What makes an RPG 'Video Gamey'?

[Drakevarg]

In a Video Game, those Bandits are just a blob of hit points and attacks. In the living world of a TTRPG, Bandits are NPC's who happen to be attacking you, so they need to make sense within the world.

For what it's worth, I'm generally every bit as critical of videogames that do this as much as TTRPGs. Worst offender that comes to mind being Dragon Age II, but really any game where you slaughter 50 people on the way to the grocery store and the story gives little/no acknowledgement of it.

[HeraldOfExius]

These days I would say it's just a more complicated complaint trying to say "the world and mechanics have obvious disconnects." As people have previously brought up, this typically includes things like "usable once per [fight/day/etc.]" without any obvious resource consumption, fire attacks that don't do anything except cause "fire" typed damage to creatures, and so on.

Which makes it weird that this concept of "video gamey" applies to games like D&D4e or PF2, yet I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft. "Video gamey" as a complaint about TTRPGs often seems to be thrown around by people that aren't all that acquainted with the video games used as comparisons, if they're even specific in the first place (see the previous reference to "Mario Smash Bros" or the inaccurate "4e is WoW" instead of at least picking a tactics game).

I think there is a legitimate comparison that can be made when TTRPGs can feel like CRPGs, but a lot of times that comes down to the difference between a human GM and whatever predetermined mechanics are implemented in a video game. A well designed game in either case should give you the tools to intact with the world rather than just watch it, but video games are more likely to skew towards the latter just because of the relative limits between computers and humans.

[Vahnavoi]

Calling something "videogamey" or such happens when someone who has played too few computer games and too few roleplaying games tries to generalize the distinction between the small number of examples they're familiar with. It's a pretty good sign whoever is using the term doesn't know all that much about computer games, or of roleplaying games, or both. There might be a legitimate gripe behind the sentiment, but the person lacks perspective and vocabulary to properly explain it.

This is super common. I'm old enough to remember when "videogame" meant Super Mario Bros and "computer game" meant DOOM, with those not in the hobby having no concept of gaming beyond those common examples. Likewise, I remember when "roleplaying game" meant either D&D or weird sex stuff. Then it meant dressing up as elves, because those not in the hobby had no concept of tabletop games and live-action games being different.

Of course it doesn't make sense. It makes less sense by the day, since improving technology allows for increasingly varied and increasingly expansive computer games. The medium by now arguably has more variety and more artistic ambition than the tabletop. It would make infinitely more sense, when complaining about a game being too much like another, to name the specific game being used as reference. I can't appreciate "videogame" as any kind of serious criticism, but I can understand why someone would not like surreal aesthetics of Super Smash Brothers.

---

One issue with discussing this is that early D&D strongly influenced early video games, and the cross pollenation has never stopped. As soon as you leave that sort of feedback loop ecosystem, as soon you're not talking D&Ds and sword/sorcery games, nobody cares. This issue never seems to ever come up.

So true. I once did some historical research and held a lecture on the topic. Just to give an idea, D&D, and its earliest computerizations (which started a year after the original publication), can be credited with popularizing hitpoints, levels and boss monsters. If anything, D&D's harmed video game development more than the other way around.

[Telok]

I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft.

That's a great example of the crossing back and forth between the table & computer. Someone had to explicitly encode those sorts of actions and effects. Probably trying to make it less "video gamey" and more like a well run ttrpg. It would be interesting to go through any dev notes or blogs to see if they mention it.

It's not totally unique though. Original XCom from the 1990s had terrain destruction & good "it burned up the scenery" smoke effects (and smoke inhalation) that dissipated over time in a way that something like several of the D&D versions never even address. We're getting more than just pretty graphics upgrades as technology improves.

[Batcathat]

Which makes it weird that this concept of "video gamey" applies to games like D&D4e or PF2, yet I just spent a chunk of my weekend playing an actual video game where my fire weapon could, in addition to attacking enemies, be used for other, logical things like starting a campfire or lighting a field on fire to create an updraft. "Video gamey" as a complaint about TTRPGs often seems to be thrown around by people that aren't all that acquainted with the video games used as comparisons, if they're even specific in the first place (see the previous reference to "Mario Smash Bros" or the inaccurate "4e is WoW" instead of at least picking a tactics game).

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of.

[Tanarii]

This could be as simple as a less effective layout, or inadequate GM guidance. Or it could be the actions that players can take is too strongly defined (I have heard D&D 4e accused of this, as some read it as not being able to do actions in combat outside of powers, I can't read the things so I would need someone with greater system to comment).

If improvised actions are significantly less effective than using a push-button ability, players will default to the push-button ability.

Also true if there actually is another push-button set of rules that covers commonly attempted improvised actions but isn't very good. Historically with TTRPGs, this often includes martial options other than "I attack": grapple/push/trip rules or trying to hamper/CC someone often is ineffective or too hard to pull off in comparison to doing damage towards killing someone.

Of course, some push-button TTRPGs excel at providing solid alternatives that aren't spells to just doing damage.

[Vahnavoi]

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

[Imbalance]

However, the fact is that video games, especially RPGs, have been influenced by tabletop games since the 80s, and a lot of things that evolved from those early video games are still a part of our tabletop RPG systems. D&D in particular had a strong influence on games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which came out around 10 years later.

Funny, that. As someone who had only ever played video games until the early 2000's, and had only ever played video RPG's until ~2017, what I found, in retrospect, is how many of my old electronic favorites were very "tabletop-ey," or, "pen-and-paper-ey?" Yeah, so, methinks the criticism comes mostly from grognards who haven't actually played many video games, and don't know what they're missing.

[Vahnavoi]

@Imbalance: it's not just that; it's also that development trends in mainstream computer games are not representative of what can be done and what has been done. Game developers play complex and experimental games (including tabletop roleplaying games), then take a few ideas from those, distill them into a new game, and the new, simpler game is what becomes an actual mainstream hit. A pair of old games that makes a good example of this: Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss (1992) versus DOOM (1993). One of these tried for a detailed "dungeon simulation", involving complex interactions between items, puzzles and quest that can be solved in any order, so on and so forth. The other was so simple that the developers joked the instruction manual could've read "if it moves, shoot it".

