[Design] Ordinary is relative

[Kyle Schuant]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Lev Lafayette 
To: design at mimesisrpg.com 
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Design] Ordinary is relative



The problem with d4-d4 and similar sort of games
(e.g., Fudge) is despite having a relative ordinary
level, it does have limits. Quite literally.

Now, I'm not talking whether Superman is 1000 or 1001
timews stronger than the normal human. I'm talking
about situations when a person is just off the scale.

You know, like what's the chance of a person with
Famous Strength wrestling something which is... Well,
about 2 levels above Famous?

Do we have Famous + 2 or is a gorilla the same as a
rhino which is the same as a tank? The obvious thing
to do would be to have "Famous +2" but then players
will want to increase their Strength above the pre-set
limit of the game.

Bloody players ;-)

***

Yes, it does have limits. Remember there are two limits. The first is the limit on Trait levels - for a regular human in a realistic game, no worse than Poor, no better than Outstanding. The second is the limit on _Performances_ - no worse than Crap, no better than Famous. No-one is always crap or famous, they just have good days or bad days. 
    That's because d4-d4's designed to give a realistic flavour for games. Someone whose base ability of Wrestling is Famous - that means that 2/3 of all wrestling matches they undertake will become famous. Famous is Albert Einstein's theories of relativity or Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back" or whatever. It's quite literally "famous." Now, real people do not perform famously most of the time. They do, at best, a few things in each lifetime which have the potential to be famous. Arnie's player rolled well when he came to say that line, and Albert's player rolled well when he came to write that paper on Relativity. But not every line Arnie said became famous, nor did every theory of Albert's become famous. Arnie's less well-known for _Jingle All the Way_, and Albert's less well-known for his paper on the photoelectric effect (even though he officially won the Nobel Prize for it) or his opposition to Quantum Uncertainty Theory. While they did SOME famous things with their abilities, not EVERYTHING they did with those abilities was famous. So we would say that Arnie has Excellent Macho Acting, and Albert has Outstanding Physics, or whatever; and they rolled well the days they came to do those things, getting a Famous performance.
    Real people don't do Famous things every day. That's unrealistic, to do famous things every day. 
    That's reality, and that's the flavour the game tries to put across. Not realistic, since that's impossible, but a realistic _flavour_.
    To complain that it doesn't allow unrealistic performances on a regular basis is like complaining that the chisel is not very good for getting the hubcap off. Well, duh, that's not what it was designed for. Try a spanner, mate. A chisel will do the job, but you'll wreck the chisel and the hubcap in the process. d4-d4 was designed for realistic-flavoured games, and therefore does not do unrealistic-flavoured games as well. 
    
    If your game is to be about famous wrestlers wrestling famously, you can simply assume that any non-wrestler they meet they can just toss aside with impunity. Call their Westling Trait, Wrestling! to indicate it's a higher league than regular people. All that matters is how good a wrestler they are compared to other wrestlers. So they are a Wrestler! Good or Wrestler! Crap or whatever. If they achieve a Famous performance with their Wrestling!, then they'll be Famous.... among other Wrestlers. But even the Crap Wrestler! is famous among regular folk; we just assume that. Famous is famous, though, for regular folk. We don't really distinguish between the different levels of positive reputation of Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both are famous to us. But if I were Brad Pitt, then the differences might matter, and I might decide that Schwarzenegger had Positive Reputation! Excellent, while Clint only had Positive Reputation! Good, and lowly old me, Brad Pitt, has just Middling Postive Reputation!. The positive reputation of all three is simply off the scale for regular folk. If we're roleplaying regular folk, we just call it Reputation Famous; but if we're roleplaying Brad or Arnold or Clint, then the differences matter, and we call it Reputation! and talk about its being ordinary, good, terrible, etc. 
    In each case, you just decide what league you're playing in. You don't CARE if the Wrestler! can toss a non-wrestler 22 metres or 22.5 metres, what does it matter? All that matter is how far Hulk Hogan can toss Sgt Slaughter. 

    The base design of d4-d4 is for the "realistic" league, but the first game I heard about outside the playtest groups was for Matrix... so there you go. And that prompted the "ordinary is relative" rule. This extends the scope of the game a bit, but it's still not very good for supers stuff, or roleplaying children, etc. It's like the saw on the Swiss Army knife - it's better than no saw at all, but really a saw needs to be bigger and sharper, get a specific tool for that. 

    I still say, games are tools, and designed for specific purposes. I don't think there are any truly all-purpose tools. Any game which claims to be "universal", when you look at it more closely, unless you're the most grovelling of drooling fanboys, you have to admit it's better at some things than others. Like, GURPS does "gritty game-balanced realism" well. FATE does "literary-style adventure" well. But GURPS does "literary-style adventure" poorly, there's too much useless (for that style) baggage to the system; while FATE does "gritty game-balanced realism" poorly, there's not enough detail to it, and too much need for GM judgment. 
    It's silly to complain that the chisel is making a mess of your hubcap, and it's also silly to think that you can have one all-purpose tool. Sure, there are the Swiss Army knives and so on, but those sorts of tools tend to do many tasks in a pretty ordinary way, and just one or two really well. They make up for their overall ordinary performance by being light and easy to carry, unlike all the specific tools they replace. 
    Similarly, a "universal" system like d4-d4 or FATE or Fudge or Over the Edge or Masterbook... they do many things in a pretty ordinary way, not very impressive, BUT at least there aren't a zillion rules and exceptions to them... 
    So really your complaint about these system is less like "this chisel does not make a very good spanner" and more like, "but this Swiss Army knife doesn't have a coffee plunger." Every tool has its limits... I don't think it's productive to try to create a tool which can do everything. Better to decide EXACTLY what you want your game to do, and focus on that. Is your game to be about gorillas wrestling rhinos? Or rhinos wrestling tanks? If so, I recommend Risus, a rules-light comedy game...:)

Cheers,
Kyle
Better Mousetrap Games
home of d4-d4 and other stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339
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