Erik Tenkar posted about this, and just about every other cool kid did, too.
My thoughts on this are simple: Innovate either system and setting and you'll get innovation in both.
If you innovate in a system, you will naturally have spill-on effects that influence the setting. Decisions you make about spellcasting, about technology, about character power, about style of play will all spill over into the setting. D&D settings generally have dungeons and dragons in them for a reason.
If you innovate in a setting, you will naturally have some influence on the rules. After all, you need rules or guidelines and system support to keep the magic zeppelins in the air, have dog-men aliens, deal with the ray guns or meson cannons, and so on. An innovative setting will always have some influence on the rules used to play in that setting.
You don't have to consciously do both. You can innovate in one, and petty much just work with what exists for the other part. But if your setting is innovative, it will cause system innovation, and vice versa. Even an homage to another system's basic setting will be influence by the new system, and an existing rules system will be warped by an innovative setting that needs more than that system provides. Only stale retreads will fail to innovate in either. Those stale retreads might still be fun, of course, but I don't think when you think "innovation" you really need to worry about either/or.
I'd agree immensely. What keeps me rooted in GURPS is the relative ease in which the system facilitates "innovation" in rules to support one's setting. Now the hard part is actually innovating, and innovating usefully at that!
ReplyDeleteYeah. I like what Joseph Bloch said - it's DIY, but only if YDI.
DeleteYup. I have problems with this "A or B" thing that every one seems to push. Because it's always somewhere in between the two extremes.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's pretty much my point. If you write a system + setting, and you innovate at all, you will end up doing something that innovates a little at least in each. Even if it's only an odd dice mechanic that shifts the odds of success in some way, it's a decision that affects the world. If you affect the world, the system must reflect that.
DeleteThe reason I use GURPS is because I like the innovation of combining all of the game material I love into one world. The dungeon delving of AD&D, the Mythic Earth setting of Ars Magic with real world religions, cultures and geography, the Elder Things of Call of Cthulhu and lots of stuff from GURPS historical books and also stuff from the World of Darkness and Ravenloft.
ReplyDeleteI think the hobby is overly preoccupied with innovation, as if distinctive was a more favorable word than good. Of course I encourage trying stuff, and it's important that we keep getting weird, incomparable stuff like Paranoia and In Nominee Satanis/Magna Veritas once were, because we wouldn't want to miss out on those.
ReplyDeleteBut the truth is, it's perfectly okay to make the best version yet of something that's been done and redone. GURPS wasn't especially innovative thirty-ish years ago (building on simulationist trends and Champions' points system) and while it's evolved rather masjestically, none of it flipped the game on its head - but I'll be damned if The Fantasy Trip didn't evolve into the very best most-purposes RPG rule system out there.
Robin D. Laws's take in HeroQuest reads like rules poetry, and should be framed and hung in a museum - the thing feels refreshing like a backpacking vacation across Eurasia. But I wouldn't want to live there. When I sit down at the table to run (or play) something, I need to stand on former ground, and GURPS is the one that's always done this for me.
Good point. I come down on the side of "what matters is play at the table," and even the least innovate game with the most cliche setting is fine if it results in a lot of sustained fun for the participants. After all, that's really why we play.
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