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Well, for 3.5, the issues are much more balance than functionality. Balance problems can be worked around, functionality problems require houserules. Compare 3.5 to Exalted 2e, a game that was critically nonfunctional and basically required a 40 page fanmade errata document to be playable.
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Aug 4, 2018 17:46
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Didn't the Exalted 2E errata eventually extend to over 200 pages?
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Aug 4, 2018 17:56
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NGDBSS posted:Didn't the Exalted 2E errata eventually extend to over 200 pages? Probably. My group kinda stopped playing in disgust after a while.
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Aug 4, 2018 17:57
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I distantly know of someone in my local scene who decided to comb through all the books and present her players with a massive document of stuffed that's allowed versus stuff that's banned. Apparently that worked well enough for her group, but that's almost certainly because said group is a bunch of weirdos who treat rules lawyering as the central tenet of game design. In particular one of my friends declared that she'd "fixed" 2E, but in the same story he described how someone had rolled 70 dice for damage. Methinks he's a bit biased when it comes to those people.
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Aug 4, 2018 18:44
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Yawgmoth posted:Bad gaming is worse than no gaming at all. What would be cross that threshold is deflating everyone's enthusiasm by aborting a campaign in act 3 because of annoying but temporarily fixable system grumblings.
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Aug 4, 2018 18:56
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Plutonis posted:The big difference is that you *started* to play. To be an spectator all the time, not deeming to try it, this is what I believe is a cretinous activity. imagine caring this much about the fact that some people watch things they don't personally participate in
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Aug 4, 2018 19:05
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cheetah7071 posted:imagine caring this much about the fact that some people watch things they don't personally participate in wait till he hears about touhou!!!
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Aug 4, 2018 19:07
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cheetah7071 posted:imagine caring this much about the fact that some people watch things they don't personally participate in Imagine caring for religion, morality, and the beauty of the world and culture and not being a creature that lost all sense of humanity such as yourself.
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Aug 4, 2018 19:09
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cheetah7071 posted:imagine caring this much about the fact that some people watch things they don't personally participate in The village idiot has bad opinions.
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Aug 4, 2018 19:12
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Imagine thinking Plutonis actually cares instead of just seeing what poo poo sticks to the wall this week.
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Aug 4, 2018 19:22
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Mr. Maltose posted:Imagine thinking Plutonis actually cares instead of just seeing what poo poo sticks to the wall this week. sorry I don't read this thread as often as I'd like so I don't know who the people to safely ignore are yet
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Aug 4, 2018 19:30
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Wasn't plutonis banned from these threads during the last mod regime? Or am I mixing people up again? Blame Ettin for letting them back.
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Aug 4, 2018 20:05
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Nuns with Guns posted:I have no idea what Yawg does for his games. Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Thanks for the epic platitude but it's irrelevant - firstly, regardless of how good that advice is, not everyone in the the universe follows it, so bad design decisions in popular games will hurt people. Secondly, it doesn't even apply here - it's well known here that the argument "we're having fun so the rules must be good" is total bunk, and thus, the contrapositive, "the rules not being good means you won't have fun", must also be false. The introduction of a bad mechanics is insidious in that you'll have just have a little less fun each time, but nowhere near under the threshold for "good gaming" if you have a good group. If you are not enjoying yourself for whatever reason and that reason cannot be removed or assuaged, it would be preferable for all parties involved for you to find another activity and/or another group; even if that new activity bears no resemblance to the one originally chosen and/or the group is made of entirely new people. Whether or not "everyone in the universe" follows it or not hasn't got a single loving thing to do with the quality of the advice and I can't imagine why you would even think it does.
