System Shock
I think every group of geeks has had “the podcast talk.” You know the one.
Seriously you guys. Our conversations are hilarious! We should start a podcast! No, shut up. I’m seriously right now. We have to share our passion with the world via low-quality audio equipment and zero editing skills!
I know that my group had that talk anyway. And when we did, the working title for our nascent media empire was The System Shock RPG Podcast. The idea was to try out a different RPG every week. We’d spend one episode playing a one shot, then do a breakdown episode where we’d talk about likes and dislikes from the game. I still think it’s a solid premise for a podcast, but it somehow never got off the ground. The aforementioned lack of audio equipment and editing skills might have had something to do with that. If memory serves, so did copyright law. At the end of the day though, I think the thing that really killed the concept was workload.
Make no mistake: learning a new system takes work. It can be be fun work, sure. I know plenty of players who devour systems like candy. But for psychographic profiles that look a bit more like Fighter than Cleric, the effort isn’t worth the reward. They’d rather play the game they know and love than risk their precious leisure time learning a new system.
The trouble comes up when these two player types sit down at the same table. One wants to try out Amber Diceless or Mouse Guard or whatever. The other wants yet another game of D&D.
“Look, the rules are really simple. Here’s a cheat sheet.”
“That’s great and all, but I don’t want to put in a bunch of effort to learn a new system that’s only going to last three sessions.”
“Won’t you even give it a chance?”
“Why don’t we just play the system we all know we like?”
And so the argument goes round and round. I won’t lie to you guys: I don’t have the solution to this one. For some groups there might not even be a solution aside from “go your separate ways.” But if you have found yourself in Cleric’s position, trying your hardest to bring your favorite grognards kicking and screaming into the brave new world, what arguments worked for you? How did you convince your group to try something different? Did they wind up liking it or reverting? Tell us your own tales of ‘system shock’ down in the comments!
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count me in as „new system phobic“
anything fantasy gaming is either Pathfinder 1e or I find other things to do with my time.
Mutant Year Zero was sufficiently different to try, but that was canceled by out current DM on account of he didn’t like the dice rolling system.
I’m not familiar. What’s the deal with Mutant Year Zero’s dice system?
you roll a number of d6, depending on skill and attribute and gear.
so maybe 2+1+1 = 4d6
roll of 6 is a success , more than one is a better success
roll of 1 is a fail
you can try to force a success by rerolling anything not a 1, but if you then not succeed any 1 is a critical fail. A 1 on the ‚gear‘ d6 = broken gear, a 1 in attribute d6 = injury and so on.
It feels extremely random and low on successes, even when skilled up.
Trying to hit a 1/6 roll immediately makes me think of infantry-only offensives and Axis & Allies. It typically doesn’t go well for the infantry.
What happens if you roll both a 6 and a 1? do you succeed, possibly with a negative, or do they cancel out?
any 6 makes it a sucess.
iirc the 1s where only interesting on a reroll.
Theres a simple solution to your problem. ‘w’)/
There is no solution, there will never be a solution. Human beings or even living people are stubborn to change. There will never be a easy solution either prep your GM/player gloves and drag the people that don’t want to play across the hills to system proficiency. Using bribes (pizza), meetings or just keep talking to them explaining the rules. Or just stick with the old system.
There is nothing else and there will be nothing else. Either they like it or are stubborn to change.. ‘w’)
flops around
Oh I dunno. The phrase “I’m GMing” will usually do the trick. Of course, it comes with the mantle of “forever GM,” but so it goes.
I generally am open to try out new systems, but the first thing I instinctively try to do is break it, whether it is the magic system, a feat system, or a skill system. I like to see what the limits are in the game. What can or can I not do? Because of this, half the other players at the table cringe at the idea of trying out a new system; However, once I have “broken in” a game, I generally return to building and playing reasonably built characters.
I’m the opposite. I’ll usually try to get the “intended experience” out of a system in my first go around. By the time I’m done with that first campaign I’ll be interested enough in the mechanics to start tinkering.
While we’re sharing our new-system approaches, I tend to look for what I can do in this system that I can’t do in other systems I’ve played/am playing. Which is why I was annoyed that the GM of my group’s recently-started Shadowrun campaign specifically forbade deckers and technomancers.
Running three parallel sessions at the same time isn’t easy, so I can understand the hesitance. That goes double if this is a first campaign. Still, it stinks to take those iconic choices off the table when you’ve got a player who’s excited for them.
