grognards.txt - sandbox gamers are the John Galts of the RPG world

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > grognards.txt - sandbox gamers are the John Galts of the RPG world

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ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Yeah, I don't see the logic in the argument that goes "I'm a female player, and demand my female PC has breasts, otherwise the DM is being sexist". It's a fantasy game - you can play a range of characters that can be very similar to you, or very, very different - some of them anatomically so. Why is the ideas of having non-Human properties on a species sexist?

BECMI used to allow Treant PCs. By this logic, only male players be able to relate to a Treant PC because they lack breasts. Or if this only relates to Humanoids, what about playing a Humanoid droid in a Star Wars RPG? Can neither men nor women relate to playing one because they lack the requisite body parts, even though droids can have a gendered personality (e.g. C3PO comes across as "male")? Doubtful.

Also, I wasn't aware that a creature cannot be regarded as female if it doesn't have breasts (in fact, that argument seems extremely sexist to me!).

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:29

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# ? May 5, 2024 20:51

ProfessorCirno: Feb 17, 2011; The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

In that case, I'll respond that I think the notion of casual sexism as it relates to "dragonboobs" is ridiculous and insulting. When in our culture the icons of feminism, such as Beyonce, revel and even gloat about their sexuality, it makes it absurd, counter-productive and paradoxical to simultaneously insist that in our fantasy art, women need the equivalent of a fantasy hijab because God forbid we think of them as sexy.

Feminism has long had a very strong vibe of wanting to have it's cake and eat it too, and now that it can't reasonably make a case anymore that it's fighting for real injustices, it's desperately trying to make stuff up to be outraged about in an attempt to stay relevant by creating fake outrage. This is at the core of the circus-like antics of the SFWA with their ridiculous fake outrage about Mike Resnick and Barry Malzburg, it's at the heart of #gamergate and the desperate attempts of the gaming journalist industry to salvage a shred of their credibility and relevance (too late for both) and it's at the heart of internet debates about dragonboobs and their appropriateness.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 09:33

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

quote:

I've played a one-shot of 5e, and while it's a playable game unlike 4e, it does have issues.

quote:

The goal of D&D 5e was to unite a fanbase that had broken apart due to the 4e disaster.

While some people (retards, mostly) like 5e, it does not seem to be successful in its unification goal.

Meanwhile, Pathfucker still exists and thrives on its continuation of the 3e legacy.

So unification should just be abandoned as a goal. Obviously WotC needs to have TWO D&D games: 5e, and 3e Special Edition. Well maybe not that name because that would be "Third Edition Special Edition" but whatever. Call it AD&D 3rd Edition like Frank Trollman says.

3e Special Edition could condense the massive amounts of 3e content and put the best content from all 3e to put into the core books (PHB, DMG, and MM). It could also address a few of the biggest complaints with Pathfucker and 3e. It is unrealistic to fix all the problems on a 15 year old game, but several of the major ones could be fixed without rewriting the entire system.

This would let us have 5e for the retards, and 3e Special Edition for people who like 3e and/or Pathfucker -- which is apparently a lot of people.

This is the only hope for WotC. Otherwise, they should just quit because they are fucktards.

quote:

What if the DMG getting pushed back is just the prelude... to the DMG getting cancelled completely?

Would you expect anything else from Mearls? I bet he won't even get it finished ever. It will be like the RPG version of George RR Martin.

I mean, the freeware Dungeon Master basic rules they released... weren't DMG-style rules. It was like... all monsters. Seriously, go look at it.

They've got nothing. NOTHING.

quote:

Look, 5E D&D hasn't failed in the same way that the Confederates hadn't failed by early 1862. Even though tactically and strategically they look to be doing okay, structurally they were hosed well before the first shot was fired/first book hit the shelf. If you analyze the fundamentals (personnel, mechanization, economics; release schedule, writer quality, endorsements, campaign setting) it's clear that unless they get bailed out by a succession of lucky black swans the effort is a failure.

quote:

As much we hate on PF it may very well be the best designed RPG currently in print. If that statement fills you with crushing despair at the state of the industry that consider that confirmation that you belong here. The sad reality is that the industry is in the dark ages where there are aqueducts still standing but no one remembers what they're for or how the build them.

quote:

I agree Pathfinder is one of the best rpgs designed right now ( if no oyher reason its basically D&D 3.75 ), but saying the industry is in its dark ages is nuts. No other "age" had produced so much varied, successful and well designed content as the last 10 or 15 years. No matter your personal gaming style, I bet there there is more quality options available right now than 20 or 30 years ago.

