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dwarf74 posted:3d6 in order doesn't work well with AD&D's stat tables. This was pretty mind-blowing when I discovered it. Like, Gygax saying "no you idiots don't do 3d6-in-order" in the AD&D 1e DMG was super-reasonable and one of the worst misinterpretations of the OSR, and then you get to AD&D 2e and they do exactly that.
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Jul 20, 2016 02:11
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dwarf74 posted:There were also a few "doesn't actually understand how the game works" parts, too. Removing xp-for-gp slowed advancement to a crawl. 3d6 in order doesn't work well with AD&D's stat tables. Speed Factor was somehow even less sensible. Clerical spheres didn't work at all. XP per GP is in 2nd ed as an optional rule. 2e also formalised the idea of "quest xp" and gave the guideline of "not more than can be obtained defeating every monster in the adventure". It also had a stack of stuff that I don't remember being in AD&D for xp awards for doing class things (like, fighters get 10xp/hd for killing stuff, rogues get 100xp per successful ability use, etc) which sped advancement up considerably but which a lot of DMs seemed to ignore, at least in my area. 100% agreed on speed factor and Spheres though.
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Jul 20, 2016 02:18
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:By the time Planescape came out 2e had been out for five years; I don't think you can really claim that the writing style of the later supplements was responsible for the earlier backlash. Hilariously enough, I'm pretty sure Zeb Cook has stated that they originally WANTED to have a lot more changes, but were so terrified of fan outrage that they ended up changing very little, hoping it would pacify fans and help convince them that the game would more or less be the same.
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Jul 20, 2016 02:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:Hilariously enough, I'm pretty sure Zeb Cook has stated that they originally WANTED to have a lot more changes, but were so terrified of fan outrage that they ended up changing very little, hoping it would pacify fans and help convince them that the game would more or less be the same. I can never find a source, but I keep hearing that 2e was supposed to make the transition to ascending AC early, but then backwards-compatibility with 1e content was demanded, so it didn't push through.
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Jul 20, 2016 02:27
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I know the 30th (?) Anniversary book had some confirmation on that but I can't dig it up right now.
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Jul 20, 2016 02:45
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I got my copy handy. Got it at the book fair for like 5bux.Zeb Cook posted:The most basic mechanic [Steve Winter and I] wanted to change was the order of Armor Class, making 1 the worst and going up. It was an absolutely sensible change, but ultimately it was decided that took things too far from what players were accustomed to. There was also the idea of getting rid of saving throws and using the ability scores instead. That just never seemed to work.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:01
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The 1e -> 2e things I remember were: 1) Rewriting the rules to make them clearer and less Gygax-y 2) Getting rid of a bunch of the "edgier" aspects (assassins. half-orcs, demons, devils, naked ladies chained to sacrificial altars, etc.) 2.5) Also, a bunch of cool things (fortifications and psionics to name two) from the 1E rules got stripped out and bundled off to separate supplements. 3) Some minor rule tweaks (thieves could improve individual skills, schools of magic meant something, clerical spheres, etc.) 4) Was the NWP not-quite-a-skill-system part of the 2E core books, or was it added later? ...and that was it. I didn't upgrade to it because it didn't offer anything appreciably newer or different from the books I already had. All the things I didn't like about 1E were still there and if I wanted a better game than 1E I'd have to go and look into Rolemaster and RuneQuest and GURPS and Champions and MegaTraveller (which I did).
