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I found The Turtles RPG in a house my family was renting. I played it by making up rules that seemed right with some six siders I scavenged from yahtzee and a limited understanding of how that sort of thing was supposed to go. I graduated to making my own games based on Final Fantasy and Shining Force that manifested as line paper with a hundred abbreviations written on them like cp, gp, hp etc. Eventually I got the Introduction to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game box set and actually learned to play the stuff from that. Prior to getting that set I was always told I was too young to play role playing games so I had to keep my gaming at least partially clandestine.
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Jan 27, 2019 05:00
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Marking: "I am now watching this guy. If they give me an opening, I will use it (to hit them, throw off their aim, get some healing on their target, et cetera et cetera)" I am really sad that got lost in the general 4e assassination, it's a clever way of doing it and making defenders more sticky without forcing chokepoints.
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Jan 27, 2019 05:22
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Bruceski posted:Marking: "I am now watching this guy. If they give me an opening, I will use it (to hit them, throw off their aim, get some healing on their target, et cetera et cetera)" I am really sad that got lost in the general 4e assassination, it's a clever way of doing it and making defenders more sticky without forcing chokepoints. it wasn't even a 4e specific thing: Tome of Battle already had Iron Guard's Glare that imposed the attack penalty on anyone you were threatening, and then Thicket of Blades so that any movement would provoke an AOO, even a 5 foot step It's a little heartening that both Path of War and Spheres of Might adapted the marking model for Pathfinder with the Armiger's Mark and Guardian Sphere, respectively
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Jan 27, 2019 05:37
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"Soldiers don't try to get hit!" is right, of course. Of course, soldiers do deliberately draw fire from time to time while trying not to get hit but something tells me a grasp of either ancient, medieval, or modern infantry is beyond them.
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Jan 27, 2019 05:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:GNS is half-right, they just backed S instead of the objectively correct choice of G Andrast posted:D&D is a strongly focused game
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Jan 27, 2019 05:59
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D&D's focus is its lack of focus. Because it has to be a game that pretends it can run everything from courtly intrigue to catburglar antics to swashbuckling across the high seas to dungeoncrawling to whatever else on a tactical skirmishing TTRPG system with a really simple pass/fail skill system slapped across it.
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Jan 27, 2019 08:01
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Loomer posted:"Soldiers don't try to get hit!" is right, of course. Of course, soldiers do deliberately draw fire from time to time while trying not to get hit but something tells me a grasp of either ancient, medieval, or modern infantry is beyond them. Soldiers also don't hang out with a thief and a wizard and fight an owlbear over a ring. Any argument that starts with "But soldiers" can be countered with "You don't play as soldiers in this game. Sometimes you kill them, though."
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Jan 27, 2019 08:14
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theironjef posted:Soldiers also don't hang out with a thief and a wizard and fight an owlbear over a ring. Any argument that starts with "But soldiers" can be countered with "You don't play as soldiers in this game. Sometimes you kill them, though." Well that depends on how much acid they've dropped, doesn't it?
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Jan 27, 2019 09:19
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Leperflesh posted:My first was d&d, but in high school I brought a guy in to play rifts as his first, and another guy joined us for shadow run as his first, and two other guys played paranoia as their first. Actually now I think about it I'm pretty sure a guy I knew back in England had only ever played warhammer fantasy RPG. Yeah, I got in on D&D first but the high school club had several WFRPG campaigns and for the 20 or so kids there WFRPG would've been the first game they saw. Unsurprisingly many already played warhammer, which made it an even easier jump-on point. Halloween Jack posted:The standard retort to this is "pre-4e combat is abstract, but not dissociated." But that's wrong for exactly the reason you stated; plus, pre-4e D&D is full of "3/day" abilities that are never explained in-setting. (For that matter, I don't think Vancian casting is ever even explained.) I think I first learned about why wizards forget spells some time after I stopped playing D&D.
