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I feel like they do, it's just that that game is first edition Dungeons and Dragons.
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Apr 12, 2017 15:31
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fool_of_sound posted:This gets discussed every few months. It doesn't really exist cause Dark Souls/Monster Hunter/other pattern recognition based action games don't translate well into turn based tabletop games. That's because "pattern recognition-based action games" is a completely rear end-backwards way of approaching it. Trying to recreate the gameplay of those games is both probably a lost cause just in and of itself, and even harder because most people don't really have the kind of comprehensive understanding of how the guts of those games really work to translate them properly even if it were possible or desirable. What I'm after is much simpler: a game about climbing up on top of something that wants to eat you and stabbing it.
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Apr 12, 2017 15:33
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Also just generally I refuse to believe that turn-based tabletop is necessarily limited to points along a straight line from "no real rules" to "rules for Chainmail."
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Apr 12, 2017 15:36
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Also just generally I refuse to believe that turn-based tabletop is necessarily limited to points along a straight line from "no real rules" to "rules for Chainmail." Of course not. You forgot 'rules for Harnmaster'
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Apr 12, 2017 16:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That's because "pattern recognition-based action games" is a completely rear end-backwards way of approaching it. Trying to recreate the gameplay of those games is both probably a lost cause just in and of itself, and even harder because most people don't really have the kind of comprehensive understanding of how the guts of those games really work to translate them properly even if it were possible or desirable. Then you want Last Stand, because that's what it is, getting up in a giant bug's face and stabbing it.
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Apr 12, 2017 16:20
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I've been working on a TRPG that involves bosses having distinct patterns you can plan around and weak points you can target- I don't really know Monster Hunter but I'm aiming for a video game feel.
Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 17:03
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I remember Mikan was working on a Monster Hunter-ish game that used playing cards, and used the idea of different weapons having very different playstyles.
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Apr 12, 2017 17:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've been working on a TRPG that involves bosses having distinct patterns you can plan around and weak points you can target- I don't really know Monster Hunter but In aiming for a video game feel. A key part of this type of video game feel is that the game is skill-based, not rng-based. Randomly failing every single action a set percentage of the time is reasonable in a game of risk mitigation and attrition like the traditional dungeon crawl. In an action game, flawless execution is the expected result of mastery.
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Apr 12, 2017 17:50
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Actually randomly failing every action sucks in RPGs too, people are just accustomed to it, and the need for a fair, non-human-adjudicated dispute resolution system is harder to implement in a game moderated by a GM than it is in a game moderated by an inflexible but impartial computer. Randomness is "fair" in the sense that it doesn't favor one player over another and also frequently serves as a gloss over shallow mechanics -- it takes much longer to "solve" a system with a random component, even if the correct decision is a total no-brainer, because randomness obscures feedback and muddies the association between using the correct strategy and success. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 17:56
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Randomness is "fair" in the sense that it doesn't favor one player over another and also frequently serves as a gloss over shallow mechanics -- it takes much longer to "solve" a system with a random component, even if the correct decision is a total no-brainer, because randomness obscures feedback and muddies the association between using the correct strategy and success. Totally agree on this. Reminds me of the King of the Hill episode where Peggy designs a game and it's nothing but multiple layers of random chance.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:14
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You could easily make a game with minimal randomness by using some of the various combat resolutions you see in board games like Kemet or, perhaps more obviously, Gloomhaven. The latter in particular would give both the depth and breadth of 4e-esque combat while keeping randomness to "I deal 6 (or 2) damage instead of 4 damage this turn" once every 4-5 turns. Gloomhaven dodges the human adjudicator issue by having monsters fight with a rudimentary AI deck unique to that monster type, but you could definitely just have monsters act as simpler GM-controlled characters. But I think people aren't just used to randomness, they expect it and often times want it. Using tactical board game combat means there's a definite, obvious skill component to that part of the game, and lots of people who play RPGs may feel that it isolates some people at the table. Cooperative board games have an issue called "quarterbacking" which is basically when a game doesn't include mechanics that forbid or dampen a players ability to tell other people how to play their character (which is a totally logical issue due to the shared victory state). Now, plenty of games have solved that problem, but the fear of the Alpha Gamer is still common, especially on other forums I've noticed. Dice and other forms of post-decision randomness do a good job blurring the input-output to the point where quarterbacking just doesn't really come up to the same degree as a deterministic resolution would encourage.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:22
