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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Sure seems like you just described a descending AC system there The main difference between what people generally envision when it comes to D&D-esque descending AC is that there's no THAC0, or maybe another way to put it is that THAC0 is fixed for everybody so all you ever have to worry about is "do I hit or beat 20, y/n?" Also there's no such thing as negative AC, the lowest you can go is 0.
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Jan 17, 2017 09:53
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It works the opposite of the way AD&D descending AC does, in that it's all additive, which was one of the big complaints about descending AC in the first place- that you had to do do multiple operations. Here, you just straight up add their AC to your roll and see if you hit. There's no THAC0 in Godbound because AC 0 just means you aren't adding anything to the roll.
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Jan 17, 2017 09:56
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The literal descriptive values of the armor types are still "lower is better", yes, but it doesn't use any of the other trappings of descending AC such as THAC0, or to-hit matrices, or converting a bonus into a subtrahend or a penalty into an addend.
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Jan 17, 2017 10:00
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I never played pre3.5 D&D but I did play Godbound with two experienced tabletop players and two newbies (aside from two sessions of fellowship). All of us had a really easy time with the AC/Hit system.
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Jan 17, 2017 10:05
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Mathematically speaking Kevin Crawford's system is exactly the same as THAC0 and in his very earliest works you basically get a single target number given for monsters which is basically THAC0 but never called out as such. His method of expressing attack rolls ("Okay, you have this number, and if you roll that number with all of your bonuses taken into account and you add your enemy's AC to the roll THEN you hit the enemy!") is THAC0 but being all coy about it and not actually saying it. But that poo poo's alright because not only do I have a tolerance for dumb old mechanics but also his method of expressing it is the most straightforward I've ever seen in an OSR RPG (e: that still insists on using descending AC). I mean, it's still dumb as poo poo IMO, but I understand where Crawford's coming from with regards to deciding to use descending AC: he started off writing supplements for Labyrinth Lord and pretty much all of his later stuff has been written with the idea of maintaining compatibility with his earlier stuff. I can forgive him that one design quirk based on the fact that all of his stuff is otherwise really solid. Also, I hope I don't come off as too harsh towards descending AC: while I personally prefer simple target number AC where higher is better I kind of actually love descending AC as part of the greater aesthetic of old-school D&D. Even though I could easily convert to ascending AC when running old-school games I usually just go "You know what, we're playing this older edition, let's just take all the dumb poo poo that comes with because it's just part of the experience." Except for Thieves, seriously, gently caress Thieves.
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Jan 17, 2017 10:29
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Guys. Thac0 is literally just (20 - level). Crawford's system is exactly equivalent to old-school systems, the only difference is that he's a competent technical writer. E;gently caress
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Jan 17, 2017 10:31
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Well yeah "Target20" is backwards-compatible with all of OSR up to and including the very first print-runs of original D&D, but Crawford (and whoever originally came up with the idea, maybe this person) still deserves credit for writing his games where Target20 is the method used to explain how attack rolls are made from the get-go.
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Jan 17, 2017 10:36
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Fantasy Craft's NPC generation system is a lot easier if you use the Web NPC Builder. In any case, it neatly avoids having the trap of building monsters as psuedo-PCs like mainstream d20 does, which was always more of a headache on my experience.
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Jan 17, 2017 12:52
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Am I the only one who feels sort of really pissy about parents who try to make their 5 year olds play D&D with them? I know that, on some level, a parent wanting their kid to like the same things they do is a natural feeling, but the kid is like 5 loving years old. Let the kid go play outside or discover their own fun before foisting your niche hobby on them. Something about it all just rubs me the completely wrong way -- like I dunno, I can't shake the image of a neckbeard dad forcing his kids to play D&D with him because parenting has consumed so much of his life that he can't go game with other adults. Or am I just speaking from the biased but comfortable position of a smug non-parent who dislikes children?
