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gradenko_2000 posted:Nightwatch in the Living City seems like it was very very procedural from its wikipedia description, right down to a flowchart of events, and that might have colored peoples's expectations of gameplay I have some wonderful stories about living city, but what is relevant at the moment is that the primary playtest force for 3e d&d was entirely living city players, because wizards wanted to use living campaigns to sell books. It worked, too, but I have never seen such a monstrous monkey paw.
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Dec 17, 2018 04:39
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NinjaDebugger posted:I have some wonderful stories about living city, but what is relevant at the moment is that the primary playtest force for 3e d&d was entirely living city players, because wizards wanted to use living campaigns to sell books. It worked, too, but I have never seen such a monstrous monkey paw. Please explain. This is fascinating but people are talking about 2e players like they’re lepers and I don’t get why.
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Dec 17, 2018 04:50
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Arivia posted:Please explain. This is fascinating but people are talking about 2e players like they’re lepers and I don’t get why. I've explained a lot before, and it's bedtime, so maybe tomorrow. The tldr version is that a lot of the mechanical problems with 3e are the result of living city players reacting to the things that are broken in 2e, and not paying enough attention to things that were bad in 2e, like save or be screwed effects.
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Dec 17, 2018 04:58
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Nuns with Guns posted:Double posting to share the Gary Gygax article the guy was citing: I'm reminded of this Gygax passage I ran across in the Mayfair edition of City-State of the Invincible Overlord. 
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Dec 17, 2018 05:14
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NinjaDebugger posted:I've explained a lot before, and it's bedtime, so maybe tomorrow. The tldr version is that a lot of the mechanical problems with 3e are the result of living city players reacting to the things that are broken in 2e, and not paying enough attention to things that were bad in 2e, like save or be screwed effects. so is this is the origin of that thing where 3e playtesting was done by people who played Wizards like artillery/blasters with lots of Evoc spells such that the save-or-dies completely flew over their heads?
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Dec 17, 2018 05:19
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Gygax himself seems to have been a fairly chill dude that just wanted people to play elfgames. Aside from that bit about screwing Arneson.
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Dec 17, 2018 05:20
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Darwinism posted:Gygax himself seems to have been a fairly chill dude that just wanted people to play elfgames. Aside from that bit about screwing Arneson. Sometimes. He went back and forth. For a good long while he was the "you must use all these rules or you are playing wrong" guy.
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Dec 17, 2018 05:43
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Yeah, a big thing with Basic was that Gygax didn't like it because it'd bring in too many people who he didn't feel were "right" for D&D (i.e., anyone not in college).
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Dec 17, 2018 05:54
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Terrible Opinions posted:A good 90% of paizo's forums are dominated by people who genuinely believe that actually analyzing the rules of the game and desiring the game be well designed means that you're some sort of sub human rules obsessed person playing to win. You know, I sympathize to some extent. CharOp gets real ugly when not everyone's into it, but I think the solution is running a system less prone to it rather than bitching at the players.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:05
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Liquid Communism posted:You know, I sympathize to some extent. CharOp gets real ugly when not everyone's into it, but I think the solution is running a system less prone to it rather than bitching at the players. Problem is you're making this assumption that 'running something else' is ever an option lol.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:19
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Liquid Communism posted:You know, I sympathize to some extent. CharOp gets real ugly when not everyone's into it, but I think the solution is running a system less prone to it rather than bitching at the players. See that's exactly why I don't sympathize. Pathfinder is intentionally even more mechanically nitpicky then 3.5 is. They're proclaiming they hate people getting into the mechanics, and then making the most mechanical mess possible.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:20
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I tend to take care of that. The group I DM enjoys 3.5 and experimental builds, but we have new players who don't have years of experience to draw on. Worse, we're gestalt assholes (started out with two players when it made sense but the group grew, so it's a legacy thing now) which makes it trickier for new folk. The solution is that I create gestalt mixes based on what they tell me they want to do in the game, making DM-approved tweaks as I go and keeping an eye towards party balance based on what we already have. They're not rigid pregens so much as just a simplified unitary class for them to manage, with line notes about optimization and some rule tweaks to make 'sub-optimal' routes not as punishing. I'd personally rather be running FATE most of the time but 3.5 is what works for everyone at the table including our new people so I'm stuck with it, but it's the least I can do to make charop not a lovely process for the newbies.
