The topic of focused vs mashup games came up in another thread, and I'm really interested to hear what people think about their comparative virtues in game, setting, story or literature. Just to take an example from (kinda) literature, Batman comics are focused: investigative, non-superpowered, noir, relatively mundane crimes, and based in one city. Justice League is a mashup, grouping Batman with, among others, Superman, who has a vastly different philosophy, power level, theme, activities, and group of enemies.
I prefer focus. You can get more depth in the fiction and the rules if you're only talking about one thing, and you don't have to think up contrived reasons why, frex, Superman doesn't squash the Joker like a bug. Balancing characters who have very different power levels in fiction via game mechanics or gameplay methods is difficult, and I'd rather not have to do it. And making a game that does Batman's noir together with Superman's sunny universe is nigh impossible.
I see the virtues of mashups as being the ability to have a variety of gaming experiences without changing rules and letting players with different preferences in setting/genre/whatever play together.
I'm okay with limited mashups, such werewolves vs vampires, where you explore what happens when two genres intersect. But in something like Avengers, where there might be 10 different characters from disparate genres, the number of "what if this meets this" issues explode and there's not time or space to do justice to any of them. Dresden Files is sometimes cited as an example of major mashups well done (and I'd agree that it's done as well as it probably can be) but I'd argue that it's good fiction because Butcher is such a good writer, and would probably be better with more focus.
So what do y'all think?
I would generally agree. A system benefits from a reasonably tight focus, both in tone and power level within the party.
The only way to have various extreme power-levels work in a party is various narrative and/or meta mechanics, which I'm generally not a huge fan of. And even in a narrative game, tonal dissonance can feel odd - probably moreso than in a more traditional TTRPG.
I'm conflicted on this. Firstly, I HATE reading generic RPGs. Yet at the same time, whenever I read a focused RPG, I get frustrated because if they only changed X and Y, then the game could support a wider variety of genres. So, I prefer focused games, but I want my focused games to be open enough to support mash-ups. IOW, I don't know what I want.
Default D&D is definitely a big mash up game, and for gaming I normally prefer that. I loved how the White Star RPG threw in *all* the TV & cinema space opera of the past 40-50 years. Gaming is generally not good for in depth treatments, it does Justice League much better.
The main benefit of a mashup is a stretching exercise: Can I take these two things that at first glance don't work well together, but somehow make them work nonetheless?
It's like playing a hobbit barbarian: A challenge that is very impressive if done well, but more likely to dissolve into slapstick. Still you don't find your limits until you test them.
I've found a tight focus tends to work better for me as a mashup can get a little out of control.
I'm going to argue that a "focused mashup" is actually best.
A prime example of a focused mashup would be the MCU. It used a massive array of heroes, but with specific tweaks to create a more cohesive setting than the actual comics have. For example, Asgardians became hyper-advanced aliens and all the magic was presented as "sufficiently advanced technology."
There was also all the cross-linking... Odin hid the Tesseract/Space Stone on Earth, the Tesseract was used by the Red Skull/Hydra, studying the Tesseract gave Howard Stark the idea for the Arc Reactor that powers the Iron Man armor and gave Captain Marvel her powers. Likewise, the Time Stone in Doctor Strange and the Mind Stone being in Loki's scepter and used, along with JARVIS to create Vision. Even the Ant-man films played into the eventual resolution in End Game.
So while just about anything (i.e. mashup) could turn up in the MCU (even different genres... Ant-Man is essentially a caper film for example), all of it was tuned to fit a larger and more cohesive narrative (i.e. focused).
In terms of my own fantasy setting that sort of focused mashup approach has been one I've tried to follow. Many of my species of both fantastic sapients and beasts share a few common origins (and not something as basic as "and each god created a species" either) and there are subtle links between those common origins as well that hint to a larger picture.
As just a taste, all the elemental/nature-themed creatures (everything from brownies, sprites, unicorns, giants and dragons) are embodied Primal Spirits exiled to the world for being too cowardly to take a stand between the victorious Primal Spirits and the fallen ones now known as demons (basically borrowing from the old syncretism that the fae were angels neither good enough for Heaven nor wicked enough for Hell).
