Veeky Forums, why won't you use a system that reinforces setting through mechanics...

This. D&D is purposefully tailored to settings where there will be:
>multiple races or species with different characteristics
>it is common for teams of specialists in different fields to work together to do dangerous things
>something like magic
>significant character growth through triumph over adversity
>there is a well defined social order but also exist large areas where adventurous types have room to do their jobs.
>combat is often on the scale of small groups, 3-10 individuals on either side.
>wealth accumulation is probably a considerable character motivator.

There are more but those are the big ones I can think of for D&D. I agree that it is sometimes shoehorned into settings that don't make much sense for it; I'm guilty of this myself as a DM: I am currently starting a small game in 5e in a post-scarcity sci-fi fantasy setting, but D&D is a good fit other than that, so I am already anticipating ways to change the money and magic item systems to compensate.

Because TTRPG's aren't a hobby any more, they're something you do in the background while chilling with fruity haired friends and customizing your mechanics to suit your setting requires actual effort.

Don't forget that whether or not the setting supports this, if you use D&D, a core conceit of your play experience is now:
>sufficient increase in skill can trump any equipment advantage
>wizards/engineers can fucking implode reality and render the concept of martial force irrelevant with star trek bullshit or whatever applies

I agree. Purpose of D&D is pretty specific, but with things like d20 SRD it's pretty much encouraged to use it as a generic frame. Things like D&D based Touhou or 40k games don't appear out of nothing no matter how retarded those concepts could be.

Literally who does this

FATE is pretty much the only such system used (maybe GURPS? occasionally?), and that's not exactly common as any trip to the gamefinder threads would show you.

D&D 2e, you had entire campaign settings build around two competing concepts of defiling and preserving and every spell and multiple systems in the game were reworked to work with this concept.

For example if for god knows what reason you had a defiler and a preserver in the same party when your defiler casted a spell it would drain all the plants your preserver had carefully maintained, so they would then have to spend several spell slots regrowing his a small portion of their portable garden the defiler just destroyed.

Because I design my setting around the mechanics, instead of having to do it the other way around. Refluffing can still make for a quite distinct setting. I also use different systems for different eras in the world since the nature of magic and such changes.

It's weird to think about how D&D was so successful that it basically supplanted "generic" fantasy as the go-to signifier for a lot of people.

I mean like you said, these are bad ideas because D&D isn't generic, but lots of people treat it like it is. Though I think that the SRD was at least as much an attempt at capitalizing on market share (both the gaming market and the aforementioned dominance D&D-inspired works had over the fantasy market) as it was some kind of ideological statement about the system's "setting-neutrality."

People have made arguments (sometimes fairly convincingly) that the overarching trends and ideologies of roleplaying in the 90's were pointing towards the emergence a kind of dominant gaming monoculture and 3E/d20 was definitely angling towards that. "One True Wayism" and all that.

In most cases, D&D just continued what had previously been generic. Appendix N et al.

I forget with setting introduced the concept of lens casting, it was really cool how they could be used multiple ways, they could be used as batteries after soaking up latent magical energies or you could modify a spell by opening a portal to a plane that spewed out light you could refract into the lens in exchange for potentially damaging it.

His point would be better phrased as most of us kind of doing it in reverse whether we like it or not. There are a lot of D&Disms that just kind of get accepted as general laws of FRP, see but also include wackiness like it being as easy to gain 15 IQ as 30 pounds deadlift weight.

On the flipside, d20 2hu probably works fine. At least as fine as your spellcard system, good or bad, would if reworked to any other basis. d20 RAW when you throw out magic, items, and base races basically just assumes a steady power ramp all the way up to demigodhood with a lot of unimportant steps on the way and the lowest tiers being held down by their average performance and limited access to special rules; this is honestly pretty well suited for gestalt Gensokyo with its literal demigod characters, constant arguments about who actually beats who, and chance for even to get in a lucky shot or the ordinary mage to find a pocket mega particle cannon.

Huh, Veeky Forums silently deletes circle-9 now. That's sad.

Only in the sense that it can run most high-fantasy settings. I wouldn't call that anything close to generic.

Because FATE is light enough that I can model any important setting-specific elements as Aspects for the setting itself to invoke at my leisure, so there's no real need to create an entirely new system.

I tried fate once but I felt that writing down all the aspects was a pain in the ass that stalled the game

Also I kept forgetting to prompt the PCs to recover their pennies

That's still annoying, given large chunks of Veeky Forums have been pointing this out for years.

>implying
>implying
>implying
fuck off

You shouldn't write everything down. Most aspects should naturally come out from description and play. Push players to discover new aspects, that you will create on the occasion.

Fate has technically numerous tools to create setting specific mechanics.

Yeah, setting specific mechanics can be skills, aspects, stunts, or stunt-like constructs without the attachment to skills.
Fate isn't great for every setting, but it can be adapted to almost any. Doesn't mean you should, of course. It sets a pretty specific tone that many settings don't work with.

I found it's easier to push the fate style into the setting you're playing, rather than the opposite.
You just make your dungeon crawling fantasy campaign a bit pulpier and everything runs smoothier.

yeah, but not in this day and age anymore. for fantasy, a system has to provide mechanics for their particular brand of fantasy. for example, D&D's Vancian magic is kinda specific. racial bonuses for elves are pretty much everywhere.

all praise goes to rules-light, story-driven games for that, i guess

>People have made arguments (sometimes fairly convincingly) that the overarching trends and ideologies of roleplaying in the 90's were pointing towards the emergence a kind of dominant gaming monoculture and 3E/d20 was definitely angling towards that.
mah, the 90s were still marked by mechanical innovation and experimentation and D&D jad fallen behind the curve.

this is really excellent advice. at the minimum, if you run setting X, you and your players shouldn't mind if setting X takes on some pulpy flavours.

