Quote from: Tyberious FunkI'll say... any RPG that doesn't use DICE for resolution is a gimmicky piece of shit.  :rolleyes:

Not any, but generally I'd say that's the case, yes.  The urge to use some gimmicky method (be it jenga, tiddly-winks, magic beans, the pop-o-matic-bubble, or whatever) mainly comes from a desperate effort to get your game to stand out above the rest of the games.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jdrakehAs for the gimmick mechanic yes, it is at that -- on the other, unlike most gimmick mechanics, it also works. Most notably, the cyclical tension set up by the Jenga tower mirrors that of the source material that the game seeks to emulate (horror movie plot structure, basically). The downside is that you have to be familiar with the genre to run it right.

If you see Horror as nothing more that body count and shock factor, Dread will not work for you.

I would qualify that with, "it can work," because I had no luck whatsoever with it.  I do know the genre, and yet it still did not work correctly.  I think my pacing was off, which is cool by me, but the game did no deliver for me.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkI'll say... any RPG that doesn't use DICE for resolution is a gimmicky piece of shit.  :rolleyes:

I gotta say, most resolution systems that use... alternate randomizes... don't seem to do it for a reason so much as do it to be different. Then, when they realize the weaknesses of using their method instead of the dice they were replacing, they have to put in a bunch of clunky compensating rules to act more like dice.

SAGA (the old TSR thing, not SWSE), I am looking at you.

I'm sure it's possible for a designer to design a game that actually uses the features of the alternate randomizer (e.g., with cards, the fact that once a card is drawn, it won't be drawn again until you shuffle) to its benefit. But if such a game is out there, I haven't seen it.

Did Dread pick a randomizer that fits what they were going for without gimmicks? I don't know... some people I know swear by it, but it's certainly NOT FOR ME[TM].

Quote from: RPGPunditNot any, but generally I'd say that's the case, yes. The urge to use some gimmicky method (be it jenga, tiddly-winks, magic beans, the pop-o-matic-bubble, or whatever) mainly comes from a desperate effort to get your game to stand out above the rest of the games.

Yep.  Much better to just accept mediocrity and make your game conventional.

Primetime Adventures went from dice to cards.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkYep.  Much better to just accept mediocrity and make your game conventional.

RPGs are not technology.

Quote from: J ArcaneRPGs are not technology.

Well, you're dead right about that.
 
Technology moves forward.  According to Pundit roleplaying is still stuck in the 70s.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWell, you're dead right about that.
 
Technology moves forward.  According to Pundit roleplaying is still stuck in the 70s.

You're not getting me here.

There's no "forward" in RPGs.

Quote from: joewolzI would qualify that with, "it can work," because I had no luck whatsoever with it.  I do know the genre, and yet it still did not work correctly.  I think my pacing was off, which is cool by me, but the game did no deliver for me.

Well, that's what I meant by may last comment. If you're not intimately familiar with the genre, the game won't work for you. And by intimately familiar, I mean that you understand the importance of pacing and how it applied to basic story structure in Horror -- admittedly, it's a pretty big pitfall.

Bodies, blood, creepy monsters, and plot twists alone do not make Horror, which is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of many casual purveyors (and, sadly, many of new Hollywood directors). Dread is more for dedicated genre connoisseurs, then casual fans. And, yeah, I know that probably sounds "swinish" -- that said, it's still very true.

How do you know if your're a connoisseur or a casual fan? If you can correctly answer three or more of questions below without Google, you're probably a connoiseur. If you can't, you're probably a casual fan.

True or False:

1. In George A. Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, the titular living dead are referred to as zombies.