In our case, we tried out Starfinder (despite one player being vehemently against it due to not liking sci-fi) because we got a bit sick of only playing Pathfinder, and a player in the group offered to DM it in place of our forever-DM.
It worked surprisingly well, with the guy that was against it actually liking it after trying it out on a silly oneshot, now we’re playing the AP proper.
I remain surprised by how much of the Starfinder experience is buried in the equipment rather than the character classes. That’s been the biggest ‘system shock’ for me so far.
I must agree! You pretty much have to check out the entire item list (especially technological items or augments) to actually get a proper grasp of the system’s options. I’m the loot-manager for that game and let me tell you, a lot of the seemingly obvious items have a plethora of depth to it, or I get introduced to items I have to look up because they’re utterly foreign to me (compare this to fantasy magic items which are usually obvious).
The entire item list in fact feels like a massive method to customize and flavor up a given character – with or without cybernetics. A lot of the items flat out let you get racial traits from other races/alien species, even, and it takes only a few levels and a couple thousand credits to flavor the heck out of your PC.
It’s got that ‘shopping mall of options’ feel to it. Or ‘Shadowrunners post-payout’ feel.
Lol you do you. Personally, Starfinder is the nadir of the gear grind that I personally loathe in games. Shaodwrun is better because at least Shadowrun flavors its items, SF is literally just “a laser pistol shoots focused light and comes in [x] different varieties, all of which are identical except for damage and item level.”
And don’t get me started on “item level”…
Or how Starship combat is shit, or how the Vesk in triple-digit AC is helpless vs. Grenade Spam TM, or how your hope for the game dies when you realize that every gun is the same except for damage die, or the feeling when you realize they made elves racist assholes so they could push the Lashunta (aka SPESS ELVES) onto us, or how everything good about PF has been tossed out and replaced with barely-related things.
I will say this much about SF though… EAC and KAC is one of the best AC systems I have seen. It neatly resolves the issue of “how does metal armor work vs lasers?” in one clean swoop. It is the one part of the system that I actually like.
The alternative to the ‘podcast’ talk is the ‘livestream’ talk. Because people want to show off their stuff live, or in a stream-like format! The issues here are the same as the podcast version, though editing might be a bit less (or more) demanding, and you have to figure out how to livestream (which is luckily easier to learn than podcasting, given so much tech and tutorials being about it). You can also supplant audio mastery with visual stuff and interfaces which take a bit to set up but work for a long while. Only issue here is if your other players are uncomfortable with livestreaming or simply ‘bad actors’ and not the kind of person who can handle a ‘live’ game. But it’s easier if they’ve had public/communal games at conventions or such.
Laurel’s been talking about starting up a Discord server over on Patreon, but doing art streaming stuff isn’t exactly the same animal.
Cleric is ROCKING that gangster look.
Dude makes a surprisingly convincing mafioso.
He’s got the Danny Devito stature for it, the beard was the only thing getting in the way.
Fighter meanwhile makes for a decent private eye.
But where are Thief and Wizard with their era-appropriate outfits? Last time we saw Thief and eldritch-tentacle-related activities (ahem, other handbook notwithstanding) she was still in her fantasy garb.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/scheduling-conflicts
The first thing you have to know about eldritch-tentacle-beasts is that they transcend time and space. Of course they’ll show up in multiple planes of reality.
Yes, but what about fancy prohibition-era ladies outfits?
I have floated the idea of torch singers to Laurel. We’ll see if anything shows up in this month’s pinup poll. 😀
It’s never been a problem for any of the groups I’ve belonged to. I mean, sure, we keep coming back to D&D of one version or another, because it’s just a fun system… but I don’t think anyone I’ve gamed with has ever been reluctant to try something new.
Give it another few decades. You’ve got to be a cranky old dude before you can be a proper grognard. 😛
Mostly I gave up on trying to get people to play D&D 4e. Invariably they get tripped up on their assumptions of how D&D SHOULD work and miss what makes 4e so good. One of the biggest complaints I hear is how long combat takes, but that’s just a new-player hurdle… and, well, if they’re a new player who heard the complaint and then has long combats because they’re new, what are they gonna think? “Ah yes, that complaint was valid.” Not much I can do about that.
Even if I know they’d love the system once they got to know it, it’s just… why drag them through all that suffering until they get system mastery?
My favorite way to learn new systems is when it’s new to the entire group. Players and GM are discovering rules synergies and intricacies at the same time, so the learning process happens in tandem. Of course, I suppose that’s easier to do when it’s a less well-known system.
