Any of you ever play Rifts?
Now there was a tabletop game that creaked and clanged. A byzantine rule set full of weird exceptions, nonexistent balancing, and an endless parade of expensive expansion books.
Was it a bad game? Well...
Let's compare it to D&D. D&D underwent a series of reboots over the years.
While it's a bit uneven, D&D reboots about every five years, invalidating all the books of the previous version. This is a serious move for the creators, since it means all the expansion books to date are now worthless. Expansion books are a huge part of the income from that IP - core books are just the start.
But it looks like around five years after the core books come out, people stop caring to buy expansion books, so it's time to roll out some new core books and start again.
Each iteration of D&D uses new rules, and all the elements of the game (monsters, settings, treasure, classes, skills, etc) are rebalanced and recreated anew. While people have versions they prefer, by and large each version is cleaner than the last version, if just because it hasn't had time to accumulate much cruft.
Rifts didn't reboot. At all. For 25 years, Rifts has kept the same core rules, skills, classes, etc.
Why?
Because Palladium Books likes expansions. The idea of invalidating expansions is just not in their business plan, especially since their expansions are "half core" - nearly every Rifts setting book adds core features to the game's rule set. If you create a tattooed man or a blind warrior maiden or werewolf or Glitterboy pilot, you have a character with radically different rules from most other characters. If those expansions are invalidated, then those concepts don't even exist any more. It's not like invalidating an "elves in detail" book - if you do that, there are still elves.
This is not just speculation - Palladium Books insisted that EVERY expansion book from all settings was theoretically compatible with every system. So you could play a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in Robotech.
This approach made reboots nearly impossible, and power creep inevitable. The best character to play in Rifts was whoever was in the most recent expansion book. The rules grew more cryptic and arcane as exceptions became the norm.
This is an interesting situation to compare. D&D, with its frequent reboots that recentralize and condense vs Rifts, with its infinite expansions, the only new versions being to rerelease the core book with some important expanded content stitched in. Comparing D&D 5e to Rifts is really revealing.
Now, the reason I bring it up is actually a bit different than you might expect.
See, each Rifts expansion book should have just been its own game.
The problem with tabletop publishing at the time is that people played games by having a group of dedicated nerds sit at the same table for years. If you played Rifts, you kept playing Rifts more or less forever. If it was D&D, you played D&D forever. You probably didn't even switch editions!
My opinion was always the opposite. Games should have an arc. They should have a finish. Whether it takes one session or twenty, there is a trajectory and the end is always drawing closer.
If you do this for a while, you notice that the rules and extraneous content make a huge difference. A game can be dramatically weakened by using a rule set that doesn't highlight the core draw of the game. A game can also be weakened if there's random content stuffed in that draws attention away from the core of the game.
Now, if you are playing in the way the old publishers decided everyone was, maybe that's not a big deal. You're attached to the characters and setting, rather than to the game or the core draw.
But if you play games that have an end, you quickly start to notice these things. And when someone says "hey, want to play this d20 game?" You find yourself shaking your head.
"D20 doesn't have much to say any more," you reply, and they stare at you blankly.
Showing posts with label tabletop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tabletop. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Friday, September 19, 2014
Generating Playable Star Trek Plots
I've talked about creating science fiction tabletop games, using the example of Star Trek. One of the things that comes up a lot whenever you do this is how you can create enough MEAT.
Fantasy games have grown a kind of plot progression out of long practice. Fantasy stories you read in books don't have the same pacing at all: a fantasy game features a huge amount of content that would give an editor fits. Dozens of pointless fights, considering which sword to buy, exploring each dungeon room one by one... this is the meat of a fantasy game.
If you've ever tried to run a science fiction game, you probably noticed that it was pretty hard to get enough meat. The plot either felt full of filler, or moved too fast. That's because you were probably using the same structure as a fantasy game. Science fiction plot lines can't really support that - there's no monsters to slay, no real advantage to exploring every room.
Science fiction plot arcs require a different approach. And we haven't really figured it out, because we haven't spent forty years perfecting our craft.
But I do have a guide that might help. Here is my guide for creating science fiction arcs that last 1-3 sessions - "Star Trek" plots that play nicely and have meat.
The Noose
The players always need to be under pressure in a science fiction plot. Players used to a fantasy plot know enough to move the plot forward even with relatively little pressure, but nobody is that used to science fiction plots yet. The noose is a crisp and looming deadline to force them forward.