We may well be living in the golden age of gaming.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 13:02

Chaltab: Feb 16, 2011; So shocked someone got me an avatar!

Holy poo poo was the Gaming Den always this divorced from reality? I don't remember it quite looking quite this much like the Repubilican National Convention last time I was there.

quote:

One thing that consistently amazes me is how the 5e pub gets praise for being 'concise' on the grounds that it is 'only' 316 pages long. I've written about how over long RPG books have gotten this century before, but have we really fallen so badly in our expectations that over nine hundred pages of 'core' material sounds reasonable?

In any case, back when Mearls was constantly writing and rewriting the skill challenge rules for 4e, he proved that he could turn out over twenty thousand words a week. James Wyatt turned in a DMG draft that had dozens of pages plagiarized from D&D For Dummies (a book he co-wrote in the first place, so it wasn't technically against the law). If they don't care if it's good or not (and they obviously don't) they can certainly put together something.

I acknowledge that we all made the same assumptions about the 4e DMG 3, and thatnever happened, but I don't think the new line can get scrapped until after Christmas. Essentials got canned in just a few months, but very importantly those months took it to after the Christmas sales data had come in. I think with the DMG being delayed until December, that Mearls' job is sadly safe during the annual Christmas layoffs at WotC.

The DMG will be 'released' and it will look like the 4e DMG 2 - a rambling collection of disconnected essays about DMing in general and various collected notes on how various staff members house ruled up some environmental challenges and poo poo. Also a list of magic items and a half-assed directive to hand them out however you want.

Basically they are looking at about two hundred thousand words, and they've shown they have the ability to generate that in a month. While they seem to have nothing now, and there's no reason to expect the hiding and wilderness survival rules to be any better than Mearls' famous 'you can set the DC after the players roll and just pretend to have a system' rant from the play test packet, there is every reason to believe it will 'exist' for certain values of existence.

-Frank

Like I don't think a single line of the above quote is true, other than the last word.

# ? Sep 30, 2014 18:04

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Ninja emulation is serious business:

quote:

Given the nature of the medium, however, realism was just a facade: in particular, although those old anime didn't have the most fluid animation (but Sasuke had stunning pictorial backdrops), what you see happening on screen (or page) doesn't generally resemble what happens in a traditional RPG with "I go, you go" rounds, at all. When s/he's "framed by the camera", during an action scene, a ninja often performs a continuous stream of actions: for example, in the following video at 1:18 Kamui runs towards his opponent, zigzags to make a feint in order to prevent his opponent from knowing with which hand he'll draw his wakizashi, and finally with a single iaido kata he draws the short sword and hits the opponent; then at 1:32 he does a high jump, flips in mid-air, and grapples his opponent to perform the "Izuna Drop" that PerceptiveMan mentioned above - and all of this happen while the opponent is jumping towards him and "is not entitled" to react to Kamui's moves:

quote:

I find this a really strange way to look at this; I mean, the mid air flip is essentially completely color. So are many of the other actions you describe. They add to the -style- of the piece, but I can't see any justification to call them "actions" in any sort of RPG sense. It almost seems like this is less of an "I can't find a game that simulates ninja action well." issue and more of a "I don't truly understand that combat in RPGs is an abstraction and that rolling a single d20 once for a 10 second combat round doesn't mean that my character only swung his sword once in ten seconds." issue. I'm not really sure a system can fix this for you.

quote:

