Game Design Sins

[DeadBob]

Pardon the huge multi-quote reply, I will try to be succinct



You use the same strategy as when buying tools, clothing, or a 40k army; if you can't pay for everything you want in one lump sum you break the purchases into useable chunks and start with what you're going to use most. When it comes to RPG miniatures, you start with the most common encounters and work from there. My collection started with undead and dungeon vermin.

I dislike the idea of a DM soliciting players for $$ to purchase group miniatures. I encourage players to buy their own PC and henchman miniatures but do not require it.

Reaper Bones, Nozlur’s Marvellous Miniatures and Pathfinder Deep Cuts are all budget miniature lines of decent quality. You could get set up with a gameable collection of undead, dungeon vermin, and bandits for under $50.


I am a "less is more" DM who sticks to curated bestiaries for whatever setting I am running and don't feel the need for every creature in the book to make an appearance in my games. Even then, my collection is pretty substantial. I don't think it is practical or even desirable to account for dozens of slightly different humanoid races and multiples of the 300+ creatures in the Monster Manual.

The "how many owlbears are needed" question feels like a non-issue, the answer being "however many you want." I imagine them as solitary apex predators that congregate briefly to mate so I own 1. If parliaments of owlbears rampaging through the forest are a thing in your game, I guess you'll need to buy more.

The sweet spot for most combat-heavy RPGs like D&D is warband/squad sized conflict so I buy as many miniatures as I think will be practically used, which is about a dozen at the top end for things that come in big numbers like giant rats, bandits, ape-men and zombies but more often less. In the rare event that I need to represent more creatures on the table than I have miniatures for, I fill out the ranks with Litko plywood bases of the appropriate size as stand-ins (which are the first to be removed as casualties, naturally).

With all due respect, I think it goes without saying that space is needed. Obviously, if no one in the group can secure enough space to comfortably host, gaming with miniatures is probably a bad idea.



I do not feel it is practical to accurately represent terrain and find that a measure of abstraction is perfectly fine, especially if PCs are blowing through multiple biomes in a session like a video game. I have a Paizo battle mat that's dungeon flagstone on one side, generic green grass on the other that works for the vast majority of encounters. I own number of themed grids like desert, city, and even a ship but they are rarely used.

Again, I think less is more applies to terrain. I use a little 3d dungeon terrain, mostly doors, chests, altars and pillars. I also pack a small number of representative outdoor items for whatever biome they party is in (e.g. palm trees for tropical forest). I don't feel the need to cover the table in wargame terrain; a handful of strategically placed, inexpensive thematic terrain pieces can make a battlefield pop without wasting a lot of time.

That said, I am looking for good dungeon tiles to up my tabletop game. Dwarven Forge tiles are absolutely gorgeous but experience has shown me that walls get in the way and setup takes too much time.


As a general rule, I buy miniatures with utility in mind and all of them are going to get used multiple times.

Then again, the money shot of my current game is gonna to be a showdown with Juiblex and in this case I don't mind blowing 60 bucks on a miniature that may only be used once (it will probably be recycled as a super-shoggoth or something though).

Before I even get too deep into properly reading your responses to the individual points. just a couple quick skim responses:

1) You've already spent more time thinking about miniatures use in what you've typed than most game texts referring to them as part of the games assumed style of play.

2) In some of your responses, you've made what I'd call "design choices". Those choices, some undoubtedly seemingly obvious (I'm of the GM provides minis school of thought also) can and should then cause follow up questions to be asked. That can or should then lead to feedback in the rules themselves, IMO.

 

[Brock Savage]

Before I even get too deep into properly reading your responses to the individual points. just a couple quick skim responses:

1) You've already spent more time thinking about miniatures use in what you've typed than most game texts referring to them as part of the games assumed style of play.

2) In some of your responses, you've made what I'd call "design choices". Those choices, some undoubtedly seemingly obvious (I'm of the GM provides minis school of thought also) can and should then cause follow up questions to be asked. That can or should then lead to feedback in the rules themselves, IMO.

