Perverse Access Memory: WISH 40: Preferred Style
What style of game do you prefer to play in? Style here does not mean genre, although certain styles work better under some genres than others. Style is more about the elements that predominate in a game: combat, politics, mysteries/puzzles, romance/interpersonal relations, etc. What three adjectives best describe your favorite game style? Does this style lend itself to particular genres or games?
There’s been some discussion on the message boards of Pyramid Online on very similar subjects lately.
The genres I like the most are low fantasy, realistic SF, and horror. I’m not so much a fan of D&D style high fantasy, over the top cinematic action, or four colour superheroes. I’ll try and identify what it is I like or dislike about these genres.
Games with solid settings: This is probably because I’m a GM as well as a player, but I’m not a fan of games where the setting is little more than an empty stage set and the focus is exclusively on the characters and their ‘kewl powerz’. I believe settings give characters context; I find it much easier to create a character if I know something about the culture he’s from. An ideal setting is exotic, richly detailed and most importantly, internally consistent. I’m not too bothered about adherence to genre conventions; in fact I consider ‘trope’ to be a synonym of ‘cliché’. I’d rather play something a bit more original. For published settings, I much prefer Glorantha to Forgotten Realms.
As for level of detail, I can remember when I first got involved in on line gaming on the Compuserve RPGAMES forum, I ended up joining the two games with the largest volume of gameworld description.
Lower power levels: Some of my most enjoyable games have featured characters as relatively ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events when a great big plot device lands on their heads. I don’t find it necessary to play characters with cinematic or godlike power levels to have an enjoyable game. The ideal power level is one where the players are powerful enough to make a difference and affect the world, but not so powerful that the either face no real challenge or trash the gameworld as collateral damage.
Not all about combat: While most games benefit from some action, I don’t like game sessions that consist of nothing more that a succession of fights. I’m more interested in role playing than tactical wargaming.
Problems must make sense within the game: Solving mysteries within the game is fine, but I can’t stand silly riddles or the sort of artificial abstract logic puzzles that used to infest D&D modules.
Variety: I like to play different genres, but not all at once! I’d rather play three separate short campaigns in different genres than a single long running game in a multi-genre monster-mash setting like TORG or Rifts. Sometimes a one-shot in a completely different style makes a good change of pace.
Free-flowing, transparent but solid game mechanics: There’s nothing worse that the story grinding to a halt for two hours of die rolling to resolve a simple barroom brawl. I also have an strong aversion to many of the funky dice pool systems that have been all too fashionable for the past decade; not only do they obfuscate the probabilities, but often produce too many freak results. Sometimes I suspect not even the designers themselves know the probabilities of their own systems. At least when I’m playing a percentile or 3d6 system, and keep rolling 01s or 18s I know I’m having a bad day with the dice. When I get loads of ‘botches’ in a dice pool system I have no way of telling if I’m unlucky again, if I’m attempting tasks I don’t have the skill for, or if the GM doesn’t understand the probabilities either and is setting the target numbers too high.
On the other hand, I don’t mind some degree of complexity provided it doesn’t slow down actual play. I have no problems with the detailed character generation of systems like GURPS.
