|
Kai Tave posted:e; oh wait, doesn't Shadowrun still have a BP/XP split going on too? Every edition of Shadowrun is a hot mess, and each of them are a hot mess in their own way.
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 02:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 09:53 |
|
|
I mean that right there is a big reason a lot of dice pool games (and have you noticed it's always dice pool games?) encourage players to max out the poo poo They Want To Do The Most numbers at chargen instead of diversifying and running into multiplicative XP costs outside of chargen, instead of whatever pissy "players just want to win and get butthurt if they can't" drivel people like to try and push.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 02:23
|
|
|
everybody designing a new rpg needs to have their head smashed with a copy of gloomhaven until they're dead or they learn what it has to say about character advancement.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 02:37
|
|
|
Impermanent posted:everybody designing a new rpg needs to have their head smashed with a copy of gloomhaven until they're dead or they learn what it has to say about character advancement. Gloomhaven is also very good, yes. I'd say it's one of the better games to come out in the last year or so.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 02:40
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:And you've never sounded like anything other than an insufferable dickhead in any discussion tbh Probably accurate. I'm not exactly shy about having opinions about elfgames.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 02:46
|
|
|
here comes a dumb effortpost on why character advancement in gloomhaven is so good. Your character abilities are represented by a hand of cards with a top and bottom. you combine the top and bottom of 2 different cards to have your action for the turn. So the top of 1 card might be 'attack 5' and the bottom of another card might be 'move 3'. and you'd use that to move 3 and attack for 5 dmg. You always use 2 cards a round, and you take short breathers within combat to refill your hand. Character advancement comes from three things: 1. levelling - where you get a new card you can add to your hand but only after taking an old one out. These new cards tend to be better than old cards, but also more specialized. IT's rare that one will simply be a higher numbers version of an old one. They'll do something like 'you attack two enemies and stun them'. 2. Equipment - tightly defined equipment cards allow your character specific abilities during combat. Leather armor doesn't boost your AC - it lets you cause an enemy attack on you to have disadvantage (think 5e d&d, rolling twice and keeping the lowest attack roll) once per short rest. A warhammer doesn't change your damage - it lets you stun enemies you hit once per combat. Consumable items are pouches of those items which you have 1 of per combat - no tracking health potions here. 3. Enchantment - with great amounts of money invested in your character, you can add a sticker to a card that adds a small piece of functionality to a card. You can turn a regular move action into a jump action, which lets it ignore obstacles. Or you could increase the damage of an attack you use a lot by 1. Or let it poison opponents. These are much rarer than others, and adding +1 is usually the least interesting option, but it is the most straightforward way you have of boosting an ability. What effects does this achieve? Well, for starters it gives each character classa strong identity - no one can take the same cards as someone else, after all. Yet it also allows for a lot of flexibilty within a class. Taking different cards meaningfully changes how a character will interact with the rules of the game. The equipment cards allow you to build characters in very different ways. One starter class, the cragheart, can be built as anything from a ranged damage dealer to an up-close tank, mostly based off of which cards they take into battle and how they gear up. Yet, it's pretty hard to actually have a character that's useless. It also makes character optimization something that's both rewarding (Because the game is tough) and intuitive. Because there's so few 'number bonuses' optimizing your character is about building the play style you're interested in, rather than stacking multiplicative bonuses endlessly. You're not trying to find every numeric boost to hitting orcs in a certain way. Instead, you're thinking - do i want to be able to take a hit? Should I increase my crowd control ability by taking a warhammer, or my single target damage by grabbing a poison dagger which will allow me to poison a few more armored enemies in a combat? Or am I better off spending my gold for now on a consumable item that will let me get out of a bad spot? tl;dr building specificity over time is better than all at once, and avoiding +1's is good for keeping options interesting and flexible.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:02
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:The only thing that's worse than a bad game are people who get pissy at players for engaging with a bad game in the manner it permits them to as opposed to cleaving to some imaginary Good Gamer Etiquette handbook. Nobody should be playing a fighter in non-4e D&D, so shouldn't be cleaving to anything.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:02
|
|
|
Gloomhaven sounds pretty cool, yeah. It being a physical board game based around cards does make it a bit harder to skim stuff for ideas though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:06
|
|
|