If the mid air flip is essentially color, why shouldn't I also consider color, say, the difference between a pile driver and any other kind of unarmed attack; or between an unarmed attack and any other kind of hand to hand attack; and so forth. Obviously, when you try to write a rules-set meant to emulate a particular genre you want to include rules that allow for a faithful emulation of actions and events that are thematically focal, staples of that genre, and to "relegate" to color and roleplaying things that are marginal. There are exceptions, of course: if I were to write a Dragonball Z RPG, probably I wouldn't include rules for flying, because all the important characters are able to fly and how they fly doesn't make any difference during their fights. On the other hand, if I were to write an RPG that tried to emulate the action scenes of ninja manga and anime, I definitely might want to distinguish between airborne combat (Kamui cannot perform his piledriver when fighting on a boat or in a meadow) and terrestrial combat (Kamui cannot perform his signature attack with the wakizashi when on tree tops), because those are among the things ninja fiction is about. A possibility would be to include limitations in the descritpion of these "super moves", like "can only be performed in a wooded area", but since a character's ability to move in a particular sorrounding is a relatively important element of the genre (where you have mountain ninja, city ninja, ninja-pirates etc.), quantifying it might be relevant to someone who wanted to write a dedicated RPG instead of "D&D with vanilla ninja". So, as you can see there is more to an abstraction than one might think.

# ? Oct 1, 2014 23:01

Big Hubris: Mar 8, 2011

quote:

Holy poo poo was the Gaming Den always this divorced from reality?

It's all dumbasses who got banned from Dumpshock in dinosaur times trying to re-enact their favorite flamewars without moderators or dissenters to stop them.

quote:

The bottom line is that Onyx Path is not really a game design house. It's a man with a business plan. Richard Thomas realized that White Wolf was circling the drain and didn't have the cash flow to maintain a company with actual employees and salaries and poo poo. But it did have enough fanatic followers to support one man in reasonable luxury.

So what Richard Thomas did was to lease the essentially worthless IP back from the Icelandic videogame company that owns them. Then his business model is to "ransom" various books for money, and then have them hacked together by cheap as free fan labor, and then have them printed up by established print on demand services.

He really isn't getting that many suckers, but he's soaking his kickstarter backers for an average of $74 each, and he doesn't need that many fanatics to write loving content for him. The whole Demon project will gross him about a hundred grand when all is said and done, and probably more than half of that is take home after he's paid kickstarter and the printer.

But just remember that the bottom line is that his target audience is the less than two thousand people in the world who think that nWoD is a good platform to bring about a game about demons. They obviously don't care about the playability of the actual game, or they would have given up on nWoD at least two presidential elections ago. And the people writing this crap are unqualified. And of course, the man actually getting all this together is a blatant scam artist.

Demon: the Descent is a scam. A very simple and obvious scam that has already grabbed as many suckers as it needs to pay for the scam artist's rent and cocaine.

-Frank

Basically, Gaming Den is a place for Frank to brag about drinking, pretend SR has a "demonstrably better" dice-pool system than nWoD, pretend OPP is worse off than whoever owns Shadowrun this half-an-edition, and to doublethink old hatreds for rhetorical effect.

You can tell this if you know old soldiers like Frank. The "WW isn't a company, goths only STEAL so they're all crazy cultists PAYING TO WORK." line is like, Usenet old.

# ? Oct 2, 2014 02:51

DigitalRaven: Oct 9, 2012

ErichZahn posted:

Basically, Gaming Den is a place for Frank to brag about drinking, pretend SR has a "demonstrably better" dice-pool system than nWoD, pretend OPP is worse off than whoever owns Shadowrun this half-an-edition, and to doublethink old hatreds for rhetorical effect.

You can tell this if you know old soldiers like Frank. The "WW isn't a company, goths only STEAL so they're all crazy cultists PAYING TO WORK." line is like, Usenet old.

One of these days, I'll work out what drugs he's been taking that leads him to think that people who get paid to be game writers and designers are "free fan labor", or that Onyx Path is somehow run by a scam artist. But then again, someone who has (as far as I can find) three whole credits to his name is obviously more knowledgeable about how companies he's never worked for do things. After all, he made After Sundown and that's shown everyone who worked on the Worlds of Darkness, who are now homeless and starving in the streets or paying in order to work, while every gamer under the sun plays his masterpiece. What's that term for maintaining beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary again?

quote:

Established brands have an additional failure state: failing to make more money than they could take in as licenses. 4th edition's phb had more preorders than any previous D&D book, and their digital initiative convinced thousands of people to pay them ten dollars a month. I have no doubt that 4th edition made money. The production costs were surely smaller than the revenue stream. Nevertheless, 4th edition was a failure. They were for a time the best selling game on the market with even the minor titles having sales an order of magnitude higher than numbers that would make no-name companies like Evil Hat happy - and 4th edition was still a failure so bad that the head of D&D got fired in the first year. And the replacement head of D&D got fired the next year, and his replacement got sacked the year after that, and then the line was cancelled.

