I don't know if I really understood the question but personally I prefer games that were designed for their settings: Flashing Blades, James Bond 007, Pendragon, etc. There is no tension between system and setting because of that.

Quote from: AsenRG;971436Whatever. Let me clarify, the disconnect between system and setting in Shadowrun is, to me, two-fold.

First, that it's way too fucking heavy as a system! While my Wizard is effortlessly summoning fire, I'm getting a headache getting all the modifiers straight.
Hey, wasn't he the one changing reality with his mind? Why does it seem I'm doing the harder mental work? Something's not right here...
And don't get me started on my physical adept not knowing the result of his attack until we roll two more dicepools;).
And yes, that's from a guy that likes Exalted:p. Somehow, Shadowrun manages to be heavier and slower than that!

Which edition?  2nd Edition being more complicated than any form of Exalted is just laughable. Period.  Full-blown 3rd granted got practically Gurps: Vehicles crazy.  4th/5th - completely different game I wouldn't piss on if it were on fire.

"I don't like the level of crunch" is a piss-poor reason for declaring a disconnect between setting and system.

Quote from: AsenRG;971436Second, the disconnect is that it has many, many pages of info on organisations and NPCs. But what does the system do with it?

You mean besides Lifestyle, Contact and Organization rules so that PCs have ways to gain Contacts, improve relationships and actually become members of organizations?

Quote from: AsenRG;971436Why, runs, runs and then, more runs. As you said yourself, there's fiction in the book about getting in a gang and working your way up.
But everything that the PCs do is breaking and entering. Last time I asked the question, I was told that "this is how the adventure I'm running is".
As JA puts it, "standard structure" of the adventure.
While I don't begrudge the focus on dungeons in a game named Dungeons and Dragons, or the focus on runs in a game named Shadowrun...if that's all that should happen in those games, then you don't need about 80% of the setting descriptions.
(And the reason why I like well-described settings is that I want to do more than that).

You realize you sound just like the people who claim D&D only supports Dungeoncrawling...you know those people you usually mock?

So...which is it?  Are you demanding more rules or are you not demanding more rules?  Are you demanding more published modules with a different scenario structure or are you not demanding more modules?

What did you want them to do?

You want to run a group of mercenaries, the mercenary archetype is there to give you an example, the detailed setting provides you with tons of conflict areas around the world and even mentions specific mercenary companies, and then there is Fields of Fire, the goddamn mercenary supplement.

Aren't you the guy that makes up a whole world on the fly every week and can effortlessly convert Fiasco into Phoenix Command so there's no point in even talking about system differences?

Now you expect me to believe this same guy can't take all the detail the setting provides you and run Yakuza without rules or explicit guidelines in the Core Book? (Yes, there's an Organized Crime supplement book too. )

Something's rotten in Emerald City brother, and it ain't the Seattle Sourcebook.

Quote from: Opaopajr;971362That's why all our education started small in pre-school and built up to greater complexity in college, etc. Kindergarten American History looks different from Collegiate American History.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of how it works IRL, at least here. Young children start broad with "the Stone Age" and then "the Romans". By University, if they're lucky it's economic effects of the industrial transition in basket weaving in 1826 Farnsworth. If they're unlucky it's "...and how that should make you feel."

Whereas I think in play people (however experienced at roleplaying in general) need to start small, fighting Tusken Raiders on Tatooine say, and work out from there into galactic politics et al. A game which cares about galactic politics should still support getting started. If it's *only* about galactic politics then it needs really strong support for political play, as much as D&D has for dungeon-bashing.

In the case of Cyberpunk games in particular, something people are forgetting is that typically the worlds are full of factions whose conspiracies and conflicts the PCs get entangled in, and have to deal with.  That doesn't mean the game needs rules for playing Damien Knight any more than Case needs to know how to become Oyabun or Molly needs to know how to run DC Metro PD.  Knowing that the street says that the Oyabun of DC has moles inside DC Metro PD on the other hand...useful information...if it's true, and maybe even if it's not.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;971332I'd add:

3. Scenario structures, which are often not mechanical in nature, although they can be (dungeon procedures in OD&D, for example).

When people talk about games that have amazing settings but they can't figure out what to do with them, for example, they're talking about a game that doesn't have an obvious scenario structures.

I'd argue that the RPG industry in general suffers from a paucity of scenario structures. Most GMs these days only have one structure in their toolbag: Railroading.

Beyond that you've got a pretty good representation of location-based scenarios (e.g. dungeoncrawling), a little bit of mystery-by-clue, and a light patina of hexcrawling.

I think a lot of referees and players alike sort of forget to think of implications.

For instance:  My city of Ram's Horn is on a navigable river.  There are docks and warehouses.

Where people carry goods by water, you WILL have pirates.  Shall we fight them, join them, or become them?

Furthermore, if there are tariffs, there will be smugglers.  Same thing.

You don't need to know anything about the setting, just a little about the real world and human nature.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;971530I think a lot of referees and players alike sort of forget to think of implications. . . . You don't need to know anything about the setting, just a little about the real world and human nature.

Some years ago, over dinner at our favorite Mongolian barbecue, one of the players in my Flashing Blades campaign asked me about how I developed and maintained so many intrigues in the campaign. I told him that any time I create a non-player character, my mind immediately begins ticking off their immediate relationships - parents, siblings, extended family, colleagues, rivals, institutional affiliations - and from there intrigues just cascade from the character.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;971225I fucked up my right shoulder and it hurts like hell and I haven't had a good night's sleep in over a week.

