Betraying your favorite game

Jay on Shining Dodecahedron talks about [[http://bigd12.blogspot.com/2005/05/doth-not-appetite-alter.html|disillusionment with the Hero System]]. In short, his preference has grown away from "crunchy" rules and toward rules that are simple and support the kind of fast-moving style he's grown to prefer. But the interesting thing is, he feels like he is "betraying" his long-time favorite system.

I can sympathize… I've gone through the same thing. I played the Hero System exclusively for seven years. I picked it up right as I left high school and, having played primarily D&D up until then, I was enchanted by the point-build system and the detailed combat system. After seven years, two years of running a fanzine, and 27 pages of carefully-crafted house rules, I suddenly realized that I didn't like The Hero System any more. Combats took hours, creating a character took hours (and a spreadsheet), and the system had fundamental flaws that couldn't be overcome without substantially changing some core features. I wanted more story and simpler rules. But I was part of a community. I didn't feel loyalty to the system itself, but I was connected to a lot of people who were devoted to the system. Leaving the Hero System behind meant disconnecting myself from the community.

In the past couple years, I've been facing a similar situation. I'm the owner of the Fudge List, I am the Editor-in-Chief of Fudge Factor, and I've been a player in the Fudge community for over ten years. And I don't play Fudge the way most people do. I've become very frustrated with the dice method not doing what I want and not being fixable without substantially changing the system. I don't feel a strong connection to the community, even though I hold a prominent position in it. And the idea of abandoning Fudge and its community entirely is difficult to swallow. It's been a big part of my life for about half of my adult years.

See, I'm not the type to play lots of game systems. I pick one system, and I use it for everything I play. The benefits of not having to learn new systems outweighs the rules not addressing the nuances of genre. So when I get dissatisfied with a system, I usually start looking for a new do-everything system to replace it entirely.

Which is odd, since I'm playing Dogs now, which isn't a "universal" system. Dogs is a lot more "rule laden" than the way I play Fudge right now. Or not so odd… I'm in a state of trying to figure out just what it is I want from the rules and from my roleplay in general. Maybe Fudge, in some variation, will satisfy me in the long run. I'm not convinced that rules with a Narrativist bent are really what I want. (Do I want the outcome of a scene to really be disconnected from my character's abilities? In Dogs, sometimes the difference between success and failure isn't what my character can do, but how much importance I, as the player, have put on an aspect of my character.)

I'll have to see how I feel about it when I've got a few sessions of Dogs under my belt.