What would a new tabletop RPG need to do in order to impress you? Impress your group?
Be crunchier than peanut brittle, yet have enough ties to it's core mechanic to be easy to teach. Mechanical depth without mechanical breadth. It needs to be a small deep lake, not a wide shallow one.
Not bandwagon on some other popular trend (i.e. no OSR, no ______-world, no "fixing" some personal minor issue with whatever edition of D&D, no trying to make a tabletop version of some popular video game or movie, no calling it rules-light in an attempt to pass off your total lack of creative mechanics or game design knowledge as an actual feature, etc...)
>>43038198
How do you feel about two different teirs of systems in the same game? A basic way and a intricate way, and a GM our group decides which version to use either for the whole thing or for individual parts?
>impress you?
Not a whole lot, I'm a system whore, especially for modern/sci-fi stuff; you could throw yet another FUDGE rehash at me and I'd take a look at it.
>impress your group?
I'll get back to you on that one once they try something that isn't Star Wars.
>>43038138
This
>>43038198
as well as being classless.
>>43038788
What's your favorite method of character gen? Pick from lists, combine elements, point buy, etc?
>>43038138
Make the players roleplay without forcing them to roleplay.
>>43038198
>>43038307
Have you heard the good word of the Cypher System today?
>>43038198
Can you give me some examples of what'd you'd consider those two extremes to be?
>>43041558
Not him, but I can give an example: In 4e, the cyclops has an ability called evil eye. That's not a problem in itself, the problem is that rather than have a an evil eye ability that you could reference, each type of cyclops has a different evil eye ability with little in common besides being called 'evil eye.' One grants a free basic melee attack; another grants a bonus to ranged attacks; another lets the cyclops shift 2 squares instead of 1; another applies a penalty to a target's speed; and so forth.
That's a lot mechanics, but you're not really getting anything for them, and it adds a hell of a lot of confusion. They could have had a base evil eye ability that they referenced with minor changes which would have enriched the game rather than bogged it down, and the players/characters could have some concept of what 'evil eye' actually was and did.
>>43040663
No. What is this Cypher System?
>>43041903
Pretty sure this is just viral advertisement but haha backfire now its piracy bitch!
http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1444695405
I really want to see more games follow along the same lines as Legends of the Wulin, in that it's a mechanically heavy system yet is also very narrative focused.
I really love that combination. I want to see it applied to more styles and genres of game. I'm bored of dull, crunch heavy days or ultra light narrativist games which have so few rules they barely exist. Getting the best of both worlds is just wonderful, but there are so few games which have even explored that design space.
>>43041903
It's the first system I could think of that fits all of the above.
It's pretty goddamn well made, kind of a shame there's only one good setting for it and it's not the one most people associate with it.
>>43041558
Pathfinder and Eclipse Phase are wide and shallow.
I have yet to find a game that pleases me on the opposite extreme.
>>43042097
>pretending to combat shilling while spreading the good word.
God bless.
>>43042343
What would you consider a deep system? Either wide or relatively narrow.
>>43038884
You'd need a point buy system AND a random roll "life path" system, a "4d6, discard lowest" random roll system suits some sorts of games as tertiary option but not others.
>>43042344
offering a $20 PDF for free
>>43042452
Yes? People need to read good things and improve their lives.
Thank you ask for your replies. This is a polite bump.
It'd need a skill system built with the same lavish attention to detail given to most games' combat systems. I'd want to be able to have crafting-focused sessions or overland travel-focused sessions or archive delving-focused sessions in the same way that you can have combat-focused sessions or social-focused sessions and have my group find them exciting enough to post shitty greentexts about them afterward.
A sweet combat meta that doesn't need more than a couple pages to explain
>>43043007
Shit, have you tried From another time, another land?
It's got deep, lavish attention to detail in every system no matter how obscure.
It also inspires shitty green texts, in my experience.
>>43042126
This. Above all else, I look for systems that actually have crunch that is worth a shit and have mechanics that help emphasize character traits.
>>43042126
If GNS theory did any good in shining light on different creative agendas and inspired people to design games to highlight them, it was an utter fucking fuckup when it claimed that they were mutually exclusive.
