The Ideal Iconic Role-Playing Game

[Cluedrew]

TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.

Err... OP=Original Post in this thread at the top of this page? Because I didn't rule out either of those. Exploding dice might be a more complex rolling method, but not by a lot, and counting can be simpler than addition.

Time is short. I hope to be back later with more replies.

[gbaji]

Nope. The Skeleton set of rules was the Original Three Little Brown books.
Not Chainmail.

The original D&D rules (the three book box published in 1974) assumed you had a copy of chainmail and used it for movement and combat. it was very much written as a "take an existing set of rules me and my friends already know and use, and fill in things like classes, levels, monsters, treasure, magic items, traps, and a bunch of other stuff for basically doing dungeon adventuring with individual characters". It did contain some basic "rules" for combat resolution (for those who didn't have Chainmail), but was a stripped down version and presented as an option. It was literally assumed that only hobbyists who already played miniature war games would be interested in playing (a varient on the genre if you will) and was very heavily targetted at that group.

Over the next couple years (and a lot of magazine published stuff), they realized that a lot of people were playing D&D who didn't have experience in miniature wargaming, so supplements were added to make this easier (and to add a lot of additional content as well, of course).

Basic, B/X, and AD&D 1e were way more polished than the original.

Yup. This was the next progression. Putting it all in one format, cleaning up the extraneous stuff, and otherwise presenting a single "finished product" for mass consumption. And yes, by this point, it bore little resemblance to Chainmail anymore (even in core rule resolution mechanics). But that was a progression over time.

I guess where I was originally going with this was that if you strip out the "detail" stuff, you're left only with basically movement/distance, time, and resolution rules. The details (classes, skills, levels, items, magic, etc) can be viewed as "stuff added onto the core rules" (and again, certainly was in the case of D&D in the beginning). I suppose we could speculate about designing an "iconic" RPG without first doing those things and then adding on to them, but that's not how it actually happened historically, and I'm not sure it could have happened in a very much different manner.

And yeah. It's not a perfect analogy historically, because the actual "RPG" element is somewhat its own thing. You could certainly roleplay, without also doing some variation of minature gaming (and that was the case actually). But it's somewhat the combining of the peanut butter and chocolate that made D&D "iconic". People wanted hard rules to resolve things they wanted to roleplay, and other people wanted to roleplay the things they already had hard resolution rules for. So...

TBH, if it weren't for the "no exploding dice" criterion and the "no counting successes" in the OP, I'd have suggested Tunnels and Trolls as a more iconic RPG.
One of the features of that game which I liked a lot was that it only used d6, and the 2d6 'saving roll' that also acted as the Skill check which also allowed you to earn XP as a result of a failed skill check or a successful one, was really neat.

I think I played T&T like, twice, waaaaaay back in the day. I remember it being a lot of fun, if maybe feeling a bit limited (that could very well have been because I was playing short sessions at tourneys though).

[Pauly]

The discussion on ideal genre is kind of interesting...

I wonder if rather than the version of urban fantasy with the supernatural being hidden, something like supernatural apocalypse urban fantasy would work well - maybe even better. You have a normal, recognizable world that every player coming in knows what it looks like and knows how to think about. Then you say as the premise of the game something like 'three years ago, the supernatural was revealed to be real as a major faction of unseelie fae ripped the boundaries of the world asunder, creating Wild Zones in various places all across the Earth which are gradually encroaching. Other supernatural factions have revealed themselves, governments have gathered military and scientific forces to do something about the zones, people have discovered latent talents which grow with exposure to the zones and seek their magic for their own personal addictions, fulfillment, and profit, etc.'
.

I think Urban Fantasy could work.
There is a lot of content that supports the genre.
In movies you go back to at least the 1940s with Cat People and So I married a Witch. Moving on to the 70s and 80s with films like Damien, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London,
Then in TV you had 4 major sitcoms Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, The Munsters and The Addams Family that leaned into the genre in the 1960s alone. Now you have I don’t know how many urban fantasy series for teens on Disney+ alone.
Literature has been overflowing with examples since Varney the Vampire,

The overall genre splits into Horror, Comedy, Slice of Life or Romance. Which gives players a huge range of options on the tone they want to set for their campaign. You also have the option of the PCs being supernatural trying to pass as normal or normals trying to defeat the supernatural.

