Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LordBaal]

On a unrelated note. I FUCKING HATE DOING PLUMBING WORK. F.U.C.K.I.N.G H.A.T.E. I.T. to the point playing FALTAL might be a better way to spend my time.

Or at least, plumbing on a budget.

Out of four things of plumbing I had to do today only one went fine. Putting the faucet of a lavatory.

Putting a Y for a old washing machine resulted almost okay except for a very small leak that fortunately is over a sink, then the faucet of a kitchen sink simply refused to stop leaking despite being new.

Finally changing another faucet from the wall resulted in the new faucet breaking to bits...

WTF??? I know how to do all those things, even for a living, but I guess is using the pieces that I can afford which are the cheapest ones the fault.

[methylatedspirit]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

Hold on, "crunch"? I'm imagining people eating the books for these games, but I don't think that's the right interpretation.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

Hold on, "crunch"? I'm imagining people eating the books for these games, but I don't think that's the right interpretation.

Crunch = Rules, mechanics

Fluff = Lore, story

[LordBaal]

Crunch = Captain

Fluff = Fluffly

Edit: Im still livid because of plumbing.

[voliol]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch.

My guess at the problem at hand.

[heydude6]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

Hold on, "crunch"? I'm imagining people eating the books for these games, but I don't think that's the right interpretation.

Crunch = Rules, mechanics

Nother interpretaion: Crunch is short for "number crunching". In tabletop gaming, crunch is the nickname given to the process of rolling the dice and doing math to determine the outcome of a turn. The longer and more tedious the process, the worse the crunch is. Shadowrun and Battletech are both games with a lot of crunch in them. It makes them less enjoyable as a result.

[Maximum Spin]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

Hold on, "crunch"? I'm imagining people eating the books for these games, but I don't think that's the right interpretation.

Crunch = Rules, mechanics

Nother interpretaion: Crunch is short for "number crunching". In tabletop gaming, crunch is the nickname given to the process of rolling the dice and doing math to determine the outcome of a turn. The longer and more tedious the process, the worse the crunch is. Shadowrun and Battletech are both games with a lot of crunch in them. It makes them less enjoyable as a result.

That's the opposite of how I usually hear it - in my experience, "crunch" is meant as a good thing.

[Egan_BW]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

This does make me wonder if there are any games which are just horrible but have really elegant and usable game design.

[Lord Shonus]

Crunch is a neutral term. It exists only to differentiate between hard mechanics and in-universe flavor.

[heydude6]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

This does make me wonder if there are any games which are just horrible but have really elegant and usable game design.

I mean Vampire the Masquerade is an rpg where you play as vampires, and those are usually a metaphor for rape. People still like it though.

If you want to venture outside of RPGs, we've got video games like Carrion and I'm pretty sure there were a few ultraviolent flash games too. I think what prevents horrible games from being well-designed (RIP Yandere Simulator), is that the people with the skills to design a good game probably made a career out of those skills. They are somewhat public figures and they have a reputation to uphold. Making something horrible probably isn't that profitable either since the target audience is so small, so they probably spend their talents on making something that is. Something safer.

EDIT:

Spoiler: Response to Frumple (click to show/hide)

This does make me wonder if there are any games which are just horrible but have really elegant and usable game design.

Almost certainly; there's tons of ttrpg (or just game design in general) cruft floating around, and non-assholes don't exactly have a monopoly on functional mechanics. Shitty lore et al often does get in the way of it ('cause it means your players are doing shitty things, which can throw things off or force the designer to kludge in shitty mechanics to encourage it), but it's not necessarily the case.

Funny how that timing worked out. As you can probably imagine, I disagree with this statement a little. I believe the incentives make competent horrible stuff less likely, though not impossible. Especially among smaller indie projects.

[Frumple]

RPGs made by bad people rarely have good crunch. Though the inverse isn't true, as Eclipse Phase seems to be made by good people and it's got horrible crunch.

This does make me wonder if there are any games which are just horrible but have really elegant and usable game design.

Almost certainly; there's tons of ttrpg (or just game design in general) cruft floating around, and non-assholes don't exactly have a monopoly on functional mechanics. Shitty lore et al often does get in the way of it ('cause it means your players are doing shitty things, which can throw things off or force the designer to kludge in shitty mechanics to encourage it), but it's not necessarily the case.

It's maybe not super egregious, but as an example I stopped playing Monster Sanctuary (a fairly recent monster catching metroidvania with pretty damn solid mechanics) basically due to the implications of some of the lore* and what it meant about the character of the folks you were forced to work with. I was just, like. Nope. I'm done.

Haven't come back to it since.

* Specifically the goblin miners bio, who were stated to be unilaterally part of a union so wildly terrible it ends up killing the majority of its members, a characteristic the main player faction specifically does business with them because of. Was just like, "Wow, these fuckers are incredibly evil, I'm going to go play something else now."

[MrRoboto75]

Marvel V Capcom Infinite had pretty damn solid game mechanics, but practically everything else about the game went wrong.

[hops]

How so? Isn't game mechanics mostly what matters in a fighting game?

[heydude6]

Was it microtransactions. Those seem like a very morally questionable element to add to any game.

[Maximum Spin]

It's maybe not super egregious, but as an example I stopped playing Monster Sanctuary (a fairly recent monster catching metroidvania with pretty damn solid mechanics) basically due to the implications of some of the lore* and what it meant about the character of the folks you were forced to work with. I was just, like. Nope. I'm done.

I always find it deeply fascinating when people say stuff like this. What is it about the morality of these kinds of fictional scenarios that makes you feel so strongly? I can't even imagine being unwilling to play a game because it involved fictional rape or murder or whatever. Honestly, it's often a plus (eg, Crusader Kings, which has both in spades).