[unofficial Weekender] One ruleset to… well, rule them all?

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

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First time visitor to OTT? Then please introduce yourself in the New Member Thread and look around in the Project System. Then come back and read on…

https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/introduce-yourselves-new-member-thread/

https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/

Read all of this before you start as it will save you any trouble later.

First thing you must do is make your “pledge”. It can be anything gaming related, big or small, and you don’t even have to finish it. No, in here, happiness is the road. Have fun doing whatever it is, but it is not a race. Accompany your work with pictures or we might think you are do something sinister and just using us for cover.

You are also presented with a few questions. It is to get the conversation started. Try and keep your answers ‘conversational’, no text speak, and certainly no “basically”. This is how we all get to know each other better. While you are here feel free to tell us a story, show a picture, joke, tales of love or woe, or just add your own little bit. This is the whole point…in here it is just us.

If you have never taken part before we may bark and bite, but we also like a cuddle! It is all done in the best possible taste and it is character building. feel free to give as good as you get.

A few other things to note: NO RELIGION & NO POLITICS! Glasgow pub rules are in effect. If you need to make a better point then it is fine, but don’t take the piss. And always keep it civil.

Play plenty of music to go with your work. Loud and through proper speakers. Write us a playlist of things we might not have heard before.

Now, after all of that there is only one ‘real’ rule in here and it cannot be broken: NO DICKS! (Exceptions may be made for little fighting men with little plastic/resin/metal wieners)

And don’t forget the highlights of the weekend: The Weekender on Friday and XLBS on Sunday. And the little show that is the unofficial Hobby Hangout over at twitch.tv

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Only one question this week:

• Reworking or creating your own rules: worth your time or is there already enough out there?

And now back to the show.

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Pledge: finish the terrain project (hopefully) and send out all the Secret Satan things. (Boy I am really lagging behind these days)

My take: I am not capable of comprehending any rule set to its full scale. I really am not. I’m happy that I have most things in my head for SW:L and Battletech though I still can’t apply that all the time to anticipate on what my opponent is going to do. Hence why I lose most of the time.

So not being able to get a grip on the complete picture really makes the mere thought of doing on on my own a nightmare. I might get my head wrapped around something like a board game where most variables are hard wired in but a wargame with army creation? Naaaaa.

Also there is so much out there I really don’t feel the need to make my own. There is enough variety out there that something will fit me perfectly. Or at least to a large enough degree that I will enjoy playing it.

Now, back to work and music maybe later.

More coffee needed.

[danlee 22443xp 1]

This week’s pledge is to finish my WIP Formorian (i.e. Orc) priestess. Then I’ll move on to the next month’s Raging Heroes release.

 

1. Reworking or creating your own rules: worth your time or is there already enough out there? – It’s worth it if you enjoy the process itself. Then it doesn’t matter too much if you never get all the way to the end. I used to dabble in it a bit when I was younger and played more. These days I’d just use stuff “off the shelf” and then maybe house rule it a bit if I felt it needed in.

[pagan8thParticipant 10864xp 2]

My first attempt at writing my rules was an RPG setting I created back in 1987. I did most of the rules, but wasn’t happy with the combat.

Over the years I have revised the setting as my creation morphed with games, movies and that I was exposed to that the time.

The dice mechanics have gone through various iterations and the rules have been simplified as my desire to play ‘crunchy games’ has been replaced with a desire to play something that ‘requires minimal rules reference’ to avoid ruining the flow of the game.

I’ve test various aspects of the game at the tabletop and when the mood takes me I dive back in and try something new.

Will I ever finish the game which is far from it’s original incarnation? That’s unclear!

Have I used any of the species, or concepts I created in othe campaign? Several times!

Is it worth my time and effort? Anything that keeps your brain sharp is good!

So that’s my long winded answer to your question…

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Anything that keeps your brain sharp is good!

In general I agree with you here. But if doing anything leads to stress (in my case the inability of making sense of things) the positive isn’t really there in my opinion.  @pagan8th

[pagan8thParticipant 10864xp 1]

You make a good point @sundancer, but in the case of my homebrew RPG I found it helpful.

I tend to work on the game when I’m having a bad time with the rules of system I’m running as I want to make a game that doesn’t frustrate me.

Although dnd 5 is a very popular system with many… I find the character classes and skills system to be frustrating and limiting… but I won’t bore you with details.

I like the One Ring RPG… mostly… the first edition anyway. The second edition did stuff I don’t like and felt like it was dumbing down the game.

So when I get stressed by the rules… I work on my own thing.

[templar007 52376xp 1]

Pledge::

 

Question of the week:

1) Reworking or creating your own rules: worth your time or is there already enough out there?

Answer part 1::  most of the time I just go with the rules as is, until they let me down.  That’s when I change them to ‘fix’ what I think is bad.   Sometimes those changes prove to be not as clever as I had though originally, so I change back to the standard rules.  It’s a rinse and repeat kind of effort.  Of course most rules work fine as is.  A lot of time goes into most rules systems.