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Jan 17, 2017 13:13
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Drone posted:Am I the only one who feels sort of really pissy about parents who try to make their 5 year olds play D&D with them? I know that, on some level, a parent wanting their kid to like the same things they do is a natural feeling, but the kid is like 5 loving years old. Let the kid go play outside or discover their own fun before foisting your niche hobby on them. Something about it all just rubs me the completely wrong way -- like I dunno, I can't shake the image of a neckbeard dad forcing his kids to play D&D with him because parenting has consumed so much of his life that he can't go game with other adults. Yes. edit for more than just a one word answer: Yes, you are. It's something that let's parents play with their kids who are interested in more indoors-y stuff play with them. It's something that encourages kids to think logically, learn about social interactions, engage their imagination and learn about storytelling. It encourages reading and math which are important at that age. You have to change the pitch of a game (grimdark trips to Ravensloft or whatever are probably not on the menu, nor should excessive rules lawyering about five foot steps and attacks of opportunity) but... The idea of 'lol what a broken fukken neckbeard lmao' is wildly unhelpful. Sion fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 13:16
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Like, you see that kind of thing on shitholes like Reddit all the time, where a parent will sometimes openly admit that they're basically just waiting for their little kid to learn how to speak well enough to form a coherent sentence so that they can start playing D&D with them. It's goddamn creepy. No little kid's vocabulary should have the word "dracolich" in it when they should still be all about Duplos and Bob the Builder.
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Jan 17, 2017 13:18
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Drone posted:Like, you see that kind of thing on shitholes like Reddit all the time, where a parent will sometimes openly admit that they're basically just waiting for their little kid to learn how to speak well enough to form a coherent sentence so that they can start playing D&D with them. It's goddamn creepy. No little kid's vocabulary should have the word "dracolich" in it when they should still be all about Duplos and Bob the Builder. I know a five year old that is loving obsessed with werewolves. She regularly sits down and is like 'here is a story about a werewolf that I wrote' and she likes to drop facts like 'werewolves are sometimes called lycanpopes.' I love the idea of a lycanpope. Also, I feel your error here was going on Reddit which, as pointed out, is a shithole. Again, a lot of it is about tone. I've run DnD games for friends and their kids in the past where they were a team of gnome rangers, wizards and clerics. 'You're a gnome and you have a pet bear that you can ride around on.' They had to solve the mystery of where the towns food supplies went to and it turns out it was Owlbears making a nest in a barn. Everyone learnt a lesson about sharing. It was great. Sion fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 13:27
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That kinda depends on whether they treat D&D itself, in terms of sticking to the rules and poo poo. I can totally see playing some ultra-light RPG with the kid as a way of basically participating in their make-believe in a way that both includes less crawling under the table for the parent and some provides some structure/tools to bring out creativity. D&D is admittedly a terrible template for this, but I'd assume it's simply the parent being an RPG normie with little idea of simpler games that would work much better - never underestimate the amount of people who never moved past D&D. Still, I'd expect the parent to fudge and streamline the hell out of it (basically boiling it down to "roll 10+ for success, or 5+ on elvish stuff" or something), with proper mechanics introduced gradually somewhere down the line as a fun boardgamey thing to do (rolling dice and pushing minis is fun, y'all). If we're talking neckbeards teaching the kids The Right Way To Play D&D, together with charop and 10 feet poles, then yeah, that's dumb.
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Jan 17, 2017 13:30
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Having run RPGs for kids (ages 7 and 8 mostly) I can say that while I agree with what you're saying (i.e. parents forcing their niche hobby on kids is weird and bad) at the same time playing RPGs with kids can be very rewarding, with a couple of caveats. Firstly, 5 year-olds might be too young to really understand role-playing. RPGs require cooperation and 5-year-olds don't have a really well-developed sense of empathy yet, so they might not see the appeal. Even with 7 and 8-year-olds it was a struggle at times, but at least they showed potential for being willing to play nice. Secondly, I agree that you should never force it on kids: when I ran games for kids it was at after-school activities at an elementary school I worked in. Taking part in the game was never compulsory and at first I was lucky to get two, maybe three players, but after those couple of kids told everyone else about their adventures my games were suddenly packed. So, you know, kids can definitely see the appeal of getting to play pretend while rolling dice. Thirdly, D&D is probably the worst choice of game to offer should the kids be interested in actually playing. Not only is the genre of D&D something that is completely alien to most kids these days (seriously, it might've flown in the 80s when everyone was into crappy swords and sorcery films, but that poo poo just doesn't fly today) it's way too mechanical and has too many moving parts. Thankfully there's a lot of child-friendly games on the market these days: my best run was with Astraterra, a Finnish adventure RPG meant for kids, which is simple enough for most kids to understand but has a bit more optional crunch if you want to introduce a bit more complexity. Also, it has a lot of stuff that (in my experience) kids want in RPGs built in, including rules for getting pets and teaching them tricks, because what kid doesn't want a pet dragon or something? For reference, I'm also a non-parent who's probably never going to get kids (I'm quite happy with my dumb cat) but I think kids are actually kind of cool.
