The White Wolf World of Darkness games do not. However, they do work really well for story-based games. As a friend mine said about play-testing one of their new offerings back in the day "Incredible setting. Rules system with holes big enough to drive a truck through."
I got spoiled by the WW system, after which I had a hard time tolerating others. It suits my brain too well. WW made me realize what makes gaming good: story. I've run games that lasted hours during which no player would make more than a dozen dice rolls. Some of them got to be like text adventures ported to real life: I'd make the story react to them in conversation, and stats only came into play when it couldn't be avoided. Or when one of my recurring power-gamers would deliberately get into stuff that would force a roll, just to show off how he'd set up his dice pools in his favor. I had to kill him more than once to save a game.
I've run games that lasted hours during which no player would make more than a dozen dice rolls. Some of them got to be like text adventures ported to real life: I'd make the story react to them in conversation, and stats only came into play when it couldn't be avoided.
Please come to Seattle and run a Victorian-era Vampire game for me? Please? None of my GM friends have the time to, or are interested in running story-heavy games. I'll bake you gingerbread bats ...
I enjoy both styles of play, myself. The best campaign I ever ran was a Mage: The Ascension game. My players still talk foundly of it and reminisce over their favorite moments.
One of the best campaigns I ever played in was also a Mage game. The ST of that game loathed rolling dice or dealing with rules, so we did it very, very little.
On the flipside, sometimes a kick-the-door-down D&D dungeon-crawl can be a blast too and is the best thing to do after a hard week at work. But even our D&D games tend to involve detailed character backgrounds and role-playing. (The campaigns, anyway. There's been times where a bunch of us have been sitting around someone's house bored and someone says "Everyone roll-up an X-level character. I'm going to whip up a quick dungeon.")
Please come to Seattle and run a Victorian-era Vampire game for me? Please? None of my GM friends have the time to, or are interested in running story-heavy games. I'll bake you gingerbread bats ...
See, that would bring me out of retirement. My roommate bittorrented a lot of White Wolf source books to see how the end of the World of Darkness went down, and I was stupid enough to look at them. Now I'm craving the Dark Ages and Changeling games I was never able to properly run.
The reason I had to give up gaming was because the only people I could get to play with me were the sort of people who are stereotypically most likely to want to do tabletop gaming. Social outcasts are one thing--been there, done that--but people who don't understand the basics of socialization outside of fictional contexts are a problem.
I've run games that lasted hours during which no player would make more than a dozen dice rolls.
I've only done RPGs a dozen or so times myself, but we always played like this. Because all of the players were more interested in the story than in the stats. I think the dice only came out if the GM couldn't reasonably decide what would happen.
My brother played D&D and everything else, and I was an annoying brat who lurked around during the games, so I'm familiar with the more... intensive... versions. But I'd read most of the Paranoia manuals by the time I was playing any RPGs myself, and so was totally comfortable with the idea that if the dice do something the GM doesn't like, he's free to ignore them.
Short form, as who knows when I'll have time to actually write stuff in a good or meaningful way.
I agree with what Kal said about the rules needing to support the type of game. I don't actually like the WW rules for anything, though, and I prefer story-based games over tactical mini games or kill-monster-take-treasure-next-room games. For story I like BRP rules, a la Call of Cthulhu. But I've been modding the D&D 3.5 rules heavily to use them for story games, and for games like Ars Magica.
That's part of the reason games are so long at Casa Winchester, is we do a lot of story and role-playing.
And the role-playing is key. For Serenity (and Buffy RPG), I've found that the game systems really limit the players/GM in terms of role-playing. I think any game based on a Traits/Flaws character build is limiting - I haven't liked that style since Champions or 007. I know that a lot of people argue that it's the only way to GET role-playing, so the characters can play "portly" or "nature lover" or "mute" or "amorous." But I think that works best for people who couldn't otherwise roleplay, something that's not the case for my gaming group. YGGMV.
I think that the character build in Serenity (again, like Buffy) is too much like the character build for a TV series. And a lot of the Serenity RPG names for things are too evocative of characters or events in the series, causing a limited mental image.
Of course, I'm a role-player first and a fangirl second...I like my role-playing to be more like fanfic that embellishes on the 'verse, rather than mimics it exactly.
And of course, the GM can modify the rules to allow for this. I think Serenity might be more flexible in this regard than Buffy was. I mean, you had to QUIP in Buffy. Who can come up with Jossian-quality quips all the time, on the fly? And if you can, why aren't you already writing for TV?
Mostly I like the Serenity RPG for immersing me back in the movie and show. For playing adventures in the Firefly 'verse, I use BRP rules.
I mean, you had to QUIP in Buffy. Who can come up with Jossian-quality quips all the time, on the fly?
I once ran a con tournament DC Heroes game in the Vertigo setting where the guy who played Etrigan spoke exclusively in rhyme and never once broke character. No one grumbled when he won the prize.
Finished watching Firefly with the girl (we'll probably watch Serenity this coming Friday) and I'm missing my show all over again. It's probably been a year since I last sat down and watched all the episodes in order, and this was the first time post-Serenity. I find myself mourning again for all the great stories in that 'verse Joss and Tim never got a chance to tell.
Yep. We've been sitting around today going, "You know what I wanna watch? I wanna watch S2 of Firefly."