My point was was to illustrate that most of the decision points for collecting tabletop miniatures have solutions that are obvious or a matter of personal preference. Do you feel RPGs should be addressing these decision points in their "What is an RPG?" preface to the rules? If so, which ones?

 

[AsenRG]

Last option on the cargo... Go with my idea of everything is Lego. Build the ship out of Lego. Build the giraffe sculpture out of Lego. How many Lego giraffe sculptures can you physically put into your ship's cargo hold? Are you allowed to partially disassemble the giraffe sculptures? :-)

...
Not practical, but I love the idea. I'm a huge LEGO fan (when i have the time to build models) and it seems like my sons are gearing to be like that as well. So I might even have the manpower to do that in a couple of years...
"First son and Second son, build me a spaceship for tonight's game!"

Pardon the huge multi-quote reply, I will try to be succinct

If people apologize for that, I should simply change my user title...

Visually, it is lush, maybe one of the most beautiful RPG books ever produced in English, an I love the background.

The system even seems quite innovative (instead of standard stats you had "attitudes" and your dominant attitude or approach modifies how you accomplish tasks).

But yeah, I think I've owned tha book for 20 years and still cannot make heads nor tails of it

I'd put that down to the translation.
But then I haven't seen the French original, so I might be wrong.

So here's a small example of shit that gives me the pip, in this case an example from a game I actually love, Spelljammer. This particular issue plagues a lot of games that have ship rules, spacefaring or otherwise. My issue here is with the notion of tonnage, particularly cargo space related to tonnage. So in Spelljammer a ship will have about half its tonnage available for cargo space, so a 30 ton ship has 15 tons of cargo space. So far so good. Here's where things fall apart for me though. Each 'ton' of cargo space is described as 50 cubic yards of cargo space. My problem here is that measurement means almost nothing to most people. Even people who suffer under the lash of Imperial measurements probably don't think in cubic yards. How many barrels of dwarven ale can I fit into 10 tons of cargo space? you ask. To which I reply, fucked if I know, let me get out my slide rule. Never mind the fact that no one knows how big a barrel of dwarven ale is in the first place because in no case will it be described in a way that's useful for determining cargo space. It's simply not terribly useful as a basic mechanic or description.

The 50 cubic yards thing struggles a little even if you want to do the math. The easy part is that a yard is 3 feet, so a cubic yard is a 3'x 3' cube. Cool. So a normal crate might reasonably be one of those and a large crate maybe two. How about those barrels of ale though? Well, maybe it's one each, IDK? Close enough I suppose. How about a crate of pikes? Arrgh. How about a big sack of tiddly winks? Double arrgh. How about a cargo of ornate giraffe statues crafted by artisanal Gnomish carvers on Phlogiston IV? Jesus wept. Don't get me wrong, I can do the math and 3D whatsits, but I don't want to have to, especially not at the table. Just gimme a cargo rating based on a range of easily conceptualized exemplars and call it a day.

I totally agree with this complaint.

What I found in practice with these kinds of things in most groups I was in, was we would usually have 1 or 2 math guys and everyone would just trust what they said about it. And if no math guy, it would become very shoot from the hip

..and this is how we've always resolved it. My default is approximating, than shooting from the hip partway through the calculations!

 

[DeadBob]

My point was was to illustrate that most of the decision points for collecting tabletop miniatures have solutions that are obvious or a matter of personal preference. Do you feel RPGs should be addressing these decision points in their "What is an RPG?" preface to the rules? If so, which ones?

I'd take it a step or two further, honestly.

Let's take your "what to collect in what order, and how many?" bit, along with your concept of a curated bestiary bit (either because it's an initially limited bestiary or because the GM is going to pair it down as part of their setting customization) and then get more specific and make it official. tailored to the specific game in question.

Let's nail practical ways to get the most out of an initially limited miniatures collection, and outright state that. Specifically. In easy-to-follow ways.

