Does system matter?

Question of the day: does the system that you use in your RPG actually matter? Naturally, I'm not going to offer up a pat and simple answer, because there's a lot of "it depends" and other caveats. Part of this is because of trends in the RPG market that have gradually offered up a slightly different take on what exactly "system" even means.

It used to be that the system was just the rules that the game used. Back in ye olden dayes, especially with regards to TSR games, this was a pretty simple question, because different games used very different rules that had little in common with each other. However, there were some other companies that did things differently, even back in the day. Chaosium used their BRP system as the basis for their games, and had differing, yet obviously related systems for RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer, for instance. But this was seen as merely convenient, and I know that I didn't think of them as a "system", merely that the systems for each game had the same basic framework in terms of how they worked. But gradually, this morph of system into being the system for a specific game and more of a higher level structure that could span multiple games started to gain traction. In the middle/late 80s, Steve Jackson Games released GURPS, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System in a core set, followed by tons upon tons of supplements that tweaked various buttons and levers within the system to allow it to play in various genres with various tones. This was seen as kind of unique at the time, though, and although perceived as a cool innovation, I don't think the market was entirely ready for it yet; most people liked (still) that different games felt different mechanically and didn't use the same chassis, so to speak, to get to the same result. Later, in 1990 or so, the old Champions superhero roleplaying game was repurposed as the Hero System, which had the same intention; it could be used for anything, and supplements that were broad but also different from each other, like Pulp Hero, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, etc. came out for it. I don't know how much this caught on; I never saw anyone use it, but I heard chatter on the internet in the later 90s about it. My impression is that it was a niche product in terms of its appeal. White Wolf also had a house system, although most of their games were released in the same setting, had similar tone and themes, and it was kind of seen that they were meant to interact with each other and be compatible. This wasn't entirely true, of course. Few people remember the Street Fighter game (except me, because I was a huge fan of both Street Fighter and roleplaying games) and Exalted, although it used the same system base, is usually seen as too different.

When Wizards of the Coast released D&D Third Edition, it also spawned the d20 family of games, and over the next few years, a number of games, both "official" and third party were spawned that used this system as its framework. From WotC officially, we had d20 Star Wars (in three editions), d20 Wheel of Time, d20 Call of Cthulhu and d20 Modern, the only one of the batch that was truly built as a toolkit approach. Unfortunately, I think they inadvertently set back the migration to common systems by released tentative and timid interpretations of the system that didn't sufficiently change the rules. Certainly this was a complaint that many had in particular with Call of Cthulhu, which of the batch is the one most dissimilar in terms of genre and tone. Around this time, Savage Worlds was also released, which has become a very popular "universal" system.

I may be charting my own perception of things more than any actual trends in the industry, but it took until d20 for me to actually really see what the appeal of having a single higher level system was. I do think that there was a sea change in perception across the board, and I remember lots of people saying things like "one system to rule them all" and whatnot at the time. d20 didn't end up being the system for me, or not unless you consider Microlite to be a radical variation on d20, which in reality it is. I've since pulled back just a little bit from some of the radicalness of Microlite; Dark Fantasy X, and all of the X games (if I ever get around to spelling them out) will now use all of the original D&D attributes, or stats, for example, and will have six skills. This 6x6 is as important to me for, if no other reason, so my character sheets are visually balanced. 

So, when we say system, what we tend to mean more often than not nowadays, in contrast to year past, is this higher level system, and in my opinion, no it doesn't matter. Pick one that you like and stick with it; there's no problem with that. Any system can be tweaked, house-ruled or modified to accommodate any genre, tone or playstyle preference, although clearly most systems also have some element that they do relatively well and is a key component of them. For example, the tactical grid-based combat of d20 is kind of core to the system, and almost every iteration of it requires it unless you eliminate all kinds of tactical and positioning rules. If that's something that you enjoy regardless of genre, tone, etc. then d20 is a good higher level system for you to use. If it's not, you might want to consider a different one. But even d20 can be modded down to a rules-light theatre of the mind variant, such as Microlite, so again, I don't think system matters. If this is what you mean by system.

Or rather, it doesn't matter in that any system can be modded to do anything, but it could very well matter in terms of picking a system that you like, prefer to use, are comfortable with, that your players intuitively handle well, etc. And it could matter, as noted before, in terms of how much you enjoy one system versus another. In that sense, system can matter a great deal. But I also believe that most people are simply most comfortable with whatever system that they've used the most. I prefer D&D-like systems, because those are the ones that the majority of my games have used since the early 80s, and even in the 00s when I was playing a lot of different things, I used d20 for most of them, including Star Wars Cthulhu, Modern and more. I certainly no longer enjoy system for its own sake, and now prefer a common background higher level system. Ideally, I'd use a common higher level background system for every game I ever play. Ideally, I'd use my own system, although I'd never actually play if so, I'd only run. But that would probably be OK too, honestly.

Now, if you pull back and refer to system as all of the rules, like we used to, then system matters a great deal, of course. The fact that a system can be used to successfully emulate the genre and tone of Star Wars and Call of Cthulhu means, of course, that they need to have some rules that make significant changes to the way in which some of the details of the game work. I've actually come to quite enjoy seeing and thinking of ways to make different systems work in different ways, and I've obviously given a lot of thought to how to do so with my own custom system for my own setting. And I think that the changes have had significant effect on the tone and mood and feel of the game. But I'm starting from a higher level system that is well-suited to my playstyle and to my history of the hobby, because it's super familiar to me from my past games. I no longer, if I ever really did, honestly, value system for its own sake, and I actually am sometimes annoyed by the requirement to have to learn a whole new system to use a given supplement easily. I simply no longer have time or interest in learning whole new rules systems; although modular-like rules that can create significant changes to the way that different variants of the system work from game to game are actually very interesting to me.