Top 3 "must-play" games for designers ?

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 1:44 pm

Stumbled on this interesting post from Ryan Macklin's blog and decided replicate it here.

So, what do you guys think are the three most important games for designers to play and what lessons does them teach ?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 2:14 pm

The suggestions in the comments are horrifying. Unknown Armies? Amber Fucking Diceless? These are examples of how not to do things!

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 2:22 pm

Well, here are mine:

1. Dungeons and Dragons (any edition except AD&D1&2): its how everything started. It established the design paradigms the hobby follows until nowadays, and it was such an impact that it bled out to videogames, boardgames and other medias. Also, both in its dungeon-focused and encounters-focused interations, it created such smart concepts as balancing encounters, torches and patrolling monsters as timing and pacing elements, reward cycles closely integrated with its gameplay focus on exploration/treasure grabbing, etc. Its the standard for a reason.

2. Apocalypse World and its hacks. Its the most recent and influential representative of the hobby's other, non-D&D, evolutionary path: the genre/story-emulation one, whose rules target at reflecting literary themes and tropes instead of physics simulation, and which IMO began back in the 80s with Pendragon, had a lull in the 90s, and rebirthed full-strenght in the 00s with the Forge and Indie movement. This game manages to dilute everything thats important in these games: drama taking central stage, every roll is meaningful, failing as important as succeeding, a "master of ceremonies" for guaranteeing the stars of the show - the players - drive gameplay, "moves" and "playbooks" condensate genre/theme into instantly-playable packages, etc. There is a reason it took the narrative/indie crowd by storm since its release in 2010.

3. Shadowrun: for being the hobby's biggest cautionary tale - a fantastic setting, an incredibly playable premise, merged to a ruleset that dont know what it wants to do, ending up partially unplayable, partially nonsensic, and fully schizophrenic. There is a reason its the champion of "What system for Shadowrun ?" threads everywhere.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 2:26 pm

It's a silva thread. Obviously it's a brazen and ridiculous shill thread for bear world. Because all silva threads are exactly that.

In any case, as a designer, you do not have to play any particular minimalist indie game that no one cares about. Like, definitionally. There are no Forge games or Story games or whatever that are must-plays.

You do need to play games that made lasting impacts, defined game creation thinking, and launched lasting empires. So you have to play Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, and Vampire: the Masquerade. And you should play each of them at their high water mark for impact. Which means that you should play D&D (and I think GURPS) in its 3rd edition and Vampire: the Masquerade in its second.

-Username17

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 2:27 pm

D&D 3e, Shadowrun re and oWoD. Apocalypse World does not make the cut.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 2:47 pm

Longes wrote:The suggestions in the comments are horrifying. Unknown Armies? Amber Fucking Diceless? These are examples of how not to do things!

Hmmm, I think Unknown Armies has interesting qualities (making whats important to your character relevant to play in the form of obsessions and passions, freeform skills, fiction-integrated magic system, flip-floping, etc) even if the overall result lacks relevance as a whole. About Amber though, I never played it and the superficial read I gave didnt show me anything of note except the gimmicky diceless mechanics (which I also dont think has much value, honestly). So yeah, I agree with you here.

Grek wrote:Shadowrun

What in Shadowrun do you think is worth of lessons for would-be designers ? Im curious, as I struggle to see any redeeming quality to this game rules-wise.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 3:22 pm

Munchausen, HERO 6th, and D&D3x, although I'd prefer to play games influenced by those, such as M&M3 or Fiasco.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 4:23 pm

silva wrote:
Grek wrote:Shadowrun
What in Shadowrun do you think is worth of lessons for would-be designers ? Im curious, as I struggle to see any redeeming quality to this game rules-wise.