[gbaji]

Since it was my posts that spurred this thread, here's my take.

I guess I make a distinction between "gamey" and "videogamey" here. I don't have an issue with games having rules. That's part of playing any game. But in a TTRPG, I lean towards games that at least try to have some sort of standard "rules" for how the world works, and powers/abilities/whatever are logically slotted into those rules in a way that still allow for a living breathing (and perhaps even rational) world to exist, complete with people who aren't PCs and featured NPCs.

In a videogame, you tend to only ever encounter things or people who are related to the game purpose/objective/whatever. And they tend to be scaled in some way to "fit" into the powers and abilities of the players. I was specifically responding to a series of descriptions of what I felt were extremely unrealistic and unreasonable powers for PCs to have in a game. Powers that, while really cool for combat situations, would effectively "break the world" if we actually asked the question: "What would a world be like if people in it actually had these sorts of powers".

And yeah. That's absolutely a subjective view on my part. But to me, it's really about "does this work if we imagine that this is a real world plus <PC powers>", or does it only work if we assume that the only things that ever happen in this world are the things outlined in and managed within the scenario at hand. Video games (and to be fair, many board games) only consider the powers/abilities within the context of the game itself. And when the focus is on flash and whatnot rather than effect, I tend to label that more "videogme" versus just "game".

I'm going to say my biggest objection to videogameyness is when powers have descriptions of their effect that don't consider the effect on the world.

Yup. More or less this. But also with a helping of "how does the rest of the world survive?" as well. If the game powers more or less assume that all use of these powers must occur in a vacuum where nothing exists other than the combatants, and the focus is on just that, I tend to lean towards it feeling videogamey to me. If the moment combat begins, you feel like you are removed from the rest of the game world until the combat ends, it feels videogamey to me.

That's BS. The most videogame-like TTRPG I've played was PF2, and it's precisely about positioning, using terrain and subtle choices. Except it's so full of discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out, it feels like a video game (and a bad one at that).

I was talking about the focus and limits on powers. Was your perception of PF2 being "videogamey" because of the rules about positioning and terrain, or because in addition to that it had "discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out"?

Meanwhile in something like Vampire, I could throw a guy through a wall, jump ten feet high, summon shadows from nothing to assail my enemies, and it was all pretty much informed by numbers on my sheet and maybe a couple abilities that could be combined on the fly in various ways because nothing said you can't.

And presumably V:tM could have very detailed rules about distance, range, line of sight, cover, etc, but would still not feel "videogamey" to you, because those things are fit into a system that otherwise takes "normal world rules" and then provides exceptions that "fit" into those base rules.

For me, it's where the powers lead to, and how realistically they fit. And yeah, I get that to some it's hard to see a distinction between D&D where you have mages tossing fireballs around and what I'm talking about. But it's not a binary choice. It's not "this is magic, so no rules matter". It's "this is magic, so the rules are even more important". If your game setting/system/whatever doesn't ask the question: "how do ordinary people live in this world if people with these powers exist", then it feels videogamey to me.

I suppose it's also how various powerful game effects are managed. If AE attacks always hit your enemies only, then it feels videogamey to me. And yeah, if you are dealing out damage levels that should level mountains, but only ever cause damage to your enemies/target/whatever, that feels videogamey to me. Several people have commented on this sort of thing already and I more or less agree with them. If a game system starts out by determining that "this is how physical damage works", and "this is how fire (elemental) damage works", and "this is how falling works", and "this is how weight and structures and physics work", etc, and then magic or tech or whatever is slotted in within that context? That's feels "real" to me, and makes some sort of logical/rational sense to me, and feels like a world that people exist in and that I want to roleplay in.

When people are tossing around effects that incinerate whole armies with one blast, I start to question how the game world can have survived to the point where the PCs were ever born in the first place. Saying "My game system supports someone standing on the sun and firing bolts of flame down at targets on the planet", I start to wonder as well. I can suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but only to a point. So I suppose at least some of this is about "sustainable power level in a game world" as well. But mostly it's about why that escalation of power level exists, and less the actual power level.

And yup. This is totally a subjective preference thing. I just happen to prefer to play in game settings where I feel like both the PCs and NPCs actually "fit" iinto the world, rather than the world more or less just exists as a background for the PCs and NPCs to have combats in (you know, like the background in a video game, which changes, but really has no functional effect on the game). So I suppose it's directional. If you start with a game world and rules that works and then add the powers/abilities/whatever, that's probably going to feel "real" to me. If you start with the powers/abilities/whatever, and then add a world to that just to give some facade of "this is happening somewhere", then it feels "not real", and yeah... videogamey. The game world is like the background in Smash Bros. It's there. You can see it. But it is not affected by nor has any actual effect on the action we are playing out though.

Does that make sense?

[PhoenixPhyre]

And yup. This is totally a subjective preference thing. I just happen to prefer to play in game settings where I feel like both the PCs and NPCs actually "fit" iinto the world, rather than the world more or less just exists as a background for the PCs and NPCs to have combats in (you know, like the background in a video game, which changes, but really has no functional effect on the game). So I suppose it's directional. If you start with a game world and rules that works and then add the powers/abilities/whatever, that's probably going to feel "real" to me. If you start with the powers/abilities/whatever, and then add a world to that just to give some facade of "this is happening somewhere", then it feels "not real", and yeah... videogamey. The game world is like the background in Smash Bros. It's there. You can see it. But it is not affected by nor has any actual effect on the action we are playing out though.

Yeah. This is my personal preference as well, although I'd put it orthogonal to the "video-game" complaint. Setting as backdrop, with all the weight of cardboard, annoys me. Bad superhero properties (as well as a lot of the bad shonen anime) tend to fall into this--they're leveling mountains, but next episode everything's back to normal. At most you have a token "out"--the quasi-canon group of superheros who go around rebuilding the cities after each fight leaves things a total wreck...but what about the collateral human damage? Or you have things like fighting in some form of "frozen" zone that doesn't affect the "real world". But that too feels hollow.

