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souldoubt
2009-06-06, 09:04 PM
I recently came across this statement, a small portion of which I was curious to discuss (my emphasis, obviously)...


The problem I have is that it treats the potential players like morons who need to be taken by the hand and treated as if they were unable to cope with things like options and an interconnection between crunch and fluff.
It doesn't matter which system the poster is complaining about (I've played many RPGs, and generally enjoyed them all); that's not what piqued my interest. (Note: "My system/edition is better than your system/edition!" arguments are forbidden on this thread! I've made the post anonymous and left the system under discussion obscure to discourage this.) I wondered that someone would, as the statement seems to imply, favor an interconnection between crunch and fluff in the mechanics of a system. I can understand not minding it, in a system where you like the fluff, but preferring it is kind of baffling to me.

To explain I should elucidate on my own preference, which is for systems that minimize crunch that is inextricable from the fluff, and vise-versa, without losing the crunchiness of the crunch in a watered-down soup of "rules-lite" sogginess. As a creative person, I value this flexibility because it allows me to take the system in any multitude of directions, opening up avenues for the imagination to flower and do something unique or different, without being hampered by the system. Anything else usually ends up feeling like an "enforced setting" to me, inflexible, and restrictive to the imagination.

So, do others share a preference (not of my own) for entangled or inextricable fluff and crunch? If so, why? I'm honestly curious.

I'm also baffled why a system without a hard-and-fast "interconnection between crunch and fluff," or a flexible interconnection, is a system that "treats the potential players like morons," since I think playing a game with such a clear interconnection requires less imagination, but that's probably a whole separate discussion.

shadzar
2009-06-06, 09:20 PM
:smallconfused: If the following is not the question you are asking and thusly not an answer to what you are asking because of incorrect question being answered, then please disregard....

Do you like your crunch to work intrinsically with your fluff?

Yes.

A gun fired will have certain things that happen each time when it is a ejected projectile. Reload times exist because fluf and physically they exist, so the crunch must have a place for that to work unless I am playing in a cartoon.

A sword swung will continue its arc based on Newton's 3rd Law, and that would mean that it cannot then be swung instantly in the other direction, so must take time to recover form the initial swing to swing in the opposite direction.

I tried to keep these answers as game/system generic as possible as requested to prevent any warring/flaming/etc.

If they do not answer enough, I will expound on them if required.

If this was not the question being asked, then please rephrased the question for those late night forum-goers. :smallsmile:

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-06, 09:28 PM
A system with zero fluff connected to crunch: Mutants & Masterminds. Another is BESM.

Both are effects-based systems, where you build everything using given effects and a small number of non-effect traits.

A system with a great deal of fluff connected to crunch: World of Darkness.

All three are great games, but all in different ways. M&M and BESM are systems geared for a certain style of play, while World of Darkness is geared for a certain tone of story.

A game can be great both with a lot of fluff and no fluff. However, the level of connection between the fluff and the mechanics determines what the game is geared towards.

souldoubt
2009-06-06, 10:22 PM
:smallconfused: If the following is not the question you are asking and thusly not an answer to what you are asking because of incorrect question being answered, then please disregard....

Do you like your crunch to work intrinsically with your fluff?

This is not quite what I'm wondering about. Obviously everyone wants crunch that works with their fluff. What I don't want is the opposite: fluff dictated by the crunch of the system.

What you seem to be talking about is how the game-world works on a very basic level, where as I'm more concerned with being able to re-fluff the details of the system and and decide what the world is like.


A gun fired will have certain things that happen each time when it is a ejected projectile. Reload times exist because fluf and physically they exist, so the crunch must have a place for that to work unless I am playing in a cartoon.

A sword swung will continue its arc based on Newton's 3rd Law, and that would mean that it cannot then be swung instantly in the other direction, so must take time to recover form the initial swing to swing in the opposite direction.

This is an illustration of what I said above. Barring some strange and utterly alien campaign setting, guns and swords (or melee and projectile weapons, at the very least) will function in a certain fashion regardless of whether your game world is inhabited by humans or by thirteen-foot-tall, bright blue anthropomorphic sheep.

So, to rephrase my question: Do you prefer a system tailored to a certain setting rather than a system with more flexible rules applicable to a broader range of settings and modes of play? If so, why?

I personally prefer the idea of single, flexible system that can be re-fluffed to fit with whatever game I have in mind. It beats the hell out of learning and keeping up-to-date with half a dozen niche-systems. I've even idly worked on developing such a system off and on for some years now.


