Voss wrote:Eh. I don't know all that much about Burning Wheel. But number of copies sold means fuck all for what constitutes good. It is very easy to manipulate people into buying shit. Most of the global economy is predicated on that exact concept.
As I see it - and I may be too cynical - a vote for Burning Wheel is a vote for 2indie4u. As shitty as VTM was mechanically, we know that people actually played it. Hell, there are still people on the Onyx Path forums talking about the campaigns they're still playing and are planning for imminent play. That a no-name book (that according to Wikipedia sold exactly 10 copies in PDF) would beat the second-most popular TTRPG of all time by such a margin tells me that the voters are simply voting against the "mainstream," not actually voting for whatever the hell Burning Wheel is.
I'm actually curious now as to whether Burning Wheel is in fact "better" than VTM in any quantitative or qualitative way.
I bought Burning Wheel since I heard good things about its Duel of Wits. Once it came in I found the book uses 8-pt. font and is shaped more like a hardcover novel than a TTRPG book.
It took them 15 pages to explain Duel of Wits. I'm personally not interested in a subsystem that takes that long to explain, much less trying to teach it to players or reference it during play.
In the "Character Burning in 12 Easy Steps" section, it takes 23 pages to explain how to make a character; 26 if you count the non-essential "rules of thumb" part at the end. Character sheets are 4 pages long.
I haven't played V:TM but I suppose one could gauge conciseness by comparing word counts on comparable sections and whether character sheets are 2, 4, or some other number of pages.
Tumbling Down wrote:
deaddmwalking wrote:I'm really tempted to stat up a 'Shadzar' for my game, now.
brized wrote:I haven't played V:TM but I suppose one could gauge conciseness by comparing word counts on comparable sections and whether character sheets are 2, 4, or some other number of pages.
Getting my Big Green Book down from the shelf:
- The "how to create a character" in V:tM is eight pages long, plus another four for a walkthrough example. The entirety of Chapter Three, which consists of this plus listing and explaining all the traits and powers except for the Disciplines, is 43 pages long.
- The character sheet is four pages long, but all the important stuff is on the first page.
Mord wrote:
I'm actually curious now as to whether Burning Wheel is in fact "better" than VTM in any quantitative or qualitative way.
As said before it will be difficult, if not impossible, to establish what games are better or worse objectively. What we can do is see how each one fare inside its own demographics and why. In which case Burning Wheel fares well, even with some very popular and award-winning spinoffs (like Mouse Guard for example).
Personally, I find it has some neat ideas but is outrageously complex. I would never GM it, but would give it a chance as a player with a proficient GM.
Last edited by silva on Mon Jul 21, 2014 11:52 am, edited 5 times in total.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
The reason why player types are important is that they form basis of commercial game design. In essence you need to choose who you cater and then make the game rules to please that group (or multiple groups). They are also important in determining which group(s) are NOT to be targeted.
The target audience is somewhat different concept but ties to this. When you determine your target audience you need to fit the rules to their wishes as well.
For example many family games have rules that prevent directly setting players against each other (competition rather than elimination) and allow players to make win-win alliances. These are design decisions marked to please Socializers among targeted audience.
Mord wrote:As I see it - and I may be too cynical - a vote for Burning Wheel is a vote for 2indie4u. As shitty as VTM was mechanically, we know that people actually played it. Hell, there are still people on the Onyx Path forums talking about the campaigns they're still playing and are planning for imminent play. That a no-name book (that according to Wikipedia sold exactly 10 copies in PDF) would beat the second-most popular TTRPG of all time by such a margin tells me that the voters are simply voting against the "mainstream," not actually voting for whatever the hell Burning Wheel is.
I'm actually curious now as to whether Burning Wheel is in fact "better" than VTM in any quantitative or qualitative way.
You're too cynical. Burning Con was $50 per ticket and sold out last year. Every small con I attend has at least one or two BW events scheduled. It's the darling of whatever passes for a professional RPG design community. Somebody is playing it.
Whether Burning Wheel is a 'good' game in play is open for discussion but it delivers what it promises. VTM promises Machiavellian power plays among immortals and delivers blood-powered superheroes. It's a more popular game but that's never been a metric of 'good' or even 'better than...'