And all of that means that I prefer generally lower-power adventures. Not zero power--the PCs should absolutely be able to change the world. But not trivially by pressing character sheet buttons, but over the course of an adventure requiring multiple actions, each of which can succeed and fail, and interacting with the people. Lower power makes it way easier to have a coherent world where the PCs are entangled with the world. Higher power ends up in the "cheat isekai" realm really fast, where the world becomes a pretty background and stops making any sense.

[Jakinbandw]

Since it was my posts that spurred this thread, here's my take.

I guess I make a distinction between "gamey" and "videogamey" here. I don't have an issue with games having rules. That's part of playing any game. But in a TTRPG, I lean towards games that at least try to have some sort of standard "rules" for how the world works, and powers/abilities/whatever are logically slotted into those rules in a way that still allow for a living breathing (and perhaps even rational) world to exist, complete with people who aren't PCs and featured NPCs.

In a videogame, you tend to only ever encounter things or people who are related to the game purpose/objective/whatever. And they tend to be scaled in some way to "fit" into the powers and abilities of the players. I was specifically responding to a series of descriptions of what I felt were extremely unrealistic and unreasonable powers for PCs to have in a game. Powers that, while really cool for combat situations, would effectively "break the world" if we actually asked the question: "What would a world be like if people in it actually had these sorts of powers".

And yeah. That's absolutely a subjective view on my part. But to me, it's really about "does this work if we imagine that this is a real world plus <PC powers>", or does it only work if we assume that the only things that ever happen in this world are the things outlined in and managed within the scenario at hand. Video games (and to be fair, many board games) only consider the powers/abilities within the context of the game itself. And when the focus is on flash and whatnot rather than effect, I tend to label that more "videogme" versus just "game".

Yup. More or less this. But also with a helping of "how does the rest of the world survive?" as well. If the game powers more or less assume that all use of these powers must occur in a vacuum where nothing exists other than the combatants, and the focus is on just that, I tend to lean towards it feeling videogamey to me. If the moment combat begins, you feel like you are removed from the rest of the game world until the combat ends, it feels videogamey to me.


Does that make sense?

As the designer of the rules you were talking about, I find this interesting. I've always mentally labeled my system as Apocalyptic Fantasy, because you're right, the world can't survive unchanged when that scale of power is thrown around.

One of the events I was talking about, where a character was sitting on the sun shooting bolts of fire down was impressive, but to give scale, in that setting he was a god that had traveled to another reality broken his soul, allowing him to gain power super quick. He was a month away from turning into a mindless primordial that consumed peoples souls, and then created a new universe of his own dying in the process. He was fighting the last Demi-Primordial of that universe, one that could control time and space.

The entire campaign had been trying to protect the remainder of the people of a hell world from the Demi-Primordials, and involved long discussions of how to handle the religions that had sprung up, feed the human survivors, and keep them safe. Two sessions of planning went into temporally locking every remaining human away right so they wouldn't be destroyed in the final battle. Even with all that, any location not temporally locked in time was destroyed in the battle, and the PCs had to flee back to their own dimension before they could fix anything. Instead, a baby god was left to pick up the pieces.

Now it might sound like that was all GMing stuff, but it wasn't. I put a ton of work into writing my game in such a way that world maps could be reshaped in battle. I had to ditch traditional mapping, and prototype some new stuff that honestly isn't as useful unless you want maps that can be destroyed. The game has a full faction system that forces to players into interacting with the towns and cities in the world, so that when a fight happens, and one of them has a 3 block radius wiped out, the consequences of that can be felt and need to be dealt with. Because of this, one of the most coveted abilities in combat are abilities that protect people and locations, or shunt battles into demiplanes.

I still remember one fight earlier in that campaign where the party connived to get the entire population of a survivor town inside a tower that they rigged to explode, on the principle that they could res a town of dead people, but couldn't do anything if all their souls were destroyed. Of course all this stuff with Gods and multiverse is just my own personal setting, and not going with the books.

The setting I'm going with is one where the primordial forces of chaos have just been unsealed, and wish to destroy the world. In a world where the most powerful wizard ever would only be level 7, and the strongest god is a level 16, eventually level 20 chaos things will force their way into a standard fantasy world and try to destroy it, while angels and the forces of light will do their best to preserve it with opposite but equal levels of power. Their definition of preserving it does mean freezing time in place so that nothing can ever happen or change again.

So the players have to deal with 2 eldritch horrors slowly breaking into a fantasy world, and that world is designed to shatter. It's designed for players and primordial forces to rip it up and leave it unrecognizable. Because I do agree with you, the power I want to give players in my game breaks the world, and I find how the world breaks to be the most interesting part of the game. When you give players the responsibility to save the world, along with the power to alter it in whatever way they can manage, and see morally fit to do so, you end up with a really fascinating game.

The only part that's really hard is giving the GM the tools to manage the game at these levels of power and setting alteration.

[King of Nowhere]

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

you sound like you had some bad game masters in your past. also, preparation =/= railroading

[Talakeal]

In my experience people complain that things are too "video-gamey" when you hand-wave something for ease of play.

For example, my system has reinforcements mechanics where, when you are in enemy territory and trip an alarm, you roll a dice to see how many enemy guards respond to you and how quickly. It works out to be mostly the same as keeping track of the individual locations of every enemy in the region, but is a heck of a lot easier for the GM to run, but gets dismissed as video-gamey.

Or even using average HP and stat arrays for enemies for enemies rather than building each as a unique character, or even not worrying about stuff like the air-flow of a dungeon and the oxygen content of the various rooms, especially when torches and fireballs get involved.

That's the guy in the gym issue***, just wrapped in the packaging of a complaint that the martial-not-just-from-the-gym is 'too video-gamey.'

Its also kind of backwards. "Guy at the Gym" is normally about restricting martials to stuff that is plausible IRL; this is about shackling martials with Vancian limitations that don't exist IRL.

[gbaji]

Yeah. This is my personal preference as well, although I'd put it orthogonal to the "video-game" complaint. Setting as backdrop, with all the weight of cardboard, annoys me. Bad superhero properties (as well as a lot of the bad shonen anime) tend to fall into this--they're leveling mountains, but next episode everything's back to normal. At most you have a token "out"--the quasi-canon group of superheros who go around rebuilding the cities after each fight leaves things a total wreck...but what about the collateral human damage? Or you have things like fighting in some form of "frozen" zone that doesn't affect the "real world". But that too feels hollow.