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Jan 27, 2019 10:35
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I wonder if marking got equal complaints from UK folks? It’s a core concept in soccer and every UK schoolboy plays soccer. Maybe why I’ve never known a player not to “get” it. The first game I played was ADnD. The first game I ran was a weirdo though - Over The Edge. Because I liked the card game. I sucked at it. hyphz fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 14:57
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Everything about marking is implicit in the old idea that you park your fighters in front of the squishy magic guy to keep them from getting splatted, everything that is except for the actual mechanics to keep enemies from bypassing them. Disliking the mark feels like another argument from the "DM genocide" crowd. "Oh my god I can't even attack who I want anymore without being penalized. Everything is getting so PC(Player Character) these days."
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Jan 27, 2019 15:03
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hyphz posted:I wonder if marking got equal complaints from UK folks? It’s a core concept in soccer and every UK schoolboy plays soccer. Maybe why I’ve never known a player not to “get” it. I'm murican and I got it instantly. It's not the same term but our sports have a similar concept and it's super basic. I'm firmly in the *hates 4th intensely* camp but marking wasn't the issue. My issue with the game was that all the classes had functionally the same mechanics and it gutted/discounted non-combat abilities.
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Jan 27, 2019 15:50
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Why would you want a huge section of the book dedicated to stuff that only a fraction of the classes get to touch? It's terrible design.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:20
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Eifert Posting posted:I'm murican and I got it instantly. It's not the same term but our sports have a similar concept and it's super basic. cool you're still wrong
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Jan 27, 2019 16:21
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Gonna guess a lot of folks first game is gonna be Monster of the Week given the way Adventure Zone is apparently driving sales of it for Evil Hat. But my first RPG was Runequest, and I rolled up a duck named Donald because that's what you do when you're five and have the option to play a talking duck.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:25
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Eifert Posting posted:I'm murican and I got it instantly. It's not the same term but our sports have a similar concept and it's super basic. Bad content
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Jan 27, 2019 16:41
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Eifert Posting posted:I'm firmly in the *hates 4th intensely* camp but marking wasn't the issue. My issue with the game was that all the classes had functionally the same mechanics and it gutted/discounted non-combat abilities. I never got this one, either. Except for format, how do classes have the same mechanics? Like, I've never heard someone complain that all martials in 3.x are terribly samey because they are presented in the same terms mechanically. But 4E, boy howdy, "all classes are the same because they're presented uniformly" is one of the go-to arguments.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:47
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Darwinism posted:I never got this one, either. Except for format, how do classes have the same mechanics? Like, I've never heard someone complain that all martials in 3.x are terribly samey because they are presented in the same terms mechanically. But 4E, boy howdy, "all classes are the same because they're presented uniformly" is one of the go-to arguments. Well you see some people have difficulty understanding that just because things are presented in similar ways, they are not the same thing. At the end of the day, it's because Wizards don't have spells and rituals apparently don't exist.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:53
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And neither do utility powers apparently. A lot of it comes down to people not understanding even decent game and layout design, and finding it unfamiliar and scary.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:56
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I hate that the counterrevolutionaries won the battle over D&D, but at least the indy scene is about as mainstream and thriving as it has ever been. I do wish 4e had been as open as 3e had been though, I would be vary happy to see a 4e pathfinder.
