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Simulationism is a disease.
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Dec 13, 2014 09:23
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It's not even a failure of simulation in and of itself, like a game that tacks on crunchy and fiddly rule after rule to account for every possible situation until you end up with GURPS by way of Hybrid and things become an unusable mess, it's a failure of the writers to actually stick to what they want their own guidelines to be, i.e. "A rating of 2 is average" and then giving Joe Beat Cop 4 dots in everything (as was the case in the nWoD's core rulebook, for example).
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Dec 13, 2014 09:30
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Is the map/misc. game paraphernalia thread a thing that is happening, or does it fall to my scrub rear end to actually post it? (I hope not, I hate making threads.)
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Dec 13, 2014 19:29
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I would like all the good people of TG to keep me in their prayers this week as I sift through the twenty-two goddamn applications to this PBP game.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:52
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Fuego Fish posted:Is the map/misc. game paraphernalia thread a thing that is happening, or does it fall to my scrub rear end to actually post it? 
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Dec 13, 2014 20:18
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Kai Tave posted:It's not even a failure of simulation in and of itself, like a game that tacks on crunchy and fiddly rule after rule to account for every possible situation until you end up with GURPS by way of Hybrid and things become an unusable mess, it's a failure of the writers to actually stick to what they want their own guidelines to be, i.e. "A rating of 2 is average" and then giving Joe Beat Cop 4 dots in everything (as was the case in the nWoD's core rulebook, for example). But then again, as ProfessorCirno basically just said, "or you could not try to have them unnecessarily try to mirror to real life in the first place and solve that problem."
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Dec 13, 2014 20:40
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Quarex posted:You would think this means it would be the easiest thing to do it right ... using BAYESIAN INFERENCE you start with the numbers/dots/donuts that you want characters to use to represent their innate characteristics/abilities/knowledges/brainpool/arm-movement/whatever, then you start playing the game, and when you discover your numbers make it impossible for an average person to do things that average people do all the time, you either raise the "average" number or change how the system works. Then you repeat until something makes sense. Isn't that sort of playtesting what you do even if your game system is as "not-simulationist" as it can possibly be?
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Dec 13, 2014 21:32
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Fuego Fish posted:Is the map/misc. game paraphernalia thread a thing that is happening, or does it fall to my scrub rear end to actually post it? I'll try and get around to it tomorrow
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Dec 13, 2014 21:37
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Quarex posted:You would think this means it would be the easiest thing to do it right ... using BAYESIAN INFERENCE you start with the numbers/dots/donuts that you want characters to use to represent their innate characteristics/abilities/knowledges/brainpool/arm-movement/whatever, then you start playing the game, and when you discover your numbers make it impossible for an average person to do things that average people do all the time, you either raise the "average" number or change how the system works. Then you repeat until something makes sense. Even without explicitly calling things out on some sort of graded scale you're going to wind up establishing what certain levels of STAT or SKILL mean simply by them existing the way they do. Like in Shadowrun, you could get rid of the descriptors for what each level of Strength are supposed to signify but by virtue of humans having their stats capped at a max of 6 that tells you right there that 6 is the normal human max without getting into things like cyberware or magic, ergo 6 is peak unaugmented human. So if the writers then go on to assign certain tasks with minimum Strength thresholds above that and those tasks are things that normal people can do right now in the real world, then someone hosed up. The issue with Shadowrun in particular is that thanks to the aforementioned cyberware and magic, along with metahumans with default attribute levels higher than humans, the general scale that play tends to happen at isn't really a "1 to 6 with outliers for stats" scale, it's more like "4 to 12" and I think that tends to skew both the players' and writers' perception of where "average values" should lie.
