Getting It

This was the first time I had been personally subjected...

Read more...

I agree with most of the article, except the way it begins.

“Getting it” means a few things. Mostly, it means coming to it with the right expectations and being open to the experience it offers. Being told that you don’t “get it” is a short hand way of saying you are not approaching it correctly, you are not looking for the right thing, you are trying to make it something it’s not, etc. It might also be another way of saying the game (or movie, or whatever) isn’t for you. I don’t think it’s rude, unless you add unspoken words (or, unless the person who said it explicitly is being rude and/or speaks certain words): if you take “you dit get it” as, you are too dumb to appreciate it, or you would like it if you just tried, Etc, then that might Not be the intention.

Sure, not all games are for all people. In this case it was very much 'I don't think you understood some of the mechanics' which kind of annoyed as I spent a lot of time diving into them.

I certainly understand the "you don't get it" thing. As a big fan of Friedmann Friese "math games" I have to resist saying this all the time when trying to get other players to play, and more importantly, enjoy, the game. Folks enjoy some things and not others, be it theme, mechanics, or even just the art aesthetic.

I used to play Catan with a player who was so conflict adverse she would put the robber in a place that affected the LEAST amount of players. She "didn't get it", or just had her own play style. She played the way she wanted (with in the rules) and the rest of us just accepted it or didn't play with her if a more cutthroat game was desired.

Star Trek seems like a tough RPG to play. So much of the show is either pure negotiation or elaborate technobabble, neither really translates well to dice rolling rules IMHO, while combat certainly does. Plus the naval command structure implies one player is "in charge" while everyone else is playing support to some extent.

Maybe I don't get it either

I once played BSG with a group that included a teenager. We had strong suspicions she was a Cylon by the halfway point and trusted her with nothing. Every skill check was a nightmare of paranoia. It was one of the best sessions of the game I've ever had. The accusations, arguments and plotting didn't stop until the moment Galactica went down.

At which point we discovered she wasn't a Cylon at all. She was just pretending because she thought it'd be fun.

For a moment I was furious to have had the whole game subverted: the human never have had a chance if one of their own wasn't playing along. And then I remembered what an amazing, exciting game we'd had.

She definitely "got it". Just not in the way most players might be expecting.

I have played a lot of RPGs over the years. Sometimes a game was very successful and I ran a campaign that lasted years. Sometimes a game failed on the very first session. Sometimes a game worked really well on a trial basis, but the campaign didn't have any legs. But I think that either playtesting or reviewing an RPG is too involved a process to come up with more than very anecdotal information. It's entirely possible that a GM didn't run the game in a way that worked well with either the rules or the setting. Or the GM did fine, but one or more of the players didn't get into the proper spirit of the game. Conversely, a group could "get it wrong" and still have a great time playing it their way.

I actually have a particularly relevant anecdote regarding the FASA Star Trek rpg of the early '80s. As Jason pointed out, some players might have a problem with the military rank structure that leaves a specific character in charge. Our GM decided to make the Captain an NPC (I suspect this was recommended in the rulebook), so he could keep adventure on track by having the Captain give orders to the player characters. The PCs in turn were all officers, so they could order around redshirt NPCs on missions. But the players resented the Captain and staged a successful mutiny. That didn't go over well with Starfleet, so they became a rogue pirate vessel. The GM scrambled to adapt, since this derailed all of his plans for the campaign, but we had fun for a while. One PC even got rid of his phaser and went out around killing people with his newly acquired Klingon disruptor pistol, which was about as powerful as a phaser but had no stun setting.

It is hard to review RPGs, I generally only do it after running something for a good few sessions: Blades, Scum and Villainy, and Star Trek are the only ones I have done.

I think with Star Trek Adventures it places way too much weight on combat and doesn't even really attempt to address negotiation and scientific stuff. Well it does have research but the rules for that are so piss poor as to be useless.

I switched to a Fate Accelerated hack for a few sessions at the end of our campaign and that worked a lot better. Technobabble can become aspects players can tag, you can quickly create minor characters that players can inhabit for a scene or two, and the fate chip system allows them to get their minor characters into trouble only for the main cast to come and save them.

I ran it as written, with no deviation to try and get a feel for the intention as much as possible. I just didn't like what I found.