Last month I presented my perspectives on four different takes on roleplaying – simulationist, narrativist, gamist and dramatic or SNGD – and how they can work as guidelines to RPG design. Today I'll apply those takes to a set of games chosen either because: They influence my perspectives on rpg design; or they have something that really calls for the application of the SNGD concepts. While reading keep in mind that the historical tidbits on the games have been collected here and there. They may not be completely accurate and I don't have references to sustain them. If they are wrong be welcome to correct it. The games are presented by alphabetical order:
D&D 3rd ed.. I'm far from being a fan of D&D3 (just check my RPGnet review if you have any doubt) but if there is one thing about the game that I never had problems with is the way it handles Hit Points. This is a hot topic and a lot of people complain about it, a complaint that stems from a simulationist perspective, and one that fails to notice that D&D has no claims to be a realist game.
Complainers should read Jonathan Tweet's article where he explains the mindset behind the HP rules in D&D 3rd ed. I must say that this article is one of my personal references in terms of RPG design thinking. We can go directly to the conclusion: "I like hit points because they allow players to manage the risks they're willing to take. It gives players an unrealistic level of control over their characters' fates, but that's what you want for a game that expects someone to survive dozens and dozens of hard-fought, toe-to-toe battles."
We can as paraphrase this in the following terms: D&D is a game; make this "Game" with a capital "G"; in D&D gamism takes it over any other considerations. I can find nothing wrong with this approach. (This is not to say that I subscribe to Jonathan's perspective on HPs but that's another issue altogether.)
HeroQuest. I suppose I don't need to explain that HeroQuest is an RPG by Robin D. Laws based on Greg Stafford's Glorantha. I'm pointing to this game because it has an interesting tie between setting and rules. Glorantha was created by Greg for no other purpose than because he wanted to do so. In other words, it was not to produce a particular output (novel, cartoon, movie, you name it). If I'm not wrong the first presentation of Glorantha to a wider audience was the boardgame White Bear and Red Moon (later re-named Dragon Pass). After that came its first RPG, RuneQuest (see below). Greg was not satisfied with this game and for more than 20 years longed for a rpg that would match his vision of Glorantha. In my terminology, the RPGs used with his setting (not only RuneQuest but also D&D, Pendragon and possibly many more) did not simulate it well enough. Eventually he hired Robin to design a new Gloranthan rpg and the result was HeroQuest (originaly named Hero Wars).
Finally Greg was happy, he had a ruleset that provided an access to his Glorantha through roleplaying with no simulationist problems. On the other hand, there were players that had only accessed Glorantha through the source books produced for RuneQuest and for whom the tie between setting and rules was just fine in this game. They were not happy with HeroQuest because it did not simulate well enough their Glorantha ... The debate still goes on with the ongoing reprints of the RQ2 and RQ3 sourcebooks and the coming of RQ4 by Moongoose. Probably the debate will never fade with two visions of Glorantha living side by side.
Prince Valiant. I guess Greg Stafford will not be displeased if I confide what he told me through email: He considers Prince Valiant to be his most accomplished game. I completely agree, as my review of the game suggests. Prince Valiant is a simulationist delight. The data on the setting and the complexity of the rules just match the "crunchiness" of the original graphic novels. Then there are the small little rules like the "no death" one that perfectly recreate the stories in RPG terms. A good deal of the gamebook is dedicated to narrativist and dramatic guidelines of very high quality. This is a game that excels at all the four SNGD dimensions.
RuneQuest. As I mentionned above, RuneQuest was the first published rpg set on Glorantha. I mentioned above that Greg Stafford, the creator of this fictional world, was not happy with RQ for simulationist reasons: RQ did not represent well Glorantha as he envisioned. This was actually apparent for anyone that owned both RQ and the boardgame Dragon Pass. Part of the reason is that the core RQ system was not designed for Glorantha; instead it was designed as a generic fantasy game and next adapted to that particular game world.
Most RQ players would consider that the game was fairly good at simulating real world combat, at least the CSKA variant with which the game designers were involved. The game also had a very good take on narrativism with its examples of play and the stories that accompanied the presentation of the rules. (RuneQuest III detached itself from Glorantha and addressed the issues of setting simulation by providing as the default setting an alternate Earth based on real world Dark Ages.)
Skyrealms of Jorune. One of the holy grails of RPG design is a game where characters are described with text descriptors instead of numbers. It's a hard take. Most often than not the textual descriptors just become a piece of fluff atached to the numbers. The reason is simple: When things get tough what matters are the numbers not the text since it's the former that are fed into the mechanics. Still there's a game where the words contribute to the gaming: Skyrealms of Jorune.
To understand why we have to remember that most games have a one-to-one relationship between text and numbers (a certain level of ability is defined with an expression – say, "veteran" – and a number). SRJ is different. In this game there are some twelve levels of ability, each with a corresponding numeric value. These levels are agregated to four qualitative levels, each including two or three numeric levels, and each with its own descriptor.