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Dec 17, 2018 06:24
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ProfessorCirno posted:See that's exactly why I don't sympathize. Pathfinder is intentionally even more mechanically nitpicky then 3.5 is. They're proclaiming they hate people getting into the mechanics, and then making the most mechanical mess possible. Pretty much. It is why after years of lighter and tighter designed systems, my regular group's taking a break to play PF 1e since we're in the mood for some mechanics kitch (especially in the character building weirdness area) and I still had to drag in a bunch of Dreamscarred material, houserule some patches for people lower on the charop curve to do what they want and have it work along with some other hacks to get it under control. Probably... not the greatest idea, but at least I'm going into it eyes open as a GM.
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Dec 17, 2018 07:00
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ProfessorCirno posted:See that's exactly why I don't sympathize. Pathfinder is intentionally even more mechanically nitpicky then 3.5 is. They're proclaiming they hate people getting into the mechanics, and then making the most mechanical mess possible. Doesn't help that they've spent how many years reprinting better versions of feats in new splatbooks.
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Dec 17, 2018 07:07
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And also reprinting worse versions of the same feats, and printing classes that are strictly worse than existing classes.
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Dec 17, 2018 08:01
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Terrible Opinions posted:And also reprinting worse versions of the same feats, and printing classes that are strictly worse than existing classes. I was looking this up the other day, and Dreamscarred Press never bothered to make Path of War-compatible archetypes for the Cavalier and Samurai because they just didn't think it wash worth the effort
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Dec 17, 2018 08:11
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dwarf74 posted:Sometimes. He went back and forth. to be fair, this is true. If you don't use all the rules of a game then you are playing the game wrong. of course if everyone plays the game wrong then maybe it's bad.
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Dec 17, 2018 08:18
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gradenko_2000 posted:I was looking this up the other day, and Dreamscarred Press never bothered to make Path of War-compatible archetypes for the Cavalier and Samurai because they just didn't think it wash worth the effort
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Dec 17, 2018 09:06
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Every archetype should clearly have an instance at each tier.
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Dec 17, 2018 09:08
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Every archetype should clearly have an instance at each tier. That would require making a fighter good enough to stand up with a wizard, and that is against the HOLY LAW of D&D.
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Dec 17, 2018 12:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:so is this is the origin of that thing where 3e playtesting was done by people who played Wizards like artillery/blasters with lots of Evoc spells such that the save-or-dies completely flew over their heads? Okay, early morning pre-work storytime In order to begin to understand Living City, you must first understand two things. 1) Living City was essentially the first MMORPG. The O was offline, sure, but it obeys all the same meta rules that your average MMORPG does, including how to divide loot, players having multiple toons, and bad classes being actively shunned by all but the extremely dedicated because there's no GM freedom to adjust things to hurt the overpowered classes. 2) Living City premiered before AD&D 2e. AD&D 2e was The Game for twelve years, and Living City was part of it for 100% of that time. People had a LOT of time to find all the holes in the system, and to find all the things that were bad, especially in the specific 4 hour (occasionally 8 for 2-part) module based adventure format. On top of that, the campaign administration basically didn't use house rules, aside from deciding what books were legal and what wasn't, so the meta was, aside from the occasional new book inclusion, extremely stable. As a consequence of these things, and the mechanical holes in 2e AD&D. almost every save or die spell in the game was functionally worthless. Clerics would prepare a couple Hold Person spells, just in case, because there wasn't a lot good at cleric 2. If there was a fighter at the table (which was not guaranteed, the average table was 3 wizards and 2 clerics, for reasons