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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default What makes an RPG good?

    So I've been mulling it over in my head, but what exactly decides whether an RPG is good or not?


    From what I've gathered, there are two distinct categories of needs from an RPG: Support of the Story, and Support of the Game.

    4E DnD, for instance, had terrible story but generally excellent support of the game (which is why many people associate it as a board game instead of an RPG).

    While RPGs like World of Darkness are tuned for story, and instead don't have much "game" to win (it's certainly not a combat-oriented game).

    And 5e DnD sits in the middle by attempting both, but doesn't really have much support for doing both at the same time (for example, using illusions or skills in combat isn't covered at all).

    3.5e, FATE and 13th Age try to sit in that middle as well, but can end up being bogging folks down in rules in order to make everything function together.


    So what makes an RPG good? Or are there always major sacrifices in every system, and it's really just about finding the right players for the right game?
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2021-03-24 at 10:51 AM.
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    Ogre in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    I'd add a third axis:

    How good of a teacher the rulebook is. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect rule set if the player misunderstand the rules or, even worst, build expectations that the game cannot fulfil. A good session is due much more to a good GM than a good rule set, but a good rulebook actually help the GM to be good.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    A good RPG is one that fulfills its basic mission: presenting a set of rules to let players tell stories in a particular genre.

    RPGs are bad when they fail to understand the genre they are trying to simulate, when they have big holes in the rules, or when they are confusing and badly organized.

    Beyond that it's a matter of group taste. Some groups love the rules crunch, others like heavy story with very little crunch, and you won't get very far trying to run Paranoia for a group that wants to play Call of Cthulhu.
    Last edited by Jason; 2021-03-24 at 11:30 AM.

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    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    The ratio of fun/disappointment/investment. Which, admittedly, is a complex map and highly subjective.

    Personally, for me, in my opinion, as I experienced it:

    Starfinder was billed to me as a Pathfinder system adaptation of Star Trek/Star Wars style space opera. The DMs had 4 to 12 books to play and it was a PF adaptation, meaning you should plan a character build before starting. Except it was also billed to me as not needing a full plan character build. I doubted that but accepted it for trying things out, and built a character following the instructions in the book and just choosing options that sounded fun. That didn't work so well.

    The game was fun despite the system, not because of it. The system didn't deliver the advertised benefits (the people who wanted to run it took the adverts at face value and were selling the game to me on that basis). Mechanically there were a number of disappointments and frustrations, not all of which were related to how it was advertised to me. It's a heavy investment system, significantly different from other ogl d20s in places with lots of options and books. It also has lots of different moving parts, taking a fair bit of head space to play. The last important bit is that as a system it doesn't do anything new or amazingly well, and there were some things it did quite badly.

    Personally, for me, in my opinion, as I experienced it, Starfinder is not a good system. I wouldn't say its bad, just that the interest/costs ratio for me doesn't get high enough to warrant any space on my shelves or hard-drive. It hits the level of "will play with a really fun DM, will not play with a rookie or hardline DM, will never personally DM, will not spend money on".

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    No game is merely "good", and very few games are merely "bad". An RPG is good for a set of players if it allows those players to do what they want to do in an RPG.

    Champions is great for me, because it allows any kind of superhero I want to design. It is not good for many players because they find the math to be a burden.

    Original D&D is great for me, with the right DM, because it's not so much a game as a framework for the DM to build a game with.

    D&D3.5e is good for people who want a near-infinite set of options; it's a poor game for people who get bogged down in too many rules.

    Pendragon is good for players who love the Arthurian mythos as written in the Middle Ages, but it's difficult to get into for players who want a modern approach.

    Toon, Paranoia, Flashing Blades and many other games are great for the people who love those settings, and are in sympathy with the presentation of those settings in the game system.

    The game that is good for you may be bad for me, and vice versa.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.

    So an rpg that claims "complex system for mystery and intrigue" better give me a mystery and intrigue focused game. It should be rules heavy but still playable and offer the experience it advertises. A game that advertises itself as a light weight slice of life, should be very easy to start and play and have comedic themes built into the rules.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    This is such a high level, existential question that it borders on no-longer being useful, but I still think it's an interesting one to talk about.

    This goes a bit farther than just rpgs, but I'd like to suggest that there's a difference between rpgs that are "good", and rpgs that are "liked". And I'm not just trying to be elitist or draw up arbitrary distinctions, although it may come across that way. Sorry in advance.

    Obviously, there's a difference between objective traits and subjective traits (ie: DnD is fun vs DnD is a fantasy game). I'm not going to pretend that's a revolutionary idea, but a lot of times on discussion boards like this, people get so caught up in subjectivity, that any useful discussion becomes impossible. Like, if a prospective game designer comes to a board, and asks what makes a sci-fi game good, at first there may be a few examples of things people like. Next, other people will say they don't like those examples, and propose some different ones. A few pages of discussion later, they settle on the fact that nothing is objectively good and nothing is objectively bad, it's all just a matter of taste. Meanwhile, the original question asker has gotten nothing useful from the discussion.

