Agreed! Give me a world where the story cuts deep, and I’ll make sure everyone leaves with scars worth keeping. Systems are tools. Setting is the altar where we decide what’s worth sacrificing.
Agreed - the best games integrate setting and mechanics so they are mutually supporting. Many games have Kewl Powerz that you need some kind of limited pool to fuel - mana, arete, power,
etc. In V:TM, that pool is Blood. And all of a sudden, your characters have a reason to want to feed; the player wants to be able to do cool things, and to do that, the character has to get blood. By renaming a basic game mechanic, you have tied the setting and system together, each reinforcing the other. BRP, GURPS, vanilla d20 - they are all perfectly functional systems that do what they need to do. But give me a Delta Green or Trail of Cthulhu any day of the week, because they have the full package.
The irony of saying "settings, not system", and then more than half the article is a list of systems...
Why not list some settings? Why not talk about what tools players can use to make evocative settings? Why not talk about what makes world building not so hard in the ttrpg space?
Instead it's just another list of the same things everyone else is listing.
I think I must have explained myself poorly, or maybe I might have written this with the assumption people would have read my previous article on the subject, which pretty much talks about how I personally use a "setting first" approach when worldbuilding for a game, so it seemed redundant to copy-paste those notions here too.
The systems I listed, are some that I think work well with this approach because they have very few "hard-coded" things in their mechanics, making it easier to convert them to your game. For example, D&D 5e has a plethora of ancestries and spells that are strictly tied to the Forgotten Realms lore, while let's say Shadowdark doesn't.
It is by no means a list of systems for the sake of it, they should be intended as "tools" in this article.
Regarding why I did not list settings, it's because this blog post is not a list of settings I like, nor a "how to make your setting" tutorial, but rather an article discussing the importance of settings and some easy-to-hack systems for your own settings. I think there are wonderful tutorials and lectures out there for making settings, and I do plan on making a "making settings" guide in the future, just not today in this post!
Plus, if you feel like you have your own, better idea about such article, please, do make your own post! There is only to be gained by more voices discussing games.
I hope that clarifies some of these aspects of my article! :)
I feel it's MUCH easier for the average person to create their own setting on personal preferences. And you were just giving systems that were light enough to be used in just about any setting, that each had enough support to find and add the one or two optional rules that feel at home in a setting. That baked in, "this system was made for this setting" kind of feel. Where the system takes a back seat to exploring the setting.
Agreed! Give me a world where the story cuts deep, and I’ll make sure everyone leaves with scars worth keeping. Systems are tools. Setting is the altar where we decide what’s worth sacrificing.
I’m hoping to write for Shadowdark soon! Such an adaptable system!
Agreed - the best games integrate setting and mechanics so they are mutually supporting. Many games have Kewl Powerz that you need some kind of limited pool to fuel - mana, arete, power,
etc. In V:TM, that pool is Blood. And all of a sudden, your characters have a reason to want to feed; the player wants to be able to do cool things, and to do that, the character has to get blood. By renaming a basic game mechanic, you have tied the setting and system together, each reinforcing the other. BRP, GURPS, vanilla d20 - they are all perfectly functional systems that do what they need to do. But give me a Delta Green or Trail of Cthulhu any day of the week, because they have the full package.
Absolutely agree!
I find Chris McDowell's Into The Odd my go to system for game design.
As a fellow world builder, the setting is everything!
The irony of saying "settings, not system", and then more than half the article is a list of systems...
Why not list some settings? Why not talk about what tools players can use to make evocative settings? Why not talk about what makes world building not so hard in the ttrpg space?
Instead it's just another list of the same things everyone else is listing.
Hi Lawrence!
I think I must have explained myself poorly, or maybe I might have written this with the assumption people would have read my previous article on the subject, which pretty much talks about how I personally use a "setting first" approach when worldbuilding for a game, so it seemed redundant to copy-paste those notions here too.
The systems I listed, are some that I think work well with this approach because they have very few "hard-coded" things in their mechanics, making it easier to convert them to your game. For example, D&D 5e has a plethora of ancestries and spells that are strictly tied to the Forgotten Realms lore, while let's say Shadowdark doesn't.
It is by no means a list of systems for the sake of it, they should be intended as "tools" in this article.
Regarding why I did not list settings, it's because this blog post is not a list of settings I like, nor a "how to make your setting" tutorial, but rather an article discussing the importance of settings and some easy-to-hack systems for your own settings. I think there are wonderful tutorials and lectures out there for making settings, and I do plan on making a "making settings" guide in the future, just not today in this post!
Plus, if you feel like you have your own, better idea about such article, please, do make your own post! There is only to be gained by more voices discussing games.
I hope that clarifies some of these aspects of my article! :)
Fwiw, I picked up on what you were trying to do.
I feel it's MUCH easier for the average person to create their own setting on personal preferences. And you were just giving systems that were light enough to be used in just about any setting, that each had enough support to find and add the one or two optional rules that feel at home in a setting. That baked in, "this system was made for this setting" kind of feel. Where the system takes a back seat to exploring the setting.
No, I understood what you wrote, I just think you missed your own point.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