Xarbala posted:Gloomhaven sounds pretty cool, yeah. cards are just a way of conveying types of actions in combat - look at 4e, strike, gamma world, etc. It's undeniably a little 'game-y' to actually have cards you use as abilities in battle but we already have spell slots and once per day uses of lay on hands and whatever pretty entrenched in the hobby. You could do a similar thing with the spells of a wizard in D&D-alikes, or a fighter with 'stances', etc. Another way to look at it is - why not try cards? They're just as removed from the action of swinging a sword as dice are.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:14
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Somebody remind me what the policy is on distributing Last Stand, ... is it kosher to share it around or was it more of a backup for people who helped fund it? Good news, friend! Mikan posted:Last Stand is free now! You have my permission to share it with anybody and everybody. The URL's also http://tinyurl.com/LastStandCollection, in case anyone lost it. That's nearly the entire Funhaver catalogue, unless I'm mistaken. But if you want more Last Stand specifically, you can still access the splatbook preview and even get a physical Armory Deck.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:16
|
|
|
Impermanent posted:cards are just a way of conveying types of actions in combat - look at 4e, strike, gamma world, etc. It's undeniably a little 'game-y' to actually have cards you use as abilities in battle but we already have spell slots and once per day uses of lay on hands and whatever pretty entrenched in the hobby. You could do a similar thing with the spells of a wizard in D&D-alikes, or a fighter with 'stances', etc. I don't mean to say I'm not down with the format, I get it. I just meant I had a brain fart and forgot that I could totally just look for a pdf of card scans couldn't I.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:25
|
|
|
Auralsaurus Flex posted:Good news, friend! Thanks for the clarification on that, I appreciate it. Last Stand's too interesting a game to want to consign to obscurity but I also didn't want to go sharing something around that might get more people sniffing around Mikan's life if she was concerned about that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 03:53
|
|
|
Xarbala posted:I don't mean to say I'm not down with the format, I get it. ah word. pm me if you're interested in that sort of thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:02
|
|
|
Impermanent posted:ah word. pm me if you're interested in that sort of thing. Thanks for the offer but I think I got it, apparently some of the print and play assets are still floating around. Also got the rulebook so I can parse out how this stuff goes together. I might actually straight up try to grab a copy of the game proper, all 20 goddamn pounds of it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:17
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Seriously, look at this poo poo. You have to go through the Wayback Machine to find any of it anymore thanks to WotC but there was a charop forum full of this stuff.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:20
|
|
|
Impermanent posted:everybody designing a new rpg needs to have their head smashed with a copy of gloomhaven until they're dead or they learn what it has to say about character advancement. #BlessThisMess
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:23
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:Honestly, after playing and running Shadowrun for so long, I am of the opinion that CharOp is poisonous bullshit that is actively the enemy of fun at the table. An optimized character has no way to grow or adapt in gameplay, and generally the player gets bored or butthurt if they cannot apply their optimized gimmick on a high percentage of game situations. Tuxedo Catfish posted:i don't think charop is the source of either of the problems you're describing here
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:32
|
|
|
Yeah but that's because it's a poorly designed game, and because spreading yourself out to be a rounded character just means you'll suck at lots of things instead of being good at one. There's plenty of games that manage to make over-specialization like that a bad idea in one way or another. Edit: In other words, the problem is that the rules are set up so the mechanically correct way to play kind of sucks, and the way that would seem like it would be more fun sucks even more. Not doing charop in Shadowrun doesn't magically fix that. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Sep 27, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:41
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:It kind of is, though. Here's the thing with SR: It's much in the same genre and playstyle as D&D, but with more "modern" design, so there's no class and level system to ensure a certain baseline competency. In D&D 4e, everyone has combat and non-combat abilities. In Shadowrun it's possible to optimize a character for combat and nothing else, or hacking and nothing else, or negotiating and nothing else. When the fixer is doing their thing the street samurai is bored, and a combat that can challenge the samurai will reduce the fixer to chunky salsa. we've been over this Comrade Gorbash posted:Edit: In other words, the problem is that the rules are set up so the mechanically correct way to play kind of sucks, and the way that would seem like it would be more fun sucks even more. Not doing charop in Shadowrun doesn't magically fix that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:50