    So how do we avoid that? One way is for the answerers to instead insist that their examples are in fact objectively good, and their opponents are either confused, or lying to themselves. Then, 10-20 pages of discussion later, a mod locks the board because things are getting hostile. That's even less useful than the first case.

    I don't have a great answer, but being honest about our personal preferences, and distinguishing between different parts of rpgs might be somewhere to start.

    Being honest is pretty straightforward. It's ok to like things that are bad, and I think it's best not to insist that they're good. Easy example, I love the new Godzilla movies, but I'll be the first person to tell you that they aren't good, in any reasonable usage of the word. The plots make no sense, the characters are a mess, but there are big monsters and it's cool when they fight each other. It's easier to find points of agreement when you break things down into more detail, and differentiate things you like, and things you think are "good".

    Now, my second point I haven't really developed well enough to be shared, so it might be nonsense. If what I'm saying makes no sense, feel free to completely ignore it, or tell me how dumb I am, or what have you.
    That being said, I think there's a difference between a game's goals, and its methods. Basically, its goals are what it sets out to do, and its methods are how it accomplishes its goals. There's some wiggle room here, but in general, its goals are going to be more subjective, and its methods are going to be more objective. So, as an oversimplified example, lets say I wanted to make a hypothetical game focused on roleplaying. "Getting in character", is a major goal of mine. If I add a section on the character sheet dedicated to the character's personality and backstory, that's a reasonable method to achieve my roleplaying goal. Incidentally, if I added a reaction lookup table, so that whenever my character talks to an npc, the dm rolls on a table to determine which pre-generated reaction the npc has, that method would not service my goal. It would make roleplaying harder (and you could argue that would make it a bad game). Whether or not the players like, or even care about, different goals will determine whether or not they like a particular system or not.

    Staying with that same example, everybody wants slightly different things out of rpgs, so they're going to be looking for different goals, making that part more subjective. I'm not going to say totally subjective though. "That system that will not be named" has some goals that I'm comfortable calling objectively bad. In general though, you can't really object to someone saying they don't like Fate because they like tactical combat, or that they dislike Cyberpunk because they prefer fantasy.

    I think methods are a lot closer to being objective. If I can use another film analogy, if a director wants a scene to be happy, he wouldn't use a dimly lit cool color pallet. Similarly, if someone says they hated a horror movie, because all the visible blood made it feel too romantic to them, it would be pretty easy to dismiss their opinion. Knowing what different rules will lead to different styles of games is part of what makes someone a good game designer.

    Again though, there's some wiggle room. Take class-based systems for example. Having different classes is good at ensuring everyone in the party has a different role to fill, which diversifies the party, and makes everyone feel like they have something useful to contribute. Some people will argue however, that class-based systems limit the diversity of the party, because it forces the characters into prepackaged boxes. And I can't just say these people are wrong for feeling that way.

    I think the reason for this is that the design of a system is a lot more complicated than one layer of goals, supported by one layer of methods. In reality, there are countless instrumental goals, whose purpose is to fulfill higher goals. Using the same example, I would say that class-based characters lead to a lack of overlap in character abilities, which then leads to cast diversity. Class-less characters lead to a higher granularity of customization, which also leads to cast diversity. So then, whether or not character classes lead to cast diversity will depend on whether the players value disjoint ability sets, or higher customization more.

    Sorry, I know that was long, thanks for reading to the end. I'm sure no one really cares about my personal philosophy of game design, but these ideas have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I didn't really answer the original question, but I at least proposed a framework in which we could think about answering it a little more precisely.
    Last edited by Stonehead; 2021-03-24 at 04:35 PM.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Stonehead View Post
    This is such a high level, existential question that it borders on no-longer being useful, but I still think it's an interesting one to talk about.

    ...

    Sorry, I know that was long, thanks for reading to the end. I'm sure no one really cares about my personal philosophy of game design, but these ideas have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I didn't really answer the original question, but I at least proposed a framework in which we could think about answering it a little more precisely.
    You make some very valid points. Perhaps what I need to do instead is change the question into a goal-oriented one, with explicit needs and fulfillments.

    Like an RPG request thread. Do we have one of those?
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2021-03-24 at 04:52 PM.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    I guess it comes down to return on investment.

    That's probably closest you can get to an objective, or at least player-agnostic, metric of whether a game is good or not.

    What do players (including the player in a DM/GM/Storyteller/whatever-the-title-is role) have to invest in a game?
    - Time is one thing: time learning the rules; time playing the chargen minigame; time planning game sessions; time arguing over or looking up rules during a session.
    - Emotional investment/buy-in is another (maybe).
    - The cognitive demands of learning the game is another. This relates to time, but is also its own thing. Games that have more demanding mechanics just require more investment of players' cognitive resources.