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Dec 13, 2014 21:59
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I'm running a D&D 5e game for some friends - all new to the system, one new to RPing totally and one last played D&D 16 years ago. On one hand, I wanted to run a semi-serious swords and sorcery flavoured game. On the other they're having fun setting fire to everything, and waiting for an oppurtunity to use their bottled gelatinous cubes and mini-battering rams. I'm just giving them situations and watching the chaos now. The mini-gelatinous cubes have been dyed and named. There's also a dog called Stay that may become the ranger's animal companion next level. (I did veto the cubes on the basis that they have no brains, so you can't exactly build a rappot with them)
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Dec 13, 2014 22:01
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Honestly, in my experience D&D is pretty terrible at running games that ever do more than occasionally flirt with seriousness. I mean, the number of games I've been in that were even semi-serious could probably be counted on one hand, but I feel like something about D&D just inherently leads to, well, what you've got going right now.
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Dec 13, 2014 22:07
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly, in my experience D&D is pretty terrible at running games that ever do more than occasionally flirt with seriousness. I mean, the number of games I've been in that were even semi-serious could probably be counted on one hand, but I feel like something about D&D just inherently leads to, well, what you've got going right now. I'm not really complaining , just commenting. I think you can do serious as long as you get everyone on board to start with. My mistake here was expecting people to think Conan the books, rather than Conan the movie.
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Dec 13, 2014 22:29
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Kai Tave posted:Honestly, in my experience D&D is pretty terrible at running games that ever do more than occasionally flirt with seriousness. I mean, the number of games I've been in that were even semi-serious could probably be counted on one hand, but I feel like something about D&D just inherently leads to, well, what you've got going right now. Yeah, this. My favorite example is the start of a Planescape-ish campaign I ran back in 2e which was supposed to be about trying to prevent Ragnarok. The story I'd sketched out was pretty grim. By the end of the second session the PCs decided to form a traveling murdercircus. I'm not even kidding, they decided to form a traveling circus as part of their "cover" (they had no reason to be secretive) because of a lie the bard told in the first session which spiraled out of control. So I ditched the gently caress out of the serious story and the game was about an interplanar traveling circus where the performers were also mercenaries and assassins. It was great. I'm not sure why D&D specifically is prone to this kind of thing, but games I run or play in do consistently lean toward silly rather than serious, regardless of the original intent.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:14
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah, this. Personally most games of anything I've run in systems without any sort of genre enforcement mechanics lean towards the silly. Like, despite the tone the materials try to convey, my Vampire games all become Blade: the RPG. Of course I encourage this, so I might not be the best person to chime in here. (but I will anyway!)
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Dec 14, 2014 00:36
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What's an example of a game with good "genre enforcement mechanics"? I think I get what that would look like, I just can't think of any good examples. e: I guess both Dread and Fiasco count? There's nothing in either of those games that prevents lightheartedness, but the way the rules are set up seems to discourage it pretty well. Or in the case of Fiasco, encourages the kind of silliness inherent in the source material. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 00:48
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Any * World game.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:49
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I love Dungeon World a lot, but in what way would it mechanically enforce "non-silly fantasy adventure"? Or is your point that its genre is "slightly-to-very silly fantasy adventure"?
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Dec 14, 2014 00:52
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Most games, even the ones with strong genre-enforcement incentives like *World, aren't really shields against a group making things wacky. On top of the fact that you can turn anything into a farce, I think players are just inclined to Shenanigans because the easiest fall-back when you don't have the energy/ideas to be appropriately dramatic is to crack jokes. This is why RPGs often descend into silliness.
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Dec 14, 2014 00:53
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poo poo wait I'm actually going to take that back about Dungeon World. Last time I played we set it up for kinda silly (He Who Thirsts Below is going to drink the concept of booze and leave the world forever sober) and it ended up actually being pretty heroic and tense. Thinking about it, every time I play DW it ends up pretty heroic and tense, regardless of the seriousness of the actual plot. e: Slightly related, my absolute favorite thing about DW is watching someone who hasn't played, but has played lots of D&D, realising that you can Defy Danger more or less however you like. The most memorable example I can think of is the player of the druid (in bear form) realising that he can narrate arrows just sticking harmlessly in his fur (DD:con) while he mauls goblins instead of saying "I dodge". I've never seen that guy grin so much. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 00:56
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AlphaDog posted:poo poo wait I'm actually going to take that back about Dungeon World. Last time I played we set it up for kinda silly (He Who Thirsts Below is going to drink the concept of booze and leave the world forever sober) and it ended up actually being pretty heroic and tense. Thinking about it, every time I play DW it ends up pretty heroic and tense, regardless of the seriousness of the actual plot. It's so good watching players new to Dungeon World realise that they don't have to dodge. The smug satisfaction in someone I introduced to Dungeon World's voice when I was like "so the arrows fly towards you, what do you do?" and their response was "I am The Paladin. I am clad in steel. I ignore them" was thrilling to witness. Defy Danger STR and CON to bulldoze through attacks is incredibly satisfying.
