A while back, I did a store visit in Oakland, CA. During that visit, I was in a discussion with someone on the future of roleplaying games who took position that RPGs were growing more specialized and that the era of rules systems that catered to a wide audience had passed. He pointed to the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons and the World of Darkness game systems as proof. For D&D 4e, he claimed that the system was focusing on tactical combat given the specialization roles classes have that players must choose from at various stages of progression. World of Darkness, he claimed, eschewed combat in favor of social conflicts. I have to ask if this was true and if so, how the weight of so many genres and subgenres haven’t fractured the market out of existence. So, why was his argument not on the level?
For starters, one of the problems with the argument is the nature of storytelling. There are two types of plots: those of the body and those of the mind. Of course there is infinite variety therein, but this is the base from which storytellers work. Human experiences are bound within these two realms. As such, it is impossible to write a rules system that only caters to a specific type of story. This isn’t to say that mechanics can’t be designed to support a certain play style, only that no system can exclude story types.
The game rules provide a guideline for method to resolve the most common actions that will crop up in the course of play. Everything else is a result of the story players wish to tell. Thus, the reason for why people create house rules. Those are situations that derive from the one thing a game cannot control: how people tell their stories and the implications personalization implies. In effect, this is beyond the scope of the rules. Players are given a sandbox full of tools, but they get to play with them as they desire.
Another reason why the argument doesn’t hold up is how players use settings with novels that support the product line. For instance, the Dragonlance line is a romance. Not only was it branded as such, but the novels also supported this thought. The adventures players set in that world do not have to make use of any mechanics that support such play, however. Nothing in a rulebook beyond the core mechanic requires players to actually use the rules for any given situation. Then again, there is nothing preventing someone one of using the world, but translating everything enjoyed from that setting into a game system they prefer instead. Here are some examples of that issue: don’t want a world with wizards, ignore spellcasters. The gods aren’t real in your version of the world? Remove any miracles priests could work.
This brings me to the reason why I feel D&D 4e is too limited in design. Too much emphasis is placed on the role of combat in play. It’s one thing to have a cinematic system, such as d6, Tri-Stat dX, and older rules-light versions of Dungeons & Dragons. It is quite another to reduce the discussion to how the classes work in combat and to offer predominantly rules and templates for specialized roles in battle. Very little focus is given to noncombat events. While story is effectively outside the scope of rules (e.g. game masters often do not roll plot lines off a series of tables), it isn’t subject to a game mechanic to resolve an outcome. D&D 4e ignores story, it doesn’t exclude it.
On the other end of the scale my interlocutor placed the new World of Darkness game line. According to him, that system focused on social conflicts more so than the physical variety. This too rang hollow. That said, he pointed out the lack of a unifying guide to combat for the disparate settings using the same system when compared to the old rules line. The core books aren’t concerned with a more tactical style of combat in comparison to the more wargame-esque system of D&D 4e. It is the purview of other books for the game, however.
In a compartmentalized system like d20/OGL games, it is easy to cherry pick the rules one wants to use to define the play experience. For a game like the new World of Darkness, it isn’t so clear when the compartmentalization is already done for players. That’s why there are so many books dedicated to specific topics and the rules that support those ideas in relation to the core game (or genre in the case of books for Mage, Vampire, etc.). In fact, four books focus on combat, all of them as part of the generic line of books designed for use with any of the genres (or a “normals” campaign). Contrast that with the books published for D&D 4e. Unlike the nWoD books, most of the D&D volumes are combat-oriented with the exception of setting guides (few in number, indeed). Both systems do represent opposite ends of gaming design philosophy.
Another reason why the argument didn’t sit well with me is the existences of point-buy systems. They have a tendency to be genre free. If systems that catered to multiple styles of play are part of a bygone era, why do lines like GURPS and HERO System still remain in print along with interest in games like the d6 System, Tri-Stat dX, and BESM? Even if they offer a build-as-you-go system alongside genre-based supplements, the options presented speak to the power and appeal of games that emphasize the players’ creativity over that of the systems’ authors. The work of the authors becomes new ways of envisioning how to use the toys at one’s disposal. It shifts the writer’s role from a dictatorial creator to a co-creator on par with the player.
Finally, there is the question of market share. How can any company create enough products to garner a base without becoming a niche or destroying its base by segmenting it? Perhaps the guy wasn’t aware of the problems TSR faced in the mid-90s when it had too many game worlds in print at the same time. The sheer number of themes that were available fractured TSR’s base and flooded its market until the sheer glut harmed the company’s margins (amongst other issues). As such, it doesn’t make sense to design multiple worlds catering to too many genres when several can be covered by a few worlds at most. The lesson was learned and the d20 Modern and D&D 3rd Edition lines worked to accommodate as many play styles and stories possible without resorting to an inordinate number of game worlds – just too many books, for some people’s tastes. In fact, there were three core D&D worlds produced by Wizards of the Coast with two licensed by WotC to third-parties and limited runs for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and Blizzard’s Diablo II (two books each). The d20 Modern game had period books, but only two that could be seen as genre offerings: an urban fantasy setting and a revisit of the conspiracy fair from the Alternity line.
The lesson learned, and followed by virtually every successful company, is a core system that then has its roots hidden by the trappings of rules that simulate genre staples. Not only does this lower the learning curve for a company’s fans to move from one world to another, but also proves that a sandbox needs to be whatever its occupants want it to be. The experience is beyond the scope of rules, just like the story. Players who like a particular mechanic will find away to express plots of mind and body as suits their tastes, making one system work for all occasions. Fans of Alternity (1998) proved this by creating material for fantasy gaming using that system’s core mechanic.
Previous:
Anatomy of Game Design: Basic Margins of Error
Next:
Anatomy of Game Design: The Technology Involved