Kristov Kerensky, on 13 March 2015 - 01:16 PM, said:
I've yet to see the PnP game that we couldn't break the rules without ever breaking a single rule. A friend of mine had created a new gaming system, great mix of scifi and fantasy, and asked me to help test it. I said ok, explain what I do to create a character and we'll start with that. He explained it to me, I questioned him repeatedly on things he considered silly, but he answered them. A few hours later I gave him my new character for his game, which became the first NPC for his game because using his rules I had created an immortal, all powerful, all knowing character that wasn't divine and had so much starting money that he could literally buy his own universes(plural). We spent the next 6 months going through the system like that to make it as hard to mess with as possible, got close, but it could still be bent all kinds of ways by people who tried. We sent the entire thing to TSR, got rejected, and started seeing some of OUR work in their next few projects..
2 lessons there, first is, gamers WILL game the system no matter WHAT you do, min/max is just the most visible sign of that. Second, NEVER send anyone your UNCOPYRIGHTED material when you are trying to sell it...*sigh*
Ant attacks. It even happens in wargames. My favorite thing to do since putting a unit on the map in SSIs Vietnam with nothing in it cost no PPs, was just fill the entire board with 1 CV ant battalions which cost the other player an extra MP to move into.
Ah nothing like grinding the Aircav to a halt in the Ia Drang without ever actually engaging them with troops.
Yeah if you give me a system, ill break it. The reason it worked usually is because everyone is friends, or youll soon have no one to play with playing like that.
Its one thing I miss the most in the franchise, the ability to play the way you want to play with the people you want to play with. If I want to do that here, I gotta shell out for premium time.
Battletech has such a great system because its just so deep that theres pretty much a counter to every munchkin thing you can do, be it BV, choice to not let the guy plop down that unit, or bringing the ever annoying Long Tom to keep people from going prone behind hills in heavy woods Lurming everything to death.
Rifts was good in that way too since you got packages that were usually fan made and they really went out of their way to try and keep you from gaming it.
But I even gamed the PnP Starship Troopers and that came out in like the 50s.