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I say this as a person who basically rewrote AD&D 2E and received a lot of upset correspondence about how "this isn't how we played the game???": the key to a good game is having a clear goal. Before any of your fluff and mechanics there needs to be some kind of end result established even if it's as simple as "kill monsters and take their poo poo." And everything has to be in service of that goal or else it's not a game, it's just a collection of rules. My main frustration is when it's not made clear what a game expects you to accomplish and D&D has bounced around wildly in this field. I used to be a vociferous hater of 4E but came around to it once I started designing board games because holy poo poo, it's actually a strong system for tactical combat without rulers. Problem is Wizards had trouble communicating that this was their purest system for fighting monsters and looting dungeons while simultaneously courting the group that went over to Pathfinder who wanted to write character sheets miles long. Communication. It's key.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:02
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Another is that tabletop has pretty specific costs and advantages compared to video games -- what about a farm simulator game demands a GM, or the kind of improvisational freedom that TRPGs offer, or 4-6 players who are always on board to play at a scheduled time, that can't be satisfied by Harvest Moon? Farming is an odd pick given it's a pretty popular theme for tabletop games like Agricola.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:15
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Farming is an odd pick given it's a pretty popular theme for tabletop games like Agricola. They're not RPGs, though, yeah?
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Jan 25, 2018 01:25
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Pendragon has the PC knights own land estates but it's NPC peasant rabble who do the whole farming job
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Jan 25, 2018 01:52
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Isn't Ryuutama pretty light on combat?
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Jan 25, 2018 01:54
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Sort of. The primary mechanics are devoted to journeying, but there's a campaign mode that focuses around combat.
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Jan 25, 2018 02:15
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Moriatti posted:Isn't Ryuutama pretty light on combat? It can be. Or it could not be. There's a combat system in it but you can easily run games with little to no combat.
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Jan 25, 2018 02:16
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There's enough rules you can do a satisfactory combat in Ryuutama. You don't have to, but you can.
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Jan 25, 2018 02:33
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dnd 5e is very much like the governments during the three kingdoms wars in china, in that its very boring and i dont want to read about it.
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Jan 25, 2018 02:55
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grassy gnoll posted:I mean, the first one was pretty good until Robespierre had his psychotic break. much like the french first republic, early editions of d&d benefit from comparison to the horrors that followed, despite being fatally flawed from the beginning e: napoleon III is pathfinder Jeb Bush 2012 fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 03:00
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funmanguy posted:dnd 5e is very much like the governments during the three kingdoms wars in china, in that its very boring and i dont want to read about it. How dare you.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:07
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Moriatti posted:Isn't Ryuutama pretty light on combat? In Ryuutama meeting hostile creatures is as common as any other dangerous turns in your journey. So you'll have to expect it to happen sooner or later the same way you expect a sudden nasty turn in the weather. Certain classes are rewarded more for fighting monsters, so you can expect to have more fights if someone picks, say, a Hunter over a Healer. The game actually has a fairly in-depth list of rules for monster item drops and how to sell their various parts.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:30
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So what exactly were the best parts of 4e with classes and monster math specifically, I am really confused about the essentials and the large number of classes.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:49
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The Democratic Party is a lot like D&D 5e: a focus-grouped mess of non-committal, mealy-mouthed initiatives that actively backed away from improving itself, and only gets attention because the alternatives are perceived to be worse.Banana Man posted:So what exactly were the best parts of 4e with classes and monster math specifically, I am really confused about the essentials and the large number of classes. PHB 1 and PHB 2 contain the best classes. Monster Manual 3 and Monster Vault contain the most improved monster math The Rules Compendium contains the correct skill check DCs The Dark Sun Campaign Setting contains the Inherent Bonus rules, which are cool and good and should be used regularly The Slaying Stone is the best of the low-level adventure modules to serve as an intro to the game
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Jan 25, 2018 03:58
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:much like the french first republic, early editions of d&d benefit from comparison to the horrors that followed, despite being fatally flawed from the beginning Look, he was magnificently incompetent, obsessed with his progenitors to an unhealthy degree, and a historical dead-end, but let's not speak ill of the dead.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:06
