Snark's Laws of Role Playing Games

by B.J. Snark

Snark's First Law of Gaming:

The more detailed the character sheet, the less it tells you what you can do and the more it tells you what you can't. A White Wolf "Storyteller" character will be more capable than a GURPS character with many more skills.

Corollary -- The Principle of Skill Inflation:

A character who was an expert in the original becomes increasingly incompetent as additional supplements are released and additional traits are added to the system. Witness CHAMPIONS, in which 1st Edition characters were assumed to have non-adventuring skills appropriate to their backgrounds, while 4th Edition characters may wind up seriously compormising power level just to have real lives. And they wonder why the "obsessed avenger" has been increasing in popularity -- they're penalizing PCs who have a life!

Corollary -- The Brow of Zeus Effect:

In most media, a character grows backwards as well as forward: as the story progresses, his or her background becomes increasingly detailed, and his or her personality becomes more defined. As a game relies more heavily on Disadvantages, this vanishes: characters become less like trees, whose roots grow deeper as they grow taller, and more like Athena, sprung full-formed from the Brow of Zeus.

Note that Snark's First Law of Gaming works both ways. Telling a PC what can't be done is often important. For example, I wouldn't use Charles Ryan's Description-Based proposal to run a MAGE: The Ascension Chronicle. M:tA is all about Limitations, and overcoming them. Its more formal system provides a framework for the milieu. On the other claw, I wouldn't use GURPS to run a MAGE Chronicle, either, although the licensed supplement IS available. GURPS is far too rigid and reductionist a system to properly reflect the fluid nature of a Mage's Reality.

Snark's Second Law of Gaming:

In a point-based system, it costs more points to be interesting than it does to be effective.

Example: Alan Dean Foster's insectoid aliens, the Thranx, are described in GURPS Humanx as a 0-point character race, which makes sense: the whole POINT of Foster's work is that while Humans and Thranx are psychologically and physiologically =different=, neither race is superior to the other. Any attempt to apply the point system of GURPS Aliens (et al) to the description in Humanx yields a race with a base cost of around 80 points -- when a typical GURPS campaign has a 100-point base.

Example: Try to create a CHAMPIONS or GURPS Supers character with the ability to detach body parts. It's easier in CHAMPS, but, even so, a character with such an ability will be easy prey for a super with a more conventional power set.

Snark's Third Law of Gaming:

"Game Balance" is a myth. No game system is balanced; games are, instead, prioritized.
Example: A priority in GURPS is that (echoing Clarke's Second Law) a sufficiently advanced technology is overwhelmingly superior to magic, super-powers, or other innate abilities.