Sup Turbs! I claim myself guilty of linking 4e complaint videos, though I don’t actually dislike the system and would unironically love to try it out.
Our group has the issue of a player who is… Well, stubborn like a mule. They get hitched on something they don’t like about a system (without having tried it in action/practice) and refuse to compromise or try from there.
Ironically that same player turned out to love Starfinder after trying it, having gotten the assumption they’d dislike it before actually playing it, and then having a blast on their first session. I can assume 4e and pathfinder 2e could go the same way, but they don’t want to touch the system, treating it as heresy.
They’re an great player in Pathfinder 1e, but that’s a comfort zone and they’re difficult to budge out of it, which becomes a problem when the rest of the group wants to play something new and not leave them behind / want them to enjoy new stuff.
There actually is a podcast like this out there, I remember listening to hear a play of 10 candles, and saw they had a bunch of other systems too. So that may be worth a find. I’ll see if I can look at my podcast history and get the name. Their 10 candles play was pretty well edited and the audio wasn’t bad, but it was like their 100th episode, so maybe they got better.
As for the podcast talk, I have always been against it in my groups. I know some people get more into it when they have an audience, but I get self concious when a new player is at the table. Can’t imagine how awkward I’d be knowing that anyone could listen to my performance.
Yeah… I think I stumbled across it on the reddits a few months ago. Lost the name of the silly thing. Please do post it if you can find it!
It’s probably One-Shot, they also did a Star Wars Genesys actual play for a long time.
I was going to complain about the design of that Chicago Typewriter, but then I realized it’s Mr. Stabby. That’s fucking hilarious.
Now I’m wondering what Mr. Stabby would have turned into if Fighter was a reporter instead of a PI.
A camera with an extremely bright flash bulb.
Also, I thought in CoC all players were “investigators”.
you really should get a cast listing under the comic, I hadn’t noticed Mr. Stabby or even recognized Fighter and Cleric.
Not sure what that would look like. Are you suggesting something like…
…And then linking to the cast page?
Would be a nice method to tag the strips and allow for searching for specific strips!
A pen or pencil for his journalist notepad, of course! It probably writes in blood-red ink, and you can guarantee Fighter would try to kill someone with it, citing ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’.
Yeah, I have that problem with Pathfinder, Pre-Fifth-Edition D&D, GURPS, and Classic World of Darkness. It’s always a brick wall I can’t get past. I love the settings, now I wish they were stated for Fate Core or 5e. Though, funnily enough, I took to CoC like a duck to water, the few I’ve gotten to play.
Is it a matter of the learning curve? Is it just a matter of “more trouble than it’s worth?”
If anything, I hate being stuck playing D&D because the (new) GM isn’t willing to move very far away from it. (We did have a short-lived game of Starfinder, and he ran a short-lived Pathfinder 2E that I didn’t bother joining. The PF2E proved to everyone playing it that Pathfinder is still an awful system, but that’s about it.)
As for what to do when considering a new system? There basically is no argument. The GM says, “We’re playing Call of Cthulhu”, or “We’re playing Mutants and Masterminds”, or “We’re playing Coriolis”, or whatever else, and that’s what we’re playing. If you’re not interested, you can sit out. And the only time I can remember that happening is me sitting out the Pathfinder game (after being burned on Pathfinder several years prior).
Half of the interest of a new game is what system it’s based on, since the system tends to flavor how things get played.
As far as how long we’ve been like this (from another comment), most of the core of the group has been together for close to 30 years, with others that have been together for at least 5-10 years.
I suppose if we grew up playing nothing but D&D, it might be different (and the current new GM is certainly following that trend). The closest to that for the main group was Mage, which was the primary system we played for several years. However there has never been a time where there was “one true system”. D&D only ever even entered the running after the release of 5E, and that was heavily influenced by the new GM wanting to run everything in that system.
As for a solution to the problem… I’m not sure. The problem you describe fits our new GM pretty well, and he keeps trying to modify D&D to do things different, such that he’d really be better off running a different system. But he isn’t willing to move very far afield. Perhaps at the end of the current campaign it’s just time to set out the ultimatum of “Anything but D&D (or derivatives).” Or take my own turn as GM.
I suppose the key is don’t let this attitude become entrenched. Start your gaming career playing lots of different systems, and it will never become an issue when you want to try something new.
