Genre and Setting

Jeremy Forbing

Genre and setting are two different things....every role-playing game simulates a genre, whether it has a setting or not. A decision like how many wounds can a character take before being killed is a genre decision. ....There are genre assumptions baked into the design of Fate and ORE.
    Lovecraftian investigation is a perfect example. The Call of Cthulhu system, and the Gumshoe system as well, are designed to prioritize and allow a slow trickle of revealed information that quickens into a flood towards the end that breaks characters' minds, thus emulating the feel, pace, and convention of Lovecraft's major short stories. A Fate version of a Lovecraft story would feel much pulpier, and likely have a much harder time that slow burn over a long campaign. This isn't a knock against Fate, a system a like which is designed for fast-paced story-driven adventure.
    Sure, you can run any genre with any system, but will it feel like a particular kind of story from that genre? Unlikely, unless the system is designed for it. D&D in 1979 and D&D in 2016 are both generic fantasy systems, yet both have assumptions about fantasy built in (magic from Jack Vance, Poul Anderson paladins, Tolkien races), and in many ways they were designed with different genres of fantasy in mind-- for example character death lurked around under every corner in the 70's, now it is rare.
    World War II RPGs where you keep track of ammo vs. ones where you don't feel like very different genres of war movie or novel. System is always built on ideas about the general tropes that create and constrain the kind of stories that will be told with it: in a word, genre. 

Travis Casey 

Genre and setting are strongly interlinked.....As far as all games having a genre "baked in" - we're talking about *systems*, not games. Different games using the same system can alter various parameters. For example, D&D 3E, Star Wars d20, and Mutants & Masterminds all use the d20 System... but they all use different subsystems for determining the effects of damage. Quite a few "universal games" offer multiple subsystems for various things, to allow "tweaking" the game to fit the genre you wish.

Jeremy Forbing 

I think the distinctions between game and system are even more nebulous than that. When you talk about the D20 system being one system, for example, it seems like you're really talking more about one resolution mechanic. Even single mechanics within systems have genre considerations,....
     Still, some of those games run into trouble when trying to step outside the original assumptions of the stories that would be told with it. M&M replaces the damage system with one much better suited to cape types, but still has some baggage built in from an assumed hierarchy of levels and internal game balance. It also sometimes chokes when applying its basic mathematical model (essentially, opposed ticks of 5% up and down a spectrum of possibilities of success of failure) to the dynamics of superheroics.
     The same designer (Steve Kenson) wrote both M&M and a superhero version of Fate, and I would argue Fate's mechanics suit the story driven flow of comic book stories way better, even though the same gifted writer with a deep knowledge of the genre worked on both.
     ...all D&D type ... games.... assumes many things beyond Hit Points and the likelihood of death; it assumes heroes who grow in formidability across a large scale over time ....tracking the acquisition and use of individual wealth and possessions....regular interaction with contained environments that want to kill you....characters that receive ambient information with varying degrees of opacity
     You can design a role-playing game without making assumptions about setting beyond the general (gravity existing, etc.), but not without building in certain givens about genre, even if you do so unconsciously or in an attempt at realism.