You may want to argue VtM has set the genre standard, but it’s really only cornered the Anne Rice sexy vampire section of the genre.

[NichG]

I think Urban Fantasy could work.
There is a lot of content that supports the genre.
In movies you go back to at least the 1940s with Cat People and So I married a Witch. Moving on to the 70s and 80s with films like Damien, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist and An American Werewolf in London,
Then in TV you had 4 major sitcoms Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, The Munsters and The Addams Family that leaned into the genre in the 1960s alone. Now you have I don’t know how many urban fantasy series for teens on Disney+ alone.
Literature has been overflowing with examples since Varney the Vampire,

The overall genre splits into Horror, Comedy, Slice of Life or Romance. Which gives players a huge range of options on the tone they want to set for their campaign. You also have the option of the PCs being supernatural trying to pass as normal or normals trying to defeat the supernatural.

You may want to argue VtM has set the genre standard, but it’s really only cornered the Anne Rice sexy vampire section of the genre.

I also (personally) think with VtM the masquerade bit is very scope limiting. It creates something where there almost certainly has to be an out-of-scale consequence for actions or accidents which might not only be innocent, but also along which lie the most interesting interactions for players to explore. Like, if you're trying for a slightly serious/comedic blend (saving the world and joking about it as you go, the beer and pretzels equivalent), then 'someone saw you transform, now a secret society will have them mind-wiped/killed/have you killed/whatnot...' suddenly wrenches the game away from doing cool stuff with cool abilities.

[Pauly]

I also (personally) think with VtM the masquerade bit is very scope limiting. It creates something where there almost certainly has to be an out-of-scale consequence for actions or accidents which might not only be innocent, but also along which lie the most interesting interactions for players to explore. Like, if you're trying for a slightly serious/comedic blend (saving the world and joking about it as you go, the beer and pretzels equivalent), then 'someone saw you transform, now a secret society will have them mind-wiped/killed/have you killed/whatnot...' suddenly wrenches the game away from doing cool stuff with cool abilities.

The other problem with VtM is the other half of the title - people want to play things other than just vampires.
I remember when VtM came out I gave it a hard no because I just didn’t want to be a vampire. Personally I’d rather play a vampire hunter, but people want to play werewolves, witches, and so on too.

Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.

But coming back to point the system would have to cope with beer and pretzels campaigns as well as more serious brooding campaigns. I think that if you cast the genre wide enough you should be able to do that. Secret societies and supernatural powers is a good starting point.

[NichG]

The other problem with VtM is the other half of the title - people want to play things other than just vampires.
I remember when VtM came out I gave it a hard no because I just didn’t want to be a vampire. Personally I’d rather play a vampire hunter, but people want to play werewolves, witches, and so on too.

Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.

But coming back to point the system would have to cope with beer and pretzels campaigns as well as more serious brooding campaigns. I think that if you cast the genre wide enough you should be able to do that. Secret societies and supernatural powers is a good starting point.

As far as the state of society, I think I'd aim for something along the lines of True Blood. Supernaturals came out and revealed themselves recently due to modernization making coexistence more feasible. People generally know a little bit about the major supernatural types but there's still a lot of mystique, ancient structures and powers and so on still coming to light, etc. Becoming supernatural should be a thing you can do in-character I think, like 'I'm going to get so and so to turn me', 'I'm going to get so and so to teach me magic', and should probably be a mutually exclusive, irreversible decision once done, and the 'introductory supernatural' level of powers should essentially be more like neat perks than character-defining, but growing in time to be character defining if e.g. you invested into it over the course of a campaign or started at a tier of play where you could be pre-invested in it.

Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has? On the other hand, that gives players something to aim for in their meta-progress: "Hey, I've never played past Lv9, I want to find out what that's like", "Hey, I've never done a 1-to-20 campaign, lets do it!". But that could easily be replaced by e.g. "We've never done a witch-centric campaign" or "We've never played wish-granting genies" or "We never did a 'destroy the world of mundanity' fae campaign before"

[KorvinStarmast]

Err... OP=Original Post in this thread at the top of this page? Because I didn't rule out either of those. Exploding dice might be a more complex rolling method, but not by a lot, and counting can be simpler than addition.

Sorry, I guess it was one of the early replies to you. Looks like I mixed things up in my head.