Build-in instructions and explain why and how to get re-use out of that collection, while trying to balance both WYSIWYG fun and practical monetary and time considerations.

Take a page from Army Construction rules for almost any miniatures game and the fold spindle and mutilate to make it a guide for GMs for an RPG that uses minis. Apply a similar principle to the terrain collection/board collection.

Builds the movement/ranged rules to assume a smaller standard "encounter space" as generally RPGs have less space available, but also generally less miniatures being used at once. If nothing else, it allows for recycling of baddies as a form of re-use. That plays with your idea of buying about a squad size of whatever curated baddies you regularly use, but then also allows for the horde effect in a given encounter (as the board is relatively small physically)

Build a game, a build a system for building a setting, that has a high re-use of boards (and for RPGs, I generally favor the use of boards at first, with "board here being a pre-made, fairly colorful 2d map/mat; 3d fully terrained stuff is a more advanced stage) that can then be expanded for individual scenarios by inclusion of other boards (probably but not necessarily one-offs). My goto example would be something along the lines taken by TSR Marvel Superheroes ( FASERIP) boxed sets; A core map ( in minis-use cases maybe a small, 4-6 piece collection of boards) that then gets re-used for different things repeatedly and then a couple more "module" or adventure specific location boards that are added slowly as adventures are played.

I think solo monsters need rules to make them unique and always challenge, although if there is a big upgrade of PC capability over time, maybe also some rules on upgrading that threat.


But those are the design choices I would make. My goal in designing that, in addition to simply wanting fun miniatures use rules would be to give the game buyer a map to success in using miniatures, including the Out-of-Game considerations.

 

[Acmegamer]

So the model you're working on is that you have different minis for everything that hits the table? Jesus. That's ... crazy pants (but awesome). I tend to have a handful of big figs, some horse sized ones, a bunch of humanoid ones, and some small shit. I call them 'enemies' and never you mind that they look like goblins and we're facing psychotic halfling cannibals.

Yup, what I call my "general purpose meanies" GPMs. Since I tend to be quite descriptive on what the party is facing GPMs get the job done for minor foes. They're numbered so it's easy for me and the players to keep track of as well. I save the individual actual miniatures for important npcs and monsters.

 

[Malakor]

As far as CoC skills go, I started noodling around with a hack ages ago for earlier editions that worked a bit like the old WEG Star Wars templates.

Basically, skills were grouped and you'd buy a category up to a certain level( say between 20-40%), then advance the individual skills separately after that with other points.

The idea was to have say, a "pulp" scientist with broad science-y skills, but specialized in just a few. Much less need to go looking for a helper NPC when it turns out that this adventure really does benefit from Botany and no one has it. IN that case, someone would have the skill, just at a modest but viable level.

I did this with a legends-based 'two-fisted 30's adventure' game several years ago. I had my 'basic' skills going to 50% and at that point the specializations were kicked in. It worked fairly well, as I recall. I think classic Cortex rules influenced me, but I have so much stuff in my library and in my head, there is no telling where the actual inspiration came from

 

[DeadBob]

Yup, what I call my "general purpose meanies" GPMs. Since I tend to be quite descriptive on what the party is facing GPMs get the job done for minor foes. They're numbered so it's easy for me and the players to keep track of as well. I save the individual actual miniatures for important npcs and monsters.

That's not actually that different from my approach. I do actually believe in reasonable substitution and have said so,

I just also believe that you can write game settings in a way to minimize it (curation of bestiary among them, as well as how you approach "people/humanoids" *in SF and Fantasy settings), use re-skinning to minimize it (can the cannibal halflings actually be reskinned to being goblins or vice-versa?), and old and well-known minis gamer techniques like recycled waves to create a feel of much larger groups of baddies, having small clumps of similarly armed dudes with only one or two close-to-wysiwyg and the others whatever is at hand ( but remove the wysiwyg guys last), and so on.

In a real pinch, I don't even disagree with using boardgame pawns.