I'll get into sometime), one of the wizards would keep a charm person handy, and preemptively charm the fighter. Beyond that, the fact that AD&D saving throws were based in the target's power, not the caster's, meant that you could generally expect your save or die to succeed 20% of the time, absolute max. On top of this, AD&D HP were pretty low, which meant that with three wizards handy, laying down a monstrous artillery barrage to burst down all the enemies and then finish off any survivors with magic missile was by far the best strategy available. Chances were strong one of the wizards would be a multi or dual class thief, which takes care of 100% of your thieving needs, since almost all of a thief's abilities were worthless, and a Knock on each wizard and a Find Traps on each cleric was enough to handle anything else. When you take all of this, combined with the defenses that made it possible, it becomes much easier to see why people were kind of myopic. They had been playing in essentially the same meta for twelve years straight, and all of our efforts were concentrated on making sure that the worst parts of that meta didn't happen again. HP inflated, making direct damage worse by proxy. Fighters and thieves got MUCH better (as much as it might not look like it sometimes). Casters lost the single most broken thing in AD&D 2e. If you ever wondered why 3e has a rule that says you can't refresh a spell slot if it's been used in 8 hours, even if you're 'fully rested'? It's because in the AD&D 2e Tome of Magic, there was a spell called Nap, at cleric -2-, that allowed wizards to refresh their entire loving spell allotment with a 2 hour power nap while the clerics (house ruled to only ever prepare spells once a day) and non-casters (if you had any) kept watch. I think the only reason the spell wasn't banned was because the admins were afraid of a goddamn riot because something like 50% of the campaign was wizards, because of the bad rules and massively warped meta.
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Dec 17, 2018 13:10
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It's precisely that meta that Ed Greenwood makes fun of so often in his Forgotten Realms novelization stuff, amusingly. I remember the one bit of Living City I played was a 4-specialist-priests party that worked out to Fighter-Cleric, Wizard-Cleric (for the utility arcane spells), Thief-Cleric, and Cleric-Cleric, plus one wizard for artillery.
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Dec 17, 2018 13:57
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Liquid Communism posted:It's precisely that meta that Ed Greenwood makes fun of so often in his Forgotten Realms novelization stuff, amusingly. Pretty much. Gonna guess... Helm, Mystra, Mask, and... hmm... Selune, maybe? (The two most popular deities in Living City were Mystra (Anyspell) and Azuth (You can just straight up memorize wizard spells as cleric ones, if you have a spellbook.) NinjaDebugger fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Dec 17, 2018 |
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Dec 17, 2018 14:00
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Liquid Communism posted:That would require making a fighter good enough to stand up with a wizard, and that is against the HOLY LAW of D&D.
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Dec 17, 2018 19:05
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That, and they're frequently capped at tasks under what actual human athletes can achieve. For "realism." I can play catch with a dog without critically failing to toss a tennis ball 1 in 20 times. But I'm not casting a spell, so...
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Dec 17, 2018 19:18
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it's "weird" because people like Hercules and Cu Chulainn always make their way into D&D descriptions of the Fighter but they never seem to hit that target (except 4e)
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Dec 17, 2018 19:24
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“Come and Get it” was such a good power, and 5e ditching Fighter marking (outside of niche cases) is a really big part of what keeps me from being interested in finding a group or rejoining organized play. Apparently Conquest Paladins sort-of mark if their targets aren’t immune to Fear and they can consistently knock their foes prone...
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Dec 17, 2018 19:34
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The idea that Conan is in any way a downgrade from Heracles is a little weird. Conan is a fighter who gets an army at mid level and a kingdom at high level, is capable of climbing basically anything and being ludicrously stealthy, and was strong enough to break a bull's neck with his hands before he was fully grown. Neither of them are Superman, and that's also fine, because they really don't need to be (4e martiald weren't and they work).