There’s an element of the community for whom “system matters” is something of a mantra. It mostly comes out of The Forge community:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html
And here’s some more contemporary thinking on the subject:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43568/roleplaying-games/game-structures-addendum-system-matters
I suspect you’ll find some points that you agree with in there.
This is why I have some appreciation for barebones, rules-lite systems designed for one-shots like Paranoia and Dread. Although I find them slightly frustrating to run just because less concrete rules means more opportunity for angle-shooting, they’re great if you want to play something different but don’t want to sink a ton of time into constantly learning intricate new systems.
I wonder how complex All Flesh Must Be Eaten is? I’m interested in trying it out but I don’t know anything about the rules.
My hobby is being dominated by a couple of years-long games at the moment. I don’t think I’d like to switch over to rules-light games in perpetuity, but they do pair nicely with a short story-arc, high turnover kind of hobby. It would be nice to try that style for a bit, just for the sake of richer variety.
I love all sorts of smaller, experimental TRPG systems, with Pendragon and New Gods of Mankind being two of the ones I most desperately want to try. But, the only TRPG groups in my area are the game shop’s D&D group (…which should be restarting any month now), which is obviously only sticking to the biggest TRPG in the world, and my local bunch of friends.
Said bunch of friends play mostly D&D and Pathfinder. We used to play Shadowrun, and one of the players recently broke out the old books since our fantasy games have been disrupted by you-know-what, but that’s about it.
I’ve been tossing around the idea of an “introductory GURPS campaign”—a GURPS campaign designed to slowly introduce players to the rules and possibilities of the GURPS system—but so far that hasn’t gotten anywhere.
I keep thinking that I should try pickup games on Roll20, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet. It’s straight up intimidating to game with randos online after you’ve got comfortable with a local group for so long.
There’s a good Seth Skorkowsky skit about this phenomenon: (12:56 – 15:00)
https://youtu.be/pn29aUjo6k0?t=776
I’m in a group that is about to start a Pathfinder 1e AP, and two of the players are 5e guys, so I wrote them up a document of the major system differences (especially those little things no one thinks about, like that you can’t move/attack/move, as well as how the number scaling is different) that I encountered from my brief experience in one 5e campaign. Hopefully that’ll smooth things over for them.
In my youth, I tried a bunch of different systems with friends. We always enjoyed the attempt, but none ever “stuck” like the old classic go to, D&D. It is easier to learn a new “version” of an old system, than to learn an entirely new system tho and over the years, I just stopped really trying.
Oh, I want to try, a lot of systems look fun, but the simple truth is, who has time for all that nonsense.
The other aspect, is I seek a particular type of play now. simple, but not too simple. I want some amount of rules, but I want them to be easy enough that we can RP without getting bogged down by them, and again, 5e D&D hits that mark for me right now.
Maybe there are other even better systems out their, but as long as my Der nd Der don’t do me wrong, I am just happy to stick with what I know (and I think mostly the people I play with now feel the same way)
This exactly.
I don’t want to/care to simulate the effect of an 8mph breeze on the trajectory of my shots by having to remember another -1 to hit. Also, it’s a bit hazy, and your target is backed by the sun, which grants them effective cover… also you’re dazzled to.
And if I’m GMing, well… I ALSO don’t want to play that. Combat is long enough with people deciding what to do.
There’s a particular phrase at the top of your post that strikes a chord with me:
It’s that ‘with friends’ bit that intrigues me. I’ve wondered sometimes how often my own gaming habits get locked in by the microculture of my specific group.
Most of my “try something new” experiences have been short one-shots at conventions. That’s where I tend to pick up new perspectives and tricks, but transferring any of that back to my home group never quite seems to happen. My suspicion is that, if I want wrap my head around a new perspective, a new set of players might be helpful.
of my regular core group of 4 I‘m actually the only one who refuses to play anything but Pathfinder 1e.
Listening to the others during sessions getting rules mixed up fron multiple systems that they play(ed) is very discouraging for me.
So at least in my case I‘m not in a PF1e filter bubble through my fellow players.
Apologies. Lots to say on this.
I wouldn’t say I’m new system-phobic. Realist, maybe. At last count, I’ve played eight, maybe twelve different systems. My whole major media arts and animation with an angle on game design, and the first obstacle with game design is can you make it work on paper. Examining other games is necessary.
The problem is really that I’ve studied design, though. This makes bad design-which is an objective thing-stick out a lot more.
Right now, a group of friends is trying to get me into HERO, and in theory, HERO is fantastic. You make your character exactly the way you want within your points limitations. Like GURPs, but more flexible maybe? But HERO has a concept within it called ‘Active Points’ which are basically imaginary points that govern how you can spend your ‘real’ points in the name of game balance.