If you own a brand with international name recognition and millions of fans, making enough sales to cover labor and materials plus enough left over to pay rent and have a pizza party is not acceptable. You could cut the entire department and license out the name to scam artists in Philadelphia for more than that (see: Onyx Path).

Dungeons and Dragons is the first loving RPG. It defines the loving genre. If people are playing other games they will sometimes say they are playing D&D because more people know what D&D is than know what a table top roleplaying game is. The bar is simply higher for D&D than it is for any other brand in the industry - even Vampire. If an edition of D&D does not sell millions of books, it is a failure (by contrast, a name-brand garage operation like Shadowrun is happy with tens of thousands of books on a title and thus hundreds of thousands of books overall). If an edition of D&D is not on track to sell millions of books, it is failing.

Right now, WotC is giving their customers a twenty dollar bill if they buy from one retailer instead of any others, and their sales boasts have been about their sales rank at that retailer. That doesn't mean they are failing necessarily, but it's certainly consistent with failure and they haven't said anything that is inconsistent with having another turd on their hands.

-Frank

# ? Oct 2, 2014 09:45

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

From a thread about Intel pulling its advertising from a website, allegedly in response to GamerGate

quote:

I'm sort of skeptical, I admit, about Intel's reasoning. Intel are Intel. They're like, I dunno, facking HUGE. Like multinational. For a tabletop Shadowrun analogy it feels like it would be like Ares pulling their funding from one of the trid sites because some Humanis goons whispered something to them. I can't see a company like Intel bending to some random anonymous schleps off the internet.

Thanks, RPGnet poster - I never would have figured out that Intel was big without the Shadowrun analogy. It's like you've opened my eyes.

# ? Oct 2, 2014 14:56

Rob Filter: Jan 19, 2009

I was given a second hand book called "cthulhu casebook" ages ago. I opened it just now. As I flipped through the pages, a single hand written sheet fell out. I've copied it below.

quote:

JEANETTE VERGOLDE
THE BAD NEWS

Seven years ago, you were in contact with a man named Adam Smythe who bore a remarkable resemblance to the hermit here at Black Knolle. He wore a huge pale beard, however - yet you believe he is the same man. The old Adam Smythe seemed happier, more open, a truly virtous man. You met him for dinners and outing and eventually became very attached.

It was hard to swallow your suprise when Adam Smythe stared out at you from those sunken eyes in his living room.

He apparently decided not to recognize you. You thought it best at the time to conceal the fact of your acquaintance as well. This is because you encouraged his arcane studies back then in the shadowy period of your youth and innocence, urging him to investigate auras, lore and places which he dared not.

One day, Smythe was found in his study, arcane papers scattered alla bout, lying face down and moaning, over and over : "He must not be spoken! He must not be spoken! Oh please, let him not be spoken!" THe police removed Smythe to a New York institution and no relatives appeared to defend him or offer aid.

You kept this a secret; were the evidence of your encouragements to drive Smythe insane discovered, you could be placed in serious danger with the law.

For this reason, it is important that you come to some sort of agreement with the man. Before he accuses you of assisting him in his activites... the pigs you slaughtered those seven years past, and drew signs with their blood as it was still hot and black.

You are dangerous - you are a dark arrow.

You feel you must dispose of your three companions, quickly and quietly. Do not let them Unmask the Power you are.

# ? Oct 2, 2014 16:01

Caros: May 14, 2008

Rob Filter posted:

I was given a second hand book called "cthulhu casebook" ages ago. I opened it just now. As I flipped through the pages, a single hand written sheet fell out. I've copied it below.

That is actually really cool.

# ? Oct 2, 2014 19:06

mango sentinel: Jan 5, 2001; by sebmojo

Someone give me your grognardiest defense of 4e vs 3.5/5 I need fuel for a sissy slap fight on another board.

EDIT: Fuuuuuuuck posted before reading op.

mango sentinel fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Oct 3, 2014

# ? Oct 3, 2014 05:12

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

strand0 posted:

Thanks. I expected people to be experienced, but...

