Flaw or feature?

[Scooter the Mighty]

Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

[Chuk Goodin]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

Personally, I think the two things should be separate. I've already got
rules systems that I like -- I might be interested in getting a setting,
but I'll usually use my own (often with influences from other settings,
not necessarily meant for gaming).

A lot of people seem to like a rules system that is specifically geared to
a setting, like 2nd edition Paranoia or something. That's never really
been my thing.

[Simon Smith]

Post by Chuk Goodin

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

Personally, I think the two things should be separate. I've already got
rules systems that I like -- I might be interested in getting a setting,
but I'll usually use my own (often with influences from other settings,
not necessarily meant for gaming).
A lot of people seem to like a rules system that is specifically geared to
a setting, like 2nd edition Paranoia or something. That's never really
been my thing.

When I buy a game, I'm primarily buying/buying into the world. The rules are
the secondary consideration. However, as the rules can radically affect the
tone of the game - D20 Star Wars is a completely different beast to D6 Star
Wars for example - I would generally have to trust that the system supplied
with the gameworld generates the right tone for the setting.

But this world-based focus means generic rulesets such as say, GURPS, are of
less interest to me.

I would have to put the original question backwards, and then respond that
that the lack of a ruleset for a published world is a feature.

[mcv]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

It depends. In GURPS 4th edition I couldn't care less about the new
"official" Infinite Worlds setting. I use GURPS for different things
(like the increasingly system-independent setting of Traveller), but
a game like Earthdawn is also great fun, and there's really no way
to seperate world and system there.

There is definitely an advantage to having books that tie a setting
to a system: less work for me. I can just use what's in that book,
and I'm done. On the other hand, it can also be useful if you can
use a system with different settings, or a setting with different
systems.

So basically I like the approach of both GURPS and Traveller. There
are lots of systems implementing Traveller, but it's easy to use it
in a different system (Fudge, Hero, whatever) if that's what you
prefer. And you can use GURPS for just about any setting you like.
But there are also a lot of dedicated GURPS Traveller books that
help me get started if I want to combine the two.


mcv.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On 19 Sep 2006 20:36:07 -0700, "Scooter the Mighty"

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

I prefer to make my own game-worlds, but I get the impression that
mine is a minority taste.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

I'm ambivalent. The do-it-yourself makes a better product--*if*
you don't have to compromise too much in the interests of time and
effort. The sticking point for me is the magic system, for games
that need one, and particularly religious magic.

I don't think a really good generic magic system is possible;
invariably making it generic weakens the flavor and worldview.
But making your own, even out of excellent building blocks, is
so much work! So there's some appeal to a pre-made world with
a pre-made magic system that fits it tightly, if the alternative
is a homebrew world with either painfully generic or misfit magic.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[s***@sonic.net]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

I'm ambivalent. The do-it-yourself makes a better product--*if*
you don't have to compromise too much in the interests of time and
effort.

My own preference is for real-world-derived gameworlds. If you can use a
real-world map of medieval London for your Ars Magica game; or modern maps,
guidebooks, phonebooks, etc for San Francisco in a game of "Witchcraft"...
well, even the most-richly-realized of the wholly-invented worlds (e.g.
Tekumel, Harn, & Middle-Earth, for a few of the notables) cannot match those
kinds of details. Even better, EVERYONE has a handle on them! It doesn't
rely upon the inventor-genius GM (1) to /also/ be a genius at exposition (2)
so s/he can convey the aforementioned brilliant richness to the players...

In *EVERY* invented world, I *always* experience questions of "what would
my character know?" The problems are invariably much-reduced (and often
virtually eliminated) when the game world is based on the real world.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
The sticking point for me is the magic system, for games
that need one, and particularly religious magic.

Yeah; magic (and particularly religious magic) speaks so directly to the
Big Questions of the game-world. It requires you to invent/establish so
VERY many things which otherwise can be left as tabulae rasa for each
player to envision (or not) as best suits their tastes and imaginations.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I don't think a really good generic magic system is possible;
invariably making it generic weakens the flavor and worldview.

Agreed. That's why I prefer a system where the magic (if any) is
well-integrated to the gameworld; and if there are *multiple* magic
systems (e.g. D&D's Arcane/Divine and/or Shadowrun's Hermetic/Shamanic
divisions) for each to be distinct and clearly derived from separate
sources (this is, incidentally, something that D&D/SR do *NOT* do,
such that I regard both as severely flawed).

