The system you use has nothing to do with the content of the game. Strange that it seems so obvious after you say it, but stranger still is the fact that droves of allegedly creative people routinely feel the need to purchase and employ new gaming material as a means of changing, ostensibly to improve, the content of their games. It’s downright flabbergasting when you consider the fact that many of these gamers will gleefully memorize vast amounts of intricate information which ultimately accomplishes little more than further complication of the game.
Worse, this continual stream of supposedly new gaming material buries the genre deeper into eccentricity, and I find it immensely interesting that it behooves game publishers to do just that. Their demographic, the stereotypical gamer, is a creature of inherently lower social status (admit it; we’re all nerds to some degree). Most gamers, being thoroughly human, are saddened by this societal view of their identities. Like anyone else, we seek to alleviate this sadness. Whereas most people seek to improve their social status through group activity and conformity, our identities as gamers are strengthened through isolation, introspection and consistent diametric opposition to conformity (which is essentially our own brand of conformity). The natural response of the gaming industry is to offer increasingly eclectic products that advance this sense of isolation. Average gamers buy and study the new material because they feel it gives them a leg up on society at large. They weave bizarre gaming acronyms and exotic subject materials into what should be normal conversations with non-gamers, and derive a sense of intellectual superiority from the confusion they create. This ill-gotten feeling of intellectual superiority in turn establishes that ever elusive sense of self-worth in the average gamer. It is this sense of self-worth that modern game publishers are actually selling, and because of this, they’ve had to adopt a skewed inverse of market capitalism in order to perpetuate themselves; one which seeks to increase revenue not through the broadening of their product’s appeal, but through the reinforcement of their product’s eccentricity in order to appease an increasingly fanatical customer base. It’s an extremely unusual approach to marketing which will eventually bankrupt them if allowed to persist; as opposed to legitimately improving their product in such a way as to make it more appealing to a larger audience, they persist in churning out scores of trivial system revisions and progressively weirder supplemental materials.
The truth is, any system can be incorporated into any setting, which therefore renders the existence of multiple systems functionally irrelevant to a DM competent in any one system. A DM’s competence, in any system, can be measured by the extent to which his chosen system goes unnoticed during the course of play. Together, a DM and his system are only as valuable as their ability to get out of the Player’s way.
This truth is obviously not economically viable to a game publishing corporation, and hence, we have stores filled with supplemental material and expanded rule books, all marketed as fresh and cutting edge. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Look, it isn’t my goal to force these publisher’s out of business; quite the opposite. I’m pointing out their weaknesses because I sincerely hope that they correct them before they file for bankruptcy. I don’t see that happening without a major philosophical overhaul; they need to expand their fan base to include the average Joe before they drive themselves into obscurity.
Clint