Off the top of my head:
-Dicepools, both that they exist as an RNG and how players interact with them. Particularly, the insight that getting someone to work out the average result on 10 dice is fairly easy, getting some to work out the odds for "2 or better" on 10 dice is fairly hard without pencil and paper and possibly a math textbook. WoD also covers this, but their variable TN system is distinctly different and distinctly worse.
-Edge as a "Hero Point" resource, specifically in that they will gladly spend temporary edge on any old roll, but many will refuse literally on pain of (in character) death to burn permanent edge for any reason.
-Hacking systems and how NOT to do them. Doing computer hacking in an RPG well is something of an open problem, much like good social system rules and good aerial combat rules. Knowing what has already been tried unsuccessfully is much better than reinventing the same square-shaped wheel over and over again. I'm looking at you, Eclipse Phase!
-Open Build Point character generation. Shadowrun is not the best example of this, but it one of more the popular examples of a BP system where all character resources come out of the same pool, and a designer needs to know how that works out.
-Drain as a character resource management system. Neither D&D nor oWoD really feature this, but it is a good thing to have in your game design toolbox.
-Triangular vs Linear in Chargen vs Advancement. Shadowrun is really really bad about giving players different costs for things depending on if you buy them between adventures than if you buy them before the campaign starts. This is obviously bad and a new game designer needs their nose rubbed in the fact so they learn not to do that.
-The Setting. While I don't think that you specifically need to know the nuances of the Shadowrun setting to be a good game designer, you do need to learn a basic notions about RPG settings in general which are easily gleaned in Shadowrun in particular. A] that you can have an RPGs in science fiction settings, and B] that you can mix genres like Shadowrun does and have that be successful and innovative.
-Fluff/Mechanics integration. Basically, the notion that the rules should reflect the setting and the setting should reflect the rules. In many places (cough cough, Movement Spells cough cough), this fails. But in others (Mages can say they want to join an initiatory group to "reap the karmic benefits of membership" with a straight face) it works quite well.

Nebuchadnezzar raises a good point about HERO. It's a very good example of a game with tight balance that isn't hopelessly dull. If D&D didn't qualify solely based on intense market penetration, I might honestly point to that as the example d20 game on the reading list.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 4:48 pm

Thanks.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 7:08 pm

First, you need to run a game of
SPULTURATORAH! the dark narrativist game of gamist simulationism in ancient retro-future Babylon.

Then, once you have absorbed the lesson, that your so-called "friends" are nothing but meat sacks flopping around in the fashion of an outgassing corpse, pile all of your dice and pencils and graph-paper in the corner and SET THEM ON FIRE. Weep meaningless tears.

You are ready to proceed to the next game.

=====
The ideal adventuring party includes a gleaming silver robot piloted by a steely-nerved everyman, a dragon who shapeshifts into a sexy teenage girl, and a magic-wielding wookie in an awesome rebreather mask.

Can one play such a party? That answer has always been yes, but the terrible consequence of the autonomous processes that lead to such universal human behavior is that you will play Rifts.

Rifts delivers what it says on the tin and that is a western with dragons, killer robots and magic ninjas. It's a dumpster-fire but that doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

=====

Are you still here? A claim might be uttered, an insistence that you are still here. Is that what you think? No, it's not even what you say, because there is no "you" to do either the thinking or the saying.

There is Call of Cthulhu. From a design standpoint, it is worse even than Rifts: the game system produces absurd outputs, the character options range from effeminate professor to ignorant yokel, and there is little notion or guidance about how the characters might interact with the setting. It is immensely popular.

Why? There is no answer to the question and no-one to ask it. Nothing means anything. Everything means nothing.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 7:21 pm

Best. Post. Ever.

vagrant · Post by **vagrant** » Sun Dec 20, 2015 10:22 pm

DrPraetor wrote:First, you need to run a game of
SPULTURATORAH! the dark narrativist game of gamist simulationism in ancient retro-future Babylon.

Then, once you have absorbed the lesson, that your so-called "friends" are nothing but meat sacks flopping around in the fashion of an outgassing corpse, pile all of your dice and pencils and graph-paper in the corner and SET THEM ON FIRE. Weep meaningless tears.

You are ready to proceed to the next game.

=====
The ideal adventuring party includes a gleaming silver robot piloted by a steely-nerved everyman, a dragon who shapeshifts into a sexy teenage girl, and a magic-wielding wookie in an awesome rebreather mask.

Can one play such a party? That answer has always been yes, but the terrible consequence of the autonomous processes that lead to such universal human behavior is that you will play Rifts.

Rifts delivers what it says on the tin and that is a western with dragons, killer robots and magic ninjas. It's a dumpster-fire but that doesn't matter.

Nothing matters.

=====

Are you still here? A claim might be uttered, an insistence that you are still here. Is that what you think? No, it's not even what you say, because there is no "you" to do either the thinking or the saying.

There is Call of Cthulhu. From a design standpoint, it is worse even than Rifts: the game system produces absurd outputs, the character options range from effeminate professor to ignorant yokel, and there is little notion or guidance about how the characters might interact with the setting. It is immensely popular.

Why? There is no answer to the question and no-one to ask it. Nothing means anything. Everything means nothing.

Sigged. Congrats, my first sig.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:53 am

DrP, whatever shit you're on you need to pass it to the left.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 8:48 am

DrPraetor wrote:Why? There is no answer to the question and no-one to ask it. Nothing means anything. Everything means nothing.