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Aug 4, 2018 21:22
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Most RPGs are terribly designed because of legacy mechanics deriving from old school D&D, WoD, and now PbtA game engines. Rules being added in for Spectators isn't going to be bad as "Advanced D&D and Vampire the Masquerade did this poo poo and it was fun, ergo it has to be here'
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Aug 4, 2018 23:42
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a d&d that focused more on how the systems work in APs would probably add more systems for roleplaying and wouldn't limit large swathes of narrative control to the spellcasting chapter so i say bring it on
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Aug 5, 2018 00:23
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GM, players, and the Greek chorus
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Aug 5, 2018 01:31
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A game can have parts that you don't enjoy and still be good gaming. Hell, I play Pathfinder every week. It's not a good game, but there are parts I enjoy. More importantly, I enjoy hanging out with my friends. "No gaming is better than bad gaming" came mostly from groups that were poo poo. It's great advice, but if you're still enjoying yourself overall, it's not bad gaming. Bad gaming is when you drag yourself down to a game you're not going to enjoy playing because otherwise, you'd have to find something else to do on a Friday night.
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Aug 5, 2018 01:40
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Yawgmoth, what if you are enjoying yourself in a bad system because you have system mastery to avoid the pitfalls but also wish that the system was better because you'd have more fun; and also you know that your buddy in the group who lacks such system mastery isn't having a very good time and that if the system was better, he might not flake out on game night so often... what then? Surely it'd be better if the game just had better mechanics!
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Aug 5, 2018 03:50
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I'm probably the flakiest member of Yawg's playing group at the moment, and we've been having regular weekly games for at least two, maybe three years now, with two full campaigns under our belts. We're also all fairly well-versed in 3.5, so there's not a big system mastery disparity across the group. EDIT: I also largely agree with JackMann's perspective. Heck, the other thing I'm gearing up for is running a game of the PF2 playtest.
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Aug 5, 2018 04:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm probably the flakiest member of Yawg's playing group at the moment, and we've been having regular weekly games for at least two, maybe three years now, with two full campaigns under our belts. We're also all fairly well-versed in 3.5, so there's not a big system mastery disparity across the group. I was talking about a game I played in ages ago. I was having fun, but clearly other people were having less fun because the mechanics kind of sucked and they naively picked poo poo that sounded fun instead of picking specific classes or abilities to get around the bad mechanics. It wasn't "bad gaming" for me, but it seemed like it was for a guy in the group, and it also seemed like he was going to take Yawgmoth's "so quit" advice. Which is cool but I liked playing with this dude and if the system was good I wouldn't have had to wonder how many more weeks until he quit. This was in a very popular game and before I knew about all this indie game stuff. So like Jeffrey was saying, I want popular games to have good mechanics so that I and my friends can have a fun time playing them, but also so especially new players won't quit the hobby because of the weekly friction as they fight with a game that only kind of works.
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Aug 5, 2018 06:32
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Jimbozig posted:I was talking about a game I played in ages ago. I was having fun, but clearly other people were having less fun because the mechanics kind of sucked and they naively picked poo poo that sounded fun instead of picking specific classes or abilities to get around the bad mechanics. It wasn't "bad gaming" for me, but it seemed like it was for a guy in the group, and it also seemed like he was going to take Yawgmoth's "so quit" advice. Which is cool but I liked playing with this dude and if the system was good I wouldn't have had to wonder how many more weeks until he quit. This was in a very popular game and before I knew about all this indie game stuff. So like Jeffrey was saying, I want popular games to have good mechanics so that I and my friends can have a fun time playing them, but also so especially new players won't quit the hobby because of the weekly friction as they fight with a game that only kind of works. I really think that respeccing should be allowed for people who gently caress up their chargen because playing a crappily made character is a nightmare (<- plays a 4e Slayer on a 2 year campaign but didn't respect out of sloth)
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Aug 5, 2018 08:10
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Plutonis posted:I really think that respeccing should be allowed for people who gently caress up their chargen because playing a crappily made character is a nightmare (<- plays a 4e Slayer on a 2 year campaign but didn't respect out of sloth) Probably the worst 4E actual play experience I had was trying the Essentials version of the Assassin and discovering that somehow they had managed to make a class even less engaging than the Slayer. "But they get cool poisons," and you know what other classes get? More than two things to do in combat.
