Quote from: RunningLaser;946177Going a little bit further with this, wonder if lack of focus on rpg's also presents a challenge in them gaining traction.  

Yes. Generic rule-sets tend to be less popular. This is why with GURPS, the setting books in total sold much more than the rules books (before 4th ed when they essentially gave up on setting books and tried to thrill the gearheads). With any rpg, the question players always ask is, "But what do we do?" Clashes over what should be done are a leading cause of game disappointment, for example if you try to gun your way through things in playing Call of Cthulhu, or try to have a lengthy and detailed backstory and character concept in AD&D1e. The game has one answer and you are trying to force through another.

With a generic game, the question "but what do we do?" is answered with "anything you want!" But if you can do anything you end up doing nothing.

I say this as someone who has written and sold generic rpgs. But I think mainly of my own game table, where I can supply the setting. Writing it up would be much harder. Rules are easy to write, settings are hard.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;946361Yes. Generic rule-sets tend to be less popular.

Plus there are already bunches of them.  It's hard to convince someone to try a new one with an elevator pitch.  A setting on the other hand can catch someone's attention in a sentence or three.

And I know some people who buy games just to read them with little intention to play them.  They're not gonna do that for a generic system.

Quote from: Skarg;946350As I've written a few times in this thread now, yes there are many people who don't care about realism much, or at least not to GM it. However:

1. This is a thread about realistic rules. Not about most popular rules, or market share, or expected gains for publishing rules.

2. I don't feel that the preferences of people who don't care about realistic rules, are particularly relevant to discussions about realistic games. Ok yes, many players don't think they want realism-focused games, and many might be daunted by unfamiliar concepts that are important to realistic tactical games, such as facing. But so what? I can explain it or run it for them, and if they don't like it, they can play something else, but that doesn't seem really relevant to a discussion of realistic rules. It seems a bit like writing about how many people prefer poker in a thread about chess, or something.

It's part of his ongoing effort to be all cynical and ironic and edgy and shit.

Quote from: Skarg;9463503. Only the GM needs to master the rules. As GM, I have run GURPS with every applicable advanced rule plus more complex/realistic house rules, on a tactical hexmap (often keeping a tactical hexmap on the table even during non-combat situations, to get players used to thinking about where they are and using that for non-combat position-based actions, like who's talking to whom and who's messing about where and when) and run it quickly for players many of whom have little or no knowledge of the GURPS rules, or have never played with me as GM before, or who have no RPG experience at all, even fairly young children, and because I'm handling the detail quickly enough and translating to/from English for them, it works quite well and they have a fun time, and they do use the detail available to them. They get positioning and facing and line of sight right away.

Shrug.  I can keep track of stuff like that in my head, and prefer to.  I like me some miniatures games just fine but I prefer "theater of the mind" for RPGs.  Of course if you don't have a really solid basis in this sort of thing it can be easier to use the map and counters.  I find that my players nowadays are mostly totally ignorant of even such simple things as spearmen in a second rank so I have to explain it explicitly to them anyway.

And much as I've had fun with TFT, now that my local TFT ref has a group of 8 to 10 playing at a time I just groan when he clears off the table and unrolls the damn hex map because it means the RPG is done for the night, and probably the next session too.  TFT works great for small groups but if you want to do the typical "9 to 12 PCs and henchmen against a gang of 20 orcs," I strongly suggest you use OD&D instead where the battle will take about 10 minutes.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;946361I say this as someone who has written and sold generic rpgs. But I think mainly of my own game table, where I can supply the setting. Writing it up would be much harder. Rules are easy to write, settings are hard.

For some people, yes.  Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were both people who liked making up setting elements and thought that it was the main part of the fun.  This had a huge impact on how OD&D was presented, possibly as much as the fact that they were both members of the Castle and Crusade Society did.  (Our motto: Take a bunch of wargamers, give them lands, castles, treasures, and armies, and you WILL get wars.  There isn't anything written about what to do after each PC has built their own stronghold because all the guys Dave and Gary played with would proceed to happily wage war on each other with no referee intervention.)

