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Originally Posted by Carl
Thirdly, and this is a rant and I apologize in advance, but if anyone ever wanted evidence that gamers are, indeed, a "superstitious and cowardly lot," these responses would give them all the ammunition they'd need.
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Or, for another way of looking at it, Gamers are very picky about the games they play. I don't think there's anything superstitious and certainly nothing cowardly about being circumspect. I mean, I have shelves full of games that I bought because I wanted to try something new, and I do like to try games with their own systems, but many of them have been wasted as a result of me or my players not liking the system. Nowadays, there's a limit to what I'll try. Let's face it there are a good many utterly horrible systems out there, I'm not saying that this one is bad, it might be great. Ever seen Star Children? A great, original concept that I loved crippled by a god-awful system that I hated. The thing is, I could use that setting with a different system, and I keep hold of the game in case I want to do so. New WoD would suit it very well I think. This system on the other hand has no base setting, just the rules, so if I don't like those rules the money is entirely wasted, not just partially.
My particular style of GM'ing is to either neglect die rolling entirely and go for a chatty atmosphere, maybe even going so far as to run a diceless system such as Nobilis, or to go for fast-paced action games like Feng Shui. I don't see a roulette wheel fitting into either very well, and also these are quite expensive compared to a few extra dice, which I probably wouldn't need and would use for other games anyway. I buy a roulette wheel for this game, and if I don't get around to running it then that money is wasted, and the wheel sits there gathering dust. I agree that it would be very atmospheric and suspenseful for a gangster or film noir style campaign though. On the other hand, I'd still like to know how many times you'd be expected to spin the roulette wheel during a sample combat. Is there any chance of a quick potted example, sans-important-rules, just to show how many times you'd be expected to spin that wheel thar? I mean is it used to determine initiative, do you have to spin it once per attack, again to dodge, whatever? I could see it working OK if everyone used a single spin of the wheel for their action, so that an entire round could be done on one spin, but by any other method it strikes me that you'd spend a lot of time watching that little ball go round when you could be role playing. I just know I'd be sick of it by the third attack 'roll'
So who would this game appeal to? Someone who already has a roulette wheel, who likes playing roulette and understands how to bet properly, who wants a bit of noir-esque atmosphere in the game, and who is a roleplayer, or of course someone who doesn't mind all the necessary time, effort and money to obtain all these things. That's a much narrower bracket of the demographic than 'a roleplayer who has some dice' or 'a roleplayer who can get his hands on a deck of cards' or even 'a roleplayer with a bunch of glass beads to use as tokens'. With most systems, you can pick up the book, read it through in a couple of hours, and be ready for at least a simple playtest shortly afterwards.
And yep, noticed that there was an optional D6 system included thanks. I was merely commenting on the main system, which presumably is the suggested one. None of this refutes the existence of an alternative, I'm just trying to get an idea of how efficient, playable and realistic the game mechanic is.
Ash