What causes me to not like some rules?  Well, most of the time I think it’s a matter of game designers trying to prove how clever they are by making a game too complex.  I know there are players that will dog on a rules system if it doesn’t add levels of complexity. That’s certainly not for me.  Then there are the dreaded “Living Rules Systems” that only exists in digital form and may change on a quarterly, monthly, daily, or even hourly basis.  Who’s got time for all that?  No hobby/crafter/player that I know.  .YMMV.  My personal experience with gamers that enjoy ‘LRS’ are people that buy a generic proxy army, never mod them, never are their minis WYSIWYG and on top of that thier minis are never painted. (there are always exceptions)  Personal I think it’s because they spend all of thier time in the rules reading and looking for killer recipes.  They don’t have any time left for the hands on part of the hobby. IMO

It has been my experience that the average hobby/crafter/player enjoys less complex systems.  They want to enjoy making the models, painting them and playing them on the tabletop.  They’re not, (for the most part), interested is digging into the rules at all levels and finding the nuances that produce the killer army/warband that can dominate the tabletop.  Personally I think it would be very boring to win every game.  It no doubt would lead to folks not wanting to play you very much. .IMHO.   Of course I feel this way became i buy, build and paint what looks cool and makes me happy to look at and move around the table.

I do like games that have the rules split up into Basic, Advanced and Competition levels.  This seems the best solution to me with regards to complexity or not.  That way you can have just the main course or eat that CAKE as well!

 

Answer part 2:: I have from time to time worked on my own rules for games that I’d like to play.

When Star Wars first came out I really liked the Han Solo character and the “roaming the galaxy free” to go where you want and so forth.  I worked on rules for flying, landing and rolling to find cargo to carry from planet to planet.  Smuggling was in there with it’s own section and consequences.  Ship encounters and underworld figures.  I seem to remember filling two notebooks with ideas and then weeding through it all.  Tossing out things and adding others.  Two of my buddies played it and thought it was pretty neat.  (Buddies always have your back).  I don’t have any of those notebooks left.  Most of it is still bouncing around in my head.  I’m pretty sure there are plenty of published games now that cover most of what I had done with my rules.  But it was fun to work through all of it.  Smoothing and polishing.

There have been others games I’ve worked on over the years.

 

My advice to anyone thinking about trying is to, “get in there and give it a go”.

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 1]

Pledge: To work on background Giftmas stuff and rework my dice tower

Rule sets are generally hit or miss with me. If I can sit and watch a game and get the gist before having someone explain I’ll normally latch on (even more so if the game seems interesting outside of the mechanics). In a way rules are like languages and they work well for some people and are unfathomable to others. Hooray, you’ve got a copy of The Mazes of Esperanto! Uh.. nobody plays that. We’ve got a copy of The Unknown Horrors of Deep Slavic Forests though if you want to try it.

In other news I’ll be salvaging the dice pen wall of my dice tower. It came to me in the post warped out of shape but I think that my heat gun can remedy the matter. I’ll update as I also wait for more resin print stuff for the bombard. I’m always tinkering even at “The End” of a projeHow goes life in the shop these days?

 

[guillotine 16040xp 1]

Pledge: now that summer season here in the north will be soon over, I will again become more active with painting hobby. In fact did a bit already as I was unable to exercise due to minor injury.

 

> Reworking or creating your own rules: worth your time or is there already enough out there?

 

Not worth it. The only exception is if rules writing is the part of the hobby you most enjoy, then of course.

There’s plenty of good rulesets out there, rather spend your time playing more. Hardly ever the rules have gotten in the way enjoying a game for me. It’s much more about the table, the forces, scenario and of course company. Unfortunately gaming companies fall into this tinkering trap too, publishing new editions completely unnecessarily (leaving aside the commercial reasons, which mainly applies to that one company only).

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 1]

Ok, done with the Giftmas stuff (to be seen at a later date) and I’m off to the next of the many things to be revealed in December. Seeing something finished is good for the spirit and urge to keep going. The downside is that I want to keep it myself because it came out better than anticipated.

It’s also a pain to now have the need for flock and only get it in bulk.

[sundancer 42985xp 1]

Good moaning everyone.

It’s Thursday and it’s now the second week I’m using my bicycle to get to work. It gets easier though I’m not sure if that’s my legs remembering the school and university days or the fact that temps are reasonable now.

And this is what I drive along at 6am

[guillotine 16040xp 0]

Way to go @sundancer! The riding getting easier is you getting stronger, which means you can start going FASTER!

[templar007 52376xp 0]

Looks peaceful!

 

Can we expect a GoPro style video, with rider narration and maybe so philosophical insight on life and Hobby intersecting?  ??

 

Hoping you continue to travel safely on two wheels. ?

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Can we expect a GoPro style video, with rider narration and maybe so philosophical insight on life and Hobby intersecting?

How do I put it?

 

No. 😉

[templar007 52376xp 0]

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