I tried to keep these answers as game/system generic as possible as requested to prevent any warring/flaming/etc.

I thank you for that.

The Rose Dragon
2009-06-06, 10:26 PM
So, to rephrase my question: Do you prefer a system tailored to a certain setting rather than a system with more flexible rules applicable to a broader range of settings and modes of play? If so, why?

Depends on the system. There will be examples of the former that I will love more than the latter, and there will be examples of the latter I will cherish more than the former.

For example, I will prefer Unisystem over D&D (3rd and 4th), as D&D is tailored to a certain setting type, while Unisystem is very broad. I will also prefer Storytelling systems over Unisystem when it comes to the kind of setting Storytelling games suggest.

shadzar
2009-06-06, 10:43 PM
Fluff dictated by crunch?

Like you can only do this thing once per day because the rules state this mechanic can only be used once per day, so you must make the fluff make that when there is no real reason for it to only happen once per day outside of the given mechanic that says it can only happen once per day?

Something like that?

No, I don't like that. Crunch exists to replicate fluff within the game world where randomization must be used for fair-play so that one cannot just decide they win at doing anything and give them a chance to pass or fail.

Fluff being dictated by crunch would mean it is probably a game I would have little interest for. If would be like making up fluff reason for why chess pieces move the way they do. In chess you don't need fluff. Games that need fluff have it for a reason, and the crunch should work for, not dictate the fluff.

:smallconfused: Did i get the question/answer right this time?

If not I abstain from furthering answering. :smallredface:

Matthew
2009-06-06, 10:49 PM
So, to rephrase my question: Do you prefer a system tailored to a certain setting rather than a system with more flexible rules applicable to a broader range of settings and modes of play? If so, why?

Systems always eventually end up tailored to campaigns, so I think the answer to this depends on how much of a particular campaign you want predetermined. For instance, I like that the rules for War Hammer are closely linked to that campaign world, but I also like that Savage Worlds is a system without an explicit campaign setting. Depends on what I happen to be looking for at the time.

Philistine
2009-06-06, 11:40 PM
@shadzar: I don't think that's what the OP was getting at. Here are a couple of examples which (I think) may better illustrate his question:

1) The Jagular
Our first example is a vicious monster called the Jagular, which in mechanical terms is good at climbing and hiding, and has a wicked Pounce-type attack. I think the OP is saying that he's fine if the rulebook entry on the creature stops there, and then he can apply his own fluff to the creature to make it arboreal, or a cave-dweller, or to have it make a weird hooting sound when it attacks, or to give it an affinity for shiny things which it then hoards in its nest, or whatever. So the question here is, do you prefer to have all that mechanically extraneous fluff added to the rulebook entry, or would you rather skip it and write up your own, or do you simply not have a preference either way?

2) The Thief Priest
Our next example is a character who venerates the patron deity of thieves. He goes about the town trying to advance his patron's agenda (thieving, in other words) and trying to recruit new members for the local Thieves' Guild (proselytizing). For the sake of fun, let's say he's the Big Cheese of the local guild, a post which requires him to perform regular ceremonial duties at the nearest temple of his patron deity. In fluff terms he's every inch a priest of the Thieving God; but in mechanical terms Rogue levels make at least as much sense for the character as Cleric levels - maybe more. So the question here is, should the player be pigeonholed into playing a Cleric in order to realize his Thief Priest concept?

3) 31 Flavors of Monk
For our third and final example, I can easily refluff a 3.5E Barbarian's mechanical abilities into something fitting a Monk: Rage would become Inner Strength ("the character enters a state of highly focused concentration in which he can draw upon hidden reserves of strength and fortitude"), and so on. Even the stupid alignment restriction can be worked in ("due to the character's intense focus on individual development, you cannot advance further in the class if your alignment becomes Lawful"). All it takes, you see, is a little imagination and creativity - supposedly the lifeblood of this hobby. So the question here is, would you as a DM allow a player to play his "Fluff Monk" as a mechanical Barbarian?

As you've probably guessed from the above examples, I'm of the opinion that flavor text and mechanics can be treated entirely separately; and usually should be. Requiring every character who can increase his physical strength for a thirty-second period once per day to be a tribal warrior fresh from the hinterland is unnecessarily restrictive, and far from adding to RPing, actively impedes it.

souldoubt
2009-06-07, 12:01 AM
Thanks for the replies.

So far, it seems that the overall answer would be, "It depends." When you like the system, the answer is tentatively, "Yes." I honestly can't say I disagree with that.

I guess I'm curious if anyone thinks that a system tailored to a specific setting is somehow fundamentally more desirable than one that is not.

At the risk of breaking my own ban on comparing systems, I'll use some actual examples from my own experience with, not two different systems, but what amount to essentially two variants of the same system.

When playing D&D 3.x with my friends, while we liked many of the mechanics of the system, we found that the way the classes, races, and many other features of the game were built made it nigh-impossible to divorce the system from a world filled with D&D tropes that most of us had grown tired of long ago in our 2e days.

Conversely, when I stumbled upon Iron Heroes, a 3.5 variant, we were able to run and play games with settings as diverse as Viking Scandinavia and a world based on Aztec Mexico, all without breaking a sweat. Many of the setting-assumptions inherent in 3.x had been weeded out in favor of classes and mechanics that worked more universally in just about any action fantasy game with a relatively low emphasis on magic items.

Iron Heroes may not be the most flexible system I've played with, but I hope the example illustrates my point of view. Does anyone think a system should always be or is always better if tailored to a given setting?

BobVosh
2009-06-07, 12:11 AM
@shadzar: I don't think that's what the OP was getting at. Here are a couple of examples which (I think) may better illustrate his question:

1) The Jagular

2) The Thief Priest

3) 31 Flavors of Monk

1) I dislike partial fluff lots of crunch. This is one thing I hate about 4ed, and other games that do it. If it is going to start on fluff it better be lots of it.

2) One reason I have always disliked class based systems.

3) Interesting monk fix. :P No opinion here, as I really haven't had much time to think about it. I think it doesn't work well for some systems, while other ones would thrive off of it.


As you've probably guessed from the above examples, I'm of the opinion that flavor text and mechanics can be treated entirely separately; and usually should be. Requiring every character who can increase his physical strength for a thirty-second period once per day to be a tribal warrior fresh from the hinterland is unnecessarily restrictive, and far from adding to RPing, actively impedes it.
You have to tread lightly for this; while a system doesn't need to connect fluff and crunch, a world should and usually does.
When selling systems you get ones like GURPs that give you a system. Very little fluff. This works well, some people really like it.(note I haven't really read the book, all my characters have been helped along for the system. If this isn't accurate and the GM was good at hiding it, insert *generic System only book*)
On the other side of the scale you have ones like exalted. Lots of fluff for each bit of crunch. Each thing that makes a character "class" unique from another one has something fluffy to handwave explain it out.

As I mentioned before I like lots of fluff with my crunch, or none at all. D&D is the closest to the middle road as I get without minding. Probably because almost everyone plays D&D(who plays RPGs at least), therefore you kinda have to like it. At least tolerate.

*heres hoping my ramblings make some kinda sense.*

*edit*

Iron Heroes may not be the most flexible system I've played with, but I hope the example illustrates my point of view. Does anyone think a system should always be or is always better if tailored to a given setting?

I usually like it better if tailored to the setting. Just so long as it isn't incredibly restrictive. Otherwise, why have more than 1 system?

Note this is mainly for Fantasy. My Sci-fi games almost always use Alternity. There is only so many different ways to have super science.

Twilight Jack
2009-06-07, 02:41 AM
There's a point at which the crunch of any given roleplaying system is inextricable from it's fluff, no matter how generic and universal that roleplaying system tries to be. I personally prefer that the fluff match the crunch in any given system I pick up.

While I admire the philosophy at work in the crafting of a "pure" resolution system like G.U.R.P.S., I find that system--like any other--lends itself to certain styles and genres over others. Ever tried running a game of G.U.R.P.S. Supers? Their "generic" crunch just doesn't fit the basic assumptions of the four-color genre. You might manage an Iron Age grim-and-gritty supers game with it, but the character creation and resolution system just doesn't capture the feeling and pacing of a superhero comic.

Mutants & Masterminds, by contrast, presents a variant of the 3.x system that captures that pace and feel perfectly. Its crunch is specifically tailored to the basic genre conventions of comic books, even if its discussions of system mechanics and power building are devoid of any outright fluff. On the other hand, as generic as its system may seem when applied to any permutation of superhero storytelling (from gritty urban avenger to cosmic protector of the galaxy), it leaves something to be desired if you want to play a game about real-world military special forces operatives. The system's crunch just isn't designed to model the realities of a firefight or the kind of decisions that need to be made on a split-second basis in order to survive when the bullets are flying. I'd be better off with G.U.R.P.S. if I'm looking for that sort of game (which isn't to say that G.U.R.P.S. is the best system for this either; it's just serves in this capacity better than M&M).