Playing the game is fine, more or less, backwards rolls aside. I think it overly punishes defense with what they call ‘aborts’ where you abort your next action because you decided to do a defensive action, but that’s just an opinion. The bigger issues are HERO’s weird, fiddly exceptions and extremely pedantic detail oriented concepts.
Every RPG has these; that’s just part of our hobby. HERO had to split the core book into a char gen book (400 pages) and a how to play the game book (also 400 pages). I think asking players, at the base level, for familiarity with roughly 800 pages of information before getting into supplemental materials is a bridge too far.
Palladium works. D20/Pathfinder 1e work. West End Star Wars D6 system works. GURPS works. White Wolf generally, BattleTech, BESM, Iron Claw… they work, but they have issues. Everything else out there? I’m not sufficiently convinced.
If you have to bend your mind into a pretzel to understand how something functions or you actually require a computer program to keep char gen straight… those are design red flags that something is horrifically wrong. Differentiating which ones are from habits and which ones are ‘real’ can be a bit of a challenge, but I offer that D20’s original point of making all system calculations additive is a good place to start for good design.
Is there no “quick start” version of HERO to help a learn-through-play experience?
If there is, I don’t know of it.
One of the people showing me the system actually snapped the other night when to figure out how to compute an advantage, he realized he was doing calculus and basically fell into a repeating cycle where modifying one end of the equation forced the other side to be modified. When I looked at it, my immediate response was “You could divide by zero and get the answer faster.”
The irony is almost all of the issues I’ve run into have surrounded strength and melee attacks, which are, conceptually, the simplest things a system is supposed to handle. A very serious consideration on my end was simply removing Strength from having any influence in my character ideas beyond lifting ability because the logic that supports it in the system is just that tortured. And even THEN… A character they helped me make picked up and threw a tank at a giant robot. This brought the game crashing to a halt for 15 minutes because no one knew how to resolve it-and they’ve been playing HERO for at least four, five years.
Let that sink in-I picked something up, threw it, and it completely derailed a game about super heroes because no one knew how to resolve that action. They tried to laugh it off as a collective brain fart, but it was bad.
If I had to choose ONE THING to get right and make simple and easy when making a game about Super Heroes, it would be Super Strength. At this, HERO has failed catastrophically.
I’ve definitely felt that before, especially since I have a tendency to buy the sourcebooks for games I’ll never get to play/run because I like to read the fluff. As for actually running games, I’ve had luck with one shots of Paranoia and Maid RPG. My group tends to welcome the occasional break from our main game for some silliness, which both of those games are great for. It also helps that one of the players will “buy in” to whatever is being played and go in with enthusiasm.
I did run a Pokémon Tabletop United one-shot for them, and the feedback I got was that while they did have a good time, the system is SUPER crunchy and nobody had the investment in the source material to want to play a full campaign. Can’t say I blame them, having been the one to set that all up.
I have that trouble with setting-specific RPGs sometimes. Falling in love with a complex system is a lot easier when there’s a compelling story world. If it’s just a lark in a nostalgic world, however, it’s a lot harder to devote the mental effort.
As forever GM of our group, the players damn well play what I want them to.
When the rare opportunity arises for me to take their places, I’ll play any game with an enjoyable (and ideally random) character-creation system. I tend to learn a system via the “loose ends” of charge, so I’ll make three or four characters before sitting down to play. Unless it’s Amber, of course, since you can’t really do that. Still love it, though 🙂
I do have a boast to the group that I will run a session of any game they wish if I cannot learn the character generation system in 24 hours, but amazingly nobody has taken advantage of this to hand me a copy of FATAL on a busy day yet.
You must live in terror and dread.
Funniest part of this for me: Call of C’thulhu is kiddie-mode compared to most versions of D&D. Much simpler, generally more consistent and far fewer subsystems.
I gotta say this is a tough one for me. My formative experiences were back in the mid 1980s, with tons of different systems available and no perceived need to be generic, universal or anything like that. It never occurred to any of us to complain about “learning” a new system, especially given that the real workload was on the GM.
There wasn’t the same fear of barriers to entry/learning curve (despite a very wide range of system complexities), or of trying things that might have “objectively bad design”. There also wasn’t an expectation of instantaneous system mastery…and that might have helped more than almost anything else.
