For me, the game works when it enhances and is an integral part of the story and narrative. If it's not... if the stats and dice rolling do not add and enhance the feel of the world, then they serve no purpose.
D&D's central narrative gameplay is "kill monsters". That's what 95% of all the statistics in the game symbolize and are used for. So the stats and the dice rolling should all be centered on that premise (which for the most part they are.) And to help enhance the narrative of that experience we want better weapons to kill monsters easier, bigger and more powerful monsters to resist our attempts to kill them better, and many different methods for killing them beside just poke them with a stick until they fall down.
But there's a difference between wanting the stats and dice rolling to enhance the narrative versus wanting the stats and dice rolling to be a "balanced and tactically compelling game". And that's where a lot of people's fixations here just make me shrug my shoulders. Because the game ceases to be about the fiction of killing monsters and instead is about making sure every single player of the "board game" has an equal chance at "winning".
"The Wizard gets to 'win' too often because they have powerful spells and can end encounters and the poor martial stands their with their thumb up their butt!"
Really? I thought the whole point of the fiction was to work as a party to kill monsters. So why does it matter "who" killed the monster? You are all a team! In the narrative of the game if you all work together to kill the monster (or trap the monster, or charm the monster, or make the monster flee etc. etc.) and you all survive the encounter... then you ALL win. That's the whole point. And in the narrative of the fiction-- despite Legolas and Gimli's 'game' in The Two Towers notwithstanding-- in a life or death situation when facing down a threat, no one is "keeping count" of who did the most stuff. If you survive and you get all the loot then you have played the game successfully. So getting all hung up in the mechanics of the game-- counting every single half-point here, half-point there making sure every player gets the same number of points-- to me is missing the forest for the trees.
And for other RPGs? The game statistics and dice and mechanics should enhance the narrative as well. A Superhero game's narrative is almost always (like D&D) about beats up Villains and sending them to jail. So the mechanics should be to enhance that gameplay of fighting villains in interesting ways and in interesting places using very specific power sets. And you wouldn't need rules or mechanics on things like "social combat" because Superhero narratives are not about that-- except in the case of a particular hero whose superpowers are about mind control or empathic persuasion, in which case you want mechanics specifically drawn for that type of character and not made into a universal system that ALL the superheroes could use.
7th Sea was all about swashbuckling and piracy and risky derring-do. And at least in the first edition of the game, the mechanics were built specifically to enhance that narrative. Players could receive a DC from the GM to do some thing and then purposefully increase the DC (by calling "raises") to get enhanced effects for success while risking the chances that they failed. The game allowed you to "take risks" as the player all in service of your character... allowing you to be as cool and swashbuckly as you wanted-- high risk / high reward like most pirates should be. The mechanics enhanced the flavor of the game.
If I'm playing a Star Trek RPG... that game better have amazing starship-to-starship battle rules, with each player's character having specific stations to stand at during the battle and each doing individualized and interactive things that all help in the battle. So no "councilor" character just sitting there doing nothing for the hour in real-time it takes to run space battles-- that character better have something meaningful and interesting to do while the Captain, Pilot, Comm, Engineering, First Officer, Security, and Medical all are doing things as well. And the rules should all make sure they do have things to do and they all help enhance the narrative of their respective positions on the ship.
Dread of course is one of the greatest examples of using the game to enhance the narrative, as the tension of not knocking over the jenga tower goes hand-in-hand with the tension building within the story. But you wouldn't use the jenga tower in a heist game because it doesn't help define or enhance that narrative at all.
Zombie rpgs need great chase mechanics but shouldn't have intricate combat mechanics--just shoot 'em in the head immediately. Autoduel / post-apoc rpgs need great car fighting and wasteland survival rules. Heist games need rules for creating and executing plans plus strong stealth mechanics and interpersonal con artist actions but don't need to highlight gunfire combat. Star Wars needs to make Jedi special but also creating stories where (if there's a Jedi) the surrounding non-Jedi characters have important parts to play in the stories and to be just as impactful as the Jedi is in their specific positions within the game and world.
So all in all... in a Roleplaying Game, the game part should only be there for those parts of the narrative that need a game to enhance it-- both in terms of whether the rules need to exist at all, but also how intricate or detailed or involved those rules are. A John Wick-style quickie shoot-em-up game should not have detailed "positioning" or worries about hit placement or crap like that which causes a single gunfire combat with an enemy to take 90 minutes to resolve... the game rules should give us quick and fun and chaotic rules that pops off enemies every 30 seconds with the characters running across the entirety of the map. And that's when you know if the Game is working in service to the Roleplaying or not.
