RPGs
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Friday, March 25 2005 04:26
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The way I see it, if a game is best played by selectively ignoring the rules, it has too many rules. To elaborate, to the degree that rules-lawyering is possible within a system, some players will take advantage of it. Given that rules exist, players are well within their rights to insist that they be applied, and applied consistently; therefore, sometimes it is best for rules to not exist. A purely arbitrary decision can't be argued with, and in some cases that's a very good thing. [ Friday, March 25, 2005 04:32: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- My BoE Page Bandwagons are fun! Roots Hunted! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4592
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written Friday, March 25 2005 12:30
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Rules are guidelines which exist, I think, in order to simplify, or simulate, certain aspects of reality. They also attempt to simulate the imperceptible forces of reality in a created world. Things like AD&D and GURPS are really table oriented. Other games are more loose. The Role Playing Gameworld is huge. Well "is" is not longer applicable, perhaps. The way I remember it at least. As I mentioned in a previous post, some games are diceless. Vampire is pretty much a diceless system. Amber is completely diceless. In my experience, Amber was my favorite. I loved the book, we were a tight group of friends and we worked well together. But I've also played in GURPS campaigns that were wonderful. A lot depends on the group you play in. A lot depends on your tastes too. These days, maybe because I've been around aq few times, I'm more inclined to do away with rule books. I tend to play games that come out of my head as well as what the players contribute. In the end out of that chaos some order comes and we enjoy ourselves. Sometimes we use dice, mostly for fighting, but there are times we don't use them either. We trust each other, I suppose. From what I've seen is that the tendency these days is to make these games less number crunching than before. Many of the modern RP systems have moved towards the d20 system which is supposed to be more friendly and easy to grasp. For what's worth, my favorite system of the dice related RPs was Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu." the d100 version. I prefer to use percentage for things (this means that the decisions are arbitrary by the DM, but such is the case and a good DM will try to be fair). Some aspects of that system were not the greatest, but that's what house rules exist for. I find it nice that one can adapt the rules of something. -------------------- quote:Random Jack Vance Quote Manual Generator Apparatus (Cugel's Saga) Posts: 604 | Registered: Sunday, June 20 2004 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, March 25 2005 13:27
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Up to a point I think Custer has a point, but, well, it seems overblown. If you want to make up your own world and campaign, with the total flexibility involved in having a live gamemaster instead of a program, I think you're stuck with tabletop RPGs. Heavy as the labor is in making up a world, a plot, and a lot of NPCs, having to generate good 3D graphics for all of it too requires a corporation. What does make sense these days is ditching any of the more complicated tables and die rolls, in favor of scripts on your laptop. If you're up to it you can also show some illustrations on the screen. But some die rolling might still be better to keep. If your character's life is at stake, you want to have their fate in your own hands, literally. Lots of cumbersome rules can be bad, if they get in the way of what you're trying to do. It's not like CRPGs don't have rules, though; they're just hidden. Back when I was doing these games I preferred the other extreme, not of hiding the rules away, but of making my own rules, tailored to my world. Inventing rules that would provide the kind of game I wanted was half the fun. This is also something you can't really do with CRPGs, unless you build your own engines. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |