The Intro
I don't know if other game designers have the same problem, I suspect it's pretty common though.
When I write a game system, I have an idea for how I want it to work while the game is running. The problem is working out how to best get the players into the cycle where the mechanical elements feel natural, and contributive to the situation rather than an obstruction. Generally I seem to see a lot of GMs and homebrewers who don't really give a game the opportunity it deserves before they decide to make their own changes. This often happens because they haven't actually played the game as it has been intended, or maybe they believe that "system doesn't matter" then they find that they don't like the system, and make changes to it to fit their style of play... not realisng that their changes to the system are refuting their argument. Or you might get those specific well-known folks n the hobby who don't like a style of game, so they try to adapt their regular system to the tell other stories... before deciding that roleplyng game just don't handle stories outside their system's comfort zone (and their own).
The dogma of capitalism, that monopolies are what every company needs to aim for, seems to be something many roleplaying game systems have aspired to. "Our game system is the ultimate, it can do anything, it can do everything, and it does everything brilliantly." But of course, that's very rarely (if ever) true.
Some people prefer crunchy game systems, where everything possible is modelled in the rules. Some people want somethng very simplistc and streamlined. Some want specific rules that model certain parts of the story in an abstract fashion, while leavng other parts of the narrative free to be manipulated as a creative void. Few people agree 100% which areas of the narratve need to be focused on, and many allow a little grey area, or put up with issues they see as problematic just to be a part of a regular game.
Most people I know have come to gaming from an oral tradition. They typically played a game with someone more experienced before skimming over the books as players, if they got into a specific character class, they'd read up that section of the book (maybe), and if they started running games they would default to the precedents set by more experienced GMs they had played under... it's only when new situations were encountered that a rulebook would be pulled out for a deeper examination. Often, under this school of game play, it's considered a mark of honour to ad hoc rules (without actually taking into consideration the long term effects that might come into the story). The problem with this is that you're no longer playing the game. You might still be building a collaorative narrative with the other players around the table, but it's not really "D&D", or "Pathfinder", or "Traveller", or whatever game you had originally been intending to play. The "system doesn't matter" crowd might even say that such a group has transcended the system and has achieved "real roleplaying" (or whatever the current term is). But I've always found this kind of gameplay to flounder. Maybe this is because I've seen behind the curtain, I know that in most games like this it ends up being GM fiat, even when the GM is good they tend to be taking regular readings of the group, and pushing the story through the characters toward a generally consensual conclusion... or pushing it forward until the time runs out. When the GM is bad, the players might as well be passive observers to an oral novel.
Part of the problem that leads to this sort of gamng is that many games are written in a really dense and obtuse fashion. They don't welcome players to reading them, but are instead dry textbooks of statistics.
This kind of brings me full circle, I want to write a set of rules that invites people to read it. Rules where people read them, and not only do they just make sense, but they also beg to be inserted into the current game in progress. I don't want the infamous grappling rules from AD&D (1st or 2nd Edition) where people need to stop the game to pull out the rules, or where the game deliberately avoids certain types of scene because the players know that certain things just get too convoluted too quickly. Nor do I want the common problem found with many story games in the mid to late 2000s, where the rules leave big gaps on the grounds that "this game isn't designed to tell stories like that, just just stick to the script with what we've given you". I want rules that fit organically with each other, rules that make sense, and that are approachable as the start of a thematic journey.
Hence my ongong quest to write an approachable set of rules with a good introduction that will hook new players and prospective GMs.
When I write a game system, I have an idea for how I want it to work while the game is running. The problem is working out how to best get the players into the cycle where the mechanical elements feel natural, and contributive to the situation rather than an obstruction. Generally I seem to see a lot of GMs and homebrewers who don't really give a game the opportunity it deserves before they decide to make their own changes. This often happens because they haven't actually played the game as it has been intended, or maybe they believe that "system doesn't matter" then they find that they don't like the system, and make changes to it to fit their style of play... not realisng that their changes to the system are refuting their argument. Or you might get those specific well-known folks n the hobby who don't like a style of game, so they try to adapt their regular system to the tell other stories... before deciding that roleplyng game just don't handle stories outside their system's comfort zone (and their own).
The dogma of capitalism, that monopolies are what every company needs to aim for, seems to be something many roleplaying game systems have aspired to. "Our game system is the ultimate, it can do anything, it can do everything, and it does everything brilliantly." But of course, that's very rarely (if ever) true.
Some people prefer crunchy game systems, where everything possible is modelled in the rules. Some people want somethng very simplistc and streamlined. Some want specific rules that model certain parts of the story in an abstract fashion, while leavng other parts of the narrative free to be manipulated as a creative void. Few people agree 100% which areas of the narratve need to be focused on, and many allow a little grey area, or put up with issues they see as problematic just to be a part of a regular game.
Most people I know have come to gaming from an oral tradition. They typically played a game with someone more experienced before skimming over the books as players, if they got into a specific character class, they'd read up that section of the book (maybe), and if they started running games they would default to the precedents set by more experienced GMs they had played under... it's only when new situations were encountered that a rulebook would be pulled out for a deeper examination. Often, under this school of game play, it's considered a mark of honour to ad hoc rules (without actually taking into consideration the long term effects that might come into the story). The problem with this is that you're no longer playing the game. You might still be building a collaorative narrative with the other players around the table, but it's not really "D&D", or "Pathfinder", or "Traveller", or whatever game you had originally been intending to play. The "system doesn't matter" crowd might even say that such a group has transcended the system and has achieved "real roleplaying" (or whatever the current term is). But I've always found this kind of gameplay to flounder. Maybe this is because I've seen behind the curtain, I know that in most games like this it ends up being GM fiat, even when the GM is good they tend to be taking regular readings of the group, and pushing the story through the characters toward a generally consensual conclusion... or pushing it forward until the time runs out. When the GM is bad, the players might as well be passive observers to an oral novel.
Part of the problem that leads to this sort of gamng is that many games are written in a really dense and obtuse fashion. They don't welcome players to reading them, but are instead dry textbooks of statistics.
This kind of brings me full circle, I want to write a set of rules that invites people to read it. Rules where people read them, and not only do they just make sense, but they also beg to be inserted into the current game in progress. I don't want the infamous grappling rules from AD&D (1st or 2nd Edition) where people need to stop the game to pull out the rules, or where the game deliberately avoids certain types of scene because the players know that certain things just get too convoluted too quickly. Nor do I want the common problem found with many story games in the mid to late 2000s, where the rules leave big gaps on the grounds that "this game isn't designed to tell stories like that, just just stick to the script with what we've given you". I want rules that fit organically with each other, rules that make sense, and that are approachable as the start of a thematic journey.
Hence my ongong quest to write an approachable set of rules with a good introduction that will hook new players and prospective GMs.
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