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Jan 17, 2017 13:54
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Assuming the kid is able to comprehend the rules of whatever game you're playing I don't see the issue with it, or how it's really different from playing a board game with your kids or any other indoor activity. It seems absurd to me that "go play outside" is a catch-all 100% solution - It might be raining, or too cold, or too dark, or the kid might be sick, or maybe you just want to be indoors to do a family thing together.
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Jan 17, 2017 14:26
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Countblanc posted:Assuming the kid is able to comprehend the rules of whatever game you're playing I don't see the issue with it, or how it's really different from playing a board game with your kids or any other indoor activity. It seems absurd to me that "go play outside" is a catch-all 100% solution - It might be raining, or too cold, or too dark, or the kid might be sick, or maybe you just want to be indoors to do a family thing together. pssh, go play outside kid *lives on 40th floor of apartment building*
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Jan 17, 2017 14:31
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It is kind of weird parents would want to engage children in structure for imaginary play, with the ability for them to engage in both mathematics and problem solving. Who would want to spend time with their own children instead of making them "find their own fun"
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Jan 17, 2017 14:40
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D&D used to be (and still is?) marketed and sold as a kid's toy, and any number of people became familiar with the game from having their moms, dads, or certain other older parental figures run it for/play it with them, so barring any sort of comprehension barrier I don't see anything wrong with letting children play it, on whatever end of the sliding scale of full-rules-vs-play-pretend. What tends to be distasteful is if you use your kids as replacements for not being able to get together with your same-age-group peers, or if you're forcing your hobby on them because this is what you like and they drat well better like it, too.
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Jan 17, 2017 14:40
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As someone who got into gaming through their parents at around that age, I've gotta say that my dad didn't actually force me to play, I went looking through all those weird books on my own and asking about what they were and how it worked and basically bugged him to let me try it and that's how I wound up playing various terrible five year old joke characters like a cleric named Eric, and a Runequest Duck named Donald.
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Jan 17, 2017 14:46
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unseenlibrarian posted:a cleric named Eric
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Jan 17, 2017 14:53
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Male Elf M.elf
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Jan 17, 2017 15:08
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Plutonis posted:Male Elf M'elf *tips fedora*
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Jan 17, 2017 15:12
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And the classic wizard Bigby and his associates Digby, Rigby, Nigby, Zigby and Sigby Griggbyson.
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Jan 17, 2017 15:43
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Drone posted:Like, you see that kind of thing on shitholes like Reddit all the time, where a parent will sometimes openly admit that they're basically just waiting for their little kid to learn how to speak well enough to form a coherent sentence so that they can start playing D&D with them. It's goddamn creepy. No little kid's vocabulary should have the word "dracolich" in it when they should still be all about Duplos and Bob the Builder.
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Jan 17, 2017 15:55
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You could even play D&D outside! It's immersive!
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Jan 17, 2017 15:57
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Even better in, the steam tunnels under the local college campu...wait, no.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:05
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unseenlibrarian posted:Even better in, the steam tunnels under the local college campu...wait, no. Or you could do it in the projects and use the tenements as real life dungeons complete with unpeople as monsters!