The original D&D rules (the three book box published in 1974) assumed you had a copy of chainmail and used it for movement and combat.

Hardly. The game books suggested you already have Outdoor Survival, which we didn't have in our first group, and yet we began playing without a hiccup; nor did we have Chainmail at first and that impeded our play not at all. (FWIW: None of us could afford armies of miniatures at that point in time, we were high school kids, but we could play the heck out of Blitzkrieg or D-Day by Avalon Hill). The alternate combat system was already in Men And Magic. That's your "to hit AC table" that used a d20, but until our local hobby shop got d20's we used a bowl of poker chips and had to blind draw chips ...
That's what we started with. And it worked. Greyhawk coming out just expanded our options, as did Blackmoor.
It wasn't until after we'd started that any of our group got ahold of Chainmail and Outdoor Survival (by Avalon Hill) - not all of the DMs used that for world generation. Most did their own thing, a few did use Outdoor Survival.

I guess where I was originally going with this was that if you strip out the "detail" stuff, you're left only with basically movement/distance, time, and resolution rules. The details (classes, skills, levels, items, magic, etc) can be viewed as "stuff added onto the core rules" (and again, certainly was in the case of D&D in the beginning).

Not quite true either. The role of Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric was spelled out in Men and Magic. The term Class came later. And the term "role playing game" grew from the hobby (the first evidence I see of it is in the products list in the back of my old Greyhawk Supplement).
That "Thief" didn't make it into the original book I suspect had to do with the time crunch of time and money to get the first batch of (1000) rules printed and published.
I am led to believe that something like a thief role was being played already in both of the primary nodes. (Twin Cities and Chicago area).

I suppose we could speculate about designing an "iconic" RPG without first doing those things and then adding on to them, but that's not how it actually happened historically, and I'm not sure it could have happened in a very much different manner.

Given what DA and his crew were doing in the Twin Cities, and how everyone who played D&D also played wargames (board and / or miniature) and Diplomacy, and given what the crew who put together the Secrets of Blackmoor have shared, you've got part of the story. Peterson's "Elusive Shift" shows how quickly "style" and "preference" communities evolved in various major cities, all taking that skeleton of a game and running with it. (The nodes he cites are LA area, Boston area, New York City area (Heritage Figs was HQ'd there IIRC), Dallas area (Heritage Figs was HQ'd there IIRC), Twin Cities area, Chicago area).

I think I played T&T like, twice, waaaaaay back in the day. I remember it being a lot of fun, if maybe feeling a bit limited (that could very well have been because I was playing short sessions at tourneys though).

Yes. T&T - in original version - was for me a once during a drunken weekend 'let's play something different' - it wasn't until a few years ago that I got to play a more polished version (5th ed, deluxe).

I just noticed that the OP was looking for something setting agnostic, which T&T isn't (at least not anymore). I also reject the premise: I think that an RPG needs a setting or a genre to anchor its feel.

The more common "let's play something that isn't D&D" games for us were Empire of the Petal Throne (me GM), Chivalry and Sorcery, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, and Traveller - but the latter only on rare occasions. Had the damnedest time keeping Traveller groups together.

I am not sure how Traveller fits into the OPs desires, but at least it uses 2d6 for the most part, but it's genre is for sure directed at SF/Space Opera type stuff.

[gbaji]

The alternate combat system was already in Men And Magic. That's your "to hit AC table" that used a d20, but until our local hobby shop got d20's we used a bowl of poker chips and had to blind draw chips ...
That's what we started with. And it worked. Greyhawk coming out just expanded our options, as did Blackmoor.
It wasn't until after we'd started that any of our group got ahold of Chainmail and Outdoor Survival (by Avalon Hill) - not all of the DMs used that for world generation. Most did their own thing, a few did use Outdoor Survival.

Yeah. I'm aware of the early progression of the game. The guy I started playing with did have Chainmail and did have Outdoor survival, so we used that stuff when I started out as a young kid (well, very briefly, often just as a reference as more stuff came out over time). Played a lot of the old AH games back in the day too. Once the AD&D rules books came out though, the older stuff more or less stayed on the shelf.

I guess I'm looking at "core rules" differently.

Not quite true either. The role of Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric was spelled out in Men and Magic. The term Class came later. And the term "role playing game" grew from the hobby (the first evidence I see of it is in the products list in the back of my old Greyhawk Supplement).