I mean for publication. Settings are easy to do for your game group, I mean you can make 90% of it up as you go along. But writing things up so they're clear and usable for someone else - that's hard.

Quote from: nDervish;946308Interesting.  My take is pretty much exactly the opposite - I loathe exception-based rule systems.  They make me feel like I'm standing on a pile of quicksand, never knowing whether someone else it going to bring up an exception that I forgot about, unless I take the time to learn the effects of every Feat, Talent, Skill, etc. that's potentially available.

As a statement of preference the above is a pretty darn good reason not to like that type of design. However what I was talking is people learning a game. Exception based design work better for people to learn how to play tactically detailed games compare to traditional approach of core rules with expansions. Note this observation has little to do whether people like a particular design. Just because a game is easier to learn doesn't mean it is easier to like.

Quote from: Cave Bear;945619How would you define a realistic rule in the context of tabletop roleplaying games? And why are realistic rules important?

Realism is a funny thing. Not all of reality is desirable, after all. Like, combat realism? Few games even try that. Song of Swords kind of does, and to be fair it's pretty awesome, but even then a lot of people play without the sepsis rules, because winning a fight and then dying afterward is fun only for a very specific mindset. And realism in magic means no magic at all. I think it's more important to have magic that has logical rules to it, and is relatively limited in scope. Even in very supernatural worlds, it's better if supernatural elements aren't just "it's magic so it works". And, this isn't a mechanics thing but a setting thing, but it's a good idea to figure out what the ramifications of that would be.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;946366I mean for publication. Settings are easy to do for your game group, I mean you can make 90% of it up as you go along. But writing things up so they're clear and usable for someone else - that's hard.

It is, super hard. I tried it around the turn of the decade, ended up abandoning it in favor of more fruitful projects.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;946366I mean for publication. Settings are easy to do for your game group, I mean you can make 90% of it up as you go along. But writing things up so they're clear and usable for someone else - that's hard.

I'd agree with that.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;946334Also - why does it bother you so much if someone pulls out a feat/spell which you didn't know about?

I GM more-or-less exclusively and, as the GM, I see it as my responsibility to know the system at least as well as anyone else at the table does.

If I were a player, then it wouldn't particularly bother me if someone else pulled out a rule I was unfamiliar with, but I prefer not to sit on that side of the screen.

Quote from: Cruxador;946391Realism is a funny thing. Not all of reality is desirable, after all. Like, combat realism? Few games even try that. Song of Swords kind of does, and to be fair it's pretty awesome, but even then a lot of people play without the sepsis rules, because winning a fight and then dying afterward is fun only for a very specific mindset.

And realism in magic means no magic at all. I think it's more important to have magic that has logical rules to it, and is relatively limited in scope. Even in very supernatural worlds, it's better if supernatural elements aren't just "it's magic so it works". And, this isn't a mechanics thing but a setting thing, but it's a good idea to figure out what the ramifications of that would be.

I don´t see this as a problem that people interested in realism usually have, unlesss they are striving for a certain theme.
The point is:
1) to explicitly state the deviations you do and how they work, so that everyone can consider/work with it .
2) consider these deviations with the rest of your system/setting, so that what builds on the deviation keeps it inner logic and thus gameablility.

And magic is just a very prominent case of this.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;946361Yes. Generic rule-sets tend to be less popular. This is why with GURPS, the setting books in total sold much more than the rules books (before 4th ed when they essentially gave up on setting books and tried to thrill the gearheads). With any rpg, the question players always ask is, "But what do we do?" Clashes over what should be done are a leading cause of game disappointment, for example if you try to gun your way through things in playing Call of Cthulhu, or try to have a lengthy and detailed backstory and character concept in AD&D1e. The game has one answer and you are trying to force through another.

With a generic game, the question "but what do we do?" is answered with "anything you want!" But if you can do anything you end up doing nothing.

I say this as someone who has written and sold generic rpgs. But I think mainly of my own game table, where I can supply the setting. Writing it up would be much harder. Rules are easy to write, settings are hard.