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Dec 14, 2014 01:29
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Lightning Lord posted:Personally most games of anything I've run in systems without any sort of genre enforcement mechanics lean towards the silly. Like, despite the tone the materials try to convey, my Vampire games all become Blade: the RPG. Of course I encourage this, so I might not be the best person to chime in here. (but I will anyway!) A lot of 90s game design uses the stick approach to genre. That is, if you do Excessively Bad Things in Vampire, you get hit with the stick of a humanity drop. Generally having low humanity is inconvenient to you, as a player. I like the games that actually offer rewards for doing genre-fitting things and encourage the players to think about how their character fit into the chosen genre. Trail of Cthulhu has its drives, which are meant to answer the question, "Why is your character the sort of person who keeps going into ghoul infested graveyards at night?" While you can technically hit you players with a penalty for ignoring your drive, I've never seen it come up. (There's also a carrot in that you get rewards for following your drive into danger.) Fate also offers a similar option.. provided that all the aspects fit the genre in the first place. Mouse Guard gives you the Nature stat, which can be used for a big bonus on doing very mouse-y things - like running, hiding, or looking for food. I also think the way that Double Cross' powers move you closer to going crazy, but you get more powerful when you're right at the edge, is a very strong way to emulate certain anime stories. The fact that your connections to other characters can pull you back from the brink, even more so. In general, I think genre emulation works best when it's baked into the whole game in a specific way - as in Apocalypse World's language and playbooks. Grafting a sanity mechanic onto D&D for a Ravenloft expansion isn't really going to be sufficient when the rest of the game is about heroic fantasy.
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Dec 14, 2014 01:56
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Here is the Map thread!
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Dec 14, 2014 08:09
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HOORAY!
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Dec 14, 2014 10:59
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AlphaDog posted:poo poo wait I'm actually going to take that back about Dungeon World. Last time I played we set it up for kinda silly (He Who Thirsts Below is going to drink the concept of booze and leave the world forever sober) and it ended up actually being pretty heroic and tense. Thinking about it, every time I play DW it ends up pretty heroic and tense, regardless of the seriousness of the actual plot. Well, when you make a roll, it has the potential to do amazing things, and things have the potential to go horribly wrong. Even if those things are silly, in either direction, that's still pretty heroic and tense. The * World engine lends itself to these moments. In a similar way, Mouse Guard and Torchbearer often lend themselves to moments of fighting through seemingly impossible odds, where someone making a roll will start out wondering how they can possibly succeed but pull together help from their party members and gear and knowledge and have a good shot at it.
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Dec 14, 2014 10:59
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Sionak posted:In general, I think genre emulation works best when it's baked into the whole game in a specific way - as in Apocalypse World's language and playbooks. Grafting a sanity mechanic onto D&D for a Ravenloft expansion isn't really going to be sufficient when the rest of the game is about heroic fantasy. Which is why and where so many "simulationist" games completely collapse; they're so busy trying to adhere to a setting in the mechanics (relying on fiction to carry the tone) that they completely ignore that mechanics contribute more to a game's tone then the game's fiction. Sometimes this means directly working AGAINST the tone for the same of making sure your mechanics read really well! To use the aforementioned example, Planescape wanted people to travel across the planes and experience how weird and different they are. So to show this, magic items would get stronger or weaker depending on what plane you were currently at. In reality, this was a pain to deal with, so people either ignored the rule (always the sign of a good rule), or didn't travel the planes and experience how weird and different they were.