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Banana Man posted:So what exactly were the best parts of 4e with classes and monster math specifically, I am really confused about the essentials and the large number of classes. 4E's monster math didn't get formally good until the Monster Manual 3, but the Monster Vault is an Essentials trade dress redo of the first Monster Manual with all the classic staples like orcs, goblins, dragons, various sorts of undead, etc, and so if you want all the traditional D&D monsters but with the actual good statblocks you will want the Monster Vault, and then the MM3 for more variety. The Monster Manual 2 can be used but requires some finagling to make sure things like defenses and damage are where you want them, but the formula for designing a monster is generally simple enough that it's merely a minor pain in the rear end rather than a major one. As far as classes go, to be honest the classes straight out of the very first PHB contain some of the better stuff right out of the gate. The PHB 2 brings in a lot of the classes that they didn't put in the first one like the Barbarian and the Sorcerer along with new ones like the Avenger and generally between those two books and the assorted Martial/Arcane/Divine Power supplements you have more cool poo poo than most people will ever actually use in a lifetime. The PHB3 is where things kind of start to run out of steam. The Monk is fun but the power point using psionic classes suffer from some wonky design, and the Runepriest and Seeker feel half-baked and just sorta there. The redone core classes in the Essentials line were divisive because they were very much a return to the form of "fighters get to hit things, and then maybe hit things slightly harder X times a day, but spellcasters get all these cool toys over there." Some people swear by them but honestly, I tried my hardest to play through several mini-campaigns using an Essential-ized Assassin and it was the dullest, least enjoyable 4E I've ever played in my life, 90% of which was spent making basic attack after basic attack. That Assassin, by the way, is from Heroes of Shadow which is hot fuckin garbage. Highlights of that book include Literally The Worst 4E Class Ever Printed (the Binder, a Warlock variant whose main ability is to make you wish you were just playing a regular Warlock), the absolute lamest way anyone could have made a 4E Vampire class, a lovely ghost/shade race option that I'm not sure anyone ever took because it's the only 4E class with arbitrary penalties out of nowhere, and a Blackguard class so boring I can't even remember what its deal was. Heroes of the Feywild, by contrast, isn't half bad. It presents some class options which are kinda sorta halfway between regular 4E classes and Essentials stuff, and most of them aren't my cup of tea but at least they aren't utterly, egregiously bad and half-assed like Heroes of Shadow was. Oh wait, there was Heroes of the Elemental Planes to, wasn't there? Uh, poo poo. Oh right, it had a couple new Monk subtypes with elemental kung fu and...another wizard variant. I mean of course it had another wizard variant. You could probably just skip that one tbh.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:11
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Kai Tave posted:4E's monster math didn't get formally good until the Monster Manual 3, but the Monster Vault is an Essentials trade dress redo of the first Monster Manual with all the classic staples like orcs, goblins, dragons, various sorts of undead, etc, and so if you want all the traditional D&D monsters but with the actual good statblocks you will want the Monster Vault, and then the MM3 for more variety. The Dark Sun Creature Catalog uses the updated monster math, too. Those three books should have you pretty well set for most 4e games you'll ever play.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:18
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Something else cool about 4e in a more general sense is how well it evokes theme via mechanics. You don't just say "kobolds are sneaky," or expect GMs to know how to make kobolds sneaky - kobolds in 4e straight up have an ability that allows them to slip away and be sneaky. They're sneaky by default, just by using a kobold's few abilities you're automatically going to make them be sneaky assholes, and that's super cool. This extends to a lot of stuff, like Dwarves being extra durable due to getting to take their second wind as a minor action. It's pretty smart.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:57
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Countblanc posted:Something else cool about 4e in a more general sense is how well it evokes theme via mechanics. You don't just say "kobolds are sneaky," or expect GMs to know how to make kobolds sneaky - kobolds in 4e straight up have an ability that allows them to slip away and be sneaky. They're sneaky by default, just by using a kobold's few abilities you're automatically going to make them be sneaky assholes, and that's super cool. This extends to a lot of stuff, like Dwarves being extra durable due to getting to take their second wind as a minor action. It's pretty smart. yeah but there's no mechanical difference between wizards and rangers therefore
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Jan 25, 2018 05:05
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Most fun I had with the Essentials classes was with the Hexblade, an Elricy warlock that summons a magic sword and has some neat summons. Sadly, the online character builder didn't handle some of its properties very well, and the Essentials era coincided with them tapering off and dropping support for the builder entirely. (In short, your pact blade mirrors the properties of your implement, and the builder wasn't designed to have equipment that exists as the effect of a power and copies the properties of another piece of equipment.)
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Jan 25, 2018 05:07
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I find a problem with less fantastical RPGs is that they are much more static, especially if they’re combat focussed, because magic provides a neat excuse to introduce new mechanics as players level. As in, in DnD you have to worry about fireballs, or Come And Get It or whatever, from level 5 up and that changes the game and keeps it fresh. In a lot of modern themed games, though, you shoot at each other at level 1 and you shoot at each other at level 20, you just add more to the dice. I can’t help but think that Starfinger’s weird level based weapon gating is an attempt to hammer this in.
