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

[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.