Which Comes First: System or Setting?

Which system?!?

Here's an interesting question which, for many people, will be something that we don't think about much.

For most of my gaming life it's always been something like this:

• "What kind of game do we fancy running?" - by which we mean genre, like fantasy or SF.
• "What kind of adventures do we fancy playing?" - by which we narrow the genre.
• "Which game do we like to run?" - by which we take the genre-fitting games and pick a fav.
• "Ok, which part of the setting shall we explore?" - by which time the GM is reading the relevant book.
• "What character do you wanna play?" - 'nuff said.

My question is simple: is this the best way to go about setting up a game?

Let me caveat this question by pointing out that my best way is likely to be different based on my group's needs, but the question is still one that got me thinking.

Here's why.

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D&D Next?

This morning I've been playing with the character creation rules from the current D&DNext playtest packet. Having done so, I thought it was about time I made some official comments.

What do I think? In summary, it's probably more positive that most would expect:

1. Apart from the d20 die still being in use, I have no major objections to the core rules.
2. Character creation only took about 20 minutes, which for a first time is not bad.
3. I quite like the Backgrounds and Specialities, despite expecting to hate them.
4. Having rolled up a Wizard, I actually felt the itch to play with him.
5. There are only minor niggles so far.

Before I get into the detail of those 5 key points let me just add one thing: I expected to hate these rules; I discovered I don't.

That's not to say that I am going to rush out and buy the new D&D... but I'm not hating it. I'm just largely ambivalent about running it as a GM. That comes from my history with D&D as much as anything else, but I think I would be ok with playing D&DNext. 

That was a surprise.

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Going Skiffy

Growing up I was always fascinated by the idea of space travel. When asked, just a few weeks ago by a pupil at school, what I would most like to do in my life I found myself pausing only momentarily before replying, "Walk on Mars." People laugh at that... but it's true.

From when I started gaming the things that I remember most strongly are twofold:

1) Crash on Volturnus (yes, Star Frontiers)
2) Classic Traveller

Both of these things formed part of what I used to, before meeting my wife, refer to as "Sci-Fi". Nowadays, I know better.

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