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:Yeah but that's because it's a poorly designed game, and because spreading yourself out to be a rounded character just means you'll suck at lots of things instead of being good at one. There's plenty of games that manage to make over-specialization like that a bad idea in one way or another. The rules are set up on the assumption that characters are diversified, and the default threats are built around those expected dicepools. The problem doesn't really rear its head until you get a monofocused optimized character present in a party that built to the rules assumptions. The alternate PACKS chargen rules (which are a Rolemaster-style background packages deal) takes a lot of that out and generates much more rounded characters, which is about as clear as you can be about the intent of the designers. The implementation of that intent, as usual for SR, is hit or miss.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:54
|
|
|
If Shadowrun is actually "meant" to have only dicepools of X or less at chargen then that ought to be a formalized rule, bam, there you go. Games aren't based on woulda-shoulda-coulda, "intent" isn't game design.Halloween Jack posted:It kind of is, though. Here's the thing with SR: It's much in the same genre and playstyle as D&D, but with more "modern" design, so there's no class and level system to ensure a certain baseline competency. In D&D 4e, everyone has combat and non-combat abilities. In Shadowrun it's possible to optimize a character for combat and nothing else, or hacking and nothing else, or negotiating and nothing else. When the fixer is doing their thing the street samurai is bored, and a combat that can challenge the samurai will reduce the fixer to chunky salsa. Due to the way that Shadowrun's system works, smaller dice pools are generally not super worth bothering to roll on things you really want to succeed. Every three dice in your pool is only an average of 1 success, and it's a system where you want multiple successes in a lot of cases. Later editions give you a small pool of meta-currency you can use to reroll or add more dice to a roll, but the other thing about Shadowrun is that it's very much a typical pass/fail binary outcome system so there really isn't a ton of incentive for players to A). spread their chargen resources around or B). go out of their way to make important skill checks with modestly sized dice pools because there isn't any sort of interesting fail-forward or multi-axis resolution (ala FFG's Star Wars games where a single dice roll gives you success/failure as well as unexpected benefit/unexpected complication and real big heroic opportunity/real big trouble in various combinations) you can get out of it, it's just "well I guess you passed, averagely" or "welp you failed." This isn't something unique to Shadowrun, a lot of games fall into that sort of trap, and that's before you take into account a lot of them cling to stupid XP/BP splits for arbitrary reasons (looking at you Exalted 3E) which further incentivize players to front-load their character's primary schtick to begin with because doing so over the course of play through XP expenditures would take way longer than simply going all-in on one or two primary focuses, then fleshing out the other stuff later on.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:55
|
|
|
Re: Gloomhavenchat, I can't wait for mine to arrive (sometime within the next celestial age, I believe). The weapon system is interesting - I wonder how applicable "all weapons have unique special abilities but do the same damage (mostly)" would be to a D&Dalike. Warriors get to use weapon abilities more, or something.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 04:57
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:If Shadowrun is actually "meant" to have only dicepools of X or less at chargen then that ought to be a formalized rule, bam, there you go. Games aren't based on woulda-shoulda-coulda, "intent" isn't game design. You're right, it ought to be, but SR's writers are not remotely loving competent.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 05:00
|
|
|
BinaryDoubts posted:Re: Gloomhavenchat, I can't wait for mine to arrive (sometime within the next celestial age, I believe). The weapon system is interesting - I wonder how applicable "all weapons have unique special abilities but do the same damage (mostly)" would be to a D&Dalike. Warriors get to use weapon abilities more, or something. 4th Edition with inherent bonuses to ignore the gear treadmill is basically that, and a lot of charop builds ab/used magic gear to get special abilities. E: And here's my dumb rear end somehow completely forgetting about different damage dice. Still fairly close as the melee weapons were relatively balanced inside their own categories. SilverMike fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Sep 27, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 05:05
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:If Shadowrun is actually "meant" to have only dicepools of X or less at chargen then that ought to be a formalized rule, bam, there you go. Games aren't based on woulda-shoulda-coulda, "intent" isn't game design. Liquid Communism posted:The alternate PACKS chargen rules (which are a Rolemaster-style background packages deal) takes a lot of that out and generates much more rounded characters, which is about as clear as you can be about the intent of the designers. The implementation of that intent, as usual for SR, is hit or miss. Better late than never.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 05:28
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Thanks for the clarification on that, I appreciate it. Last Stand's too interesting a game to want to consign to obscurity but I also didn't want to go sharing something around that might get more people sniffing around Mikan's life if she was concerned about that. I’ve talked to Mikan recently and it’s not a problem.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 06:16
