelling creativity (that, and blow shit up in a vicarious fashion), so I find that systems that intertwine setting and system are better at creating fiction than generic systems.
I like Traveller, for example, but the system does not reward character or story development. Don't Rest Your Head, on the other hand, uses mechanics so tuned to the setting that if they were changed it would mess up the risk/reward economy and the game would no longer be the same (think Doom Patrol meets Dark City).
As far as generic systems go, I like ones that are streamlined without a lot of crunch, so I give Savage Worlds the nod. Character creation is simple and fun, and conflict resolution is quick and pulpy. (In a different world, I'd've said FATE, but I've never played it... got fudge dice though, so anytime...)
As for gaps in rules, *satisfying* social conflict resolution is something missing in a lot of games. When I played Dogs in the Vineyard that one (and so far only) time, I loved that arguing with an NPC using the dice was just as thrilling as a gunfight. A few other systems have social conflict rules, but the emphasis is still on the shooting and the stabbing. I like those things, but if that's all I wanted I would just play CounterStrike.

[The Other Dave]

I'm, perhaps unsurprisingly, with Moyashimaru on this one. Any game where an argument is just as exciting, in terms of engaging with the game's system, as a fight, gets thumbs up in my book. As a corollary to this, I also think most systems don't address, well, anything but combat really, adequately. This sort of ties in to how I'd respond to Primarch's answer to point 4 as well - if your game makes using the system for interaction abilities just as fun and involved as using the system for combat abilities (which, of course, depending on the system, may not be all that involved at all), then it'll be easier for everyone to be engaged in social scenes. If the game makes the rules support the story (and here you can see I've drunk the Story Games kool-aid as well, heh) and does it well, any worry about conflict between "game" and "story" becomes moot.

Dogs does this well, I think, as do games like Burning Wheel (in an extremely crunchy way), PrimeTime Adventures (in an extremely rules-light way), and The Shadow of Yesterday (in a somewhat middle-of-the-road way).

Erm, I'm getting my answers all mixed up, aren't I? That covers points 1 and 4, I guess.

Favorite system: I don't really have a single go-to system, as the kinds of games I like tend to be focused, which means I'd probably choose a different game depending on what kind of game I wanted to play. I've not really found a "universal" system that doesn't fall short in the question-1 category.

Least favorite system: Hmm. I used to play a lot of Exalted, but doing so made me realize just how much of a cluster, er, thing that game's system is. It's based on the WoD system, which assumes human-level abilities as a baseline (which means dice pools of typically, say, 4-6 dice), but bumps the power level up so high it makes the system actually physically cumbersome, because even a starting character could pretty easily be rolling a pool of 15 or 20 dice four times in a row for a single attack. Add to this that it tries to have a rigorous exceptions-based system like D&D, but has often-shoddy playtesting and even poor basic rules knowledge on the part of people writing for the game, and it can get broken pretty fast. Which is a shame, because the setting is so awesome.

[Primarch]

In response to ToD's post.
I've heard good things about DitV's social interaction rules (mainly from ToD actually), so maybe that would be a game I would like to try in the future.
Likewise, Exalted is a game I've played and tbh, didn't enjoy much. Our DM was very much of the "kill as many PCs as possible" variety and after generating my PC I found myself chopped in half the first time the bad guy hit me. That wasn't much fun. Likewise, I thought the idea for the campaign setting was pretty good, but the fact that I needed more dice for that than I do for Warhammer was kind of off-putting. Exalted would fit pretty neatly into D&D 4th Ed. I think, as that has similar special moves and powers without requiring a bucketfull of dice.

[ShogunPat]

I did have some experience with Exalted back in college and as much as I like rolling dice it was just ludicrous.

