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systems
I’m not a big fan of the ‘each to his own’ and ‘fine if you’re into it’ chat about RPG systems. Even if RPGs were like art, artistic taste does not, as so many people have claimed, vary so much from person to person, nor lack in objective criteria. Insofar as a painting is trying to do something, it can be better or worse at it, and RPG systems are most certainly trying to do something.
Consider that an RPG’s system can be the difference between twenty minutes of exciting combat, and three hours of combat where people are looking up tables and abilities. Sure, those tables and abilities may buy players more options and options are good, but the price isn't necessarily worth the goods, nor do the goods necessarily have to cost those four hours of table-faff. I propose that we can have a good idea of just how efficient a game is, which might give us an idea of where we should be aiming at.
Time and options are my main metrics – time spent in resolving actions, time creating characters; these are the costs which we bear, not a matter of taste and not something anyone craves. Options are the bread and butter of RPGs, or they should be. Less faff-time and more options are what make an RPG better or worse than its otherwise fungible peers.
Systems can be boiled down to sparse handful of tasks – results, variables which affect those results and system pairing, or mapping between, variables and results. In short: input, output, and method.
Results for systems are not the same as game results. When a player wants to smash down a door, the in-story result is that the door is smashed or not smashed. The system's result is 'yes' or 'no'. When a player wants her bard to calm the tavern, and all sing a gentle song together, the story's result might be a tavern full of Silent Night, but the system results from D20 are either 'yes', or 'no', while the Storyteller system has results ranging from 'Botch', '0', '1', and so on up to around '5'. This isn't to denigrate what happens in the story, but to focus for a while on the systems themselves.
Then there are variables – these are the things and distinctions which the system allows us to recognise.
An in-game shop might be a lively and well-decorated place, but a shop from the point of view of the game mechanics barely exists in most systems. It’s a place, which exists or doesn't. A few games such as Fate might add in some properties such as Run Down, or Expensive. Meanwhile, Fate's system barely recognizes that a sword exists, while Advanced Dungeons & Dragons will say that it has the properties of Damage, and Weight.
Meanwhile, we can see every RPG system has plenty of variables for characters. "{S, D, C, I, W, Ch}" is a combination familiar with all D&D players, and beyond that we have a 'To-Hit' score, AC, level, et c.
In theory, any player might take an interest in anything, but systems initiate players on a very focussed path very quickly.
Someone with a D20-based character simply cannot play a noble in the court for long, because the only thing in court (as far as the system is concerned) is 1D20 + Charisma + Etiquette, and the outputs 'yes' and 'no'.
Whatever happens in the world, the Spartan system will keep players away from the noble courts.
Meanwhile, players attempting to pickpocket someone have almost exactly the same input-style - a simple roll of the D20.
But the D20 produces far more results - you can get money from pickpocketing someone, and the money can go on your character sheet to be used for later purchases.
This feedback loop, where variables turn to results, and the results breed more variables, is what makes a system interesting, and what leads players into it. Consider the action-space in D20 systems:
| Action | Variables | Results | PC Engagement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talking with allies | Charisma + something | 'yes'/'no' | Mediocre |
| Attacking goblins | Attack Bonus, AC, hit points, spells, Feats | Money, XP, wounds, information | High |
| Catching up with family | None | None | Low |
Consider the same variables in the Storyteller system as someone plays Vampire: The Masquerade.
| Action | Variables | Results | PC Engagement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talking with allies | 3 Attributes, 4 Abilities, yielding likely 12 combinations, plus Disciplines | Blood points, information | Medium |
| Attacking goblins | 3 Attributes, 2 Abilities, yielding around 6 combinations, plus Disciplines. | Blood (or blood-loss), loss of Humanity | Medium |
| Catching up with family | None | None | Low |
I have to admit at this point that 'medium engagement' in Vampire: The Masquerade's combat isn't something I can source, but I think it's clear at the very least that if a group of players have spent the night at a cousin's wedding, this is more likely to happen in the Storyteller system than D&D, because there are simply more levers to pull.
Whatever story a GM might want to present to players, real choices boil down to variables and results, and the system will fast turn apparent choices into pseudo-choices.
As an example of a pseudo choice, a D&D fighter in combat might be asked 'What do you do?', but the possible variables are either 'fight' or 'run'. The 'run' mechanic is uninteresting and leads to certain defeat, the 'fight' button is the only choice which allows victory, and even if it doesn't; nobody knows how tough an enemy is so there’s little use thinking of stats – one just hits things. Such systems pantomime choices in front of people, occasionally putting in more, small choices such as which of two types of enemies to hit first but largely sticking to the old routine of doing the work for the player and occasionally pretending to care about their input. The biggest aid in this illusion are the dice. It can give players a sense of agency and control – it seems important to players that they roll their own dice instead of the GM rolling for them. The result, of course, won’t vary either way. And if dice were absent from the game, with the options of ‘continue combat y/n?’ blinking from the GM, it would become apparent that this combat cares about as much about their participation as the overhead light bulb in the room. Pseudo-choices may continue to entertain, but for obvious reasons I consider them to be a poor move for any system.
After all this bare-bones mechanics talk, it's time to link things back to the story, because none of my ramblings are about how a game's story - the description, presentation, the goal, the plot - are unimportant. It's about isolating the system to have a look at how this affects the story.
White Wolf laid out long descriptions of Attributes, Abilities, and then proudly stated that their basic rules are only two pages long - roll a number of Dice equal to the Attribute plus the Ability. If you have Strength 3 and Athletics 2, then a Strength + Athletics action means you roll 5 dice and count the number of dice which come up '6' or more. A couple remarks on interpreting dice and the rules section was finished...except it wasn't.