You wrote, "But if you can do anything you end up doing nothing." However, it doesn't sound like you have that problem yourself (or have you?) I and the people I have played with generally haven't had that problem. Because as you say, our GMs provide settings and circumstances, and our players also tend to be creative and interested enough to come up with things to do without needing to be artificially pollinated with adventure seeds or dragged around by adventure hooks.

Of course there are many players who aren't like that, especially at first, and for them there should be good ready-to-play materials. It seems to me though that such could be provided for a generic system - they just often aren't.

I've always thought GURPS made a marketing mistake by not providing more ready-to-play content early on. The second GURPS title, Orcslayer, was great because it was ready for immediate action. It had full battle maps and combat stats for everything, complete travel rules - everything for several days of gaming with near-zero GM prep required. Then they did almost nothing like that again for years and years, IIRC. The settings books (with a few exceptions) were also just starting points for developing settings - they weren't developed settings - they mainly talked about what the setting would be like, providing some minimal mechanics for assorted things, a few sample characters, etc. They were like "here's the start of your research on how to create a setting in this style"... or at least that's how it seemed to me compared to the level of prep I do. I could I suppose half-ass improv a campaign using one of those worldbooks, but really I'd want to do tons more world building before I'd run a game, of which the worldbook would only give me a start on the research. Still would be really useful and/or interesting, except I pretty much never want to game in most of the worldbook settings they published anyway. Didn't stop me from buying nearly my own weight in GURPS worldbooks, but I was usually disappointed because I was hoping for more crunch - rules and stats for stuff I could incorporate into my own worlds.

I absolutely love the 3rd edition GURPs supplements. On the average (with a few noteable exceptions), they were absolutely fantastic resources.

I don't know what the fuck they were thinking abandoning that for 4th edition. It's sad, they were a staple of the hobby for such a long time.

I believe the thinking went, "Mmm, Munchkin money...."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;946364...
Shrug.  I can keep track of stuff like that in my head, and prefer to.  I like me some miniatures games just fine but I prefer "theater of the mind" for RPGs.  Of course if you don't have a really solid basis in this sort of thing it can be easier to use the map and counters.  I find that my players nowadays are mostly totally ignorant of even such simple things as spearmen in a second rank so I have to explain it explicitly to them anyway.

Ok. I mentioned maps here for the level of stuff involved still not being too crunchy for players.

QuoteAnd much as I've had fun with TFT, now that my local TFT ref has a group of 8 to 10 playing at a time I just groan when he clears off the table and unrolls the damn hex map because it means the RPG is done for the night, and probably the next session too.  TFT works great for small groups but if you want to do the typical "9 to 12 PCs and henchmen against a gang of 20 orcs," I strongly suggest you use OD&D instead where the battle will take about 10 minutes.

Hmm. 9-12 vs 20 doesn't take all that long for me, especially in TFT, but ok. Does he wait for each player to think about their actions, or make them pretty much say what they're doing when their turn comes up?

Quote from: Tristram Evans;946456I absolutely love the 3rd edition GURPs supplements. On the average (with a few noteable exceptions), they were absolutely fantastic resources.

I don't know what the fuck they were thinking abandoning that for 4th edition. It's sad, they were a staple of the hobby for such a long time.

Hmm. Yeah, well I have sort of loved having a wall of GURPS worldbooks on so many topics. And bits here and there were useful to me, even outside gaming contexts. But I've only extremely rarely set a game in one of their settings, or in any other published setting (except the ITL sample map which I built my first world around). The books I heavily used weren't worldbooks but mainly rules expansions or setting/era-type expansions: Magic, High Tech, Ultra Tech, Low Tech, Martial Arts, Vehicles, Space, Bestiary, Compendium I & 2. I actually like the 4e books I've seen (more than I like the 4e Basic Set, which I have issues with) because they seem crunchier/meatier. Although I kind of hate some of the styles adopted in the later books, as I find it mostly irrelevant how many character points things are assessed at, and the template format seems a bit ugly and hard to read. But I also haven't bought very many of them because they're expensive hardbacks with glossy page art, and at this point I don't really feel the need for them. My research reading list is growing faster than my methodical reading rate, especially with people here mentioning other game systems that might have interesting things to check out. (Sepsis rules? hmm... )