Yeah, it probably is othangonal. I think I tossed in "videogamey" due to the descriptions of the powers involved as well. When it seems like the focus is on cool powers and crazy abilities that feels videogamey to me. Because I see it as "I'm mashing buttons on my game console, controller, keyboard, whatever" instead of "I'm actually roleplaying my character in a realistic manner within the game setting to acheive my goals". It's very much about focus though.

And all of that means that I prefer generally lower-power adventures. Not zero power--the PCs should absolutely be able to change the world. But not trivially by pressing character sheet buttons, but over the course of an adventure requiring multiple actions, each of which can succeed and fail, and interacting with the people. Lower power makes it way easier to have a coherent world where the PCs are entangled with the world. Higher power ends up in the "cheat isekai" realm really fast, where the world becomes a pretty background and stops making any sense.

Yeah. I lean heavily that way too. Enough power to be able to defeat most "normal" things out there, and even some "really powerful" things (but not just by beating them, but having to figure out how to do it, like in a quest or something), but not like "walking around changing the primal rules of the universe at whim" level stuff (or anywhere close to that).

I tend to believe that low to mid power level gives the greatest sense of accomplishment. If you can just change things at a whim, then there's no real reward if you do so. If you have to struggle and work, and go on multiple adventures, and over time see some changes in the world around you (evil forces are decreased, good folks are running things, etc), that feels like you did something. In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now. And it's been small things. Helping out a rival to that king. Helping out some of the farmers who were in trouble. Gradually helping to get some other forces to put some economic pressure on said kingdom (then realizing that this was part of yet another evil kings scheme from yet another kingdom, so had to deal with the ramifications of that). Going around finding historical information about his family. Finding additional secret factions with various hands in the goings on. Working with or against those factions. Helping some border nobles deal with this kings actions. Each is a small little actions. Each gradually is changing things in the direction they want to go. To the point that now, like years and years later, they have helped build up a group of rebels, made contact with two secret groups who are helping them (each for different reasons, and of course each with their own ulterior motivations as well), built up some contacts with dissident nobles (and put them in contact with the aforementioned rebels), and are otherwise "poised" to make a final push. Is it going to be a grand battle where the players fight the evil king? Probably not. I haven't actually decided yet, but most likely the actual battle/civil war/whatever will be done by NPCs in the background. I'll likely have them involved by dealing with some other evil final strike thing the king has going in the background that'll turn the tide in his favor, or do <horrible things> if he loses. Something like that.

Because I like to make worlds that actually operate by themselves, even when the players aren't there doing anything. And that also means that there are large forces of history constantly moving along. And the actions of the PCs can influence these things, adjust the direction of that flow slightly here and there. But it's never just "we show up and change everything because we are mighty and can". That's the kind of game I just don't find any interest in at all. If you can just do that with the powers on your character sheet, then what's the point of doing so in the first place? It's all just arbitrary.

As the designer of the rules you were talking about, I find this interesting. I've always mentally labeled my system as Apocalyptic Fantasy, because you're right, the world can't survive unchanged when that scale of power is thrown around.

One of the events I was talking about, where a character was sitting on the sun shooting bolts of fire down was impressive, but to give scale, in that setting he was a god that had traveled to another reality broken his soul, allowing him to gain power super quick. He was a month away from turning into a mindless primordial that consumed peoples souls, and then created a new universe of his own dying in the process. He was fighting the last Demi-Primordial of that universe, one that could control time and space.

The entire campaign had been trying to protect the remainder of the people of a hell world from the Demi-Primordials, and involved long discussions of how to handle the religions that had sprung up, feed the human survivors, and keep them safe. Two sessions of planning went into temporally locking every remaining human away right so they wouldn't be destroyed in the final battle. Even with all that, any location not temporally locked in time was destroyed in the battle, and the PCs had to flee back to their own dimension before they could fix anything. Instead, a baby god was left to pick up the pieces.

Not knocking you here, but this is pretty much the opposite of a game I would enjoy playing. As I said above, I find that playing at that power level just isn't very satisfying after a fairly short amount of time. What's the point of having characters who can reshape whole worlds and universes and timelines, if it's all going to be torn down and they'll have to do it again? Other than just saying you did it, which I find to be a really empty accomplishment. It's kind of interesting because you are running a very high power level game, but it seems like the playeres have less power in it than a relatively low power game I might run because nothing they do sticks around for very long (I may be reading into this incorrectlly though).

Again though, that's my preference. I'm quite aware that other people have different likes and dislikes.

The setting I'm going with is one where the primordial forces of chaos have just been unsealed, and wish to destroy the world. In a world where the most powerful wizard ever would only be level 7, and the strongest god is a level 16, eventually level 20 chaos things will force their way into a standard fantasy world and try to destroy it, while angels and the forces of light will do their best to preserve it with opposite but equal levels of power. Their definition of preserving it does mean freezing time in place so that nothing can ever happen or change again.

If the most powerful wizard in the setting is the equivalent of level 7, gods are 16, and these chaos things are 20, what power level are the PCs, such that they are shunting people into alternate dimensions or freezing time in order to save them from destruction?

Do the PCs ever actually just live in the towns and among the populations they save? Or do they just hang out in some alternate plane/time/whatever, waving their fingers and saving people? I'm just not seeing where the scale of this game fits. Why do they bother with this? Seems like the PCs are so far beyond "normal people", that they shouldn't care. Unless there's some explanation as to why they are normal people living among normal populations of these worlds, but somehow magically are able to do these things that no one else can? Or are they all from other universes or something (which puts me right into the "why bother" category, since there are an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of outcomes, so you're really not changing anything at all. Just hang out in the universes where the chaos things aren't destroying everything, right?). If you can travel to alternate realities, then all that's required to "save the universe" is to travel to one where no one is in danger. That scale is just too large for anything you do to actually matter. And if we want to get more 'sci-fi' with it, then every action the PCs take just create an new infinite number of additional alternate universes, each with their own quantum probabilities of success or failure. So why bother? I'll just dimensionally travel to the universe where I'm the king and everything is perfect. And if someone shows up to mess that up, I'll just travel to the new alternate universe exactly like the one I was in, where that person didn't show up to mess that up. I can play this game forever, but it's boring.

