benlehman

No, this is must for any game.

The thing is, the coherent, focused game is less likely to have people on the wrong page. When there's focus, everyone knows from reading the game what they're in for -- and if they're not on the same page, they're going to figure this out pretty damn quick. However, Vampire means entirely different kinds of games to different people, because it's so broad, and it sometimes takes months for people to figure out that there's an expectation clash.

In an attempt to capture market share, most "mainstream" games have cast their net wide -- but this often means not everyone is on the same page without a lot of pregame discussion, and even then it can be problematic because the system ain't really optimized for what people have agreed on.

Yes, a swiss army knife is nice, but do you actually prefer using the screwdriver on it to using a real screwdriver? When it's all you have -- like when in the 1970s all there was was D&D -- it's one thing, but it's another thing when we "have the technology", as others have said.