If you had to place RPGs on this coordinate system, what systems you place where?

If you had to place RPGs on this coordinate system, what systems you place where?

top left is 2 kids in the playground making shit up as they go along.

D&D is very bottom and like half-way to the right.

Game of Pretend is also available in adult version

Call of Cthulhu is three quarters down, three quarters right

All editions at the same place? 1e/2e is certainly crunchier and wider than 4e/5e.

GURPS near top-right.

FATAL bottom-right.

What do you mean by "Narrative Versatility?" I'm having trouble thinking of a trait inherent to an RPG system that so strongly affects the GM's narrative

Versatile system: GURPs, can play almost any theme, genre, setting, etc.
Not versatile: Moldvay basic D&D. is only really good for dungeon crawling. If you don't add in Cook's expert, you'll have trouble with wilderness stuff.

The coordinates only make sense if you do official rules/supplements as written, not with DM fiat/houserules.

In that case, top right corner is probably the best choice

>D&D is...
Okay, you clearly don't know anything about game structure.

1st Draft

A good first draft, but in need of some revision.

shift every eddition of DnD closer to the top right, at least by a bit
shift FATAL to the very bottom right
put Shadowrun where FATAL was
put Dungeons the Dragoning 40K 7E at the very bottom of the page, lined up with the word "Rules."
Finally, put Mutants and Masterminds dead centre on the chart

Put this about 40% up and 60% left.

>4e narrative versatility BELOW other D&Ds

What the shit? The ease of refluffing makes it very damn versatile. It's probably the only D&d I'd put above the "narrative" line.

4e doesn't have anything that 1e/2e doesn't have, and they have shit tons of officially published setting material.

have you ever tried not playing D&D=

D&D is actually a rather niche game. Not in terms of popularity, obviously, but in terms of the kinds of campaigns its good at running. It's essentially a dungeon/wilderness crawler focused on exploration and combat (and to varying degrees, resource management). You can certainly play shit outside of that, but that's not what it's what it's made for. And hell, you could play a non-horror campaign of Call of Cthulhu if you wanted.

So 3.x and your AD&D's should certainly not be above the midline in terms of narrative versatility.

Wait... why do you have Call of Cthulhu way towards the crunchy end? Has it gotten more complicated since I last played? Last time I looked, it was essentially a streamlined BRP, which is a streamlined RuneQuest.

If 0,0 is the middle of chart, -10,-10 is the bottom left-hand corner, 10,10 is the top right, then I'd say the games are something like...

Savage Worlds 0,7
GURPS 7,9
Barbarians of Lemuria -8,-4
B/X -4,-6
AD&D 1,-5
2nd edition AD&D 2,-4
3.x 6,-4

>4e doesn't have anything that 1e/2e doesn't have

Aside from Eberron and PoL? Class progression to 30? Paragon Paths and Epic destinies? There's a huge amount of area covered without setting books.

Of course, if by "narrative versatility" you mean amount of setting books published, okay, 1e/2e wins by volume. If you mean actually the system supporting multiple types of settings, 4e has a much wider scale and coverage than both.

Anima should be smack-dab in the middle on versatility, but all the way into the Crunchy zone.

DnD is a fantasy combat skirmish game with a campaign system bolted on.

Fate Core top, slightly right.

Fate Accelerated top, about a third to the left
[-3, 10] if I'm following these cordinates

That's only accurate for some editions. Originally, D&D WAS the campaign system.

fpbp

No and neither have you.

>DitV
>wide
Dude, it's about Mormon cowboys solving interpersonal problems in the 1840s. It's not wide at all, and if you tried to run some other story with it, you'd be better served by a different system.

t. Someone who has run DitV

It's not that hard finding a group for something that isn't DnD if you have friends or social skills

haha yeah...who doesn't have friends or social skills...

;_;

While I've probably played more D&D than any other game than Gamma World (which was D&D-derived), it still only makes up a relatively small fraction of my role-playing experience -- a tiny fraction if we're including homebrews and games so house-ruled they might as well be homebrews.

>Mongoose Traveller crunchier than Classic

I've only played classic, but I thought MgT expanded combat rules.

You're probably joking but if you're not, it's never too late to grow as a person, maybe hit up the local game store? Most people there aren't great but you can over time cherry pick the people you like and hangout with them. Just put yourself out there, the worst thing that can happen is you're rejected

I've played Dark Heresy, L5R, VtM, and a Judge Dredd style game with DitV. Maybe you're playing it wrong?

Mongoose simplified quite a bit. CT has the page of death including equations for intrasystem travel that was pretty easy to work out, but looked intimidating at first glance.