Riddle of Steel is one of the best systems I've every seen for lethal and gritty swords & sorcery. If I'm in the mood for blood and sweat and dirt and steely sinews, it's the first system I'm going to look at. But it is so specialized that it can't really manage any other style of game, even within the larger fantasy genre. It's the perfect tool for a very specific job, but it's a unitasker, so I don't own the system even though I think it's a masterpiece.

You mention how well Iron Heroes, another 3.x variant, performs at modeling anything from the Vikings of Europe to the Aztecs of Central America. How well would it manage a game about a ragtag group of smugglers suriviving on the edges of known space after having lost a war for independence from the Union of Allied Planets? How about the aforementioned superhero game? Chances are, the crunch of that system wouldn't model the fluff of the genre conventions. The crunch is always tied to a certain assumed range of possible fluff. If you're going outside that range, you're better off using another system (or heavily modifiying what you've got to fit).

Beware the system where the crunch doesn't match the fluff of it's own default setting (I won't name my candidates for this ignomious classification, to avoid shooting anybody's sacred cows).

Personally, I like a system that provides a set of mechanics that can be tailored to a moderately wide array of fluffs, or a system that models a specific broad genre perfectly.

But I think we're fooling ourselves to think that you can ever divorce fluff from crunch completely.

Grey Paladin
2009-06-07, 02:53 AM
Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun For Game Design (2005) wrote:


The bare mechanics of a game do not determine its semantic freight. Let's try a thought experiment. Let's picture a mass murder game wherein there is a gas chamber shaped like a well. You the player are dropping innocent victims down into the gas chamber, and they come in all shapes and sizes. There are old ones and young ones, fat ones and tall ones. As they fall to the bottom, they grab onto each other and try to form human pyramids to get to the top of the well. Should they manage to get out, the game is over and you lose. But if you pack them in tightly enough, the ones on the bottom succumb to the gas and die.

I do not want to play this game. Do you? Yet it is Tetris. You could have well-proven, stellar game design mechanics applied toward a quite repugnant premise. To those who say the art of the game is purely that of the mechanics, I say that film is not solely the art of cinematography or scriptwriting or directing or acting. The art of the game is the whole.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-06-07, 04:06 AM
I guess I'm curious if anyone thinks that a system tailored to a specific setting is somehow fundamentally more desirable than one that is not.
Yes, for a certain subset of games.

At their heart, every RPG is built towards a certain set of themes or tropes; D&D is aimed to recreate the Heroic Fantasy genre, while Shadowrun plays with dystopian themes in a cyberpunk-ish setting. Systems that attempt to be overly general (BESM or GURPS, as examples) typically must be highly tailored towards a given campaign to actually be useful; the generic system tries to do too much.

These themes can be broad or narrow; d20 Modern is very broad, but continues to provide for "Contemporary Adventurers." Others can be very, very narrow. As an example, take The Mountain Witch. (http://www.realms.org.uk/cms/articles/themountainwitch)
In this game each player is a ronin in Feudal Japan that has been tasked to kill O-Yanma, the Witch of Mt. Fuji. Each game progresses through 4 Acts in which each player's "Dark Fate" (randomly & secretly assigned during character creation) is revealed, and the implications are played out.

The rules of the game are simple - an opposed d6 roll to determine who has narrative control of a conflict, and to what degree they control it - and the entire character sheet can fit on the back of a 3x5 index card. Yet, every mechanic in the game is geared towards playing a single scenario in a single setting.
Mountain Witch is the narrowest game I've seen, and yet it is terrifically entertaining. The rules not only provide for essentially free-form RP, but the "Dark Fates" will always spark intra-party conflict; and therefore, drama. Here, the crunch and fluff are (and must be) inexorably linked; if you de-linked some rules, the game would lose focus; if you added more pure crunch you would only complicate its beautiful simplicity.

Does this mean I play Mountain Witch all the time? No. Why? Because a game so tightly focused only permits a limited range of storytelling. The closer the linkage between fluff and crunch, the fewer types of stories you can tell - but without that linkage, the game loses focus and can become clunky.

souldoubt
2009-06-07, 10:13 PM
Okay, I should say that Philistine ninja'd me while I was typing up my previous post (and I didn't notice :smalltongue:), and that I agree with absolutely everything he says, both his examples regarding my point/question, as well as his opinion on the subject.


