To mash or not to mash
There's a common practice in design circles where designers (and I hesitate to use the term "designer" in some cases, because this practice sometimes feels lazy and derivative) get two existing games, picking and choosing elements from each to create an unholy hybrid.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
So many of those hybrids recently have been PbtA products (which seem to be the current face of Story Games), or D&D products (which are basically the face of the OSR). I've seen the abysmal horror of a Storyteller system/PbtA hybrid, and don't want to walk any variant of that path. I similarly don't think that a "Mage:the Ascension / Dungeon and Dragons" hybrid will work.
Still, there is the adage that sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's just a case of picking the right games to mash together, and maintain the elements from each that give the right direction to the final project.
I discussed this in a previous post, where I said that no two games will fit together perfectly, and sometimes you need to grind certain elements away, and fill in the remaining gaps with putty to make a solid and coherent piece that can be polished smooth with editing and playtesting.
So forget the last bit of my final post... I'm not going to create a brand new system for this game. Instead, I've previously thought about a magic system for my game FUBAR...So I might just use this project for that.
The next post will explore that.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
So many of those hybrids recently have been PbtA products (which seem to be the current face of Story Games), or D&D products (which are basically the face of the OSR). I've seen the abysmal horror of a Storyteller system/PbtA hybrid, and don't want to walk any variant of that path. I similarly don't think that a "Mage:the Ascension / Dungeon and Dragons" hybrid will work.
Still, there is the adage that sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's just a case of picking the right games to mash together, and maintain the elements from each that give the right direction to the final project.
I discussed this in a previous post, where I said that no two games will fit together perfectly, and sometimes you need to grind certain elements away, and fill in the remaining gaps with putty to make a solid and coherent piece that can be polished smooth with editing and playtesting.
So forget the last bit of my final post... I'm not going to create a brand new system for this game. Instead, I've previously thought about a magic system for my game FUBAR...So I might just use this project for that.
The next post will explore that.
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