Welcome to Night Vale.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 5:53 pm

Frank pretty much nailed it. GURPS might be a mildly controversial submission but I understand why he put it in there. I honestly don't know what I'd put in it's place.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:08 pm

TheFlatline wrote:Frank pretty much nailed it. GURPS might be a mildly controversial submission but I understand why he put it in there. I honestly don't know what I'd put in it's place.

Much as I'm a GURPS guy, I'd probably put Champions in that spot. It's the same sort of anything-goes point-buy, but it understands itself a lot better and puts more of its design decisions out in the open. Acceptable SPD, CV, and DC/defense spreads, as well as the 'effects-based' philosophy are all really good reads for a learning designer.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 6:20 pm

Regarding the justification for Shadowrun, there are profoundly more bad ways to do something than good ways. I wouldn't want anyone to play a game to learn how not to do something, because you could spend most of eternity exhausting the list. For the most common mistakes, you can just tell them. For Shadowrun, the biggest negative impacts I've seen on people has been their interacting with the system and coming out with the idea that hacking does anything, as well as getting bogged down with the sometimes stultifying nitpicking that Shadowrun engages in with .01s of Essence and tracking every last bullet. The biggest positive impact seems to be fairly marginal -- there are lots of games with dicepools and hero points, and many people don't seem to need to learn "you can splice two things together and have it be neat," partially because the dominance of superhero media already has told them that. Even with caveats and warnings against the negative lessons one could take, it seems to be a risky dosage of mind poison, and there's other bad ideas you can get from it that most people might not think to warn about, like sometimes people might emerge with ideas like "the sample character with weapon skills but no cyber and no magic is acceptable."

Basically everything Shadowrun does that would recommend it for play has been done somewhere else better, and I would create any such recommended list focused on a "best of the best of the best" approach. So, I don't think Shadowrun makes the cut. I think there are multiple different "top 3s" though, based on the kinds of games you want to write -- HERO/Champions, for instance, is arguably a must-read for anyone who wants to do a superhero game, whereas D&D might actually be a bad choice of reading for that reason.

Obviously if you want to write a cyberpunk fantasy heartbreaker, uh, you do read Shadowrun, of course.

For my top 3 "in general," I would probably pick HERO for a lesson in effect-based generation, Vampire the Masquerade because of my latent goth tendencies, and... Descent. Yes, the board game. It is up to the aspiring developer to decide whether the last is a lesson in "what you could be doing instead of playing/designing an RPG" or "a recommendation in how to engage with dungeon crawls."

silva · Post by **silva** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:45 pm

Almaz nailed it about Shadowrun for me.

Almaz wrote:I think there are multiple different "top 3s" though, based on the kinds of games you want to write -- HERO/Champions, for instance, is arguably a must-read for anyone who wants to do a superhero game, whereas D&D might actually be a bad choice of reading for that reason.

This is a good point. As an example: most games cited on the article linked on OP are worthless for someone wanting to design a D&D-like game, while most games cited in this thread (Shadowrun, WoD, D&D, etc) are worthless for the narrative/story-games crowd.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Dec 21, 2015 7:53 pm

Almaz wrote:
For my top 3 "in general," I would probably pick HERO for a lesson in effect-based generation, Vampire the Masquerade because of my latent goth tendencies, and... Descent. Yes, the board game. It is up to the aspiring developer to decide whether the last is a lesson in "what you could be doing instead of playing/designing an RPG" or "a recommendation in how to engage with dungeon crawls."

I haven't gotten far into Descent 2nd edition but 1st edition was kind of a mess rules wise.

If we're going to go with an example of an ongoing campaign along with tight rules design within the board game space, I'll tip towards Pandemic Legacy.

One thing is clear, while the TTRPG market has learned fucking nothing from the board game renaissance, it looks like right now we're looking at a subset of board game designers looking at TTRPGs and RPGs in general for ideas on how to make their games have longevity.

mlangsdorf · Post by **mlangsdorf** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 12:37 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Much as I'm a GURPS guy, I'd probably put Champions in that spot. It's the same sort of anything-goes point-buy, but it understands itself a lot better and puts more of its design decisions out in the open. Acceptable SPD, CV, and DC/defense spreads, as well as the 'effects-based' philosophy are all really good reads for a learning designer.

I wouldn't necessarily include GURPS for game mechanics design, but SJ Games has a good grasp of writing style, trade dress, and indexing that is often absent in the tabletop industry. GURPS products might be a little bland, but they're bland in a very recognizable way. And I have 30 page PDFs for GURPS that have longer and more comprehensive indices than 400 page WotC boxed sets. It's fine as a game designer to surpass the GURPS house style, but it's functional and minimalist enough that you shouldn't do worse than it.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:57 am

GURPS is a better choice than Champions.

