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Attorney at Funk posted:how much oregano can I get on that Nice ref.
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Apr 20, 2014 08:30
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ProfessorCirno posted:Guys all the PCs rolled up heavy social characters and I made an adventure with no social checks and they're bored, god what's wrong with this game????? The world doesn't revolve around the players gosh. Sometimes you need to realise my renaissance France campaign is going to actually be about becoming mustard mafia (or whatever retarded poo poo that one grog post was about).
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Apr 20, 2014 10:05
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more-specific, clearly-defined skills also help keep people from stepping on each others' toes. if everyone has skills that are applicable to every single situation 13A bird/batman style, then it's harder to adjudicate who gets the spotlight for a given scene. the dude with +5 batman steps on +5 police detective's toes all the time, for example fate does this a lot better than 13A's essential non-system, and it's kind of an unaddressed problem of *world
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Apr 20, 2014 10:13
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And just like FATE Aspects, the GM should step in and go "Your 'I'm Batman' skill is overly broad." I mean, would Batman have just one skill of "I'M BATMAN?" Probably not! Let's go with the most recent film batman. He'd be Born Into Wealth and Class. He was Trained in the League of Shadows. He's History's Greatest Detective. These would likely all have different numbers - Born Into Wealth and Class 1, Trained in the League of Shadows 3, History's Greatest Detective 4. Then we have the cop, and he's got Friends in Low Places at 4 and Beat Cop of Every Street 4. So while the two of them are probably about equal at actually finding things and detectivin', batman is better at swooping down on criminals and holding them over a railing, while the cop knows every nook and cranny in the city and can act chummy with both criminals and other low class folks to get info from them, while batman can at least function in a high to do ball (while the cop would looks more out of place due to not being born into wealth and class). This idea that games should NEVER INVOLVE THE GM NEVER EVER is so loving stupid, and yet it's the heart of this argument. That the GM just goes "HEY MAKE CHARACTERS" and vanishes into the aether while each player seals themselves off into The Chambers of Character Making, never once talking to each other, until they are done.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:48
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I bought into the Dungeon Bastard kickstarter, because he's awesome. The highest level of support was playing through his 'World's Worst Dungeon Crawl' at a con - and at the level I bought in, I got the video. The best part is that he had to hack the gently caress out of D&D to make it fun for anyone else other than the wizard. He added all sorts of fudged dice and extra bonuses that he dished out like candy, and even then it was still all sorts of benevolent dictator 'mother may I' nonsense for everyone else, and 'I just do a thing and I am more effective than everyone else' for the wizard. He essentially added mechanics from story games. When you blew a roll, you could call on the 'Dice Fluffer' - someone in the front row of the audience - to re-roll a single die roll that session. You could 'Go Epic' - attempt something really cool, and if he liked it, he added anywhere from 1-3 d6 to your success check. When something that sounded awesome failed, he added arbitrary 'roll d20, on 11-20 you still succeed' just to make it work. He totally knew regular D&D was un-fun, and threw in Fate points in all but name to make it fun. Even after all that, the Wizard just said 'I cast Fireball' - (which kills the entire group of enemies that the rest of the party spent three rounds barely wounding) - 'you WIPE THEM OUT'. The Wizard player actually looked bored because he never really had any risk of failure, almost never rolled dice, had the least audience buy-in or reaction from what he did. I *really* want to see this scenario played through with typical AD&D rules, just to hammer home how boring and un-fun it would be without his house rules. -- I am an old-school D&D player, I'm old, and I am a former grognard. I hope D&D Next fails miserably, and kills D&D for good. Long live story games.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:50
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So I was thinking about the D&DNext team talking about 'silos' early on in development, and with +4 Batman & +2 Former Bird being a thing - they came together in my mind. Take four silos for a D&D-like game of Combat, Exploration, Social, hobby (semi-arbitrary, I can't remember what the Next team were thinking) and assign a phrase to each. You could use whatever - like aspects or 13A skills, but I was thinking for combat in this D&D example you can use any of the D&D classes. So - Level 1 Combat - Whizzard Exploration - I'm Batman Social - former bird hobby - dirt farmer the important thing in regards to the current discussion would be to key all the mechanics off of your level rather than assigning a level to each section. They should all be as effective as each other. Crappy example sure, but I've been trying to divorce D&D from ability scores and maybe skills in my mind for a while and get it closer to Fate aspects for that side of things.
