lytefoot: prokopetz: damiannottheomen:...

lytefoot:

prokopetz:
damiannottheomen:
prokopetz:
Guided introspection and emotional catharsis are well and good, but sometimes all you want out of an RPG is to sword-fight an evil clown.
Why not both?
Because you’ve gotta prioritise. A game that’s about talking about your feelings, in which you happen to sword-fight an evil clown, will provide a fundamentally different experience of clown-fighting from a game that’s about sword-fighting evil clowns. A player who’s down to fight clowns may find that it detracts from the desired experience if the clown is really a metaphor for hating your dad!
After years of playing games that try to be generic systems that desperately want to be everything to everyone and all about “legend making” and “mythic archetypes” but actually don’t do anything well, it is so refreshing to sit down to a dedicated clown-fighting game. A really good clown-fighting game will:
Ensure that all player characters are good at clown-fighting, so that no character creation choices cut you off from the core clown-fighting loop.
Spend the bulk of its system on clown-fighting, so that other activities (such as pie making) are touched on lightly if at all.
Allow players to specify their characters to allow interesting depth and variety in clown-fighting styles and tactics, without false choices allowing them to prioritize non-clown-fighting activities.
None of this nonsense of a game that claims to be about clown-fighting but has a character archetype entirely dedicated to playing circus music (so that players of that class spend the bulk of the game reading an book, but then interact alone with the GM for about 10 minutes a session while the rest of the players get a snack.
No “this is a game about clown fighting” but 2/3 of the system provide detailed mechanics for making pastry and any character without a pie-making skill is actually incapable of meaningfully participating in large portions of the session.
No options to make an opera singer with no ability or reason to fight clowns whatsoever, who nonetheless comes with a seltzer-proof vest because otherwise they’ll die right away. (They’ll still die right away because the vest doesn’t cover anything but their torso.)
Just a really well thought out clown battling system where you sit down and hit evil clowns with swords and interacting with the system is deeply satisfying, especially when you hack the clowns and make them run off of cliffs.