Again. Goes with my general feeling that if the scale and scope of the PCs and their operations are too high/large, it becomes somewhat meaningless. Who are you really saving? Why? Are people actually people to save that you care about, or just numbers on some cosmic balance sheet?

So the players have to deal with 2 eldritch horrors slowly breaking into a fantasy world, and that world is designed to shatter. It's designed for players and primordial forces to rip it up and leave it unrecognizable. Because I do agree with you, the power I want to give players in my game breaks the world, and I find how the world breaks to be the most interesting part of the game. When you give players the responsibility to save the world, along with the power to alter it in whatever way they can manage, and see morally fit to do so, you end up with a really fascinating game. .

Yeah. No thanks. I could very well be missing something here, but that sounds like the opposite of what I want out of a game. I want to build things, not destroy them, or just save some parts of it that are being destroyed, or rescue people by shunting them into some other location while their world/homes are destroyed.

And then what? We get to create some new universe with new rules/laws whatever, only to have the GM tear that one apart? I'm not seeing the attraction here.

Again. Not knocking it. I'm sure it's great fun for you and your players (which is all that ultimately matters). It just does not sound at all like something I would have fun playing.

[Zuras]

This is an interesting discussion, because none of the examples given really match what I mean when I complain about a game or mechanic being video gamey.

To me, a video game style mechanic is one that may seem totally reasonable in isolation, but causes problems in practice due to how finicky it is, or the additional cognitive load it places on the GM and players. Lots of stacking bonuses, marking targets for effects, elements that are no problem at all if the game or VTT handles it for you, but can be a real pain if you do them with pencil and paper. Skill and feat trees that are confusingly impenetrable if you have to rummage through books for them, but actually seem straightforward when you look at them in a character builder app.

Basically any game that would be significantly easier to play on a properly set up VTT than at a table is video-gamey, by my standards. It’s not necessarily pejorative, I’m just a Luddite who prefers face to face physical games whenever possible, so if I call something video gamey it’s probably one of the reasons I don’t like it personally.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah. I lean heavily that way too. Enough power to be able to defeat most "normal" things out there, and even some "really powerful" things (but not just by beating them, but having to figure out how to do it, like in a quest or something), but not like "walking around changing the primal rules of the universe at whim" level stuff (or anywhere close to that).

I tend to believe that low to mid power level gives the greatest sense of accomplishment. If you can just change things at a whim, then there's no real reward if you do so. If you have to struggle and work, and go on multiple adventures, and over time see some changes in the world around you (evil forces are decreased, good folks are running things, etc), that feels like you did something. In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now. And it's been small things. Helping out a rival to that king. Helping out some of the farmers who were in trouble. Gradually helping to get some other forces to put some economic pressure on said kingdom (then realizing that this was part of yet another evil kings scheme from yet another kingdom, so had to deal with the ramifications of that). Going around finding historical information about his family. Finding additional secret factions with various hands in the goings on. Working with or against those factions. Helping some border nobles deal with this kings actions. Each is a small little actions. Each gradually is changing things in the direction they want to go. To the point that now, like years and years later, they have helped build up a group of rebels, made contact with two secret groups who are helping them (each for different reasons, and of course each with their own ulterior motivations as well), built up some contacts with dissident nobles (and put them in contact with the aforementioned rebels), and are otherwise "poised" to make a final push. Is it going to be a grand battle where the players fight the evil king? Probably not. I haven't actually decided yet, but most likely the actual battle/civil war/whatever will be done by NPCs in the background. I'll likely have them involved by dealing with some other evil final strike thing the king has going in the background that'll turn the tide in his favor, or do <horrible things> if he loses. Something like that.

Because I like to make worlds that actually operate by themselves, even when the players aren't there doing anything. And that also means that there are large forces of history constantly moving along. And the actions of the PCs can influence these things, adjust the direction of that flow slightly here and there. But it's never just "we show up and change everything because we are mighty and can". That's the kind of game I just don't find any interest in at all. If you can just do that with the powers on your character sheet, then what's the point of doing so in the first place? It's all just arbitrary.

Yeah. I run a "living world" with multiple simultaneous groups where the things each party does affects the other groups in "real time" and the characters (and their effects) persist beyond the campaign. That's been tons of fun--my last session saw a group get to meet their characters from the first campaign (now level 20 and retired). That first campaign definitely changed the world--one of their last adventures saw them dethrone a god. If they'd have just walked up and said "let's fight", they'd never have succeeded--physical might cannot dethrone a god. But maneuvering (both intentionally and not) a god into breaking the rules that bind their kind, manifesting on the Mortal Plane and interfering with mortals directly? That makes them vulnerable to a good old-fashioned beat-down. And it had been the entire campaign coming, ending a meta-arc that had started near the very beginning. Same with their other big thing, which was foiling an ancient dragon's plan. They never ended up fighting that one--it ended in a court battle in front of all the other ancient/adult dragons in the setting. And if they'd not have built up relationships over the campaign, if they'd have just "pressed buttons"...it would have never happened that way.

I tend to run on the principle of Archimedes and the lever--give me a lever and a place to stand and I shall move the world. PCs are definitionally catalysts. They're the ones who happen to be in the right place at the right time to make changes. Not because they pushed a button labeled "rewrite things", but because they moved a rock here, talked to a person there, and things snowballed. A high-level party is powerful in part because they themselves are powerful. Sure. But not "kick down a demon prince's door" powerful. But their true power comes from the allies they've made, the truths they've discovered (or created!), the lives they've touched, etc. All those together make them able to change the world and have it stick.

Direct physical (or magical) power is actually, IMO, the worst way to make lasting change. Sure, you can change things right around yourself. But your power projection is limited, and it's well attested that "great men" who aren't great leaders tend to get sandbagged/ignored by those ostensibly following them. Historical inertia is a thing--you can stand against the tide yelling "stop", but it'll bowl you over. Instead, you need to redirect it slowly.