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Dec 14, 2014 11:12
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ProfessorCirno posted:To use the aforementioned example, Planescape wanted people to travel across the planes and experience how weird and different they are. So to show this, magic items would get stronger or weaker depending on what plane you were currently at. In reality, this was a pain to deal with, so people either ignored the rule (always the sign of a good rule), or didn't travel the planes and experience how weird and different they were. 4e did the right thing here where they removed a lot of the cruft of poo poo that no one ever used (hello demiplane of salt) and kept all the cool, interesting places you would probably venture to outside of your own material plane.
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Dec 14, 2014 15:44
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No way, dude the bizarre poo poo that was just bizarre, like the plane of elemental salt, were fantastic. It's the parts that were incredibly specific jank mechanics (priest spellcasting rules) where the setting sucked. And also the amazing bizarre poo poo/jank mechanic crossovers, like spell keys. The great ideas were great, it's the implementation we're bitching about.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:21
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MartianAgitator posted:No way, dude the bizarre poo poo that was just bizarre, like the plane of elemental salt, were fantastic. It's the parts that were incredibly specific jank mechanics (priest spellcasting rules) where the setting sucked. And also the amazing bizarre poo poo/jank mechanic crossovers, like spell keys. The great ideas were great, it's the implementation we're bitching about. That's the thing, though. It was neat to read but not useful to play in. It was background poo poo that very rarely, if ever, saw any sort of play; there was no reason to go to the elemental plane of salt because it'd just loving kill you. Same with a lot of the planes actually. They weren't very fun. 4e just went "well gently caress that, just keep the cool stuff" and that worked because then you didn't have a ton of poo poo clogging up space that'd never get used by 95% of players.
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Dec 14, 2014 17:52
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Slimnoid posted:That's the thing, though. It was neat to read but not useful to play in. It was background poo poo that very rarely, if ever, saw any sort of play; there was no reason to go to the elemental plane of salt because it'd just loving kill you. Same with a lot of the planes actually. They weren't very fun. No, I agree with MartianAgitator. Background poo poo is fine. Not everything needs to be 100% played in all the time. Sometimes just being part of the weirdness of a setting is fine. Also, the Plane of Salt is a bad example of poo poo that needed to be cut. We aren't talking about something like a giant block of history that scholars of the setting used as weapons against people who just wanted to slay orcs, or that useless "weapons lose their pluses" rule, or even Ravenloft's giant very specific list of which spells you are punished for casting in the Demiplane of Dread when it's totally fine everywhere else. We're talking about a place where salt elementals came from. And the fact that it killed your rear end dead by basically pickling characters is cool - not only does that have the potential to be a really memorable way for a PC to die, because the Inner Planes are so alien they were rarely if ever used like "haha you teleport there now ur ded lol" (at least in my experience, maybe someone else has a tale of how the evil DM hid a portal to the Plane of Dust in the pub's door or something) but it's a challenge. As in, "This place kills you dead but are you bad enough to figure out how to go there and live because that's where the bad guys have their cool fort made out of a giant salt crystal?" It's not useless because anything that fires the imagination isn't ever useless. I'm not against not having it (Mystara, D&D's greatest setting, just has the four classical elements as Inner Planes) but its kind of silly to point at it and say that this is why 1e/2e was bad when there are a thousand other, better reasons, when I could come up with an awesome Plane of Salt adventure. Hell I'd throw the Plane of Salt into the Elemental Chaos if I ever use the 4e cosmology again. But I'd probably make it the Plain of Salt. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 19:23
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Is there a thread for world design? I'm working on a fantasy setting and want someone to bounce ideas off.
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Dec 14, 2014 19:35
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The plane of salt ruled, sorry. If you never played a Salt Mephit in your childhood D&D games I really feel for you.