|
|
|
I feel as though it's possible to say 'games can be flawed' or even 'this game is too bad to play' and also 'charop can be massively unfun for other players at the table, so maybe have some care.' Like, for a non-elfgames example, my fencing coach recently told me about a guy he knew who used to, and may still, modify his foil jacket for electric foil. Not in any way that was against the rules - he would add Teflon to the wire jacket that makes the connection with the point of the foil, ensuring that glancing hits really slid off and wouldn't press the button on the tip; he would hem up the shoulders of the jacket into something more like a tank top, reducing the target area by an inch or two on the shoulders. None of this was ever a problem for him in terms of the rules, in any way. It was fully allowed. But fencing's a sport undertaken with other people, and the point of the sport is, indeed, to win the bout - but it's still seen as breaking the basic social contract to eke out advantages in this way. That's about how I feel about aggressive charop; it's fine if everyone in the group is into that, and like literally any other part of RPG-playing, should be discussed like mature adults. Just because something is allowed by the sort of necessarily flawed RAW doesn't mean a player who does it is in line, in the same way that a GM is rarely restrained by the rules from being an absolute shitheel, but also shouldn't do that. Maybe I'm just pessimistic; I expect most RPGs to contain some kind of weird mechanical lacunae, simply because they're complex systems built in a hobbyist industry, and even much more professional games industry things like AAA video games also often have massive bugs. It's just not reasonable to expect every game people might want to play to be perfectly constructed, so having social agreements that make sure everyone involved have a good time is already necessary. Why can't that extend to include 'please don't make a character that will completely outshine the rest of the group' the same way one generally doesn't have one player start with way more EXP or stuff than the rest? I mean, part of the problem is that some games (Including, sadly, Exalted 3e) can lead to unfortunate differences between characters due to poor character building design. That's a sign, in my view, to have the group generally agree about how optimized their characters should be, and definitely grounds for players to consider editing their character sheets (or getting free stuff to make up) if serious issues arise in play. Anyways, that's my 2c. tl;dr, RAW is always going to be flawed and whether or not those flaws are exacerbated by player or GM action can seriously change how much the game is playable. Having a social contract to try and generally keep the party on the same page in terms of mechanical effectiveness is no different from any other OOC agreement to make the game work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 06:30
|
|
|
Cooperative, collaborative games have social contracts by default unless your game group is inherently dysfunctional in which case you shouldn't be playing such a game in the first place. A game, any game, shouldn't require a social contract to paper over deficient design. It's fine to say "hey guys I know this game is wonky, let's reign it in" if your personal group of gaming buds is down for it, it's another thing to go around acting like people who don't abide by your own personal social contract are shitters for doing so. This hobby is chockablock full of people who've internalized the attitude that games can't fail, they can only be failed, and that if only it weren't for those darn munchkins/minmaxers/powergamers/charoppers/whatever that there wouldn't be any problems but a lovely game is still a lovely game, and given a choice I'd rather play a game that respects my ability to perform basic arithmetic and pattern-recognition than one where I'm expected to pretend to be stupider than I already am in order to play it the way it's "intended" as divined from half-baked guesswork, personal assumptions, and a deleted comment a freelancer made on a messageboard two years ago.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 07:10
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Cooperative, collaborative games have social contracts by default unless your game group is inherently dysfunctional in which case you shouldn't be playing such a game in the first place. A game, any game, shouldn't require a social contract to paper over deficient design. It's fine to say "hey guys I know this game is wonky, let's reign it in" if your personal group of gaming buds is down for it, it's another thing to go around acting like people who don't abide by your own personal social contract are shitters for doing so. This hobby is chockablock full of people who've internalized the attitude that games can't fail, they can only be failed, and that if only it weren't for those darn munchkins/minmaxers/powergamers/charoppers/whatever that there wouldn't be any problems but a lovely game is still a lovely game, and given a choice I'd rather play a game that respects my ability to perform basic arithmetic and pattern-recognition than one where I'm expected to pretend to be stupider than I already am in order to play it the way it's "intended" as divined from half-baked guesswork, personal assumptions, and a deleted comment a freelancer made on a messageboard two years ago. youre sounding like an rear end in a top hat, relax maybe?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 07:48
|
|
|
Goa Tse-tung posted:youre sounding like an rear end in a top hat, relax maybe? boom, got em.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 07:51