The thing I find with a game like Call of Cthulhu for example (keeping in mind I am a big fan of the game) is that a lot of social interactions and by that I mean non-combat time in a game is often poorly detailed. For example in D&D there are oodles of rules to adjudicate your actions in combat but outside of combat the rules are very vague and without a good GM non-combat can get tedious and pointless. A CoC game with a pretty terrible GM wouldn't be any fun. Some would argue that anything short of a great Gm would result in a mediocre game. That is the flip side of the coin. I've read lots of praise for CoC as a game and I myself agree whole-heartedly, however that assumes the GM is not the combat-ready Pc killer that I have seen so many times in college.

In addition to rules or mechanics dictating dice rolls for combat there also seems to be a lack of definition or satisfaction in non-combat situations. During my 3.0 D&D years I quickly became tired of running PCs through a dungeon and opted for a social adventure at a party. As far as I was aware there were no mechanical rules to playing out a social game and I quickly found my party becoming bored. Not for lack of dice-rolling but it simply didn't hold their attention like combat.

Dogs in the Vineyard and like some have already posted drawing mechanical parallels between combat and non-combat seem to make even an argument in game more interesting. Now most games do not go into any detail about mechanics for social interactions.

So let me ask a supplemental question: In your experience, what was your most memorable social encounter in an RPG? Whether it involved tons of dice or none at all for hours on end.

[Primarch]

So let me ask a supplemental question: In your experience, what was your most memorable social encounter in an RPG? Whether it involved tons of dice or none at all for hours on end.

Hmmm, my most memorable social encounter?
My group and I were playing a 3.5 campaign set in a fantasy city where we were all part of a thieves guild. Time and again we had trouble with an NPC (who we had previously robbed at the start of the campaign). It turned out that he was part of a cult and after we ruined their plans, he was on the run from them and looking for revenge on us. After dealing with lots of other things and getting the cult all worked up even more, we decided to get rid of this thorn in our side. We fought our way up to his country house, slew his guards, butchered his henchmen and got the evil little weasel at swordpoint. And then we said "We're here to save your life!" We bargained with him and got all of the cult's secrets out of him in exchange for some money (we'd literally bankrupted him and ruined his reputation) and faking his death at our hands. The DM was thrown for a loop as we had previously said we were going to kill him and had no forewarning of out little scheme. In the end, it all played out rather well. At least until the semi-beserk ranger in our party decided to actually kill him rather than fake his death, but that's another story.

[Moyashimaru]

Tough question, and I don't have an answer. The gamers of my youth were mostly interested in the regular hack n' slash, and I can't say I was much different. What can I say? There were no videogames back then.
No, my interest in the social situations within RPGs came after my return to the fold a scant two years ago. Perhaps that is a side effect of age, I don't know. I came back looking for a bit of the old and stayed for the new.

RPGames with social conflict rules I'd like to try:
Dogs in the Vineyard (check).
Apocalypse World (also by Vincent Baker)
Spirit of the Century (FATE-based)
Diaspora (also FATE-based, but with specific social conflict rules that have received good notices)
Fiasco (aka "The Coen Brothers RPG")

Any others?

[Miggy Smallz]

To answer the first question:

I agree with most of the above. However, I no longer really like D&D ONLY because I now like improving characters on the fly, in between game sessions. The ability to garner xp points at the end of each session, then learn skills, even incrementally, as we need them-- that's a huge benefit that D&D, with its levelling system, does not have. That said, I still love D&D for the setting and options, but games like Dark Heresy, 7th Seas, Heavy Gear and Savage Worlds are more interesting to me now.


The second question :

It was a game of BESM, playing in an X-men inspired game. We were sent to a parallel world by accident, and had to retrieve a macguffin in order to return to our own world. The said artifact was in the possession of some leader, who also had a ferocious alien woman (brought by the macguffin) leashed up, which he then ordered to attack us. I was playing former president Jimmy Carter, who now had a Kamen Rider suit and all its powers, but I decided to fall back on diplomacy, Carter's greatest skill. It would be pretty difficult, the GM said, but he let me roll and--- BAM. Natural 20 (or its equivalent, rather). In short order I convinced the alien to attack her leader and together, we would use said macguffin to return ourselves to our respective worlds.