What is a broken RPG?

[starblaze]

Hello all,

I have been thinking about some remarks I recently heard concerning various game system for RPG's being called broken. Most of these seemed to be pointed towards such games as RIFTS, AD&D and some others. I was wondering if you members could try and define what constitutes a broken system.

Any takers?

[SkyKnight]

A system is broken if attempting to follow the rules in at least a casual fashion negates the fun of role playing.

Examples of broken rules abound. I'm sure some other posters will list many. The simplest answer is simply that the game mechanics impair the ability to have fun.

[Killer Shrike]

Real quick and heavily IMO:

Broken games systems are systems with little or no balancing of power between character options. This is generally refered to as "Game Balance"

Broken game systems are systems that have so many loopholes and/or mismatched arbitrary rules that the system is easy to manipulate or take advantage of in making unstoppable characters. Again, Game Balance, but via a different means.

Broken game systems are systems wherein the rule fail to make any kind of sense or are significantly flawed by some design decision(s), which makes playing the game as written unpalatable or illogical.

Broken game systems are systems that are limited in thier usefullness, which are so rigid they defy customization, or so arbitrary and chaotic that its impossible to get a "common sense" mastery of the game -- you have to read each rule carefully each time something comes up because the rules dont share a common theme or follow the same meta-rules.

There are more, but I dont have time to list them. Sadly, its much easier to design a broken system than a really good system. The problem of course is that broken is in the eye of the beholder, any system can be raped by power mongering players or made a travesty of by a poor GM. So, its mostly just a matter of opinion and personal preference.

Frex, I think the Paladium system is broken, in all its forms. Ive played RIFTS (when it first was released), TMNT, Ninja's & Superspies, and was preparred to play in an actual Palladium fantasy game back in High School which fell thru at the very last second after much preperation by all involved when the guy that was going to GM's father got layed off and they moved back north. I had some fun playing various Palladium system games, but my fun was outweighed by my frustration with the complete arbitrariness and total lack of power balancing inherent in the system and the materials provided. Great ideas, horrible execution IMO. But thats just my opinion. Many people really enjoy RIFTS and other Palladium games.

{shrugs} Its all a matter of opinion really. There are very few systems where the overwhelming majority all agree that they are not just bad or uninteresting, they are outright broken.

[buzz]

Originally posted by starblaze
I was wondering if you members could try and define what constitutes a broken system.

Any system that you don't like.

Honestly, this is the most common use of the term that I've seen. If somebody doesn't like a game or has some issue with a system, they deem it "broken."

To me, a system that is genuinely "broken" would be a system or a mechanic that simply does not do what it's supposed to do. The only example I can think of (and this is second-hand knowledge) is the dice mechanic from 1st ed. Vampire, in which, iirc, the better you were at something the *more likely* you were to botch. This, of course, makes absolutely no sense, ergo, I'd consider it broken.

The truly "broken" systems are few and far between, imho. The term is more of a fanboy insult. Sure, there may be plenty of systems that are poorly-designed or unbalanced, but that, to me, doesn't make them "broken." It just makes them "not good."

[Derek Hiemforth]

I'll take a variant of what SkyKnight said...

A given rule is broken when it doesn't accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish, when it utterly fails the common sense test, or when its complexity is extremely out of whack with its importance.

An example of failing to accomplish to goal would be the 4th Edition HERO System rule on buying altered racial characteristic maxima. The goal (presumably) was to make (say) the average dwarf hardier than the average human, to make an extremely hardy dwarf cheaper to build than an extremely hardy human, or both. It actually did neither. Raising the dwarf's CON max to 23 still left their base CON at 10, and (since you have to pay for the increased maxima in addition to paying for the CON itself), a dwarf with a 23 CON actually cost exactly the same as a human with a 23 CON. And if you were a dwarf and didn't buy at least a 23 CON, then you paid points for something you didn't use.

An example of failing the common sense test would be the 2nd Ed. AD&D rules for leaping. The only rule in the system governing how far characters could jump without magical aid was the Jumping non-weapon proficiency. (Which I guess meant that if your character didn't have the proficiency, he couldn't leap?) The Jumping proficiency allowed you to leap 2d6+your level in feet, assuming you made the proficiency check (which was based on STR). Let's take two thieves. One is 1st level, 18 years old, with a 17 STR and a 17 DEX. The other is 20th level, 95 years old, with a 6 STR and a 6 DEX. The young buck with the 17 STR will make his check almost all the time, but when he makes it, will leap an average of only 8 feet. The old geezer with the 6 STR will rarely make his check, but when he does make it, this 95 year old soars an amazing 27 feet on average.

An example of failing the complexity/importance test would be if a game's only rule for combat was "Each character rolls 1d6. The character with the higher roll kills the other." Or if its rule for the crucial task of horse grooming required a d1000 roll and a six-page chart.