    What do players get out of it?
    - Fun/enjoyment, insofar as this can be separated into fun/enjoyment to be had from the game itself versus fun/enjoyment from being at a particular table with other players.
    - A sense of fulfillment/satisfaction, insofar as this is distinct from fun (maybe).
    - As a negative, disappointment - that the game was unable to fulfill their particular fantasy for their character (insofar as that fantasy ought to have been realisable in that game), that some feature or mechanic that looked cool did not turn out to be so, that sort of thing

    As long as the ratio of (positive return - negative return):investment is greater than 1, the game is good (although some are probably better than others). A game might be considered mediocre if that ratio is between 0 and 1. A game is bad if the ratio is 0 or less (because the returns are sufficiently negative).


    Another thing to consider is a game's "universality", you might say. A game is better if it has "universality" - by which I mean that there is something in that game for any player whose preferences match the game's genre/theme/mechanics/default setting flavour. It is, of course, no strike against a game if there is a preference mismatch.

    I suspect most RPGs as designed either have or have the potential to have "universality", but I think including the concept among our criteria does help deal with games such as That Game (that Stonehouse refers to obliquely), which was apparently designed not only to not have "universality", but in fact to be against "universality".

    Whether "universality" ought to be considered on its own, or embedded in the "returns" of the game, I could not say. There may be other concepts that are similar to "universality", but my brain hurts too much right now to come up with any.


    I think those are a decent conceptual basis for thinking about what makes an RPG good (or not).

    Now, quantifying all of this - there's the rub. I'm not sure it's possible.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Sort of related to that universality point, I wonder what the relationship between a game being good, and people liking it. I don't think it'd be controversial to say that in general, people like good games more than bad games, but I don't know if they overlap perfectly.

    If a game being good is directly related to how many people like it (or would like it were all systems marketed the same), then there would be some weird conclusions. Like, imagine a game set in prohibition-era United States. Definitely not the most popular setting, but one that could have some interesting games. If that game switched genres to be a fantasy game (probably the most popular genre), would it have become a "better" game? And if being liked, and being good are different, is it possible to distinguish between them?

    Not claiming anything one way or the other, but it's interesting to think about.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    On universality:

    A good game is a game which is loved by its players, but IMO it doesn't really matter for the quality of the game if this set of players is large or small. (It is a good product if moreover it's player base is large.)

    As a consequence, a game should either be universal enough so that every players at tables picking it find something to love, or be advertised in such a way that only tables that will love it start a campaign (or a balance of the two).

    On theme vs quality of the game:

    Every RPG or boardgame has an underlying "abstract game" where you remove all its theme.
    + This abstract gameplay can be good or bad by itself.
    + The theme can serve the gameplay by having the intuition of the players help them to remember the rules and their interactions (monsters are powerful, insects are individually weak, etc).
    + At the contrary, the theme can disturb the gameplay by having "optimal strategies" look stupid and unintuitive (e.g., the best way to run your ancient tribe it to let your peoples starve and never produce any food, because there is no actual death in the game, just negative points for not feeding them)
    + In the case of a RPG, the theme is both the most important and the least important part. It is the most important part because RPGs is at is core a story building game. It is the least important because whatever is written in the book will often be overshadowed by whatever the players and GM bring to the table.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    It must worship a Good deity.

    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.

    So, for something to be a good RPG, it first and foremost must be an RPG. So that rules out 4e. But it can't just be an RPG, *and* be good - it must be good at being an RPG.

    But what does that mean?

    Well, "RPG" is short for "Role-Playing Game". One would expect, at a minimum, that the system would not be a detriment to role-playing, or to the game.

    Others have already covered many of ways that the system can fail. There are a lot. If the rules or hype mislead regarding how to play the game. If the complexity of the rules and required investment does not provide a commensurate reward. If the rules and the fiction are significantly out of sync. If the gameplay loop itself is dysfunctional. If the system is inherently toxic. To give a few examples.

    Beyond that, it's a question of *who* it is good for. To continue to pick on 4e, 4e Forgotten Realms was "Forgotten Realms, for people who hate the Forgotten Realms". That was a really poor choice. Beyond such considerations, though, it's mostly a question of, "what makes a game good for this group?".

    So, let's look at a few examples of what has made games good or bad for me, personally.

    ShadowRun

    Pros: ShadowRun was a great game for me because it had plenty of interesting rules and subsystems to explore. It had a fun character creation minigame. It had tables full of cool gear. It had a spell creation system. In earlier editions, at least, it made fast characters seem fast in a way unparalleled by other systems.

    Cons: ShadowRun was a terrible system for me primarily because it handled spotlight sharing by saying, "for x players, you get to play 1/x of the time". It also lacked an "invention" system to parallel the spell creation system. The skill defaulting system was… meh, additional complexity for minimal gain. And there were a few places where the mechanics encouraged mechanically "bad" actions (the strongest possible character was the character with the lowest Strength, the ____est possible character was the character with the lowest ____).