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Apr 20, 2014 12:13
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LSTB posted:The discussion is about mechanics. The Background rolls may have resulted in different fluff but neither resulted in a failure state. Elfgames never said everything outside of combat is irrelevant. He said the fights, where you CAN achieve a failure state by being killed, were the same. To equate that to simply not caring about anything but combat is a huge strawman. Failing forward is not about making everything the players do be "the right choice", it's about making sure the plot progresses even if you fail horribly. To use the old locked door example: Failing at lockpicking a door having the consequence of you can't get into the dungeon is boring. The plot just stops. Failing your lockpicking roll meaning you get in after the orcs show up is interesting. The plot continues, but now you're down some health potions or behind schedule or whatever. Similarly, failing your diplomacy check on the king meaning he tells you to gently caress off and the plot stops is boring. Failing your diplomacy check on the king meaning he wants to help you but the kingdom doesn't have the money but there's a rumour that there's a gold fountain over yonder maybe if some bright young chaps were to clear it out that might change hint hint, or a noble grabbing you outside the door afterwards and saying he'd like to help but doesn't have the men but maybe if you were to help out in a military campaign he has going there might be some free guys afterwards, that's all good stuff. basically every time you do a thing it should move the plot along in some way. It's still a failure state for your characters because now they're running around doing errands while their village is slowly losing inhabitants to trolls or whatever, but it means the game progresses. Also, like half the stuff in that big post wasn't caused by "failing forward". Failing forward doesn't mean the big bad guy turns out to be grunkles, failing forward means that while looking for grunkles you stumble across further clues to the real big bad guy, but only after wasting a fuckton of time chasing grunkles (which will have consequences). The player saying "I bet it's grunkles" and them automatically being right is a different thing altogether.
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Apr 20, 2014 12:40
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Or you open the door but you damage your lockpicks/the door spits a poison dart in your face, or you mess up picking the lock because you see a bunch of orcs through the keyhole. Maybe the King sends too many troops because your peasant mumblings caused him to overestimate the threat and there's going to be consequences for that later, or they laugh you out of chamber but your vocal, drunken ramblings about your hatred of the ivory tower upper class attracts the interests of the thieves guild. That there needs to be a name for this concept is sad. Oh wait it's grackles not grunkles. I don't care. Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:49 on Apr 20, 2014 |
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Apr 20, 2014 13:46
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Cease to Hope posted:more-specific, clearly-defined skills also help keep people from stepping on each others' toes. if everyone has skills that are applicable to every single situation 13A bird/batman style, then it's harder to adjudicate who gets the spotlight for a given scene. +5 to Bird is not a terribly useful skill for someone who lacks wings, beak, and talons it is however broadly informative, as it helps inform how the character reacts to a wide variety of situations working as intended
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Apr 20, 2014 14:07
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ProfessorCirno posted:
D&D gives people brain damage.