My current obsession, the Japanese game Shinobigami, weds an almost entirely player-focused scene building system (basically, once the GM designs the basic outline of a scenario, he has pretty much no input in how the players approach it) with mechanically driven objectives and a beautiful and option-rich combat system that satisfies that itch so so good. To echo OP's wording, I don't think I've ever been more "impressed" with a game, and I hope we see more designers in the future acknowledging that these different elements can coexist in the same game without being "incoherent."
>>43043501
That sounds really interesting. Got a link to a translation, or is it one of the games still stuck in moonrune?
>>43043555
You can get the same thing out of Tenra Bansho Zero.
and that's definitely translated.
Good art, good organization of rules and fluff, uncomplicated system that lets players do things without rolling bucket-fulls of dice or consulting a table or doing complex math, and maybe a fun premise wedged in there somewhere.
>>43043686
I love the theme, style and setting of TBZ, but I found the combat system a little underwhelming. I love a lot of the concepts, like wounds adding dice or the dead box, but there seemed like a lack of meaningful choice and mechanical interaction during fights.
>>43038138
To impress me and my group?
Make ample use of d12s and d16s
>>43043742
Has anyone ever mentioned the Cypher System to you?
It's basically the definition of meaningful choice, you have all the choice in enhancing every roll.
Though a lot of people don't like that it emulates gradual exhaustion instead of 100% to dead.
Mechanical interaction, do you mean like.. having pointless rules just to have pointless rules?
Try Infinity, they're making an RPG right now and we have a /tg/ thread on it.
Dwarf Fortress is a video game designed with the express purpose of establishing a virtual environment with deep rules providing fertile ground for tremendous emergent complexity in both narrative and gameplay.
I want to be able to take a similar focus on emergence to the tabletop.
>>43042516
>>43042452
>>43042344
>>43042097
>>43041903
>>43040663
Thanks for sharing. I got all excited and immediately got sad when I saw it was Monte Cook's "spend 1 point to lower your DC so that you succeed your attempt at not losing 1 point" system. I will say the generic does look a bit better than numenera, though, which isn't saying much because it's what left the salty taste in my mouth.
>>43041725
You just helped me refine my shitty brew with your input, for what it's worth.
bump
>>43044566
No tabletop game can provide that through its rules, only through a good GM.
A tabletop game with rules as deep and complex as Dwarf Fortress would be unplayable.
>>43038510
DnD tried that like 30 years ago. Basic D&D was relatively popular but eventually Advanced won out and having two versions became pointless.
>>43049714
BD&D and AD&D were fairly common and equal at one point, it was 2e AD&D that killed off BD&D in the end during the early edition wars.
4e's "essential" range was supposed to be another sort of simplified pseudo-BD&D but it was too much of a clusterfuck and hated by EVERYONE.
>>43046678
Damn those thunder thigh bones are giving me achubby
>>43049018
I hear Shadowrun 3E did a decently good job of it.
>>43038138
Make exclusive rules for a cool setting that are both easy to understand as well as interesting enough to support lots of different groups and play styles.
So basically like what Savage Worlds already does, but with a lot more interesting modules.
>>43041903
It's Monte Cuck crap. No one plays it except leftover 3.5 shills.
>>43042126
>mechanically heavy system yet is also very narrative focused.
You mean, FATE?
Nah, sorry. FATE already proved that when devs get bored with a good concept they add so much bloat to it that it turns into utter shite.
>>43038138
What impresses me is a system that encourages you to approach the way you think about & play the game in a totally new context.
FATE would be one good example, but the system that exemplifies this most to me is Hillfolk. Even though I've only gotten to run it once, just reading the book seriously changed the way I think about all the games I GM now. That's what I like to see: books that give you inspiring ideas and new perspectives that you can apply to your RPG experience as a whole.
A horrifyingly large and detailed Bestiary. I'm talking stats for everything ranging from Lice to Sauropods. Multiple volumes, stats everything!
>>43052347
>Hillfolk
You've caught my interest. Go into detail, or post it or something
>>43052496
Hillfolk is a game about dramatic storytelling. What it tries to do is take the structure of other dramatic media (television, film, etc.) and translate that onto the tabletop.