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Dec 17, 2018 20:06
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Mors Rattus posted:They stepped back from killing Fantasy entirely, and there's been a really well-liked new take on 40k, with new fluff that folks are enjoying. Hello what's this I hear about new good 40k fluff
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Dec 17, 2018 21:25
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Hello what's this I hear about new good 40k fluff Short form? Robot Gillyman has gone 'wait, why have you guys gone full Nazi? I...I have to fix this, don't I' and is trying to unfuck the Imperium. The Orks remain Orks, and my understanding is that the Tyranid Hive-Fleets are all getting more characterization via their tactical and strategic methods. The Tau...well, the Tau are a mixed bag, we get the end of the Evil Space Pope angle and walking back the mind control, but the introduction of Tau who are somewhat Chaos-tainted which makes very little sense. My 40k friends seem to be enjoying these changes; I'm mostly a Fantasy guy.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:35
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Mors Rattus posted:Short form? Robot Gillyman has gone 'wait, why have you guys gone full Nazi? I...I have to fix this, don't I' and is trying to unfuck the Imperium. The Orks remain Orks, and my understanding is that the Tyranid Hive-Fleets are all getting more characterization via their tactical and strategic methods. The Tau...well, the Tau are a mixed bag, we get the end of the Evil Space Pope angle and walking back the mind control, but the introduction of Tau who are somewhat Chaos-tainted which makes very little sense. My 40k friends seem to be enjoying these changes; I'm mostly a Fantasy guy.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:42
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Which Tau are Chaos-tainted? I don't really follow 40K but I did once briefly play Tau until I ran out of allowance. They haven't made the Farsight team Chaos-aligned have they? Because that would be incredibly boring.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:43
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NinjaDebugger posted:Okay, early morning pre-work storytime this is an excellent post and i want people to remember it every time you're tempted to count AD&D 2E as one of the good editions
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Dec 17, 2018 21:49
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Joe Slowboat posted:Which Tau are Chaos-tainted? I don't really follow 40K but I did once briefly play Tau until I ran out of allowance. They haven't made the Farsight team Chaos-aligned have they? Because that would be incredibly boring. Nah, it’s not Farsight. It’s some regular Tau troops who used a reverse-engineered from the Imperium FTL drive. Apparently they’re now super xenophobic, blaming the non-Tau in their unit for their bad time in the warp.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:53
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Terrible Opinions posted:A good 90% of paizo's forums are dominated by people who genuinely believe that actually analyzing the rules of the game and desiring the game be well designed means that you're some sort of sub human rules obsessed person playing to win. Same, but also a handful of Goons in these forums.
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Dec 17, 2018 22:19
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reading the rules is the coward's path
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Dec 17, 2018 22:23
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sexpig by night posted:reading the rules is the coward's path The coward plays a thousand games; the valiant play but once
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Dec 17, 2018 22:26
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Mors Rattus posted:Short form? Robot Gillyman has gone 'wait, why have you guys gone full Nazi? I...I have to fix this, don't I' and is trying to unfuck the Imperium. The Orks remain Orks, and my understanding is that the Tyranid Hive-Fleets are all getting more characterization via their tactical and strategic methods. The Tau...well, the Tau are a mixed bag, we get the end of the Evil Space Pope angle and walking back the mind control, but the introduction of Tau who are somewhat Chaos-tainted which makes very little sense. My 40k friends seem to be enjoying these changes; I'm mostly a Fantasy guy. What should I be reading, I want to read 40k things agaib
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Dec 17, 2018 22:49
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I want to read about RoundButt Girlyman being angry that the imperium went full Nazi and also somehow the Nids being characterized?
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Dec 17, 2018 22:53
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Dark Imperium kind of kicks it off. That focuses a decent amount on Rowboat's fall and resurrection. Not sure about the tau stuff. There's a bunch of stuff that happened with the eldar, who managed to basically short circuit their end-times prophecy and (partially) create their god of death, which was supposed to require the death of the entirety of the eldar, but didn't. That's got several books covering the wacky shenanigans. There's also a bunch of horus heresy stuff, which is a mixed bag. Some has added new lore, some is just very tedious battle porn with a few paragraphs of interesting history scattered throughout.
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Dec 17, 2018 23:11
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