I really like this. It brings narrativism into the picture – the verbal descriptors – and drama with it. You see, what you know is that your adversary is, for instance, a "master". But does he have a low level of mastery or a high level of mastery? Is he level 9 or level 12? This simple twist allows the GM to keep things narrativist while not sacrificing the required crunch. Simple and effective.
Sorcerer. How does a game by the guru of GNS (Ron Edwards, if you have any doubts) rate in my SGND variant classification? Not too well, I'm afraid. It starts with a simulationist mismatch. Simulationist mismatch, said I? How come if Sorcerer is not based in a specific setting? Simple, the book Sorcerer presents its own setting of inspiration, a setting that can be detached from the RPG Sorcerer presented in that same book. The RPG just does not simulate the setting that well.
According to the setting sorcerers are few (no more than 100 worldwide) and seldom interact among themselves, but according to the RPG these guys keep bouncing onto each other. Not very consistent.
If played by the book, Sorcerer also has gamist problems. PCs are mostly the pawns of their demons ... which are controlled by the GM. On the other hand, for a game by the Pope of narrativism Sorcerer is too much focused on those nasty little gamist devils like dice mechanics. These are much more preeminent than, you know, playing characters or coming out with good narratives.
Finally, there's almost no real support for drama.
Mind you, this is not to say that Sorcerer is a bad game, it is not (the setting is ok and has no claim for originality; the system is an expansion of Prince Valiant with some nice tweaks). It just does not live to the purposed goals of its game design amply described in the gamebook itself.
Sorcerer plus Sorcerer & Sword. I got Sorcerer because of Sorcerer and Sword. All I can say is that S&S does not improve on Sorcerer, specially because it fails in the simulationist front.
For a start, S&S makes wrong assumptions about how to write S&S fiction: whether the writer has from the outset a detailed plan of his S&S fictional world, or instead lays it down as he develops his fiction is irrelevant when assessing the quality of his output. In any case, designing a RPG setting is different from writing fiction, what works for the latter may not work for the former.
Another problem I have with S&S concerns the adequacy of the game lingo inherited from Sorcerer when applied to the S&S genre. In my opinion it does not work. Ron should have changed the names of the descriptors, etc. Once more, this is a simulationist failure. In Sorcerer the weight is put heavily on the demons but this is not something that goes well with the S&S genre.
And like Sorcerer the S&S book has scarce support for narration or drama. Once more, this is not to say that Sorcerer & Sword is a useless book, on the contrary, it has some nice ideas about the S&S genre and how to roleplay it. These ideas are just not enough to make it an accomplished work.
Te Deum pour un massacre. The most outstanding thing about this game is the character creation rules. They present the player with a highly detailed life-path that leads him from infancy to adultood. It is a tool that excels at all levels: it is a simulationist dream given the level and quality of historical detail; it provides a rich personal story for the character, a story that just begs to be continued through play; it also provides balanced stats to fuel the system's side of the game; finally, it includes plenty of little details that bring forward the drama of the times and individuals (for instance, did that old friend of your childood turn into a loyal Huguenot or into a damn' Papiste?). In Te Deum you don't create a character on the fly, but then you also know that he will be with you for a long time. Required reading for life-path designers (and not knowning French is no excuse to miss it).
Toon. Ah, Toon. I'm still undecided if Toon is or is not the best RPG ever, at least from my very narrow perspective. At least it is second to none. It has it all: Perfect simulationism (the "Illogical Logic" rule is an exemple of RPG design at its best); a simple, playable ruleset that provides a game experience that matches the setting; plenty of materials to help the GM and the players play stories worthy of any Hanna & Barbera cartoon; endless tools to put players in character and help them in bringing out all the drama and feel of a Tom & Jerry. Every rule helps in bringing the setting alive, every bit of text has a purpose for gaming. Yes, Toon is very hard to play but that's not because of the game resources, instead it's because cartoons are really hard to roleplay.
Tribe 8. I love this game, I really do. I'm talking about the first edition, by the way. The most outstanding characteristic of the Tribe 8 gamebook is the almost perfect way it combines narrativism with gamism in the way it presents the data on the game world in subjective terms, thus putting the reader in the toes of a character right away. The only reason why the T8 gamebook is not perfect is because the character creation rules come after the setting data. In my opinion the character creation crunch could be presented as the setting fluff unfolds tying both even more strongly. Still, this is a book where the reader can do the matching between fluff and crunch seemlessly. Here narrativism really relates to gaming.
The games just presented catched my imagination either positively or negatively by the way they bring forward the importance of some or all of the SNGD concepts. They will inspire the way I take those concepts into consideration while designing Rough Quests.
