Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
Suppose Monopoly wasn't fun, but was the best teacher of capitalism. Would it be good? I would say "yes", but it wouldn't be a good game.

...stuff...

dtd40k7e....
...Cons: character creation feels too complex for the benefits. Class system offers too little crossover potential. Feels too much like "one trick pony" is the optimal play. Needs better (more extensive) tables. Limited potential for growth. Perhaps most of all, "raises" system feels horrifically underutilized.
As I recall Monopoly wasn't originally desdesigned to be "fun" but to teach about how unfettered capitalism tended to result in monopolies. Sort of a "what it says on the tin" thing. Not being designed "fun first" is why almost nobody plays it be the rules, instead changing stuff to make it "more fun".

Whether it's a good game probably depends on what you're using the game for. I doubt many participants in, say, RL military arctic winter war games are having much fun. But then, the infantry having fun slogging around in -20 degree blizzard conditions wasn't the point anyways.

That said, I'm pretty sure we're all in RPGs for the fun. While that means fun is a possible metric I think we have to be aware of our individual prejudices on what is or is not fun. Those who dislike comedy RPGs will probably not find Toon any fun. Those who are passionate about mechanical rules & options balance will likely find Rifts offensive. Those who assume games run by a DM using modern best practices will weigh things differently than those who assume naive tabula rasa DMs who play by the book.

I threw together a quick form to play with a weighting system. Just to see if I could make something that quantified how I felt about different systems. Its ok, but there's tons of subjectivity. Its probably only useful for individuals comparing games, not multi-person comparisons. Maybe if I add an 'expectations column'. Eh, difficult stuff to quantify.

Quertus: Go throw your DtD concerns in the thread on the others games board. I'm hoping by next week or two to throw up a preliminary text revision of book one. There's still time to get changes in.