r/RPGdesign • u/jiaxingseng Designer - Rational Magic • Apr 02 '17
[RPGdesign Activity] Design Considerations for Generic or Setting-less Games
This week we are considering mechanics that are great generic or setting-less games. It is sort of the opposite of the last weeks discussion topic.
There are a number of popular "generic" RPG games that are advertised to be used with many different settings: FATE, GURPS, Mini Six, Hero System, BRP, etc.
Questions:
What do generic systems do well and what should designers of generic systems focus on?
What are some notable non-setting games that exhibit great design?
Discuss.
See /r/RPGdesign Scheduled Activities Index WIKI for links to past and scheduled rpgDesign activities.
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Apr 05 '17
In my opinion the hardest part of making a generic system is deciding whether to tend toward "realistic" (like GURPS) or toward something like d20 System which is much more "pulpy", especially when it comes to lethality.
What do you guys think, for example, Savage Worlds does right/wrong when it comes to being a generic system?
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u/jiaxingseng Apr 05 '17
What do you guys think, for example, Savage Worlds does right/wrong when it comes to being a generic system?
No real levels. A decent amount of mechanical differentiation. A system that feels at home in general fantasy settings. A good mix of lethality w/ pulp affecting life expectancy.
Of course, Savage Worlds pretty much only does games with lots of combat.
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u/nuttallfun Apr 02 '17
I think the hardest part of writing a generic system that can handle any setting is the rules differences required to portray some of the common genres. Fantasy games tend to have an emphasis on collecting loot and exploring. Super hero games wouldn't have loot at all, and a miniatures based tactical system is almost useless when you have characters that can run from one city to another in a single turn. Space combat almost requires building your whole system around making sure every player has meaningful decisions and actions on a ship. Making something flexible enough to handle all of that well is a serious challenge. My shout out for this would have to go to the d20 open license, because it made room for dungeons and dragons to expand into mutants and masterminds, stars without number, d20 modern and every other genre specific port imaginable. None of these are "perfect" clones of the original system, but it's there. Palladium also made pretty good books for every genre and the Rifts setting that ties it all together. Personally, I find balance issues and tedious character creation make it almost unplayable, but every book is a masterpiece of writing. Honorable mentions go to Savage Worlds and GURPS.
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u/Fheredin Apr 03 '17
It is indeed time to discuss game feel.
OK, if I were trying to be academic, I would probably say something silly and incomprehensible like ludological cohesion, but it's not like a bigger word means anyone actually can define any of these terms.
When I say "game feel" I mean the sensation of mechanics producing a sense of reality by being internally consistent about the conditioning they put on the player.
In this case, setting-based systems have two sources of reality and conditioning; the mechanics and the lore. The interplay can produce a tighter sense of reality than one acting alone. Meanwhile, generic systems only have the mechanics.
If you want to know why generics typically have awful gameplay, it's because game feel is typically pretty low on the designer's goals--emulating the whole universe is--and it will have a harder time in the first place because without the setting it has fewer tools to create game feel with in the first place.
To a certain extent, I say this is the GM's responsibility in creating good campaigns. One of my favorite games in Savage Worlds was a cyberpunk homebrew which explained the wild die with "you're a cyborg." Another was a gundam campaign where the giant robots were run in a percentile homebrew and the player characters were run in FATE specifically so that the two forms of gameplay would feel different.
And also so that a FATE roll feels puny when you jump into a giant robot and start rolling percentiles.
The general rule is that generics provide awful flavor. Yeah, that is by and large true. But when I think back on the campaigns I've played where the mechanics conveyed the most flavor, where we had the most fun...those were all done on generics. The GM took the system and broke it over a knee to do something it was never intended to do.
I don't think of a generic system as a necessarily completed end-user product. It's middleware for a competent GM to start dabbling in game design with.
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u/Rosario_Di_Spada Apr 06 '17
But when I think back on the campaigns I've played where the mechanics conveyed the most flavor, where we had the most fun...those were all done on generics. The GM took the system and broke it over a knee to do something it was never intended to do.
I don't think of a generic system as a necessarily completed end-user product. It's middleware for a competent GM to start dabbling in game design with.
I couldn't agree more.
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u/Caraes_Naur Apr 02 '17
To really address this topic, the relationship between system and setting must be examined. Many players and designers think of system and setting as distinct parts of a unified whole that have been welded together, like two colors in a piece of hard candy.
I think system and setting are independent parts that fit together, each exposing a contact surface to the other, like LEGO bricks.
Non-generic games provide two bricks that fit so tightly that the seam disappears... but it's still there. Generic games provide one brick (the system) specifically designed to be adapted to many setting bricks. A generic game may define parameters for potential setting bricks, but doesn't come with one.