D&D's central narrative gameplay is "kill monsters". That's what 95% of all the statistics in the game symbolize and are used for. So the stats and the dice rolling should all be centered on that premise (which for the most part they are.) And to help enhance the narrative of that experience we want better weapons to kill monsters easier, bigger and more powerful monsters to resist our attempts to kill them better, and many different methods for killing them beside just poke them with a stick until they fall down.
But there's a difference between wanting the stats and dice rolling to enhance the narrative versus wanting the stats and dice rolling to be a "balanced and tactically compelling game". And that's where a lot of people's fixations here just make me shrug my shoulders. Because the game ceases to be about the fiction of killing monsters and instead is about making sure every single player of the "board game" has an equal chance at "winning".
"The Wizard gets to 'win' too often because they have powerful spells and can end encounters and the poor martial stands their with their thumb up their butt!"
Really? I thought the whole point of the fiction was to work as a party to kill monsters. So why does it matter "who" killed the monster? You are all a team! In the narrative of the game if you all work together to kill the monster (or trap the monster, or charm the monster, or make the monster flee etc. etc.) and you all survive the encounter... then you ALL win. That's the whole point. And in the narrative of the fiction-- despite Legolas and Gimli's 'game' in The Two Towers notwithstanding-- in a life or death situation when facing down a threat, no one is "keeping count" of who did the most stuff. If you survive and you get all the loot then you have played the game successfully. So getting all hung up in the mechanics of the game-- counting every single half-point here, half-point there making sure every player gets the same number of points-- to me is missing the forest for the trees.
And for other RPGs? The game statistics and dice and mechanics should enhance the narrative as well. A Superhero game's narrative is almost always (like D&D) about beats up Villains and sending them to jail. So the mechanics should be to enhance that gameplay of fighting villains in interesting ways and in interesting places using very specific power sets. And you wouldn't need rules or mechanics on things like "social combat" because Superhero narratives are not about that-- except in the case of a particular hero whose superpowers are about mind control or empathic persuasion, in which case you want mechanics specifically drawn for that type of character and not made into a universal system that ALL the superheroes could use.
7th Sea was all about swashbuckling and piracy and risky derring-do. And at least in the first edition of the game, the mechanics were built specifically to enhance that narrative. Players could receive a DC from the GM to do some thing and then purposefully increase the DC (by calling "raises") to get enhanced effects for success while risking the chances that they failed. The game allowed you to "take risks" as the player all in service of your character... allowing you to be as cool and swashbuckly as you wanted-- high risk / high reward like most pirates should be. The mechanics enhanced the flavor of the game.
If I'm playing a Star Trek RPG... that game better have amazing starship-to-starship battle rules, with each player's character having specific stations to stand at during the battle and each doing individualized and interactive things that all help in the battle. So no "councilor" character just sitting there doing nothing for the hour in real-time it takes to run space battles-- that character better have something meaningful and interesting to do while the Captain, Pilot, Comm, Engineering, First Officer, Security, and Medical all are doing things as well. And the rules should all make sure they do have things to do and they all help enhance the narrative of their respective positions on the ship.
Dread of course is one of the greatest examples of using the game to enhance the narrative, as the tension of not knocking over the jenga tower goes hand-in-hand with the tension building within the story. But you wouldn't use the jenga tower in a heist game because it doesn't help define or enhance that narrative at all.
Zombie rpgs need great chase mechanics but shouldn't have intricate combat mechanics--just shoot 'em in the head immediately. Autoduel / post-apoc rpgs need great car fighting and wasteland survival rules. Heist games need rules for creating and executing plans plus strong stealth mechanics and interpersonal con artist actions but don't need to highlight gunfire combat. Star Wars needs to make Jedi special but also creating stories where (if there's a Jedi) the surrounding non-Jedi characters have important parts to play in the stories and to be just as impactful as the Jedi is in their specific positions within the game and world.
So all in all... in a Roleplaying Game, the game part should only be there for those parts of the narrative that need a game to enhance it-- both in terms of whether the rules need to exist at all, but also how intricate or detailed or involved those rules are. A John Wick-style quickie shoot-em-up game should not have detailed "positioning" or worries about hit placement or crap like that which causes a single gunfire combat with an enemy to take 90 minutes to resolve... the game rules should give us quick and fun and chaotic rules that pops off enemies every 30 seconds with the characters running across the entirety of the map. And that's when you know if the Game is working in service to the Roleplaying or not.
