LostKnightsRPG.org

[Rusty]

I think this thread has been done before, but I like to revisit this subject from time to time.

the question:

What makes a good game for you? Please describe in as much length as you can. I'm working on things and this info would be helpful. Anything at all that has made a game in the past 'great' for you, from archetypal story arcs, to levels of detail, anything.

Basically, I'm asking for people to state what they hope will happen/be present in a game when they start playing it.

oh yeah, and stare at my avatar.

[rydi]

i will reply later. bed for reals this time.

[Liquidprism]

I want to make sweet love to your avatar. I am making sweet love to your avatar.........................................................................................................................................................
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.........................okay finished.

Anyway, I like power in games. Having it, maintaining it, lording it, using it, fishing with it, riding with it, using it to fly, kill, steal, heal, and deal. Yep, good old fashioned power.
All my favorite games involved two major points; Power and me having it. I really can go on and on about the long hot baths I like to take, soaking in the exctasy that is power. I let it infuse my skin, flood every pore of my being, and then...gently get up, dry off, and point my powerladen powerhouse at the problem.

What more is there than that. I play games to escape my shitty life, I don't want to be some other random guy, with real life problems and relationships, I get to deal with enough of that at home (and I'm not good at it). So when I play a game I want to be the farthest thing from 'me' as possible. I want to be a sentient alien weapon designed to destroy things, and wrestling with a concious. I want to be a martial god, or a soldier in some epic war. I want to wield universe changing power and be the best there is at what I do.
Yes, I like to actually role-play, I'm pretty good with personalities and interactions, but at the end of the day I want to know I have the power to back up my desire, and the will to mainfest change in what is inevitably another shitty existence.
The moments I rememeber are moments were my characters grew, or changed, or affected change in some way. In the last DnD game we played (3.5) I remember three moments above all the others.
Running into a room with a nightwalker, hitting it with an undead bane mace, and then Cheyne rolling a 1 on its Will. save, which resulted in its instant destruct.
Another came after a grueling fight with a room full of undead (one of many) and the whole party opting to retreat. But, what did I do, I stayed behind, and decided to fight it out. With my last Searing Ray I hit the big bad of the room and dropped it, which subsequently blew my invisibilty and revealed my presence. I took my stand in a pool of holy water and as all these mummies walled me in the rest of the party came back to finish the fight. Yeah it was stupid, but it was epic, and awesome. That I was able to rally people with my actions made the game for me. I was ready to die to those mummies, and take as many of them as possible with me, but the gaming gods were kind, and instead the tide of battle turned.
The third thing I remember is walking down a hallway full of brutal traps and taking them all to the face. I made my saves and walked on. Hell yes.
These three instances really made me love playing that game. They combine gritty decisions, larger than life encounters, and heroic action. Its great to feel like your making a diffrence in the game, both in the long term story and in the immediate setting.
I will admit that I was not overly fond of the general idea of Cheyne's 'Evil Dungeon Tower", it basically sybolized a lack of hope and a powelessness, niether are things I want to have in a game, at least not as reacurring themes.
What I do like are games like Starforge (the original) I loved playing Derrick Hawks, with his weird powers, and cool technology. I also love playing my marvel character Prism, a construct from another universe designed as a weapon, and forced to wrestle with his own sentients and growing 'humanity'.
Speaking of Marvel, there is a neat system. It uses cards to determine success, random acts of fate, and character generation. It also needs a bit of tweaking to fleash out a long running game, and deal with some situations the designers overlooked, but hey its fun, fast, and easy.
I don't like overly complex rules and stuff. Keep it simple and easy. There generally isn't a need to have 4 sets of attributes all derivative of one another, which then affect a series of skill trees, and their respective specialties.
There is something to be said about systems like 3.5 DnD with all its options and unique character builds. As Cheyne likes to say, "Optimizing a DnD character is a game all its own.
With that said however look at the amount of material you have to comb through and grasp just to make a character that is fun to play, and able to handle a variety of situations.
Yes, yes i know DnD is about team work, and using a balanced party to whatever, guess what...i don't like relying on others to get stuff done. I want to be able to do my own thing. Sure a party should work well toegether, but i don;t think that means they all need weaknesses that have to be shored up by other characters.
Feng Shui is a great exampe of what I like. Starting player are world class heroes, ready to fight the hoards of enemies who want reality for themselves. Sure once the newness has worn off you have to maybe add some new powers, but the basic system is pretty sound, and very simple.
I also actually like the Silouette system we used for Starforge. It just had that one flaw with it's attributes being the only thing that mattered in skill rolls. With some simple modification that could be fixed.
I am running out of things to say on this topic just now. I think I have a pretty good summary here of likes and dislikes. If you want more just ask. I have a bunch of gaming anecdotes from my years of play, both things I loved and hated. Anyway, hope this helps.

[Liquidprism]

Whoa dude, my post went haywire...freakin sweet.

[rydi]

my gaming has been an evolution. i like power as much as the next person, and i spent alot of my early gaming interested in gettin as much of it as possible. i also like systems; figuring them out, min/maxing them, crunching numbers to get that 1/10th of a pt advantage... its kind of like an athlete prepping for the big game and getting a kick out of the improvements they are making and how they are going to have an edge because of their special training regimen...

but as i've gotten older i've come to appreciate strategy and character interaction a HUGE amount more than i used to. I really like both of those elements.