Looked these guys up on Wikipedia. Not really encouraged.
If they were working on D&D 3.75 I would be encouraged because most of their work is on 3.x, or OGL products.

Mike Mearls - Mr Mearls has many D20 titles. Other works Designed Pagan Publishing's Godlike (Using the OGL. Works). From White Wolf - Several Hunter Books (Hunter: The Reckoning)
Bruce Cordell - 2nd Edition AD&D, 3rd Edition D&D
Rich Baker - 3rd Edition D&D

Not good enough for a reworking of D&D into a compleatly new game system from the ground up.
Not good enough for a reworking of THE GREATEST RPG in the world.
Very not happy.

# ? Oct 3, 2014 05:43

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Rob Filter posted:

I was given a second hand book called "cthulhu casebook" ages ago. I opened it just now. As I flipped through the pages, a single hand written sheet fell out. I've copied it below.

I had a similar thing happen with the copy of Prime Directive I bought in a nerd store. An awesome campaign one-sheet fell out. It's typewriter typed on onionskin, and I left the spelling errors. Here's the best part:

quote:

3.b Character creation will be very similar to Prime Diective, with a few modifications to make it more of a Star Trek flavored effect. Use the Prime Directive creation system, but leave the skill section blank, until a Referee can tell you your relevant ranks and permissions.

4. Source Materials: Only material from the actual TV shows (NOT TNG!!!) will be considered official (except Star Fleet battles at my diescretion) will be allowed for game background materials. THIS IS PRIMARILY AIMED AT DAN.

# ? Oct 3, 2014 18:09

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

theironjef posted:

THIS IS PRIMARILY AIMED AT DAN

I think we have a new thread title.

Grog tax:

quote:

My understanding is that the outrage brigade is the more radical wing of SJWs, looking for, or manufacturing when none is found, a tremendous amount of outrage targeted at one or more people to make themselves feel important and superior, with an added bonus if they can hurt or otherwise bring down someone they don't agree with.

# ? Oct 3, 2014 18:28

Darth Various: Oct 23, 2010

Pundit vs Wick. Whoever wins, we lose.

John Wick posted:

Hi there. My name is John and I design games. Lots of them. Over twenty years, I�ve designed over twenty roleplaying games. I�ve had a hand in card games and board games, too, but the thing I�m best known for is roleplaying game design.

Now, this isn�t an article about game design, but rather, an article about being a game master. But, in order to get to that advice, I need to spend a little bit of time talking about game design. Trust me, it matters.

So, I�d like to begin by asking you a question. You�re playing a science fiction roleplaying game and your character is about to face Vin Diesel�s character, Riddick, in a fight and you get to choose which weapon he uses.

Do you pick sword, gun, hammer�

How about �tea cup?�

A follow up question. Same situation. Except this time, you�re facing Sean Connery�s character from The Presidio, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell. You get to choose which weapon he uses, but he says, �I don�t need a weapon, I�m only going to use my thumb��

How much damage does Sean Connery�s thumb do? What�s the save vs. Sean Connery�s thumb? Does it have an initiative bonus? Can it block or parry? Does it do Megadamage?

When I first started designing roleplaying games, they appealed to me because they were kind of like writing a philosophy: �this is how I think the world works.� Games like Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon were great examples of this. The systems were tailored for the setting. And in the world of Riddick and Lieutenant Colonel Alan Caldwell, a tea cup and a thumb can do a whole helluva lot of damage.

One of the most common features of roleplaying games are weapon lists. Especially guns. You could tell a gun porn enthusiast just by looking at his stats for guns. Different damages for different calibers, range variants, range modifiers, rate of fire, burst fire, on and on and on.

Same thing with sword porn. Reach modifiers and different die types based on the target�s size and bashing or slashing or piercing and� gulp� speed factor.

And yet, here�s Riddick killing guys with a tea cup.

And so, again, I ask you, what weapon do you choose for Riddick?

It�s a trick question, of course. It doesn�t matter what weapon you give Riddick, he�s going to kick your rear end with it.

Does the tea cup have a speed factor? How about Sean Connery�s thumb?

More important question. In fact, perhaps the most important question: how do any of those things�range modifiers, rate of fire, rburst fire, slashing, piercing, etc.�help you tell stories?