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Aug 5, 2018 08:26
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Kai Tave posted:Probably the worst 4E actual play experience I had was trying the Essentials version of the Assassin and discovering that somehow they had managed to make a class even less engaging than the Slayer. "But they get cool poisons," and you know what other classes get? More than two things to do in combat. Huh, really? One of my usual players, while admitting it's a pretty simple class, seems to have fun with it. But they're really into the tactical element of the game, and I can certainly see the appeal in coming out of nowhere, doing a fuckton of damage to the most dangerous enemy on the board and slipping away. Plus, you can play a ninja and throw poisoned shurikens everywhere. (doesn't help that the original Assassin is considered fiddly and overcomplicated for lackluster results with the whole shroud mechanic) Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 09:21
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Huh, really? One of my usual players, while admitting it's a pretty simple class, seems to have fun with it. But they're really into the tactical element of the game, and I can certainly see the appeal in coming out of nowhere, doing a fuckton of damage to the most dangerous enemy on the board and slipping away. Plus, you can play a ninja and throw poisoned shurikens everywhere. You get to do your big damage hit once per combat, period, and then after that you get to spam basic attacks for the rest of combat. Even the Slayer accumulates more uses of its +damage encounter but the eAssassin's remains 1/combat pretty much forever. You're right that playing a slippery, sneaky character who can do a bunch of damage and then dance back out of range is a lot of fun, and guess what, you can do that by playing a Rogue out of the PHB1 and you aren't stuck having to nurse your one better-than-basic ability while everyone else gains additional encounter and daily powers. If anything the eAssassin is less tactical precisely because your pool of useful options is stagnant compared to everyone else's growing toolkit.
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Aug 5, 2018 10:11
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Plutonis posted:I really think that respeccing should be allowed for people who gently caress up their chargen because playing a crappily made character is a nightmare (<- plays a 4e Slayer on a 2 year campaign but didn't respect out of sloth) yeah a lot of the issues with system mastery can be theoretically solved, or at least papered over, by removing all choice permanency to wit, there was a lot of skills in Diablo 3 which completely loving sucked on release and across multiple patches, but you were never locked into them
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Aug 5, 2018 10:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:yeah a lot of the issues with system mastery can be theoretically solved, or at least papered over, by removing all choice permanency I mean there's stuff like retraining at level up but it should probably extend to stuff like class choice
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Aug 5, 2018 12:54
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You can't house-rule the empty-souled assholes and idiots off of the 5e credits page, their damage is already done.gradenko_2000 posted:a D&D designed to appeal to the AP crowd would be the second time ever that D&D ever had a design focus, so might as well It would actually be the third time. The second time, the focus was "appeal to people who hated the last time we focused design."
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Aug 5, 2018 13:30
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Kai Tave posted:Probably the worst 4E actual play experience I had was trying the Essentials version of the Assassin and discovering that somehow they had managed to make a class even less engaging than the Slayer. "But they get cool poisons," and you know what other classes get? More than two things to do in combat. That's almost verbatim the 5e assassin, which is second only to the Ranger in lovely 5e classes.
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Aug 5, 2018 14:22
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Father Wendigo posted:That's almost verbatim the 5e assassin, which is second only to the Ranger in lovely 5e classes. I've played in two 5e games with my current gaming group, and one of the players played a beast master ranger the first time, and is now playing an assassin rogue. I joined after the subclass choice the first time, but I tried to warn her away from the assassin but she wasn't having it. Oh well... at least base rogue is still pretty good I think.
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Aug 5, 2018 14:36
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Plutonis posted:I mean there's stuff like retraining at level up but it should probably extend to stuff like class choice The thing is people are really married to class-as-flavor, so respeccing that seems downright bizarre to a lot of folk - it comes across like basically playing a completely new character to them. In my 4e game I made a Monk, both in fiction and mechanics, but later decided I was more interested in him being a more toned-down grappler/striker sort of martial artist rather than 4e Monk's hyper-mobile wuxia style so I made him a Ranger. It worked great but whenever I tell people irl about this it takes a while to parse because like, you're a monk, so be a monk.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:06
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Plutonis posted:I mean there's stuff like retraining at level up but it should probably extend to stuff like class choice from 3.5's PHB 2:  from Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign:  from 4e's PHB 1:  it can be sometimes surprising how much these games actually got right, buried somewhere in the rules, waiting for someone to use them.