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Jan 25, 2018 11:29
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hyphz posted:I find a problem with less fantastical RPGs is that they are much more static, especially if they’re combat focussed, because magic provides a neat excuse to introduce new mechanics as players level. The problem with most versions of D&D and its ilk is not only that "new mechanics = spells", but then also that some classes don't get spells. You mentioned Come And Get It, and that's good, because Come And Get It is not magic, but the Fighter also doesn't need magic in order to able to be that "fantastical". Now in a game like, say, Call of Cthulhu or Twilight 2000, where you're all human comrades that are completely terrestrial and pedestrian, you're correct that all you really have to look out for is raising your Shoot Gun percentage from 60% to 80% if you ever manage to live that long, but that's okay too, because denying everyone of "fantastic abilities" keeps everyone on the same playing field. The challenges can still be varied, and they can still be challenging, but at least you don't have the uneven keel of a quarter to a half of the party wielding literal deus ex machina powers while the rest can't. Starfinder's level-gated equipment was put in because the the designers at some point realized that the narratives that would spring from a sci-fi game might produce outcomes where the players could become fabulously wealthy beyond the prescripted wealth-by-level rules, so they had to say that you couldn't wield a level 20 Gun even if you could afford it.
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Jan 25, 2018 17:03
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hyphz posted:I find a problem with less fantastical RPGs is that they are much more static, especially if they’re combat focussed, because magic provides a neat excuse to introduce new mechanics as players level. I have a lot of thoughts on Mr. Misfit's post, but here's a specific one: my pet theory is that in a "traditional," non-narrative RPG, games where you just have Ability Scores and Skills are almost always pretty dull. People gravitate to games with some element of the fantastical to add an extra dimension to allow for more unique PCs. Whether that's magic, cybernetics, or all kinds of science-fictional gear. Feat systems are one way of doing this, but there are a few design problems you quickly run into, especially if you hope to write and sell a lot of supplements. gradenko_2000 posted:Now in a game like, say, Call of Cthulhu or Twilight 2000, where you're all human comrades that are completely terrestrial and pedestrian, you're correct that all you really have to look out for is raising your Shoot Gun percentage from 60% to 80% if you ever manage to live that long, but that's okay too, because denying everyone of "fantastic abilities" keeps everyone on the same playing field. PATROL is a great example of a more traditional game that has distinct character classes in a game where the PCs are as similar in their gear, training, etc. as in RECON or Twilight 2000. (Even so, it has a WWI expansion that is obviously PbtA inspired.) quote:The problem with most versions of D&D and its ilk is not only that "new mechanics = spells", but then also that some classes don't get spells. quote:Starfinder's level-gated equipment was put in because the the designers at some point realized that the narratives that would spring from a sci-fi game might produce outcomes where the players could become fabulously wealthy beyond the prescripted wealth-by-level rules, so they had to say that you couldn't wield a level 20 Gun even if you could afford it. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 17:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:Starfinder's level-gated equipment was put in because the the designers at some point realized that the narratives that would spring from a sci-fi game might produce outcomes where the players could become fabulously wealthy beyond the prescripted wealth-by-level rules, so they had to say that you couldn't wield a level 20 Gun even if you could afford it. This is so frustrating because it seems like it could be solved by some kind of narrative consequences if they ever decided to have narrative rules outside of what skill does what. It's a space opera game, there's always a bigger fish out there - you do some run that gets you twenty tons of sixteen-barrel repeating laser rifles or some other ungodly armory, suddenly half the thugs in the galaxy have a vested interest in robbing you and yours. "Not a high enough level to find the trigger" is such a dumb rule idea - even understanding the apparent intent! - that I really don't quite know how to respond to it.
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Jan 25, 2018 17:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:Starfinder's level-gated equipment was put in because the the designers at some point realized that the narratives that would spring from a sci-fi game might produce outcomes where the players could become fabulously wealthy beyond the prescripted wealth-by-level rules, so they had to say that you couldn't wield a level 20 Gun even if you could afford it.
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Jan 25, 2018 17:29
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Splicer posted:It shows how criminally unimaginative and wedded to their system they are
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Jan 25, 2018 17:32
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food court bailiff posted:This is so frustrating because it seems like it could be solved by some kind of narrative consequences if they ever decided to have narrative rules outside of what skill does what. It's a space opera game, there's always a bigger fish out there - you do some run that gets you twenty tons of sixteen-barrel repeating laser rifles or some other ungodly armory, suddenly half the thugs in the galaxy have a vested interest in robbing you and yours. "Not a high enough level to find the trigger" is such a dumb rule idea - even understanding the apparent intent! - that I really don't quite know how to respond to it. Give the fighter equivalent a scaling badass bonus for guns and stuff so nobody thinks twice if she's packing a tricked out laser and power armour, but the wizard needs comparatively more street cred before he can get away with it.
