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hyphz posted:See, you're right it's not unreasonable, but at the same time it shows the problem. If you want a completely balanced challenge, flip a coin. What's the gain in making it "spend hours poring over the books to get the right combinations of powers, just to have the same result as flipping a coin would have had?" This isn't even close to what a balanced gaming experience means in, like, any context.
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Aug 26, 2017 02:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:There is actually a new D&D game in development! *probably not but I certainly never played whatever game he was in if he was in something before
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Aug 26, 2017 02:30
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He was in one of the Baldurs Gate games. You can kill him and take his stuff iirc.
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Aug 26, 2017 02:32
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Der Waffle Mous posted:He was in one of the Baldurs Gate games. This concludes the important discussion of Bruenor Battlehammer in the year 2017
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Aug 26, 2017 02:34
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hyphz posted:See, you're right it's not unreasonable, but at the same time it shows the problem. If you want a completely balanced challenge, flip a coin. What's the gain in making it "spend hours poring over the books to get the right combinations of powers, just to have the same result as flipping a coin would have had?" This is literally the most commonly reused bullshit refrain on why we shouldn't bother ever balancing anything and minmaxxing is good (until the wizard isn't the most powerful, then it's all broken and has to be changed). It's entirely incorrect in every way. Balance is not a 50/50 chance of success on everything, it's that all choices are equally viable. Shooting someone with a gun and shooting them with a laser gun, if held up as being equally viable options, should, in fact, be equally viable options. Choosing to play as a no multiclass 1-20 Fighter, and choosing to play as a no multiclass 1-20 wizard, and choosing to play as some kind of mix between them, if all three are presented as equal choices, should mean all three are equally viable and all three can effect the game to (roughly) the same degree. It means, to be frank, the actual opposite. The whole loving point is to remove the idea that you have to spend hours pouring over the books to get just the right combinations of powers. That's not gameplay. That's homework. Events should be decided because of what happen in the game - not because of metagame decisions made before the game even started. hyphz posted:Yes and no. First of all, the discovery changes the nature of the known game - if the players now feel they all have to play in a particular way, that reduces the experience. You could reasonably argue that the game was always broken which is fair enough, but the players won't feel that way if they've been enjoying the game for the last few months unaware of the holes. Man if your example on how "it's not that the game is broken, it's not the game's fault..." is fuckin' Shadowrun, I have real, real bad news.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:02
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Shadowrun, where the physical adept is always the worst choice and the decker dies if you look at him funny.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:This is literally the most commonly reused bullshit refrain on why we shouldn't bother ever balancing anything and minmaxxing is good (until the wizard isn't the most powerful, then it's all broken and has to be changed). It's entirely incorrect in every way. To add to this, because I have a lot of opinions on game balance in tabletops, balance isn't "everyone is equally powerful" or "every option is equally useful," its more like "everyone can play whatever option they want and still contribute meaningfully." PbtA games are pretty good about this, they near-universally provide balanced play experiences, but they definitely don't do it by making everyone equally powerful. For example, The Angel in Apocalypse World is super weak. They're the healer, in a world where being healed still means weeks of bed rest and lots of pain. They can't really defend themselves well, they don't have any real armor or weaponry, they don't have much in the way of food or barter. But they have incomparable leverage, as the only person who can stitch you back together if you come home full of holes. When you play the Angel, you won't be busting heads or taking names or lording over the wastes, but you still get a balanced role in the narrative, because everybody and their mother needs you, and they need you in one piece. And also the structure of *World games involves cutting to whoever we haven't checked in on in a while, so no matter what everyone else is up to, we still spend time with your character and see what you're up to and what you plan to do. So that does a lot to smooth out the bumps. When equal narrative focus is a core rule of the game, that goes a long way to making sure everyone feels important. In my experience, proper balance in a tabletop game is less about everyone's numbers being on par or having equal chances to succeed at whatever they do no matter what, its more about making sure everyone feels valuable, like they're contributing in a way only they could contribute. Its about making sure no one feels like they wasted their time, whether its because the minmaxer killed everything turn one or because half the party spent all battle doing nothing meaningful. And that's where a lot of people trying to design balance in their games trip up. Trying to balance so every option is numerically balanced is very, very hard. It's important in crunchier games, very important, but I think equal (if not more) focus needs to be given to narrative balance, making sure everyone has something meaningful they can do in any situation you put them in. Focusing only on numerical balance (or not focusing on balance at all!) at the expense of narrative balance is the issue a lot of older games face, and I think shifting that focus to narrative balance is the actual thing about PbtA games that makes them work in a way nothing before them really did. That's the real revolutionary idea of it. That and the playbook structure letting you hand someone everything they need to know to play in a single 1-3 page printout. That does SO much to improve pick up and play viability as well as increase player engagement by drastically reducing how much everyone needs to read the books to play the game, and is the other huge revolution that PbtA brought to the table that I am super excited to have stick around forever.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:49
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Maybe this is tangential to the min-maxing discussion, but I saw a thread about rolling for HP, and the number of people who said something to the effect of "This is not something that unbalances a game, it is something the DM balances around." was just shockingly high. Like, apparently letting Fighters roll d10's and Wizards d6's for random amounts of HP was something that the DM can take into account when designing encounters and monsters? loving how? You're going to draw a distinction between adding another +1 or +2 to a monster's damage rolls to factor it in? This also goes hand-in-hand with "keeping things random makes for more roleplaying opportunities!", as though having a Fighter character with 8 HP at level 3 is supposed to be "interesting".