Just a moment ago, I called weapon lists one of the most common features in roleplaying games. These things are not features. They�re bugs. And it�s time to get rid of them.

Why? Because they�re screwing up your game. They�re distracting you from the focus of the game.

Because the focus of an RPG is to tell stories. Let me explain.

Chess is not a roleplaying game. Yes, you can turn it into a roleplaying game, but it was not designed to be a roleplaying game. If you give your King, Queen, Rooks, Knights and even your pawns names and make decisions based on their motivations�instead of the best strategic move possible�you�ve turned chess into a roleplaying game.

You can successfully play chess without roleplaying. In fact, roleplaying can sabotage the game. Now, the definition of a roleplaying game is fuzzy at best, but I think you can I can at least agree that if you can successfully play a game without roleplaying, it can�t be a roleplaying game.

Video games like World of Warcraft call themselves roleplaying games, but are they? Can you successfully play WoW without roleplaying? In fact, you can. Can roleplaying sabotage your enjoyment of the game? In fact, it can. My friend Jessie tells the story of being kicked off a roleplaying server because he was talking in character. Another friend of mine tells the story of how she was wearing �substandard� armor and equipment because �my character liked it.�

Choices such as �How do I level up my fighter?� do not make a game a roleplaying game. In that case, games such as Dungeon and Descent are roleplaying games, and even their designers would probably tell you, these are board games.

World of Warcraft is a very sophisticated board game. The goal of WoW is not to tell stories but to level up your character.

Remember the Three Questions:

What is your game about? Leveling up your character.
How does your game do that? Loot drops for killing monsters and completing quests.
What behaviors does my game reward? Bigger loot to kill bigger monsters and complete more difficult quests.
Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro asked their community, �If you�ve stopped playing D&D and switched to WoW, why?� Their answer? �Because I get the same experience from WoW I got from D&D.�

Listen to that answer again. �I get the same experience from WoW I get from D&D.�

You know why they get the same experience? Because World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons have the same design goals.

When 4th Edition came out, there was an almost universal negative reaction. Why? Because the designers had given up the ghost. D&D was not a roleplaying game. It was a very sophisticated, intricate and complicated combat simulation board game.

A very sophisticated, intricate and complicated combat simulation board game that people were turning into a roleplaying game. Just like giving your rook a motive, players used a board game to play a roleplaying game.

Can you successfully play D&D 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition without roleplaying? Yes, you can. Notice I didn�t mention 5th edition. That�s a different kettle of fish that I�ll have to talk about at another time.

The first four editions of D&D are not roleplaying games. You can successfully play them without roleplaying. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, is a game you cannot successfully play without roleplaying. If you try it, you get� well, you actually violate the basic tenant of the game: to make yourself scared through your character�s choices.

You can play board games such as Rex and Battlestar Galactica and even Settlers of Catan without roleplaying� but roleplaying seems to make them more enjoyable. Talking in character, making (apparent) choices based on character motives� but if you go too far in that direction, you�ll lose. And the goal of those games is to win. Roleplaying, in the end, sabotages the goal of the game.

But if you try playing games such as Vampire or Pendragon or Our Last Best Hope or World of Dew or Deadlands without roleplaying, you�re missing the entire point of the game. In fact, I can�t even imagine what those games would look like without roleplaying.

I�ve been trying for many years to come up with a satisfactory definition for �roleplaying game� and while I�m not entirely happy with it, this is what I�ve got so far:

roleplaying game: a game in which the players are rewarded for making choices
that are consistent with the character�s motivations or further the plot of the story.

Like I said, I�m not entirely happy with it. It�s a working definition and far from complete, but I think it�s a good working definition.

Now, with all of that said, you�re probably wondering, �John, what does this have to do with game mastering?�

My friend, it has everything to do with game mastering.

Because if the most important part of your game is balancing the damage, rate-of-fire, range modifiers, damage dice, ablative armor, dodge modifiers and speed factors, you aren�t playing a roleplaying game. You�re playing a board game.

And you need to stop it. Because all that crap is getting in the way of telling a good story.