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Apr 20, 2014 15:52
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ProfessorCirno posted:And just like FATE Aspects, the GM should step in and go "Your 'I'm Batman' skill is overly broad." i agree in principle but in practice it would be better if there were a bit more guidance, and maybe some reason to ever not wheedle your dm to shoehorn in your highest +X possible. maybe bake in a breadth vs depth thing where you are expected to be more specific with applications of the background the higher the bonus is, or do something that limits the number of background uses but makes them more significant when they pop up, or something? idk im no game designer and i like the idea of backgrounds but it feels like they could have done more with it than stop at a certain point and be all "yeah just let the gm cover it from here on"
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Apr 20, 2014 16:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:And just like FATE Aspects, the GM should step in and go "Your 'I'm Batman' skill is overly broad." This post actually is what clinched my opinion to the other side. You're right about your normative statements, but the game needs to have rules specifically so that the GM can judge exactly as you say, "Your 'I'm Batman' skill is overly broad." (and the players too for that matter). Note I haven't read any of the rules for this game and I don't even know what game we're talking about anymore but this is just what I've gathered from this thread!! It seems like you're assuming the GM already has all this experience under his belt with the system so that he can make that determination. Whereas if I sit down with my friends to all try this game out for the first time and one says "ok Ralp I made my character, I put my skills in Lockpicking +3 and Disarm traps +2" and another says "I'm just Adventurer +4", then I'll maybe scratch my head and reread the rules and decide, hmm yeah I guess that's how this game works! AND, since (I assume) the rules DON'T include specific constraints for determining what skills are too broad or too narrow, I would be right: that IS how the game works.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:15
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Alright, what the hell are people talking about with all this former bird vs batman stuff? It sounds like an interesting example, but I'm not finding the source on google.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:18
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I remember Burning Wheel discussing this at length: if you, GM, can't tell the player what interesting and story-progressing things will happen on success and failure,then you cannot call for a roll. That poo poo is totally basic, right up there with "say yes or roll the dice", just below "system matters", but I can't remember the pithy phrase used to summarize it. The example was a guy who had snuck in to a tower to steal the magic pice of poo poo the whole campaign was about, and starts picking the lock on the chest. What happens when he fails? He opens it just as the guards burst in.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:20
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Ralp posted:This post actually is what clinched my opinion to the other side. You're right about your normative statements, but the game needs to have rules specifically so that the GM can judge exactly as you say, "Your 'I'm Batman' skill is overly broad." (and the players too for that matter). Note I haven't read any of the rules for this game and I don't even know what game we're talking about anymore but this is just what I've gathered from this thread!! http://www.13thagesrd.com/character-rules#TOC-Backgrounds-Skill-Checks the idea is that youre more so putting poo poo down that is a broadish background rather than a specific verb like climbing or disarming or w/e
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Apr 20, 2014 16:21
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akasnowmaaan posted:I am an old-school D&D player, I'm old, and I am a former grognard. Can't empty quote this because I never really played d&d Read a lot of books, tho, so I feel connected a bit
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Apr 20, 2014 16:24
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OtspIII posted:Alright, what the hell are people talking about with all this former bird vs batman stuff? It sounds like an interesting example, but I'm not finding the source on google. was quoted earlier in the thread, click the username: Ferrinus posted:btw i wouldn't advise actually attempting to read that because holy god
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Apr 20, 2014 16:25
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@Ralp the difficulty of declaring player-defined skills is why I like what @starkebn had w/r/t using game-applicable silos rather than integers to adjudicate skills. esp. if you use a card suit & deck action resolution system
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Apr 20, 2014 16:26
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Attorney at Funk posted:I just, I fuckin love vampires Well, it's been two days and I'm still laughing at this
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Apr 20, 2014 16:29
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I like using backgrounds as skills.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:31
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01011001 posted:http://www.13thagesrd.com/character-rules#TOC-Backgrounds-Skill-Checks Ok, thanks. That invalidates my specific example but as long as some backgrounds can be too broad or too narrow (which everyone seems to agree is the case), then it's a flaw in the system; you can't just say "oh, well the GM should have spotted that and made you change it". The GM doesn't have some special wisdom from beyond the rulebook, he's just a guy like the rest of the players.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:36
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It DOES give examples of the scope an appropriate background should have, which mitigates those problems a lot.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:38
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You can talk about batman vs former bird all you want but both of those examples are completely nonsensical and not in the spirit of the background rules.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:41
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Ralp posted:Ok, thanks. That invalidates my specific example but as long as some backgrounds can be too broad or too narrow (which everyone seems to agree is the case), then it's a flaw in the system; you can't just say "oh, well the GM should have spotted that and made you change it". The GM doesn't have some special wisdom from beyond the rulebook, he's just a guy like the rest of the players. my GM Herbie can run anything. The game can suck, but he can toss out what he doesn't like and then it rocks.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:41
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13A, above all other D&Dalikes, is more about the spirit rather than letter of the rules E: unless, you know, storygames
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Apr 20, 2014 16:54
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Nihnoz posted:You can talk about batman vs former bird all you want but both of those examples are completely nonsensical and not in the spirit of the background rules. http://www.13thagesrd.com/character-rules#TOC-Backgrounds-Skill-Checks posted:A few possible backgrounds include: acrobat, alchemist, animal trainer, architect, aristocratic noble, assassin, chef, con-woman, goblin exterminator, hunted outlaw, knight errant, magecraft, priest, refugee, scout, shepherd, soldier, spy, temple acolyte, thief, torturer, transformed animal, traveling martial arts pupil, tribal healer, tunnel scout, wandering minstrel, warrior poet, and so on. Doc Hawkins posted:my GM Herbie can run anything. The game can suck, but he can toss out what he doesn't like and then it rocks. If the game did a better job of explaining what a good vs bad background was I'd give it a pass on this. Forcing the GM to audit each background is obnoxious, but it's not the same as house-ruling.
