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This is a game for people who want to pilot giant robots slugging the hell out of other giant robots. This does not deconstruct the giant robot art form. This does not take Neon Genesis Evangelion and run with some of its concepts. The only thing you are deconstructing in this game is other giant robots and you are doing it with your fists.
― James Wallis, Ludonarrative Dissidents ·S1 E03 Lancer
So I've been thinking a bit about the posts I've been seeing concerning the players of ttrpgs (mostly D&D and specifically 5th edition) generally acting... Well, like they have a reputation for acting. You know, the stuff going around for, by, or near @anim-ttrpgs and @thydungeongal (who I can't tag for some reason. Is that a setting? Oh well). The "can't be made to read the rules" or "meet the players where they're at" crowd.
That last one was an especially interesting take in a sector of the hobby complaining of a DM shortage.
Anyway I've come to a simple conclusion from this behavior: DMs, if your players act like customers it's time to get new ones.
The fundamental problem I have with most games I've played descended from Apocalypse World (including PbtA and FitD games) is that when and how the players fail is so heavily influenced by the GM's arbitrary judgement. Because of this, it is effectively impossible to strategize or get better at playing the game, because you aren't really playing the game, you're playing the GM.
I've very much been enjoying D20's "Neverafter" but I have a lot of thoughts on how the production is approaching content warnings for the series and they are mostly negative.
I don't know where D20 contracted or got their advice from but as someone who uses CWs I personally find the approach largely unhelpful, and performative at the expense of being useful.
And I hesitate to post even this much of a criticism because I feel like the general flavor of internet response has probably been "It's great they care about this!" without reflecting on the actual usefulness of the specific approach. And it is good they care about that, but I would hope we can point to why specific methods are not actually achieving what they intend to.
But one thing I did notice, and this is a tiny footnote, is that all the mechs… Think of a BattleTech 'Mech, think of the cover of classic BattleTech, you've got that, I can't, I don't know the different BattleTech models, but basically it's this massive structure with two enormous arms, and two enormous guns suspended from the arms, the guns are built right into the arms. Every single mech in Lancer has hands. There are, or at least all the artwork, they are all illustrated with very human-like hands. And this goes back to what I was saying about the magic robots versus the real robots, and that dichotomy that lies at the heart of what a giant robot game thinks it is and what it's doing. These giant robots are essentially beings, they are not machines, I would say. And as you’re playing them in terms of almost Jungian style, it's you as, there's no separation between you the pilot and you the thing, you are the thing, you're being the thing, represented by a small miniature on the table. I'm not going anywhere in particular with that, I just wanted to point it out because I didn't get to put it in earlier on.
― James Wallis, Ludonarrative Dissidents ·S1 E03 Lancer
I've spent a lot ―too much of my life― designing and redesigning initiative systems, and occasionally fighting co-designers who want to take them out. [Lancer's initiative system] is basically you decide who goes first. The players decide in what order they go and then one player goes and then one of the enemy goes. The GM decides which enemy goes. It's really boardgamey and it really works and it's not realistic but then I've yet to actually see an RPG initiative system that was realistic and wasn't boring. Initiative systems are hard, this one feels like a game, but it works. And my hat is off, that is a splendid piece of design.
― James Wallis, Ludonarrative Dissidents ·S1 E03 Lancer
The question to answer for a game ―when you're designing it― in many ways is: "What's the good bit?" And when you know what the good bit is, you focus on that and the good bit gets more detailed and intensive rules and more time at the table, and everything else exists just as support for the good bit.
― Greg Stolze, Ludonarrative Dissidents ·S1 E03 Lancer
Watching a D&D 5e player post his house rules for making combat more engaging on discord and he's just re-creating D&D 4e from first principles…