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Aug 5, 2018 17:28
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Yawgmoth posted:I start with a google sheet that makes heavy use of the concatenate function for quickly creating/modifying die rolls for roll20 and will auto-stat up a given creature's derived stats by just adding in base stats and number of HD. Then I just shorten the skill list the way most people do (spot+listen=perception, hide+move silently=stealth, etc), make all spellcasters spontaneous with a spells known list, and give the players a stat array. I drop magic items that buff stats and instead give a static +2 inherent bonus every 3 levels, to one ability score and each previous choice. So for example, at 9th level you'd have a +6 to one score, a +4 to a second, and a +2 to a third. I also cut out all the save or die spells.. It's funny because most of those are things I've thought about doing to "fix" 3e but never had the energy to do. If you're having fun and everyone else is, though, then that's great! gradenko_2000 posted:from 3.5's PHB 2: The 3.5 PHB 2 and DMG 2 both had lots of quality stuff in them, but not a lot of of it seemed to stick in peoples' memories. But the things that did remain memorable like the Duskblade and Beguiler, the shapeshift Druid variant rules, and character backgrounds were all positive contributions to the game. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 18:40
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Part of the problem with a lot of systems is people selectively reading the rule books, usually unconsciously, and playing pretty far from intended as a result. Remembering all the lovely subsystems for random things that would probably be better off as GM fiat, but forgetting the quality of life features.
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Aug 5, 2018 18:54
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My understanding is that most players don't really read the books, and get 90% of their info at the table.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:44
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Haystack posted:My understanding is that most players don't really read the books, and get 90% of their info at the table. It's definitely been my experience. I usually let it slide (at least for the first few sessions) because I frequently run games that either nobody at the table has played before, or only I have played before.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:48
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Honestly with dnd the major problem is people being mistaught or people having weird preexisting notions of what the rules are or should be. There’s a lot of weird culture built up around dnd that I’ve only otherwise seen elsewhere with shadowrun.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:49
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Reminds me of the actual throw-down argument I had with someone that absolutely would not believe me when I told them surprise rounds are not a thing in 5th edition.
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Aug 5, 2018 21:51
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Reene posted:Reminds me of the actual throw-down argument I had with someone that absolutely would not believe me when I told them surprise rounds are not a thing in 5th edition. I really, really wish that D&D variants would include changelogs. I do remember when 3e first came out, and almost all the local GMs who were used to 2e were arguing that an enemy could avoid being Sneak Attacked when flanked by turning to face the rogue.
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Aug 5, 2018 22:42
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fool_of_sound posted:Honestly with dnd the major problem is people being mistaught or people having weird preexisting notions of what the rules are or should be. There’s a lot of weird culture built up around dnd that I’ve only otherwise seen elsewhere with shadowrun. Yeah people have gotten bits and pieces of D&D canon from like a hundred different sources and it just sort of builds up. I really think this is where the "magic can do anything because it's magic" sort of thing comes from because, while the rules definitely encourage this, I've spoken to people who have never cracked open a D&D manual at any point who just like nod along with the idea that magic is just inherently Better. Countblanc fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 23:03
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fool_of_sound posted:Honestly with dnd the major problem is people being mistaught or people having weird preexisting notions of what the rules are or should be. There’s a lot of weird culture built up around dnd that I’ve only otherwise seen elsewhere with shadowrun. When I started playing, a friend's stepdad would run games for us and some of his friends, and for some reason they rolled a d12 for initiative. At some point I realized that we should be rolling a d20 and the stepdad and his friends got really mad when I quoted the section of the PHB that said so at them. Even though rolling the d12 pretty much guaranteed that PCs won initiative over the monsters the majority of the time.
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Aug 5, 2018 23:23
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