I didn't necessarily mean a push towards a single mechanical system, but a singular idea of what roleplaying games should do. Look at some of the big names of the era, D&D, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Rifts... As much as they tried to differentiate themselves from each other over how they got the job done, they were all still doing essentially the same job: the heroic (or anti-heroic) powerful heroes going on adventures thing.

There was far more variation in setting and what dice you rolled than in the overarching idea of what roleplaying games could be about. It wasn't until the indie boom of the 2000s that you started to see real significant pushback against it.

>implementing meta-narrative in system

Point me at them, user. I love those things. I've seen a few cool ones in ttRPGs. The clocks in Blades in the Dark, the countdowns in The Sprawl, how so many things in AW are designed around PC conflict, etc.

But honestly, most of the interesting ones have been on the board game scene. Deck building games in general, the dwindling hand mechanic in Gloomhaven, the damage-prone CPUs in Mechs vs Minions. I'd love to see some of these ideas come to the ttRPG scene.

I disagree that these are specific mechanics. OD&D was the only iteration where mechanics reinforced the theme, because there you got exp for explicitly finding treasure in dungeon. The latter editions were disconnected from this basic conceit and became generalist, because you get exp from adventuring in general regardless what form those adventures take.

I think board games, miniatures games, card games, and combinations thereof just give more scope to play with mechanics than RPGs. Remember when they replaced Orbs with power cards? You couldn't do that in an RPG because there's no equivalent of victory points.

that is true but adventuring to this day and age still forms the core of this hobby. for good reason.

Just use GURPS

It really is the Best Universal Role Playing System.

Pretty much every good generic system has told to make setting reinforcing mechanics.

I really love how SLA Industries reinforces corporative theme.

You acquire quests through little tickets called BPNs. In setting you can get BPN either by standing through a long line in employment centre or by receiving them through your own financier, who takes certain percentage from your reward. You're expected to print BPN form and give filled card to players when they receive it in game.

There're also some other document forms, like a 'Contract of Employment', 'Search & Seizure Warrant', 'Sponsorship Contract', etc. There're no in-game mechanics surrounding them, but these little touches really flesh out setting and immerse players when handed out in proper manner.

Instead of level characters have thing called SCL, that depicts their corporative rank. With bigger rank comes more prestigious sponsors, popularity, high ranking BPNs, access to secret data, etc. Also top of character sheet is a literal clearance card.

And this game is full of those little touches.

>You couldn't do that in an RPG because there's no equivalent of victory points.

There could be.

Strike!, for its tactical combat uses a system where you gain strikes for things like being brought down to below half health, being knocked out, etc. and at the end of the fight you tally them up to see how well you achieved the goal you set up before the fight.

For example, you want to defeat the guards so you can apprehend the Evil Vizier. If you collect no strikes, you find him in his room, possibly red handed trying to destroy some sort of evidence. If you collect some strikes (the number is 1 more than the number of party members IIRC), some of your guys (the ones who collected) will be winded by the fight, and you make a Minor Concession; the vizier may be making his getaway right now, but you can still give chase. If you got a LOT of strikes, you make a Major Concession; he had ample time to get away and write you a farewell letter, or worse. You'll maybe find some clues as to his whereabouts, but you didn't get much closer to your goal.

The same could work in reverse, the heroes collecting victory points, and the fight being over and their goal achieved based on how many you collect.

Character's vices and virtues in Pendragon is a great narrative mechanic that simulates chivalrous romances.

Unknown Armies is literally build out of meta-narratives.

Runes in Fate of the Norns: Ragnarök not only represent stats and abilities, but also replace dice.

In Ryuutama GM has to create a character in a form of godly dragon, who can appear before players in various forms. The way character is build determines what type of campaign party will have, what kind of intrusions GM can make and what kind of benefits party may receive during the play.

>Runes in Fate of the Norns: Ragnarök not only represent stats and abilities, but also replace dice.

As in, a static determination, or is there still an element of choice or randomization?

IIRC, when you "roll" you draw from your rune bag, which have a number of runes distributed according to your stats; so a strong but dumb character would have a lot of "strength" runes but very little "mind" runes, and vice versa. You draw X runes from your bag and count the ones relevant to your current challenge.

My experience with WoD has taught me anything is the more you try to "enforce a theme through mechanics" the more you set youself to fail.

Sure there are something that can be covered with them but many others that are just too broad and need a DM fiat to make rulings.

Saying X always happens regardless of context is problematic.

Because risus works well enough as an engine any day.

Why build a new game engine when you can just use source.

Because I don't want to force players to read all my setting notes just to play the game.

Right, but what about you opponent's victory points? The point of dropping Lester into a nest of scream wizards is you can keep revive-doubling him, forcing your enemy to flip victory points to keep the screamers fed with power cards.

In an RPG the play is naturally different, more interpersonal. Our party of wandering Yeezytroopers stumbles upon an inbred mob of night clan lynching a family of fishmen. Does our Black Witch enshadow us to sneak up on them, do we send our tame Bullboy to shout as a distraction, or do we run and tattle to the nearest Orb Lord? See? It's more character and imagination driven, which doesn't eliminate mechanics but reduces their scope. There's no way to ask 'how many power cards do they have?' without trivialising the setting.

>OD&D was the only iteration where mechanics reinforced the theme, because there you got exp for explicitly finding treasure in dungeon.
Nigger that was still in the game as late as 2e.

Exalted
Dread
13th Age

None of those are generic systems.

I read this post but have no idea what you're actually trying to say.

>My experience with WoD has taught me anything is the more you try to "enforce a theme through mechanics" the more you set youself to fail.

Where did WoD fall through for you?