Quote from: BalbinusSo, atmosphere, detail, evocative settings, clunky or odd mechanics, these are things I tend to associate with French rpgs.

I would say that is generally true.

Also, the French market tends to value published adventures and deep game lines. A core book without adventures is seen as more of a sin than it would be in the US market.

If you gave the average French gamer a kickass, concise game that is open-ended, clearly written, evocative and smooth in play but has no adventures in it and has no supplements, he wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it.

Again, these aren't hard rules. But there's definitly a trend in that market to spell things out and for gamers to stick to "the published line" when gaming. That trend is also present in the US but seems like an epidemic in France.

You know, I only played the exception, Qin, but I'm pretty tempted to check out those games. They sound like the kind of game I like to play, and more importantly, like the kind of game I like to run. Most rulesets are too complicated for me, anyway. Ask my group, I tend to blow the maths more often than not, and more often than not it is NOT in my favour.
Oh, and BTW, Pierce, how do you juggle 6 NPCs and 5 PCs mechanically? C'mon. Same way you manage with the 11 NPCs... wing it. You can do it with NPCs because the players aren't seeing the numbers, so if they can't see the ir characters' either, what's the problem?

Quote from: Consonant DudeIf you gave the average French gamer a kickass, concise game that is open-ended, clearly written, evocative and smooth in play but has no adventures in it and has no supplements, he wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it.

Again, these aren't hard rules. But there's definitly a trend in that market to spell things out and for gamers to stick to "the published line" when gaming. That trend is also present in the US but seems like an epidemic in France.

I've never witnessed that, but I'm not talking for the general public either, just from personal experience.

Qin is indeed very good. And not only mechanically. It really shines in its art and over all style and so does its setting info. Maybe I am bit French like, but I miss some cool adventures for Qin, because it would deserve them. Luckily, I am not the DM in this case so I consume not produce this time, but nevertheless I still miss adventures.

Quote from: Consonant DudeIf you gave the average French gamer a kickass, concise game that is open-ended, clearly written, evocative and smooth in play but has no adventures in it and has no supplements, he wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it.

Again, these aren't hard rules. But there's definitly a trend in that market to spell things out and for gamers to stick to "the published line" when gaming. That trend is also present in the US but seems like an epidemic in France.

I am also not sure if this is true.

Take for instance SimulacreS. That game went through five or six editions without nary a supplement at all. (Granted, the first three editions must have been on a fanzine level before Casus Belli polished the thing and published it as Hors Série #2 as a special edition of the regular magazine.)

After that the game saw thematically specialized editions (think: GURPS supplements with all the basic rules) - as a voodoo pirate setting (more than a decade before 50 Fathoms and Pirates of the Carribean), a cyberpunk game, a Jules Verne-ian gaslight punk game, a fantasy game... but apart from a two-page department in Casus Belli the game simply didn't have modules or supplements, and no official storyline whatsoever.

(And if I remember correctly it had some kind of free license attached to it? I don't know what kind of publications happened on the grass roots fanzine level.)


What I learned of a French gamer was that in the early nineties the market was divided between players of Nephilim and INV/MV, in a similar way that  German gamers played either D&D or DSA, or US gamers preferred either D&D or RQ (but I don't know if that dichotomy was equally apparent and defining in US scene).
That, and that almost no one played Nephilim as the serious Umberto Eco-like setting the designers had envisioned. Nephilim was used as a occult superhero game.