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Aug 26, 2017 03:59
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That's how I feel about all randomness, except possibly for the bare minimum necessary to prevent your game from becoming fantasy-flavored Chess. (I mean, assuming that isn't the goal in the first place.)
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Aug 26, 2017 04:15
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I personally really like randomness (I prefer in play to react to things entirely out of my own control and to interpret results and work out how the random thing occurred) but I like a lot of stuff that has fallen out of vogue for extremely good reasons. Like tables.
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Aug 26, 2017 04:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:Maybe this is tangential to the min-maxing discussion, but I saw a thread about rolling for HP, and the number of people who said something to the effect of "This is not something that unbalances a game, it is something the DM balances around." was just shockingly high. We always used to do 'roll twice and take the highest' back in 2e AD&D, and by the time we hit pathfinder my group had a casual agreement that we all just assumed we maxed out the HD. It never, ever, every factored into scaling in any way.
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Aug 26, 2017 06:39
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neongrey posted:I personally really like randomness (I prefer in play to react to things entirely out of my own control and to interpret results and work out how the random thing occurred) but I like a lot of stuff that has fallen out of vogue for extremely good reasons. Like tables. There's good randomness and bad randomness though. Randomness in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it merely gets used a lot in poorly thought out ways in a lot of RPGs without any further consideration than "random = good." Not knowing the result of deciding to take a course of action is one thing, "I rolled a 1 for my starting hitpoints so the first time a goblin nicks me with a rusty spoon I guess I'll die" is something entirely different. And even then, randomizing stuff like stats and hitpoints can be fine if the game is built from the ground up to be that sort of game, but plenty of people have enshrined stuff like rolling hitpoints and "3d6 six times in order" as a sacred text despite even the game with D&D on the cover no longer being that game these days.
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Aug 26, 2017 06:54
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OK, so what are some games with good char-gen randomisation? The newer Gamma World springs to mind, and so does the newish Conan game. I can't recall the specifics but WHFRP3 had the whole "randomly select a character sheet then customise" thing which was also cool. Anything else?
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Aug 26, 2017 08:46
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Fantasy AGE does a fairly good job as far as always leaving you with a workable character
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Aug 26, 2017 08:48
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Reign.
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Aug 26, 2017 08:51
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I like Through the Breach's approach; random draw to get you started, but then you can choose the stuff that really matters as far as how you will interact with the game mechanically, and you're guaranteed to be able to max out your 'be effective' stat.
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Aug 26, 2017 09:16
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Comrade Gorbash posted:This is not actually the case. A lot of lovely IoT products have opt-out in terms of whether the data is collected, not whether the connectivity is enabled. And that's discounting companies deliberately obfuscating what they're doing, or implementing connectivity features incompetently. A couple years ago one of the early smart home hubs had an admin panel that was searchable over Google, and didn't require a unique login credentials. There's also plenty of devices that are always listening, whether you turn off connectivity or not, and can potentially be forced open if someone finds them while wardriving. Improper siloing of diagnostic and control systems is almost the default rather than the exception. Leperflesh posted:There are players who legit expect - perhaps not totally unreasonably - that while they are min-maxing their character to be uber powerful, the GM is min-maxing the antagonists in the same way; e.g., their minmaxing is necessary to meet the expected challenge. They may even feel aggrieved that their fellow players aren't putting in the effort to make powerful enough characters. Until I pointed out that any attack which was capable of getting through it without the "completely bypass force field" attack modifier would outright kill any other member of the party. Kwyndig posted:Shadowrun, where the physical adept is always the worst choice and the decker dies if you look at him funny.
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Aug 26, 2017 11:16
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From what I've heard, the whole online bonuses thing happened like this because the guy that wrote the cyberware listings thought that the bonus was for having a direct neural connection, while the guy that wrote the decking rules thought it meant your wifi was on and easily hackable. Importantly, neither of these people spoke to each other.
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Aug 26, 2017 11:32
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AlphaDog posted:OK, so what are some games with good char-gen randomisation? The newer Gamma World springs to mind, and so does the newish Conan game. I can't recall the specifics but WHFRP3 had the whole "randomly select a character sheet then customise" thing which was also cool. Anything else? Beyond the Wall's character generation randomly allocates points, much like Reign's.