    WoD Mage

    Pros: conceptually awesome! Sphere system was interesting.

    Cons: the core mechanics were laughable. The mechanics and crunch did not match the fluff or "intent" of the system.

    3e D&D

    Pros: so many rules - little need for rule 0. So much content - little need to homebrew. Homebrew encouraged.

    Cons: too much focus on balance. Too much focus on balance… by people who were not good at balance. To little "wow, cool!". Too many unspoken assumptions. Really hard to make a character organically / without planning out a "build" before the game even begins (in addition to the obvious, this is a source of conflict between the rules and the fiction).

    dtd40k7e

    Pros: excellent for fueling my creativity. "Roll and Keep" mechanic is interesting. Exploding dice add to tension. Fun fluff, that doesn't get in the way of the crunch.

    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.
    Last edited by Quertus; 2021-03-25 at 06:34 AM.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by clash View Post
    An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.
    A good game needs to have mechanics that lead to situations and behaviors by the players that math the kind of fiction the game is supposed to evoke.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    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.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by clash View Post
    An rpg is good if it does what is advertised. That's it.

    So an rpg that claims "complex system for mystery and intrigue" better give me a mystery and intrigue focused game. It should be rules heavy but still playable and offer the experience it advertises. A game that advertises itself as a light weight slice of life, should be very easy to start and play and have comedic themes built into the rules.
    Surely there's a bit more to talk about than just "A good rpg does what it does good", right? If the question is "what makes an rpg good", don't we have to talk about how they do what they advertise? Especially when people disagree on whether or not it does that well.

    Maybe an example would make this easier. Take Scion for example, the players play as demi-gods with their own domains, and so part of the system is that you have to roll whenever you try to act against your "nature", and if you fail, your character can't do that action, or may even do a different one instead. This type of "character hijacking" so to speak is somewhat common in more rp-heavy, rules-lite systems. It's purpose seems to be to encourage role-playing, by ensuring that characters are always acting in-character, but to some, it does the opposite. Some people say it ruins role playing by taking the power to decide your character's actions out of the hands of the player.

    So then, the question has to be asked: If Scion is advertised as an rp-heavy, character-driven system, does it do what is advertised? IMO the reason that question is hard to answer is why the topic of this thread is a more complicated issue.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Well-written. You can't play RAW, you interpret the rules. You (almost) can't play RAI. Nobody knows the intent of the rules and TTRPG's just get too big and complicated for even the writers to keep track.
    Regardless, a game needs to explain its rules as clearly and simply as possible. Both for people learning the system and for people looking up rules during play. This is hard.

    Good fiction. An RPG will have mechanics which promote certain behaviours. This results in a theme and feel. Promote a good theme and feel, write it into your RPG's fiction, advertise it and write the rules to result in it. It is very statisfying when fiction and rules support eachother. Also, a setting written on the theme and feel can help introduce the RPG and be interesting on its own.
    Sometimes rules break, hard. They create the tippyverse, or make what was supposed to be a dark serious struggle a powertrip. Or they just promote weird behaviours like ignoring armour because it doesn't actually help so nobody sane wears armour anymore and there goes the setting's elite plate-armoured knight order's reputation.

    Rules to facilitate playstyles I enjoy. I like customising characters, playing awesome martial characters and having some options to act in each major activity of play. Not to mention progression being exciting. Exclusive niche protection, mage-only gameplay? Not for me, bad RPG, yep.


    Resources. You buy a whole dang TTRPG, and there's no bestiary, let alone an introductory adventure? You now have to design these yourself?! Humbug, preposterous I say!

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sneak Dog View Post
    Rules to facilitate playstyles I enjoy. I like customising characters, playing awesome martial characters and having some options to act in each major activity of play. Not to mention progression being exciting. Exclusive niche protection, mage-only gameplay? Not for me, bad RPG, yep.
    Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board, and are otherwise nearly identical)?

    I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2021-03-25 at 02:27 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by KOLE View Post
    MOG, design a darn RPG system. Seriously, the amount of ideas I’ve gleaned from your posts has been valuable. You’re a gem of the community here.

    5th Edition Homebrewery
    Prestige Options, changing primary attributes to open a world of new multiclassing.
    Adrenaline Surge, fitting Short Rests into combat to fix bosses/Short Rest Classes.
    Pain, using Exhaustion to make tactical martial combatants.
    Fate Sorcery, lucky winner of the 5e D&D Subclass Contest VII!

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Man_Over_Game View Post
    Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board)?

    I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".
    While I'm not Sneak Dog, I will agree with him, and point to Mutant & Mastermind for a successful rule-heavy system that went that direction. It doesn't matter if you are using divination magic or if you are just "Movie Sherlock Holmes", those two abilities have the same end result.
    [Unless you're trying to counter it. Interactions between multiple powers is when their precise description starts to actually have an influence on the gameplay.]