Thinking about it, I think what made Vampire so popular is that it offers a very rich character-building game; not character-building in the sense of numbers or stats or anything, but character-building in the sense that you can genuinely imagine yourself as being your character. It builds a very fleshed out and seductive world to offer to alienated teenagers. It promises you the idea that your character's day-to-day life is cool, and this allows the players to conceptualise and obsess over their characters in ways that you can't over a shadowrunner or an adventurer, because we only ever seen them when they're "at work."
Vampire isn't a game for people who enjoy doing things, because as you point out it mostly comes down to being a blood-powered superhero. It's a game for people who like just sitting around and being in character; and because you can do that by yourself it's accessible to lonely teenagers in a way that games which need a party aren't.
Actually, you might be surprised at how much navel gazing ends up happening with some flavors of SR player, particularly in MUDs or PbP games. I mean, obviously WoD takes the cake in this area thanks to the low barrier to entry--"You, but immortal and sexy" is as easy for people to grok as it gets--but the SR books were so detail obsessed that players were given ample opportunity to be future hipster Samuel L. Jackson if they wanted to roll that way. According to the books being a prime runner meant that you were not only the baddest motherfucker in the valley but also that you first saw Concrete Dreams at Club Penumbra back before they sold out. Also, there was just the simple fact of the matter that most players and virtually all of the writers have never really known anything but a relatively bourgeois lifestyle, so despite all the promises of z-zones and class warfare you'd often end up with tons of games revolving around all sorts of small time Mary Sue bullshit.
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Whipstitch wrote:all of the writers have never really known anything but a relatively bourgeois lifestyle, so despite all the promises of z-zones and class warfare you'd often end up with tons of games revolving around all sorts of small time Mary Sue bullshit.
Laertes wrote:Thinking about it, I think what made Vampire so popular is that it offers a very rich character-building game; not character-building in the sense of numbers or stats or anything, but character-building in the sense that you can genuinely imagine yourself as being your character. It builds a very fleshed out and seductive world to offer to alienated teenagers. It promises you the idea that your character's day-to-day life is cool, and this allows the players to conceptualise and obsess over their characters in ways that you can't over a shadowrunner or an adventurer, because we only ever seen them when they're "at work."
Vampire isn't a game for people who enjoy doing things, because as you point out it mostly comes down to being a blood-powered superhero. It's a game for people who like just sitting around and being in character; and because you can do that by yourself it's accessible to lonely teenagers in a way that games which need a party aren't.
Hehe, Ive never thought of it like that (perhaps because Im not VTM target crowd) but it makes total sense.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
nikita wrote:The reason why player types are important is that they form basis of commercial game design. In essence you need to choose who you cater and then make the game rules to please that group (or multiple groups). They are also important in determining which group(s) are NOT to be targeted.
The target audience is somewhat different concept but ties to this. When you determine your target audience you need to fit the rules to their wishes as well.
For example many family games have rules that prevent directly setting players against each other (competition rather than elimination) and allow players to make win-win alliances. These are design decisions marked to please Socializers among targeted audience.
I agree, Nikita. I just would like to see how the Bartle theory relates to roleplaying games, and specially how it compares to roleplaying-originating theories like the threefold model, for example.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
silva wrote:I agree, Nikita. I just would like to see how the Bartle theory relates to roleplaying games, and specially how it compares to roleplaying-originating theories like the threefold model, for example.
Most of the real player theory work always seems to match Bartle's work and and Keirsey's temperament theories.
However, few years back I stumbled upon interesting article about Unified Model of player types and gaming styles, which attempts to shoehorn GNS (he extends it to GNS+) to match mainstream player theories. It is in Gamasutra so it is free: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6 ... hp?print=1
Longes wrote:So, here, at the gaming den we talk a lot about good and bad RPGs, call *World names, etc.
But here's RPGGeek's best RPG tournament, and DungeonWorld became the absolute champion, with Fate on the second place.
So what is the criteria YOU use to determine whether a game is good or bad, or are we all here just a bunch of rpg hipsters?
Longes man, you've got it all wrong. It's THEY who are the hipsters.
Anyway, yeah, basically vomiting in rage from the OP.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
There is one game designer who is well worth reading if you wish to think game theories: Greg Costikyan. While he has not put up any formal theory as his own (he works as consultant) he has put a lot of thought to what games are about and mechanisms that make them work.
If you really wish to have a good night's sleep, I suggest starting to read "Beyond Role and Play" (http://www.ropecon.fi/brap/) book about role playing games. Many of its writers are academics so it is a bit more dry than usual fare I have seen in related web sites.
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