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Yesterday's review.
This is the first roleplaying game manual put out by Systemic Insanity, a small company local to my household and containing a lot of people we know. As a result, though nobody who lives here worked on any of the text or ideas involved, there is a lovely picture of part of our back porch among the visuals, and we also provided many of the costumes. ... and yes, that is Thrud on the cover.
So I thought I'd read it and see whyfor the going through our closets.
Okay, so. I am not much into roleplaying games, though I have played many because I know a lot of people who like them a great deal. I am not a stats and dice and rules-geekery type person: I like my RPGs to be easy to use, comprehensible, intuitive, colorful, and readily manipulable in the service of the story. In fact, a good system, for me, should be one that actively makes it easier to tell the story the GM would like to tell. A good system should spark all kinds of ideas for the stories that can be told with it, because looking at the mechanics makes a person say 'oh hey that makes me notice how I could twist a plot in xyz direction'. If I find a gaming manual sparking stories in my head when I read it, it's probably going to be fun for me to play, and if not, not.
Those of you who are heavily into min-maxing may disagree with that. We maybe shouldn't play together, but I have no philosophical beef; it's just not what I like.
( By my standards, therefore, this isn't a good system, but it also isn't terrible. )
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
comments over there.
This is the first roleplaying game manual put out by Systemic Insanity, a small company local to my household and containing a lot of people we know. As a result, though nobody who lives here worked on any of the text or ideas involved, there is a lovely picture of part of our back porch among the visuals, and we also provided many of the costumes. ... and yes, that is Thrud on the cover.
So I thought I'd read it and see whyfor the going through our closets.
Okay, so. I am not much into roleplaying games, though I have played many because I know a lot of people who like them a great deal. I am not a stats and dice and rules-geekery type person: I like my RPGs to be easy to use, comprehensible, intuitive, colorful, and readily manipulable in the service of the story. In fact, a good system, for me, should be one that actively makes it easier to tell the story the GM would like to tell. A good system should spark all kinds of ideas for the stories that can be told with it, because looking at the mechanics makes a person say 'oh hey that makes me notice how I could twist a plot in xyz direction'. If I find a gaming manual sparking stories in my head when I read it, it's probably going to be fun for me to play, and if not, not.
Those of you who are heavily into min-maxing may disagree with that. We maybe shouldn't play together, but I have no philosophical beef; it's just not what I like.
( By my standards, therefore, this isn't a good system, but it also isn't terrible. )
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