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Also I don't know how to make things like single Athletics or History Lore rolls into luckless ventures outside of like, fast dexterity challenges like Speed Jenga or balancing 10 differently sized dice for 10 seconds lol
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Apr 12, 2017 18:25
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I think you might be able to make Shadows of the Colossus work in 4e, but it will involve using a hot wire to cut foam, drawing grids onto the foam, maybe getting super crafty and making movable hinges, and using pushpins in lieu of minis. Or just use a big map and a (flat) sub-map to represent the monster's own on-body terrain.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:31
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Countblanc posted:Also I don't know how to make things like single Athletics or History Lore rolls into luckless ventures outside of like, fast dexterity challenges like Speed Jenga or balancing 10 differently sized dice for 10 seconds lol Some things just aren't important enough to the focus of the game to receive effort- or time-expensive resolution systems. v  vFor games that do implement randomness I'm partial to things like miss tokens and bennies, where randomness is a fallback system, a backup for a give and take economy between players and the GM.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:34
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Randomness is such a big part of RPGs that I can't even remember a videogame RPG that has no RNG or something of the like. Even actiony ones like the Witcher and the like have them for some features.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:34
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I agree, but it really doesn't feel much better to whiff a jump over a canyon than it does to whiff a mace swing, perhaps worse since skill rolls tend have more immediate narrative consequences.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:36
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I've been working on a TRPG that involves bosses having distinct patterns you can plan around and weak points you can target- I don't really know Monster Hunter but I'm aiming for a video game feel. kingdom death doesn't work very well on top of its dare-you-enter-my-magical-realm fetish problems, but it uses grid combat combined with decks and targeting tables unique to each monster to achieve a SOTC/Monster Hunter feel. to do something like that, you need to sink a bunch of design and components into every single monster, though
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Apr 12, 2017 18:40
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Bar Crow posted:A key part of this type of video game feel is that the game is skill-based, not rng-based. Randomly failing every single action a set percentage of the time is reasonable in a game of risk mitigation and attrition like the traditional dungeon crawl. In an action game, flawless execution is the expected result of mastery. Well, bear in mind a key part of an RPG is that it's both game and fiction, and pulling a 1-credit run of Dodonpachi is impressive as a real-life test of skill but "and then the fighter flew in and blew up all the things" isn't much of a story. Failure is a part of fiction. I did experiment with diceless systems early on but those kind of boil down of players effectively choosing failure or success based on their resources, which leads to more analysis paralysis and disengagement, I felt. I may just not have the skill to implement it properly, but that's what I saw.
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Apr 12, 2017 18:43
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Honestly, the kind of player who actually ends up with analysis paralysis is going to have it in any system where there are limited resources unless every time a choice appears there is a clearly marked best option. I used to game with a guy who couldn't decide which first level spell to prep for the day in AD&D, which is such a nonchoice at 1st level it's almost a joke. There are a few options here. One is to help them reach a decision, but depending on how you handle things you might end up quarterbacking them, which doesn't help in the long run. Some of the other options, like timers, are a bit mean and in many cases counterproductive. I think the best option would be design your system in such a way that your choices become immediately tactically meaningful, like with a paper-rock-scissors style hit resolution, if you pick the wrong one you screw up, but since neither side reveals their choice until after both have been made any choice is valid if you can't decide. You might make it so that NPCs always use specific choices or order of choices, which would reward players who pay attention while still keeping things in the dark the first encounter. Giving them set patterns that switch under certain triggers would work better than having them just do the same thing over and over again here, but this would be more for GM-less play than anything else, if you're going to have an active facilitator it's better to let the GM make their own choices.