Again, pointing to Ars Magica -- the core magic system with its Latin
terms and archaic flavors is a nice example, and OTHER magic in the world
(faerie powers, Divine miracles, etc.) is entirely-separately-invented,
without using "Hermetic Magic" as its core.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But making your own, even out of excellent building blocks, is
so much work! So there's some appeal to a pre-made world with
a pre-made magic system that fits it tightly, if the alternative
is a homebrew world with either painfully generic or misfit magic.

I've yet to meet a GM who was so inventive AND so skilled at displaying
said invention that I didn't have to keep stepping back from the RP to
say, "my character would know *something* about this, right? WHAT does
my character know here?"

[Del Rio]

Post by s***@sonic.net
In *EVERY* invented world, I *always* experience questions of "what would
my character know?" The problems are invariably much-reduced (and often
virtually eliminated) when the game world is based on the real world.

Agree with many of the points you made in your post,
but not this particular one. One of the best things
about a wholly made up world is the ability strictly
limit PC knowledge to what they "should" know. As
opposed to a real world derived campaign setting like
Ars Magica, where a player has a hard time remembering
that his illiterate, peasant born Grog character who
has never seen a map in his life doesn't know where
Prague is, and in fact has only heard vaguely of it.

Also, there's a real issue if you're GMing for players
who are better versed in history / geography than you
are. Given the kind of players that ArM tends to
attract, unless the GM was a medieval history major,
this can be a fequent occurance. It's tough to GM when
the players know more about the sociology of the
campaign than you do.

Post by s***@sonic.net
I've yet to meet a GM who was so inventive AND so skilled at displaying
said invention that I didn't have to keep stepping back from the RP to
say, "my character would know *something* about this, right? WHAT does
my character know here?"

That's true, a brief meta-game discussion does need to
happen sometimes. I've seldom had a game where it
became truly disruptive. I tend to inspersperse my NPC
dialog with GM asides as needed, especially when it's
something that the PCs probably *would* know just as
part of the "common knowledge" of the area that they're
in, but has just never come up in the game previously.
But reasonably often a player will ask me a few
questions to establish their position before they reply
in character. Not so often that I've found it a
problem for the dramatic flow of the roleplaying.

[s***@sonic.net]

Post by Del Rio

Post by s***@sonic.net
In *EVERY* invented world, I *always* experience
questions of "what would my character know?" The
problems are invariably much-reduced (and often
virtually eliminated) when the game world is
based on the real world.

Agree with many of the points you made in your post,
but not this particular one. One of the best things
about a wholly made up world is the ability strictly
limit PC knowledge to what they "should" know.

I think we just have to agree to disagree here...?

Post by Del Rio
As
opposed to a real world derived campaign setting like
Ars Magica, where a player has a hard time remembering
that his illiterate, peasant born Grog character who
has never seen a map in his life doesn't know where
Prague is, and in fact has only heard vaguely of it.

While this too can be a problem, IMHO it's no worse than
(e.g.) the "dumb fighter" (INT as a dump-stat) whose player
"forgets" that he's dumb & plays him sharp-as-a-tack.

All in all, I experience the "not enough info in a custom
world" as a worse problem than "too much info from the
known world." From my perspective, a MUCH worse problem.

YMMV (and obviously does). Not to say that either one of
us is "right" in any absolute sense... I'm just *more*
right, is all ;^)

Post by Del Rio
Also, there's a real issue if you're GMing for players
who are better versed in history / geography than you
are. Given the kind of players that ArM tends to
attract

That too; at least for ArM (and a few others).

Post by Del Rio

Post by s***@sonic.net
I've yet to meet a GM who was so inventive AND so skilled at displaying
said invention that I didn't have to keep stepping back from the RP to
say, "my character would know *something* about this, right? WHAT does
my character know here?"

That's true, a brief meta-game discussion does need to
happen sometimes. I've seldom had a game where it
became truly disruptive.

I've seldom (never, in fact) had a game (in a custom, GM-
invented world) where my lack of "common ground" with my
PC failed to be disruptive... at least of my own RP and
my own enjoyment (I try not to be a wet blanket on others
in such cases).

