I wouldn’t call Genesys particularly crunchy per se. But there are a lot of little things, like keyword based abilities and range band movement and lots of Talents that alter player’s interactions with standard rules, and guidelines for the spending of Threat and Despair and Advantage. I find that you need to know these things and be able to keep them in mind. Sure, you could BS and improv your way through it, but then what does a talent that generates you an extra advantage on Hacking checks or whatever mean if you’re not at least hewing close to the guiderails, you know?
I played a demo game of Shadow of the Beanstalk Genesys at PAX Unplugged this past year with a friend who’d never played before and wanted to check it out after I’d talked it up. We spent literal hours after that session with him going “I didn’t like how X worked” and me saying “that’s because the GM did it wrong, it was supposed to be Y” on several topics. And that was just a loosey goosey demo game. So it’s not that the game is crunchy, but it’s very easy to make it seem lackluster.
I find 2d20 to sometimes be similar. Some people bounce off of it because of failures to grasp the system making it seem less than it is. Maybe they don’t get how to use Momentum or they can’t grasp how to build a battlemat with interesting zones, or how ranges work, or how to build towards the archetype they want, or whatever, and they may give up or fall back to their old system of choice. Ultimately it’s their loss, but I of course want people to stick around and support one of my favorite systems so it keeps being made. And honestly, I think this is true of a lot of games, if not most games, but we all had more patience for it when we were 13 and had little else to worry about, another possible root of over-fondness for the games of yesteryear by some.
I’m reminded of an interesting YouTube video by a creator called Razbuten, called “What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games,” where he subjects his wife who does not play games to a series of modern video games, and watches her struggle with basic tasks like manipulating the camera and even reading what’s going on in the levels because she hasn’t been training in the language of video games since she was a little kid like he had. We don’t always think of it that way, but that’s exactly what it is, and while his video is about video games, it certainly happens in tabletops. Why are we closed minded about a new edition of game X? Because I don’t have time to relearn it like I did this old one seems like a reasonable answer to me, but as humans we post-rationalize and say that nah, it’s because it’s bad because if it was good, I’d just be missing out. Can’t be having that.
As for Cthulhu/BRP, one of my big problems is the Sanity rules. If you’ve seen terrible monsters and weird magicks and stuff, you’re not Paranoid, or Delusional, or Mad… you’re Right! But mostly, I just find myself underwhelmed with the percentile roll under system. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s some amazing stuff in the CoC line. Masks of Nyarthalotep may be the greatest campaign ever written, and I’ve played some great ones. I’m currently playing in a Great Pendragon Campaign, and I’ve played an L5R City of Lies game before too. Masks is better. But if I want horror, I’m turning to Red Markets every time (though Trophy is shaping up to be pretty cool too). If I want investigation, I’m going GUMSHOE. In my RPG Meetup group is someone who runs nothing but CoC every Meetup and everyone else seems to love his games. But they’re just not for me.
Though I still contend that there is a “flavor” of play that is at odds with the crunchier aspects of FFG’s release. Perhaps I really “make it fly.” (Or perhaps I don’t; I should pull it out, play it, and reassess.)