1) I dislike partial fluff lots of crunch. This is one thing I hate about 4ed, and other games that do it. If it is going to start on fluff it better be lots of it.

Edition opinions lurk...
Funny, I kind of like that about 4e; it allows me to come up with my own fluff, which is probably what I'd do anyway. It may also be because it feels like a refreshing change from 3.x having a lot of fluff that I wasn't fond of (see previous post about having grown tired of D&D tropes many years ago). From my point of view, that unwanted fluff cluttered things annoyingly where it was superfluous, and made trying to re-fluff things feel like an uphill battle wherever it was entangled with the crunch. In contrast, I find 4e's fluff to be non-intrusive and easily changed to my own desires.


while a system doesn't need to connect fluff and crunch, a world should and usually does.

Absolutely. But I want a system that gives me, typically, a genre or style of play, not a world. I can come up with a world of my own -- a world which I'll probably (almost inevitably) be more interested in and feel more invested in than anything I got out of a rulebook. I suppose that's just a personal preference, and not a feeling that the majority of gamers would share.

You mention how well Iron Heroes, another 3.x variant, performs at modeling anything from the Vikings of Europe to the Aztecs of Central America. How well would it manage a game about a ragtag group of smugglers suriviving on the edges of known space after having lost a war for independence from the Union of Allied Planets? How about the aforementioned superhero game? Chances are, the crunch of that system wouldn't model the fluff of the genre conventions. The crunch is always tied to a certain assumed range of possible fluff. If you're going outside that range, you're better off using another system (or heavily modifiying what you've got to fit).

See above response to BobVosh. :smalltongue: I have pushed the technology level as far forward as the Renaissance and as far back as the Neolithic without much effort, but Iron Heroes is, as I stated, intended and best used for (to ostentatiously quote myself) "just about any action fantasy game with a relatively low emphasis on magic items."


Yes, for a certain subset of games.

At their heart, every RPG is built towards a certain set of themes or tropes;

Again, see above and you'll find I agree.

Well, probably. I think words like "themes," and especially "tropes," can be interpreted in different ways. I'm curious what you mean when you refer to "themes or tropes" in an RPG.

Say, for instance, I'm running a game in an ostensibly "high fantasy" setting/system, such as D&D. I and my players decide we don't really care for elves, so we want to re-fluff them into something else -- something that is relatively if not entirely unrecognizable as an elf. We should be able to do that without a lot of hassle. In fact, we should be able to re-fluff every race in this way, and other things to boot. We should be able to have a game that contains the "tropes" of magic and pitched battle without having to include a plethora of other more specific stock fantasy elements that we don't necessarily want. And yet, some would argue that elves and the other common races in D&D are also "tropes" of high fantasy, and as such a high fantasy RPG system should be, as you put it, "built towards" them.

So I find myself a little leery of the idea that an RPG should always have certain tropes built into it, except in the broadest sense of the term.


These themes can be broad or narrow; d20 Modern is very broad, but continues to provide for "Contemporary Adventurers." Others can be very, very narrow. As an example, take The Mountain Witch. (http://www.realms.org.uk/cms/articles/themountainwitch)

From your description (intriguing, by the way), I would describe The Mountain Witch as a "roleplaying game," but not a "roleplaying system." Even as I type that, I have a bad feeling that drawing such a distinction could spark another whole line of discussion. :smalltongue:

Meek
2009-06-08, 12:10 AM
So, to rephrase my question: Do you prefer a system tailored to a certain setting rather than a system with more flexible rules applicable to a broader range of settings and modes of play? If so, why?

Yes and no. This depends on what you mean by a specific setting, because a lot of games have specific settings that you can rip the rules out of anyway and keep on trucking.

I've played games of Mage: The Awakening not set in the World of Darkness. I tossed Paradox out the window, I made my own clans and whatnot, I set it in the setting I wanted. It really wasn't that hard to distance it from World of Darkness and play it how I wanted, despite it being very specifically designed to a certain setting with certain assumptions (such as Paradox, paths, etc). I've also used the rules for other supernaturals modified to remove assumptions like a Promethean's Disquiet and Wasteland, and other things very tied into World of Darkness fluff.

I wouldn't ever think about setting any Storyteller game I played in the actual honest-to-God World of Darkness, because I detest it. But I do like Storyteller for supernatural and horror gaming in contemporary Earth.