thread: 2009-09-14 : Subsystems
On 2009-09-14, Vincent wrote:
Seth: Maybe! I have a crotchety opinion about that one - providing mechanics for something certainly distinguishes it, but I don't think it necessarily emphasizes it - so let me come back to that sometime.
Ryan: I'd just call all of those subsystems.
Guy: Yeah! One of the best and most obvious ways to integrate subsystems with one another is to have them require the same thing from the players. For instance, "roll 2d6 and add the appropriate stat" might be common to half the subsystems in a game.
Ben: Messiness: Huh. I'm like "yay messiness!" in principle, but I can't think of a time that happened to me. Natch it's a hole in my pontifery.
Standalone subsystems: Oh absolutely. It does need to be said.
I don't even know what it would mean for a given subsystem to be objectively good in isolation. The only measure of a subsystem's goodness that I can attend to is its fulfillment of its place in the system at large.
Simon: The way I figure it, at least for the games I'm talking about, what's important is integrating your subsystems, not keeping their number down. You want them to fit together seamlessly, and you want learning one to contribute to (or outright include) learning the next.
I think Raven's spot on here: "It occurs to me that many 'subsystems' aren't delineated as such at all in indie games, despite quietly existing in actual effect..." Poison'd is an example of the kind of well-integrated "six best subsystems" game I'm talking about. It has three whole resolution systems for different kinds of conflicts, plus a variety of other subsystems. It's heavier than many other games after the Forge fashion, but it's not, like, heavy.
Whether, like, Shadowrun has the right number of subsystems or way, way, way too many, though...