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Apr 20, 2014 16:57
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My longest post ITT was about a silos type system so I think I'm for it.
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Apr 20, 2014 17:11
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OtspIII posted:If the game did a better job of explaining what a good vs bad background was I'd give it a pass on this. Forcing the GM to audit each background is obnoxious, but it's not the same as house-ruling. it has a lot of the same problems as house ruling, though it's also a kind of weird shift to go from 13A's combat, which is rigorously detailed and wargame-y and rules-heavy, to everything else, where you kind of waggle your background at things and the gm decides if you get +x to whatever more or less based on whim i realize 13A's intended game style is a series of loosely linked fight scenes but IMO it ends up making your character a wargame pawn made up entirely if rule constructs, even more than in 4e
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Apr 20, 2014 17:34
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If I'm going to storygame, the last kind of system I'd consider is one that's iterative upon 4e.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:01
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Cease to Hope posted:it has a lot of the same problems as house ruling, though I think there's benefits to going full autism and rigor and benefits to playing things fast and loose but when you constantly phase between the two it's a little jarring.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:06
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I'd sooner use 3.PF and be like, hey, don't pick a Tier 4 / Tier 5 Full BAB class because we're playing story mode here, get yourself a caster or a skill monkey so you can act creatively.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:09
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LSTB posted:I'd sooner use 3.PF and be like, hey, don't pick a Tier 4 / Tier 5 Full BAB class because we're playing story mode here, get yourself a caster or a skill monkey so you can act creatively. you really wouldn't dude
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Apr 20, 2014 18:12
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I love you man but you don't mean that.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:12
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Nihnoz posted:I love you man but you don't mean that. I mean, relative to 4e skill challenges or games that iterate on 4e.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:16
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Not to badmouth 4e. It's just that, if I'm going to GM 4e, my motivation is going to be to make that idea for a World of Warcraft dungeon you had when you were 15 come to life.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:18
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3.5 skill system is exactly as lovely as 4e skill system tho.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:18
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you're just falling into the same trap billions of gamers around the world fell into where they want to fix 3.5 and make it actually playable.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:18
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Nihnoz posted:3.5 skill system is exactly as lovely as 4e skill system tho. 4e is worse because of Rituals, and Skill Challenges.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:25
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LSTB posted:4e is worse because of Rituals, and Skill Challenges. Good thing 13th Age doesn't have either of those.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:49
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 19:47 |
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Okay, so, gettin' a notion here. You'd want a combat silo that's like a much less fiddly version of 4e, and an everything-else silo that works something like this: You get a bunch of Background Points at character creation, and one or two more every level. At any time, you can trade in one of those Background Points for a Background Phrase of your choosing, provided the GM agrees it's not too much more broad or too much more narrow than the rest of the table (no absolute measure of generality or specificity is needed). Additionally, the GM will give out premade Background Phrases based on events in the story. When a character faces a task and the GM knows how to advance the story on a success or on a failure, he assigns it a difficulty from 1 to X and calls for a roll. You decide how many Background Phrases you have that are relevant to succeeding at that task, then roll that many dXes, and if one of them is at or above the difficulty, it works. Some of your Background Phrases cause penalties instead and reduce the number of die you get to roll. This obviously needs some more guidelines about how to decide if a skill is relevant (maybe some FATE-like negotiation?), when the minimum dice pool should be 0 and when it should be 1, or maybe you use the second-highest roll or the lowest, etc. Background Points don't do anything themselves, but when you spend one to get a Background Phrase relevant to a single task you're currently attempting, you automatically succeed at that task, so characters become better-defined in critical moments. It seems like the probability curves wouldn't be smooth enough to be interesting, though.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:49
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