[Jakinbandw]

It's kind of interesting because you are running a very high power level game, but it seems like the playeres have less power in it than a relatively low power game I might run because nothing they do sticks around for very long (I may be reading into this incorrectlly though).

It worked well for an 8 session playtest of the rules. In a way, what they did had a long term impact on the campaign as they became something of a legends amongst the other gods. But this is a local game, so I wouldn't discuss if you would like it or not. I'm not trying to sell you on it, just give context.

If the most powerful wizard in the setting is the equivalent of level 7, gods are 16, and these chaos things are 20, what power level are the PCs, such that they are shunting people into alternate dimensions or freezing time in order to save them from destruction?

They start at level 1, and can level up all the way to level 20. Remember, I was giving examples from the 'High Level playtest that started the PCs at level 11, and leveled them about once a session until they hit 20 instead of a slower game, with all the examples coming when they were level 19-20. The setting was a completely different one than the one I'm writing to include in the book.

Right now, I'm in a game where we are level 1, and we, as a party, are struggling to reliably beat more than a dozen weak Shadows (chaos monsters) in a battle. Our faction work so far has included setting up a training grounds, and recruiting 30 characters to train up as a militia to protect our local town when we aren't there.

Our last session was us traveling with a train of refugees to protect them in case a bunch of Shadows saw them and attacked, as we escorted them to the capital, only to arrive and find that the doors were barred to all due to overcrowding. We had to deal with the water making the horses sick, a person getting a broken arm after falling off a spooked horse, and a stick up from some local outlaws that had been partially infected by Shadow Taint.

Now you still might not enjoy it. Not everyone enjoys slowly building up from low levels of power to higher levels while their actions affect the world around them and they are forced to make moral choices.

Yeah. No thanks. I could very well be missing something here, but that sounds like the opposite of what I want out of a game. I want to build things, not destroy them, or just save some parts of it that are being destroyed, or rescue people by shunting them into some other location while their world/homes are destroyed.

I think you're confusing the homebrew setting I described with the main setting that I'm writing with the game. That said, if you don't want to play a character that can build cool things, then sure, the game wouldn't be for you. Not everyone is able to enjoy games that allow them to do things like build temples or recruit militias. It can be too much responsibility for some players that just want to go and kill monsters rather than interact with the world and grow to care about it.

Why am I talking about building things when you're complaining about destroying them? Because every time you change things, something of the past is lost. Raising a militia fundamentally changes the nature of a town. They lose something of their innocence as you teach a good number of how to be soldiers.




As for not being able to save everyone. Do you usually only play games where there is no chance of failure or no consequence for it? Things going wrong, and people failing are the risks that make success all the more exhilarating for me. That said, I could see players working with there GM to turn the game into something without such terrifying stakes. Where if something too dark happens, like the death of a cared about town or NPC, the players can veto it. I'm all for accessibility options for players that don't want such depressing or grim topics in their games. Heaven knows we have enough of that in our daily lives.

I also have rules for converting the games power level to be on point with something like 3.5 and ditching the faction system. Because when my last DM was running curse of Strahd, they and another player asked if there was anyway they could switch to my system because they were finding 5e too frustrating for multiple reasons. We switched over, and everything went smooth.

I talk about the high level play stuff though, because there are a million different systems that can run low powered fantasy games. It's not unique, and I don't find that my system can do it in a fun way a real selling point. For me, I want to sell my game on things that other systems can't do. And at the end of the day, it's having practical rules for handling the big flashy stuff. Sure it's cool that our bard is healing wounds by gathering wild herbs and using them as poultices, and sure it's neat that my character can access a bunch of light magic spells without it breaking the system, but neither of those are things that DnD, and other low powered games can't do.

So yeah, I'll talk about the time the party managed to ground a dragon just before it could fly over a fort and burn it to ash. I'll talk about the fact that a high level Technologist character can effectively build a full on air fleet. But at the end of the day, it's just me writing rules that allow for balanced scaling up to around level 60 or so in 3.5 (An easy way of converting is to assume 1 level in my system is worth 3 levels in a dnd game. Thus a Level 7 character would be about as powerful as a normal level 21 B tier character in 3.5).

If you don't ever plan on playing a campaign past level 6 in dnd, then outside of me and my friends finding character design more enjoyable than the other fantasy games we've tried, there won't be much for you there. And what people like when it comes to how a game plays is different for each person.

[Ignimortis]

I was talking about the focus and limits on powers. Was your perception of PF2 being "videogamey" because of the rules about positioning and terrain, or because in addition to that it had "discrete actions that don't mesh with anything else unless explicitly called out"?

And presumably V:tM could have very detailed rules about distance, range, line of sight, cover, etc, but would still not feel "videogamey" to you, because those things are fit into a system that otherwise takes "normal world rules" and then provides exceptions that "fit" into those base rules.

Because of discrete actions, yes. I don't think of, say, D&D 3.5 as too "videogamey", despite it having multiple relevant positioning mechanics of the same bent, because it achieves enough integration of abilities into how the core rules work to feel like it's something my character can do IC rather than a "button to press".

For me, it's where the powers lead to, and how realistically they fit. And yeah, I get that to some it's hard to see a distinction between D&D where you have mages tossing fireballs around and what I'm talking about. But it's not a binary choice. It's not "this is magic, so no rules matter". It's "this is magic, so the rules are even more important". If your game setting/system/whatever doesn't ask the question: "how do ordinary people live in this world if people with these powers exist", then it feels videogamey to me.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a system+setting combo that doesn't ask those questions. Either the system does (powers are limited in some way and not just everyone can have them), or the setting does (powers are limited in some other, not entirely mechanical way, but still not everyone has them).

I suppose it's also how various powerful game effects are managed. If AE attacks always hit your enemies only, then it feels videogamey to me. And yeah, if you are dealing out damage levels that should level mountains, but only ever cause damage to your enemies/target/whatever, that feels videogamey to me.

I find that it's enough for me for the ability to have the "deals damage to the targets in the area you choose" or "deals damage to all targets in the area, from which you can exclude X targets of your choice".