    Though, when I say "I agree with him", I mean that I prefer RPGs that go that way. But I definitely don't consider that every RPG should necessary go that way.

  19. - Top - End - #19
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Hmm. I wonder....

    Pendragon is a great system if you want to play a specific version of Arthutian mythos in a specific style. Terrible for D&D style high magic dungeon crawls. As a plus though, the game book itself (although not always the people proposing to play) is quite clear on that.

    What if you go with:
    1. What the system says it does, mechanically and thematically.
    2. What it actually does do, right out of the box for people who take it at face value.
    3. What it does in experienced hands applying best practices.
    4. Rate the game on how well it meets it's own goals, with the understanding that tbis may vary dependent on the skill of the users.

    There are games I wouldn't play with inexperienced DMs. Some because of system complexity on the DM side, others because they lack critical guidelines & guardrails. There are games that don't play well if the players aren't... not "experienced", more like the game works on certain expectations and themes that the players need to be able to understand. Like a superhero game that collapsed because half the players couldn't hero.

    I can't say those are bad games. Just that there are users that don't have something (experience, expectations, adaptability, just something) that the system needs to be properly used.

    Maybe adding "Does it work well for the intended audience?" and "Does it communicate who that audience is?", in the list somewhere.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    A good RPG system is useful. I can state, with fair certainty, that a useless RPG system is not good.*

    What makes a RPG system useful largely depends on who is using it, and what they are using it for. I want a system which I can run easily, which can interpret player actions into mechanics fairly well, and which I can teach other people if I need to. Fate does this. So, Fate is a good system for me. I also want systems which give a fairly distinct setting and playstyle, without being overly obtuse. Shadowrun is a fairly good example of this. So Shadowrun is a good system for me as well, even if it's one I use much less frequently.

    I would say that a good RPG system (in general) has a goal and is successful at presenting and accomplishing that goal. It doesn't need to be a system for me. It doesn't really need to be a system for anyone, technically. As long as a system has a specific goal in mind, and chooses rules and mechanics which accomplish that goal well, then it can be a good system - at least, at that specific goal. No system can reasonably be good at everything, and even the generic RPGs are generally not as good at specific settings or scenarios than some RPGs specific for those settings.

    --

    * A system which highlights how useless it is to display useless RPG mechanics would technically be a use of the system, and thus potentially make it good at displaying bad RPG mechanics. So you can put your Time Cube RPG printouts back on the shelf.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Two (somewhat inchoate) components (and there are others):

    1) Fulfillment of purpose
    2) Fitness of purpose

    1) This answers the question "How well does it deliver on its claimed goals?" Which presupposes answers to the questions
    1a) What are its purposes or goals?
    1b) Who are its target audience?
    1c) What measurements are there for testing this fit?

    There are generally multiple goals, including the ones inherited from the genre level--being a Role-playing Game. Something that's not a good game isn't a good RPG; something that doesn't assist or encourage role-playing isn't a good RPG. But purpose is broader than that.

    A statement of (one of) 5e D&D's purposes might be "Enable and empower creation of small-team based adventures in a fantasy world", while another might be "be more friendly to new players (than earlier editions)", while a third might be "make Hasbro lots of money" and a fourth might be "feel like D&D". Note: I'm not employed by WotC, nor do I speak for them. These are my impressions as to their aims, as expressed in their product.

    2) This answers the question "is what it's trying to do important or interesting to me?". This one's quite subjective. For instance, you might have a great WWI trench-fighting RPG. Portrays life excellently, has wonderful mechanics, real gritty, etc. Does its job excellently. And I'd totally pass it over, because I'm not interesting in roleplaying in a WWI environment. That doesn't make it bad objectively, just bad for me.

    I reject the idea that good systems have to be universal. I prefer when systems know who they're targeting and what they're trying to do. And then do it. And especially advertise what they're going for. Trying to be universal and failing (which everyone does, universal is basically impossible even within a single genre) ends up leaving you neither fish nor fowl nor good red beef, as the saying goes. Choose what you're going to do, then do it well.

    Now if you narrow your focus too much, you'll not find players. Which may make it a commercial failure. But lots of "good" products are commercial failures. They were produced well, just not for the right market. Or things shifted out from under them. And conversely, a lot of commercial successes aren't objectively all that good.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Man_Over_Game View Post
    Weird question then, are you promoting something akin to 4e DnD, where most powers are mechanically similar with different means and results (for example, most Fighter AoEs are centered around them while Wizards have AoEs centered around points on the board, and are otherwise nearly identical)?

    I don't mean that in a rigid 4e format, I just mean in the sense of "There's no inherent difference between physical and supernatural power".
    I like it when the mechanics show the fiction. Making them mechanically similar implies they're similar in the setting, which often clashes with what the setting explicitly says. If it clashes, I'm against. Mechanical similarity makes it very easy to balance though.

