Some Possibly Unpopular Opinions Regarding Gaming-related Issues

1.  I will never attend a convention in Indiana. The people of that state have chosen to enact policies that make everyday existence dangerous for some people. There are some other states that this applies to, but Indiana is notably relevant in this at this time. I'm sure the populace of Indiana has their collective reasons for doing so, but whatever those might be don't change the hazard the state poses to some people.
2.  I don't play games to "tell stories". That's what writing is for. I might tell stories based on things that happen during a game, but that's a different matter. It was a severe mistake to reduce adventure games to writing workshop exercises, resulting in some "games" that are little more than glorified, sometimes overly complicated procedures for passing around a metaphorical Talking Stick.
3.  Playing wargames no more means that a gamer likes or glorifies war than playing Monopoly means that a gamer wants to be a slumlord or similar parasite.
4.  Adventure games work best when they don't assume an inherent "heroism" and invest characters with superpowers as if powers are the same thing as heroism. Heroism is, or should be, a quality of the player, not their playing piece. This opinion is, of course, complicated by the existence of adventure games centered around superpowered genre conventions like superheroes or shōnen battle anime, but I should hope that the basic point is clear to anyone who isn't being lazily contrarian. Such games should put players on a more or less equal footing with their opposition and allow the players to shine or fall on their own merits. Which is not to fetishize an unnatural "balance", as overcoming adversity should be part of the process, not merely testing tactical acumen. It's a fine line to walk for the person designing the scenario.
5. Speaking of that last, and a conclusion I keep coming to, "adventure game" is a better term for the sort of game I most like to play than alternatives like "roleplaying game" or "storytelling game", both of which latter terms have led to misguided design, at least from the perspective of adventure gaming. Are they now three separate but related hobbies? Maybe. Certainly the more extreme games, like Capes, Once Upon A Time, or Tales of the Arabian Nights no longer much resemble the classic adventure games that caused the first gaming explosion (the second was trading card games, the third computer games).
6. Not really an opinion, but a thought occasioned by that last: maybe I should write a taxonomy of sorts of games, to cover sports, parlor games, board games, dice and card games, wargames, adventure games, and so on. Basically, I would want to list out the various sorts of games that I see and try to capture the characteristics that seem subtly different but create entirely different experiences, especially between the categories of adventure games, roleplaying (or perhaps "role-immersion") games, and storytelling games that often get conflated as if they were all the same. It would be complicated by the fact that some games take elements of different types of games and combine them (like chess boxing and other kinds of combative chess variants or Dread) for various effects. And of course the perception that some are the same type even when they aren't creates issues as well. Ugh, it would be an involved project, for sure.
7. Complex games shouldn't have the stigma they are given. Most aren't really all that complex in the first place (Aftermath! really doesn't deserve the reputation it has, to pick a notable example), but even the ones that are create a distinct, unique, and sometimes enjoyable atmosphere of play. Mostly, people seem to object not so much to complexity but to elements and mechanics they find uninteresting for one reason or another. Those mechanics, though, are generally included to present an aspect of play that the designer wanted to emphasize. An example of a specific, common mechanic might be encumbrance, which was included to present a logistics challenge in many early adventure games, but is discarded as "too complicated" by some who don't understand the value of that kind of challenge. Similarly, people who aren't interested in weapons might chafe at measuring fine differences between various weapons that weapon enthusiasts might enjoy. "Who cares about a 3cm difference in length?" the dilettante might complain, "That's too much to keep track of." Meanwhile, the enthusiast enjoys weighing one tradeoff against another, even at the expense of "complexity". So, it isn't complexity that is the issue, it's what elements are you interested or not interested in weighing the relative merits of, and things like speed of play and ease of memorization are parts of that equation.
8. Somewhat related, can people please stop dismissing calls for "realism" by resorting to claims of "fantasy"? Yes, there are no dragons or fireball spells, but some people are looking to engage with those things as if they were real rather than treat them as merely story elements that fill plot and story purposes (or game elements chosen to fill out a mechanical matrix of game procedure options). While "verisimilitude" is perhaps more precise a term, it's pretty obvious that people looking for "realism" mean that, so why force the more cumbersome word on the discussions?

 Maybe more later.

Checking In

I apologize for being quiet for several months, and for not continuing my look at expanded Domain Play in AD&D. I do want to say that I'm still around, though I almost wasn't as I had a stroke in mid-January from which I'm still recovering. Mainly, it's meant that I've lost, hopefully only temporarily, the use of my left hand, which makes typing somewhat slower. Otherwise, there seem to be few or no major ill effects. We did learn that I've had some heart damage consistent with a heart attack sometime in the last five years, but I have no idea when exactly that might have happened.

 

For now, here are some things that could be of interest:

Over on Dice and Discourse, we have a post on using isekai tropes with GURPS Banestorm. That's a nifty idea that could use characters based on the players, original characters, or ones based on the players but with anime-style superpowers or even just bonus powers like Magery 3. Of course, not all anime uses high-powered characters (see, for instance, the excellent Ascendance of a Bookworm for an isekai example, though to be fair that one does eventually grant the main character some extra magic power).

Speaking of GURPS, Dungeon Fantastic had a quick discussion of why characters can't just target Vitals without knowing where they are. Personally, I think that's probably something that should be applied more generally: make a Physiology roll, at default if necessary, to target Vitals. It's not like a character can see where the kidneys or whatever are.

Enraged Eggplant has been adapting ideas from ACKS, especially the recent Imperial Imprint second edition (see, the initials make a Roman numeral "2", because Macris thinks he's more clever than he is; being fair, though, he's a good game designer, whatever his other shortcomings might or might not be) to GURPS. For my money, the most useful so far is adapting the Market Class rules, but there are other good ones if you look around over his posts since January. Market Class is an idea that should have been in GURPS City Stats, if they'd have thought of it.

I hope that you are doing well. Take care of yourself.