I say this, in spite of the fact that:
1) Frank's dad used to run Champions games for us when we were little kids, so I have fuzzy feelings for Champions. As a game to run superheroes, Champions works better than GURPS works for anything.
2) I don't remember how GURPS works. For some reason I recall rolling 4D4 for stuff? I did read a basic GURPS rulesbook... like 10, 15 years ago? But I know how GURPS supplements are structured...

So, in principle, Champions is a more universal system then GURPS. In practice, however, Hero System is a pile of magic asterisks telling you to figure this shit out on your own. That's doubleplus ungood from a game design standpoint.

Champions breaks down at the low end (this was actually a problem because as kids we kinda wanted to play rats of NIMH and negative strength doesn't work for fighting other sentient rats with swords) but you can hack the Hero System to all play blind insect-aliens that see by vibration, or the inhabitants of flat-land, or other bizarre things, and the game system does relatively well. But, if you want to play a Vampire, the Hero's systems answer is: here are some rules, choose some and declare they apply, figure this out your own damn self. The most extreme example is Delayed Effect, which is Vancian spellcasting and (as of the last edition I read) instructs the GM to, roughly, "figure out some system that limits how many spells you can prepare." Even supposing it's int/5(RU), that's going to give you 6 recoverable charges for your spells but costs a RADICALLY different amount of points than those 6 recoverable charges bought another way, fuck you very much.

GURPS, on the other hand, would (probably does) have a book where someone has decided how vancian spellcasting or vampires should work (or a few reasonable takes on vampires) and fleshed them out. So GURPS is enough of a universal system that people can write these sourcebooks - a NIMH sourcebook would work - with varying results and cover a lot of ground, many different genres.

Hero System, on the other hand, pretends to cover everything but really only covers Pulp and Comic Books, which are essentially the same genre. In Pulp, every vampire can be a Steve. It doesn't really bother you if Batman fights vampires in two different comics and in one comic the vampire burns to death in sunlight and in the other comic the vampire just loses his powers, and one vampire is magical and the other is comic book science. It doesn't matter because the vampire has powers and weaknesses and, in Champions, everything else is explicitly a special effect that doesn't matter for rules purposes.

This is an interesting design decision, but as compared with GURPS it makes Champions a genre-focused game and Hero System a clusterfuck for most things.

Hell, the Shadow has a ruby that clouds men's minds. Is it magical? It's up to you - if *I'm* playing the Shadow, his ruby isn't magical, that's just something you can do with a ruby because this is pulp fiction and "mundane" hypnosis works that well if you're the Shadow. The Shadow is going to team up with the X-Men and his ruby is going to be blocked by Magneto's helmet. Does that make sense? No. Does it matter? No, not in this genre.

A few other Hero Games work well, as long as again there is no real world-building to worry about. So Spy Hero - which is just Champions where the Superheroes are all batman - works fine, and Star Hero works well if it is Spy Hero where the pistols have little fins and dinguses glued onto them, again pulp Flash Gordon material. But Star Hero works poorly for Star [Trek|Wars] where there is world building and you're supposed to care about specific stuff like ship classes, and who learns to do what exactly with the force, and things of that nature.

Fantasy Hero just doesn't work at all. Suppose you have a fantasy setting in which magic is performed by taking hallucinogenic drugs that enable you to command ghosts (this conceit comes from a fantasy novel I read as a teenager - I will highly recommend it when I can remember the author or title). Within this setting, the alchemical recipes you use to make the drugs and the hallucinogenic side-effects and such are a big deal, so in GURPS you just hack up some GURPS-flavored rules for this stuff and it will toddle along. In Champions, the answer is, the drugs and ghosts are just a special effect for whatever powers you buy, figure this shit out yourself. Not a satisfactory answer or a good design.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 7:56 am

TheFlatline wrote:I haven't gotten far into Descent 2nd edition but 1st edition was kind of a mess rules wise.

If we're going to go with an example of an ongoing campaign along with tight rules design within the board game space, I'll tip towards Pandemic Legacy.

2nd edition seemed pretty decent to me! But I admittedly didn't go very deep into it. The Pandemic recommendation is also fair!

Daniel · Post by **Daniel** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 9:17 am

How you play as a designer is more inportant, than the game you play.
If your actual play mode is 90% Magical Tea Party, 9% basic skill checks, 1% combat using a stripped down version of the combat system, you are not going to learn anything specific from whatever specific game you picked.

Assuming you do play the right way engaging with the actual rules.

