Recent threads on realism and Story-Games have made it very clear that in any practical sense I play completely different games than... well just about everybody.

I think realism is a definable and achievable goal in game design. That puts me at odds with most people in the modern gaming scene.

I think simulation of genre is desirable and also achievable by a mix of game mechanics and what could be called meta-mechanics (more commonly called play style). This puts me at odds with everyone who identifies as Simulationist.

I believe this combination allows one to create (or recreate) their own fantasy or sci-fi epics, basically on par with modern film and literature themes, plots, and events (perhaps more a sad comment of the state of modern film and literature than a comment about how great the gaming style is)- and thus serves many of the more common 'story' goals.

It is in short a middle of the road style that uses sophisticated and rather complex rules to reach a perfect mix of realism, genre and story without stressing one to the point that the others break.

This style was born in the 70s and remained common in the 80s although most attempts at rulesets design for it was a failure (mostly of scaling). It has however nearly completely faded from the scene over the last couple of decades for reasons that are IMO mostly cultural and irreversible.

So it's really not worth talking about.

But I'd thought I'd throw the term Genre Simulation RPG out there for my own use because saying that I'm a mix of war game and story-game is rather clumsy. I think it gets the point across better.

Man, if this thread was an english exam, I would get flunk.

Google Translate don't speak gleichman; no help there.

I'd agree with Brian.  Though I might question his definition of success since it only applys to specifically pleasing him.

I got asked why I prefaced In The Shadow of Dragons with "A Narrative Simulation Game" a couple days ago.

The notion is similar.  I want a game that does everything it should do and does those things right.  I don't want a game that does nothing right and only does things I don't want.  Hello D&D I didn't see you sitting there!

Quote from: gleichman;660145I think realism is a definable and achievable goal in game design. That puts me at odds with most people in the modern gaming scene.

If the recent realism thread is anything to judge by it's quite the opposite, it seemed as though more people favoured realistic systems of one sort or another.

I'd view genre emulation as another layer on top of the physical mechanics, or in some cases like two fisted pulp it might change basic rules such as how much damage a person can take. Otherwise, Call of Cthulhu is the definitive genre emulation game with its insanity rules. Magic or psionics systems of any sort are 100% genre emulation, although they shade into setting a bit as well. Although I suppose genre emulation can be entirely about the setting, the rules for a hardboiled detective game needn't be any different to the rules for a modern military or spy game.

Quote from: David Johansen;660544I'd agree with Brian.  Though I might question his definition of success since it only applys to specifically pleasing him.

You make it sound like it is a question of aesthetic and it's not. It a rather objective examination of what a game does and does not model correctly, what type of play (genre simulation) it does or does not interfere with, and how much effort is required to actually use it.

Genre simulation used to be a big deal for me.

It isn't really anymore.

That said, hoping this thread will prove interesting, and I can see the OP's point.

I don't have a problem with games that feature mechanics which assist in genre emulation. If the mechanics are well designed then they will produce a genre specific feel on thier own. Example: the sanity rules from COC.

What I find off-putting is games that require player behavior that is willfully ignorant or just plain stupid, in order to emulate the genre. If the players have to make retarded decisions "because genre trope" then I won't be that interested in playing.

This includes many supers games in which the heroes can never just break the fucking neck of the supervillain who has escaped 20 times and harmed innocent people each and every time.

Emulating as specific genre comes second to playing to the best of one's ability IMHO. Otherwise there isn't much of a game going on, just an attempt to recreate events as they happen in the fictional source material.

Gleichman, I am interested which games in the 70s and 80s you feel came closest to achieving effective genre simulation. Also what was your feeling about games like TORG that came out in the transition from 80s to 90s.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;660628If the mechanics are well designed then they will produce a genre specific feel on thier own. Example: the sanity rules from COC.

It's a bit of a side track, but I've never cared for the CoC sanity rules. Over the years and different authors the mythos covered more ground than people going crazy, and shoe-horning sanity rules on all possible adventures is plainly the wrong approach.

It also is in effect telling the player how to role-play his character, something I'm never interested in. I set wide limits yes, but I don't force any behavior for those acting inside them.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;660628What I find off-putting is games that require player behavior that is willfully ignorant or just plain stupid, in order to emulate the genre.

Every Genre is a mix of good tropes, and stupid tropes. The former comes from good writing, while the latter arise because of bad or lazy writing. When deciding to simulate a genre in a RPG you must sift the tropes splitting them into good and bad, and just simply forget the bad ones.

For example we never had a superhero villian escape 20 times etc. etc. Nor did we have inconsistent superpowers. And we were still four-color silver age in style.