OTOH, I do value the aesthetics, and look for other ways to limit the need for that stuff. Which ultimately was what my first post was about: really think about what h=goes into using minis and then design the game/setting/methods to make it as reasonably wysiwyg as possible, with the least fuss. And I mean that as a contrast to simply never even talking about the stuff and just expecting folks to muddle through on their own with no direction.

Lordy knows I've met plenty of people (and I went through this stage as well) who sort of accumulate a collection that's never quite right, muddle through trying to figure out when and where and how to use those miniatures and minimize the hassles of translating from unconsidered game scenarios/materials/ settings, and then mostly pack that stuff away and never use it again.

Part of the reason I've ended up with some fairly extensive miniatures collections is that I've purchased those half-formed collections from frustrated other players second hand.

* Mos Eisley style multi-species baddie groups are one method, since anyone could potentially be a baddie. Another way is to cut down and curate the list into just a few baddie categories of differentiation and then use a few slightly different figures (more of a JRRT approach).

 

[Agemegos]

In a game in which transporting cargo is a major thing I don't see why you can't use a basic abstract number.

This ship holds 50 cargo. A crate of guns is 1 cargo. A scupture of a giraffe is 4 cargo.

The problem is not the ship specification that says "50 cargo". The problem is the lack of a listing of everything from "aardvark, live" to "zymurgy textbook, introductory" with their volumes in cargo. And I don't think that's a problem that I expect or want an RPG to solve for me.

The cargo "ton" equal to 100 cubic feet is at least used in real-world shipping, so that you have some ghost of a chance of being able to look it up somewhere. "Infantry in troop transports require five tons per soldier."

 

[TJS]

The problem is not the ship specification that says "50 cargo". The problem is the lack of a listing of everything from "aardvark, live" to "zymurgy textbook, introductory" with their volumes in cargo. And I don't think that's a problem that I expect or want an RPG to solve for me.

The cargo "ton" equal to 100 cubic feet is at least used in real-world shipping, so that you have some ghost of a chance of being able to look it up somewhere. "Infantry in troop transports require five tons per soldier."

Well yes. This is something that should be handled at the game design level not the individual GM level. But you don't need every possible cargo listed you just need a broad range of cargo.

Anything that comes in a standard size crate should probably be 1 cargo. So if it's a crate of textbooks it's 1 cargo. If it's one textbook it's too neglible to be concerned about. Living things should be listed by the amount of space they need.

You don't need to list everything. But if the players do want to transport an aardvark the GM could probably look up the cargo list and see that 1 sheep takes 2 cargo worth of space, so that's probably what you would need for an aardvark too.

After all isn't this how prices have always been handled? How do you normally determine the price of something if it's not listed in the rulebook. Don't you use the general scale of prices for things that are listed as your reference point?

If I have to look something up I'd rather it be the rulebook for the game I'm playing.

 

[Ravenswing]

The problem is not the ship specification that says "50 cargo". The problem is the lack of a listing of everything from "aardvark, live" to "zymurgy textbook, introductory" with their volumes in cargo. And I don't think that's a problem that I expect or want an RPG to solve for me.

The cargo "ton" equal to 100 cubic feet is at least used in real-world shipping, so that you have some ghost of a chance of being able to look it up somewhere. "Infantry in troop transports require five tons per soldier."

In which case we do what GMs have been doing for half a century now: figure it out or wing it.

 

[David Johansen]

I just rated a variety of types of cargo by density. Mind you, I'm firmly of the belief that biomass, soil, manure, and similar dense, biologically rich materials will be the valuable treasures being shipped in space. And crews passing through will be very popular for their genetic diversity as well.

 

[Acmegamer]

In which case we do what GMs have been doing for half a century now: figure it out or wing it.

Yep, to keep the game going it's just easier to ballpark it (wing it). As a GM I do try to figure out as many of these type of situations ahead of time if I recognize that they're going to crop up though.

