Min/Max Boards
Meta Board => Archive => Brilliant Gameologists Podcast => Topic started by: BG_Josh on December 16, 2011, 09:27:25 PM
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What Games Are "Good Enough"?
An incomplete list
Separated by genre
Action Adventure
Dungeons and Dragons 4th
Dungeons and Dragons 3rd
Warhammer Fantasy (the latest)
Savage worlds (any after the latest deadland imprint)
Battlestations
Science fiction
Shock Social science fiction
Misspent Youth
Freemarket
Apocalypse world
Microscope
Fantasy
Burning Wheel Gold
Dungeon World
Don't rest your Head
Spirit of the Century
Zombie Cinema
Mouseguard
Mystery/Procedural
GUMSHOE (they are in on a technicality, no competition)
Inspecteres
Horror
Dread
My life with Master
Here the list of excluded games so you know I know about them (again incomplete)
-Anything published before 2000
-Anything White Wolf (except maybe ares magika 3rd ed, maybe)
-Anything MWP (a cartoonishly awful publisher)
-Anything HERO or steve jackson RPGs (except as non rules source books)
-Dresden Files (just use Spirit)
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OK, so why are these games good?
1) They set up an interesting "thing" (What is the game About?)
2) The mechanics induce the action needed for that thing (How does it do that?)
3) The mechanics reward that action (How does it reward that behavior?)
4) Repeat
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I was a fan of the alternity system for a long time, struck me as a precursor to D20. Im not sure when it was made though, likely on your excluded list.
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Define "good enough."
I would say Pathfinder.
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Good enough is good enough to play. Some of these do have big flaws.
There are a number of games that can be houseruled to playability, but why would you?
Alternety is not very well designed.
Pathfinder is DnD. The problem is that PF can't even try to fix any of the issues that 3ed has so it. I tend. To not blame PF for the mistakes of 3ed
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I would say that Pathfinder took 3.5e and made it less interesting to me, even though the game really is about 90% the same.
I'm kinda surprised to see 4e on here. Out of the box, the numbers just don't add up for the game, and then there's skill challenges. It does kinda make me ask, though: what's the difference between a board game and a PnP game? This question may be somewhat unique to me, however, since I have also, a long time ago, played Hero Quest (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest").
EDIT: Holy crap, I must have been like... 8 when I played that...
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Um... You didn't really define anything. I know that you meant "good enough to play", but I still don't know how good is "good enough."
@ X-Codes
PF is less interesting for you? How so?
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Um... You didn't really define anything. I know that you meant "good enough to play", but I still don't know how good is "good enough."
@ X-Codes
PF is less interesting for you? How so?
There's even less decision-making to do at the table. Fighters just decide whether or not to auto-attack with or without PA, Casters of all varieties have a smaller range of useful, viable buff and save-or-lose spells, skills are easy for anyone to pick up, PrCs are almost universally bad, feats are almost universally shit. Of course, I could just bring a Factotum to a PF game and it all pretty much works out the same, but I'd rather not do that.
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I would say that Pathfinder took 3.5e and made it less interesting to me, even though the game really is about 90% the same.
I'm kinda surprised to see 4e on here. Out of the box, the numbers just don't add up for the game, and then there's skill challenges. It does kinda make me ask, though: what's the difference between a board game and a PnP game? This question may be somewhat unique to me, however, since I have also, a long time ago, played Hero Quest (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest").
EDIT: Holy crap, I must have been like... 8 when I played that...
4e has the capacity to be a more tactical game than 3e. It is also much clearer in execution.
At one time i thought challenges were a good idea, now i see they are pointless roll fests. So I just ignore them.
As for how good is "good enough" this is the list of games to actually consider playing.
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I am emphatically depressed for 2 reasons.
1: This list is depressingly short.
2: Worse, the list of games on this list I have actually played is even shorter.
Fortunately, at least number 2 can be rectified (sigh, I wish there were more gaming conventions in Australia that would make the sampling of newer games easier).
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Have you ever played Shadowrun, Josh? If you have (I'm assuming games you've played that aren't mentioned are purposefully excluded), what would say are its biggest failings? I've only played 3rd edition once, so I can't legitimately analyze it, but I did enjoy that one session. Though I'm curious about the general sentiment of that game.
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Now that you mention it, I am, too. I've heard good things about Shadowrun, it's just obscure.
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Have you ever played Shadowrun, Josh? If you have (I'm assuming games you've played that aren't mentioned are purposefully excluded), what would say are its biggest failings? I've only played 3rd edition once, so I can't legitimately analyze it, but I did enjoy that one session. Though I'm curious about the general sentiment of that game.
4th edition shadowrun is basically a cut and paste of every shitty trad game of the last 10 years.
And that is unusual because 3rd had some different, and interesting, ideas.
What I imagine is that the "design" department tried to play to the middle. And like in politics all plays to the middle are not good for anyone, they are failures for everyone.
PS - the same thing happened to "ares magika"