This was something I was thinking about the other evening. I think at some point anyone who has been into rpg's gets the idea to write their own. Many of the folks I have known, myself included, have this first reaction of wanting to do something as novel as possible.

However the longer I have thought about it the more I'm not sure that's A. really even possible at this point nor B. particularly desirable.

It seems to me that we have sort of hashed out all the major ways any given die or dice can be used to generate "friction" in a given game play scenario. Nearly any mechanic you can think of will likely have a given analog somewhere or another.

For the most part in my experience I have seen systems that were too wrapped up in trying to do something different. Often it seems convoluted or forced.

Personally I have realized over the years that what makes or breaks a system for me is rarely mechanics but more often presentation, play-ability(I suppose this is a mechanical issue), and how well the system seems to fit the genre it's taking on.

So is it really possible to "innovate" mechanic wise? Is that even really a desirable goal? If someone were to set out to write a new game should they even make the attempt at "wholly" new or just work from some existing template to fit the intended setting/genre?

I appreciate the value of some diversity in game mechanics, and just general futzing around that I would call 'house rules' in most cases. But it got far out of control years ago and has now become something that is almost always a negative distraction. If I look through my entire gaming collection, there are probably 100 or more mechanically different ways to resolve an attack roll. That is just stupid, pointless, obfuscating bullshit. Given how badly our community has managed this issue, it is a mystery anyone plays these games at all.

Innovation for its own sake is distracting.

An innovative dice mechanic that handles a particular situation better than existing ones? Of course thats possible. And probably inevitable.

I always think that I'm done, then someone comes out with something clever that is really great to play (like the Cypher System) or can be used to make my life easier (the freakish combination of Dungeon Worlds Fronts and the 5x5 Dungeon Design method), or all of the cool fiddly bits of the Gumeshoe system, and then I'm impressed again.

I wrote a blog post with my opinion on "innovation in RPGs" -- while it was specially directed to the then debate over whether OSR games were innovative enough, it really in my opinion of innovation in in RPGs in general.

QuoteThe latest "great debate" going around the OSR blogsphere is about innovation -- as in are OSR games and settings innovative enough and/or whether settings or rules should be the focus of innovation.

I'm going to be a curmudgeon and say that I don't give a damn if a game or setting is full of innovative ideas or 100% derivative. All I care about is whether or not the result is something I'm willing to actually use. I'd rather buy a game or setting that is 100% derivative of everything that has gone before if it is something I like and will use than buy a game or setting full of innovative ideas that either turn me off or require a lot of work on my part to learn and/or use.

Innovation for innovation's sake is pointless. If your innovative ideas make the game harder to play, take longer to do things, make it harder for those who aren't into system mastery, make it more work to referee, are simply reinventing the wheel without really improving the wheel, or the like I'm simply not interested in the innovations. The same goes for settings -- if your innovative setting requires a lot of effort to understand or get involved in, chances are few people will actually use it in play. Tekumel is often held up as a example of an innovative setting. I happen to be one of the people who loves Tekumel and has ever since TSR published Empire of the Petal Throne in the mid-1970s. However, I've seldom been able to play in a Tekumel campaign and have only ran a few short campaigns set there in all these years. Getting committed players for it is hard as it takes quite a bit more effort on the player's part to get into than a more standard fantasy setting.

Remember also that true innovation in rules is rare. Many rules ideas I have seen listed as innovative recently were actually first tried back in the 1970s and 1980s. Advantage and disadvantage are often touted as innovative by D&D 5e fans. I tried (and rejected as they made lots of extra work for the GM) very similar rules back in the early 1980s in one of my homebrew rules sets. The D20 roll with ascending AC used in D20 games was seen as very innovative when D&D 3.0 was published, yet I first saw such a system published for D&D in Different Worlds circa 1980 in a two-part article by John T Sapienza Jr ("D&D Variant: Vardy Combat System" in Different Worlds #6 and #7). Chances are fairly good that your "innovative rules mechanic" has already been done.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not against innovation in either rules or settings. I'm simply not interested in games or settings that try to be innovative as one of their primary goals. I want good rules and good settings, if they are innovative without reinventing the wheel or pointless complexity/change, great. If they don't have a shred of innovation but work well for my needs, great. If their main claim to fame is "being innovative", I'm not likely to be interested.

My advice is to concentrate on making your rules or setting work well in for OSR play. If that requires innovation, innovate. But don't innovate simply to please those who seem to think that innovation is the be all and end all of good rules or setting design. There is nothing inherently right about innovation nor is there anything inherently wrong with innovation. The same, of course, is true of being derivative. Make the best rules or setting you can and don't worry about whether it will be seen as innovative or derivative.