    In Shadowrun, characters getting hi-tech implants lower their magical capacity. It's a mechanic that shows the incompatibility. It's awesome in that way.
    In Warhammer, magic runs the risk of warping reality and creating horrible effects up to and including the mage's death as they summon a daemon. Magic is risky and there's mechanics for it. It's good in that way.
    In D&D 5e, mage's wanting to keep their concentration spells going need to make constitution checks, which also influence their maximum hit points. As a result, mages are promoted to be as tough and well conditioned as anyone, despite the popular image of a frail old mage. It's awkward in that way.
    However, it has a very explicit split between what martials do (swing weapons a lot) and what mages do (cast spells a lot), which fits the system. It's good in that way.

    D&D in general has been having issues here for me. Too distinct has lead to underwhelming martials. Too similar has clashed with the setting.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    1) A world that is fun to be adventuring in and interesting to players. As a side bar this includes a breadth and depth of material so you aren’t stuck in any one place. Space 1889 is an example of a game that mechanically was average at best but because the world was so much fun players enjoyed the gaming experience.

    Without this the game will fail.

    2) Support for the DM. Most of us have day jobs and families. Unless you have the luxury of time for some reason DMs need as much help as possible. If the game requires too much from the DM in terms of campaign building, campaigns will stall.

    3) Mechanics that are consistent with the world as described in the fiction. If I’m playing Star Wars and people start running gun toting Jedi because that’s mechanically better than using light sabers - that’s a fail.

    4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)

  24. - Top - End - #24
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    The primary thing in my eyes is: how much does the game succeed in aiding the players in creating the sort of game it wants to be? Basically, how well does it fulfill its stated objective?

    For example, I consider Exalted a bad game, largely because the thing it says it wants to be (an epic game of hubristic heroes and daring feats that change the world) has historically clashed with both the setting (which has often been written with a very WoD-style sensibility of "if you step out of line the Super Baddy/splat Elder/whatever will whack you) and the mechanics (which rewarded all sorts of things except actually going in and taking risks). The game can be fun, but what it ends up as as an emergent game and what it wants to be are not really so much as in the same zip code.

    Meanwhile, I think Edge of the Empire is a pretty good game, overall, because most of it is pretty good about encouraging the sort of stories that it wants to create - a bunch of slightly criminal weirdos running around in the galaxy backwaters and getting into and out of trouble. Do note, it still has some bad parts, as Star Wars typically wants some starship chases and such, and the starship rules for EotE are not conducive to daring Han Solo escapades. But on the ground, EotE makes getting into and out of the sort of trouble that Star Wars side stories thrive on very easy and very rewarding. Hence, successful game.

  25. - Top - End - #25
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    I like to say, roleplaying is making decisions for the character in the fantasy environment,

    So a good one is: It provides lots of opportunities to make interesting decisions for the character in the fantasy environment.

    Change out "interesting" to whatever adjective you find most fun when it comes to decision making.

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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drascin View Post
    The primary thing in my eyes is: how much does the game succeed in aiding the players in creating the sort of game it wants to be? Basically, how well does it fulfill its stated objective?

    For example, I consider Exalted a bad game, largely because the thing it says it wants to be (an epic game of hubristic heroes and daring feats that change the world) has historically clashed with both the setting (which has often been written with a very WoD-style sensibility of "if you step out of line the Super Baddy/splat Elder/whatever will whack you) and the mechanics (which rewarded all sorts of things except actually going in and taking risks). The game can be fun, but what it ends up as as an emergent game and what it wants to be are not really so much as in the same zip code.
    It also clashes with the fandom being White Wolf/Onyx Path fans and thus take everything way too seriously and deeply and thus you end up with people and devs recommending things like Debt: The First 5000 years to help explain its subject matter, when dude I don't want to need an anthropological book about ancient world economics to play my mythical hero/wuxia/anime-esque game.
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)
    "Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand." Great goal, nobody would ever complain right?

    Lets look a little closer at D&D to-hit. Start with AD&D 1e, it had charts. Roll, add bonuses, check the class chart for the AC. Sounds terrible? It's a sheet of paper the DM uses, the player only adds a number or two, plus the charts both made martial classes better at fighting and were not just linear number lists. At the high/good AC range there were a set of ACs that a 20s would hit, then for ACs past that the roll needed to-hit would start going up again. Those charts were written by people who begain with war gaming simulations, those numbers were not just randomly made up. Easy to understand? Maybe not so much, some of the effects weren't obvious. Easy to use? Yeah, roll plus strength plus magic and tell the DM.

    Move on to AD&D 2e, thac0. That's a "simplification" of the charts that loses the bumps and plateaus of the charts. Now players have a number on the character sheet and an extra step of math. It's issues come from keeping the backwards compatability of descending AC numbers inherited from the original wargaming roots (where they made sense at the time).

    On to D&D 3e, ascending AC and class based attack bonus. Simple ya? We went with straight addition this time. But a plethora of modifiers, feats, gear, etc., including touch AC and "no dex" flat footed AC. And we're back to complaints of "too complicated".