Nooses should have a concrete time span and failing to deal with them is the lose state. Players might be able to push nooses back, but they can't ever reduce the noose's effect. The noose is all-or-nothing, high-stakes. The situation may also get worse as the noose approaches, but the noose is specifically the looming deadline.
Noose examples include: the disease will kill everyone on the planet in 2 days. The Klingons will declare war in a month if you don't find their lost ship. The vote happens tomorrow and the majority of the senators are planning to vote "no". The space wedgie will cause life support to fail in six hours.
Personal Mire
My planned gameplay revolves around people, and therefore the NPCs need to be the terrain of the game - half like a dungeon map, half like a monster fight. To make this easy for the GM to plan out without needing a ton of advance work, I recommend "constellations" of NPCs - groups of NPCs that are related to each other around a specific topic.
For example, the "impending new order" constellation would feature characters from the old guard and the new order and some conflicted bystanders, and their relationships would be clear. You could leave most of the characters in the wings until you need them, not bothering to create any details until you need them to play a role.
The idea is that any given NPC would belong to two or more of these constellations, and their motivations would intertwine. This adds some complexity to the things the players do, and create some nice terrain for them to be wary of. It also creates a lot of hooks that are easy to turn into complications, twists, and major NPCs.
Complications
Normally, solving the noose is pretty straightforward. If there's a disease, you need to research the cure. If there's a lost ship, you need to track the warp trail. If there's a vote, you need to convince people to vote your way.
Complications are what make the situation a lot more difficult - they are reason that the actions that should solve the situation either can't be performed or produce a bad result.
Complications usually give the noose emotional resonance, and should generally be themed to give a strong, unified feeling.
For example, the disease turns out to be a nasty engineered bioweapon, which makes curing it much more difficult. The next complication might be that the weapon was created by the locals, and they don't want that revealed and certainly don't want to help you fix it. The next complication might be that the creators died of the disease and can't help. These complications are loosely themed - they're about plans going awry, smaller evils blooming into larger ones.
Other Examples: The Klingon ship was kidnapped by a space godling. The senators you need to convince are stranded on an ice planet. The space wedgie is making time judder backwards and forwards randomly.
Twists
A twist simply changes the lose state. It either replaces the noose with a new noose, or it reverses the noose so that your efforts have been working against you, or it makes everything you've done feel very different now that it's over.
Examples: the vote needs to fail to keep their society stable. The "missing" Klingon ship is an ambush. The space wedgie was trying to protect you from a warp core breech.
Twists don't need to be clever. This is not about creating clever plot lines - it's about creating meaty plot lines. The twist either adds more meat, or makes the meat you already ate taste funny.
B-plots
The B-plot is actually an integral part of science fiction plots, although it may not be immediately obvious. See, the function of the B-plot is to create emotional resonance with the primary plot.
Most science fiction primary plots are about something big - a starship, a disease, a political movement. But in the end, the plots are an excuse to show how people live and act in those situations. The B-plot is the easiest way to lure the players into that kind of close emotional connection.
The B-plot is often "unrelated" to the main plot, at least in terms of causality. However, it reflects the human judgments and lives of the main plot. So, your B-plots should shadow your complications and twists. Since your complications and twists should be loosely themed, the B-plot will likely match many of them at the same time, and offer a human window into a world of big things going wrong.
Typically a B-plot is introduced before the first complication - often before the noose. It exists first even though it is an echo or window onto those larger events.
For example, if the vote is being screwed up because the senators are stranded on an ice planet, you'll start off with a B-plot that plays with that. Perhaps it's about planning a vacation, or the life support going on the fritz, or being unable to get off the ship, or having family visiting.
If the twist is that the lost Klingon warbird is actually waiting in ambush, the B-plot might be about your Klingon crewmember being proud of his culture's obsession with honorable combat, or it might be about an officer training test where everyone dies in an ambush: the Koboyashi Maru sequence. B-plots don't have to be clever or hard to connect.
However, B-plots do have to offer some meat. Think of them as a sequence that doesn't require the GM: when the GM is busy with a particular player, this is something the other players gnaw on.
Therefore, the B-plots should be things where the players can spend some time expressing themselves or their characters, and should involve some die rolling or content that A) doesn't require the GM and B) dictates how things go for them.
For example, the Koboyashi Maru B-plot. It isn't just a line you feed them. You say "this is an officer test." You walk them through it once or twice. But there's a table of results - if your leadership is this, this happens in the first segment. Roll weapons fire, check to see what happens in the second segment, and so on.
