I still get excited by new roleplaying games. I enjoy reading them, and I usually enjoy the first few sessions when everything feels unfamiliar and exciting. But only the first few sessions. Then I start changing things.
What tends to interest me in a game is primarily the setting/genre/concept. If I suddenly get interested in a topic or a show, book, a style of fiction then I’ll instinctively want to roleplay in it (or more likely run a game in it). That means I’ll look around and find a game that fits the bill.
But then… when I get it to the table it never quite scratches the itch that made me interested in the first place.
This used to frustrate me. I wanted to find a game I could just use as written, without the steady pull toward houserules and workarounds. I kept assuming that if I looked hard enough, I would find the right system and the problem would go away but I’m no longer sure that’s true.
I think I have a fairly settled idea of what I want from a session. Mechanics that either reinforce the genre conventions OR get out of the way entirely. Simple resolution. Consequences that linger without turning into punishment. Pressure on the players’ choices rather than on the machinery of the game. When a system pulls attention elsewhere or gets in the way of what’s interesting then I need to tinker with it. Tinkering can include minor tweaks or total overhauls… more than one campaign has been started in one system and ended up in another, and usually been the better for it. By “better” by the way, I mean more suited for my GMing style and the play-style preferences of my players. I’m not stating any objective quality improvement here, just that the final tinkered-with result is better suited for doing what we want it to do.
That’s not to say that I’ll ever stop buying & learning (possibly even using!) new systems though. There’s often something in there that’s interesting – some new mechanic, some new bit of advice – that I can use. The default homebrew system that most of my campaigns morph into has adapted over the years and now incorporates player-only rolls, clocks (circular hit point tracks for any situation) and some form of multi-outcome task resolution. Combat tends to use the same system and be over quickly but brutally.
In short, as the image at the top of the page suggests, I’m less interested in the donors and more interested in pillaging the cadaver for organs I can extract and stitch into the creature on my slab. It hasn’t gone on a rampage yet, but it’s Alive, it’s definitely Alive!
Otherworlds 