How to Choose the Right RPG for your next Campaign
This one's just as good as any other one...right?
The poster probably expected me to say "Oh this game by far is the best one to use for a post apocalyptic campaign" but I couldn't break it down that simply. A game about the people in the apocalypse surviving in a stronghold would need a system with a totally different focus than survivors exploring the ruins of a city. It boils down to the type of the story you can tell with a system.
Not all RPGs are designed to tell the same kind of story. Apocalypse World is a great example, a game I love to be sure, but I wouldn't use that game if I wanted to play a long term campaign about exploring the ruins of a city and fighting zombies. It's just not the type of game Saints VB and MB necessarily had in mind when they designed it. There is a limit to character levels and the game encourages players to retire their characters to a life of safety after a certain level. The rules encourage conflict between characters and everything.
That's not to say Apocalypse World wouldn't work to run that sort of game (and AW 2.0 more so could run it), but by finding a game whose design centers around the type of game you want to play makes it a lot easier and the game will flow much better. Compare AW to something like Other Dust by Kevin Crawford and you can see they were designed to tell two entirely different kinds of stories in a relatively similar type of setting. Other Dust though is designed for you to create a sandbox for the characters to explore and interact with before they get to the table. AW specifically says not to preplan anything and let the game evolve out of chracter creation and the social relationships/scarcities that come out of that character creation. Both are interesting and valid approaches to a post apocalyptic setting, but you wouldn't want to preplan a wasteland for Apocalypse World and you probably wouldn't want to try to run Other Dust without at least a little prepwork.
This very basic difference is because they were, and stating the obvious at this point, designed to tell different kinds of stories. To that end deciding on the right game system for the campaign is a very important step.
How to decide what game to use
You could use D&D 5e to run a modern spy game if you wanted to revamp the entire thing. You could use Vampire the Masquerade to run a game about regular people trying to graduate college. You could use any system for any setting, but finding one that will fit with what your players expect/want and fit the GMs idea for the campaign will make everything about the game easier to deal with. The reason there are so many different RPGs, and the popularity of universal systems never really took hold completely, is because they are all designed for different kinds of stories. That's why it's important to figure out what sort of story you want to tell with the players ahead of time.
Not enough RPGs mention this, in fact I can't think of any that do, but before you even pick the game it's important for a GM to hash out with the players what is expected of everyone and what kind of game appeals to people. Entire campaigns can be ruined by being shoehorned into the wrong system.
A good GM should take into account not just the game flow mechanics (i.e. when the mechanics affect the story) and how much complexity there is to character creation, but the reward mechanic built into the system. If the players don't feel they are getting a return on their investment of time, they will lose interest in the system. What that reward is may be different for different players. Some players love planning their character build and how they will progress or the epic loot or the huge boss battles, or even telling a good story with their actions.
I don't think you need to go as far as trying to accommodate everyone, but knowing what people are interested in should help narrow down the system that would be good. If no one is interested in complex character creation and they just wanna get to telling a story, then you don't want to give them something with a character creation process that'll take hours. Similarly if no one is interested in the idea of having to reference charts and distances and wind speeds, then you don't want to give the players a game that will force them to do that sort of thing.
It is important enough that it is worth stating explicitly a third time: it's important for a GM to hash out with the players what is expected of everyone and what kind of game appeals to people. I don't know why this is never mentioned in GM sections of games, but talking to the players before you play the game is crucial. Doesn't matter if you've got some amazing campaign planned out in your head. Your campaign will stagnate and fall apart if your players aren't into it, regardless of how epic and amazing you believe the campaign will be.
Not enough RPGs mention this, in fact I can't think of any that do, but before you even pick the game it's important for a GM to hash out with the players what is expected of everyone and what kind of game appeals to people. Entire campaigns can be ruined by being shoehorned into the wrong system.
A good GM should take into account not just the game flow mechanics (i.e. when the mechanics affect the story) and how much complexity there is to character creation, but the reward mechanic built into the system. If the players don't feel they are getting a return on their investment of time, they will lose interest in the system. What that reward is may be different for different players. Some players love planning their character build and how they will progress or the epic loot or the huge boss battles, or even telling a good story with their actions.
I don't think you need to go as far as trying to accommodate everyone, but knowing what people are interested in should help narrow down the system that would be good. If no one is interested in complex character creation and they just wanna get to telling a story, then you don't want to give them something with a character creation process that'll take hours. Similarly if no one is interested in the idea of having to reference charts and distances and wind speeds, then you don't want to give the players a game that will force them to do that sort of thing.
Player Opinions Matter
It seems obvious, but then a lot of the obvious stuff just goes unsaid because everyone assumes it's already been said. Everyone has a preference and opinion about what will be fun, but not everyone will buy into the same brand of fun.
I have taken to using Google Forms as a way to try out my next campaign ideas and sending them to the players. I try to keep my questioning as broad as possible with questions about things like whether or not character death is a possibility, how much narrative control they want to exert, what sort of level of character creation crunch they are okay with, and what level of in game mechanical crunch they are okay with. This makes it easier for me to cross off huge chunks of my game collections without having to get into the grit of each one with the players.
When I present a list of possible games to them, I try to frame their presentation using the information they provided. Letting them know about how likely character death is or what sort of rules crunch they can expect once we get into the game or even what sort of story I'll end up pushing for the campaign. So that when we do finally decide on the game, everyone is coming to that game with the same understanding of what to expect and no one gets blind sided by a system they wouldn't have agreed to use if they had known it's full level of crunch.
The tl;dr
It is important enough that it is worth stating explicitly a third time: it's important for a GM to hash out with the players what is expected of everyone and what kind of game appeals to people. I don't know why this is never mentioned in GM sections of games, but talking to the players before you play the game is crucial. Doesn't matter if you've got some amazing campaign planned out in your head. Your campaign will stagnate and fall apart if your players aren't into it, regardless of how epic and amazing you believe the campaign will be.
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