A concrete reference as to what can happen lets the players compare their performances to each other, and makes it easy for the GM to give various bonuses or penalties according to their efforts without having to spend a lot of time thinking up new things.
In another example, if the B-plot is that someone's family is visiting the ship and being annoying, assign a family member to every other player. Now whoever is free can be an annoying family member to anyone else who's free. Moreover, you can also get incidental synergy - if the same player is playing the goofy father and the lead starship engineer, then the goofy dad and the engineer get along oddly well. That's fine.
The whole point is to offload the content creation to the players. You need to seed it, of course - tables, NPC character sheets, whatever else is needed. But then the players run with it, try it in different permutations and different places. This lets them control the pace of the play rather than dumping it all on you, and is similar to how fantasy players might mull over what powers to buy on next level-up.
B-plot participation should be worth XP and/or in-game resources. The people who do best at Koboyashi Maru get a commendation point, for example.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Fantasy games have grown a kind of plot progression out of long practice. Fantasy stories you read in books don't have the same pacing at all: a fantasy game features a huge amount of content that would give an editor fits. Dozens of pointless fights, considering which sword to buy, exploring each dungeon room one by one... this is the meat of a fantasy game.
If you've ever tried to run a science fiction game, you probably noticed that it was pretty hard to get enough meat. The plot either felt full of filler, or moved too fast. That's because you were probably using the same structure as a fantasy game. Science fiction plot lines can't really support that - there's no monsters to slay, no real advantage to exploring every room.
Science fiction plot arcs require a different approach. And we haven't really figured it out, because we haven't spent forty years perfecting our craft.
But I do have a guide that might help. Here is my guide for creating science fiction arcs that last 1-3 sessions - "Star Trek" plots that play nicely and have meat.
The Noose
The players always need to be under pressure in a science fiction plot. Players used to a fantasy plot know enough to move the plot forward even with relatively little pressure, but nobody is that used to science fiction plots yet. The noose is a crisp and looming deadline to force them forward.
Nooses should have a concrete time span and failing to deal with them is the lose state. Players might be able to push nooses back, but they can't ever reduce the noose's effect. The noose is all-or-nothing, high-stakes. The situation may also get worse as the noose approaches, but the noose is specifically the looming deadline.
Noose examples include: the disease will kill everyone on the planet in 2 days. The Klingons will declare war in a month if you don't find their lost ship. The vote happens tomorrow and the majority of the senators are planning to vote "no". The space wedgie will cause life support to fail in six hours.
Personal Mire
My planned gameplay revolves around people, and therefore the NPCs need to be the terrain of the game - half like a dungeon map, half like a monster fight. To make this easy for the GM to plan out without needing a ton of advance work, I recommend "constellations" of NPCs - groups of NPCs that are related to each other around a specific topic.
For example, the "impending new order" constellation would feature characters from the old guard and the new order and some conflicted bystanders, and their relationships would be clear. You could leave most of the characters in the wings until you need them, not bothering to create any details until you need them to play a role.
The idea is that any given NPC would belong to two or more of these constellations, and their motivations would intertwine. This adds some complexity to the things the players do, and create some nice terrain for them to be wary of. It also creates a lot of hooks that are easy to turn into complications, twists, and major NPCs.
Complications
Normally, solving the noose is pretty straightforward. If there's a disease, you need to research the cure. If there's a lost ship, you need to track the warp trail. If there's a vote, you need to convince people to vote your way.
Complications are what make the situation a lot more difficult - they are reason that the actions that should solve the situation either can't be performed or produce a bad result.
Complications usually give the noose emotional resonance, and should generally be themed to give a strong, unified feeling.
For example, the disease turns out to be a nasty engineered bioweapon, which makes curing it much more difficult. The next complication might be that the weapon was created by the locals, and they don't want that revealed and certainly don't want to help you fix it. The next complication might be that the creators died of the disease and can't help. These complications are loosely themed - they're about plans going awry, smaller evils blooming into larger ones.
Other Examples: The Klingon ship was kidnapped by a space godling. The senators you need to convince are stranded on an ice planet. The space wedgie is making time judder backwards and forwards randomly.
Twists
A twist simply changes the lose state. It either replaces the noose with a new noose, or it reverses the noose so that your efforts have been working against you, or it makes everything you've done feel very different now that it's over.
Examples: the vote needs to fail to keep their society stable. The "missing" Klingon ship is an ambush. The space wedgie was trying to protect you from a warp core breech.
Twists don't need to be clever. This is not about creating clever plot lines - it's about creating meaty plot lines. The twist either adds more meat, or makes the meat you already ate taste funny.