    4e, everyone uses powers so everyone with the same stat bonus has the same chance to stab/shoot/magic a target. In theory you could have characters with different levels or different magic item plusses, but the system is trying to be balanced and different levels/bonuses isn't balanced. Complaints of "too samey".

    5e and we're even simpler with the only difference in stabbing/to-hit ability between characters is attribute bonuses and a magic item or two. But at least you might have the option to trade a bit of character improvement to have the option to trade -5 attack for +10 damage if you use the right kind of weapon. We're consistent and easy to understand, but unless the character is casting spells the difference in character's martial skill is 16, 18, or 20 stat and what plus of magic weapon they use.

    How about 6e? We can make things even more consistent and easier to understand. Everyone gets 1d20 vs AC and AC is limited to a 5 to 15 range. Consistent, everyone is the same. Easy, no math at all. We can make it even easier! If we move all differences in combat ability to damage and hit points we can do away with AC too, the to-hit can be just be 1d20 vs 11. But wait! We can make that easier too! Since that's a 50% chance we can just double all the hit points and do away with attack rolls. Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand, plus we just eliminated all the attack rolls so the character sheets and combat rounds are simpler too. In fact, there are tables that already do away with rolling damage and hit points. Just take the averages and things are even more consistent and simpler.

    I think I recall reading a couple 1-page games that used a single d6 with a 5+ success and characters having a few +1s and +2s. That's about the epitome of consistent and easy to understand, but nobody ever seems to use them.

    How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?

  28. - Top - End - #28
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?
    Digital randomness is quite difficult to handle. Players easily over-interpret results and will quickly feel like the results are rigged or unfair. [Peoples also think their dice are cursed, but they blame the physical dice, not the game itself].

    Opacity is seen as unfair. Just displaying the odds is rarely enough, as a lot of peoples don't trust randomness if it doesn't match their intuition. The two solutions I've see that seems to work to reduce player's feeling of unfairness are
    (1) "Materialisation" of the randomness through explicit cards or dice.
    (2) Lies and illusions. You fake transparency by displaying odds of success/failure that are wrong by using a different formula for your "odds" and the actual check. [Usually you undervaluate the probability of success for easy/medium checks].

    IME, (2) is the most frequent choice, especially in tactical video games (Fire Emblem, XCOM, etc).

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    1) A world that is fun to be adventuring in and interesting to players. As a side bar this includes a breadth and depth of material so you aren’t stuck in any one place. Space 1889 is an example of a game that mechanically was average at best but because the world was so much fun players enjoyed the gaming experience.

    Without this the game will fail.
    Eh… I build my own campaign settings. So, afaict, the only fail state is if the game is locked into a single setting, *and* that setting doesn't deliver.

    So, it needs a good setting, *or* an open setting. Both is just gravy.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    2) Support for the DM. Most of us have day jobs and families. Unless you have the luxury of time for some reason DMs need as much help as possible. If the game requires too much from the DM in terms of campaign building, campaigns will stall.
    I generally make my own content. What help do you think a system *needs* to give me?

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    3) Mechanics that are consistent with the world as described in the fiction. If I’m playing Star Wars and people start running gun toting Jedi because that’s mechanically better than using light sabers - that’s a fail.
    Hmmm… this is tricky. When it's *obvious* to all the characters that the fluff-compliant methods are suboptimal, that can be an issue. Was there a version of Star Wars that had this specific issue?

    Anyone who thinks D&D is "obvious", though, I'd love to Obliviate their D&D PhD, lock them in a room with no internet, and see just what they create. Based on my extensive experience with earlier editions, my intuition suggests that it's not at all as obvious as some would have you believe. And, since D&D Wizards don't exactly have the internet, it's bad role-playing to play them as if they understand things that they realistically wouldn't.

    Spoiler: THAC0, digital
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    4) Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand. THAC0 is the poster child for a dis-intuitive mechanic that smart people couldn’t grasp because it ran negative to every other mechanic in the game. (I know people defend THAC0, but if it was so good why has it been abandoned and no other game stile the concept?)
    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    "Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand." Great goal, nobody would ever complain right?

    Lets look a little closer at D&D to-hit. Start with AD&D 1e, it had charts. Roll, add bonuses, check the class chart for the AC. Sounds terrible? It's a sheet of paper the DM uses, the player only adds a number or two, plus the charts both made martial classes better at fighting and were not just linear number lists. At the high/good AC range there were a set of ACs that a 20s would hit, then for ACs past that the roll needed to-hit would start going up again. Those charts were written by people who begain with war gaming simulations, those numbers were not just randomly made up. Easy to understand? Maybe not so much, some of the effects weren't obvious. Easy to use? Yeah, roll plus strength plus magic and tell the DM.