[David Meadows]

Post by s***@sonic.net

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

I'm ambivalent. The do-it-yourself makes a better product--*if*
you don't have to compromise too much in the interests of time and
effort.

My own preference is for real-world-derived gameworlds. If you can use a
real-world map of medieval London for your Ars Magica game; or modern maps,
guidebooks, phonebooks, etc for San Francisco in a game of "Witchcraft"...
well, even the most-richly-realized of the wholly-invented worlds (e.g.
Tekumel, Harn, & Middle-Earth, for a few of the notables) cannot match those
kinds of details. Even better, EVERYONE has a handle on them! It doesn't
rely upon the inventor-genius GM (1) to /also/ be a genius at exposition (2)
so s/he can convey the aforementioned brilliant richness to the players...

Absolutely agree. My game is set on modern day Earth and I have at my
disposal more multi-media reference material than is contained in all the
game books of all the game worlds of all the games ever published.

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Chances are suprisingly good that Scooter the Mighty was not wearing

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

That's too general a question to give a single, one-size-fits-all answer
to. If the mechanics have been specifically designed with the flavour of
that world in mind, this can be really good, but if the two don't really
seem to have all that much to do with each other, I'd greatly prefer if
they were separate products.

[gleichman]

I've always been a fan of a pure rules book since I typically make up my own
setting. Even when I do use the basic concepts for a setting (like
Shadowrun) I tend to make serious and sweeping changes.

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

[DougL]

Post by gleichman
I've always been a fan of a pure rules book since I typically make up my own
setting. Even when I do use the basic concepts for a setting (like
Shadowrun) I tend to make serious and sweeping changes.

I don't think I've ever run a game from a published setting except as a
one-shot, and that very rarely.

Non-the-less, I like the system to come with something like a published
setting or a bunch of stuff about the expected setting. The setting
tells me what the designer expects the game to accomplish and what he
expects the world to look like, that gives me a starting point for my
own design.

DougL

[f***@hotmail.com]

Post by DougL
Non-the-less, I like the system to come with something like a published
setting or a bunch of stuff about the expected setting. The setting
tells me what the designer expects the game to accomplish and what he
expects the world to look like, that gives me a starting point for my
own design.
DougL

I can understand that.

I'd rather have a good set of designer notes for the game in place of a
setting for that purpose, but I'm unaware of anyone doing those these
days.

More importantly however, I've learned over the years that I frankly
don't care what the designer expected the game to accomplish. This
point has been rammed home with Steve Long's current work on HERO
System, as far as I'm concerned, he doesn't have a clue and is coasting
on previous work and sheer word volume.

Much like the setting, I'll create my own goals for the game- assuming
the mechanics are interesting enough to attract my attention in the
first place.

[s***@sonic.net]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

A feature, clearly.

Mind you, it may be a *BAD* feature, or a poorly-done version of
something that "coulda been a contenda..."

But, as one example, the card/poker theme so pervasive through the
(non-d20) version of Deadlands... EXCELLENT. The game-system and
the game-world mutually reinforce one another, to the extent that
I'm usually willing to overlook the mechanical quirks and foibles
and flaws of the mechanics (which so often bug the hell out of me
in most other systems).

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by s***@sonic.net

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

A feature, clearly.

I usually look at products from the reverse of the original question. I tend
to be attracted to the atmosphere and tone of game settings and only later
care about the mechanics. From that point of view, I suppose that I prefer
worlds which use an established and understood set of rules, rather than
having to learn a completely set of rules each time.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/index.html

[Will in New Haven]

Post by Scooter the Mighty
Do you think that it's a flaw or a feature for a gaming system to come
with a pre-designed campaign world ? Do you prefer to just have raw
rules and make up your own world, or have some world background to
start with?

If the cost of the extra pages isn't critical to the consumer, I think
it's a feature. I have never run a campaign world; the closest I ever
came was running a modified "keep on the borderlands." However, I have
gotten a great many ideas over the years and even more enjoyment from
game worlds and modules I didn't use directly. The whole Gloriantha
thing, although I have never used it and never GMd RuneQuest, was
great.

Will in New Haven

--

"Pot-Limit has more thinking involved; young people can't think"
Norm Chad