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Apr 12, 2017 19:00
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Plutonis posted:Randomness is such a big part of RPGs that I can't even remember a videogame RPG that has no RNG or something of the like. Even actiony ones like the Witcher and the like have them for some features. I can think of a lot of video game RPGs (roguelikes, especially) where the first systems you're introduced to -- the ones that control the early game -- are heavily random, but the more you advance the more you find deterministic systems that allow you to nearly or sometimes even completely suppress randomness. (Or, similarly, raise the floor of the random range so high that you can still succeed/survive and go on to win even in a worst case scenario -- a situation that's still random but where the randomness is effectively meaningless.) Of course, this is more of an accident than a design feature, but it's kind of cool watching games stumble onto better design unawares. 
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Apr 12, 2017 19:11
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Plutonis posted:Randomness is such a big part of RPGs that I can't even remember a videogame RPG that has no RNG or something of the like. Even actiony ones like the Witcher and the like have them for some features. Banner Saga I guess I can think of a few tactics games and stuff like that that don't have randomness, but they're competitive games.
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Apr 12, 2017 20:04
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signalnoise posted:Banner Saga I guess Banner Saga has RNG! Both on combat (deflect/dodge/whatever) and on events. e: Whats the tradgame discord link Plutonis fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Apr 12, 2017 |
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Apr 12, 2017 20:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That's because "pattern recognition-based action games" is a completely rear end-backwards way of approaching it. Trying to recreate the gameplay of those games is both probably a lost cause just in and of itself, and even harder because most people don't really have the kind of comprehensive understanding of how the guts of those games really work to translate them properly even if it were possible or desirable. I've tried to write this game every year or so for the past 5 years, and I keep ending up running into some difficulty or another making it too complicated or annoying in practice. One of these days I'll get it right. It's an incredibly interesting design challenge, but also a very difficult one. Like, Panic at the Dojo started as one of these and then kinda fell away from it to become something less ambitious.
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Apr 12, 2017 22:04
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I think the recognition needs to come from success rather than failure to work as a board game or ttrpg. Like using Gloomhaven as an example again, the first time you encounter Skeleton Archers you might only fight 1-2 of them so you see their abilities at a relatively slow pace. Then maybe 4 dungeons later you fight a shitload of them, but you have knowledge from the last time you fought them and know what sort of abilities are in their deck. Ok "needs" might be too harsh of a word but it's definitely easier and I think most players will prefer that method since "knowledge" and how to apply it is really the only skill you can test in ttrpgs - there's no execution or dexterity requirement unless you use the aforementioned stacking dice tower or whatever. e: like a Monster Hunter game might have you fight Jaggia before Great Jaggi, and it'd be good design to have the latter use some moves and behaviors from the former even though they aren't exactly the same.
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Apr 12, 2017 22:23
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The only way to replicate action games in trad games is to do a LARP. Go on, coward. Do it.
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Apr 12, 2017 22:32
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Countblanc posted:You could easily make a game with minimal randomness by using some of the various combat resolutions you see in board games like Kemet or, perhaps more obviously, Gloomhaven. The latter in particular would give both the depth and breadth of 4e-esque combat while keeping randomness to "I deal 6 (or 2) damage instead of 4 damage this turn" once every 4-5 turns. Gloomhaven dodges the human adjudicator issue by having monsters fight with a rudimentary AI deck unique to that monster type, but you could definitely just have monsters act as simpler GM-controlled characters. I mean my personal anecdotal experience is that a lot of RPG tables still tend to have some quarterbacking going on, especially if you have players that are more wishy-washy about stuff so someone else at the table takes it upon themselves to be Lead Tactician and do things like tell people "okay Bob, on your turn if you attack that orc over there using your Lightning Beard spell then we'll be able to deal with these guys, Steve can you heal Dave?" My other anecdotal experience is more in agreement with you, but the thing about making meaty tactical games is that many RPG groups seem to be comprised of people trying to get three or four different sorts of game out of the same game, if that makes sense. Joe likes crunchy tactics while Bob just wants to hang out and drink beer and occasionally hit people with his axe while Steve is super-invested in the story and exploration stuff, and consequently a lot of RPGs at least give the impression of being malleable and flexible enough to accommodate everyone all together even when it's pretty clear in cases where they're better supported in one aspect than others (D&D). Making an RPG in the vein of Gloomhaven, which for the record I think is a pretty well-designed game, runs the risk of encountering the D&D 4E Effect where when you lay all your cards on the table and are explicitly up-front about what sort of game it is and design towards that goal with a focus that the people who aren't into that side of things bounce off of it for reasons both genuine and perceived ("combat in 4E takes longer than I'd like to resolve" on one end and "it's literally impossible to roleplay" on the other). This sort of thing is the norm when it comes to boardgames and video games but it seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way when it comes to RPGs.