    Move on to AD&D 2e, thac0. That's a "simplification" of the charts that loses the bumps and plateaus of the charts. Now players have a number on the character sheet and an extra step of math. It's issues come from keeping the backwards compatability of descending AC numbers inherited from the original wargaming roots (where they made sense at the time).

    On to D&D 3e, ascending AC and class based attack bonus. Simple ya? We went with straight addition this time. But a plethora of modifiers, feats, gear, etc., including touch AC and "no dex" flat footed AC. And we're back to complaints of "too complicated".

    4e, everyone uses powers so everyone with the same stat bonus has the same chance to stab/shoot/magic a target. In theory you could have characters with different levels or different magic item plusses, but the system is trying to be balanced and different levels/bonuses isn't balanced. Complaints of "too samey".

    5e and we're even simpler with the only difference in stabbing/to-hit ability between characters is attribute bonuses and a magic item or two. But at least you might have the option to trade a bit of character improvement to have the option to trade -5 attack for +10 damage if you use the right kind of weapon. We're consistent and easy to understand, but unless the character is casting spells the difference in character's martial skill is 16, 18, or 20 stat and what plus of magic weapon they use.

    How about 6e? We can make things even more consistent and easier to understand. Everyone gets 1d20 vs AC and AC is limited to a 5 to 15 range. Consistent, everyone is the same. Easy, no math at all. We can make it even easier! If we move all differences in combat ability to damage and hit points we can do away with AC too, the to-hit can be just be 1d20 vs 11. But wait! We can make that easier too! Since that's a 50% chance we can just double all the hit points and do away with attack rolls. Mechanics that are consistent and easy to understand, plus we just eliminated all the attack rolls so the character sheets and combat rounds are simpler too. In fact, there are tables that already do away with rolling damage and hit points. Just take the averages and things are even more consistent and simpler.

    I think I recall reading a couple 1-page games that used a single d6 with a 5+ success and characters having a few +1s and +2s. That's about the epitome of consistent and easy to understand, but nobody ever seems to use them.

    How about a game that plays great but has a custom dedicated "results" app that it needs in order to be played? Easy to use, hit three buttons in order and read the result. Consistently good and accurate range of results. The actual randomizing is completely opaque. Some people would hate it for the electronics bit of course, but that's not part off "is the game any good". High stats/skills are good and pushing three buttons to read a result is easy to understand, right?
    2e THAC0 was bad. 3e "touch AC" was not "added complexity" - it replaced the more complicated, less defined, and more obfuscated "AC 10".

    There is no way in which the 3e attack roll mechanics were inferior to the 2e THAC0 mechanics. And I say this as someone who considers 2e to be the best RPG!

    The 1e tables added value at the cost of complexity - not better or worse, but different.

    As i understand it, 4e and 5e have the same basic "mechanic" (d20 + bonus vs DC) as 3e. So the differences in the implementation of the rest of the system, that produce these different opinions, seem unrelated to the question of how easy and intuitive the system is.

    Quote Originally Posted by MoiMagnus View Post
    Digital randomness is quite difficult to handle. Players easily over-interpret results and will quickly feel like the results are rigged or unfair. [Peoples also think their dice are cursed, but they blame the physical dice, not the game itself].

    Opacity is seen as unfair. Just displaying the odds is rarely enough, as a lot of peoples don't trust randomness if it doesn't match their intuition. The two solutions I've see that seems to work to reduce player's feeling of unfairness are
    (1) "Materialisation" of the randomness through explicit cards or dice.
    (2) Lies and illusions. You fake transparency by displaying odds of success/failure that are wrong by using a different formula for your "odds" and the actual check. [Usually you undervaluate the probability of success for easy/medium checks].

    IME, (2) is the most frequent choice, especially in tactical video games (Fire Emblem, XCOM, etc).
    Huh. I always felt that my "rolls" were on the lucky side in XCOM, which just made it more frustrating that I could never beat it. Is there a source for the display math being wrong in those games?

    Personally, I like rolling physical dice. I'll only sacrifice that bit of enjoyment if the game when I have a compelling reason - like when I'm running an army of the undead, or a mech with 40 machine guns...

  30. - Top - End - #30
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: What makes an RPG good?

    A good game is fun to play.

    I was tempted to leave it there to make it a statement about the simplicity of it all. But then I thought I should explain that whatever general criticism you can level at a system doesn't really matter as long as people are enjoying it. You can argue that maybe they would have more fun with a different game but even if that is true the second game is merely better not that the first is bad. And I suppose I am ignoring some special purpose games that don't exist for entertainment… yeah that's fine for now.

    Let me close off with some things that generally help systems be fun:
    • Clear about their goals. (Expectation/Experience matching.)
    • Have unity between there mechanics and themes.
    • They should take minimal time/energy/skill to learn (minimal is relative and I am speaking of the skill floor).
    • They should take minimal time/energy/skill to play/run (same, this one is surprisingly controversial).
    Actually the last two are so broad they kind of cover everything else I was going to put on the list.

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