And this is why. I don't see classes, races, spells, etc as "core rules". To me, core rules means "how do we measure time, movement, distance?", and "how do we resolve attempts to do things?, and "how do we resolve combat/damage/whatever?". You can do all of that without ever writing a single class or spell or item into a game. You first create the "meta rules". Just in combat: What is damage? How is it defined? Wound levels? HPs? How is it done? Rolled? Static? How many dice are used and for what?

Once you define those things (the "skeleton" I'm speaking about) *then* you do things like say "this class gets X hps per level. Can wear this type of armor. Levels are gained by exp points, which are earned by <this method> (or, hey, whether we're even using class and levels). And you fill in tables of weapons, with damage done, and tables of armor which have some values to them that have meaning within the core rules already created. And then you might add spells to this, that again have effects and costs that also have meaning within the core rules already created. Those core rules are the foundation everything else rests on IMO. And yes, we can point to the roles in the first books, but even that kinda supports my point. Those were analogs for "units" in a wargame and were included as the basic "unit types" you could play. Again, very much from a wargame pov. Chainmail already contained a section for "Fantasy combat", and it's really obvious that they just built on that in D&D. Not sure how much actual roleplaying was going on initially, though.

You start with those core rules though. Or, at least, in the case of D&D, that's how it happened (started from miniature wargaming and then added elements to it to simulate fantasy combat, then went further in the 1:1 scale to create an actual RPG with existing combat resolution rules). Again, we could speculate that one could do it the other way around, and start out thinking in terms of "I want to roleplay various types of characters", and then move to "defining those characters via levels, and classes, and items, and spells, and whatnot" and then build a system of dice roll mechanics to manage all of that. And I'm sure that some game design methodology today may very well work via that process. Today. But that's after 50 years of folks knowing what these things look like as a whole.

I'm not sure if an "iconic" game starting the genre could ever have moved in that direction to start the whole thing off though. That would be like speculating an alternative to Ford building the assembly line system for cars by first considering the infotainment system we want to have installed.

Again though. To me, the "skeleton" or "core rules" is all about measurements and resolution methods. The rest of the stuff is all details, which can be setting/genre variable IMO. Now yes, at some point along the journey to becoming an actual RPG, that other stuff has to be introduced, but it does tend to have to rest on having those core mechanics in place first. Unless we're considering Toon as an "iconic RPG"?

The more common "let's play something that isn't D&D" games for us were Empire of the Petal Throne (me GM), Chivalry and Sorcery, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, and Traveller - but the latter only on rare occasions. Had the damnedest time keeping Traveller groups together.

Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time.

[Bohandas]

The first thing is approachability. As the most iconic system it is also one going to be the one most often someone's first role-playing game they have tried. So it should be an easy system to learn and an easy system to GM. I suppose that is always true to some degree, but here even more so, so I would be willing to make some more trade offs for it. People who want to go deeper and more detailed can move onto other systems or use the homebrewed solutions that will pop-up, so I think it is the best trade-off for this situation.

Second is, I believe it should be setting and (to an extent) genre agnostic. Every system is going to have a particular tone, or whatever you want to call it. That cannot be avoided. But with that tone it should be able to cover fantasy, sci-fi, westerns and so on.

From this what springs immediately to mind is Toon. It's simple and it already has official fantasy, western and sci-fi settings (as well as a superhero setting, an early 20th century gangsters setting, and a horror setting)

[Pauly]

As far as the state of society, I think I'd aim for something along the lines of True Blood. Supernaturals came out and revealed themselves recently due to modernization making coexistence more feasible. People generally know a little bit about the major supernatural types but there's still a lot of mystique, ancient structures and powers and so on still coming to light, etc. Becoming supernatural should be a thing you can do in-character I think, like 'I'm going to get so and so to turn me', 'I'm going to get so and so to teach me magic', and should probably be a mutually exclusive, irreversible decision once done, and the 'introductory supernatural' level of powers should essentially be more like neat perks than character-defining, but growing in time to be character defining if e.g. you invested into it over the course of a campaign or started at a tier of play where you could be pre-invested in it.

Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has? On the other hand, that gives players something to aim for in their meta-progress: "Hey, I've never played past Lv9, I want to find out what that's like", "Hey, I've never done a 1-to-20 campaign, lets do it!". But that could easily be replaced by e.g. "We've never done a witch-centric campaign" or "We've never played wish-granting genies" or "We never did a 'destroy the world of mundanity' fae campaign before"

You could have the default modern world as described, then ‘historical’ expansions which feature more secret society feels.

For progression I was thinking that the supernaturals gain a power when they level up. For vampires you have a laundry list of powers such as turning into a bat, hypnotic gaze, control over wolves, sparkling in sunlight, super strength, wall crawling, super speed. So you’d start with a few basic powers and as you leveled up you could choose which power you added to your character. Witches get more and better spells so their progression would feel completely different. Werewolves would be similar to vampires. You could do some form of summoner of demons who gets to summon bigger and badder demons as they level up. Each class gets to feel unique in the way they level up.

So maybe not hard D&D type set progression, but leveling up will still feel significant. I think the leveling up is required for the iconic game because it creates a baseline for boasting about your character. Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.

[NichG]

You could have the default modern world as described, then ‘historical’ expansions which feature more secret society feels.

For progression I was thinking that the supernaturals gain a power when they level up. For vampires you have a laundry list of powers such as turning into a bat, hypnotic gaze, control over wolves, sparkling in sunlight, super strength, wall crawling, super speed. So you’d start with a few basic powers and as you leveled up you could choose which power you added to your character. Witches get more and better spells so their progression would feel completely different. Werewolves would be similar to vampires. You could do some form of summoner of demons who gets to summon bigger and badder demons as they level up. Each class gets to feel unique in the way they level up.

So maybe not hard D&D type set progression, but leveling up will still feel significant. I think the leveling up is required for the iconic game because it creates a baseline for boasting about your character. Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.

Admittedly this is my own bias, but I'd love to get rid of levels and 'pick something and progress in it' as a sacred cow. As well as the sort of on-rails advancement that tends to make parallel advancement destabilize the game (like e.g. finding spells, loot, getting your attributes increased by a Wish, etc in D&D tends to be troublesome compared to 'just use WBL, advancement only via the character build system' approaches). But I see the point about bragging.

If we're talking about Vampire, diablerie and generation sort of acted like this sort of thing without being the only (or even expected) form of progression. So I think I'd like to see something along those lines, where there's a relatively static 'tier' which isn't impossible to advance, but where there are a few parallel modes of advancement that can take place over the course of a campaign which - importantly - don't tend to take characters out of range of relevance with one-another. So e.g. going up a 'tier' means that threats and concerns of lower tiers actually do become totally irrelevant to you, and its hard to have a mixed-tier party. But a normie, a vampire, a werewolf, a magus, etc all of the same tier could have different point pools or whatnot and still adventure together. That also makes tier-up events into convenient plot points - you're tier 1 characters facing a tier 2 BBEG who is trying to sacrifice a town of 5000 to hit tier 3 and seriously move outside of your ability to influence, etc. But I don't know how much this really matters for iconicity, versus just being personal preference here...

[Pauly]

Admittedly this is my own bias, but I'd love to get rid of levels and 'pick something and progress in it' as a sacred cow. As well as the sort of on-rails advancement that tends to make parallel advancement destabilize the game (like e.g. finding spells, loot, getting your attributes increased by a Wish, etc in D&D tends to be troublesome compared to 'just use WBL, advancement only via the character build system' approaches). But I see the point about bragging.

If we're talking about Vampire, diablerie and generation sort of acted like this sort of thing without being the only (or even expected) form of progression. So I think I'd like to see something along those lines, where there's a relatively static 'tier' which isn't impossible to advance, but where there are a few parallel modes of advancement that can take place over the course of a campaign which - importantly - don't tend to take characters out of range of relevance with one-another. So e.g. going up a 'tier' means that threats and concerns of lower tiers actually do become totally irrelevant to you, and its hard to have a mixed-tier party. But a normie, a vampire, a werewolf, a magus, etc all of the same tier could have different point pools or whatnot and still adventure together. That also makes tier-up events into convenient plot points - you're tier 1 characters facing a tier 2 BBEG who is trying to sacrifice a town of 5000 to hit tier 3 and seriously move outside of your ability to influence, etc. But I don't know how much this really matters for iconicity, versus just being personal preference here...