Genre's are large things, you can't do all of it if you tried- so it picks to do the parts you actually like.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;660653Gleichman, I am interested which games in the 70s and 80s you feel came closest to achieving effective genre simulation. Also what was your feeling about games like TORG that came out in the transition from 80s to 90s.

It all depends upon the game in question as each had their strengths and weaknesses. So it's best to ask about specific ones.

Many would work nicely for one-off or short campaigns as their weakness would only appear after extensive play (and 'leveling') or extended observation. I'd lump RuneQuest and CoC in that group.

Others had more glaring problems.

TORG for example did an excellent job of reflecting the setting in many ways, but was held back by a die mechanic that produced linear results within a closed range. The outcome was unpredictable and often ineffective characters that depended too much upon their probability points (I think they were called something like that). This outcome was counter to the setting's concepts (which was to be reality's Heroes) and basically ruined the game for us. You couldn't really run Doc Savage for example, but instead something more like Doc Maybe.

A later version (perhaps unoffical) replaced the mechanic with 2d10 to map the results on a bell curve (and thus was less random) and this helped, but still wasn't quite enough.

It's things like this that matter most to me, does the core system actually support what you're trying to do- or does it stand in the way? Chrome (like CoC's sanity rules) is easily added or removed, the core however must be solid if the game is to reach its goal.

Scaling is another very important trait as it determines how long a system will hold to its genre without breaking it, and it determines the range of what genres can be simulated.

The reason I like HERO System from the 80s is that the core is solid for many genres and it scales very well. In addition how one constructs the characters and items for a specific campaign can and does reflect the genre- you can very easily get very detailed genre based results from a very general set of rules. Something that no other system quite manages IMO.


Just to pick an example to highlight this point- Voltron (a big mech anime from a while back). Each adventure arcs ends with the team combining the lions (smaller mechs) into Voltron to fight the big villain.  But that's the only time the lions are combined. How does one make that happen in Hero?

Easy, you buy the normal abilities to allow the lions combine to happen, and then place a limit on it of "once per adventure". Done. You've recreaste a very specific genre trope, simulated a 'story element' of the setting, and place it completely under player control to explore and use as they will. And you didn't need a special rules supplement or additional rules to do it.

What could be better?

Quote from: gleichman;660553You make it sound like it is a question of aesthetic and it's not. It a rather objective examination of what a game does and does not model correctly, what type of play (genre simulation) it does or does not interfere with, and how much effort is required to actually use it.

No, no, I'm saying your biases are overly broad and subjective.

Anyhow, did you ever try Chivalry and Sorcery 3e / The Rebirth?  I think it would have been right up your alley with the BSC - PSF structure in combat.  It's kinda like 11+ OB - DB in function.

Genre-mechanics are a mistake. I dont play RPGs so I'm forced to act contrivedly or stupidly so my character "feels" like one of the characters in the highly-contrived stories I've read or seen. I play a character so
I can play that character and make the decisions I would have made, as succinctly summed up by the Dragon's Lair 80s cartoon show's tagline "what would YOU do?".




There is nothing objective about any of this.

Quote from: gleichman;660684Just to pick an example to highlight this point- Voltron (a big mech anime from a while back). Each adventure arcs ends with the team combining the lions (smaller mechs) into Voltron to fight the big villain.  But that's the only time the lions are combined. How does one make that happen in Hero?

Easy, you buy the normal abilities to allow the lions combine to happen, and then place a limit on it of "once per adventure". Done. You've recreaste a very specific genre trope, simulated a 'story element' of the setting, and place it completely under player control to explore and use as they will. And you didn't need a special rules supplement or additional rules to do it.

What could be better?

Terrible example though. The purpose of forming Voltron is to create a thrilling climax to a preplotted story. Once you give players access to something like that, they're going to use it in all kinds of strange and wonky ways, and the game will be nothing like an episode of Voltron, because the players formed Voltron to smash up the local DMV instead of using it to fight the big bad monster of the episode.

Quote from: David Johansen;660770No, no, I'm saying your biases are overly broad and subjective.

People love to claim that everything is subjective, it is seldom true.

There is nothing subjective in how random the TORG die mechanic is. Nor is there anything subjective in noting that it's inconsistent with the genre it's attempting to model. These are actual objective facts.

The only subjective matter was the original selection of the genre in the first place. After that, not so much.

Quote from: David Johansen;660770Anyhow, did you ever try Chivalry and Sorcery 3e / The Rebirth?  I think it would have been right up your alley with the BSC - PSF structure in combat.  It's kinda like 11+ OB - DB in function.

No, I gave up on fantasy games after developing my own. It does sound interesting however, when was it released,