The Escapist Issue #65 Now Available
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 875
Q: Let's talk about design in terms of putting together a game. Which do you see as the more important aspect, the system of a game or the setting of a game?
A: Depends on the game. You have some brilliant work out there that's almost all setting and you have things out there that are pure system. SPI's Strategy 1 was nothing but system. There are some maps of territories that never happened and here are a whole lot of counters in God knows how many colors for generic military units. And there are some brief rules on how to use this to represent medieval and here some brief rules for Age of Steam and there are some more brief rules for WWII technology ... and now run along and play! No setting at all.
My GURPS roleplaying game is all about system, and some people found that either daunting or boring, and they said "well, there should be some setting." And the fourth edition does add some specific setting suggestions, although it's a "multi-versal" setting. It still gives them a framework. Some people like framework. Some people prefer story framework to game rules. They say, "I can make up rules. Give me a story to work with."
There's no right answer, and there's no reason to think that one approach should or will dominate, because people are different. They want different things.