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Apr 13, 2017 00:40
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Kai Tave posted:the D&D 4E Effect where when you lay all your cards on the table and are explicitly up-front about what sort of game it is and design towards that goal with a focus that the people who aren't into that side of things bounce off of it for reasons both genuine and perceived ("combat in 4E takes longer than I'd like to resolve" on one end and "it's literally impossible to roleplay" on the other). This sort of thing is the norm when it comes to boardgames and video games but it seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way when it comes to RPGs. in my opinion the idea that 4 people who want to play 4 different games should all nonetheless play 1 game that barely meets everyone's criteria is not only wrong, but is perhaps the central thing holding back rpg design, period. And we would all be better off if Joe played Strike or Panic at the Dojo, Steve played a * world hack, and Bob just hung out and maybe played a casual board game or something lightweight. We don't ask people who like basketball to play games where you dribble a soccerball before hitting it with a hockey stick at a croquet goal because all of their friends like those other games. The tighter your design goal, the better your game will be at actually doing the thing your players are there to do. If some people dislike that and want thing X out of it... they can play other games.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:05
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Impermanent posted:in my opinion the idea that 4 people who want to play 4 different games should all nonetheless play 1 game that barely meets everyone's criteria is not only wrong, but is perhaps the central thing holding back rpg design, period. And we would all be better off if Joe played Strike or Panic at the Dojo, Steve played a * world hack, and Bob just hung out and maybe played a casual board game or something lightweight. We don't ask people who like basketball to play games where you dribble a soccerball before hitting it with a hockey stick at a croquet goal because all of their friends like those other games. I mean I don't disagree at all, it's just that a whole bunch of people (I mean for certain values of "a whole bunch") have made a lot of hay out of being various shades of angry about RPGs that try to break out of what I would call the "traditional RPG" mold. Even 4E which was still about as traditional as RPGs get in a lot of ways, with the same time-tested XP-and-leveling gameplay loop and rolling d20s for everything to go dungeon crawl adventuring with your party, got a lot of pushback for various reasons which largely seemed centered around how gamified they made it in pursuit of achieving a specific playstyle and feel. The good news is that these days with the prevalence and comparative ease of self-publishing and crowdfunding, indie designers can much more easily afford to create the game they want aimed at specific sorts of interested players without necessarily bankrupting themselves in the process. The downside of course is that it's not necessarily any easier to get people to play these games as opposed to even more D&D.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:15
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The other downside is too many people keep trying to remake D&D instead of doing something worthwhile.
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Apr 13, 2017 02:25
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While it's less of an issue here due to the fairly vibrant Play by Post culture for some games, saying "everyone should just play their ideal game" is something of a logistical impossibility for many. If I want to play 4e or Strike my options irl currently basically do not exist, similar for when I have the itch to try something like Chuubo's or Fellowship. I can either play Pathfinder/3.5e, 5e, or if I'm lucky, some White Wolf titles. Back at my old scene I was able to at least play 4e because I had enough friends with whom I had built faith in my gaming tastes to convince to try it despite all of them hearing it was awful, but since moving it's not even an option. So ultimately I just don't play irl, but fortunately I have alternatives. Some people just don't know about those other options or don't enjoy playing online or whatever, so they play 3.5e despite wanting to play a guy who swings a broadsword around with crunchy, tactical combat because it's close enough if you squint and playing a game with your friends is inherently fun unless poo poo goes really sour for whatever reason. Meanwhile Sarah is also playing 3.5e because it's her ideal system, and Jeremy is playing along because rolling History checks is the closest he can come to the storygame he so desires.
