RPG a Day #6 Flavor

 

I’m going to try and take part in the #RPGaDay writing prompts for 2021. The idea
is there’s a prompt every day that asks you to write about something in RPG’s you really like. There are a couple of alternate prompts offered but I’m going to try and do the main one every day. If you want to try it yourself, you can head here for the calendar for this year.

How to judge Flavor in RPG’s. I’m not sure when it first became a thing in my games, but I remember some of the times the world and its functions and practices really drew us in. one of the biggest games for the flavor of the world altering how I played was a game called Legend of the Five Rings. It’s the first time the setting and the game made me have to think different.

The system of honor and courtesy that fills that game made me have to rethink how I played characters. I had to learn new ways to solve problems and interact with the world. How your character approaches the world didn’t just reflect on their reputation but also that of your family. This was massively important. Up to this point reputation wasn’t something I’d ever worried about. I didn’t care if the world thought about my character. Here, I was worried about how my actions made the world think about my cousins.

It’s the first game that made me think different.  It’s something that I now look for in gaming. I want a game that forces me by its setting to think in ways I normally wouldn’t. For that reason I think flavor is important and I look for it in other games. I want a detailed world that lets me work in its confines. I’ve even begun looking for it in games where it didn’t used to matter to me.

I used to not care about how people viewed my D&D characters and now I want them to have influence on the people around them. I work to make my characters more approachable by employers in Shadowrun, and I make sure I’m acutely aware of my Sponsor’s in X Crawl.

Not a lot today, but those are my thoughts on Flavor. I did consider talking about the question of, “How do you want to do this?” but figure someone else more versed in it than I will take a swing.

How about you, what sort of flavor do you look for in games?

Tomorrow I’m back again with Small.