 

[Fenris-77]

So yeah sure, we can all wing it. In terms of design sins, my point was that it should be easy and intuitive to wing it when the thing being winged is a very peripheral system. Rather that frustrating and shitty, which is what my examples indexed.

 

[ffilz]

I've met a few big LEGO fans in these kinds of conversations before.

My suggestion would be to shoot for fewer games, but bigger more dramatic games, and get any other LEGO fans in the gaming group to come in and help you build, working their ideas in.

So if your group meets every week or so, shoot instead for a single all day affair every month or so.

I'd also probably go with the Big Table (and maybe multiple small areas) concept. Do you have a garage or basement or similar as potential play space?

With the adaptability of Lego people, you really do have almost an unlimited ability to create new individual characters and players can literally build their characters from parts available.

I would think the big thing would mostly be getting the non-Lego folks to heartily buy int the Lego aesthetic. Once that was done though, the sky is the limit.

I've considered a variety of ideas for running games. My ideal would be to keep a permanent setup, though it could change over time, but it takes me months to build the more significant structures, and weeks to build a simpler structure at best. I'd be wary of including other peoples Lego pieces, even if in the form of a complete structure. That would then mean that I would only be able to accommodate one or two other builders since they would have to build from my collection. Then there's how to get the dedicated space. The largest display I set up was 5'x15' and I have a brand new 5'x5' section and more in progress. That 5'x15' display also took 8-10 hours to set up so a long term setup would be strongly desirable. This setup would be very cool to game it, but it's a huge investment to setup and to set the whole thing up I would need to empty the garage of more than just the car. Also, I only have 5'x7.5' worth of tables... Oh, and there's no way my wife would let me host an all day gaming event...

So the idea remains a dream. But every once in a while I get to set up at a Lego convention and share my setup.

 

[AsenRG]

I just rated a variety of types of cargo by density. Mind you, I'm firmly of the belief that biomass, soil, manure, and similar dense, biologically rich materials will be the valuable treasures being shipped in space. And crews passing through will be very popular for their genetic diversity as well.

...that's actually a good note to remember!

 

[Atelerix]

LttP, but on the cargo thing, Traveller is explicit. IIRC, it's all explained in Fire, Fusion and Steel, although that's been OOP for decades.

1000 kg of liquid hydrogen takes up 14m^3. Why hydrogen? Because in Traveller, it's used as fuel, either Jump fuel or (in some editions) as reaction mass for thrusters.

In space, fuel is life. Spacers think of everything in terms of "bingo point" - can I get to safety if I have to turn around now? Journeys that run out of fuel are a long, slow death in a metal coffin millions of miles into cold, empty darkness. In the real world, we talk about the "delta-V" (total velocity change possible) of a design, as reducing the fuel load as you burn it makes changing velocity easier. In Traveller it's tons of fuel as a simplification. Fuel is life.

That volume also corresponds to a 2x2 metre square on a deckplan, with a height of 3.5m - enough extra space for conduits carrying atmosphere, power cables and electrical wiring. Which is handy.

Traveller abstracts different cargos as cost per ton. Pretty much anything else you'd carry is denser than hydrogen, thus smaller and can fit into your cargo hold. You don't want to go much above the hydrogen load in kg though, as your ship starts to lose its acceleration rating and, again, you start to lose options - you can't run from pirates, or you can make fewer course changes. Yes, you can carry almost 20 tonnes of gold in a 1 ton cargo bay, but you really don't want to. You're also going to need cargo restraints, storage boxes (or a safe for all that gold!), living space/food/water for live cargo and so on.

I'm pretty sure that some versions of the game explicitly allow you to use the cargo hold as emergency fuel storage.

And I love that about Traveller. Everything on a space vessel is measured in Life units. How close are we to drifting away forever, or being stuck without Jump fuel in an uninhabited system, and just... dying... out here?

Orher games picked the measure up without understanding it.

Why yes, I did play the game with engineers and physicists when I was a student!

