Wyatt’s DMing Preferences: Balancing Rules and Storytelling in RPGs

Since some other people are doing this, I thought I would too. These are bunch of DM preference things that you answer so people can read it and insult you and say that you are the cancer killing RPGs and then they return to read your blog the next day because their life is just that sad.

•Comprehensive Rules vs Minimal Rules

I’m a middle-of-the-roader here. I’ve seen the extremes – FATAL has too many god damn rules and then there’s games like Nobilis that have no rules and are basically a desperate struggle to impress you with rosy prose.

However, there are rules-light games I like. My favorite, Maid: RPG, is a rules-light game. But generally unless the game has a really strong, fun theme that catches my eye, I don’t want it to be as rules-light as Maid is.

•High Power Fantasy vs Low Power Fantasy

High power, no real contest. Look at the games I like – in Cthulhutech, you use extremely powerful futuristic vehicles and weaponry in a desperate struggle against lovecraftian horrors that, in other games, you would just run helplessly away from crying in your worthless investigator pants. In Maid: RPG, through the power of anime, anything goes. In D&D 4th Edition, you’re an awesome fantasy hero (or like I prefer it, a badass mythological/wuxia hero that bends physics over and defiles her thoroughly) who’s limits are only defined by how bold you feel like being in any particular situation.

•Narrative Mechanics vs Simulation Mechanics

They’re good for different things. I can easily visualize all the abstractions in D&D 4th Edition that other people can’t seem to, and I don’t really think of describing a power’s fluff as being a “house rule” and I don’t think it has to be “consistent” either. Bloody Path never bothered me, and daily martial exploits never bothered me either. However, I don’t even really consider D&D 4th Edition’s combat to be really a narrative mechanic, so I don’t know what to put here.

I don’t hate simulation mechanics, but they’re the ones that have that slippery slope into an unplayable extreme for me. The example I gave before was sailing a ship. Conditions at sea, damages to different parts of the ship, the need for a crew, those things I can accept (and want) rules for. But when you have me mathematically divining a ship’s turn radius, or calculating windspeeds, and you have me figuring out the arc of a cannonball shot and micromanaging every member of the crew – we have problems. I can’t for the life of me get excited about those.

Look at Cthulhutech’s mecha movement, with all the acceleration and deceleration to keep track of and speed codes. It’s more complicated than it has to be and I don’t see it contributing to the game in any beneficial way. That’s why I handwave vehicle movement to work just like the movement of organic beings.

I do like some narrative mechanics too. Cthulhutech’s insanity has no real mechanic consequences, it doesn’t say “you have penalties to X and Y.” It’s a narrative mechanic that has the player roleplay the insanity effect he or she is suffering from and how he or she struggles with it. If you acquire too much insanity, then it has a mechanical effect – your character is gone until a long hospitalization can fix your broken mind. But this takes a lot to happen, so it isn’t a bother.

In general though, I like rules for combat, skills and such, but not rules directly for storytelling concerns like morality/alignment kind of crap and imposed Codes of Honor with mechanical effects and suchlike. And for making pottery. No pottery-making skill, please.

•Strategic Chargen vs Simple Chargen

There’s a threshold.

Wushu’s simple chargen bores the hell out of me and doesn’t engage me at all, but Maid: RPG’s chargen is both brain-dead simple and really fun and engaging.

Swords and Wizardry’s chargen was also sterile and unengaging to me, whereas picking out every detail of a character in a strategic and comprehensive manner like in 3.5, the opposite extreme of S&W, also bores me.

D&D 4th Edition’s lies somewhere in between the two and engages me. Cthulhutech’s though has loads of choices, but at the end of the day I still say it’s pretty simple as far as point buy systems are concerned, and also entertains me.

In general though, I don’t care as much about this.

•Tactical Encounter vs Strategic Adventure

This lies on the system to pull it off in a way I like. I don’t prefer either.

•Combat Balance vs Adventure Balance

Combat balance, but I’d accept adventure balance if it was done well. I have yet to see it done well, in D&D, in Cthulhutech, in Exalted, in any game I’ve played. I don’t want to have to come up with contrived situations to make the guy who forewent “Epic Monkey Shining Fist Kung Fu” for “Sailing” look comparably useful. I usually have to go out of my way for that when I don’t want to.

•Balanced Encounter vs Balanced Adventure

I don’t really prefer either. I’ve both been annoyed by balanced encounters and by balanced adventures. I usually toss both the setups and do whatever I want. I don’t really need guidelines for how to inject conflict into my game. I can decide that myself. I do pretty well with Cthulhutech and that doesn’t really have any sorts of guidelines in any way about what monsters to use where and against whom.

•Wargame Combat vs Abstract Combat

Honestly, over the time I’ve spent on D&D 4th, I’ve liked using maps. Me and the players who play with me (and it’s been a varied bunch as I don’t really have much of a group anymore) haven’t really complained about being disconnected when we pull out a map and go square by square in combat.

However, I will put this as “no preference” because I abstract combat is nice and not a deal breaker for me. As long as the game isn’t pretending like it has abstract combat when in reality there’s all sorts of weird ranges and templates in it.

•GM as player vs GM as referee

I don’t really care.

•Fantastic Characters vs Common Characters

Look at Spirits of Eden. You should be able to guess this.

•Established Setting vs DIY Setting

You can guess this one too.

•Resource Optimization vs Creative Problem Solving

I think you can solve problems creatively even while managing resources, and BY managing resources. In D&D 4e I always encourage creative usage of skills and powers to solve problems. I think you can be creative while working with the system, rather than thinking of the system as always being against you.

So I guess this question isn’t for me either.