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Dec 14, 2014 19:57
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I'll always be fond of Planescape: Torment for putting a major setpiece adventure in, iirc, the Plane of Vacuum.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:02
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Len posted:Is there a thread for world design? I'm working on a fantasy setting and want someone to bounce ideas off. I started up a worldbuilding thread way back when, but despite my best efforts it died from lack of posting. I doubt a new one would fare any better, so maybe just ask around in one (or both) of the two system design threads we have.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:06
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Lightning Lord posted:Hell I'd throw the Plane of Salt into the Elemental Chaos if I ever use the 4e cosmology again. But I'd probably make it the Plain of Salt. The plain of salt is an area of the elemental chaos that intersects with the shadowfel. boom salt elementals and salt skeletons and if you bury meat there it turns into the best jerky or maybe it gets haunted or both
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Dec 14, 2014 20:22
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It was the home of an ocean god who got murdered and the ocean dried up. The tomb-palace of the dead god is full of mer-mummies who can swim through the air via their memories of water.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:28
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Is there any particular reason why my thread title's different? Regarding the Planescape planes, a lot of the boring ones could be fixed mostly by dropping cool cities and adventures into them, also places with living conditions for extraplanar travelers. Sadly a lot of material doesn't give much in this way, leaving several planes (elemental planes in particular) rather bereft of cool features in some sourcebooks. For example in my homebrew Planar Revision Project, I decided that the Elemental Plane of Air would be home to a lot of airship travel, for there's a lot of floating islands with unclaimed resources. There are also Cloudscapes, which are basically giant cloud dungeons which can be reshaped and moved by a pilot in the center who controls a magical orb made of frozen water. My Elemental Plane of Air had glorious djinn cities as hubs of civilization, airship pirates and prospectors, and warlords riding in giant cloud dungeons. Another good idea is to focus on the colonizing aspect of extraplanar travel. Planes might be weird and hostile, but they're home to unique natural resources highly prized by outsiders. The Elemental Plane of Earth is an endless sea of minerals and gems. The Elemental Plane of Water would be home to many old sahuagin/merfolk/etc races who opened portals there. Religious people who prize fire as a destructive purifying force make pilgrimages to the Holy Shrine of the Fire Lords in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and those who can pass the trials can gain great prestige among the faithful. The Positive Energy Plane is home to the city of Morning's Gaze which is entirely animated by a colony of ravids: shifting streets lurch about in random directions, stoves spit out pots and pans at intruders, and local landmarks walk about the place to meet and greet each other. TL;DR what I'm saying is that more sourcebooks need to treat the planes as cool, varied places with cool, varied adventures beyond "hey, this place is full of fire and poo poo." Libertad! fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 20:31
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Libertad! posted:TL;DR what I'm saying is that more sourcebooks need to treat the planes as cool, varied places with cool, varied adventures beyond "hey, this place is full of fire and poo poo." Man, the plane of flaming poo poo sucked. No more family holidays for me.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:42
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PublicOpinion posted:It was the home of an ocean god who got murdered and the ocean dried up. The tomb-palace of the dead god is full of mer-mummies who can swim through the air via their memories of water. One of my favorite homebuilt settings was inspired by this idea, with ghost whales and all kinds of awesome poo poo. Messinian Salinity Crisis with a little bit of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within. And trade/adventuring via airships sailing across the salt flats. I should rewrite it and run another game there.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:57
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Libertad! posted:Regarding the Planescape planes, a lot of the boring ones could be fixed mostly by dropping cool cities and adventures into them, also places with living conditions for extraplanar travelers. Sadly a lot of material doesn't give much in this way, leaving several planes (elemental planes in particular) rather bereft of cool features in some sourcebooks. Well Planescape books tended to do this. In particular the planes of conflict book and the ethereal plane book are really good. The ethereal plane being the old place you go to walk through walls and nothing else plane, and they made it one of the most interesting planes by exploring it being in contact with all material worlds, so you get a bunch of hidden pocket realms scattered throughout. Unfortunately the Inner Planes (elemental planes) book was given to Monte Cook. Which turned out about as formulaic as you'd think.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:21
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If there is no plane of salt then where does water go when someone is dessicated? No mere mortal salt could absorb the water of every desiccated mummy and umber hulk in the prime material plane. Checkmate, Demiplailures.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:39
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