 

[Lofgeornost]

A venial game design sin:

Your game's system for some function--say combat--contains elements that are fairly straightforward, or work the same way they do in many other games, and others that are less self-explanatory or usual. But the 'example of play' in the rulebook only illustrates the fairly straightforward part of the system.

I ran into this today looking over Cavaliers of Mars. For combat, a player rolls a number of D10s, choosing a mixture of attack, parry, and stunt dice. The way attack and parry dice function is pretty simple and clear, but stunt dice can have several different effects, and are less well-explained in the rules. In the sample combat included, stunt dice don't show up.

 

[Nobby-W]

Yup, what I call my "general purpose meanies" GPMs. Since I tend to be quite descriptive on what the party is facing GPMs get the job done for minor foes. They're numbered so it's easy for me and the players to keep track of as well. I save the individual actual miniatures for important npcs and monsters.

I have a bunch of RAFM aliens that I use as general purpose meanies (at least those of the monstrous variety). Trouble is, I did them about 30 years ago and most of their heads have fallen off.

 

[Nobby-W]

Late to the party, but this. SO MUCH THIS.

As a forever DM, I hate this trend in modern game design. I hate this trend. I hate hate HATE HATE HATE HAAAAATE. This trend in modern RPG design. My job as Game Master is hard enough already. I have to write backstories, come up with motivations, design and balance encounters. Having to earn the right to do my job and having the game hamstring my creativity is just insulting and disrespectful.

I think that's overstating the effects of FATE points. As the whole system revolves around aspects and using FATE points to invoke the aspects for effect, giving a bad buy a certain number of FATE points is more like giving a D&D baddie a certain number of legendary actions.

FATE has essentially one set of mechanics for aspects and to get a mechanical, as opposed to purely narrative, effect you spend a FATE point on invoking an aspect (not strictly true but close enough at the moment).

 

[Agemegos]

Meta-currency... for GMs.

I share the hate. And I have an additional problem with it.

Fate points etc. tend to mean that I have to choose whether an attempt succeeds or fails. But the reason I turn to a game’s resolution system is that I don’t know what to choose or don’t want to choose.

And when the system doesn’t determine what happens but rather determines which player has the duty of determining what happens it is simply not doing its job. “Give me a straight answer, you useless conglomeration of procedures and tokens! If I knew what would happen or ought to happen I wouldn’t be asking you!”

 

[chuckdee]

I share the hate. And I have an additional problem with it.

Fate points etc. tend to mean that I have to choose whether an attempt succeeds or fails. But the reason I turn to a game’s resolution system is that I don’t know what to choose or don’t want to choose.

And when the system doesn’t determine what happens but rather determines which player has the duty of determining what happens it is simply not doing its job. “Give me a straight answer, you useless conglomeration of procedures and tokens! If I knew what would happen or ought to happen I wouldn’t be asking you!”

It works well for some (me included) and gives the players more input into the story. It's a different paradigm for play, and understandably some don't like it, but I'd not consider it a 'sin'

 

[Graelorn]

This is probably just me, but when it comes to generic RPG's I like for for the games attributes to be just that, generic.
And pointing to my favorite, current, generic RPG Savage Worlds, I love the game slightly less because they opted to use Smarts, Spirit and Vigor for attributes. Those just don't seem to fit thematically with a cutting edge cyberpunk setting for example. No one would complain if they went with Intelligence, Willpower and Endurance.

 

[thebigh]

Welcome to the forum!

Is it just the names for these attributes that annoy you? I'm not familiar with SW so I don't know if Vigor differs mechanically from Endurance.

 

[Graelorn]

Welcome to the forum!

Is it just the names for these attributes that annoy you? I'm not familiar with SW so I don't know if Vigor differs mechanically from Endurance.

Yeah it is just the names. If Vigor were called Endurance no mechanics would need to be changed. Same for the other two.
I can't say for sure, but from a design perspective I think they just wanted the attributes to be short words; they are all 5-6 letters.