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Jan 27, 2019 16:56
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The reason why there isn't a 4e Pathfinder is because it would be a ton of work and who knows how popular it would even be. Also, 13th Age already exists.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:00
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That's why I wish it were open like 3e, The OGL SRD did a lot of work for people. 13th Age is good, but it's combat isn't a grid based battle game. Also, I hear a lot of talk about how martials are boring in 13th age, and martials are not boring in 4e. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 17:01
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If you want to play 4e that hasn't changed from 4e why not just play 4e. The OGL just helped people make carbon copies of 3e.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:03
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I will. It would be nice to have a version that incorporates errata and learned lessons though. The game is kind of a mess in current form, and character creation can be a hassle for a number of reasons including getting the builder working, sorting through the feat glut, and incorporating some of the soft fixes for the math that should have been hard fixes.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:06
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Sampatrick posted:If you want to play 4e that hasn't changed from 4e why not just play 4e. The OGL just helped people make carbon copies of 3e. I want 4e that doesn't have the bloat or a billion fiddly bonuses that makes combat take forever. I like 13th age just fine but it really doesn't do any of the things I like 4e for. (also the martials in 13th age are indeed really lame)
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Jan 27, 2019 17:06
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unseenlibrarian posted:Gonna guess a lot of folks first game is gonna be Monster of the Week given the way Adventure Zone is apparently driving sales of it for Evil Hat. MotW is tricky though, because the pacing is totally under the GMs control. It might be much more vulnerable to the Mercer effect that 5e.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:12
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remusclaw posted:I hate that the counterrevolutionaries won the battle over D&D, but at least the indy scene is about as mainstream and thriving as it has ever been. I do wish 4e had been as open as 3e had been though, I would be vary happy to see a 4e pathfinder. 4e Pathfinder is Pathfinder 2e. The playtest really feels like 4e.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:15
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Sampatrick posted:At the end of the day, it's because Wizards don't have spells and rituals apparently don't exist.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:16
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Arivia posted:4e Pathfinder is Pathfinder 2e. The playtest really feels like 4e. I have been half rear end'ed following it, and I have seen people make comments that it feels like a mix between 3rd, 4th, and 5th, but very few people have been very positive toward it. I will also say, I don't really like open playtests of RPG's like that. It seems to result in bland compromise games.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:21
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Haystack posted:Spellbound Kingdoms is explicitly mystified as to how a neophite came to be reading the book in the first place, and cheerfully recommends that they google roleplaying. He's not wrong though! The response and handling of it in the intro is really bad, and is liable to put off any novice RPers. But it would be really weird for that to be anyone's first exposure. Especially as it was mostly (entirely?) online with its Kickstarter and dtRPG, so you'd have to be blindly ordering stuff online without looking at what it is.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:26
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remusclaw posted:I have been half rear end'ed following it, and I have seen people make comments that it feels like a mix between 3rd, 4th, and 5th, but very few people have been very positive toward it. I will also say, I don't really like open playtests of RPG's like that. It seems to result in bland compromise games. There’s a theory I can believe that the Pathfinder 2e Playtest was a deliberate non-compromise / sacred barbecue just to test all the unusual mechanics they were considering, at once.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:29
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Not enthusiastically explaining roleplaying in the intro of an rpg is a really weird design choice. Sure, the original purchaser might tend to be experienced with games, but there's no sure bet that anyone who comes into contact with the book after that will be. Plus it's half a page of text to do, which is an exceptionally minimal investment of effort.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:30
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hyphz posted:There’s a theory I can believe that the Pathfinder 2e Playtest was a deliberate non-compromise / sacred barbecue just to test all the unusual mechanics they were considering, at once. That’s not a theory. Paizo said as much, multiple times. That’s also why they were willing to do big, sweeping changes to Resonance and so on.
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Jan 27, 2019 17:43
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remusclaw posted:That's why I wish it were open like 3e, The OGL SRD did a lot of work for people. I definitely do want a game that builds on what I liked about 4e while fixing some issues (which Essentials emphatically failed to do, since e.g. instead of fixing the issues with rituals it pretended they didn't exist), but OTOH I'd need something that plays significantly faster, since I just don't have the ability to have regular 6+ hour game sessions anymore.
