@beadsland From a programming perspective, maybe. From a rules standpoint? I don't really think so. :/

@Angle Insofar as the engine provides for specific models of how characters, adversaries, and equipment are represented, how events in play are represented (and what sorts of events are capable of being represented), and what dimensions of play the player does and doesn't have freedom within, yeah, I think the engines necessarily lock a lot of rule meta-structure in.

Not much of a gamer mind you, but as a programmer, don't see how this wouldn't be the case.

@Angle @beadsland can confirm that gameplay code is under-engineered in most instances because it gets thrown out too quickly to matter. the reusable parts of game engines focus mostly on how to display scenes or portray living characters. Interactions and rules are shoved on top of that per-game. cheap to build, expensive to polish.

w/r to new game rules, it's the driving motivation/vision and feedback loops to judge their success with that are the most challenging parts.

@Triplefox @Angle So it's just down to convention that so many games look so very similar in underlying structure?

@beadsland @Triplefox That and the fact that there are only so many ways to do the same thing for the same reason.

@Angle @Triplefox Ah, but that's just it. There aren't only so many ways to do different things for different reason.

@Triplefox @Angle s/reason/reasons/.

@beadsland @Triplefox ...No? But my point is that there isn't any video game analog of GURPS - a large body of rules balanced and refined by many people over a period of years, which you can plug together to make the kind of experience you want. Like, I'm thinking of building an X-Com type game, right? There no library for dealing with accurately representing cover, melee attacks, ranged attacks, movement, injury, etc. That all has to be rolled by scratch every game. :/

@Angle @Triplefox A readily re-configurable model for representing melee and ranged combat would be a major coup all in itself, leave alone providing for all the systems typical to a tabletop RPG.

Also (and here I'm going to take a somewhat opposite position to the one I took a few toots ago), just because you *can* configure a combat system doesn't mean it will even approach being balanced.

Torg, for instance, was notorious for what was called the "glass-jawed ninja" problem.

@beadsland @Triplefox I mean, yeah, but that's what playtesting is for. So you can figure out that "Okay, giving the orcs super high strength and high quality steel weapons isn't a very balanced combination. Maybe give them medium quality steel or high quality Iron, instead...?"

@Angle @Triplefox Yes. But do you see how you're already locking in the representation model for equipment?

@beadsland @Triplefox What, with material and quality? Yeah, thats a good point I guess. I still think a system that was strong enough to be useful, flexible enough to be braodly applicable, and light enough to be easy to work with would still be possible. I mean, I think GURPS would work just fine for most needs already. :/

@Angle @Triplefox Personally, I always found GURPS somehow too flexible as a platform for gameplay, although again I think its an amazing feat of design.

It's the poet in me, I think. Limitations provide form. Too much freedom can translate to goop. I think we've got forms in game design that need a good funeral they've been so overused, but form, as such, still matters.

GURPS doesn't seem to have enough form for my liking.

@beadsland @Triplefox It relies on the GM and players to provide form. Which works for some people, but not others. :/

@Angle Which is fine, but my sense was that those drawn to the game were those who were looking for something goopier than I care for (the six books to create a character scenario).

i.e., there seemed to be a self-selection bias that would mitigate against the GM & players being the sort inclined to providing a very compelling form. As you say, YMMV.

Consider Shadowrun, for instance. A group of GURPS players could achieve a cyberfantasy RPG as immersive, but are they likely to?

@beadsland Mmm, maybe? Personally i like it cause it has a broad selection of fairly realistic, comprehensive, and detailed rules for almost any situation. On the other hand, I'm not very good at actually roleplaying (playing in character), so even when playing D&D or Shadowrun or whatever, I don't really tend to get anything that immersive. :/

@Angle Yes. Realism is often raised in favor of GURPS vs. other game systems.

Sure, you've got a superpowered mystical alien going up against a ninja-mage armed with something freakishly similar to the voom voom melee weapons of a popular space opera, but the mechanics of the rules allow you to represent all of this with a degree of realism that other systems just can't match.

Which is undoubtedly true. Still would rather play out the same scenario in Marvel Super Heroes RPG.

@beadsland What does marvel supers bring to the table? Immersion? :P

@Angle Two things.

First, the mechanics are purposely *not* realistic, but not realistic in a way that aligns well (even campily) with the spirit of the four-color Silver Age comics universe.

Second, there is a metaphysics and setting with a deep history that provides (again, unrealistic) justification for why and how the two adversaries described would even be on the same planet, let alone matched up in a life-or-death struggle.

@beadsland Mmm, yeah. Interestingly enough, four color supers is one of the genres GURPS really struggles with mechanically - the genre is just so unrealistic that making it work with the rest of GURPS is a huge stretch. XD

@Angle Which is why MSH throws realism out the window and has you watch as it falls to a messy death before you ever start creating a character.

It's also why Torg--despite offering mechanics that allow for representation of everything from mice to gods--explicitly declares to anyone that will listen that their superheros aren't the four color variety. Because that would just be too much.

(And this from a game that is all about subverting the very notion of "reality".)

@beadsland I'm not really familiar with TORG, but yeah, I can believe it. :P

@Angle TORG is GURPS for folks who like immersion so much they send postcards to the game design company describing the outcomes of their adventures to influence how the metaplot will advance over the coming months and years.