Why would traveller have less narrative versatility than D&D - shouldn't it be the other way around? vanilla D&D can only fun fantasy in a fantasy setting, while all Traveller versions are capable of handling anything from stone age to medieval to modern tech to future. The huge variety of different worlds and ability to randomly generate new worlds and even entire sectors gives almost unlimited "Settings" as each world is a unique self-contained setting

GURPS is nowhere near as crunchy as you think. It has a grand total of around half a dozen mechanics, including (in no particular order) skill success rolls, damage rolls, contests and quick contests, influence rolls, and size/distance modifiers. The rest doesn't exist unless your setting (setting appropriate skills/magic) specifically calls for it, and the overwhelming bulk of it is just modifiers to a success roll.

The average player only needs to actually understand a handful of things to play any given game of GURPS, slightly more if you're using tactical combat. It should be very slightly left of center, or around center, of the crunchiness axis.

There's just a lot of it, and it is the GM's responsibility to shave off anything that isn't related to the setting.

Pegging GURPS is a bit tricky because how much of it do you include? Same thing for OD&D. The little brown books alone are distinctly light on rules (to the point where some shit isn't properly explained), but if you include all the supplements, you have proto-AD&D, which is much heavier. The Greyhawk supplement in particular is a game changer, and probably considered core material to most OD&D games.

But with that said, I don't buy that GURPS is slightly on the light side when it comes to crunch. I mean, you can run Savage Worlds as a rules-light game if you just use the quickstart rules, but that doesn't make it a rules-light game. Also, what the average player needs to understand isn't necessarily determinate in how heavy a game is. When I first started running D&D, I did all the roles and calculations for my players (this was much more common way back then), but that didn't make the system ultra-light.

That's fair. You make excellent points.

I stand by what I say, with the following revisions and emphasis.

Any given cohesive setting or niche using GURPS is not terribly crunchy. It is only when you start doing shit like centaur-leprechauns designed for dungeon crawling punching a Bird of Prey in space does it start getting weird or crunchy. One or two similar dishes at a time is super easy on rules, but the kitchen sink can get bizarre and daunting. Weirdness, even in stupid situations, is mostly from the lack of cohesion in tone and theme. Mostly "you want to do what? Okay, let's figure out the modifiers." (Even that can be handwaved with built-in rules for abstract difficulty)

This is with the caveat that the rest of the sink doesn't exist until such a time as the group dictates. GURPS is designed such that you can use all of the components at once, if you really want to, and they will all work together smoothly. (A medieval character in a modern space Opera? Easy, and realistically balanced.) It's just a tonal and thematic mess, and as a result, kind of a pain to juggle.

The vast bulk of the extra rules are some subtle variation of a success roll or modifier to a success roll, which is by default written on your character sheet. Admittedly, it's super front-loaded with work for the player and the GM, even less for the players if the GM has character templates available. After character creation you should only occasionally need to reference the rules, and most of those rules can be boiled down to a cheatsheet.

Even oddball shit like invention is basically a success roll with some stipulations. Once you've used one type of invention skill, you've basically used them all, excepting the different stipulations.

In my opinion the rules that are there are also pretty intuitive.

The TL;DR is that GURPS only approaches the crunchier side of the spectrum when doing a lot of bizarre shit at once, and even then it's not _that_ crunchy.

Not much to add beyond saying to the OP that this is a great idea, and despite it being possibly a bit subjective, it would make for a fantastic gaming resource going forward. Please keep working on it and publish your findings good sir!

>Rules being intuitive

ST (strength) determines melee power and HP. HP is basically meatpoints, no dicking around with abstractions that invoke ludonarrative dissonance.

DX (dexterity) is for skills and speed, including if you can aim a weapon, be it a sword or a gun.

IQ is an abstraction for intelligence, almost exclusively used for skills.

HT is health, an abstraction of your immune system, sensory organs, and cardio-vascular system. Directly influences perception and Fatigue. Fatigue powers magic and some special martial moves, and is functionally stamina.

Attractiveness is separate from your charisma, which is separate from your social standing, which is separate from your wealth, all of which is separate from your skill in various kinds of smooth-talking, diplomacy, interrogation, sex appeal, etc.

Granted, it's a lot of stuff to screw around with to create a character, but none of it really jars me like some of the common problems in DnD ilk (WIS increases with age, which also increases your perception. wut.) You never really have to touch how these things are related outside of character creation or when you invest more character points.

There's also a lot more agency in combat, and more combat-related things make sense. Armor reduces damage, but doesn't necessarily make you harder to hit. You can actively parry, dodge,or block attacks. Give yourself one-shot buffs (without being a caster, gasp) through the use of martial tactics.

It is, in my opinion, easier to grok. It's also easier to narrate without getting fucked up by ludonarrative weirdness, because the rules make sense in relation to the IRL shit they are meant to represent. And because there are so many ways to skin a cat (which you are free to ignore), especially in combat, you have the choice of engaging more meaningfully with the actions of your character.

