that thing where "5th ed works for everything!" is a marketing statement, not an absolute fact

[deird1]

Been watching a lot of Stargate recently. I finally got curious and googled to see whether there was currently a Stargate RPG available. And I found out: there is about to be a new Stargate RPG. Also, it's going to suck.

Sure, technically it's hard to determine the suckiness level of an RPG until it's actually published. But it's going to be done using 5th ed, so chances are high.

Granted, there's nothing wrong with 5th ed, in and of itself. But when RPG creators say "We used 5th ed because we're familiar with it, and the players will be familiar with it", it doesn't fill me with confidence. It sounds like they:
a) don't know much about the variety of RPGs out there
b) don't know enough about RPG design to understand why you'd choose different things for different games
c) don't know enough about Stargate to understand why it wouldn't really mesh well with 5th ed.

It reminds me of people posting to RPG discussion forums, saying "I've got a great new idea for an RPG! It's totally unique: it doesn't even have classes!" To which the only correct response is "...oh, honey."

The thing with Stargate is:
- it relies on conversation - lots of conversation
- they avoid combat whenever possible

Both of these things make D&D a bad fit. Instead, I'd go with something like Cortex Prime, to be backed up with a lot of planet design from Stars Without Number.



(Of course, because I am a crazy person, I am now designing my own Stargate RPG, just to prove to myself that it's possible. This is the sort of thing that happens when you can't leave the house for several months.)

Comments

[hnpcc]

Of course, because I am a crazy person, I am now designing my own Stargate RPG, just to prove to myself that it's possible. This is the sort of thing that happens when you can't leave the house for several months.

See also: why I wrote this thing that is kind of weird, and long. And why I am doing 3 different virtual challenges...

[deird1]

Totally. Lockdown does weird things to creativity.

[schneefink]

Yeah, that doesn't sound very promising. (Though if they want to make a game where the Earth-normal characters step through a gate and land in fantasy worlds where they gain magic, I'm all here for that ^^ There could be different kinds of magic on each world, and some translates and some doesn't - and then at some point they realize that they can carry some magic back to Earth...)

[deird1]

I am intrigued by your plotbunnies, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. :)

[contrarianarchon]

*sighs*

That sure is a lot of terrible signs indeed.

(Trying to do *anything* in 5e is another kind of mistake, it doesn't really have any merits for me given that my "I know this very well" D&D is 3.5, not 5e. Not that 3.5 is objectively much better, I can just run it in my sleep.)

What about Cortex Prime do you think goes well with the social aspects you want? I'm not familiar with it as a system.

[deird1]

5e has its merits. It seems to work well for a low-level adventuring party that is not dungeon crawling. But not much else.


Cortex Prime wants you to add together three different things. So, for instance, a stat, a skill, and a relationship. Or a skill, a thing you value, and a toolkit. (Clark Kent might be shifting a giant rocket out of the way before it crashes into a building that Jimmy Olsen is in. So you add together Clark's "heroism" value, his "Jimmy Olsen" relationship, and his "physical" stat.)

The thing is, it's all customisable, so you decide what things you think are important for affecting rolls. For Stargate, I'm contemplating a fairly standard Stat/Skill thing, but also having Mission Objectives, like "protecting the Earth" and "exploring the Galaxy" and "defeating the Goa'uld". Because I think Teal'c (for example) is likely to put far more effort into something that will directly hurt the Goa'uld than he is into anything else, and this should be affected by his dice rolls.

The system also allows for a wider spread of social abilities, rather than having everything crammed into the Charisma score. I'd like to use different Stats to reflect what the characters are trying to do with the conversation - so high Willpower PCs would be good at intimidation, and high Intelligence PCs could do negotiation or deception, and high Presence PCs could do persuasion or charm... and so on.

[contrarianarchon]

*nods*. I tend to find - simple flat-roll social systems, like 5e and such, kinda weird? They tend to lead to weird outcomes (esp given that in 5e, the range of possible rolls are incredibly wide and swingy compared to the size of bonuses you can have, so it's very hard to be consistently good or bad at a thing), so I like something with more - hard-coded understanding of what it's going for in it's resolution system and mechanics. A good example of this kind of thing is the exalted 3e Intimacies system and how it impacts social persuasion - interacting with people socially has *mechanical depth* and by extension the ability to produce (more) complex stories emergently, which I like a lot. Since social outcomes are - innately nuanced, and innately attached to mechanical outcomes. So if you're trying to convince someone - you try and learn what they care about, as described by their existing intimacies, and try to give them more intimacies using whatever persuasion you can try and *then*, after - an extended interaction, you can lean on those things to maybe talk them into something that they wouldn't have agreed to without that consideration?

(So, for example, if you're trying to convince a king to support you in a war, then you - start by learning that they care mostly about riches, so you explain to them that this will be profitable rather than leaning on a moral plea, and that leads to a concrete mechanical bonus; similarly you could instead spend your first few interactions filling this king with a great hatred of the people you want him to fight and thereby making convincing him to do so much easier (unless of course, he draws on his desire to keep his kingdom peaceful as a counterbalance, and so on).

I'm given to understand that a lot of people find this kind of mechanical complexity a burden on their storytelling (and specifically, a burden on their ability to RP freely, I think?) and not an aid to it (whereas I find it's an aid because I have trouble as a GM, producing deep models of what every middle-sized NPC is thinking, and the use of mechanics should lead sometimes to outcomes you didn't expect), though, so it might not be for you?

[deird1]

That sounds excellent!


I've been looking into social mechanics recently. One system I liked was a single roll for convincing someone - but broke down into three possibilities:
- failure: you don't persuade them (for a reason) or you do persude them, but something goes wrong
- success: they do what you're asking if you've provided them with a reasonable motivation
- partial success: they give you some indication of what would motivate them

So, for instance, you're trying to convince the school jock to beat up a gang of bullies for you.
- failure: either he's a member of the gang, and you've just let them know what you're planning, or he agrees to beat them up but turns out to be crap at it and gets beaten up himself
- success: you offer to do his homework, which is sufficiently motivating (whereas if you had rolled high but offered him something he didn't want, it'd be treated as a partial success, just like if you hadn't rolled quite as high)
- partial success: you offer to do his homework, and he declines. But he says "I'm actually pretty brainy. Not so good at talking to girls, though. Wish I had the guts to ask for Sarah's number." and you now know that you can offer to help him ask Sarah out and then he'll help you with the bullies.

[contrarianarchon]

Oh I can def see that as a good framing, esp if you're good at writing the failures as fail-forward. Is this PBTA? It gives me a PBTA vibe.

[deird1]

I actually don't remember! It was from a 250 comment-long discussion on social mechanics in roleplaying, so it all ended up in the same bit of brainspace. :)

[contrarianarchon]

Fair enough! It had that look to it - Powered By The Apocalypse is actually probably something worth looking into - it's a good mental framework for *genre* emulation, among other things, and that's very much what you're doing here. The way it construes player-side mechanical options as a set of "moves", each with it's own context and outcomes, is very good for emulating stories where the PCs are working with a specific toolkit of responses and reactions they want to work with, which can be a good mindset if you're trying to replicate a specific *story* rather than simulate a particular setting.

[dimity_blue]

Good for you! I hope it turns out awesomely well.

[deird1]

Thanks! I will probably post excitedly about it if I manage to do something worthwhile.