As a GM, your job is to help the players tell the stories of their characters. �Game balance� has nothing at all to do with telling good stories. It�s an archaic hold over from a time when RPGs were little more than just really sophisticated board games. Or, as someone once told me, �An RPG is a strategy game in which you play one hero rather than a unit of heroes.�

If that�s the case, HeroClix is a roleplaying game. And I think that all of us can agree that HeroClix is not a roleplaying game. Why?

Because I can play it successfully without roleplaying.

�Game balance� is important in board games. It means one player does not have an advantage over another.

In a roleplaying game, game balance does not matter.

Let me say that again:

In a roleplaying game,
game balance does not matter.

What matters is spotlight. Making sure each player feels their character had a significant role in the story. They had their moment in the spotlight. Or, they helped someone else have their significant moment in the spotlight.

Whether the fighter is balanced with the wizard is balanced with the thief is balanced with the cleric demonstrates a mentality that still thinks roleplaying games are tactical combat simulators with Monty Python jokes thrown in for fun.

No.

The reason roleplaying games are a unique art form is because they are the only literary genre where we walk in the hero�s shoes. We are not following the hero, we are not watching her from afar, we are not being told the story. As Robin Laws now famously said, �A roleplaying game is the only genre where the audience and the author are the same person.�

I think it�s even more than that. In his classic game, Runequest, Greg Stafford created a world where mortals go on vision quests into the spirit realm where heroes and gods live, become one with the hero, and live out one of that hero�s stories. He comes back to the mortal realm transformed by the experience.

That�s the genius of Greg Stafford. He made the very act of playing a roleplaying game a mechanic in his roleplaying game. You step into the hero realm as your character who then steps into the hero realm to become transformed by the experience of becoming a hero and by doing so, you are transformed by the experience of becoming a hero.

And what exactly does speed factor have to do with this? Or ablative armor? Or rate of fire? None of it.

These days, as a GM, as I�m reading through a game or as a game designer, making my own games, whenever I encounter a new mechanic, I ask myself, �How does this help me tell stories?�

If it doesn�t, I throw it out.

When I run Vampire, I keep the Humanity rules and throw out the initiative rules.

When I run Call of Cthulhu, I keep the Sanity rules and throw out the gun chart.

I don�t want you to think I just get rid of combat mechanics. On the contrary, for Vampire, I usually get rid of that whole Social trait thing entirely. Why? Because this is a roleplaying game, and that means you roleplay. You don�t get to say, �I have a high charisma because I�m not very good at roleplaying.�

My response to that is, �Then, you should get better at it. And you won�t get any better by just rolling dice. You�ll only get better by roleplaying.�

If you want to get good at playing chess, you play chess.

If you want to get good at first-person-shooters, you play first-person-shooters.

If you want to get good at roleplaying, guess what?, you roleplay.

And if that�s too much of me to ask, you can go right across the room to the RPGA where they let you make as many charisma rolls as you want because the game they�re playing is not a roleplaying game.

So, GM�s� I now ask you� I urge you� I beg you� go through your favorite game. Right now. Get it off your shelf, pull it out of your back pack, and open it up. Get yourself a big, fat sharpie. And go through each page and ask yourself this question.

�How does this rule help me tell stories?�

If you can�t get an answer in ten seconds or less, get rid of it. Because all it�s doing is getting in your way. It�s another hurdle you have to overcome. It�s another minute of wasted time while you or another player look it up to make sure you got the rule right because that�s what�s important� getting the rules right. Game balance. We must make sure our game is balanced.

No. You are not playing a board game. You�re playing a roleplaying game.

Start acting like it.

Ze Pundit posted:

John Wick Has NEVER Played D&D
We need to be clear on that point. Since Mr. Wick is no liar, and I'm sure that his opinions were sincere in his recent blog entry where he claimed that D&D is not an RPG, because it is just a mechanical combat-game, and where he suggests that since D&D is a "game you can successfully play without roleplaying", unlike real RPGs like Call of Cthulhu.

The only possible conclusion from all this is that John Wick has never once played D&D in his life.

Oh, he may have thought he was playing D&D. He may have mistaken some other thing he did for D&D, and this twisted his mind to lead him to the place where he unfortunately finds himself today, where he barely seems to understand what an RPG is.

Because you see, D&D is not in any way a game you can successfully play without roleplaying. You can, no doubt, play a really lovely game of D&D without roleplaying. But you could do exactly the same thing with Call of Cthulhu.