Their fallen kin the demons used their primal power (before being exiled to the Outer Darkness/Hell) to warp some men into dwarves to better slave away in their hellish mines and mixed their power with selected mortals to create the Malfeans that served as overseers of their slaves (and with beasts to create things like Hell Hounds and the like).
The Demon Emperor so hated the life and light of The Source that he destroyed himself to empower a web of energy called The Shadow that created the undead and other horrors as posthumous revenge upon Creation.
Upon being freed from the demons, the humans and dwarves adapted the processes of the demons to create the practice of bio-forming so they could have slaves to serve them as the demons did. This gave rise to the many species of Beastmen (minotaurs, kobolds, goblins, centaurs, wolfen, crocodin, etc.) and many hybrid beasts (griffins, wyverns, manticores, etc.).
The Beastmen would eventually rebel and tear down the human empire and the next globe-spanning empire to arise resolved to avoid the mistakes of the previous one... by creating golem slaves (yes, humanity repeating its mistakes is a theme... that said, the sapient golems are easily the least connected thing in the mashup and could probably be cut entirely except that one of my starting precepts for the system was the ability to select any species available in 4E D&D).
Then Men went and played with something they didn't entirely understand (but probably related to primal and/or demonic power because of what the resultant disaster didn't affect) and wiped out 99.9% of the population in The Cataclysm that mutated at least a quarter of the survivors (men and beasts) into hideous monsters (orcs, ogres, trolls, troglodytes, hydras, etc.; the fact that the Cataclysm energies had no effect on the embodied primal spirits or demon-tainted malfeans is intended as a clue to the disaster's origin without spelling anything out for certain).
So, yeah, it's a mashup, but I tried to keep it focused into particular channels so it would feel more cohesive than "the gods/a cocaine wizard created it for some unknown reason."
Marvel games are where mashup work best for me as I can put every part of the campaign in a wee box in my head that relates to the comics I'm thinking of. I can get over-excited with other stuff and throw too much into the mix.
Quote from: Mishihari;1143600The topic of focused vs mashup games came up in another thread, and I'm really interested to hear what people think about their comparative virtues in game, setting, story or literature. Just to take an example from (kinda) literature, Batman comics are focused: investigative, non-superpowered, noir, relatively mundane crimes, and based in one city. Justice League is a mashup, grouping Batman with, among others, Superman, who has a vastly different philosophy, power level, theme, activities, and group of enemies.
I prefer focus. You can get more depth in the fiction and the rules if you're only talking about one thing, and you don't have to think up contrived reasons why, frex, Superman doesn't squash the Joker like a bug. Balancing characters who have very different power levels in fiction via game mechanics or gameplay methods is difficult, and I'd rather not have to do it.
I can see some problems with trying to do the Justice League as a specific example, but I'd argue more broadly that there's good reason in RPGs to
(a) don't worry much about game balance
(b) don't worry about doing a genre right, and just have fun
I think there's a lot of fun to be had in gonzo games where sometimes characters can do incredible things, and it doesn't have to be balanced - just wacky and fun. And even if a game isn't gonzo, it can be incorporate some very different elements - like martial-arts monks alongside fireball-tossing wizards. These don't have to be balanced for the players to have fun.
I've had a lot of fun with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Monster of the Week, for example, where you have low-power sidekicks alongside superpowered heroes.
Quote from: jhkim;1143689I can see some problems with trying to do the Justice League as a specific example, but I'd argue more broadly that there's good reason in RPGs to
(a) don't worry much about game balance
(b) don't worry about doing a genre right, and just have fun
I think there's a lot of fun to be had in gonzo games where sometimes characters can do incredible things, and it doesn't have to be balanced - just wacky and fun. And even if a game isn't gonzo, it can be incorporate some very different elements - like martial-arts monks alongside fireball-tossing wizards. These don't have to be balanced for the players to have fun.
I've had a lot of fun with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Monster of the Week, for example, where you have low-power sidekicks alongside superpowered heroes.
I'll agree that balance is not worth worrying about too much. Back in the day, I DM'd parties with PCs ranging from level 4 to level 12 and everyone still had fun. Balance is a real reason to prefer focused games, but for me it's the least important of them.
Focused for me. And provide tips or tools to broaden the scope if the group wants.
Like Pendragon, Apocalypse World and some OSR do.