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Aug 26, 2017 11:42
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AlphaDog posted:OK, so what are some games with good char-gen randomisation? The newer Gamma World springs to mind, and so does the newish Conan game. I can't recall the specifics but WHFRP3 had the whole "randomly select a character sheet then customise" thing which was also cool. Anything else? Nightbane, but not because of balance.
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Aug 26, 2017 11:42
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Kai Tave posted:Reign. seconding this
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Aug 26, 2017 11:45
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Kai Tave posted:There's good randomness and bad randomness though. Randomness in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it merely gets used a lot in poorly thought out ways in a lot of RPGs without any further consideration than "random = good." Not knowing the result of deciding to take a course of action is one thing, "I rolled a 1 for my starting hitpoints so the first time a goblin nicks me with a rusty spoon I guess I'll die" is something entirely different. And even then, randomizing stuff like stats and hitpoints can be fine if the game is built from the ground up to be that sort of game, but plenty of people have enshrined stuff like rolling hitpoints and "3d6 six times in order" as a sacred text despite even the game with D&D on the cover no longer being that game these days. Sure, but that was far more of a response to the notion that all randomness being bad which I posted right after.  (I do actually like 3d6 in order because I like working out what kind of life led would result in those results, but I also like tossing sets of rolls where the answer is "not one that I want to play" so)
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Aug 26, 2017 11:53
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Thinking about it a bit more, I guess the issue is more than RPGs seem to be the only type of game where criticism is based almost entirely on the outcome of the game. And yet putting in any rule deliberately manipulating outcomes is instantly offputting. People complain if one faction in a tabletop minis game has an advantage. But they don't complain that a wrong strategic choice at the beginning can get you kerb stomped, if a different choice was available. They certainly don't demand that every battle is tense and ends with one side winning, but possibly only just - which people do demand from RPGs.
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Aug 26, 2017 12:58
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No, they don't. DnD 5e went (kept?) Back to the tradition of eight encounters per day which means that some of them are trivially easy as to make that many encounters without a long rest possible.
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Aug 26, 2017 14:30
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Kibner posted:No, they don't. DnD 5e went (kept?) Back to the tradition of eight encounters per day which means that some of them are trivially easy as to make that many encounters without a long rest possible. This only for D&D, but correct.
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Aug 26, 2017 14:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:This only for D&D, but correct. Still. No other kind of game is designed based on variable play scenarios that are expected to have one of a small range of managed outcomes and to never be replayed.
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Aug 26, 2017 15:05
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Well, I mean, when the most popular game does it that way, that's a sizeable portion of the gaming population. Pathfinder works the same way, too. CoD games also have different levels of encounters (down and dirty). HeroQuest 2e has different levels of relative challenge and is a big part of how narrative is supposed to work in that system (rising and falling action). Strike! has different encounter types based on intended difficulty/importance. I'm sure there are more games, too.
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Aug 26, 2017 15:29
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Zereth posted:Aren't there some cases where poo poo that used to work in previous editions, like using a smartlink to eject your magazine I think is one, now require it to be connected to the internet? But the arguments are usually about ~realism~ and the idea that 'runners and Corps both make always-optimal choices to maximize their returns, even if they're chasing a tiny tiny edge. That's just not how these things actually work. Hell, there's even a whole philosophy in project management about this idea. It's relatively low effort to solve for 80% of cases, fairly significant effort to solve for the next 10%, and an absolutely absurd amount of effort to solve for the last 10%. So companies generally don't try to cover that last 10% and deal with it on an exception basis, or just don't bother serving those customers at all. This should be how megacorps generally behave. It's also at the heart of why cyberpunk worlds suck - it's one thing if a restaurant that specializes in Thai food ultimately decides just to put up warning signs that they can't accommodate peanut allergies. That still kind of sucks, especially when a bunch of restaurants all make the same decision independently, and there's arguments to be made about what are legitimate reasons for non-accommodation. It's an entirely different level of awful when people working from the same mindset are in charge of safe drinking water or building codes, and that's even before you add in that quarterly returns are the only criterion those people are being judged on, and that the people really responsible are shielded from any actual consequences. Basically if you want a primer on how megacorps should behave, go watch Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, The Big Short, Too Big to Fail, and The Smartest Guys in the Room. Especially the last three since they are connected to actual cases where widely praised industries, corporations, and executives made obviously bad choices because it was easy. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Aug 26, 2017 |
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Aug 26, 2017 15:30
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AlphaDog posted:OK, so what are some games with good char-gen randomisation? The newer Gamma World springs to mind, and so does the newish Conan game. I can't recall the specifics but WHFRP3 had the whole "randomly select a character sheet then customise" thing which was also cool. Anything else? Random chargen is an option for Shadow of the Demon Lord as well and works fine there, mostly setting background details or physical traits that don't make your character unplayable or gate options if you roll the wrong combo.