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Jul 20, 2016 03:08
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AlphaDog posted:It also had a stack of stuff that I don't remember being in AD&D for xp awards for doing class things (like, fighters get 10xp/hd for killing stuff, rogues get 100xp per successful ability use, etc) which sped advancement up considerably but which a lot of DMs seemed to ignore, at least in my area. We used that for the first... year, maybe? I remember sheets of loose-leaf covered with math, and the eventual realization that the extra work was boring and the way we played didn't help the other classes at all. They kept it for Dark Sun, the original box and supplements. By that point it seemed like a weird, vestigial appendage.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:11
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FMguru posted:4) Was the NWP not-quite-a-skill-system part of the 2E core books, or was it added later? Non-Weapon Proficiencies were a part of the 2e core, but were still mentioned as an optional thing compared to just roleplaying how you did things or using your own die-roll method. They were originally written in late-stage AD&D 1e supplements, I want to say Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneer's Survival Guide.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:17
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They had NWPs and another optional random system of 'secondary skills', which basically assigned you a profession from a percentile table and let you argue whether being a sailor would let you tie knots or fish. Adorably, they advised against combining the two systems for fear of creating a super-character.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:24
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Bieeardo posted:They had NWPs and another optional random system of 'secondary skills', which basically assigned you a profession from a percentile table and let you argue whether being a sailor would let you tie knots or fish. quote:Adorably, they advised against combining the two systems for fear of creating a super-character.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:35
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Halloween Jack posted:
Heh.
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Jul 20, 2016 03:47
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As one of the people that was 1e AD&D from the start, the reason I didn't switch to 2e was lack of cash to buy the new books. Why buy a new set when the one I had was perfectly good...also I need to pay my utilities.
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Jul 20, 2016 07:02
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AlphaDog posted:XP per GP is in 2nd ed as an optional rule. 2e also formalised the idea of "quest xp" and gave the guideline of "not more than can be obtained defeating every monster in the adventure".  gradenko_2000 posted:Non-Weapon Proficiencies were a part of the 2e core, but were still mentioned as an optional thing compared to just roleplaying how you did things or using your own die-roll method. Yeah, they originated in Wilderness and Dungeoneers Survival Guides, and got further expanded in Oriental Adventures. The thing is, 2e fully integrated them into its system rather than leaving them as really optional like 1e.
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Jul 20, 2016 14:20
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As a kid I picked up an AD&D sourcebook thinking that it would help me with the SSI AD&D games I was playing. It saved me from actually playing AD&D. When I started actually roleplaying, knowing that AD&D referred to skills as "nonweapon proficiencies" helped keep me off the game. Are there any of you whose very first roleplaying experience was with another TSR game, like Gamma World, Top Secret or Boot Hill? Those games had some interesting transitional ideas.
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Jul 20, 2016 14:34
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I started with Runequest and Tunnels and Trolls, so my perspective is generally skewed.
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Jul 20, 2016 14:51
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I played a lot of Tunnels and Trolls and Runequest too. Also most of the FGU games, especially Villains and Vigilantes, Chivalry and Sorcery, and Space Opera.
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Jul 20, 2016 16:01
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Halloween Jack posted:As a kid I picked up an AD&D sourcebook thinking that it would help me with the SSI AD&D games I was playing. It saved me from actually playing AD&D. When I started actually roleplaying, knowing that AD&D referred to skills as "nonweapon proficiencies" helped keep me off the game. I had the Top Secret and the Star Frontiers box sets. I was so happy to see them bring back all the Star Frontiers races in D20 Future! Top Secret was pretty abysmal though, in terms of game design. Every character had like 30-40 skills/NWPs and all of them had to have a percentile score. I can't recall if they were derived or rolled though. Here's some other quirks of the game: 1) You are a KGB agent, trying to talk to a Mossad agent but both of you are posing as Americans (for some reason). Since neither of you are speaking your native tongue, you each have to roll you skill in English to understand each other. RAW, it's possible to have an entirely one0sided conversation even though both characters are taking turns talking. 2) Unarmed combat was done in some kind of weird, secret-ballot type "tell the GM (Administrator) what you want to do and he compares the two results on some crazy-rear end tables". One cool abstraction was that if your hand to hand skill was low, you could only fight on the untrained or boxing table, while your opponent was busy throwing you around with judo and kicking your rear end. 3) XP was pretty much just cash. the only reason you did jobs was to get paid. Money did let you buy cool stiff or build a secret base, but you didn't really get better at anything you could do at level one. 4) There were no classes, but you had to select what branch of your organization you were in: Investigation, Confiscation, Assassination. Investigators got XP for infiltration, recording confidential material, and amassing intelligence. Confiscators got XP for stealing stuff, more or less. Assassins got XP for killing people. If you did something another branch was skilled at, you got like one-third the XP they did. It was a weird system that almost seemed designed for playing three sessions back-to-back, one one one, rather than as a group. Still though, it was a cool sourcebook and I actually learned things from it as a child (the Basques want independence and have been willing to kill for it; Esperanto is a made up language that actually exists; bullet-proof glass is $25/square foot).