B-plots
The B-plot is actually an integral part of science fiction plots, although it may not be immediately obvious. See, the function of the B-plot is to create emotional resonance with the primary plot.
Most science fiction primary plots are about something big - a starship, a disease, a political movement. But in the end, the plots are an excuse to show how people live and act in those situations. The B-plot is the easiest way to lure the players into that kind of close emotional connection.
The B-plot is often "unrelated" to the main plot, at least in terms of causality. However, it reflects the human judgments and lives of the main plot. So, your B-plots should shadow your complications and twists. Since your complications and twists should be loosely themed, the B-plot will likely match many of them at the same time, and offer a human window into a world of big things going wrong.
Typically a B-plot is introduced before the first complication - often before the noose. It exists first even though it is an echo or window onto those larger events.
For example, if the vote is being screwed up because the senators are stranded on an ice planet, you'll start off with a B-plot that plays with that. Perhaps it's about planning a vacation, or the life support going on the fritz, or being unable to get off the ship, or having family visiting.
If the twist is that the lost Klingon warbird is actually waiting in ambush, the B-plot might be about your Klingon crewmember being proud of his culture's obsession with honorable combat, or it might be about an officer training test where everyone dies in an ambush: the Koboyashi Maru sequence. B-plots don't have to be clever or hard to connect.
However, B-plots do have to offer some meat. Think of them as a sequence that doesn't require the GM: when the GM is busy with a particular player, this is something the other players gnaw on.
Therefore, the B-plots should be things where the players can spend some time expressing themselves or their characters, and should involve some die rolling or content that A) doesn't require the GM and B) dictates how things go for them.
For example, the Koboyashi Maru B-plot. It isn't just a line you feed them. You say "this is an officer test." You walk them through it once or twice. But there's a table of results - if your leadership is this, this happens in the first segment. Roll weapons fire, check to see what happens in the second segment, and so on.
A concrete reference as to what can happen lets the players compare their performances to each other, and makes it easy for the GM to give various bonuses or penalties according to their efforts without having to spend a lot of time thinking up new things.
In another example, if the B-plot is that someone's family is visiting the ship and being annoying, assign a family member to every other player. Now whoever is free can be an annoying family member to anyone else who's free. Moreover, you can also get incidental synergy - if the same player is playing the goofy father and the lead starship engineer, then the goofy dad and the engineer get along oddly well. That's fine.
The whole point is to offload the content creation to the players. You need to seed it, of course - tables, NPC character sheets, whatever else is needed. But then the players run with it, try it in different permutations and different places. This lets them control the pace of the play rather than dumping it all on you, and is similar to how fantasy players might mull over what powers to buy on next level-up.
B-plot participation should be worth XP and/or in-game resources. The people who do best at Koboyashi Maru get a commendation point, for example.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
Texture in Gameplay
The reason I keep building tabletop RPGs that nobody really plays or sees is because tabletop games have an interesting clarity. A lot of the most time-consuming stuff in a video game (or even a published RPG) is not required when you're building these kinds of prototypes, so you can explore a lot and polish a lot.
The big thing I keep thinking about is the difference between elegance and texture.
One of the impulses I always have is to aim for elegance. I always want a set of simple rules that work in all situations and create a lot of tension and emergent complexity. But that's not necessarily the best thing to do. It's very bland.
It's true that these rules make the game pretty easy to pick up, and it's also true that the game can be very interesting if the players and the GM inject themselves into the world. But it's hard to get traction with a system that tastes like tofu.
The other end of the spectrum is oldschool AD&D, where nearly every rule is special-case. The mechanics governing armor class are completely unrelated to the skill check mechanics which are completely unrelated to the class restrictions which are unrelated to the loot drops and so on. It's not just a stapled-together set of independent mechanics, it's also a bunch of special cases within those mechanics.
To a lesser extent, any game with a specific world is full of this kind of special-case stuff. "Oh, this particular city specializes in this particular thing, and has this particular relationship with that city..." "Oh, the prestige class 'bone knight' has these abilities and is widely considered by the public to be..." "These forests are full of lurk-spiders, which are giant spiders that also have a chameleon ability..."
A lot of people might consider this to be "color", but it is often very integral to a player's experience.
First, they're important narratively. These things will often be what the GM uses in her campaigns, and will drive small or large plot elements. Even if they aren't used directly, the GM's own scripts will tend to reflect the examples provided.
