Game Style Manifestos

[beejazz]

Inspired by "why do you like grit?" I figured we each have our own likes and dislikes and preferences of other sorts in terms of the genres and playstyles we like. Here I come to ask, what's your "thing?" How do you define it? What do you like about it? Where does it fall short? I mean... for some examples of things we could discuss.

Grit
Grit is a dirtier, earthier style of gaming. Players stake out their little turf and defend it against all comers. They ain't out to save the world. They're out to avenge a wrong, clear their names, prove their worth, put food on the table by "freelancing", or just live another day. The means at their disposal is often nothing more than their wits, their fists, and their hard-earned place in the world. You've got to be smart and know when to start shit and when to avoid it. And when the shit does hit the fan, no plan will survive contact with the enemy. The better part of valor and all that rot...

Gritty things do include grim 'n gritty stuff like Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, Hellboy, The Goon, Punisher, etc. But they do also include less grim counterparts like Cowboy Bebop, Big O, and the like.

Transhumanism
Transhumanism is, at its core, all about you. Who are you? What are you? Can you change who or what you are? Or will you lose yourself trying? Are you willing to risk it? In a transhuman game, people aren't what they seem and you're no exception. The big selling point is the chance to rise to power (as opposed to having a set power level) and the feeling that doing so is something of a gamble. Drawbacks include the potential to devolve into self-centered angst, and the fact that once you either become powerful or lose yourself trying, what else is there?

Transhumanism includes things like cyberpunk, anything by Greg Bear, Childhood's End, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fullmetal Alchemist, etc. In gaming terms, it also includes things like Vampire/WoD (which I see as transhumanism trying to be gothic horror) and Unknown Armies (which also drifts into some gonzo stuff every now and again).

Gothic Horror
Gothic horror is like transhumanism turned inside-out. In this case, the defining quality is a monster with human traits (as opposed to a human taking on monstrous traits). Whether it be a vampire, a werewolf, or Frankenstein's monster, there is a hunter wearing the guise of man.

Mecha
GIANT FRIGGIN' ROBOTS

Anyway... I'm running out of steam here. But I just wanted to get a discussion going. To that end, what's your favorite playstyle or genre? Go into as much detail as possible.

[the_taken]

I don't think mecha can be set as a particular gaming style. It's more of a combat system.

You can apply any of the gaming styles to any combat mechanics.

I think what you mean by:

Mecha
GIANT FRIGGIN' ROBOTS

should be more:

ANGRY SMASH FEST!!1!
Kicked in the door, the goblins, the Lich King, the warlord, the princess. Oh, wait... we were supposed to keep the princess?

This is the kind of gaming style that emulates monster truck rallies and war games. You're given a dude with a schtick and have to go hit stuff with it. It's a game where everything is a target for an attack, and heavy metal rock stars literally bring the house down with demonic axes of ear splitting grinds and power chords. Traditionally, all table-top battle games are like this, 'cept you get lots of guys with schticks.

For D&D, this means short background paragraphs that the DM might not even look at, and pretty much any character is a viable concept. If you're going to have monster characters, use CR instead of ECL.
If you apply this style to mecha games, basically you're a 80ft blue god of death firing explodingous lasers and lasererous explosions in all directions while you perform behemoths level suplexes in and orgasmotron of metal crunching, space shaking, city leveling destruction.

It takes a certain level of rule knowledge to make this kind of game work. And while oddly this is the kind of gameplay that newer players are often introduced with, it is often the style that they are least able to handle.

On the other hand:

The Classic Dungeon
"To win the chalice, listen to me,
All in one, one in all,
That's the key" - Gargoyle Head

This is the classic AD&D game style where every thing is a puzzle. Even the monsters. Some NPCs are there to force you into a tea party style of puzzle where the standard "sticks and spells" approach to puzzle solving usualy ends in a TPK. Some solutions to puzzled included killing every monster you came across for the XP, while others involved not killing monsters to complete quests. Some monsters could only be dealt with in completely arbitrary methods that resulted in a TPK if you didn't solve the puzzle in time (see the old AD&D lich for a demonstration of this).

The Legend of Zelda is a video game equivalent to this style of play.

[sparkletwist]

I prefer a "cinematic" style. Unpleasant details of life are glossed over, and we know the PCs are going to be important because they're the PCs. It doesn't matter how unimportant they may seem at first-- they've always got a trick up their sleeves. Starting at Level 1, at least in the traditional D&D way, what's the use of that? I like the White Wolf (WoD, Exalted, etc.) way of doing it more: even from the beginning, you're something special.

(As an aside, this is why, to me, MMORPGs lose something. Part of a fun RPG, whether it's on a computer or played in a small group, is the sense that your characters are special. If everyone wants to be special, nobody is. Everyone wants to be the great hero or the diabolical villain... nobody wants to be the local millet farmer.)

[Polycarp]

The New World
The New World has everything emphasized as new and unexplored, either because the known world has always been insular or because knowledge has been "lost" somehow.  In this type of game, your basic knowledge is very local - not only do you not know much about the next kingdom over, but nobody you know can speak their language.  Different races are more or less rare; at the very least your elf character will get stared at in a foreign land, at worst you're pursued by angry mobs.  The landscape is dominated by wilderness that is both trackless and dangerous, and foreign lands have strange customs, strange weapons, and maybe even their own variations of spells, classes, and races.

You'd better bring a cartographer because there are no continental maps to buy.  You'd better bring a lot of goods, because every kingdom uses their own totally different coinage.  You'd better bring some extra skill points too, because nobody survives who isn't a polyglot or rich enough to hire one - in the New World, your most likely hireling is a translator.

On the negative side, everything is new and dangerous - on the positive side, well, everything is new and dangerous.  Characters are better described as "explorers" than "adventurers," and the successful ones are as widely hailed as Columbus, Magellan, or Marco Polo - assuming they ever make it back to their bucolic homeland.

This kind of campaign tends to lean towards grit, but the cinematic "wonderful, colorful new world" is also possible.

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=Holy Carp]On the negative side, everything is new and dangerous - on the positive side, well, everything is new and dangerous. Characters are better described as "explorers" than "adventurers," and the successful ones are as widely hailed as Columbus, Magellan, or Marco Polo - assuming they ever make it back to their bucolic homeland.

This kind of campaign tends to lean towards grit, but the cinematic "wonderful, colorful new world" is also possible.[/blockquote] Grit can, in the right hands, make more colorful, awe-inspiring events seem more so by contrast.  In an 'exploration' setting, a huge waterfall is made more amazing in comparison to the dirty, sweaty trek they group may have spent to find it.