The one biggest draw to playing new/different systems, though, was that it often meant a new (sub)genre, with its own conventions and rules that seemed to be tailored to that genre/setting. It created a different feel at the table, and that helped foster a mindset for that game. It was never “AD&D in space” or “AD&D post nuclear war with mutants” or “AD&D time travelers”.
M
First time playing CoC was after a long stint of dungeon adventuring. The biggest hurdle for me was figuring out what a session looks like when it’s not full of discrete challenges (read: multiple combats). It’s a very different flow for players coming over from D&D style games.
That is partly because the whole of the (A)D&D games are still basically skirmish (war)games in a fantasy setting, with more or less (depending on edition and/or GM) tacked on rules for social interaction other than fighting. Which was, for a long time, why it didn’t appeal to me. Only with D&D 3rd, which, in my opinion at that time, had a healty dose of RuneQuest derived skills added to it, did I start to play it. But it then again devolved into a skirmishing game, with all those fighting feats added, so meh…
First of all i just wanted to say that podcast are things from hell, an abominable practice and each and every person that listen to them completely monsters damned for they crimes against good taste 😀
As for systems. Meh :/
Learning new systems isn’t that much of a deal. If we don’t know what a rule says, we say anything. We are unburden by the weight of Order, Chaos rules. And we use a couple of systems and only that. D&D, PF-SF, Chronicle system, wod, exalted, the system both Stars without number and Godbound use, PbtA, Interlock System, cyberpunk and the witcher. You know only a handful of small systems to play a few games. Learning different systems only matters if you try to learn all of them or you embark in the masochist endeavour of playing a new system once every two weeks 😀
By the way, since you are always pocking people with question. Which one will be your favorite system and why? o_O
Ninjago: https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/portals/-/media/campaigns/kids/ninjago/choose-the-path/play-guides/ninjago_howtoplayguide_2hy20_v4_en_en_online.pdf?l.r=-1528996664
I was pretty sure you would say: “Anyone i can play with Laurel, my one true love, the only woman in my life, My Love” But Lego is a good answer too 😛
For me, it would be difficult. Kinda like asking which one is your favorite car’s wheel. You use the wheel to drive the car, but have more like a favorite car. D&D died with 5E so is out. PF-SF isn’t bad, but D&D 3.5 isn’t bad too. Exalted is fun, Stars without Number is interesting. Godbound is something i wanted to play even before it was out, very fitting of my tastes. Legacy is good too, many options and fun. More strategical than many other games. All in all, while i like those games, i think i would chose the Chronicle system. Exalted, WoD are pretty good games, and they use the very same system. So i will chose versatility and goodness of games and therefor Chronicle 😀
I’ve had the same thought of making a podcast based on playing a bunch of different ttrpgs, but i think making it into a podcast would make people even more reluctant to learn a new system… if you wanted to turn your existing D&D game into a podcast that’s one thing, everyone already knows how to play that and doesn’t need to change much, but once they lose their confidence in how to play the game it becomes a lot harder to convince people… though starting with D&D and then moving to a new system may work… assuming the people are willing to learn a new system at all (I’m also not sure I should really be in a 4TH podcast…)
I think the best bet for getting an entire group on board with learning a new system is to have someone as the designated teacher of the system who helps everyone learn the game, this doesn’t have to be the GM (but they should definitely try to learn it more than the other players)
That is the most efficient way to do it. And if you were doing the podcast thing, that’s probably how you’d have to go about it.
But for me, I think that there’s something special about learning a system together with your buddies. Figuring out rules questions by consensus, discovering mechanical interactions together, and watching emergent behavior play out on the table is a special kind of pleasure you can only get once with a system.
I’m especially thinking of the concept of “paranoia combat” with Exalted. Once you discover that mess, it changes the way the game is played forever.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/10602/what-is-exalted-paranoia-combat
5E is just such a juggernaut in the local community that I haven’t had a chance to play much of anything else since I re-entered the community. I’ve heard good things aboot Shadowrun 4E, (5, Anarchy, and 6 are supposed to be terrible) but I’ll never get to play it because it’s out of print by 2 editions and everybody wants to stick with 5E.
Cleric’s chin is like one’s parents having sex: I know it exists, but it should remain an abstract concept.
Game cons, man. For me, that seems to be the best way to get out and experience different parts of the hobby.
In theory I like the idea of learning new systems. In practice I avoid it because I know I can’t keep all those rules straight in my head. And I’ve seen how useless and disinterested the kinds of players you get when those things are true for them.
