thread: 2014-05-24 : Games that Take Off, Games that Don't
On 2014-05-29, alan wrote:
Interesting to contemplate why complexity helps sell.
Here (Scotland) most games are long campaigns, so a game won't generally get a look in unless I can be confident that it will run 6-12 sessions with plenty of scope for development and change during that.
There are exceptions during events like conventions, but those are 'trying a game out' not really playing it.
Games require depth to last for a reasonable number of sessions, that depth can come from players but that is unreliable (not everyone is on best form every day), so it is useful for the game to provide a substantial quantity of content.
As such, mini games like sundered land don't provide enough material to inspire confidence that they have the depth to last. The oracles in IAWA (particularly with all the fan ones) made up for the very simple, spartan rules content - the explicitly PVP nature also reduced the content burden on the GM.
To me, the thing that would make really minimal rules sets appealing for running a campaign would be strong content generation tools - things for helping to create a situation/session, to make things persist across sessions and such.
This makes VB go "+1"
Makes sense to me!