Second, they're important statistically. A lot of these special-case rules flavor the choices the players make. "I need to gain two points of strength so I can use this particular skill", for example. Or "we better stock up on jorts, they're heat resistant and we're headed into a jungle." Or "I'm learning this worthless cantrip spell because I can use it in these unexpected ways..."
Third, special cases are important to the "stewing" part of the game.
"Stewing" is a concept I've not really seen explored anywhere. Basically, when someone gets interested in a system, they don't simply stop thinking about things the instant the session ends. They keep thinking about it. They think about it a lot on their own time. They imagine their path forward, alternate builds, imagine potential scenarios, read about interesting monsters and places, maybe read the novelizations if they get really interested.
This isn't about the GM actively scripting a session. It's about just stewing in the system.
In my opinion, stewing is the purest example of traction. The more rewarding it is to stew over a game, the better the traction is. I think this same traction shows itself in gameplay and session scripting too, but its purest form is when a player borrows the rulebook so she can read it on her own time.
As far as I can tell, in order to improve traction you need to have a particular kind of world design, a particular kind of special case.
Basically, it's the special case that makes people think of a scenario.
A special case rule might be a critical hit table full of generic hits. Critical to the leg, -1 dex; to the arm, -1 str; etc. But this is pretty flavorless: nobody reads that and thinks about a scenario.
A better table would be one like the Hackmaster tables, which are deeply hilarious, pages-long tables that include hit locations like "left nipple". But even these are probably not ideal.
If you want the best critical hit table, you need hit locations that make the player imagine what it'd be like to get hit with one, or hit a monster with one. "Leg, -1 dex" isn't going to make anyone give a shit. But "knocked down and flung 10 feet backwards" would make them think.
It's important not to drown them in options. There's a reason monster descriptions tend to be most of a page and include a lot of extraneous details: if it's just an endless list of names and stats, the player will lose focus and skim. It's the same with tables.
You don't need a "flung 5 feet backwards" and "10 feet" and "20 feet" variations. You just need one option that punches that particular spot. The next option does something else, such as "concussion: cannot use skills for 5 rounds".
To be honest, a random table is also not a very interesting way to handle critical hits. Instead, consider linking critical hits to the weapon. Each category of weapon has its own critical hit. The hammer class knocks people down, the staff class concusses them, and so on.
By linking the events to other in-world choices, you accomplish two things. First, you make those choices matter more. Second, you make the assumptions of the player matter more. For example, many players will just assume a particular weapon for a particular character. Now they have a piece of rules meat attached to that assumption, and they can easily imagine the results. "Oh, dwarven warrior with a hammer... cool, he'll be blasting things away from him!"
...
The thing you have to watch out for is taking it too far. If everything is special-case rules, then you can only play if you've already played before. No new players will really be able to get a feel for the system.
Five ways around this:
First, have a really easy to understand set of core rules. The texture comes out during play, not during initial explanation.
Second, have templates ready so a player can choose what they want without understanding all the rules. Make the templates decent.
Third, make the special case rules imply scenarios. A rule like "+3 to attack" means a lot less than "nightvision". Nightvision implies a lot of scenarios. +3 to attack is a statistical tweak. Even if +3 to attack is stronger, it's not as vibrant.
Fourth, there's nothing wrong with statistical meat: just hide it far along the player's career. Everything a new player is likely to encounter should be vibrant and scenario-inducing. Later on, when they deeply understand the balance of the system, +3 attack will make them drool and think up cool scenarios just as much.
Fifth, add in a hint of the scenario if you don't think the special case gives enough impulse on its own. Old Shadowrun books used to do this a lot - the endless list of guns or districts or whatever would roll by. But at the end of each entry would be some chummer snarking over the net, gently giving hooks. Like "GUNCHILD_88>> Oh yeah this was the place where the cops did that mafia sting... never been the same since!"
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
The big thing I keep thinking about is the difference between elegance and texture.
One of the impulses I always have is to aim for elegance. I always want a set of simple rules that work in all situations and create a lot of tension and emergent complexity. But that's not necessarily the best thing to do. It's very bland.
It's true that these rules make the game pretty easy to pick up, and it's also true that the game can be very interesting if the players and the GM inject themselves into the world. But it's hard to get traction with a system that tastes like tofu.
The other end of the spectrum is oldschool AD&D, where nearly every rule is special-case. The mechanics governing armor class are completely unrelated to the skill check mechanics which are completely unrelated to the class restrictions which are unrelated to the loot drops and so on. It's not just a stapled-together set of independent mechanics, it's also a bunch of special cases within those mechanics.
