I think you missed the point of the blog. It’s not “A guy makes a game” it’s “a group of friends make stuff up and a game is carved out of it”
Which yeah I can understand not everyone likes that. You need some imagination, the willingness to try new things and generally be down for some chaos. For the rest of us it sounds like a fun way to just fool around with friends.
As I said, it sounds like my personal hell. I do not believe the average person is good at making up rules, and thus many bad outcomes are more likely.
If the other people are proposing bad rules, it’s probably some combination of
Play with the bad rule and am annoyed
Try to convince them to change the rule, and that’s not fun
Don’t realize it’s a bad rule until it has unwanted consequences
I really don’t want the game to grind to a halt because we realized mid session that the interaction of rules is making Bob super effective, and now we need to untangle this in a way that Bob won’t feel attacked and Alice won’t feel useless.
If I just wanted to fool around with some friends, and we wanted to do an RPG, Fate is right there. It even encourages you to build on top of it.
I think you… Don’t get it. You’re coming at this as a “My competitive ranked TTRPG where I play only optimal builds and make optimal actions won’t benefit from loose rules”
Literally sitting down at a table with some beer and pretzels and just improv gaming is fun as hell. Not all the time but to shake things up? Sounds great.
This has nothing to do with builds. Fate, the game I said I’d play, doesn’t really have builds.
This is all about not wanting to have to spend a lot of time arguing with people, or playing a game I don’t like. Those are the two most likely outcomes. People will propose bad rules, and we either argue or I suck it up. There are so many common ideas in RPGs that I really don’t enjoy, but are popular nonetheless. I don’t want to stop the game and argue that “save or die” kind of sucks, and if we kill Alex’s character now like that a. they’re probably going to be unhappy just look at their face and b. what are they going to do the rest of the night?
(Or I’ll propose rules that won’t achieve the desired goals very well, because I’m also not such a good designer I can nail things on the first try)
Maybe with some hypothetical spherical frictionless group of players that are all on the same page about rules and design it would be fun. But that doesn’t seem to exist in the real world. We live in a world where people go “Let’s use D&D for a game of political intrigue! Wait, why does the fighter barely have anything to do and gets bad results on every check he does make? Why weren’t they scared when the antagonist pulled a knife on them??”
arguing with people, or playing a game I don’t like
…yeah so if you’re the kind of player who argues and fights at the table. Maybe stick to structured games with clearly defined rules.
People will propose bad rules, and we either argue or I suck it up
Again, people do this when ‘friends’ want to just play a goofy made up game over some carbs
Let’s use D&D for a game of political intrigue!
Again…this isn’t your scenario. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re conflating taking game systems and adding other mechanics to it and just goofing around and making it up as you go.
It’s okay to say “I need a game with explicit structure and rules”. That’s fine too, but maybe don’t argue with your players though.
I think you missed the point of the blog. It’s not “A guy makes a game” it’s “a group of friends make stuff up and a game is carved out of it”
Which yeah I can understand not everyone likes that. You need some imagination, the willingness to try new things and generally be down for some chaos. For the rest of us it sounds like a fun way to just fool around with friends.
As I said, it sounds like my personal hell. I do not believe the average person is good at making up rules, and thus many bad outcomes are more likely.
If the other people are proposing bad rules, it’s probably some combination of
I really don’t want the game to grind to a halt because we realized mid session that the interaction of rules is making Bob super effective, and now we need to untangle this in a way that Bob won’t feel attacked and Alice won’t feel useless.
If I just wanted to fool around with some friends, and we wanted to do an RPG, Fate is right there. It even encourages you to build on top of it.
I think you… Don’t get it. You’re coming at this as a “My competitive ranked TTRPG where I play only optimal builds and make optimal actions won’t benefit from loose rules”
Literally sitting down at a table with some beer and pretzels and just improv gaming is fun as hell. Not all the time but to shake things up? Sounds great.
This has nothing to do with builds. Fate, the game I said I’d play, doesn’t really have builds.
This is all about not wanting to have to spend a lot of time arguing with people, or playing a game I don’t like. Those are the two most likely outcomes. People will propose bad rules, and we either argue or I suck it up. There are so many common ideas in RPGs that I really don’t enjoy, but are popular nonetheless. I don’t want to stop the game and argue that “save or die” kind of sucks, and if we kill Alex’s character now like that a. they’re probably going to be unhappy just look at their face and b. what are they going to do the rest of the night?
(Or I’ll propose rules that won’t achieve the desired goals very well, because I’m also not such a good designer I can nail things on the first try)
Maybe with some hypothetical spherical frictionless group of players that are all on the same page about rules and design it would be fun. But that doesn’t seem to exist in the real world. We live in a world where people go “Let’s use D&D for a game of political intrigue! Wait, why does the fighter barely have anything to do and gets bad results on every check he does make? Why weren’t they scared when the antagonist pulled a knife on them??”
Yeah, no you don’t get it.
…yeah so if you’re the kind of player who argues and fights at the table. Maybe stick to structured games with clearly defined rules.
Again, people do this when ‘friends’ want to just play a goofy made up game over some carbs
Again…this isn’t your scenario. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re conflating taking game systems and adding other mechanics to it and just goofing around and making it up as you go.
It’s okay to say “I need a game with explicit structure and rules”. That’s fine too, but maybe don’t argue with your players though.