Well I am feeling less burnout this week! But also sometimes more burnout. I did a deep dive into various systems and found that I was definitely starting to sense a pattern in my interests. Here's what I realize now; noting that this isn't a unchanging constant; just what my tastes seem to be running to in the moment:
Verisimilitude Over Abstraction: I prefer somewhat more simulationist systems, which favor verisimilitude over "rule of cool" as a natural recourse. I liken this to the difference between a movie where our hero drops 10-15 feet and seems to take injury or has trouble getting up from such a fall, vs. other movies (Marvel films come to mind) where same hero seems able to drop 30-50 feet and is unphased, even without having super soldier serum to explain his massive invulnerability.
This means systems like BRP, GURPS, Mothership, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk Red and Dragonbane are standing out to me because they provide meaningful engagement levels with some sort of baseline "reality" but some other systems....even ones I like....aren't feeling too good to me at the moment because I am not presently "vibing" with the idea that the abstractions on the character sheet and in the system are really just numbers and have more to do with "did this look cool?" than anything else. That rules our D&D 5.5, Cypher System, Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, and no doubt others.
Pragmatic Character Info: I'm preferring systems which communicate clearly what you rcharacter is about, without a lot of rule-flipping and holistic interpretation. Pathfinder 2E is not a good example of this; it is laden with weird feats, obscure conditionals, and a balanced mechanical process which means skill sets are very "meh" in figuring out how your character looks different from another similar character. Contrast with BRP, which narrows the character generation to a set of common baselines defined by genre expectations for powers (if used), but in general you can look at a character sheet and understand what it means to run that PC without having to crack the book open constantly.
The System Respects Theater of the Mind: lots of games these days lean in to the popular desire for maps and minis, and I get it; those can be fun (I suppose). But I have run RPGs for most of my life without such gimmicks, and the sorts of stories I want to convey through gaming these days (and most days) work better when the players aren't focused on the ancient wargame element that remains embedded in conventional takes such as D&D. Admittedly GURPS, as an example, supports elaborate hex-based movement and suggests this can be useful; I have played in GURPS games where the GM used this to effect, and I get it. But I have also run (and played) in countless GURPS games where it was all theater of the mind, and the experience was always more creative and superior. So systems which either implicitly or explicitly support TotM play are preferred.
No Authorial Overtones: I won't single anyone out, but if the system has a heavy authorial overtone which tries to tell you how to play, either explicitly or implicitly, that can be a real turnoff. The author does not trust you to play the game the right way for you, the end-user, and that is just not cool. I can be in 100% agreement with the game writer's viewpoint and this will still piss me off because it is an attempt by the author to control the narrative on the end user experience.*
There are quite a few RPGs on the market today that like to talk about how their source of inspiration was, shall we say, a racist person in his time, and then denigrate his works, even as they then proceed to write an entire system around said works, implying there was still merit to the man's creations, enough for them to exploit for money. Hypocrisy! It makes it very hard to take such works seriously. Either you acknowledge that you are, indeed, inspired by the creative works of said author which means you feel his imaginative developments have merit and inspiration beyond the unpleasant bits you did not like (okay, yeah, I'm talking about Lovecraft here) and will expand upon his vision despite your dislike of his century-old racist attitude, or you maybe should decide that its ethically better for you to go write a different game and leave well enough alone. I'm looking at you, Age of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror.
Sometimes it feels like these games were written by authors fearful that their audience would get mad at them for not appearing cognizant of these perceived injustices or social issues. The best head-scratching example I can provide is in Liminal Horror, which has a paragraph about how its not cool to play cops, authority figures or people with wealth or means. This, of course, is actual nonsense; part of the point of RPGs is the ability to explore roles beyond most people's grasps....and horror as a medium is excellent at skewering all sorts of professionals and the wealthy with equal aplomb; its not merely the purview of the poor and downtrodden to be murdered by eldritch cults. But if you were writing this game a few years ago when there was a strong push on social media to "strike back at the man" or you are a younger author (spiritually or physically) enmeshed in antiauthoritarian counter cultural values, then this might feel like a sensible paragraph to put in, no matter how utterly stupid and counterfactual to the actual genre of horror it is.
Important: despite this minor rant, I really like Liminal Horror as a mini-system; it occupies a unique concept space and I look forward to the Kickstarter backed future edition coming out soon. Also, I find that entire rant ironic given that the best module produced for Liminal Horror so far, the Bureau, is entirely about a fictional authority organization inspired by the Bureau of Control from the eponymous video game. So one of the system's first modules directly contradicts this angry little countercultural paragraph that demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination and genre understanding right off the bat.
Okay, rant off! Tonight I plan to close out the D&D 5.5 game, and am proposing we tackle Dragonbane or Mothership next (because that's what I packed for).
*Note that I am not talking about games which have advice on "know your audience," sections, or talk about the use of the X card. Those are just practical advice (don't run a game for 9 year olds with Kult, m'kay? or if you are running for a diverse crowd of Gen Z players, an X card may be quite revealing if you are not good at reading a crowd as a GM). Admittedly, if a game tells me to "remove the spiders if a player is offended" my internal advice is: don't run a game with spiders for someone who is scared of imaginary spiders, you know? Maybe find different players?
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