Put me down as an old school Traveller player, so I find classes and levels more than frustrating. What I was thinking of was making classes/levels more ‘build a bear’ than ‘progress to a goal’. You could have 4 very different “level 12” vampires who all fit classic vampire tropes . One could be a mind control hypnosis themed vampire, another a sneaky flying and infiltrating sort, the third a fast moving, dodging, hard hitting close combat ’glass cannon’ and the fourth maxed out on resistances and regeneration making him almost impossible to kill. The thing is they all start from the same point. Part of the difficulty is achieving ‘many paths are viable’ over ‘the one true path’ to power.

[Telok]

Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time.

I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter.

Other players will know what a ‘Level 12 Vampire’ is when you talk about him/her. But when you try to describe your Traveller or Call of Cthulhu character to someone else there isn’t the same handy shortform.

Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah. I'm aware of the early progression of the game. The guy I started playing with did have Chainmail and did have Outdoor survival, so we used that stuff when I started out as a young kid (well, very briefly, often just as a reference as more stuff came out over time). Played a lot of the old AH games back in the day too. Once the AD&D rules books came out though, the older stuff more or less stayed on the shelf.

Cool. And yeah, once AD&D stuff came out we mostly used that, though one DM stuck with the previous material..

I guess I'm looking at "core rules" differently.

Yeah, I think we are.

Yeah. I think I've heard of exactly one Traveller game that actually ran for any decent amount of time.

Apparently, the Mongoose Traveller games have had more success...but I've not played them.

I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter.

There's always a bigger fish.

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing.

Yes. Good examples.

[Cluedrew]

Maybe you could split the PC categories into 2 groups - normies (i.e. people with no powers but cool gear) and supernaturals and have it that your campaign is either a normie campaign with no supernatural PCs or a supernatural campaign with no normie PCs.

Isn't that two systems though? I know the Storyteller system in particular has a long history of trying to put different kinds of PCs together, but I've heard mixed things about its success.

I would actually rather go with the pre-awakened angle where "normies" are starting characters and you become a supernatural being of some kind as the last stage of character creation, but you actually can play part of the campaign as an introduction before that happens. (Not my idea, I really like NichG's setting pitch and borrowed from that.) Under this model I guess secret agents with cool gear is a supernatural being; mechanically speaking. Although if you wanted to have a character option that feels more like a normal person, I would go for something about someone channelling the heroes of old so they don't really have to know what is going on but can be really good at things and have flashes of insight.

Maybe that's a useful insight - perhaps an iconic game shouldn't have such sharply defined 'levels' as D&D has?

Oh yeah. Well you can have a level up, but the system of unlocks at particular levels is a terrible design pattern in a role-playing game. Basically, it means you have twenty (or N) packages of content and only one way for a character to explore them. Also it leads to the game's mode of play changing out from under you which can lead to problems.

If you want distinct level-ups, I would do a system of pools of possible upgrades, every however many points you get to pick another from the pool. This makes your skill set wider but rarely gives you strict upgrades. Which pool you start with can pretty much be your "class". Story events, or getting most of the upgrades in a pool, can give you access to a pool of stronger abilities if you do want to tier up. Unlocking another another pool on the same tier can be used to multiclass as well, if you want your secret agent to have just get a bit energetic on the full moon.

From this what springs immediately to mind is Toon. It's simple and it already has official fantasy, western and sci-fi settings (as well as a superhero setting, an early 20th century gangsters setting, and a horror setting)

I've heard about it but never played it. My main concern would be making sure that it can handle some more serious games which... I think it could do even if that is not the plan. Especially if we are actually talking about a system that merely inspired by Toon and not Toon itself.

[Pauly]

Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

That is a mature, responsible well thought and reasonable out take on the issue.

What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can do 80 points of damage a turn”
“”Well my level 10 Druid can do 90 points a turn”
“So what my Level 8 Rogue is undetectable, so your characters will never hit him”
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,

[NichG]

That is a mature, responsible well thought and reasonable out take on the issue.

What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can do 80 points of damage a turn”
“”Well my level 10 Druid can do 90 points a turn”
“So what my Level 8 Rogue is undetectable, so your characters will never hit him”
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,

I feel like I heard this kind of bragging about characters in the vampire LARP at the gaming club I was in during grad school though...

