@Coin said:
See, I see the mechanics as a help towards making the story less predictable and adding a level of chance to it. When people typically complain about mechanics I find that it's because they want to do something their stats don't allow if they have to roll for it, to which I say: maybe build the character you want to play, instead of playing without consideration of the mechanics.
Obviously this is veering off-topic (a true novelty for these forums, I realize) but I think what people enjoy about a system is the chance to pick their powers and veer their general build toward a specific direction. Powers are quite popular, I've never met anyone who doesn't like'em.
So the WoD allows people to pick 'invisibility' in Obfuscate (I know it's not real invisibility), scary-fu in Nightmare, extra-sensory perception in Auspex, etc. That's appreciated because it makes things uniform; your second dot of Protean and mine are the same, so there's consistency across the board and we all know what it can/can't do. So what do I need to use that second dot of Protean? Oh, it's that roll; gotcha. How much does it cost? Oooh, that much, so now my hard-earned XP go towards stuff I already like, and thus I have incentive to get more.
That's what I assert the system provides most people. It's not the randomness or chance of failure, but then again it's not because they don't like to lose (they do, but that's not the reason); it's just the unifying framework for their abilities.
Few people - and I count myself among them - will change the way they roleplay to accommodate the mechanics. The mechanics are there to serve roleplay, not the other way around. Whenever the implementation of a system significantly alters gameplay bad things happen; what comes to memory is HM's olden days when +vote was the primary/only way people have XP so gigantic scenes became prevalent. No one liked that shit and it was horrible, characters were coming in and idling to farm +vote/all eligibility.
So how do you know if a system is good? People use it on their own because it improves their gameplay. How do you know if a system is not? People don't use it unless they are forced to, and stop using it when they aren't.
That's the only benchmark that matters. A great super-fun mechanic that's unused is neither, no matter how it looks on paper.