Now, there are plenty of RPers who will tell you that system doesn’t matter, but I think that’s simply not true. Sure, to some extent you can RP in whatever style you want with any system, however certain systems abet certain styles of play better than others – just as certain programming languages abet certain programming styles and paradigms. I can fake ::object oriented programming:: to some extent with a non-OO language, but it’s typically not very easy or natural. If I want to write OO, I’ll use an OO language such as Python or Ruby, not a language like C or ::Fortran::! Similarly, if I want an RPG that will help the participants explore moral choices that imperil the character’s humanity I’m going to use a game like Sorcerer and not ::D&D:: of any edition. Why? Because the system in Sorcerer is designed for that sort of play (though allows for a lot of flexibility in defining just what ‘humanity’ is).

Now, obviously the situation with RPG games/systems is not as cut and dried as it is with programming languages (though it’s not as cut and dried there as you might think), but as long as you don’t try to over-extend the analogy, it seems to be a valid one.

So, what brought this little tirade on? Two things (as you might have guessed). First, at work, there is a push by upper management to standardize on ::Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition:: with some allowance for the ::.NET:: crowd. As you might image many developers, especially those who favor PHP are not terribly excited about this. Personally, given that choice, I might prefer .NET simply because I actually like ::C#:: whereas ::Java:: frustrates as much as anything else. Java, and to a lesser extent .NET (though .NET at least is relatively language agnostic) are attemps to make one tool for all jobs, which, predictably, results in a tool that is not particularly well suited for any job.

Secondly, on the RPG side of things, there has over the last 2-3 years a strong push to make the ::D20:: a univerisal system. D20, which in it’s previous incarnations as the system for the prior incarnations of ::Dungeons & Dragons:: (when it wasn’t trying to be a system for all games and gamers) still didn’t do anything well. Basically, it’s sort of the case of D&D getting there first. In its defense, its incarnation as D20 specifically adapted to D&D it is much better.

Pages: 1 2 3 4