[sblock]False. The word "zombie" is never used in the original film to describe the living dead. Instead, they are referred to as ghouls.[/sblock]

2. Return of the Living Dead was originally scripted as a sequel to the aformentioned Night of the Living Dead.

[sblock]True. John Russo was Romero's collaborator on Night and wrote Return as a sequel. Romero didn't like it and, thus, it didn't happen.[/sblock]

3. Tobe Hooper's the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a re-telling of actual events.

[sblock]False. While Hooper drew on the real-life killers Ed Gein, Albert Fish, and the Benders (a family of serial killers on the Kansas frontier) for inspiration, the events portrayed in the film are purely fictional.[/sblock]

You Supply the Answer:

4. The 1979 feature Halloween features what famous Star Trek actor?

[sblock]William Shatner.[/sblock]

5. Where does this actor appear in the film?

[sblock]On the psycho's head. The killer's mask is a William Shatner mask with teased out hair that has been sprayed with a coat of flat white primer.[/sblock]

6. Dario Argento's most famous trilogy of giallo films is known collectively as what?

[sblock]The Animal Trilogy[/sblock]

7. What three films compose this trilogy?

[sblock]The Cat o' Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage[/sblock]

8. Chuck Connors, television's The Rifleman, plays both a protagonist and the main villain in what b-movie Horror film?

[sblock]Tourist Trap[/sblock]

It is this audience that Dread seems to name for and, dare I say, nails. The problem is that this somewhat fetishist audience is really, really, small

Quote from: J ArcaneYou're not getting me here.
 
There's no "forward" in RPGs.

Well, now I'm not getting you.
 
If there is no "forward" in RPGs, how come we don't all play original D&D?

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWell, now I'm not getting you.
 
If there is no "forward" in RPGs, how come we don't all play original D&D?

If you dig original D&D, why the hell shouldn't you keep playing it?

RPGs don't "progress forward", they simply offer new options.

As I pointed out in the "innovation" thread, there's no such thing as obsolence in RPGs, no universally superior approach.  

Sometimes even, perfectly wonderful techniques are abandoned, because of this misconception.  I'm actually stepping back to pre-3.x D&D for the approach to stat blocks for monsters and minor NPCs in my own game, because I think the idea of boiling down the mechanics a creature to the bare basics needed to fight it has it's advantages in speed of play and prep.

We're not talking computers or something here, where a Pentium 4 is objectively superior to a Pentium II, we're talking about games, where the only real metric for comparison is fun, and fun is gonna be entirely relative to the players in question.

I think the healthier way of looking at the field is that of diversification.  Exploring the myriad of options out there, each of which is good for different things, and brings different flavors to the table.  Like food, even if it's something you adore, you don't necessarily want to eat it every day, and there's doubtless for everyone of us countless foods we've never tried but could very well adore even more.  

Different, but not necessarily always better.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWell, now I'm not getting you.
 
If there is no "forward" in RPGs, how come we don't all play original D&D?

Because there are people whose gaming needs are served better by different games. b), original D&D has been rather hard to get until... uh, next week. c), some people may be turned off by the sparse production values and the disorganised nature of the product. d), while games don't advance as technology does, they change to conform to contemporary tastes, which are obviously different.

On the other hand, OD&D is still very playable if you are into very light and very moddable games. My one-shots have been pretty successful so far.

Therefore: there is no "forward", but there is "elsewhere".

Quote from: J ArcaneDifferent, but not necessarily always better.

 
When you look at it from the perspective of the hobby as a whole, different often is better.  The more games available, the more different games available, the more choice I have.  And as far as I'm concerned, more choice is definitely better.
 
So that's why I think a game like Dread is innovative... whether I personally like it much, at least it does something different.  And that gives me another choice to consider.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWell, now I'm not getting you.
 
If there is no "forward" in RPGs, how come we don't all play original D&D?

I think the core ideas that original D&D introduced (traditional GMing model, character differentiation, themes of exploration/adventure, etc.) are still hugely popular today and haven't been improved on.

And more choices isn't necessarily a good thing, either. In some cases it's a bad thing (in brick/mortar retail outlets more crap means less good stuff on the limited shelf space. On the web, more noise means lower signal-to-noise ratio).

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.And more choices isn't necessarily a good thing, either. In some cases it's a bad thing (in brick/mortar retail outlets more crap means less good stuff on the limited shelf space. On the web, more noise means lower signal-to-noise ratio).

Bricks-and-mortar stores can go fuck themselves.  Seriously.  It might be different in the US, but here in Australia most of them are shit.  As for the signal-to-noise ratio of the internet... dude, are you for real?  The whole internet is one big mess of noise!