So rather than be the guy ruining what should have been a promising game for other people because I can’t get into it, I only learn select systems I think I’m going to like. Or are incredibly simple. I don’t feel too bad though since I chose to learn Blades in the Dark and Masks so that means learning pretty much any Powered by the Apocalypse game (of which there are just under a billion I’m sure) is pretty simple for me.
It just means that I’ll likely never learn Pathfinder 2e or a new White Wolf game or Shadowrun edition. Shadowrun being the biggest shame there, but boy is that a lot of rules in my experience and nobody has yet told me they’ve solved the “you basically have to learn three separate systems for this one game” the whole real world/magical world/cyberspace thing sets up.
Most painfully to me it means I’ll likely not learn an official Star Wars system since I don’t really like what I hear about any of the ones that exist enough to bother. (I mean, I hear the latest one is pretty good but has some stuff I don’t like and also does stuff in a way that works really really poorly for play by post.)
But that’s ok, that’s what I have Scum & Villainy for.
But at the end of the day, if my brain was just better at remembering things and not mixing them up, I’d probably be learning a new system every month. Because trying out new things really does appeal to me. And no matter how much people want it to, D&D really cannot be the square being shoved into the circle hole for all things. (Or really even most things, not that people ever stop trying.)
(PbtA has a better shot at that, but still won’t work for everything out there.)
sigh If only one of the versions of FATE actually worked in a way where I don’t wind up caring about the mechanics the way the premise of the systems claims you shouldn’t have to.
But if you’re trying to figure out a compromise in a group of people where some people want to try new things regularly and some people want to just stick with what they know and everyone agrees they’d all like to play with each other… I think the solution would be to try new things…. not regularly.
Like once or twice a year (or more or less depending how often you meet).
If someone’s main concern is they don’t want to just do a bunch of one shots, maybe every session alternates games. So you play “main game” all the time until some change happens in preferences, but you also play “new game” for a few months. At least a few sessions so “not one shots” person can feel like they got to actually play around in the system rather than learn a whole new system to just tip their toes in and never see that sea again.
I am usually the one wanting to try out new systems, and likely do so too often. My way of making the other players want to try it is simple.
“I plan on doing the new FFG Legend of the Five Rings next week. Unless anyone of you guys want to be the GM for a change? None? Colour-coded samurai it is.”
It’s kind of a vicious cycle. The person who wants to have the group try a different system for a couple of sessions may not be as comfortable in it as they’d like, which can impact how the rest of the group sees this new game/system, which makes the person running it more uncomfortable with running it. Of course, it doesn’t help when the new game is extremely different in tone from the group’s usual game and/or limits the players’ options much more than their usual game. Call of Cthulu/Delta Green for example usually requires a certain buy in to the system’s tone of despair and horror (unless your GM encourages the Henderson approach), while Pathfinder and D&D are a bit more flexible in tone.
One of my gaming groups attempted a short scenario a year or two ago from Delta Green which went relatively well considering hardly any of us had played any form of Call of Cthulu, but it turns out the scenario as it’s supposed to go expects the group to follow the instructions to the letter and thus shouldn’t even see a monster or weird shit. Overall, a horrible choice of scenario and the GM didn’t understand why it was bad.
Did you know that they actually did a CoC/PF crossover in the last book of Strange Aeons? Two words: Mobster Valeros.
Nice! I only made it through Book 1 before half my group moved across the country. Game over after that.
I’ll keep a look out for Valeros if the Glass Cannon guys ever make it to the final book. That might be a few years away though, lol.
You know, there is a D20 version of [i]Call of Cthulhu[/i]
There’s also a board game! It looks oddly familiar….
https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-285hkc2e8r/images/stencil/1280×1280/products/9420/8522/pic3122349__79209.1511929226.jpg?c=2
I play a lot of different RPGs. As a matter of fact, I didn’t play any (A)D&D until ten or twelve years into the hobby (started with RQ3 CoC and Star Trek (FASA)). And I like a lot of settings and systems. Also I think I have over 20 different systems and/or settings rules books in my RPG bookcase, and I like to think I’m able to GM an adventure in any of them with only an hour or two of preptime.
My wife, as a player, states that she does not need to know the rules of an RPG, as long as there is somebody (usually me, the GM) who can explain to her how she can and/or should do things – sort of like fighter up above. And after some sessions she usually picks up the rules anyway.