@beadsland Huh, alright. That sounds pretty damn cool, actually. :/

@Angle Oh, yeah?

But here's the thing: It's not just unrealistic. The setting is a conflict between realities, as such.

The mechanics are all about determining how long a cyberpriest can fight a dragon in a lost world that is quite literally the body of a goddess before reality slaps them both upside the head and says "Not Here, You Don't!"

@beadsland Huh, interesting. I'll need to add that to the list of things I need to look up. :P

@Angle They're just now releasing (via Kickstarter campaign) an update to the game, hence my looking at how to do a crossover between it and the Chronicles of Darkness setting.

@Angle Actually, I've always thought it would be interesting to develop a meta-game for TORG where each player created their own reality with its own rules, and then sent their champions into duels to vanquish the rule sets of the other players.

@beadsland Like, I've found a pretty good compromise is to play goal-oriented problem solver character, because that way my natural inclinations tend to fit the characters pretty well. I'm still not very good at playing them immersively in character, though. Maybe I should outright play inhuman A.I.s or whatever. XD

@beadsland So I suppose you could say that the people drawn to GURPS are those who likely wouldn;t achieve anything too immersive even if using another system? :/

@Angle My impression is that those attracted to GURPS don't find immersion very compelling.

You seem to have suggested something very much like that just now, if I'm not mistaken.

@beadsland Mmm, sorta? I think it kinda ties into that whole "Emotional vs logical" thing that people talk about. On the whole I think it's a bit of an oversimplification, but there are places where it is indeed a useful model, and this is one of them. I, and I suspect a lot of GURPS players, are more towards the logical on that spectrum. I tend to look at things fairly logically, so realism and internal consistency are usually fairly important to me. I would guess you look at things emotionally, so immersion and the over all feel of a work are much more important to you, yes? :P

@beadsland I can think that way too of course, and often find it quite interesting and useful, but I can;t do it for long periods at a time, and when it comes to RPG's I tend to default into my Goal Oriented Problem Solving mindset, which is very much on the other end of the spectrum... XD

Well, yes, we're all capable of flipping the script for a time, but the whole thing about being more this or that is that you're more comfortable doing things the way you are more comfortable with.

@Angle Agreed. INFJ here. 😜

That said, would suggest that you can have something that is illogical and nonetheless internally consistent.

The world created by Lewis Carroll, for instance, is consistently illogical.

Which is all to say, there's no reason you can't create a game system even *more* flexible than GURPS, and yet also build it so that consistency is not too tightly coupled to realism.

Still doesn't address the immersion question, but it'd be a great thing nonetheless.

@Angle Myself, I really need to learn to play against type more.

I think I'd be a much better player if I wasn't always portraying a hermit who doesn't have anything in common with anyone anywhere and can't figure out how to integrate with a team to save their life.

@beadsland haha yeah same. XD

@beadsland @Angle pretty much any detail can be called out as being a key support or superfluous to design goals. e.g. if it's a tense horror or tactical combat game, modelling individual morale and weapons reliability would be high priorities, vs D&D-style swords and sorcery where a lot of the focus goes to "performative heroism" and doling out loot. that' makes a generalization challenging - you can run a campaign with a generic ruleset, but the extra tweaks add more of a focus.

@Triplefox @Angle Yep.

@Triplefox @Angle It's not just about providing for a combat system, but also providing the tools for *balancing* any system (combat or otherwise) one wants to configure.

Did you know that buildings with central air are supposed to have their HVAC system balanced twice a year. It's an expensive process using specialized tools to reroute airflow to serve the building's occupants appropriately given ambient conditions outside the building. (Many buildings never do it.)

@beadsland @Triplefox I agree? But I still think it could be worth doing. :P

@Angle @Triplefox Oh, no doubt! It'd be very challenging project even if only for pen-and-paper games and for that reason alone, well worth doing.

Taking it to the level of translating models that, for human players are readily fungible if one decides to fiddle with them, to computer representations, that's another challenge altogether.

GURPS was gorgeous in its audaciousness. GURPS the computer game engine would likely be a nightmare to maintain, if not to build.

@Triplefox @Angle (I think I reversed my position somewhere along that line of thought, but am not entirely certain where, why or how. *shrug*)

@beadsland @Angle convention and ability to communicate a new design. especially when the project is large, it's very hard to say more than "clone this" across a large team. and most developers don't get any training in turning other principles into design framework, so they don't have any grounding except the prior art.

@Triplefox @Angle Yes. I strongly suspect that part of that communication hurdle is the available toolchains.

It's easier to say "do X using tool Y" than to say "do Z for which you will first have to build tool Alpha, because none of the tools available to us can do anything resembling Z yet".

There are programming tasks that I want to accomplish today but that I cannot do readily because the apposite tools don't exist. It would be the same for gaming as for any problem domain.

@Angle @beadsland a corollary to my previous is that people with fine arts or philosophy training see design differently from pure technicians, who are given to optimizing the framework of previous rulesets and tend to focus instead on changes in scope(minimizing, maximizing) or changing technical aspects(e.g. simulation details).

When speaking of commercial games, they're driven by a marketing imperative, so the design is framed by an initial pitch and filled in from there.