The arguement for standardized systems & worlds
Tuesday, 31. August 2010
Greg has a few good points as to why having linked systems and settings are a bad idea. I agree with his assertions in general as for the game being terrible for world building, but not everyone are at this stage to where it’s useful. I’ll argue in the case of devils advocate for standardization here at least for the beginning. The majority of them are for marketability in terms of the developer.
In fact it might be simply terrible for any sort of beginner to have to come up with everything without any form of guideance. That is an absolutely a huge turnoff for new players, not only are you required to learn the rules and come up with character, but come up with a world as well? Very harsh.
I believe that having a temperated world for each system is an excellent idea… provided that each system has added rules for expansion in the longer term. Even as an experienced player, I want something to give a general “feel” of the game play and system. Inevitably rules will be tweaked and the setting may be changed, but at least I have a baseline experience to work from. This also makes a game very relatable.. other players and storytellers instantly have a connection when a game is talked about, simply because there is a baseline of how it works.
There is of course, the simplification argument for is that having all classes and clans is that the play is focused. This focusing simplifies game play, it simplifies rules and times at the table and allows everything to move quickly and hopefully smoothly. Assuming the game has been streamlining rather than adding useless rules, the standardization allows for quick quashing of arguments.
From a marketing perspective it allows a designer to cover the largest variety of their players at once. This efficiency hopefully lowers cost for them and prospective buyers in the future. Nobody from a production perspective wants to create a product that has very limited appeal… its inefficient to produce unless you can sell it for high cost or are just into it for the art. If you’re selling cars then for instance; you want to be able to sell tires which everyone needs, not huge spoilers.
In addition, there are branding issues. It’s difficult to brand pure flexibility in a game system as it’s primary attribute. It’s not something that sticks in ones head as a usable attribute. So setting is used to differentiate one system from another.. one does dragons, one does vampires, one does sci-fi, etc.
–Note that I do think modern systems are too limiting both in terms of choice, but also in terms of typing them strictly to the producers product. (Edition, expansion, etc.) But there is a good reason for it other than just being purely greedy.