Otherwise things get bogged down with calculating how much earth displacement a Fireball-equivalent effect causes. Actually, Shadowrun does this with AoE damage effects and barriers, and resolving a grenade blast in an enclosed space completely RAW instead of skipping to "how many people it blew up" might take several minutes if you're good with those rules or half an hour if you're not.

[Duff]

The only part that's really hard is giving the GM the tools to manage the game at these levels of power and setting alteration.

That seems like a setting that would ask a fair bit of a GM. And the players
Which could lead to a table leaning more on their "buttons" than they normally would like.
That might lead to them feeling the experience to be videogamey

[Kurald Galain]

I find that it's enough for me for the ability to have the "deals damage to the targets in the area you choose" or "deals damage to all targets in the area, from which you can exclude X targets of your choice".

The catch here is consistency between rules and flavor. If an effect is flavored as an explosion, then it makes not a whole lot of sense that this somehow doesn't affect allies in the area. You can either solve that by describing the effect differenly (e.g. "seeking fire snake") or by making the effect ally-unfriendly.

That doesn't mean requiring overcomplexity like you describe with Shadowrun. But note the difference that 5E's Fireball spell explicitly sets flammable stuff on fire, and 4E's Fireball does not (and as mentioned, 4E has fire elementals that do not resist fire damage). Again, the point is consistency between rules and flavor.

[icefractal]

I don't generally think in terms of "video gamey", but overly gamist? Like, gamist to the point that it interferes with other qualities like "feeling like a world" and "being able to solve things in outside-the-box ways" or "emergent properties"?

Yes, that's something that bugs me in TTRPGs. I'm not saying it's inherently wrong, but it's not why I'm playing a TTRPG, and I feel like I could get more and faster gamist fun by playing a board/card/video game.

And that said, there are some video games which are better in certain areas I value than most TTRPGs. The table that will let you invent and use devices/mechanisms to the extent that Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress (or, I've heard, Tears of the Kingdom) does is rare. And TBF, those are single-player games (well, Minecraft has multiplayer but not in an RPG way). So if that single player wants to spend several hours fiddling around with a device that they then use to defeat the big boss risk-free, that's well and good. Probably not so good at a table of other players, so I understand there's going to be limits. But still, I don't think the video-gameness is the problem.


Re: "low and slow" - I get the appeal, but for me this is the sticking point:

In my current game, I've literally been running a series of adventures (in between a mix of other ones), with a common theme of "dealing with problems with an evilish king in the neighboring kingdom" for probably 5 years now.

So it's been five years and they're getting close to launching a coup/rebellion, but not quite there yet. So maybe six years total? That's not an unreasonable span of time for a realistic rebellion, but also it's longer than the significant majority of campaigns I've been in.

Personally speaking, I've been in enough games that lasted a year or less that I'm pretty wary of slow starts and delayed payoffs. Low-level play is fine, but I want to eventually use all the levels the system has, not just the first 1/4 repeatedly. Obviously some campaigns do last significantly longer, so YMMV.

[Ignimortis]

Re: "low and slow" - I get the appeal, but for me this is the sticking point:
So it's been five years and they're getting close to launching a coup/rebellion, but not quite there yet. So maybe six years total? That's not an unreasonable span of time for a realistic rebellion, but also it's longer than the significant majority of campaigns I've been in.

Personally speaking, I've been in enough games that lasted a year or less that I'm pretty wary of slow starts and delayed payoffs. Low-level play is fine, but I want to eventually use all the levels the system has, not just the first 1/4 repeatedly. Obviously some campaigns do last significantly longer, so YMMV.

I have not had a game that didn't lose steam after two years at most. Most games either conclude or peter out after a year and a half. It's very annoying to keep redoing "low levels" (even in systems without levels) over and over again, that's for sure.

The catch here is consistency between rules and flavor. If an effect is flavored as an explosion, then it makes not a whole lot of sense that this somehow doesn't affect allies in the area. You can either solve that by describing the effect differenly (e.g. "seeking fire snake") or by making the effect ally-unfriendly.

That doesn't mean requiring overcomplexity like you describe with Shadowrun. But note the difference that 5E's Fireball spell explicitly sets flammable stuff on fire, and 4E's Fireball does not (and as mentioned, 4E has fire elementals that do not resist fire damage). Again, the point is consistency between rules and flavor.

That's true, but someone can be justified in asking "ok why isn't Fireball area difficult terrain afterwards? it's bound to make a crater", etc. It's all a matter of how far you go with abstraction and suspension of disbelief.

[Kurald Galain]

That's true, but someone can be justified in asking "ok why isn't Fireball area difficult terrain afterwards? it's bound to make a crater", etc. It's all a matter of how far you go with abstraction and suspension of disbelief.

Yes, and I'm seeing a sliding scale here:

• On the top level, the game makes rules for almost everything, and gets judged for being overcomplicated. Example: Shadowrun or Hackmaster, or those large-table wargames that last for days.
• In the middle, the game makes an effort to match rules to the fluff within complexity limits. Example: 2E, 3E, 5E, but frankly most RPGs I'm familiar with fall in this category.
• On the bottom level, the game doesn't mind having disassociations, and gets judged for being "gamey" or "gamist" or "video gamey". The most prominent example here is 4E, but games like Descent or Arkham Horror tend to be here as well.

Note that this is a scale and not three distinct categories with hard cut-off points.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of.

This covers much of my feel for the distinction.

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

I am not sure if this is heresy or not. (Your last sentence).

Same with their other big thing, which was foiling an ancient dragon's plan. They never ended up fighting that one--it ended in a court battle in front of all the other ancient/adult dragons in the setting. And if they'd not have built up relationships over the campaign, if they'd have just "pressed buttons"...it would have never happened that way.

From a player in that campaign: We actually were in the dragon's lair. The four of us and an ancient black dragon were face to face. Dragons in Phoenix's world tend to be spell casters. Our nemesis (since about level six?)cast something like Plane Shift at the whole party. My attempt at counterspell failed, but all four of us made our Charisma save. (Which in retrospect makes sense, since we were playing a Paladin, a Warlock, a Bard and a Sorcerer). The dice were kind.
One of the things that I had hoped to manage during the campaign, or maybe shortly after retirement,

Spoiler: was this

Show

was to make a deal with our former nemesis to take out those evil snake folk who were enslaving/sacrificing the zandolit / lizardfolk, but we I never got around to that. And now, motherhood takes a priority so that grand idea probably won't happen.