How do you "foster" creative thinking?  62 years of life have led me to conclude that people are either creative or not.  Though I suppose telling people "hey, make up some shit you think would be fun" might free up somebody who grew up thinking that the rules are the only permitted things.

Agreed. And an addendum. Some players and DMs are creative in radically different ways.
Example I've used before: I do most of my DMing on the fly on the spot based on whats gone before or what Ive established so far. One of the other DMs I know does extensive adventure prep. Another does world prep and then sets things in motion and lets the players do as they will.

A well thought out setting can be great for DMs who aren't good at that aspect and frees them up for focusing on the adventures. Or acts as springboards for adventure ideas, and so on. Even a skeletal setting like Karameikos from BX can do that. But others might want something much more detailed like the BECMI Gazeteers.

Quote from: Itachi;971176Thoughts? Please forgive the words as I'm a non-native. Try to capture it's spirit instead of it's form, if possible.

D&D has the best system. Always has. And it matches its setting perfectly. So simple in design really. All it's about is:

Solo-players that are looking for human random number generators for their next game. So they tell their friends that they wan't to be Dungeon Master at a game table.

Victorian England was light on barge pirates. Some settings are too peaceful to make standard adventurer plots likely. These can work well for horror stories though.

Quote from: S'mon;971338Yes - though this is most useful for pre-game prep work where the GM is the primary decider of what the 'adventure' will be; scenario structures are less vital if the players themselves are highly motivated instigator types who will have their PCs go out looking for stuff and mess with anything they come across. In that situation I mostly just need stuff (eg environments, NPCs, spaceships, monsters, conspiracies, organisations, rumours) for them to mess with, either pre-created or easy to create in play. And some kind of task-resolution mechanic, plus hopefully a reward structure like XP which encourages messing with stuff.

I agree about the defaulting to railroad structure. Hard railroad-by-scene seems less common these days, but the Paizo AP style approach where you progress from adventure site to adventure site with a mission to kill everything there seems very common. I guess it dates back at least to G1-G3.

My current player group actually want hard railroading and a clearly focused mission at all times. They flail about helplessly when I ask them where they want the game to go next. I suspect some of this may be the pernicious influence of CRPGs where you don't really have the option of freeform choice, just the illusion of choice.

I have encountered more than one group of players to whom "you don't need a special rule to try to do something" has been quite a revelation. For me that was the default assumption of play. "I want to hire a ship and sail to the Island of Openminded Stewardesses." "I want to become a crimeboss and take over the thieves guild."  We didn't need sailing feats and organized crime rules.

Quote from: S'mon;971488That's pretty much the exact opposite of how it works IRL, at least here. Young children start broad with "the Stone Age" and then "the Romans". By University, if they're lucky it's economic effects of the industrial transition in basket weaving in 1826 Farnsworth. If they're unlucky it's "...and how that should make you feel."

Whereas I think in play people (however experienced at roleplaying in general) need to start small, fighting Tusken Raiders on Tatooine say, and work out from there into galactic politics et al. A game which cares about galactic politics should still support getting started. If it's *only* about galactic politics then it needs really strong support for political play, as much as D&D has for dungeon-bashing.

:confused:

Perhaps my example is unclear, so let me try another one: we often start our children with mathematical symbols and basic numeracy before introducing them to integral calculus.

Because it's hard to start big.

Settings place similar demands upon their players and it is up to the GM to gauge their audience's receptivity. Birthright may start off with politics baked into the cake, but I am not going to run players immediately against aggressive Awnsheghlien with a crippled kingdom. It is better to offer manageable small setting challenges before I throw them into setting deep water.

Because it's hard to start big.

Quote from: Opaopajr;971620Settings place similar demands upon their players and it is up to the GM to gauge their audience's receptivity. Birthright may start off with politics baked into the cake, but I am not going to run players immediately against aggressive Awnsheghlien with a crippled kingdom. It is better to offer manageable small setting challenges before I throw them into setting deep water.

Because it's hard to start big.

Yes I think a lot of games would benefit from an introductory "newbie town + starter dungeon" type setup in the core book. Very few do, the default is much more towards a linear single-session intro adventure, if anything.

Quote from: S'mon;971630Yes I think a lot of games would benefit from an introductory "newbie town + starter dungeon" type setup in the core book. Very few do, the default is much more towards a linear single-session intro adventure, if anything.

Oh, I think we were in agreement then. I couldn't tell if I was coming across unclear. Perhaps your "whereas" threw me off.

It seems to me that ways to "foster player creativity" and interest in doing things other that wait for the next train on the GM's railroad to glory, include just having your game clearly work dynamically and have player choices be mostly what determines what happens. When players observe that doing things, particularly things that aren't just waiting and responding predictably to GM prompts, leads to other logical and interesting things happening (and applying active thought to situations tends to have good results), in ways that are unscripted and make some sense and are fun, then at least some players will be more awake and active and creative and interested, and the ones who aren't at least enjoy the show more. One can also have the smart and interesting NPCs naturally tend to be more interested and friendly with the smart and creative PCs, and/or take more advantage of the predictable PCs.

Is there tension between setting and game? Only in badly-designed games.