This was posted on RPGnet by Spectralent dude, but I found it so perfect that I had to bring it here for my heart dear denners.Spectralent wrote:In a couple of other threads I've noted that there are some games that have left me feeling unsatisfied in play. In general, there's a big class of rules-light I don't get on with, and likewise I don't like crunchy, complicated stuff.
But, on the other hand, I both like big-book D&D 4e and play-with-a-handout Apocalypse World. So, what's up?
I think at it's core it comes down to the leading quote: A game is a series of interesting decisions. Now, this isn't everyone's definition. It couldn't be. And there's also definitely room for games to be about largely fictional decisions, and I'm not ragging on that playstyle. But, for all games that are about interesting decisions, oh boy do RPGs screw up in a lot of ways.
See, some complexity is good. 4e makes good use of it's complexity; there's tons of stuff, but almost all of it produces different combinations of emergent effect. Hundreds of different monsters mean hundreds of different battles. There's a lot going on! The complexity is earned. There's a reason for it. On the flipside, though, Apocalypse World is fairly low-crunch; everything's resolved with one fairly central resolution mechanic and you're usually rolling only every now and then. But equally, almost every roll, you're asked to make a decision. So, mechanically, those are engaging games!
But oooh boy does tabletop have a lot of unengaging games.
Now, I should note, here I'm talking mechanics. Narrative decision points are universal and not specific to any one game; freeform RP includes narrative decision points. A game's mechanics don't win points here because you can narrate something interesting every time you engage the same, non-engaging mechanical process. I am, obviously, also speaking for myself; I know people want different stuff out of games. Hopefully though this will be useful to other people, too, since I've seen this sentiment expressed a lot of times before I finally put my finger on it and gave it a hard stare.
There are two main subsets I've noticed:
1. Front-loaded engagement.
Where chargen is the only major decision point. Possibly levelling up, too. Veeery common. Very insidious, too, because they give lots of "out of game" fun, and realistically people probably spend more time thinking about games than playing them unless you have a really frequently-meeting group. But having a bevy of chargen options doesn't mean much when subsequently in play, you've only got the use of the one attack you brought, to be repeated endlessly every fight. There are games that have complexity upfront, and more meaningful complexity in play, of course, but some games fall into this pitfall. I'd accuse various generic systems of this, to varying degrees. This also dovetails with...
2. Trap options
This includes dud feats, spells, powers, or whatever, but I'm also expanding this to include trap options in play. If you've got a game that promises an exciting choice between picking the right option and dying every combat... Well, that's not much of a choice. Exalted 2e's "perfect or die" combat is very guilty, here, but it comes up in other places where there's never any real way to engage things: You've got the right and wrong way to play, and that's it. Especially bad when the game was accidentally built to be very unbalanced, and thus there are multiple seemingly viable wrong ways to do it. You can also look at things like D&D's fighter, for multiple inputs. It's a trap option to start (it's a very subpar class), but in addition to that, it has a very one-note playstyle; get a nice sword, get into melee, and full attack every round.
Now, what can be done? Well, the obvious option is "more stuff to pick from that's not a trap". And this is fair; both D&D 4e and Exalted 3e have reasonably engaging systems and both are reliant on a bevy of special moves of varying applicability to make use of. You get a choice between, say, penalising a creature's attack so it can't hurt you or moving it to an ally so they can unleash a nasty melee attack on it. They're both good options; it's your decision on that.
But, I've played a lot of wargames lately, too. And most of those don't have a ton of "special moves". Primarily, they're reliant on positioning of things and a few (so, definitely multiple!) options of approach, between one or two weapon types or attack approaches. So, I actually think games could potentially produce interesting and engaging combat without large lists of cool powers; but I'm not sure many of those exist. But, for wargames, things can definitely be tense and involving with only a few pieces on the board. Infinity is my goto here; the reaction mechanics are downright nasty, and mean any decision to move or even fire is a calculated gamble to weigh up. I'm not calling for all games to be Infinity, by any means, but it's notable how many games on my hard drive I know how to "win".
As before, this doesn't include things like "well your fights include more stuff to do if you set them on a burning zeppelin flying over berlin while soviet hellbats attack"; that does sound fun. This is more part of a thesis that games should be mechanically engaging by default, rather than by external effort.
Do you agree ? If so, what kind of games do you feel conductive to this kind of thing ?