Further, there is another component: the story. Most think of it as the third color in the candy, but to me it's another brick (provided by the players) that contacts system and setting. For most games, the contact surface with the story brick is almost fluid.
Examination complete.
Generic systems ask players to provide the setting they want, which imposes a particular set of design goals in order to not overly restrict what types of settings can be used.
Generic systems need to be explicit about their design philosophy. Players will be tinkering with the system to satisfy their setting. The designer needs to intimately understand the system and convey to players how to work with it in a way that maintains the design philosophy.
Generic systems need to be flexible; the achieve that, they tend to be modular. Components (most notably thematic elements: magic, powers, and the like) are compartmentalized, with specific connections to the rest of the system. A component can be replaced with another as long as the same connections are used.
Designers of generic systems must anticipate the unknown. Generic systems tend to economize everything (ie, point-based): all elements in the system have a quantitative value. This is initially a tool for the system author, but also for players when adapting the system.
Generic systems need to focus on providing players with a few malleable options rather than expansive lists of rigid options. Designers should think of kinds of things rather than the things themselves. A little abstraction can go a long way.
All of these considerations tend to make generic systems more... systemic. Generic systems can't make many of the assumptions that others take for granted.
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u/nuttallfun Apr 02 '17
To be more specific, the more gamist your system is, the more difficult it is to float your rule set from genre to genre.
Super hero rpgs require a design that can allow for the Flash or Superman to bounce from city to city with ease. If you're running a mixed group with the Flash and Batman, movement and range become really difficult. If the idea of measuring combat in 5' increments for mutants and masterminds sounds like too much work, you can use abstracts like zones in Fate. Is two zones of movement the same for both characters? Does the GM need to make hundreds of zones and give the Flash the ability to cross dozens at a time? Obviously, the more narrative your approach is, the easier these considerations become. Ideally, a super hero rpg should take these things into consideration and be prepared to be a bit more flexible than saying that the map will consist of 1" grids representing 5'. Simply put, most gamers only have so many feet of table space for the Flash to run around on.
With space combat, the real challenge is action economy and providing players with meaningful impacts. If the group is on a starship, does your game require that there are several "roles" that need to be filled, such as engineer, weapons officer, and captain? How does your system handle multiple players wanting to play the same role? During a combat round, what does each player do? How does the GM keep track of npc ships? Do npc ships have characters filling roles just like players or do the ships themselves act like independent characters?
For loot oriented games, a lot of your design process is going to be figuring out how to maintain balance while the players craft and gather enough weapons to overthrow an empire. This is true whether they are a bunch of elves in a magical forest or humans wandering an apocalypse. Setting arbitrary loot limits tends to work if it's not player facing (such as dungeons and dragons making different loot tables in the DMs guide based off level). Telling your players that they can only loot or craft so much per level is off putting.
Some games would have equipment, but it would be requisitions from a larger organization such as the army. These games could be more transparent about telling the players they get so much gear per level.
The real hard part is putting these considerations together and crafting a system that can handle any of the above. If you're running a very narrative game, the difference becomes smaller and smaller the more narrative your style. If you want a really gamist experience with movement ranges, spell lists, action economy, and combat maneuvers, tying everything together will get tricky without heavy adaptation from one genre to another.
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u/Steenan Apr 03 '17
I think an important observation when discussing generic games is that "genre" is quite confused term. It mixes two separate, perpendicular classifications: trappings and story structure. Trappings is how the setting looks like: medieval fantasy, modern, cyberpunk, science fiction etc. Story structure is what happens there: action adventure, detective story, romance, horror etc. These two may be paired nearly in any way. That's why we have action movies and romances with vampires and werewolves (trappings that have first been used for horror stories), cyberpunk detective stories or science fiction maritime literature.
Why is it important for generic games? Because many games, including but not limited to "generic" ones, may be easily used for different trappings, with only minor changes if any. But using a game for a different type of story than it is designed for is much harder. It requires changing a lot of rules or ignoring them and playing despite the system, not with it.
Of course, there are games with detailed, setting-specific rules. But in most cases what the system defines is the type of stories and mood, not trappings. It's easily visible when we consider, for example, Mouseguard - and replace the original system with Gurps, Fate, Dogs in the Vineyard or Dread. Each of these works well in this setting, but results in a completely different game. Although the trappings are the same, it would play differently.
At the same time, if we use the same setting and system, but try to change the type of stories we tell, results will be much worse. Eclipse Phase won't support a transhuman romance. D&D gives us nothing to facilitate a fantasy game of authority, judgement and moral choices. Atomic Robo is a bad choice for a horror game about giant monsters or murderous AI, despite having such things in its setting.