[ahyangyi]

I ran one for about a year. D&D-isms finally sank it. In space, size really does matter.


Actually "level 12 Vampire" doesn't (personally) tell me anything because it's a very different thing in every D&D edition with only surface details staying semi-constant or recognizable, sort of like 12th level fighters are so insanely different each time that it tells me nothing useful other than "might wear armor, more hp than most wizards, and probably isn't casting too many spells".

For Traveller "five term navy doctor baronet" is pretty darn informative, likewise for CoC "1924 lucky ex-soldier college history professor" is a very useful batch of information, but you need to know the systems just like a D&D player needs to in order to make sense of that vamp thing. I can describe Traveller or CoC characters succinctly to people who have played those games, it just won't make any sense to a D&D player who thinks of mechanics first. Here, "60 year old impoverished baronet who is a well educated but clumsy doctor that served twenty years in the Navy and saw some weird stuff". That probably tells a D&D player very little, but a person who plays Traveller or CoC (the definition of "navy" is all that really changes between the games for that character) has a lot of critical info about them that's probably more consistent no matter which edition of the game is being played.

That's true, but... perhaps "level 12 fighter" is just a poor representation, even for D&D characters. Usually you'd at least expect the fighting style, e.g., "Whirlwind attack halberd fighter" or "Crane style sword-and-board fighter".

[Telok]

What I was talking about is more the
“My level 12 fighter can ....
Kind of boasting that we did when we were spotty teenagers.

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline.

So promoting the **** measuring contests of tweens is required for "iconic"? The character building minigame and the ability to 'win' it is important? Having "my character can beat up you character" as metric of discussions is good for a game?

[Pauly]

So promoting the **** measuring contests of tweens is required for "iconic"? The character building minigame and the ability to 'win' it is important? Having "my character can beat up you character" as metric of discussions is good for a game?

Absolutely. (*)

Those tweens from 40 years ago are now the mature core group that have expanded the hobby. The current tweens, as a group, are the ones that spend the most money on the hobby and keep the game alive today. The members of the current tweens that stick with the hobby will be the driving creative force for expanding the hobby in 10 tp 20 years time.

I don’t have to like that aspect of the game, but to be ‘iconic’ the game has to appeal to tweens and tweens like **** measuring competitions. What I want is for that part of the game to be designed well enough that is does not overwhelm actual role playing

(*) disclaimer - applies for games with zero to hero player progression

[Pauly]

I feel like I heard this kind of bragging about characters in the vampire LARP at the gaming club I was in during grad school though...

That’s a hard call though. Who is more mature and socially aware - your average 14 year old boy or your average STEM Ph.D student?

[ahyangyi]

then... what quality of Traveller caused it to completely not generate the **** measuring contest?

[Pauly]

then... what quality of Traveller caused it to completely not generate the **** measuring contest?

In order of importance.

1) Lack of levels.
2) Life Path character creation.
3) You chose how much XP (terms served) you character had at starting. The more XP the greater chance of something bad happening on your life path (permanent injury, debt, death, abilities degrading due to age)
4) Character progression was from good to better, not zero to hero.
5) Gear being more important than character feats compared to D&D

[NichG]

That’s a hard call though. Who is more mature and socially aware - your average 14 year old boy or your average STEM Ph.D student?

Most of the other people in the gaming club were undergrads, too, aside from the occasional townie... So like, 18-22 year old STEM undergrads vs highschooler.

[Cluedrew]

I think having those discussion is important to create an iconic game because it gives a sense of pride in your ability to build a character and compare them to other characters in other campaigns at an even baseline. Traveller, for all that I love about it, never generated that kind of discussion in the groups I was around as a young pup,

Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games. This is war-game stuff, optimization and a focus on numerical balance, especially around combat. I know the D&D players might be shocked but I don't think the iconic system should be watered down so much with a different genre.

Even if people argue that down or break out into a "the iconic tactical role-playing game (war-game/role-playing game hybrid)" sub-topic, I still think that levels and (D&D-style) classes are not required. Just the numbers game itself. Honestly I would prefer it is the brief exchanges about games were short stories from play. The role-playing part of the game.