White Wolf games universally followed the rules up with multiple pages of combat, and vampiric Disciplines which added more variables and results to combat. Even ostensibly social Disciplines like Presence had abilities relating back to combat.
When it came to social scenes, White Wolf delivered the goods in terms of variables - players had 6 Attributes - Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance, Perception, Intelligence, and Wits, which had little or nothing to do with combat. The abilities matched, with all of combat being glossed over as either 'Brawl', or 'Mêlée', while social encounters has Etiquette, Empathy, Leadership, Subterfuge, and a plethora of other Abilities the Storyteller might let players use. But when the results came, the game quickly fell short.
The Storyteller system has no rules for how to gain the Retainers background, or how many successes are required to gain a dot in Influence. Conversely, if players want to gain a point in Generation, they know exactly what they have to do - they have to drink the soul of a more powerful vampire - and they know exactly what the results will be - the ability to store and spend more blood points.
The total result of this is that players in a Vampire game might not care to engage in combat with 2D6 goblins, but they do care about combat more than catching up with mortal allies. Meanwhile, engaging in normal mortal activities is almost discouraged by the rules. Industrious and eager players may well engage in these things because they know what the game is ostensibly about, and don't mind making up for the rules' shortcomings, but this sort of thing might be less of a feat if players could use mortal interaction as a way to gain Humanity dots without spending XP.
Genre is generally marked mostly by its variables and results. A fighting game needs to recognise the distinction between two types of swords, while a game about crime-fighting anime-girls might not. Horror games usually have some result which recognises a horrified character, allowing characters to become 'insane' or 'scared', which then stipulates that they must flee.
With an overall view of RPGs, many conclude there are no rights and wrongs; everything is a matter of personal taste or opinion. I think this is a mistake people make as they conflate a choice of genre, and a choice of how genre is expressed. To choose 1920's noire instead of high fantasy isn't the sort of choice which can be wrong. However, choosing to have a Western game with only one type of gun, no mention of how a sheriff's responsibilities play out, and no mention of how shooting from cover works, is objectively a mistake. And if it isn't a mistake, it must be because the genre in the game is looking at different things within the Western genre.
The last part of a system is marrying up the variables to the results. The best kind of mapping is, ceteris paribus, the one which allows us to get results from variables in the shortest amount of time. Two systems can have the same variables and results while they have a different mapping, and if both have an acceptable probability distribution but one is faster, then that one is better.
Most bad things are mostly bad, but some bad things are just bad. Consider the worst mapping from modern Dungeons & Dragons: the Ability scores. You assign a Strength of 12 to your character, write it down, then look it up on the chart, and find an Attribute of 12 means a +1 bonus. Why not simply have Strength +1? Where does the number 12 come into the game? The only functional difference is that any time you add +1 to an Ability score, there is the possibility that it will do nothing. Mechanically, anything that does nothing is bad.
For the younger RPG players, allow me to introduce you to the horrors of making a simple, second-level thief, in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I warn you that this is not for the feint of heart, and invite you to skip the details once you're thinking "I get the bloody point". It's been over decade, but from memory, it went something like this:
- Thieves have about six special abilities, including:
- Pick Pockets
- Use magical item
- Detect trap
- Hear noise
- Move silently
- Hide
- Each one has a chance to succeed, between 0% and 100%. Roll a D100 to test if you succeed.
- To populate your skills, you start with 130% of skills to divide between (there are additional rules here for rangers).
- No skill may begin with more than 35%, not taking into account the racial bonus.
- Add your racial bonus or penalty to each thief-ability if you are not human, according to the chart.
- Add bonuses and penalties to these abilities depending upon your Attributes.
- For each level you gain, at 30% which you can divide between these abilities, with no more than 15% towards any one ability per level.
Well, that was a ride in the park wasn't it? Let's do a quick-fire recap of:
- Variables:
- Dexterity
- Intelligence
- Wisdom
- Level
- Results:
- Pick Pockets
- Use magical item
- Detect trap
- Hear noise
- Move silently
- Hide
So this system takes 6 ideas to introduce to the player, and has six outputs. Not great.
The modern D&D v3, Pathfinder, et c. all have better rules for this, and at no point decided the old system was a good idea. People playing these games have never claimed that the old systems were superior (and if one has, they're wrong). We're looking at something approaching an objectively better system, so let's look at it:
- Variables:
- Dexterity
- Intelligence
- Wisdom
- Level
- Results:
- Pick Pockets
- Use magical item
- Detect trap
- Hear noise
- Move silently
- Hide
The new system looks exactly the same, so it must be the mapping which is different. The first difference is that modern D&D does not have a separate system for normal skills and thieves' skills. The distinction doesn't serve anyone, so nothing is lost. Next up, percentage points are replaced with standard +1 increments. This means players lose the ability to tell the difference between having a 32% chance to pick pockets and a 35% chance, but again, nobody wants this distinction. Skills are already limited to a character's level, so the players don't have to remember a new rule, or arbitrary rules like '35% points in a skill at maximum, at first level, plus 15% per level'. Lastly, the racial abilities become part of the normal Ability bonuses - picking pockets is based on Dexterity and Elves gain +2 Dexterity, so elves gain +2 at picking pockets. The existing rules take care of the same feature without us noticing.
The system is a very clear improvement, not because it does more, or does better things, but because it does exactly the same stuff faster and easier.
The choice of which genre to play is entirely down to personal preference, but a system can still be judged on whether nor not it takes into account the right variables and results to bring that genre to the players. Once a system has fixed variables and results, the shortest possible path from one to the other is always the preferred method.
The system cannot provide a definitive answer to whether or not someone will like a game, or how players will behave, but it can very efficiently set players on a fixed road once the game starts. Variables and results are both important, but the surest way to gain player involvement in a system is a feedback loop, where results turn into variables.