You could run either game, strictly mechanically, doing no roleplay. You could stat up a bunch of D&D adventurers and then play out a bunch of combat encounters with orcs. You could stat up a bunch of CoC investigators and just have them find clues via mechanical rolls and then just automatically lose sanity based on checks, and fight with (and probably die from) deep ones in a tactical encounter.
The only difference is that D&D characters would be slightly tougher in the fight.

You could say the same thing about FATE, for that matter. You could say the same about Seventh Sea or L5R. poo poo, you could say it about Dogs in the Vinyard. If you wanted, you could just run through everything automatically, with no more roleplaying than D&D.

In fact, D&D at least OBLIGES more roleplaying if you intend to. In many new-school games, instead of roleplaying you can just roll your social skills when you interact with an NPC. You don't have to lie to them, or manipulate them, or enchant them, you just have to ROLL your Deception, Diplomacy, or Seduction.

Now tell me again which one is "Roll-playing and not Role-playing"?

But the thing is, this is a really lovely way to play an RPG (or indeed, as I understand it, even a storygame).
And once you realize that, and realize that D&D has precisely as much or as little roleplaying potential as CoC, and probably more than new-school games that include a bunch of social mechanics to help you avoid actually just roleplaying it, then the only conclusion you can reach is that John Wick thinks that one is an RPG and the other isn't only because he has either never played D&D at all, or he played a really lovely game of D&D at some point and it traumatized him.

And poo poo, that's how most D&D-haters get their start. Some lovely GM touched them in a bad place and they never got over it.
Its logical that D&D would have a lot of lovely GMs and that people would be more likely to have a bad D&D experience, for two reasons:
a) D&D is the first game a lot of people ever play. Often as mere kids, with other mere kids, who don't really know what they're doing. By the time they move on to another RPG, like say CoC, they're already a bit more mature and thus MISTAKENLY think that CoC is a more mature game.

b) D&D is the most popular roleplaying game in the world, by a wide margin. That means that it's likely, by mere weight of numbers, to have the most number of lovely GMs.

But that also means there are more awesome GMs for D&D than for any other RPG in the world. By that same rule of numbers, there are more loving amazing DMs running D&D today than there are good games of CoC, L5R, and FATE put together.

If Mr. Wick thinks that a game of D&D run without roleplaying can be called "successful", he's never played a real game of D&D in his life. He's certainly not played in one of many games; in my (lotfp) Albion game last week, where there was a culmination of events from over a year of real-time and years of game play, in an epic Game-of-Thrones-esque situation of betrayal, shifting allegiances, rebellion and scenarios where the values of ideas like friendship, loyalty, social class, and truthfulness were all tested. Plus a "reveal" scene where the PCs' boss (Richard Crookback) finally showed his true motives of revenge and what many would call villainy (certainly ruthlessness); and a gruesome and very roleplay-heavy death scene.
poo poo, he hasn't even played in anything like my DCC game, which is a much lighter kind of fare than my Albion campaign, but even there roleplaying is the foundation or corner-stone of the entire game. Where the PCs have to regularly interact with a vast range of colourful characters, wind their way through exotic and unusual groups and cultures (in a very detailed, very Gonzo, but internally consistent world), figure out where they stand with the various conflicting power groups in the areas they travel to, and (in the case of the party spellcasters) negotiate with their often erratic and demanding Daemon Patrons, or as clerics deal with a certifiably insane G.O.D.

So no, its a pity, but Mr. Wick has clearly never actually played a successful real game of D&D. And the "negative reaction" Mr. Wick noticed that gamers had toward 4e D&D was not because it was "too honest", but on the contrary, because it was a game designed to cater to people who believed this lie, this utter bullshit about D&D invented by people who despise the game, that it was only meant to be tactical combat game. And it FAILED as an edition because the vast majority of D&D players don't play the game that way.

And, I'll note, I'm sure there were some people who managed to have some decent campaigns with it.

In any case, John, I once invited you to come visit me in Uruguay and check out my lodge. I think you should really consider taking that up, especially now. Not only will I show you around this amazing country, and give you the masonic tour, but I'll also teach you how to play D&D. It sounds like you desperately need it.

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > grognards.txt - sandbox gamers are the John Galts of the RPG world

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