Reply To: Victory Points Suck!

[limburger 21711xp 1]

Any rule implemented without thought tends to result in a bad/not-fun game.

Anyways … I think the talk by Scott fails to address one important factor :   the reason for playing

Narrative focused players don’t need any mechanic, beyond a good story/background for the battle.
Mechanic focused players *need* mechanics that inform them of the options available.

Historical games have a huge advantage : history itself takes care of the scenario generation.
Non-historical games ‘need’ some kind of battle generator.
Something that gives both sides a reason to fight the other.
And that creates odd situations where a ‘battleplan’ dictates that there have to be N objectives at specific locations on a map.
That sort of thing can be abused by mechanical oriented players.

Getting players of both types to face each other is a recipe for disaster, unless both are aware of how the other plays and the game is set up to make the best of it for both.