PCs are definitionally catalysts.

Yes! (But that presumes players engaged with the world. I have a group which isn't really engaged, despite my best efforts).

I don't generally think in terms of "video gamey", but overly gamist?

You captured another bit of my feel on this. +1

Yes, and I'm seeing a sliding scale here

I recall Chivalry and Sorcery also being pretty Rules Heavy.

[Tanarii]

Some examples of games I consider quite (usually board) gamey and ones I don't:

Gamey:
AD&D 2e /w Combat and Tactics
Battletech
Shadowrun
GURPS
D&D 3e
PF 1e
D&D 4e
PF 2e

Not Gamey:
D&D BECMI
AD&D
AD&D 2e
D&D 5e (especially with TotM)
Palladium Robotech
Palladium RIFTS
Gamma World
Traveller
Apocalypse World / PBTA
Blades in the Dark
Mutant Year Zero
Forbidden Lands

[Easy e]

To me the premise of this entire thread seems a bit off. If you look at the OPs question, and then scratch it beyond the surface the REAL question seems to be:

"What do I do with feedback about my creation?"

Well, you really only have a handful of responses to feedback about your game:

1. Ignore it, because it is doing what you want it to do and the people critiquing it do not value or understand what you are trying to do.

2. Compromise with it. Incorporate some parts of it to try and get closer to what you want it to do.

3. Adopt it. Steal it and make it part of the game because it does what you want it to do.

4. Cut it. Realize it is causing more confusion than helping you do what you want the game to do so it is better to not be in the game at all.


However, in order to decide how to react or incorporate the feedback you need to have two things.

1. A clear idea of what your game is trying to do.

2. Clear design goals that you use to keep the game doing what you want it to do through out.


"Video Gamey" is simply a distraction from the main question you as a designer need to have. Is the mechanic helping your game do what it is suppose to be doing, and is it in line with the design goals?

• If the answer to those two questions is no, cut it.
• If it is Yes, ignore it.
• If it is maybe, adopt or compromise it.

If you re-look at the feedback you got about your system, which of those conditions applies?

[Jakinbandw]

To me the premise of this entire thread seems a bit off. If you look at the OPs question, and then scratch it beyond the surface the REAL question seems to be:

"What do I do with feedback about my creation?"

In this case, it actually was about the term Video Gamey. I have a very set goal of the game I want to build, IE: one that allows for a character to level from standard levels of power to extreme levels of power. I'm frustrated with systems that make using powerful abilities have no effect on the world, and ones that limit the PCs access to the highest levels of power. For example, in Exalted the selling point of the game is often stated that you get to play powerful superheroes in a fantasy setting, but when you play the game you're surrounded by beings that make a mockery of the maximum power you can reach, the Unconquered Sun being a prime example.

So with those solid goals in mind, I've made a system that matches them, along with a few others that makes the system playable and fun for me and my group.

Obviously that means I'm not going to change the system because someone feels that they don't want to play a system where they can gain that much power, but the whole Video Gamey comment left me confused because, well, the things that were brought up certainly felt like they applied equally if not more to dnd and dnd-alikes.

After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that video-gamey is a messy term, and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Also that most people here wouldn't find my system video gamey (Though, I wish to stress, if the opposite was true and the general consensus was pretty solidly that what I was building was Video-Gamey to most, I'd likely embrace it and use it as marketing. There is no right and wrong answer here, and what excites some people drives others away. Knowing what audience you want to appeal to is always the first step).

[HeraldOfExius]

I think the idea behind the comparison is less "you can't do this in a video game" and more "you can't improvise this in a video game". Some video games are indeed very good at that sort of thing, but it still requires the developers to have prepared for it, while in a TTRPG a GM can (or at least should be able to) adapt to player ideas neither the GM nor the game's developers has ever thought of.

The point that I was getting at is that some video games provide more than enough freedom that you can do a lot of what you might think to try and do while some TTRPGs might not have much inherent support for most types of possible interactions despite (or possible because of) being very mechanically heavy in specific areas. Yes, a human can adapt to new ideas, but...

By now, I'm willing to say that the ability of human game masters to adapt and improvise is greatly exaggerated. If anything, recurring topics about "railroading" and how hard it is to prepare as a game master prove that a lot of human game masters are either incapable or unwilling to hold games that would be more impressive than linear computer games. Past technical implementation, a tabletop game master or developer has no real edge in creativity over a computer game developer, and vice versa.

Some people don't adapt well. And since a lot of the more "gamey" TTRPGs tend to be very mechanically heavy in specific areas (usually combat), those mechanics can be a crutch that leaves anything that happens outside of them obviously hobbled. That isn't always the case, but I've seen it happen several times.

[Easy e]

In this case, it actually was about the term Video Gamey. I have a very set goal of the game I want to build, IE: one that allows for a character to level from standard levels of power to extreme levels of power. I'm frustrated with systems that make using powerful abilities have no effect on the world, and ones that limit the PCs access to the highest levels of power. For example, in Exalted the selling point of the game is often stated that you get to play powerful superheroes in a fantasy setting, but when you play the game you're surrounded by beings that make a mockery of the maximum power you can reach, the Unconquered Sun being a prime example.

So with those solid goals in mind, I've made a system that matches them, along with a few others that makes the system playable and fun for me and my group.

Obviously that means I'm not going to change the system because someone feels that they don't want to play a system where they can gain that much power, but the whole Video Gamey comment left me confused because, well, the things that were brought up certainly felt like they applied equally if not more to dnd and dnd-alikes.

After reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that video-gamey is a messy term, and I shouldn't worry about it too much. Also that most people here wouldn't find my system video gamey (Though, I wish to stress, if the opposite was true and the general consensus was pretty solidly that what I was building was Video-Gamey to most, I'd likely embrace it and use it as marketing. There is no right and wrong answer here, and what excites some people drives others away. Knowing what audience you want to appeal to is always the first step).

Cool. It sounds like you figured out what you needed then!

Kudos.