Fix Your RPG Without Changing Systems
Switching RPG systems won’t fix pacing or engagement. Learn what actually changes how your game feels at the table.
System matters, or so the assertion goes. The idea traces back to Ron Edwards on the late, lamented (by me, at least) Forge forums. The idea is that system choice determines the quality of play, and to some degree it’s true. Players will tend to build for what the system supports, and use the abilities that have the most impact. Some mechanics are just better for certain genres and settings than others. A game with complicated rules is going to play differently than one that’s streamlined, and how playable those rules are regardless of their weight is going to affect decisions at the table.
My argument is that the same issues tend to persist across different rulesets. A lot of it goes directly to roleplaying’s roots in wargaming, and the assumptions that brings. Not just the Kill – Loot – Level – Repeat cycle, but repeated frameworks like turn-based play and ability-based difficulty. Those are fine if your style of play is survival-based and you like sessions driven by violence. If you want anything else, some systems aren’t equipped for it.
What if I told you [Morpheus voice] that there’s another way? You can keep using the system of your choice, the only one you can find players for, the only one your players will agree to play, and play it differently. Because you can. Best of all, you can cite the long tradition of house rules and hacks to make it go down easier if you face objections at the table.
Change nothing about the mechanics. The alteration centers on the moment where player action either changes the situation or passes without impact. You kill the orc, so what? Make the orc matter to someone. Give the orc some importance in the world; he knew something that know one else knew, and that creates a problem. He was vital to the local economy and now people will lose jobs or go hungry. Heck, fall back on the tired cliché of his clan being vindictive and will now hunt the player characters to exact their vengeance. The orc was a domino, and he’s been tipped over creating a whole chain of events that need to be dealt with.
Engagement depends on the decisions that the player make carrying visible consequences. That’s when encounter becomes story. Shifting attention from the mechanics to how even seemingly unimportant moments are handled, the post positions meaningful change as the driver of momentum regardless of system.
But the system does matter, because every game rewards certain behaviors and undervalues others. If you really want to play a narrative-based game, don’t patch over another game. Maybe try it with your table’s system of choice, introduce them to another style of play, and see if they like it. Then break out Principia Canonica, and show them a game that was designed from the ground up for story-focused roleplaying.
