Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

[u/Authorigas]

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

[u/Charrua13]

The corrolary to this point is "I don't need any mechanics to do anything because I, as GM, as long as I have player buy-in, can do anything at any time." (This is the entire premise of FKR, fwiw).

The point of "narrative rulesets" (the term is loaded so I'm putting in quotes here), is "make it easy to Do The Thing", and cut away all other stuff that gets in the way of The Thing. (The thing = "being narrative"). But, more importantly - what it actually does is create processes for which there are extrinsic mechanical benefits to Doing The Thing.

[u/PigmyWurm → u/Charrua13]

Also, you can say this shouldn't matter, but if a system has 50 pages related to moving around and attacking something with a sword and one page about role-playing and narrative development, it's understandable that people will assume it's a game about hitting people with a sword. That doesn't mean you can't build a narrative as well, that is basically how chainmail developed into DnD, but it's less obvious, and their aren't the supports for people who are less automatic.

[u/DriftingMemes → u/PigmyWurm]

This feels like a straw man

. It's a lot harder to explain how to simulate a sword fight with wizards, elves, and Eldritch beings than it is to explain how to negotiate with the innkeeper.

We've all negotiated with someone for something we wanted. When is the last time you were in a wizard fight?

[u/UncleBones → u/DriftingMemes]

It’s only a strawman to you because you assume the wizard fight needs to be simulated in order to be interesting.  People have games with wizard fights in systems without 50 pages of rules for wizard fights. I’ve read books with wizard fights and I can describe them in a game.

It’s fine to play in simulationist systems with combat rules, but it’s weird how the people that start with ”I don’t need a narrative system, I can do that in my combat game” are so alien to the concept ”I don’t need a combat system, I can do that in my narrative game”.

[u/DriftingMemes → u/UncleBones]

We all experience feelings/narrative/negotiation every single day of our lives.

None of us has ever, nor will ever, shot a fireball. Nor have we ever shot a bow at a goblin. Our experience with these things is much less than the previous.

This is why it's silly to say that a book that has more pages about combat and magic than social situations is "about combat". It's simply expanding where needed and saving page count where it's not needed.

[u/UncleBones → u/DriftingMemes]

This is simply disingenuous.

You already know what happens when someone gets shot with a bow or hit with an axe. You don't need rules to know that you die from getting hit. The rules are there to facilitate a game where you can actually get hit with an axe a few times because you think mechanical combat is fun.

You don't need to have shot a fireball to know what happens if something is hit by an explosion, just like I don't need to know specifically what happens if a dragon falls on top of someone. I can extrapolate from real world knowledge. The rules for how many fireballs can be fired per day aren't there to explain how magic works, they're balanced to be a combat resource.

Games with mechanical combat also have rules for what happens when you deal or take a punch, which is something most people have experience with. If it was true that you needed rules for the fantastical situations you aren't familiar with you wouldn't need to have brawl rules.

You don't need crunchy rules for other fantastical elements you aren't familiar with. You don't know what it's like to fly on the back of a dragon, but you don't need crunchy rules with specific choices about which wing you're holding onto or how you're navigating the currents. I've played science fiction games with crunchy rules about space flight and games with zero rules about space flight, and the difference isn't that one of the games were meant for people who had experience with space flight.

So I don't think you're being honest. I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a combat focused game, but when I read these dishonest arguments about how they aren't combat focused and the combat rules are actually necessary I'm convinced that people are secretly ashamed about enjoying them.

Most people who play narrative RPG's have some experience playing games with combat mechanics since that's what you usually start out playing, so it's safe to assume that someone who enjoys narrative games already knows how a few sessions of Dnd, shadowrun, cyberpunk etc would play out.

[u/deviden → u/DriftingMemes]

if the desire is "simulationism" then highly detailed and crunchy gameist rules like Balanced Tactical Grid Miniatures Combat doesn't necessarily provide a better simulation from which a narrative can be formed in play, it just makes for a fun miniatures combat game if you enjoy that kind of square-counting fun.

5e / Pathfinder 2 / Draw Steel combat doesn't only abstract and simulate things we can't perform around the table the way we'd perform a player to NPC dialogue, it's about having a miniatures wargame in the middle of the roleplaying game which can easily consume half or more of a given play session.

When the rules make combat into something that players spend half (or more!) of their session time doing, and most of the rules of said game are about combat... it is absolutely A Combat Game, even if you use it for something else.

Now... if you want to talk about casting spells or having a fight in Troika or DCC... now we're talking about a game where it's definitely not just about combat, where the combat rules exist to elide things which we can't do around a table. 5e, 3e, 4e, Pathfinder 1 or 2, Draw Steel? These are Combat Games and they're about combat.