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Aug 26, 2017 15:49
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I think the next model for games being popular has to do with the number of popular nerds. Harmon, Wheaton, Day, Vin Diesel: if any of these people actually developed an RPG, it would be huge. Maybe not mainstream huge, but in our increasingly balkanized culture, maybe there isn't mainstream huge outside of Pokenon Go, superhero movies and dragging celebrities when they gently caress up. The easiest way to start might be creating an escape room where people solve it in character.
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Aug 26, 2017 23:08
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Golden Bee posted:I think the next model for games being popular has to do with the number of popular nerds. Harmon, Wheaton, Day, Vin Diesel: if any of these people actually developed an RPG, it would be huge. Maybe not mainstream huge, but in our increasingly balkanized culture, maybe there isn't mainstream huge outside of Pokenon Go, superhero movies and dragging celebrities when they gently caress up. I mean, Wil Wheaton has an RPG based on the campaign that he regularly runs on Geek & Sundry. Maybe it's really popular elsewhere but I can't say I've heard a ton of buzz about it beyond the initial "oh hey there's gonna be an RPG based on that campaign Wil Wheaton runs." quote:The easiest way to start might be creating an escape room where people solve it in character. These already exist. There's one (or was one, I haven't checked to see if it's gone out of business) at a mall near where I live, you make a reservation, pay a fee, and you and X number of people have an hour to solve the mystery and escape from a puzzle room.
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Aug 27, 2017 01:18
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Nuns with Guns posted:Random chargen is an option for Shadow of the Demon Lord as well and works fine there, mostly setting background details or physical traits that don't make your character unplayable or gate options if you roll the wrong combo. To add to this, there is an extremely fiddly and involved random-rolling-for-stats system in Forbidden rules. Usually it just involves taking a lower base stat and add 1d3 to it. Some ancestries have more or less in certain stats, but overall the system is just catering to more of the worst.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:27
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Kai Tave posted:These already exist. There's one (or was one, I haven't checked to see if it's gone out of business) at a mall near where I live, you make a reservation, pay a fee, and you and X number of people have an hour to solve the mystery and escape from a puzzle room. I think he/she means an RPG-branded one.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:28
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Wil Wheaton is repellently bad on camera and I don't understand how he still has a popular following. I mean, he's a perfectly nice guy and I genuinely like him, but my god, he is always fake-"on" in a really awful way. I imagine him trying to promote a product to the general public would actually hurt sales.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:38
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Yeah that's the sort of thing where Shadowrun fucks up. The problem is that the rationale commonly used to say "that's dumb" is also dumb. It's one thing to say "thematically this moves too far from the source material" (I don't agree but there's a legit argument that can be constructed here) or "the implementation of this is lovely, both in terms of mechanics and logic" (absolutely true). That's actually a long-running argument in the Shadowrun player community. The newer editions of the game really don't go out of their way enough to talk about just how lovely the daily life of the average non-wageslave in SR's world really is. They badly forgot the 'punk' portion of cyberpunk, and pushed towards 'how cool is all this transhumanist stuff!' instead of 'your characters are ekeing out survival in a world that considers their lives a rounding error on a particularly unimportant spreadsheet'.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:40
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Leperflesh posted:Wil Wheaton is repellently bad on camera and I don't understand how he still has a popular following. I mean, he's a perfectly nice guy and I genuinely like him, but my god, he is always fake-"on" in a really awful way. I imagine him trying to promote a product to the general public would actually hurt sales. I mean his brand was literally kicked off on the strength of "that guy you hated is actually pretty nice", I think he is kind of boned.
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Aug 27, 2017 02:55
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I met Wil Wheaton at Dragoncon one year. Dude stayed late 30 extra minutes to meet everyone in line, and I was the last person. Very nice guy, and I enjoy his onscreen persona. I never watched TNG back in the day so I had no idea who the guy was or why folks hated him so much until I checked it out.
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Aug 27, 2017 03:41
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I don't really have strong feelings about Wil Wheaton one way or the other except for the time he publicly threw a producer on his Youtube show under the bus, blaming him for being the reason they always get so many rules wrong in the games they play, which was a pretty lovely thing to do, but otherwise he's definitely someone I would hold up as being Nerd Famous.
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Aug 27, 2017 03:43
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And here we see the difference between Nerd Famous and Famous Nerd.
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Aug 27, 2017 04:45
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To add to that, Dan Harmon is notable in some nerd circles but a mainstream audience wouldn't immediately recognize that he created Community and Rick and Morty. And Vin Diesel only seems to play D&D 3e, so I'm not optimistic about any RPG he theoretically designs and publishes.
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Aug 27, 2017 14:02
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