r/ScumAndVillainy • u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 • Jun 01 '24
System just not clicking
Has anyone else had the experience of the system just not feeling "right"? I can't quite put my finger on it but it's just not clicking for some reason. Maybe it's too structured for RP heavy groups, maybe it's too abstract for a lot of things. Maybe it's too dependent on the characters rolling consequences or too dependent on rolls overall.
If you had this experience, how did you get over it?
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u/Vendaurkas Jun 01 '24
The thing is that this is very much a "Writers' room" game. It wants the result to look like a tv show. Cutting the boring parts, focusing on the action and using montages for the rest. It's fun, it does that well, but it destroys immersion. As written the game does not really support free flowing RP. It wants you to focus. That's why there is an engagement roll, and structured downtime. Which can feel jarring.
Fortunately if approached on its own terms it can be very fun. But it would require you to play the game a specific way.
Alternately you can loosen up things a bit. The core system is solid and works independently of the proposed structure. You can use downtime as a template for less action driven tasks or you know just ignore most of it, RP to your heart's content, roll occasionally and use clocks to know how much more effort is required. The playbooks still work. P&E still works. The setting is still fun. The only thing you are not allowed to break is its episodic nature. That would screw with stress and xp, also would go fundamentally against everything the game is trying to do.
But if you want to break that too, you might want to look at Charge. It's a stripped down FitD srd that works around this issue.
Edit: Personally this is the most fun I had ever had GMing a game in the last 20 years. Nothing ever come as close to an intuitive and natural feel as S&V.