GURPS should be shifted downward since it has multiple settings and genre books to consider.

Fuck it. Let me put it this way: GURPS is super simple and has only a few mechanics. He said, after rambling about how intuitive and elegant it was for several paragraphs...

It is my opinion that it should be considered far less crunchy than 3.x, and potentially around the same crunchiness or less crunchy than 5e, so at current metrics it would be around centric or just left of center.

GURPS should be a area from near center to near right edge. Simply because it can run relatively light games, like in Action splat, all the way to the meme string article.

2nd draft using the feedback

A good example of a low-vesatility game would be Pendragon. Pendragon is about playing Arthurian knights, and that's all it's about.

GURPS should be a horizontal line along the top of the chart.

"ERP" should be in the bottom-left corner.

(If you consider this chart to be Serious Business and demand that every entry has a perfectly accurate placement, you might want to move it slightly up.)

Exactly. Getting mad at gurps for having a lot of rules is like going to a buffet and getting mad that they've given you too much food. You're not expected to use everything ,at least not all in one go, and if you do and it fucks up, it's mostly your fault for being a glutton (or an idiot)

old world of darkness
med cruchie
very narrow narrative

new world of darkness
med low cruchie
mild to med wide narrative

There's some truth to this, although I think it wouldn't extend more than a quarter to the left. Depending on the DM and supplements you use, GURPS *can* be very, very crunchy. Most DMs won't want to run it that way, but if you wanted to run a game where you manually calculate modifiers for every little thing, GURPS could support that.

Just using the basic set would be about on par with 5e IMO. As long as you aren't counting supplements that simplify it, a line near the top from 5e to about 9/10 of the way to the right fits pretty well.

I like it!

4e is still completely missplaced. It is in no way more naratively narrow than any of the other DnD editions.

...

>DitV is narratively narrower than 4e
Into the trash with this thing.

Oh boo-hoo, someone doesn't share your opinion of 4e.

Why don't go evangelize your dead game in /4eg/?

I forgot to correct it from last time
Never played it myself, just misplaced it from someone's suggestion

How about Dread at [-9, -3]?

>implying 4e isn't dead as a door nail

>NWOD
>Higher on Narrative Versatility than M&M
NWOD is pretty narritively versatile, but M&M is basically a generic high powered system with a superhero coat of paint. And the superhero genrecontains just as much versatility, if not more, than NWOD.

Regarding the wide-narrow axis, I think I've got a general definition for where something should go on it.

The furthest up the following list is, the wider it is:
>This system is designed to be used for any genre and a setting. See GURPS and Fate.
>This system is designed to be used for any setting within a loose genre. See nWoD and M&M.
>This system is designed to be used for any setting within a more rigid genre. See the D&Ds and Traveler.
>The system is designed to be used for a specific setting. See Call of Cthulhu, oWoD, Shadowrun, etc.

But D&D is inherently narrow in scope based on its mechanics.

See 'more rigid genre.' I know hating D&D is in fashion but you just repeated what I had said.

I'm not sure how to place it on the axis, but it does have a rather narrow application even within the fantasy genre. Vancian magic is appropriate for dungeon excursions where successive encounters / non-combat incidents wear down your magical resources over time. It falls apart if you're not doing that sort of thing and only have one or two occasions for use in a particular day.

The classes are specifically designed for dungeon crawling (with some wilderness exploration thrown in) and may not make much sense in other areas. In a game without much fighting, a fighter is probably going to suck really fucking badly compared to a wizard. In a game without traps and where locked doors aren't much of a consideration, the thief of earlier editions takes a big hit. In a more diplomatically-focused game, well, the rules tend to be pretty sparse for most any class.

And then there's the level of magic. Most stories don't have the insanely-high, reality-bending sort of magic you ultimately get in D&D. Most stories hew closer to a swords & sorcery level of magic, and that's something that doesn't work particularly well in a D&D campaign. And there's also the extreme growth in power in general as characters level, which limits more down-to-earth play.

Understand that I'm not saying that D&D is bad; it's just that it does a particular thing. And many of the complaints about D&D come from it being applied outside of this niche.

Put this on 1, 1.

pic related

Bold the words on the axis, or find annother way to indicate them. It's getting hard to see them in the clutter

The last couple of things added I have no experience with, so give feedback.

Re-spec to "core rules only. Supplements & splats will drive any game up and to the right.

GURPS isn't crunchier than 3/3x. And honestly isn't as versatile as its partisans think it is.

Original 1979 Classic Traveller goes to up and to the left of final, all supplements CT.

