Quote from: Levi KornelsenControl....    players?

Oh, my gracious, no.  I've never met a good GM that controls players; the best ones don't even try.   Good GMs simply control situations, arranging them neatly so that when the players hit, things explode in a satisfying fashion.

Yes, exactly. Blast shields and shock absorbers cunningly deployed to let you ride the detonations. Not a whit of control, but they take you to interesting places you'd never go to by yourself... if you're careful!

-clash

Quote from: JimBobOzA gamer buddy commented to me recently that it seems like games written in the 1970s and 1980s "put more information in a paragraph" than games in the 1990s and 2000s. There's a better content to fluff ratio.

I've been gaming for 20, 25 years and I don't think writers were much more concise back then. I think that is a romanticized notion. However, there is much more fluff today in game books. Whole sections could be cut off. But fluff is information. It's just not information that appeals to some of us.

Reasons books have bloated as the hobby evolved:

1-Fluff. That fucking trend is now reaching generic games, with GURPS and soon BESM having their own crappiverse.

2-Pressure to equal or top predecessors.

Let's say you design a roleplaying game. Many roleplaying authors will tell you they like to check out what has been done in the past and what is being done currently. So you end up putting in subsystems that have become standard in other games (and are sometimes worshiped) to cover all the bases. Drama points, sanity systems... depending on the genre, it could be anything.

That doesn't just happen with rules. I believe certain fluff sections are now considered "standard" nowadays. Authors feel pressured to put them in there.

So, to make it short: old school designers didn't have to look at competition so hard. They included what *they* felt was needed to put out a functional game. Today, designers feel they have to look at everybody else and include all that extra stuff they didn't think about themselves.

Drama points are a blatant example of this. They're creeping up in more and more games in the last 6 years and I'm not buying that all these authors thought of it themselves.

Quote from: Consonant DudeFluff. That fucking trend is now reaching generic games, with GURPS and soon BESM having their own crappiverse.

By virtue of the power vested in me by the state of confusion, I declare crappiverse to now be official theRPGsite jargon.  Use it often, folks.

:win:

Quote from: Levi KornelsenAnd more!  I approve of, and will continue to state my love for, special sheets that the GM can use to coordinate their stuff - ones with charts on!

I call them control sheets, no less!

Control Sheets. Levi, you truely are a beautiful gamer

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Levi KornelsenGood GMs simply control situations, arranging them neatly so that when the players hit, things explode in a satisfying fashion.

Last night we followed Hastur to his giant tower, walked up to him and demanded an explanation. He started eating the other guy's face, so I punched him in the head, and he let go. Then he ate my face.

Apparently the other PCs went on to save the world or something, but what did I care?

The GM said, "I've run this scenario several times before, but no-one else went toe-to-toe with Hastur."
"Well of course not, if he eats their faces."
"But you walked up to him!"
"You told us afterwards that his pseudoods have a range of three miles. So, what difference would it make?"

Ah, the bitter, bitter taste of futlity, that old vintage Cthulhu draft. *Gulp* Drink it down, everyone!

In the spirit of getting more of the game in a paragraph,

Call of Cthulhu: Flip a coin. Heads you go mad, tails a hideous beast from beyond the stars eats your face.