So Many Role-playing Game Systems, So Little Time

[RPG Post]

So Many Role-playing Game Systems, So Little Time

Halloween morning I played a Call of Cthulhu game for the first time. You can read a little bit about the game here: Chosen's Halloween Tabletop RPG Game. It has been almost 3 years since the last time I played a live game. Getting a chance to sit at a table again and use a pencil and my brain was a lot of fun. It was unusual in so far as of the three player characters, two were played by women. Most of my experiences have been male-centric. The group consist of vastly varying RPG gaming experience. Chosen and I have both been playing RPGs for around 30 years, give or take. One player has some experience, and it was the first gaming experience for one player. Distaff gaming aside, the rules were simple, elegant and designed for role playing. The first time player in the group could contribute as much as any of us and seem to take to it quickly.

It helped that all the skill rolls were percentile rolls, without much in the way of modifications. And that the players did not need to read any rulebooks to understand their characters abilities. Dice rolling and X number of core rulebooks, more than anything, seems to determine whether a game moves smoothly or not. So we looked at some other games to try and found a couple that looked fun, a couple all gamers should take a stab at and some complete wildcards we would like to get around to. We hope to bring updates to the site in forms of reviews of the RPG products and comparisons between styles of games. The dynamics of the group allow us to examine things from different perspectives and highlight how the game applies to seasoned RPG gamers or a newbie.

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We All Expect The Spanish Inquisition

The Call of Cthulhu games was helped by an ominous knowledge no one makes it through the adventure alive, sane or uninjured. So it was only a matter of time before a bad decision cost one or all of us dearly. A bad decision or a bad roll. It, oddly, felt more realistic knowing we were doomed to failure than it frequently does in FRPGs where the heroes triumph, vanquishing evil. Not that I would want to play a campaign where we fail mission after mission, but as the camera pulled away with the sole survivor, ankle snapped, no food, no gas, huddled in an APC in the middle of nowhere, there was a sense of having finished a Romero movie. And liking it.

The characters were pre-rolled, again a time saver, letting us jump into the game. It also took away some of the attachment that a lovingly created character brings to the table. If you spend four hours on character creation then die first time out, you might never play again. It would be like a FoxTrot comic, one where Jason destroys Paige's character in the first minute after she creates it. Call of Cthulhu answered many of the concerns of first time gamers by simplifying the mechanics, keeping the rules out of the way of the story.

Role-Playing Game Mechanics

How many games systems are out there? Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying, White Wolf's SAS, Pelgrane Press's GumShoe (which is being used in the new Trail of Cthulhu game), Pinnacle's Savage World, Open d20, d10, True 20, D&D 4th edition, hundreds more. Each core rulebook I have read starts with an introductory section that defines role-playing games. There is usually a mention of GM as final arbiter of all decisions and the exhortation to have fun. But what is “fun?”

I assume we all have a different definition of “fun” when it comes to games. This site is obviously skewed toward Storytelling Adventure System, an elegant system that stresses story and role-playing. D&D 4th seems focused on customization, wargaming with miniatures and precise rules to cover as close to every situation as possible. Wizards of the Coast seem to have at least eight core rules books for the 4th edition, including three Players Handbooks, as well as Dragon Magazine rules, supplement-added rules and a variation of the core rules called Essentials aimed at streamlining the 4th edition core rules. But not exactly compatible with them.

Complexity, Rules and Adaptability

There may be a tie-in to Chaos and Complexity theories in Wizards decision to have rules scattered across multiple publications. There may not. But damn there is a lot of material. White Wolf seems to have gone another direction and used their system in multiple milieux that inhabit a shared universe, with the exception of Scion. Which shares modified rules but not universes, necessarily. Breadth of offering rather than depth of rules seems to rule their decisions.

(I joked about chaos theory, but Wizards spends enough time thinking about their rules and gaming that they have an article on equilibrium and game theory up on their site.)

A lot of other rule sets have opened up to encompass a framework plus multiple settings and styles. Pelgrane's Gumshoe and Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying for example. At the most barebones, MADS from Point of Insanity Game Studio, is specifically a framework to translate characters from any game system into a common framework, so you can play cowboys versus starship troopers versus elven bowman, if you so desire. It is set up to handle combat and characters, sort of like the computer program in Deadliest Warrior. Without the cheesy animation. You provide that.

Some systems are at another extreme, that is they were developed for one game. Adventures in Oz seems to be such a system, the mechanics flow from the setting. While the base mechanics might be extensible, character creation is very much a product of Baum's universe and would probably only work for certain other universe's such as Alice's Wonderland.

Perhaps the mostly widely role-playing game system used is d20. D20 uses the Open Gaming License, based on D&D 3rd edition rules and pulled in numerous directions, from Spies to Superheroes to Space. Some amazing work on the part of various game designers has shown streamlined rules and increased playabilty, as many feel Pathfinder displays in D&D's own setting. When all is said and done though, d20 is for good and bad, a D&D variant rule set.

Dice and the Universe Hates You

Dice exist in RPGs to introduce randomness, quantum uncertainty, the fickle finger of fate, chance. Rules exist to to impose structure. Modifiers exist to grant luck and a bit of control to the ready and skilled and trip up the unaware. These are a balancing act in any game, where characters should be challenged but not oppressed and ground down. Dice, chits, coin tosses and shuffled cards can lay low even the mightiest of heroes, causing plans to come crashing down.

Some games and campaigns are not set up to challenge a character but to challenge the players. There's a big difference. Even the mightiest of characters can be felled by puzzles, mysteries, cryptic quests and moral quandaries. Some players love role-playing a character asea in choices with lasting ramifications. Can you catch the killer before a timer counts down, do you let ten people die to save one or vice versa.

Exploring New Worlds

Over the next few weeks, I want to touch upon various game systems and why they came to be that way. Newer game systems have an advantage over D&D in that they were created mostly as homages or responses to Dungeons and Dragons. Being the first system, maybe, or the first popular system at least, D&D create the paradigm and all other games, fairly or not, are compared to it.

If you have a favorite system, let me know in the comments and a little bit about why the system rocks.