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Cooperative, collaborative games have social contracts by default unless your game group is inherently dysfunctional in which case you shouldn't be playing such a game in the first place. A game, any game, shouldn't require a social contract to paper over deficient design. It's fine to say "hey guys I know this game is wonky, let's reign it in" if your personal group of gaming buds is down for it, it's another thing to go around acting like people who don't abide by your own personal social contract are shitters for doing so. This hobby is chockablock full of people who've internalized the attitude that games can't fail, they can only be failed, and that if only it weren't for those darn munchkins/minmaxers/powergamers/charoppers/whatever that there wouldn't be any problems but a lovely game is still a lovely game, and given a choice I'd rather play a game that respects my ability to perform basic arithmetic and pattern-recognition than one where I'm expected to pretend to be stupider than I already am in order to play it the way it's "intended" as divined from half-baked guesswork, personal assumptions, and a deleted comment a freelancer made on a messageboard two years ago. Man, and you call me insufferable.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 08:05
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:Man, and you call me insufferable. I'm a big believer in the truth, yes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 08:17
|
|
|
From an industry point of view I think a bigger deal is that "no system will be perfect and every game will have a social contract" ends up practically translating to "let's just play D&D now and forever." After all, D&D is flawed, but if every other system is too there's no benefit to switching. And if you disregard that then D&Ds social advantages become overwhelming (most groups will have their social contract for D&D established, much more potential for third party contact and integration, much lower inertia, etc)
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 10:29
|
|
|
FATAL is in fact quite enjoyable if you ask people not to roll ogres just so they can instantly rape every encounter to death.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 13:04
|
|
|
hyphz posted:After all, D&D is flawed, but if every other system is too there's no benefit to switching. Systems can be less flawed, and thus less poo poo than D&D, which is very poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 14:04
|
|
|
Goa Tse-tung posted:youre sounding like an rear end in a top hat, relax maybe? He's completely correct and I would far rather play with someone who takes that attitude, GM or player, than someone who doesn't.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 14:40
|
|
|
[quote="“Lemon-Lime”" post="“476813644”"] Systems can be less flawed, and thus less poo poo than D&D, which is very poo poo. [/quote] Sure. But it doesn't matter in practice. The social shoring required for D&D is a part of pretty much every group, by default. As soon as it becomes apparent that a new system is going to require effort to work out new shoring, it's onto a loser.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 14:43
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Sure. But it doesn't matter in practice. The social shoring required for D&D is a part of pretty much every group, by default. As soon as it becomes apparent that a new system is going to require effort to work out new shoring, it's onto a loser. What do you mean by "social shoring"?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 15:30
|
|
|
hyphz posted:From an industry point of view I think a bigger deal is that "no system will be perfect and every game will have a social contract" ends up practically translating to "let's just play D&D now and forever." D&D enjoys this benefit even compared to more mechanically rigorous games anyway though, thanks to what my good friend Ryan Dancey would term "network externalities." There really isn't much use in worrying about this particular issue because it should just be taken as a given that most gaming groups are going to want to play D&D or something similar forever regardless of whatever else is out there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 16:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 09:53 |
|
|
For the record, I absolutely think there's a threshold of how flawed a game is before it's not worth trying to hold it together that way. D&D is the Monopoly or Risk of RPGs; tons of people are going to play it and try to extract a good experience from it, but it's absolutely poorly designed for that. But 'games are written by fallible, often undercompensated people' is hardly a radical opinion; game devs constantly talk about what they wish they had changed or done differently. In which case, why not start from the position of 'we should make sure this game is fun for all the players?' A better game makes play easier and reduces the chances of this, certainly. But the group doesn't necessarily want to play the most mechanically perfect game, as opposed to the game with the setting and genre that appeals at the moment. I'm currently running Mage: the Awakening 2e, rather than Fellowship, even though I'm certain Fellowship is more mechanically balanced and streamlined, because we wanted to play the Mage setting and didn't want to homebrew literally everything to make it work. Also, homebrew is absolutely going to be flawed; when I've made systems for settings I wrote myself they've been easily broken, because I'm not an experienced or particularly talented designer. Does this mean we should just never do that, since any player who can break that open has license to do so?
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2017 17:40
|
|