There is some subjectivity to this; I don't feel role-playing games and war-games (or dungeon-crawlers) go together that well and I am sick of people acting like some scene editing of unstated detail disqualifies a system while there is a massive combat system with relatively minor chances for character expression, an out of character perspective on everything and people just accept that unquestioningly. Just getting that off my chest. Back to the main topic, in the end I would argue of being inclusive of hybrids in terms of the genre as a whole. But for the iconic system I think it should be pretty focused on the genre itself.

Do people know Slay the Spire? Its a pretty good game by most accounts. But if I wanted to pick an iconic dungeon crawler, I would not pick Slay the Spire because it is so much of a deck-building game as well. I guess I would pick... Decent maybe? Pokemon Mystery Dungeon might even work better.

[ahyangyi]

Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games.

Well, different people's definition of "roleplaying" are definitely different. I doubt the "roleplaying" in MMORPGs and the "roleplaying" in LARP have anything in common.

A wargame where a player controls one unit instead of one army is a roleplaying game in some sense.

[Vahnavoi]

Well, different people's definition of "roleplaying" are definitely different. I doubt the "roleplaying" in MMORPGs and the "roleplaying" in LARP have anything in common.

The general definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation to decide what to do, how, and why.

Both MMORPGs and LARPs can fit this. The major differences are in how the situation is staged (computer program versus physical props), which naturally changes how the player expresses character actions (giving inputs to the program versus physically acting).

Tabletop gamers just have their head too far in the weeds of popular tabletop games to notice the things that hold true across mediums and genres. The most ridiculous aspect of this is fixating on things which were pioneered by tabletop wargames and pretty much directly copied over to tabletop roleplaying games. Assigning numerical values to abstractly model character attributes? Rolling dice to resolve actions? Having a game master who takes freeform inputs from players and then returns next state of the game based on their own judgement? None unique to roleplaying games, all things D&D copied from earlier games.

Which is why I don't particularly care for the idea of a single, iconic roleplaying game. Not even the idea of a single, iconic tabletop roleplaying game. The space for tabletop games in general is large enough to have several extremely different iconic games, and narrowing the focus to roleplaying games doesn't limit that space nearly as much as people presume.

[ahyangyi]

The general definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based exercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation to decide what to do, how, and why.

Both MMORPGs and LARPs can fit this. The major differences are in how the situation is staged (computer program versus physical props), which naturally changes how the player expresses character actions (giving inputs to the program versus physically acting).

Tabletop gamers just have their head too far in the weeds of popular tabletop games to notice the things that hold true across mediums and genres. The most ridiculous aspect of this is fixating on things which were pioneered by tabletop wargames and pretty much directly copied over to tabletop roleplaying games. Assigning numerical values to abstractly model character attributes? Rolling dice to resolve actions? Having a game master who takes freeform inputs from players and then returns next state of the game based on their own judgement? None unique to roleplaying games, all things D&D copied from earlier games.

Which is why I don't particularly care for the idea of a single, iconic roleplaying game. Not even the idea of a single, iconic tabletop roleplaying game. The space for tabletop games in general is large enough to have several extremely different iconic games, and narrowing the focus to roleplaying games doesn't limit that space nearly as much as people presume.

Yep, I had that feeling that roleplaying was a board idea when I mentioned MMORPG, but you articulated it much better. Great post and thanks!

[Pauly]

Well you are going to have to argue down the third point I made in the opening post. To briefly summarize: The iconic role-playing game should be primarily a role-playing game and contain only minor elements of war-games and story-telling games. This is war-game stuff, optimization and a focus on numerical balance, especially around combat. I know the D&D players might be shocked but I don't think the iconic system should be watered down so much with a different genre.

[snip]

The point I was making about the appendage measurement aspect is that it
(1) is a thing and
(2) appeals to the most important segment of the audience.
I am completely agnostic as to what aspect of the game generates the rulers and appendages coming out. For some games or hobbies the art is where it happens, which is why there is crossover in between wargaming and model rail roading. For CCGs its the collecting aspect. It manifests itself in D&D in the character optimization.

To appeal to tweens there should be an element of ‘my [stuff] is better/cooler than yours”.

[Cluedrew]

(2) appeals to the most important segment of the audience.

Who is this and why?

Heads up, probably going to argue against and segment being that much more important than others, but I'm still curious as to what you have to say about it. Personally, I say the numbers game should be replaced with a story swap. Which is actually talk I've heard a lot more of personally over the years.