Our gaming club has (or had, before the covid thing) this activity – Wisselrollenspel (roughly translates as musical chairs RPG), in which several volunteer GMs offer a short (usually 6 sessions) adventure\campaign in a system\setting they like, so that other players can have a go at that system and/or setting. That is a relatively painless way to entice players to try something different. And it also enlarges the pool of players for that particular system or setting.
“Why don’t we just play the system we all know we like?”
That might just be the heart of the problem. I like (and like to try) a lot of different setting (and systems). For Court Intrigue games I do not need, or want, half or more of a rule book telling me about how fighting works, so that disqualifies D&D (which I do not like anyway). For Investigative games I need to be able to have social interaction resolution, sometimes even in place of the Roleplaying that should go with that, so if the social interaction part is not emphasised in rules, procedures and characters, then that system is not a good fit for the setting. If I’m not in the mood for fighting, and I’m usually nod in the mood for that, then D&D becomes an endless slogfest of one fighting encounter after another.
And I am aware that you can roleplay with any system and any setting, regardless of rules, but that only works if the group and GM is willing and able to look and work, beyond the underlying premise of the system\setting.
What I think I want to say with all the above is that I like my RPG experience varied, to learn about, and grow, parts of my character that I do not use regularly in the mundane world, and that using just one system and/or setting feels like too much of a contraint.
Playing new games has only convinced me that 5e is the perfect tabletop gaming system- whoa, put the pitchforks down and let me finish!
5e is the perfect tabletop gaming system FOR ME.
I’ve seen Vampire and Cthulu; I don’t like having my character’s “sanity”/self control determined by a dice roll.
I’ve tried Lancer and it seems okay for mech stuff, but there doesn’t feel like a lot of room for RP stuff.
Fate (specifically Bulldogs) has been a blast, but as much as I like it, it doesn’t feel like a GAME, it feels like guidelines for improv acting skits. It’s like playing Whose Line Is It, but with a plot.
There’s always 3.5e/pathfinder, but I find the number crunching to get in the way from start to finish. For a video game, those extensively detailed numbers can be hidden and left for the computer to process, but even then it’s possible to go too far, and have aspects specified that really need left open so that they can be tailored to the needs of the individual group playing.
4e is even worse, where not only is everything far too numbers heavy, but on top of that everything has been reduced to modular chunks where, despite several different options, their core mechanics all function the same.
5e is everything I want from a tabletop system.
The classes all have variety. They all have archtypes with unique flavor for how they become more powerful, and they can be combined together for even more interesting combinations, all of which can still fit the unique flavors of the parts that comprise them.
The skills are simple but wide reaching. Unlike 3.5, that asks you to individually track every single skill progression at each level, 5e just lets you pick what your skills are and assumes you’ll master them as you get stronger. Background customization allows your skills to represent more than just your class, as it also helps convey your character as an individual; our skills are invariably the result of either necessity or interest.
But more importantly is just that 5e GETS OUT OF THE WAY for things that I don’t want to have to conform to
And there are new options coming out every week. The balance is getting a little wonky, but that’s been present since SCAG. So far WotC has been doing a great job at providing new options that support both individual character ideas as well as enjoyable pop culture (like how people can basically be ironman with the new Armorer subclass)
And honestly, with just a few tweaks, 5e’s rules can be used to play practically EVERYTHING else out there. You might need to add a skill, or tweak a mechanic, or there might be a lot of stuff that just doesn’t get used at all, or needs the flavor modified to fit the new theme, but there really aren’t many limitations.
Even if a new D&D system comes out, I have a feeling 5e(or perhaps 5.5e) will be sticking around a LONG time.
My first impression of 3e was “this actually makes sense and is easy to understand”
Having come from 2e (sort of. I had played the 2e-based computer games “Dark Queen of Krynn” and “Treasures of the Savage Frontier”) whose impenetrable combat system I still have trouble understanding
Pitched Dungeon World instead of D&D: “It’s simpler than D&D, it will take less effort for me to run.”
Pitched Mouse Guard instead of D&D: “You play mice soldiers.” (Everyone likes this idea.)
Wrote a simpler version of Mouse Guard using Pace RPG as a backbone and stripped it down further for Play by Post during the pandemic: “It’s simpler than Mouse Guard, it will take less effort for me to run.”
Was the experiment successful? How’d it go over with the group?
Pedantry: Trademark law, not copyright.
If it’s the name of a product/company it’s always the Trademark. ALWAYS.
Even if the name is somehow under copyright, it’s use as a name in trade (products, companies etc) is still a trademark.
You push up your glasses when you “um actually” me!