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| AI Art by @nightcafestudio |
Some games are nothing more than a few loose rules tying together a box full of like things. The "stuff" the game collects is more important than the rules. Many sci-fi games fall into this sort of game design routine; there is very little difference between classic sci-fi games other than theming and flavor.
We mixed Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Space Opera equally. They were all just "stuff books" for each other, with Space Opera being the king. We didn't know much, the starship conversions were messy, but it worked out.
One of my favorite games in the genre is the excellent Cepheus Deluxe. I tried the new Traveller, but the Imperium setting keeps the game from being an actual 2d6 generic system. I prefer 2d6 with the Imperium removed and that core complex sci-fi universe challenging you at every turn. Still, I get the feeling a lot of these games are designed like that "box of stuff," like the classic Aftermath! game and its million ways to die, to-hit charts for snakes, hexagonal grenade explosion templates, and a strange assortment of late 1970s sporting goods weapons, like 0.22 long-rifle slash 0.410 shotgun break action over-under rifles.
The rules exist to hold the box of stuff together. With both games, the mechanics can get repetitive in ways never intended, endless die rolls to complete an action, with die rolls before combat rounds begin, layered die rolls to make attacks, and even more, die rolls to find out what happens to who. Many of these die rolls exist to confirm the average case or provide a "wouldn't it be cool" bonus that ends up being gamed hard since it is the easy path to win.
Incremental vs. Overall Design
This is where a game designer needs to step in and ask, "Why?"
Why are we rolling so many dice? Why are there this many steps to something that should be conceptually simple and serve the story? How many steps and die rolls do we need for one round of combat? Do the tiny differences matter?
Cypher System was a wake-up call to me, with its single-challenge rating system and abandonment of the minutiae. This is clearly veteran game designer work, something streamlined and designed to get out of the way and let you tell your stories.
Game designers, especially veteran ones with decades of experience, have been around long enough to see when a game's design is leaning too much on dice-rolling for procedural rules. Pretty soon, you get so lost in the box of stuff, multiple rules, and successive dice rolls in chains, you are applying special modifiers for one piece of gear in a unique circumstance, and suddenly, the trees are all you see.
Not the forest.
And indeed, not the story you are trying to tell.
The Tangibles List
But these boxes of stuff are the tangibles that link the experience together. What would Car Wars be without spike droppers, paint sprays, and flamethrowers? Some of these items are outside your typical "Road Warrior" experience, yet they make that box of stuff say, "I am Car Wars!" You can pick a few items out of Traveller, like the laser carbines with the power backpacks, the standard issue "blade" weapon and some space pirates still use revolvers and sabers as their boarding party weapons. That says "Traveller" to me, the same the iconic "power drill" laser pistol of Star Frontiers says that the game's box of stuff is unique and iconic.
You need those tangibles to tie the experience together.
I get why some don't like generic games like Cypher System, FATE, GURPS, or Savage Worlds. Cypher almost goes out of its way to simplify gear and weapons into three basic categories and toss away many special, single-case rules tied into gear. With Cypher, if you have the gear, you ease the task. Some tasks may not be possible without special gear, like hacking into a computer without a computer. All weapons are light, medium, or heavy. Even gear prices are grouped into a few levels.
Let's say you wanted to play a Traveller-style game with Cypher. Where would you start?
For me, the tangibles take precedence. I would probably print out the middle 30 pages of Cepheus weapons and gear and use that as my "tangibles list" for my game. Starship combat, I would need to figure out. But that gear list ties the experience together, which is what you should start with when emulating a genre. I can simplify these down to Cypher-like items, the tiered weapons, and the gear that eases a task, but that gear list is my tangibles for the game.
The same with the fantasy genre, but there are some tremendous generic OSR equipment books to build your tangibles list from, such as the excellent Old School Armory (DriveThruRPG has this). This can be boiled down into the Cypher-like gear and weapons system, but it gives you a list of items that define the game and experience. When someone goes shopping, hand them the book. When you need to gear out a bandit, use the book.
The base Cypher rulebook has some great tangibles lists in the genre sections, but those feel generic. I prefer defining my genre and backing that up with a tangibles list to define what the players can find, hold, and use in the world. A lot of the "other stuff" can be cyphers and artifacts themselves; in that hard sci-fi game, you could say "the items of the ancients" are scattered around and use cyphers and artifacts to simulate ancient-tech items and have a great game. In fantasy, those are the magic items.
I feel that the "tangibles list" is one of the "unsaid parts" of the Cypher System, assumed to be there in the generic gear lists they give you, but much better if you can find and define a specific source of items in the world that you can use to say, "This is what is in this world."
You need cyphers and artifacts.
But you also need a defined, concrete, and well-designed tangibles list to base the foundation of the setting. While gear and weapons are ultimately flavors, strictly defining that flavor will keep the game grounded and feel more like a setting based on reality than on a list of generic items. These items also serve as inspiration for items that may ease the difficulty in tasks you may not have thought of, as that 10 gp crowbar will come in handy for forcing open stuck doors and chests. Defeat a vampire and want it to never return? You need that mallet and wooden stakes for 3 gp.
You need a great tangibles list.
Once you have a tangibles list, many other parts of the setting just come quickly. With just the Cypher System rulebook, I can have a fantasy world. With that tangibles list defined in a book like Old School Armory, what was once a "generic fantasy world" takes on an entirely new feeling, more old-school flavored, but definitely different than the one that comes with the core Cypher System book.
Yes, this is still just all "flavor," - but the flavor is narrowly defined and in a collection that is compelling and interesting enough to capture your imagination. This also gives you ways to break free from the generic parts of the game that don't seem compelling, like for treasure, and gives you the flexibility to drive player motivation with game-world wealth and value.
Real Money Options
Also, a great tangibles list with prices will let you break from the monetary system in Cypher System used in character creation, where prices are generic and tiered, to one based on the game world's currency. Sure, in fantasy, you can start with an "expensive" item; but once the game starts, you will find 157 sp and 68 gp and buy things from your tangibles list using that, not the generic tiered prices used only in character creation.
Then, seeing that 5,000 gp fist-sized ruby will put a sparkle in your eye. Some genres thrive on finding that 1,300 gp, or having 20,000 cr to upgrade a starship and having a tangibles list that supports prices and currencies adds to the flavor of the game and takes it a step away from the generic and into that familiar feeling area.
Could you switch freely between generic prices and realistic wealth? Nothing stops you, and using both systems may be beneficial. You could convert all a party's treasure to one wealth value and say it could buy a castle. You could keep realistic wealth for most found treasures, say a side job provides comfort equal to a generic price level, and track that on the side.
But if a party likes shopping and saving money for purchasing artifacts and other power items, having a tangibles list gives you a few more options while increasing flavor and immersion optionally and seamlessly.