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Jan 25, 2018 17:45
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Mr.Misfit posted:I had a fascinating discussion today about role-playing and dnd that I wanted to recap here because it was inspired by a number of interesting points. Re: point 4, Television and books are inherently oriented towards an abnegation aesthetic because it’s a passive aesthetic. RPGs are a participatory medium and lend themselves to more active aesthetics like discovery and tactical challenge. It’s much more relevant to draw examples from a similarly active medium like video games. (Which you also did.) E: Another question I ask myself when considering ttrpg design is “does this benefit from roleplaying and/or not having an explicit goal?”, and if not it should probably be a board game instead. DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 25, 2018 |
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Jan 25, 2018 17:55
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I enjoy how it took until TYOOL 2018 for a major gaming news website to run an article saying 'Hey guys, there's stuff out there that's not D&D and it's actually quite good, so maybe you should think about playing them too? Just a thought?' Reference: https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/18/16905694/independent-rpg-world-wide-wrestling-fiasco-dread-ten-candles
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Jan 25, 2018 18:02
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lol Polygon
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Jan 25, 2018 18:05
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Of course someone in the comments is pimping OSR games.
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Jan 25, 2018 18:10
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Finally what indie tabletop needs for validation. The people who are known to have the worst taste in indie videogames
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Jan 25, 2018 18:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:The problem with most versions of D&D and its ilk is not only that "new mechanics = spells", but then also that some classes don't get spells. Yea, I specifically mentioned Come And Get It precisely because it was available to a fighter class. Just because a game is fantastical doesn’t mean that one dude has to be the one with ALL the fantastical stuff. The unevenness problem isn’t magic, it’s having one class with “magic” as their thing. But I just haven’t seen any situation where a level 20 gunfight has notably different tactics to a level 1 gunfight. Yes, you can change up the terrain and so on, but that doesn’t feel like a natural tie to level or a thing the players have earned. I guess you could level up into Revolver Ocelot or something but that’s at least mildly fantastical.
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Jan 25, 2018 18:35
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hyphz posted:Yea, I specifically mentioned Come And Get It precisely because it was available to a fighter class. Just because a game is fantastical doesn’t mean that one dude has to be the one with ALL the fantastical stuff. The unevenness problem isn’t magic, it’s having one class with “magic” as their thing. most games are going to have some kind of fantastical element to them or else they are going to focus on things that aren't just shooting people
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Jan 25, 2018 18:38
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hyphz posted:But I just haven’t seen any situation where a level 20 gunfight has notably different tactics to a level 1 gunfight. Yes, you can change up the terrain and so on, but that doesn’t feel like a natural tie to level or a thing the players have earned. I guess you could level up into Revolver Ocelot or something but that’s at least mildly fantastical. I get what you're on about. A lot of traditional games have a lot of combat rules, but in the end it boils down to just attacking and dealing damage. Lots and lots of tables of modifiers, but anything like tactical movement and cover ends up being this loosely-defined thing that happens on the margins, and therefore, most groups end up not doing it at all.
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Jan 25, 2018 18:56
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What if in our imaginary gunfight RPG everyone starts moderately competent with firearms and the thing they gain as level up bonuses are techniques that require strict teamwork - the reason you unlock them as you're leveling up is that you're getting to know your party members better and trust them more in combat. Even if you could, it's probably not a good idea to charge your own teammate and try to use them as a stepping stone to jump over a piece of cover unless you're absolutely sure that they're on the same wavelength and will be ready to give you a foothold.
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Jan 25, 2018 19:03
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Mr.Misfit posted:I had a fascinating discussion today about role-playing and dnd that I wanted to recap here because it was inspired by a number of interesting points. Re #4: Are you sure about that? In any given year for a long time now, the most popular films are genre movies. Re #5: The big groups of potential roleplayers who aren't being captured by the medium are people doing freeform, online roleplay, and people playing RPG video games. First, I'm not convinced that the way forward for RPGs is to recruit more people by imitating whatever is popular in whatever other given medium. It's better to focus on what's being done in things that are at least games in the first place. Not everything adapts well to a tabletop game--you could certainly make a game about The Amazing Race or American Ninja Warrior, but what about Dr. Phil, The Daily Show, and The Bachelor?
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Jan 25, 2018 19:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Re #4: Are you sure about that? In any given year for a long time now, the most popular films are genre movies. I'd play a Dr. Phil tabletop game
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Jan 25, 2018 19:15
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Halloween Jack posted:Re #4: Are you sure about that? In any given year for a long time now, the most popular films are genre movies. maybe not a game about the shows themselves, but a game about making tv shows, with different goals and objectives depending on the genre of show in question, now that could work
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Jan 25, 2018 19:17
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Serf posted:maybe not a game about the shows themselves, but a game about making tv shows, with different goals and objectives depending on the genre of show in question, now that could work There’s Soap, and Pantheon?
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Jan 25, 2018 19:20
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