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Jan 27, 2019 18:41
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Halloween Jack posted:Why would you want a huge section of the book dedicated to stuff that only a fraction of the classes get to touch? It's terrible design. because you play one of those classes, and so does anyone else who understands the system. it's like MvC2, the fact that there are 56 playable characters and like 10 of them (generously) actually matter in high-level play sucks for the designers (who wasted their time) and for newcomers (who don't know that 90% of their favorites will become useless as they improve) but as long as the top tier has interesting match-ups and variety internally none of that actually prevents it from being a good game, just one that wasn't made as time- or effort-efficiently as possible whether 3.5 actually achieves the last part is another story, of course, but i maintain that 3.5 is a game about being a wizard and hand-picking a bespoke list of powers based primarily on their conceptual effect on the game world, rather than or at least before their tactical utility. i love and even strongly prefer 4E, but it doesn't do that. it doesn't even try. powers are deliberately written so vaguely that reskinning is trivially easily, which is good, but serves a completely different purpose. a handful of rituals cross into that design space but the vast majority of them are just mechanics for dealing with the aftermath of combat or the transition in or out of it. and ultimately "guys, magic mouth and tenser's disc are still there that's what you wanted right no wait come back" rings pretty hollow. "It's not true that 4E doesn't have utility spells! Look at this list that's 1/10th of the size, has recurring gold costs in a game where gold is even more strictly rationed out by level and basically serves as a second form of XP, and the whole section kind of looks like an afterthought" From a designer's standpoint, of course there's no point in making a million weird rituals that only awkwardly relate to the main focus of the game (tactical combat) and which would probably require constant interpretation and on-the-spot rulings if they did interact with combat. But this misses a more fundamental split in how players engage with the game and what they want from it. (I'm deliberately not saying "what the game was designed to do" because lol) this is also why i am not joking when I say that the best version of D&D 3.5 is Mage: The Awakening 
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Jan 27, 2019 19:06
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remusclaw posted:I found The Turtles RPG in a house my family was renting. I played it by making up rules that seemed right with some six siders I scavenged from yahtzee and a limited understanding of how that sort of thing was supposed to go. I graduated to making my own games based on Final Fantasy and Shining Force that manifested as line paper with a hundred abbreviations written on them like cp, gp, hp etc. My first RPG was homegrown based off of The Legend of Zelda and reflavored completely based off of what stuffed animals and blocks I had available. Once we were allowed to use the phone we ended up doing a lot more theater of the mind games. The argument that TTRPGs shouldn't be like video games will never land with me. Video games are the form of games that are optimized for computers. TTRPGs are the form of games that are optimized for talking to a friend. e: Now that I think of it none of my early games featured character generation, because that wasn't a thing in video games at the time. DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 19:38
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Ewen Cluney posted:OTOH I'd need something that plays significantly faster, since I just don't have the ability to have regular 6+ hour game sessions anymore. That was what damned 4E for me. It was a perfectly serviceable RPG and I welcomed innovation in D&D, but I never felt like we got very much done relative to other RPGs, in a three or four hour session.
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Jan 27, 2019 19:44
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One of the big things 4e got wrong by my reckoning was that it didn't throw away the idea that an adventure should be made up of a bunch of little encounters. Encounters take a lot of time in that game and because of that, they should all be meaningful. 4 fights per full rest sounds alright in the abstract, but in play those 4 fights might take four sessions to get through, and most of them are going to be trash fights. Shining Force was my favorite video game when I was a kid, and my ideal 4th edition steals from that I think, fights should be big, and they should matter, and they should only happen when it is appropriate, rather than because there has to be a fight every couple rooms or so.DalaranJ posted:
I think I had the same thing going on in my head to a degree. The Ninja Turtles game had way too much space put aside for making lame original characters when I thought it should have been full of more Turtles Characters, like Bebop and Rocksteady, and I know that they didn't exist when the game came out but they did by the time I got a hold of it, so I wanted them moire than I wanted some Terror Bears or whatever I have a great fondness for Palladiums equipment and weapons pages though. Full of Kasuri-Gama, egg shell smoke bombs and AK-47s as it is. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jan 27, 2019 |
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Jan 27, 2019 19:52
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Throwing away little encounters would make 4e a worse game imo. Boss fights lose their importance if every fight is a boss fight and the whole fighting a pack of kobolds or w/e is kinda integral to the game D&D.
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Jan 27, 2019 19:57
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It would make it a different game for sure. But downplaying traps and dungeon delving and such already did that. I don't like meaningless violence, I want it to be consequential and important if it's going to take up time and effort. I am aware that it means that classic D&D is not necessarily what I want out of a game any more.
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Jan 27, 2019 20:00
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