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Apr 13, 2017 03:07
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The big trick I see a lot of people unwilling to try there is to introduce people who don't play tabletop games to tabletop games. Bring out a Fiasco or a Dungeon World, something lighter, and try and get your mom and your uncle to play with you, or some friends from work. Anything pick-up-and-play works particularly well, especially if you can do a whole game/adventure in only 2-3 hours. Trying to get people who have only played D&D to try anything else in good faith is like pulling teeth. It sucks and I hate it, but unless they mention wanting to try new things, the only way to get people into non-D&D games is to grab 'em before they get into D&D.
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Apr 13, 2017 04:55
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that doesn't really jive with the fact, however unfortunate, that most people got into the hobby through D&D what i suspect is actually happening is the people who want a storygame-like experience just bounce off of D&D in the first place and, as a result, don't get into tabletop
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Apr 13, 2017 05:01
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It's kind of weird that I've never really had a problem getting people into boardgames to try other boardgames at least once without any moaning or complaining about how they just want to play Settlers of Catan again thanks. I dunno if it's the fact that a boardgame only lasts a couple-few hours at most while the assumption is you'll be locked into an RPG campaign forever or if it's just a (sub)cultural difference surrounding the two hobbies or what but I've rarely had a time where I brought a new game to boardgame night and was met with dug-in heels.
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Apr 13, 2017 05:19
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Oh yeah board games are completely different. Anyone brings in a new board game, and everyone wants to give it a go at least once! I really wish that bled over a bit to RPGs.Tuxedo Catfish posted:that doesn't really jive with the fact, however unfortunate, that most people got into the hobby through D&D That seems likely, about half the people I play with these days has had a D&D experience very similar to that. Tried it, hated it from the get go, left the hobby until I introduced em to something else.
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Apr 13, 2017 05:30
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Board games last hours, tabletop RPGs last months. (Unless they're one-shots, and one-shots can be a fairly alien concept in their own right.)
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Apr 13, 2017 05:45
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Board games last hours, tabletop RPGs last months. I keep shooting myself in the foot because while I can pull-off a oneshot easily enough, it always goes so well that I think we should keep playing, and I'm not as good at campaigns insofar as stringing along an interesting long-term plot.
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Apr 13, 2017 05:54
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Board games last hours, tabletop RPGs last months. While that's true, and I even bring that point up, the fact is that there's more to it given that people can and will play D&D for years and sometimes even decades without end, the same game over and over even in different campaigns or with different groups, while I'm fairly certain that barring the occasional chit-and-hex wargame if you told most boardgamers that they'd have to play the same game without any variation for the same length of time they'd absolutely hate it. Even beyond the general playtime scale difference between the two, the RPG side of tradgaming seems a lot less eager on average to try new games as opposed to sticking with a single game or very small pool of games.
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Apr 13, 2017 05:55
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I always sell new RPGs concept and campaign idea first, even to RPG people. Also one-shots.
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Apr 13, 2017 08:39
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I know plenty of people keen to play D&D, regardless of alternatives offered. Oh, any thread for that new Rune Wars game from FFG?
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Apr 13, 2017 13:01
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Aside from Fate (since I'm already considering it) what would be another good system for running Planescape? Keep in mind that I don't want to just do adventures in Sigil, I want to explore the rest of the planes and possibly even make some trips to the Prime.Cassa posted:I know plenty of people keen to play D&D, regardless of alternatives offered. Clearly, they are sad fools, merely proto-grognards who must be shown the error of their ways. The fun they seek to have is but a mirage, and D&D is the desert where they will choke on the sands of their ignorance. 
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Apr 13, 2017 13:05
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