Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMThis reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years. I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.
Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing. What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.
Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do. "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme. I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War. Have you considered Exalted? That was a real suggestion.
Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else. Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.
People start defending the nonsensical suggestion. Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything. Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true. That's not what Exalted is written to do. It says so right in the fucking book.
After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game. Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game. In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted. People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that. Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion. I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it. On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do.
Quote from: Aglondir on May 12, 2024, 07:14:20 PMAmazed by the part where he says: If you don't like the Woke agenda, you are untrustworthy, since you agreed to it when you signed up here.
Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 12, 2024, 06:40:08 PMThere's an obscure dead French ttrpg that did it a couple decades ago. It didn't get any traction because this hobby is dominated by an obscene first mover advantage.Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 12, 2024, 09:45:32 AMYou could introduce a flashback mechanic where characters remember living through various historical eras a la Highlander: The Series, allowing you to invent pretentious lore and make it personally relevant to the PCs.Honestly surprised this hasn't already happened.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 12, 2024, 06:58:08 PMThis explains so much of the stupidity in this hobby and is a key reason why I keep giving up on my ideas to make my own. If most "gamers" ignore the rules anyway or buy the books to read shitty microfiction instead of playing, then why should I spend any effort to write functional games or coherent settings? They're brand loyalty cultists who won't buy my work anyway.Quote from: yosemitemike on May 12, 2024, 11:09:06 AMAfter a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game. Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game. In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted. People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that. Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion. I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it. On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do.
If you dig a little deeper, what inevitably emerges is that the person claiming X can do Y is already ignoring many of the rules and actively fudging the ones used. Of course if you do that, you can use almost any system to run almost anything. I mean, Paranoia for a Three Musketeers game probably doesn't work, because the fluff is too disjointed. But as long as the fluff is remotely in the vicinity and can be twisted all out of recognition, then you can do it. Because you aren't really playing X, but some patina of X.
This trend is part of what I mean when I sometimes mention that I'd run Star Wars as a parody game using Toon rules. Because it's the same kind of disjointed nonsense, while at the same time as a parody I could certainly do it. (And most of why I couldn't run it as a serious game is that I can no longer take anything in the Star Wars universe even remotely in the spirit intended, not because of any deficit in the Toon rules for pulling off that gambit.)
Not coincidentally, this is also why some game "designers" aren't. Not in the sense of Gygax avoiding the AD&D rules, but in the sense of the so called designer not even using the rules they are purportedly running, whatever those might be.
Quote from: Anon Adderlan on May 12, 2024, 08:27:36 PMThe trick is these are all blind boosters so they're not going to measure how well this particular sculpt sells but how successful the line in general is, and then brag about how this decision was justified.
Quote from: Aglondir on May 12, 2024, 07:11:43 PMIs that a quote from G-troll? (starting with "I was looking...")