AND I LIKE FEELING AS THOUGH I IMPACT THE GAME WORLD. That's an important one for me in any game i play.

recently, i've found that my tastes are falling toward niches, games and game concepts made to handle very specialized needs. i like dd 4th ed, but only for purposes of an uber challenging tactical board game. i like marvel as THE power game (how do you get better than universe spanning cosmic heroes?). I like wod for politics, and sometimes for character interaction and story content.

my ideal game would have:
-character interaction (both professional "lets accomplish the mission" and personal "small talk over dinner" types) as integral to the game.

-strategy, in the form of problems to solve that make me feel special in solving them, or at least my character if i can't.

-the ability to impact the game world, and make a difference in it.

-a good story.

-enough balance between the players that one or two don't just dominate everyone else with their uberness, and a good enough group of players that everyone adds to the game. really, even bad gm's run good games when the players care and interact well.

some things i care less and less about:
-combat. it bores the shit out of me most of the time. maybe it is because i understand the numbers too well after years of min/maxing, but most combat is predictable going in, especially if you pay attention and after a few rolls you get the enemy's stats down. b o r i n g. part of the reason i want to play dd 4th ed as strategy is because as a plot driven game, the system is too focused around combat, and with the 'balanced' encounters you are forced to use to keep your players alive, entirely predictable. at least as a strategy game you can ramp up and vary the challenges, and don't have to worry about the protagonists having a tpk and ending your story.

-combat. did i say that already? it takes for fucking ever, and eliminates roleplay, takes people out of their characters and puts them into dice rolling mode. i enjoy the idea of combat far more than the reality. if a game is to have combat, i preffer something more like marvel, d6, d4, or feng shui. simple rolls, or rolls vs. rolls. no long string of hits, no 32 attack combos, and preferably a system that penalties can be easily applied to ad hoc for weird stuff. one thing i like about marvel is that the cards are exciting, and have pictures of actual characters. i think it has a a subconscious cognitive effect, priming people for comic bookish types of interaction.

-dungeons. only in d&d are dungeons an option. they are lame. but, in a board game, as you climb up an infinite tower... then they're cool.

-metaplot. this sounds weird at first. and don't get me wrong, i do like it. but i think that people can do without it more. or at least less out in the open as the motivator for the game. to elaborate...

i went on the wod boards a while back. and i was talking to people about my games, and the fact that one of my major annoyances was that characters interacted so little, despite my encouragement, and that what little interaction there was often ended up being stilted and lifeless. and i was also debating (well, mostly deriding) the merits of Nwod. but some of the other people on there had good points, one poster in particular. he had a three tier idea of gaming.

1)novices start out with the game in simplest form, rolling dice, killing monsters, getting treasure, simplistic wish fulfillment, and 1D characters.

2)second tier players want more complexity, and move towards quest style games, with overarching plots and characters that are more developed. the problem with tier 2 is that characters are subordinate to the plots, and their interaction is only seen as important as it relates to the plot. the actual roleplay element ends at 2D characters.

3)the third tier he described takes a bottom up approach, and is why i ultimately switched to nwod. the metaplot is there, but is not the focus. instead of intruducing an overarching bunch of stuff, you focus on the here and now of the character's lives. you present interesting npc's, have them interact, solve small problems, most of which are just run of the mill stuff in their character's life (but nonetheless define the setting; a simple intelligence gathering mission for a spy game, feeding for vampire, and so on). your characters start out forced to interact with one another to pass time, and that interaction is seen as important, and is rewarded, by the gm. the metaplot is introduced slowly, and is not seen as disembodied from the characters that carry it out, but rather as an expression of their traits (the best analogy i can come up with atm is politics; people think of politics as overarching policies and ideology, which in a way it is, but more realistically, especially if you are engaged in politics at the front lines, it is personalities and individuals that create the political landscape, not just a disembodied idea of 'republican', 'senate', or what have you). characters become more involved, and do not subordinate their own goals and desires to the needs of the over-plot; rather, they make their goals an active part of the metaplot. the summer game has already been working better along this new model.

now, all that said, that tier system isn't meant to be elitist or to say a type of gaming is wrong. but it does show a movement toward greater complexity, and comprehension of complexity. myself, i like play at all three levels, but levels 1 and 2 get boring after a while. lvl 1 is virtually the same game every time, especially if you are playing in a balanced fashion (thus my desire to throw balance out the window for d&d). lvl 2 has more variety, but at its most basic it is quest based, and quests are modeled after a few standardized, archetypal progressions. go read joseph campbell for a breakdown of the hero's journey. or go watch star trek for another type of quest. or x-files. how many more are there really? and the end, at least for most games, is always the same: beat the bad guy, save the princess/world/artifact/gerbil, cut scene.

third tier play offers more complexity, while still allowing lower tier elements to come in, but emphasising roleplay and character development. while some people can play with large scale ideas, metaplot, etc, and create cool character interactions out of that, most people can't. most people need low-lvl stuff to deal with, npcs to talk to, and normalish stuff with a hint of the abnormal to make the setting. when confronted with a galactic armada of emperor zorg, they freeze up and either go into combat mode or go into solve the quest mode, abandoning their characters in the process. Oh, one other thing about this: i find that the people that respond to tier 2 plot style with good roleplaying are often either detached from normative society, live mostly in their heads and fantasies rather than reality, or both. some people do actually respond well to metaplot, making richer characters, but most people can only see the quest, or can't see past the scale of it. wierd things you notice by watching people game.

that's all for now, this took me the better part of an hour, i'm hungry, and no one will read through this in detail most likely anyway.

[Rusty]

i read it. it was good.