---Innovation in the OSR? Who Cares?

An example (to me ) of innovation for the sake of it is "The One ring" RPG.

The combat mechanic is quite clunky and slow and doesn't really add anything.

I thought it was odd they turned traveling from a location to another location into a gaming mechanic, as they felt roleplaying traveling in between locations in game as a waste of time, which I disagree with.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed with ToR, although it was very pretty.

It was REALLY disorganised as well.

Quote from: Arkansan;843194So is it really possible to "innovate" mechanic wise?

Yes.

QuoteIs that even really a desirable goal?

The answer varies depending on what you're going for.

QuoteIf someone were to set out to write a new game should they even make the attempt at "wholly" new or just work from some existing template to fit the intended setting/genre?

Again, depends on your goals and what you can do with the existing templates.

I used to be all for innovation and big books with a legion of rules inside of it to try to master it.  I didn't think a game is good unless it has hundreds of options to pick from, or it does something unique in its mechanics.

Then I got older.  I figured out a long time ago that you don't need massive amount of rules, or innovation for the sake of innovation mechanics to make your game good.  You just run the game well and every thing else should follow.

If you could look at my early attempts to make a game system you could see that.  My early ideas which I thought up ten years ago, or more were using 3.5 DnD rules, nWoD with even more merits, or something that is too big for its own good.  Either way I ended up making a large cluster fuck of a mess and just giving up.  I am a shamed of myself for not going light sooner given how many years I spent on a fruitless task.

Now my idea had shrank down to some thing similar to a rules lite Dark Heresy.  You got your hit points, your percentage dice rolling mechanics, a few traits, and the major deal is assets.  Most of those things are just old, but proven mechanics that people can rely on.  The only reason why I made assets is because I don't want to write down a massive amount of abilities so I kept it free flowing like FATE aspects.  Hell the only reason I got three hit points was because I stolen it from d20 Star Wars and some DnD clone that is a mix of 3.5 and 4th editions.  Mainly heroic points is your buffer health and most important your energy pool which allows your character to pull off effects in the game.  What effects you can do is again determined by your assets.

About 20 years ago I was talking to a friend who played games and she asked "Have you designed the perfect RPG yet?" At the time I still thought it was possible to make a perfect game, not for everyone of course, but one that I would see as damn near perfect. I considered that question off and on over the years.

This hobby has been around for about 40 years. Now I wonder if just about everything that could be done has been done and it's just a matter of mixing and matching parts and choosing what you and your group prefer. Rolling stats vs. point buy; percentage vs. d20 or 3d6 or 2d6 or diceless; passive defense vs. active defense (or a bit of both); hit locations vs. general damage; classes vs. skills or a mix; using cards for random determinations, detailing a characters past at creation, etc, etc. Is there something that hasn't been thought up and included in a game system somewhere?

Silly BS aside perhaps the real question is "What mechanic do you want to see in a game that hasn't already been used?"

Quote from: danskmacabre;843199An example (to me ) of innovation for the sake of it is "The One ring" RPG.

The combat mechanic is quite clunky and slow and doesn't really add anything.

I thought it was odd they turned traveling from a location to another location into a gaming mechanic, as they felt roleplaying traveling in between locations in game as a waste of time, which I disagree with.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed with ToR, although it was very pretty.

It was REALLY disorganised as well.

Yeah that's how I felt about ToR, I really want to like it but it's clunky and the organization is shit. I hear they've put out a revised edition that's better but I'm not shelling out for another copy.

Quote from: Snowman0147;843205I used to be all for innovation and big books with a legion of rules inside of it to try to master it.  I didn't think a game is good unless it has hundreds of options to pick from, or it does something unique in its mechanics.

Then I got older.  I figured out a long time ago that you don't need massive amount of rules, or innovation for the sake of innovation mechanics to make your game good.  You just run the game well and every thing else should follow.

If you could look at my early attempts to make a game system you could see that.  My early ideas which I thought up ten years ago, or more were using 3.5 DnD rules, nWoD with even more merits, or something that is too big for its own good.  Either way I ended up making a large cluster fuck of a mess and just giving up.  I am a shamed of myself for not going light sooner given how many years I spent on a fruitless task.