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Jan 17, 2017 16:08
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I don't know about 5 year olds, but I used to GM after school at a under-privileged/low-income elementary school* and I'm willing to venture that, yes, in fact, most 8 year olds (or whatever) are super, super down with the idea of beating up some goblins and taking their magic swords. Like, will probably do that with or without you. You just don't play like Torchbearer with them or whatever. Despite all of its cruft from being a parody, they do really like Kobolds Ate My Baby in my experience, however. *Shut up. A friend asked me to and a bunch of kids in East Harlem have better math and socialization skills than they used to and we had a lot of fun.  Edit : Arivia posted:Or you could do it in the projects and use the tenements as real life dungeons complete with unpeople as monsters! I find it kind of darkly humorous that you posted this while I was writing mine so they're next to each other. Xiahou Dun fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 16:12
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Arivia posted:Or you could do it in the projects and use the tenements as real life dungeons complete with unpeople as monsters! The Lost Citadel of Pruitt-Igoe.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:15
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Xiahou Dun posted:Edit : Yep As a disclaimer, I'm not actually advocating that. It's a reference to Davis Chenault (one of the Castle & Crusades' guys) ban from rpg.net for unironically suggesting it, though. LARPing while you get your vigilante massacre on.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:22
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You don't need LARPing as an excuse to get upper class to middle class people to set the homeless on fire
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Jan 17, 2017 16:24
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Man, I was just referencing Mazes and Monsters. (And the RL "oh, he wasn't actually missing after playing D&D in the steam tunnels, whoops." case it was based on.)
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Jan 17, 2017 16:26
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Plutonis posted:You don't need LARPing as an excuse to get upper class to middle class people to set the homeless on fire For once I unironically agree with Plutonis. Did the Gates of Hell just open?
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Jan 17, 2017 16:27
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Arivia posted:Or you could do it in the projects and use the tenements as real life dungeons complete with unpeople as monsters! I give you: Violence, the RPG which has exactly that as a premise.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:39
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Doodmons posted:I give you: Violence, the RPG which has exactly that as a premise. That's the Greg Costikyan game, right? At least he was doing it tongue firmly in cheek. Davis Chenault was pretty drat serious.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:43
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Arivia posted:Or you could do it in the projects and use the tenements as real life dungeons complete with unpeople as monsters!
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Jan 17, 2017 16:48
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Like on the one hand I love The Warriors and a game where you play a goofy New York street gang fighting other bizarre 70s New York street gangs for survival sounds pretty cool. But at the same time there's just no way to make it work without it being totally ignorant.
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Jan 17, 2017 16:52
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What if you made it like every goons favorite movie, The Raid: Redemption (or Dredd)? You start your hunt for one particular baddie, they put a big bounty on you and your crew, then suddenly a bunch of rudeboys are coming for you because it might be there one chance to get out of this hellhole. You don't gotta make it a murder romp. edit: I changed some words around Ominous Jazz fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 17, 2017 |
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Jan 17, 2017 16:58
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Serf posted:Like on the one hand I love The Warriors and a game where you play a goofy New York street gang fighting other bizarre 70s New York street gangs for survival sounds pretty cool. But at the same time there's just no way to make it work without it being totally ignorant. You don't have to play street gangs squabbling with each other, either, but with the heavily-armed vigilantes invading your neighbourhood. SERF, YOU ARE ORDERED TO LEAVE THE BRONX. A SOLAR-POWERED PRE-FURNISHED HOME AWAITS YOU IN NEW MEXICO.
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Jan 17, 2017 17:05
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Halloween Jack posted:I was playing the Arkham Asylum series at the same time I was reading through people's attempts to do superheroes in OSR rules frameworks (note: they're all bad), and got the idea that "street-level" supers would make for a pretty good dungeoncrawl where the dungeon is the villain's lair, or Arkham island, or just the mean streets of Gotham. But I was uncomfortable with the latter idea for exactly this reason. There's also Ben Baugh's old Long Stairs setting riff, where a portal opens up under a nuclear bomb test site and it ends up leading to a fantasy dungeon. That's a pretty good job for a Suicide Squad group.
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