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  | Ones and Zeros |
| An irregularly updated journal of my Fair and Balanced thoughts, reactions, opinions, biases, outrages, strategies, victories, and commentary. Whatever it is, it's much too subtle to be considered a parody... |
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| Be Careful What you WISH 4... |
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July 28, 2002
| WISH |
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This week Ginger invites us to discuss systems: the good, the bad, the indifferent.
System isn't very important to me unless I'm playtesting. The best games I've run or played in have submerged the system and let us get on with the adventure. I love Paranoia, Kobolds Ate My Baby, Everway, Hunter Planet, and Classic Traveller for letting me ignore them. We had some amazing successes writing for and running Call of Cthulhu at NanCon 88 (named after the founder's Olds Delta 88, not the year...) and we never ran the system outside of the Con.
On the other hand, a system that is intrusive is bad. I've had fun in Shadowrun despite the system, not because of it. The Imperium Games Traveller (T4) edition was a big drag on my Traveller game because it took so much effort to make it work. If I want to play a tactical resource management game, I'll play Angband.
I try to answer two questions when I choose a system "can I use the setting to build the world in which the game works?" and "does the setting/system provide for the player experience I'm trying to project?"
An example of the former: I once tried to play a somewhat ambiguous but in-the-end heroic superspy in Champions. Where this character failed was that the game didn't really have much advice about this kind of character and the other players and I had different ideas about how and when the conventions of four-color comic book games should affect how they dealt with him.
The latter is exemplified by my experiences running Traveller:Inheritances in T4. I didn't do a very good job setting the tone for the campaign before it started and the players didn't agree. I had some playing for laughs and others who were attempting to determine when they could inconspicuously kill the clowns. It blew itself up after a few weeks and nobody really got to the high-speed action space chase story I wanted to tell. Luckily I have all those plot elements in my back pocket and I know how not to do that story in the future, including being more careful with picking a system.
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| .:Posted by Michael on July 28, 2002 11:49 AM:.
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