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Jul 21, 2016 00:54
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All I know of Top Secret is from flipping through an old dog-eared copy and hearing the System Mastery review of it. From what I can tell, TSR wanted to update their rules to keep pace with what some other companies were doing--namely in the form of a percentile skill system--but they really just hadn't moved beyond the dungeon delving mindset. Your PC is supposed to go to this one neighbourhood in a foreign city that's been mapped out, and wander into shops and try to find secret doors to secret rooms with treasur--I mean, uh, secret commie plans or something.
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Jul 21, 2016 01:10
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Halloween Jack posted:All I know of Top Secret is from flipping through an old dog-eared copy and hearing the System Mastery review of it. From what I can tell, TSR wanted to update their rules to keep pace with what some other companies were doing--namely in the form of a percentile skill system--but they really just hadn't moved beyond the dungeon delving mindset. Your PC is supposed to go to this one neighbourhood in a foreign city that's been mapped out, and wander into shops and try to find secret doors to secret rooms with treasur--I mean, uh, secret commie plans or something. The actual modules (not Sprechenhaltestelle), played closer to Bond/Ludlum/Le Carre plots. They weren't necessarily good but they weren't dungeon crawls. Top Secret / Special Investigations, the late 80s version, was a lot better at pulling off cinematic flow and plotlines.
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Jul 21, 2016 02:29
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Mophidius just announced they're producing a new official Star Trek RPG . Looks like it'll cover all the various series.
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Jul 21, 2016 17:48
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They're a good company too.
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Jul 21, 2016 18:45
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What is the 2d20 system like?
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Jul 21, 2016 19:26
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"Star Trek Adventures will use the Modiphius 2d20 game system" hard pass
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Jul 21, 2016 19:37
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Zurui posted:What is the 2d20 system like? Found a thread discussing its mechanics. The opinions are...weird, but it discusses the mechanics.
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Jul 21, 2016 19:58
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Evil Mastermind posted:Mophidius just announced they're producing a new official Star Trek RPG . Looks like it'll cover all the various series. I thought the Star Fleet Battles company perpetually owned the license to the original series for most tabletop games. That's the whole reason I thought no one had done this before. I wonder how Modiphius got the rights?
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Jul 21, 2016 20:47
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EverettLO posted:I thought the Star Fleet Battles company perpetually owned the license to the original series for most tabletop games. That's the whole reason I thought no one had done this before. I wonder how Modiphius got the rights? fake edit: maybe CBS just threw a bucket of money at the SFB battle guys to get the licence back.
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Jul 21, 2016 20:50
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EverettLO posted:I thought the Star Fleet Battles company perpetually owned the license to the original series for most tabletop games. That's the whole reason I thought no one had done this before. I wonder how Modiphius got the rights? I think the only thing they have the sole license to anymore is the Animated series. Part of that is poorly-written license agreements from back in the day, and part is that nobody has cared to get those rights. I asked Ken Hite about this a few weeks back and wish I could remember any details.
