Ruminations on the Impossible Dream Before Breakfast
Roger:
Right; one of the big questions with Simulationism in general is "So what the heck is the GM supposed to do? Just keep track of all the bookkeeping, or is there more?"
The two approaches to getting System and everything else to play nice together are: 1) Start with System, and build everything else on top of it, in accordance with its demands; and 2) Start with Everything Else, and keep reverse-engineering it out until you have a consistent System.
In practice there's often a cyclic feedback loop, where a problem arises, and either the System is changed to stop fighting with the Setting, or the Setting is changed to stop fighting with the System. Sometimes it works; sometimes it all flies apart.
You might find it useful to look at some "naked System" games, like FATE 2.0, GURPS, Universalis, and even PrimeTime Adventures, to see where others have gone from "I have this neat piece of System I want to use."
Daniel B:
So the final question I'm facing is: what do I want my System to emulate? This is where all the actual play examples become even more important. The relevant ones that Roger summarized were my Banjo-Kazooie case, and Adam's wanting "to talk about how <his> sorcerer pwned the dragon".
Another example I can think of that hadn't occurred to me before: a buddy of mine was running a Monk in one of my campaigns. I felt his Monk wasn't getting enough "exercise", what with two other tanks already being in the party. As such, I built a sort of nemesis for him, an evil Dark Elf Monk. At the time he thought it was just a random NPC, so he raved to me about how exciting it was; little did he know it was intentional. My point is that he was able to walk away from the game talking about how his Monk pwned the nemesis. My players walk away really excited about the game only occasionally, and that was definitely one of the times.
Ultimately, then, I think what I'm ideally looking for is a System built specifically to cater not to any particular Setting or Colour, but to player psychology. I want the System to be able to consistently and reliably develop that player-to-character relationship through hardships in the adventure. Now, the very hard part: actually figuring out what that means and how to really do it. :-.
(I *really* to start buying more games to get experience. Oy)
DB
Caldis:
There arent very many games that work to that player psychology aspect that you mention but there's been a lot of player advice over the years. There are newer games that try and get the player to indicate more clearly what it is they want from the game but that clarity is working counter to that deceptiveness that fooled your buddy into believing that the NPC nemesis was just a random character. Gurps (or other similar games) will give you a mechanical system that sounds like part of what you want, you can easily go through the process of building up characters until they get skilled enough to advance to greater challenges. What it doesnt do is read the players to find out what is going to give them that spike of interest that make these events stand out to the player and if you dont get that it can get pretty dry and mechanical.
Traditionally finding that spark of interest from the players has been almost entirely a GM skill and one that hasnt got a lot of attention. Gurps has disadvantages that can signify player interest but it's hard to know how to use them or what exactly interests the player about that disadvantage (or if they just took it for the points). Gurps lite is available as a free download if you want to check it out for that mechanical system of play, you could also check out the Shadow of yesterday (also available free) for a game that brings that spark of interest from the players to the fore.
Ron Edwards:
Perhaps it's a good time to let this thread stand, and spawn daughter threads? The issues are trenchant enough that I think specific, play-based subtopics would be very valuable, especially if they can be critiqued and intellectually digested separately.
Daniel, it's your call; let me know.
Best, Ron
Daniel B:
Yes .. I don't think I can continue contributing much more without some additional field research.
It's occurring to me how very much a science this is. Sure we can all imagine what we think things are like based on previous experience, but moving from idea to theory requires experimental evidence.
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