Now my idea had shrank down to some thing similar to a rules lite Dark Heresy.  You got your hit points, your percentage dice rolling mechanics, a few traits, and the major deal is assets.  Most of those things are just old, but proven mechanics that people can rely on.  The only reason why I made assets is because I don't want to write down a massive amount of abilities so I kept it free flowing like FATE aspects.  Hell the only reason I got three hit points was because I stolen it from d20 Star Wars and some DnD clone that is a mix of 3.5 and 4th editions.  Mainly heroic points is your buffer health and most important your energy pool which allows your character to pull off effects in the game.  What effects you can do is again determined by your assets.

I went through a phase of trying to design the most Byzantine bullshit simply because I was convinced everything had to be ironed out, and worse I felt like it all needed to be "new and exciting!". I hit a point where I got sick of pointless complexity and I realized that there really wasn't anything new about anything I was doing.

Quote from: Doughdee222;843207About 20 years ago I was talking to a friend who played games and she asked "Have you designed the perfect RPG yet?" At the time I still thought it was possible to make a perfect game, not for everyone of course, but one that I would see as damn near perfect. I considered that question off and on over the years.

This hobby has been around for about 40 years. Now I wonder if just about everything that could be done has been done and it's just a matter of mixing and matching parts and choosing what you and your group prefer. Rolling stats vs. point buy; percentage vs. d20 or 3d6 or 2d6 or diceless; passive defense vs. active defense (or a bit of both); hit locations vs. general damage; classes vs. skills or a mix; using cards for random determinations, detailing a characters past at creation, etc, etc. Is there something that hasn't been thought up and included in a game system somewhere?

Silly BS aside perhaps the real question is "What mechanic do you want to see in a game that hasn't already been used?"

I feel the same way you do, I really think most everything that can be done has been done and now it's a matter of putting together in a way that works for you.

Quote from: Arkansan;843213Yeah that's how I felt about ToR, I really want to like it but it's clunky and the organization is shit. I hear they've put out a revised edition that's better but I'm not shelling out for another copy.

Being a LotR fan, I REALLY wanted to like ToR.
They got the mood right, meaning art and text etc.

But yeah, I remember doing a playtest session with a friend.
character gen was a nightmare, I was flipping all through the book finding the right section in various phases of character gen.

Combat was even worse and was such a pain to go through.

The slipcase and dice were pretty, but that's not enough for such a crap game.

Yes I heard they did a revised edition to make it more organised as well, but it was a pretty expensive RPG when I bought it the first time around.
No way I'm gonna buy a new version.
Especially as I just didn't like some of their game design decisions at all.

Quote from: Arkansan;843194So is it really possible to "innovate" mechanic wise?

Sure it's possible. Though it is unlikely that anyone will come up with a mechanic that hasn't been used somewhere else. Even the goofy Jenga tower mechanic already showed up in Jenga, and Jenga was like building a house of cards in revers or like a 3D version of the kids game Operation.

QuoteIs that even really a desirable goal?

Innovation for its own sake does not benefit the game. There are three benefits to innovation.

(1) If the innovation does something useful in the game that existing mechanics can't do.
(2) If the innovation does something other mechanics do, but does it more simply or more elegantly.
(3) If the innovation somehow enhances the game experience in some other way.

QuoteIf someone were to set out to write a new game should they even make the attempt at "wholly" new or just work from some existing template to fit the intended setting/genre?

Neither.

The only good reason from a game design standpoint to try to do something new is for one of the reasons above. Doing something different for the sake of difference just obfuscates what you are doing and makes the game harder to learn. Usually that's not a good thing to do design-wise.

The reason to use a template is because it makes your design easier or it makes your game easier to sell or for new buyers to learn.

Now a designer might be tempted by the intellectual challenge of trying to come up with a new, but not better, way to do things. That may be intellectually stimulating to the designer, but it's a bad goal for design.

Quote from: Bren;843221Innovation for its own sake does not benefit the game.

Many game designers need this burned into their flesh with the tip of a red-hot poker.

It's all such a waste of creative energy. I'd trade 5 solid 70's era pastel modules for 5000 pages of rules-y dreck.

You can always innovate, in any field. The problem with rpgs is about 95% of the time, "innovation" is used instead of "obfuscate shitty mechanics".

I mean, honestly, wtf are rpg mechanics, anyway? Roll some dice to see if an action with an uncertain outcome succeeds or fails. That's about it. At some point you'll run out of ideas as to how those dice are rolled and how they're interpreted and then you have to actually write a good game instead of just bamboozling people with your novel take on a die pool system (which was already perfected in WEG SW, anyway).

Also, I think if a newbie can't play with nothing more than the information on their character sheet, the game sucks.