An entire game system could be deemed "broken" when it either has some critically broken rules for which there is no easy fix, or when it has so many lesser broken rules that working around them all either becomes tiresome, or changes the game so much that you might as well not be said to be playing that system.

Anyway, there's my .02.

[MisterVimes]

Anything found in Murphy's Rules

[Blue]

I would consider a system broke if...

• Rules contradict each other
• There are insufficient rules to cover major, commonly performed actions
• The Eratta of blown figures, calculations, and charts is so big it's easier to just publish a newer edition.
• You must adopt a NASA scientist into the group in order to interpret the language used in the book.

[JohnTaber]

Great posts guys. Very nice. I don't have to say anything...you guys got it well in hand...

[Evil Steve]

One that I would add to these would be any system who provides skills, but no means to use them. For example, Talislanta (in one edition) had rules for the Riding skill, but provided no rules for the mounts themselves.

Any lack of critical information that is central to the concept. Most of these games died out in the late 80's when any monkey with a typewriter and $50 could run off an RPG.

Oh yeah, forgot some. Rules that create frustration rather than balance. Traveller 1st ed: A character could die during...brace yourself...character creation. When making characters, you would take Terms of Service in the military to gain skills. If you rolled badly, you died during that term and had to start over. Why not just have the character forceably retired from the Forces without the skill boosts. Never understood that one.

Systems that lack a process of advancement that is player and activity centered. Both Traveller 1st ed and Morrow Project 1st ed had this flaw.

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Evil Steve
One that I would add to these would be any system who provides skills, but no means to use them. For example, Talislanta (in one edition) had rules for the Riding skill, but provided no rules for the mounts themselves.

An excellent example of this would be many of the Class Skills in TSR's Buck Rogers RPG. If they had provided circumstances when half those skills would be useful it might not have died such a grisly death.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by Evil Steve
Systems that lack a process of advancement that is player and activity centered. Both Traveller 1st ed and Morrow Project 1st ed had this flaw.

I think this is more a flaw from the perspective of gaming style preference rather than something innately broken. But it brings up a good point, which is: from the viewpoint of the person considering a given system, any mechanic that too greatly contradicts their own tastes makes that system "broken" for them.

For example, I really dislike random attribute generation. I find no advantage in it in any way. So to me, a game system that uses random attribute generation is "broken," because I wouldn't play it.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by buzz
The only example I can think of (and this is second-hand knowledge) is the dice mechanic from 1st ed. Vampire, in which, iirc, the better you were at something the *more likely* you were to botch.

Not precisely: the better you were at something the more severe your botches could be, but they were less likely to happen.

Not much better, and I would consider the majority (if not the whole) of the Storyteller line to be broken, but it isn't quite *that* broken.

It is, however, broken for these reasons (which are also some of my answers to the original question, though I'll try to avoid too much duplication of other posts):

1. Lethality:Complexity Ratio. If building the character is time consuming and not fun of itself, then a system that also can kill that character in an instant without careful GMing is not my cup of tea.

2. Different systems in the same game, unless they mesh well. The World of Darkness series and, to a lesser extent, GURPS have this problem: completely new rules for each of what we might call "special effect". Nothing wrong with that as long as they are never in the same game or are well balanced, but neither of these is necessarily the case in those systems.

That's all I can think of that hasn't been said (and I'm not even sure, then, it's late).

[Jhamin]

My primary criteria for a broken system is that is has some character choices that are signifigently better than other choices for no particularly good reason, or that might cause you to make a character that is overly powerful in comparison to others without setting out to do that.

RIFTS gets brought up a lot because it's classes don't seem to have any standard they can be measured by and characters are blatantly mismatched in power levels.

When the two different players can make characters by the book without any power gaming, and character A can kill character B in 2-3 shots, but Character B needs 28-35 shots to kill character A, then something is broken in this system.
(If you think I exaggerate, try putting a 1st level Glitter Boy against a 1st level SAMAS Pilot some time, don’t even think about how long a wilderness scout or scientist will last in this world)

[buzz]

Originally posted by Jhamin
My primary criteria for a broken system is that is has some character choices that are signifigently better than other choices for no particularly good reason, or that might cause you to make a character that is overly powerful in comparison to others without setting out to do that.

Some would argue that this isn't broken, it's just unbalanced. E.g., elves are far superior to every other race in Decipher's LOTR rpg, but many fans of the game seem to like this, as it accurately reflects the source material.

Granted, the overall fan reaction to LOTR seems to be pretty mixed.

[tesuji]

Originally posted by Jhamin

When the two different players can make characters by the book without any power gaming, and character A can kill character B in 2-3 shots, but Character B needs 28-35 shots to kill character A, then something is broken in this system.

I will observe that this example seems to ignore potential non-combat abilities. I would consider it a fine example for a wargame but not for an RPG myself.