3 must play games.
1. the game you are designing for at the moment.
2+3. 2 games that have the same sort of design questions as the game you are designing.
So if I did a game about dashing international con-artists/jewel thiefs, I might play James Bond 007 and The Dying Earth.

silva · Post by **silva** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:29 pm

Daniel wrote:How you play as a designer is more inportant, than the game you play... if your actual play mode is 90% Magical Tea Party, 9% basic skill checks, 1% combat using a stripped down version of the combat system, you are not going to learn anything specific from whatever specific game you picked.

This is such an obvious thing, no ? I mean, whats the point of taking lessons from games if you dont follow any games text as is and just steamroll your own way of playing whatever game you come across ?

Though I admit I know a few people who does exactly that.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Dec 22, 2015 6:55 pm

I was waffling on GURPS vs HERO myself, but DrP's argument for GURPS just convinced me that HERO actually has more lessons for an aspiring designer.

I'll open with the cheap shot that DrP can't even remember the correct dice mechanics for GURPS, but can level fairly accurate criticism at several of the problematic areas of HERO. That should show how much of an impression each system made upon him.

But that's a cheap shot, and I'd like to be serious instead of merely snarky.

As the systems go, they are both rules-heavy, "universal" systems intended to run multiple genres of games, and both use point-buy chargen and advancement (with both having multiple sets of rules for how that works in different genres and power levels of games). All that is stuff you can get from either system, and there aren't many other rules-heavy "universal" systems that can compete with those two.

However, the strength of GURPS is in the supplements and licensing. As Frank has pointed out, GURPS Asparagus is the best researched Asparagus sourcebook for any RPG and is a mighty useful reference for games in systems other than GURPS which deal with Asparagus related issues. That's pretty great, however it teaches some troubling design lessons:

To do something, you need a splatbook or combination of splatbooks. Said splatbooks have already been written by people who are more knowledgeable and passionate about the subject or source material than you are, so when you try to design something, you're probably reinventing the wheel. I'm not sure that "it's already out there, find what somebody already did and adapt it" is a lesson I want aspiring designers to learn. Personally, I would prefer future designers scratching their heads over HERO's blueprints and notes for how to build a rules system and learning how to make shit up themselves than thinking the solution is to buy more splatbooks.

Conversely, effects-based design is the signature difference of the HERO system. There are no other rules-heavy games of similar market penetration which use effects based design. That makes this point of difference very interesting in what it can teach designers.

Obviously, if you like effects-based design, you don't need to be convinced that it's something designers should be exposed to; But I contend that even if you dislike effects-based design, its limitations and failures are highly, highly instructive to design of other games. For Example: As DrP points out, Vancian casting is a nightmare to implement in HERO. This immediately leads to the questions "why do we need Vancian Casting?" and "what other systems could we use instead?" - and those questions have meaningful answers. "We don't it's a legacy of what Gygax was reading in the early 70s" and "there are many other potential systems for character abilities". Those are useful design lessons.

HERO is also notorious for not being able to build a proper Magic Missile spell. So from an effects based perspective, a designer has to break Magic Missile down into its component parts:

It's arcane magic
It requires Verbal and Somatic Components
It's an attack
It does a light amount of damage
That damage is force-typed (which has its own set of rules within D&D)
The damage scales with level
As part of the scaling, the damage can be split between targets
It does not effect inanimate objects
It does not allow a saving throw
It cannot strike targets with Total cover nor Total Concealment
Spell Resistance may apply
When used against a legal target, it does not miss

That's rather a lot, and therefore a royal pain to contemplate as a design process. This again leads to the questions, this time about "do we really need all these parts? couldn't we simplify things?" And pondering that is a useful design exercise.

Furthermore that last bullet point is the one which HERO can't handle properly. You can kinda sorta try to shoehorn it in by playing with the Area of Effect advantages or including RNG-breaking to-hit bonuses, but neither of those are exact fits. And again, it's a useful exercise to contemplate the differences in fundamental assumptions between D&D and HERO which make Magic Missile a mediocre spell in D&D and a "this does stuff that is probably too powerful" in HERO.

So that all sounds like I'm making the argument that HERO is full of "what not to do" examples here. But, even DrP agrees that there are areas where HERO's effects-based design works just fine. Yes, those areas are mainly Champions superheroics and various psuedo-superheroic Pulp genres, but those are decently sized chunks of game genres where effects-based design works.

So HERO has clear areas where it works, known areas where it fails, and interesting lessons can be drawn from contemplating those failures and comparing them to other common game systems. That actually sounds like a really good candidate for the sort of thing aspiring game designers should read.