Most OSR games as actually played at the table, back in the 80s: middle to upper left.

Replace FATAL with Rolemaster. Fatal is unplayably off the map to the lower right.

>5e is crunchier than 4e

Microlight20 is on there twice.

Flip Dogs in the Vineyard up to the same spot but above the line.

Swap the places of DnD 4e and 5e.

One Microlight is the 2 page version, the other is the deluxe full game.

Burning wheel/torchbearer belong on there somewhere, both near top right. Mouseguard would be much further left on the same Y axis.

Where phoenix command, rhand morningstar missions and sword path glory would be?

...

I still contest that GURPS should be closer to center, at least closer to center than 3.x stuff. Others in the thread agree.

At least it isn't all the way to the right, though.

I was GM for a few COC games, the hardest crunch is combat mods, all of which in on a 2 page spread. Honestly it's one of the least crunchy RPGs I have ever played. But to be fair I haven't played a wide selection of RPGs.

CoC 7th is less crunchy than DnD 5th, why is it all the way off over there?

Hey, I finished DMing Mouse Guard yesterday and... Yeah, that is pretty accurate.

Torchbearer and Mouse Guard seem to be written with a much narrower scope than Burning Wheel. Most of Burning Wheel's versatility is in hacking it to do what you want, in my opinion.

Am I missing something?

Move shadowrun up and to the right. You can do out and out war, space opera, matrix adventures, slice of life, dungeon crawling and more in it.

We need Apocalypse World to the right of but near to Fate Accelerated

>Versatile system: GURPs, can play almost any theme, genre, setting, etc.
GURPS can play any setting with aplomb but is not particularly wide on genre or theme. Like, you can do slapstick in GURPS but you'd be fighting the system. You could do drama but the system would be in the background.

I don't know of any system that's genre-versatile though, let alone both genre and setting, so I think GURPS still deserves its place at the top of the versatility scale.

>1e/2e is certainly crunchier . . . than 4e/5e
Are you high.

Agreed. On the versatility axis, Mouse Guard should be on-par with Dogs in the Vineyard. Torchbearer and Burning Wheel should probably be somewhere between M&M and SW.

Crunch axis seems pretty accurate, tho.

So where would you put CoC on the crunch matrix? -3?

I still don't understand why Traveller and D&D are in the negative narrative versatility area - wouldn't that imply they are more on the restrictive side rather than versatile?

Both Traveller and D&D have massive narrative versatility - the GM/DM has the freedom to create any kind of narrative they want. Some would argue any game with a GM has infinite versatility dependent only on the GMs imagination.

Either way, D&D and Traveller should both be above the line of "0" narrative versatility. They do not actively restrict narrative.

See . If anything, D&D should be further negative, at least the editions that are closest to the line (I don't think B/X needs to go any further down).

I put GURPS at [7,9] but that was in reaction to its initial placement at the extreme righthand corner of the chart, from which I assumed we were talking about GURPS with a decent bit of rules and not a more stripped-down campaign.

The post you linked doesn't say anything about narrative - it just complains about magic and classes.

D&D has a DM controlling the narrative - he can do whatever he likes with regards to narrative. That makes it infinitely versatile. A good DM will give the players the kind of narrative they want - will make sure even the "worst" class has a role to play and that casters have time to rest even in a dungeon.

The main narrative limitation of D&D is the setting - you can't do modern technology or futuristic tech without homebrewing a bunch of stuff. Still, within D&D's fantasy setting any kind of narrative is possible.

>The post you linked doesn't say anything about narrative - it just complains about magic and classes.
The mechanics of the game limit the narrative. I mean, you can push beyond them, but then you could run a space opera using the Call of Cthulhu rules.

>D&D has a DM controlling the narrative
Every game has a GM tweaking stuff.

The AD&D games I've seen or played in are generally lighter, but if you actually used all the rules in 1e, or went with all the players options and shit for 2e...

Would you mind telling me how you managed to run Dark Heresy and the Judge Dredd style game with it? I'd actually like to do something similar and i would like to hear it.

We have to rate versatility based on how the rules are written and intended for. I mean, DM fiat can run any ruleset any way - it's why you see so many pathfinder games on roll20 trying to do everything under the sun because players are too lazy to learn a more appropriate system.

put Paranoia slightly under and to the left of Pendragon

Where you put it in the center of the crunch axis is good.

Fantasycraft should be put either just above or just below the word "Crunchier"

I still think the wide range of D&D, narrative-wise, is a bit silly. 1e through 5e are not *that* much more versatile than B/X. Just because you're lighter on rules doesn't make you inherently narrower in scope. Sure, you probably have less specific rules to cover different instances, but those are also fewer things that tie you into a specific way of doing things. The gap between B/X and BECMI in particular seems way too big.