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Jul 21, 2016 20:51
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Zurui posted:What is the 2d20 system like? It's not bad. I've barely played it but it actually has some similarities to the FFG Star Wars system, kind of the same marriage of crunch and narrative mechanics. Makes sense, since the same guy, Jay Little, designed both. A lot of the criticism I've noticed (not to dismiss anyone who dislikes it) seems to stem from people disliking the narrative points system, like in that thread Covok links. EverettLO posted:I thought the Star Fleet Battles company perpetually owned the license to the original series for most tabletop games. That's the whole reason I thought no one had done this before. I wonder how Modiphius got the rights? I believe they have a (not "the") license to Star Trek as it was in 1979. That's why the Star Fleet Technical Manual from 1975 is so prominent and why they eventually had to make their own version of the Star Trek universe. I mean FASA's Star Trek RPG came after the ADB game, and it features the original series. It was focused on the movies because that's what Star Trek fandom was largely interested in then, and no doubt Paramount too. But there were strictly TOS-period books too. General Ironicus posted:I think the only thing they have the sole license to anymore is the Animated series. Part of that is poorly-written license agreements from back in the day, and part is that nobody has cared to get those rights. The Kzinti being around would back this up, but I wonder if they have a deal with Larry Niven too? Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 21, 2016 |
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Jul 21, 2016 20:53
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My very limited recollection is that they had got the rights in the late 1970s during a nadir in the value of the Star Trek IP and it included the original series, the animated series, and the technical manual since those were basically the whole of the license at the time. Then the movies came out and the license holders realized they hosed up in their wording and have the SFB guys nothing new to work with, so the movies, TNG and all later series are out of their license. Due to their limitations, the SFB universe has been drifting further and further from the standard one. That said, I thought they still had the license for the original series and were desperately squatting on it. Perhaps the new movies gave Modiphius rights to use the 'original' cast? I don't know.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:13
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I don't like the fact that they do a "Failures subtract from successes" thing.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:14
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EverettLO posted:That said, I thought they still had the license for the original series and were desperately squatting on it. Perhaps the new movies gave Modiphius rights to use the 'original' cast? I don't know. If that was true then the FASA Star Trek RPG wouldn't have existed. Also, the Last Unicorn RPG had a TOS supplement, the Decipher game incorporates TOS material, etc. Kurieg posted:I don't like the fact that they do a "Failures subtract from successes" thing. That's fair criticism.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:16
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Last Unicorn Games produced a TOS game, as did FASA before them, so I don't think the holders of the Starfleet Battles License ever had sole custody, just a right to keep producing what they were granted.
remusclaw fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Jul 21, 2016 |
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Jul 21, 2016 21:18
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That makes more sense.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:20
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Lightning Lord posted:That's fair criticism. It makes it so that you can only get an even number of successes from your dice natively, unless you roll under your skill. I'm not sure what their probability curve looks like but I'm pretty sure there a huge cliff between the failure and success plateaus.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:23
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Kurieg posted:I don't like the fact that they do a "Failures subtract from successes" thing. Do they? The second post of the linked thread says that this is not the case. Perhaps it was like that at some point in an early playtest and it got changed later? Remains to be seen if Star Trek has such a failure-cancels-success thing.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:24
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I was just going over my copy of Mutant Chronicles, and failure results don't do anything but make you ignore that die on the roll. Natural 20s can add Complications, but it's possible to both succeed at a task and get Complications. I have no idea how Conan handles it, but I'd assume the same way.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:43
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Actually looking over my Conan KS materials and the quickstart, I don't see where failures subtract from successes. The closest I see to that is the Struggle mechanic, basically an opposed roll (the example given is for a footrace) where any successes that the loser gets over the difficulty rating (Momentum, another mechanic) subtract from the Momentum of the winner. My biggest issue is that 20s being a bad result is kind of counterintuitive and sort of feel-bad. That's just something to get used to though, not necessarily a design failing. Also the slate colored boxes with white text are hard to read. Keep in mind that every RPG Modiphius does uses a different variant of the 2d20 system. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 21, 2016 |
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Jul 21, 2016 21:46
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Roll under systems in general are kind of counter-intuitive for most gamers. Personally if I was going to run MC I'd drop the nat 20 rule and just use the Repercussions rating for Complications instead.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:51
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ADB's original agreement was through Franz Joseph, who made the Technical Manual, and then this transferred to Paramount once they realized what they had. As stated before the manual was created during a time where Star Trek was dead and merchandising was nowhere near what it is today. ADB can't even use the original cast, only certain elements of TOS and TAS like races and governments. It's kind of like a more reasonable and civil version of the Battletech and Harmony Gold rights debacle but handled much better. http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/faqs.shtml
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Jul 21, 2016 22:02
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