 

[Agemegos]

It works well for some (me included) and gives the players more input into the story. It's a different paradigm for play, and understandably some don't like it, but I'd not consider it a 'sin'

Fair enough. I was very excited when I encountered Spirit of the Century; I thought that by charging them a poker chip to do it I would be able to get character-players to do what I had been urging them to do for fifteen years. And evoking for effect might have been okay, but Fate’s failure to produce specific outcomes didn’t suit me.

Nevertheless, one good thing did emerge from my failed “Red-Blooded Earth Men” campaign. The experience led me to realise just what it really is that I want from RPG rules and what I need them for.

 

[David Johansen]

Build a game, a build a system for building a setting, that has a high re-use of boards (and for RPGs, I generally favor the use of boards at first, with "board here being a pre-made, fairly colorful 2d map/mat; 3d fully terrained stuff is a more advanced stage) that can then be expanded for individual scenarios by inclusion of other boards (probably but not necessarily one-offs). My goto example would be something along the lines taken by TSR Marvel Superheroes ( FASERIP) boxed sets; A core map ( in minis-use cases maybe a small, 4-6 piece collection of boards) that then gets re-used for different things repeatedly and then a couple more "module" or adventure specific location boards that are added slowly as adventures are played.

Oddly enough, I always wanted something like this for Traveller. It's already built around boardgame elements. All the stuff could be arranged as a game board and cards with a set of geomorphic tiles for doing ships and wildernesses.

 

[Vargas]

Using jargon and acronymns unique to your game in the text before you've explained them is a big one for me

Going out of your way to come up with forced terms for simple concepts.

 

[TristramEvans]

Going out of your way to come up with forced terms for simple concepts.

I feel like that's been a tradition in the Hobby since day one

 

[sharps54]

I feel like that's been a tradition in the Hobby since day one

Which doesn’t mean it’s a good one. I play with a GM that runs a lot of BRP based games and he often asks for rolls for an attribute or skill that might be called something different in the current game and we end up with at least one, “I can’t find that on my sheet” as we figure out what that common trait is called in the variant we are playing. Same with say advantage and disadvantage (which did NOT start with 5E) when other systems use it we end up just defaulting to advantage/disadvantage because it is now ubiquitous.

There are times it makes sense to change terms, I don’t own and haven’t read the Alien RPG but over on the Casting Shadows podcast episode 3.8 Anthony talks about how the terms for mechanics are natural and free flowing so when a players says what their PC does it flows right in with normal conversation. That sounds like a plus to me after a few sessions and the players have internalized the terms but having to remember what Awareness or whatever is called in an oddball variant of a system for a one shot is not fun.

 

[chuckdee]

I feel like that's been a tradition in the Hobby since day one

I think one of the reasons it started being a tradition was TSR and the murky area of trying to keep D&D mechanics and terms to themselves.

 

[E-Rocker]

Ooh, I did finally think of a game design sin that bugs me: claim your system is generic (in the sense of "can be used for any genre"), but clearly design it with only vanilla fantasy in mind and then just throw in a couple sentences at the end of the book about how "this game totally works for modern/ sci fi/ horror/ etc. games, too, I swear! Really it does! Just... um... replace bows with guns?"

 

[AsenRG]

It works well for some (me included) and gives the players more input into the story. It's a different paradigm for play, and understandably some don't like it, but I'd not consider it a 'sin'

And yet for many of us, it is.
Also, all sins are only sins for some of us. Well, maybe we could come up with an agreement that FATAL sucks, but we might disagree which parts suck the most...

Yeah it is just the names. If Vigor were called Endurance no mechanics would need to be changed. Same for the other two.
I can't say for sure, but from a design perspective I think they just wanted the attributes to be short words; they are all 5-6 letters.

Welcome to the forum!
Also, Savage Worlds was originally created for pulp games and Westerns, IIRC. Smarts and Vigor fit that very, very well. And since it's a generic system, they're probably unwilling to change the name of the attributes for specific settings...

