Results and relations - The purpose of a gaming system

In my last post I put up a small thought experiment about character generation. The aim was to point at two different roles that a gaming system has.

My own answer to the question is that even if I make a purely random character, making the rolls myself gives me a stronger connection to and better understanding of the character. This implies one thing: The rules has two purposes

First of all, it helps me to decide what happens in the game. If my character fails a Jump skill check, he fails to make a jump he tries to make.

Second, it helps me to get a relation to the world and to my character. When I roll the dice, there is a symbolic aspect of it as well: My dice-rolling is my character jumping.

A well designed game approaches the rules from both these functions. It seems, however, that it's not as easy as it sounds. I have encountered a number of games that focus to much on either of these two.

One extreme is a game that focuses purely on a good statistical simulation. In this particular context I mean that the world says that something should happen, and the rules actually supports this. Someone who is extremely strong actually does more damage and lifts heavier weights. However, if this is the only aspect of the game, the rules and the character can be quite dry and fail to convey the sense of a strong character. A small example: In the game Heroes Unlimited, the "Strength"-attribute is called P.A (Physical Affinity). It's perfectly valid, and it doesn't take you long to learn what it means, but it's still P.A, it's not "Strength" or a similar straightforward english word. In other words, it's technically correct, but fails to relate directly what it means.

The other extreme could be a game that is very good on giving out an impression of someone who is strong. This game could use a dice pool system, having more dice to roll gives you a tactile sensation that the character is more powerful. However, if the statistical outcome of the rules doesn't support the description, the suspense of disbeliefe get's harder. One example for me would be the old Marvel RPG (The old version known as FASERIP). Since it used descriptive words and clear steps of their attributes, you quickly got a good sense of how strong or fast someone was supposed to be. If I read that a character had Incredible strength, I knew that he was about as strong as Spiderman or Iron Man.

The problem with this game was that, to some extent, the results of the rolls failed to support the descriptions of the attributes. In the real game, at least in my experience, my character with Incredible strength and Amazing Agility couldn't do what Spiderman could do in the comics.

This to me is an example of where the rules support the sense and impression of the character, but fails to live up to it's "promises".

In earlier posts, I've looked at these parts as Layers of a gaming system, where the core is about the statistics and the outer layers are about the interface. After looking at some different games through this layer system I had to abandon that idea, at least partly. This is because in some cases, the core statistics and core mechanic is closely related to the "Human Interface"-layer, and to make a distinct separation between what parts are Interface and what parts are Engine is basically impossible.