To a lesser extent, any game with a specific world is full of this kind of special-case stuff. "Oh, this particular city specializes in this particular thing, and has this particular relationship with that city..." "Oh, the prestige class 'bone knight' has these abilities and is widely considered by the public to be..." "These forests are full of lurk-spiders, which are giant spiders that also have a chameleon ability..."
A lot of people might consider this to be "color", but it is often very integral to a player's experience.
First, they're important narratively. These things will often be what the GM uses in her campaigns, and will drive small or large plot elements. Even if they aren't used directly, the GM's own scripts will tend to reflect the examples provided.
Second, they're important statistically. A lot of these special-case rules flavor the choices the players make. "I need to gain two points of strength so I can use this particular skill", for example. Or "we better stock up on jorts, they're heat resistant and we're headed into a jungle." Or "I'm learning this worthless cantrip spell because I can use it in these unexpected ways..."
Third, special cases are important to the "stewing" part of the game.
"Stewing" is a concept I've not really seen explored anywhere. Basically, when someone gets interested in a system, they don't simply stop thinking about things the instant the session ends. They keep thinking about it. They think about it a lot on their own time. They imagine their path forward, alternate builds, imagine potential scenarios, read about interesting monsters and places, maybe read the novelizations if they get really interested.
This isn't about the GM actively scripting a session. It's about just stewing in the system.
In my opinion, stewing is the purest example of traction. The more rewarding it is to stew over a game, the better the traction is. I think this same traction shows itself in gameplay and session scripting too, but its purest form is when a player borrows the rulebook so she can read it on her own time.
As far as I can tell, in order to improve traction you need to have a particular kind of world design, a particular kind of special case.
Basically, it's the special case that makes people think of a scenario.
A special case rule might be a critical hit table full of generic hits. Critical to the leg, -1 dex; to the arm, -1 str; etc. But this is pretty flavorless: nobody reads that and thinks about a scenario.
A better table would be one like the Hackmaster tables, which are deeply hilarious, pages-long tables that include hit locations like "left nipple". But even these are probably not ideal.
If you want the best critical hit table, you need hit locations that make the player imagine what it'd be like to get hit with one, or hit a monster with one. "Leg, -1 dex" isn't going to make anyone give a shit. But "knocked down and flung 10 feet backwards" would make them think.
It's important not to drown them in options. There's a reason monster descriptions tend to be most of a page and include a lot of extraneous details: if it's just an endless list of names and stats, the player will lose focus and skim. It's the same with tables.
You don't need a "flung 5 feet backwards" and "10 feet" and "20 feet" variations. You just need one option that punches that particular spot. The next option does something else, such as "concussion: cannot use skills for 5 rounds".
To be honest, a random table is also not a very interesting way to handle critical hits. Instead, consider linking critical hits to the weapon. Each category of weapon has its own critical hit. The hammer class knocks people down, the staff class concusses them, and so on.
By linking the events to other in-world choices, you accomplish two things. First, you make those choices matter more. Second, you make the assumptions of the player matter more. For example, many players will just assume a particular weapon for a particular character. Now they have a piece of rules meat attached to that assumption, and they can easily imagine the results. "Oh, dwarven warrior with a hammer... cool, he'll be blasting things away from him!"
...
The thing you have to watch out for is taking it too far. If everything is special-case rules, then you can only play if you've already played before. No new players will really be able to get a feel for the system.
Five ways around this:
First, have a really easy to understand set of core rules. The texture comes out during play, not during initial explanation.
Second, have templates ready so a player can choose what they want without understanding all the rules. Make the templates decent.
Third, make the special case rules imply scenarios. A rule like "+3 to attack" means a lot less than "nightvision". Nightvision implies a lot of scenarios. +3 to attack is a statistical tweak. Even if +3 to attack is stronger, it's not as vibrant.
Fourth, there's nothing wrong with statistical meat: just hide it far along the player's career. Everything a new player is likely to encounter should be vibrant and scenario-inducing. Later on, when they deeply understand the balance of the system, +3 attack will make them drool and think up cool scenarios just as much.
Fifth, add in a hint of the scenario if you don't think the special case gives enough impulse on its own. Old Shadowrun books used to do this a lot - the endless list of guns or districts or whatever would roll by. But at the end of each entry would be some chummer snarking over the net, gently giving hooks. Like "GUNCHILD_88>> Oh yeah this was the place where the cops did that mafia sting... never been the same since!"
Anyway, those are my thoughts.
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