I'd also like to point out that Smarts is used for your observational capacities as well, which honestly doesn't fit with the word intelligence in my book (which denotes understanding, not merely noticing).

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

D&D is worse than FATAL. At least FATAL follows a consistent design principle through both editions.

 

[AsenRG]

D&D is worse than FATAL. At least FATAL follows a consistent design principle through both editions.

...there is something to that logic!

 

[TJS]

Ooh, I did finally think of a game design sin that bugs me: claim your system is generic (in the sense of "can be used for any genre"), but clearly design it with only vanilla fantasy in mind and then just throw in a couple sentences at the end of the book about how "this game totally works for modern/ sci fi/ horror/ etc. games, too, I swear! Really it does! Just... um... replace bows with guns?"

I'd take that further. The system is designed for fantasy, but really it's just designed to do D&D fantasy with Dwarves and Elves and wizards that blow things up with fireballs and why on earth did the designers go to all that effort for something so terminally boring?

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I'd take that further. The system is designed for fantasy, but really it's just designed to do D&D fantasy with Dwarves and Elves and wizards that blow things up with fireballs and why on earth did the designers go to all that effort for something so terminally boring?

You get a similar thing with "systemless" scenarios that are blatantly just "D&D without stats".

 

[ffilz]

Ooh, I did finally think of a game design sin that bugs me: claim your system is generic (in the sense of "can be used for any genre"), but clearly design it with only vanilla fantasy in mind and then just throw in a couple sentences at the end of the book about how "this game totally works for modern/ sci fi/ horror/ etc. games, too, I swear! Really it does! Just... um... replace bows with guns?"

I'm sort of guilty of this... Though I didn't try and publish or push my system. I DID also start a Wild West adaptation. And the inspiration for elements of my system was Paul Gazis's Traveller skill system. I might not have attempted to label it generic though had it not also drawn from Hero and GURPS... Now I mostly reject generic systems...

 

[TJS]

I'd take that further. The system is designed for fantasy, but really it's just designed to do D&D fantasy with Dwarves and Elves and wizards that blow things up with fireballs and why on earth did the designers go to all that effort for something so terminally boring?

Actually, there's also something like Savage Worlds, which isn't really designed for fantasy, but in the accommodations it makes for fantasy makes the most boring and tedious decisions possible (yes I know that's probably a commercial imperative - but whatever).

Also Green Ronin's lazy Sword Chronicle rendition of their old Game of Thrones rpg which stripped out the Westeros IP and added in Dwarves and Elves without really fixing the rules and just making the setting much more boring and generic. (and literally seemed to cut and paste a half-finished magic supplement they'd released earlier into the back).

 

[Sharrow]

I'd take that further. The system is designed for fantasy, but really it's just designed to do D&D fantasy with Dwarves and Elves and wizards that blow things up with fireballs and why on earth did the designers go to all that effort for something so terminally boring?

Because they didn't find that kind of game boring, but they did find D&D's rules lacking and so decided to write their own rules, ones that better reflected what they wanted from their games.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I share the hate. And I have an additional problem with it.

Fate points etc. tend to mean that I have to choose whether an attempt succeeds or fails. But the reason I turn to a game’s resolution system is that I don’t know what to choose or don’t want to choose.

And when the system doesn’t determine what happens but rather determines which player has the duty of determining what happens it is simply not doing its job. “Give me a straight answer, you useless conglomeration of procedures and tokens! If I knew what would happen or ought to happen I wouldn’t be asking you!”

I don't dislike GM metacurrency on its own own, but I think they are the kind of thing that needs to be reserved for particular kinds of RPGs. Like if you are making a system where the GM is supposed to be very antagonistic towards the PCs, but you want something to help balance that out, I can see metacurrency working pretty well. If the GMs goal is to kill the party and all the GM has to do is select a Tarasque to drop on them, making that Tarasque cost something isn't a bad idea. But few games put the GM in a role this antagonistic. To me it seems like a potentially useful tool that shouldn't be thrown out over style differences