The mechanics focus almost exclusively on character interaction, but not in the way that games like Burning Wheel or ASoIaF turn social conflicts into a form of combat. There's no rolling involved, you simply roleplay. But the outcome of any given roleplaying scene awards "Drama Tokens" to the LOSER (the person who doesn't get what they want / gives in to what the other person wants) which can be spent to influence future interactions. At their strongest, Drama Tokens can be used to force another character to make some sort of concession to you in a roleplaying scene—so, if you resist the urge to dig in your heels and not change your mind in early scenes, you get leverage to make things go your way in later scenes that you think are more important to you.
I'm not sure if I've done a very good job explaining it, so I totally encourage you to take a look at the book yourself. The main takeaway is that the structure of the game shifts the focus not just toward having more character interaction, but to thinking about WHY and HOW those interactions play out. The emotions of the characters and the drama that results from those emotions coming into conflict take center stage in a way you don't always see playing other RPGs. It's really damn cool.
>>43051728
>FATE
>Mechanicaly heavy
wut?
>>43042343
How about the Riddle of Steel?
It's basically a dueling system with bits on top.
For me, it would need to have something that I could point to and say, "Look at this neat thing they do." It doesn't have to be revolutionary or completely new, just at least one thing that really catches my eye.
>Shadowrun - It's Earthdawn but cyberpunk. Don't you wanna play a chromed-up ork?
>4E - It's Final Fantasy Tactics, the RPG
>Don't Rest Your Head - Insomniac superheroes fighting off punny nightmares and exhaustion
On a related note...
>What would an RPG sourcebook need to do in order to impress you? Impress your group?
To impress me, I'd want a game that trims the rules down to an absolute minimum without degenerating into pure abstraction. The more mechanics you can squeeze into a similar paradigm so that I don't have to be looking things up, the better, so long a the math behind it is decent.
I'm not a fan of heavy crunch because I think that most things are simply not all that important. What is important is to be giving players interesting choices and encouraging creative play. All a system really needs for this is a way to track relative competence at things, a way to measure odds of success, a way for characters to manipulate those odds, an RNG system for unpredictable outcomes, and player motivation to then act on the results of RNG. This is what keeps it a game and not interactive storytelling.
>>43053418
>4E - It's Final Fantasy Tactics, the RPG
you fuckin moron
that is the dumbest worst wrongest thing i've ever seen on tg
>>43053604
Sounds like you're describing FATE to me.
>>43053706
Come on man, this is literally the reason I ran a 4e game. It's hardly an insult.
>>43053418
>What would an RPG sourcebook need to do in order to impress you? Impress your group?
I know this is a very vague answer, but I like stuff that inspires me. Fluff that grips me like a typical page-turner novel, crunch that immediately makes me want to go and build a character around it. It's hard for me to say what qualities something has to have to inspire those feelings, though. Stuff that's "novel" (at least for its system) and adds a new kind of dimension to play or to the world, rather than just an arms race of special abilities that obsolete the basic book ones or "our elves are different" fluff.
>>43053905
Nah, that's actually super helpful and reassures me that mine are both in the right direction.
Ultimately, it sounds like you just want something that actually promotes a different experience than what the core ruleset provides for by itself. Instead of just Core Material But Better which a lot of sourcebooks fall into.
Like the Victorian supplements for Vampire and Changeling in WoD, or the Cerulean Seas or DSP's Psionics for Pathfinder.
>>43053706
Dat butt frustration doe. That reason alone is what sold my party on the game, and it's my favorite edition of DnD mostly for that reason.
>>43038138
simplicity with plenty of customization
>>43053710
Mm, maybe. I think Fate has its own fair share of complexity for its own sake. Fate works hard to be a set of rules focused on the narrative. It has a lot of terms and concepts unique to itself, which is neat, but also an extra effort to really pick up and appreciate.
>>43038138
player races that go beyond
>a human that is blue and kind of strong
or
>an elf but red and psychic
shit man
where's my crab-people or nebulae with legs
>>43042344
Have you heard the good word about how the shilling is terrible? Switch to Euros now!
