Crunch Friday - Flexible Game Play
A game for everyone – Rules variants and a flexible game engine.
One of the problems of game design, not related to back ache, eye-strain, or the development of RSI from rolling so many dice, is creating a game everyone wants to play. Or, at least, a game that everyone can stand without having their gaming ethics compromised by the idiocy of the game designer.
Role playing games, like any really good nerdy pastime, generate covens of insane fanatics who allow or crucify a system for what can seem the tiniest of features. “I refuse to play the West End Games Star Wars system,” a friend of mine once said when I offered a game. “I will not play an RPG based entirely on luck,” he elaborated without embarrassment.
This was withering criticism indeed. He didn’t like luck in an RPG? I felt sorry for dice everywhere.
What it turned out he meant was that he felt that this particular game system boiled down to passing a series of abstract difficulty numbers, entirely created by the GM, which would then either succeed or fail by rolling a random number of dice. Since you did not know what skills would be useful before the check, it was not possible to craft a character capable of beating all challenges. Even then, the dice could betray you, and the player could ‘lose the game’ through no fault of their own.
Well, that just about stuffs it up for most RPG’s. I can’t claim that the Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game doesn’t use dice or difficulty numbers, nor does it flag up in advance exactly what skills are useful, but it does contain a few novel things that might make it more palatable to my highly critical friend (love you, Mike).
EDRPG contains many variant rules to suit as many different gaming styles as possible. For instance, generating difficulty numbers can be ‘realistic’, where starting characters stand no chance at performing the most difficult feats of the game, or ‘relative’, where the game scales the difficulty numbers according to the rank of the characters. Realistic numbers give the game a gritty edge, relative numbers allow for more heroic, action-hero style of play.
Likewise combat can be fought entirely in the mind with the GM describing the environs and the location of enemies, or it can be played with miniatures on a hand-drawn battle mat. Playing with the battle mat probably opens up lots of interesting tactical options, whilst the theatre of the mind allows more open play.
Where a rule might be contentious, I have tried to include a useful variant. Those of you who have read the Playtest book might have noted, for example that ships are able to take any number of actions between their turns in order to dogfight or pursue enemies. This rule is great fun and engaging, and I hope everyone tries it, but I realise that there will be some people who will never enjoy the idea and for whom it will present a block on their having fun with the system. For them there is a rules variant that takes away unlimited interrupting actions and restricts the number of times a player can act outside their turn.
The idea is that the Elite Dangerous RPG can be played with a differing degree of grittiness, realism and cruelty. The game can be light and quick, or more detailed and stern depending on the desires of the players and GM. I hope I have done this in a way that doesn’t confuse anyone. The risk of lots of options can be uncertainty.
