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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I think you should talk about things that you like. Talk about things that do a bad job in serving a good purpose. I've said this before but there are good design goals buried in 3.5 / Pathfinder that the facile suggestion of "just play 4E" or "just play Dungeon World," however well intended, do not serve any better (and sometimes worse) than those games do. The hard part is identifying those things and drawing them out from all the more objectively quantifiable failures, like how utterly useless CR is as a measure of difficulty, feats that serve no purpose except to trap the unwary, the fact that it's even possible to play a non-caster PC, and so on. FMguru posted:P&P is a perfect example of why games need developers. I'm sure the whole thing made perfect sense to the designer, but its a completely baffling nonsense mess to anyone who isn't him. It's a real heartbreaker - it's clear he had a vision for what he wanted (and it wasn't just "AD&D plus a decade of my group's house rules"), and he put a lot of work and effort into it, it's just incredibly badly communicated. I've never heard of this game but based on your description, it sounds like it would also be a fantastic topic for a similar kind of analysis. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jun 20, 2019 |
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Jun 20, 2019 19:25
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I've never heard of this game but based on your description, it sounds like it would also be a fantastic topic for a similar kind of analysis.  Some guy even put a 2nd edition together for it which incorporates errata and not much else.
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Jun 20, 2019 21:05
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FMguru posted:Rolemaster, too. In fact, I'd say a good chunk of the 1970s fantasy heartbreakers constitute various attempts to solve the "no social context" problem in D&D. Empire of the Petal Throne does it by grafting on Tekumel, which is awesome but constituted way too deep and idiosyncratic of a background (and the actual EPT 1st edition rules don't really engage with the background that deeply save for magic and treasure, since they're an eccentric riff on OD&D). C&S overcorrects by going for a setting drawing heavily on Medieval Europe, but massively overestimating how much information you actually need to bake into the game to arrive at the sense of verisimilitude it's after. Finally, RuneQuest shows the world how you actually bake setting assumptions into a game system (particularly with the way you're enticed into investing in cult membership for magic), as well as finding a level of setting description which is light enough that it isn't daunting whilst being rich enough to deliver a lot of flavour. It's notable that once the 1st edition AD&D DMG comes out, it included a whole bunch of details on building quasi-medieval societies, and the design space shifted away from looking into ways to marry setting to rules and more into finding more robust rules (BRP/RQ 3rd Edition generalising RQ's skill system, for instance, or early Rolemaster essentially saying "What if AD&D, only you have a more consistent resolution mechanic for stuff?").
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Jun 21, 2019 00:26
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To me, the missing context of D&D characters is less setting, and more that there's no room for characters to have any kind of hooks into the setting, whatever it is. Even Exalted's extremely threadbare Resources/Retainers/Hearthstone backgrounds do more. It doesn't help, of course, that prewritten adventures generally have the baked-in assumption that characters have exactly zero attachments to keep them from wanting to move across the country, take a caravan to China, or whatever.
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Jun 21, 2019 03:49
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Roadie posted:To me, the missing context of D&D characters is less setting, and more that there's no room for characters to have any kind of hooks into the setting, whatever it is. Even Exalted's extremely threadbare Resources/Retainers/Hearthstone backgrounds do more. It doesn't help, of course, that prewritten adventures generally have the baked-in assumption that characters have exactly zero attachments to keep them from wanting to move across the country, take a caravan to China, or whatever. I think it's starker in the core OD&D booklets, where there is a dungeon and a hexmap wilderness and that's literally all that's defined of the world. I don't really disagree with you, mind, though I think "social/setting context" and "hooks into the setting" amount to the same thing - if the characters don't have those hooks then the setting isn't a society they live in, it's a painted backdrop for their adventures to play out against.
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Jun 21, 2019 08:58
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Roadie posted:To me, the missing context of D&D characters is less setting, and more that there's no room for characters to have any kind of hooks into the setting, whatever it is. Even Exalted's extremely threadbare Resources/Retainers/Hearthstone backgrounds do more. It doesn't help, of course, that prewritten adventures generally have the baked-in assumption that characters have exactly zero attachments to keep them from wanting to move across the country, take a caravan to China, or whatever. Weapons of the Gods does the 'integrate characters into the world and its history and lore' better than any other game. Pity the dice system is so awful.
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Jun 21, 2019 13:57
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Warthur posted:Did he poo poo his pants in Chik-fil-a, which would imply he got inside the store somehow (perhaps partaking in a secret "chicken lock-in" party and stuffing himself with chicken direct from the fryer), or merely at Chik-fil-a, which would imply he was just in the general vicinity (perhaps desperately pounding on the door demanding that they let him use the bathroom). The original rumor said it was in the Circle Center Mall Chick-Fil-A, so we’re talking about a food court situation. Perhaps he was leaning back against the drop down cage when the alleged making GBS threads occurred? I don’t know! There’s no proof that isn’t exactly what happened!
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Jun 21, 2019 14:12
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The way 13th Age used backgrounds for skills also does a good job of integrating characters with the game world.
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Jun 21, 2019 14:24
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Warthur posted:In fact, I'd say a good chunk of the 1970s fantasy heartbreakers constitute various attempts to solve the "no social context" problem in D&D. Empire of the Petal Throne does it by grafting on Tekumel, which is awesome but constituted way too deep and idiosyncratic of a background (and the actual EPT 1st edition rules don't really engage with the background that deeply save for magic and treasure, since they're an eccentric riff on OD&D). C&S overcorrects by going for a setting drawing heavily on Medieval Europe, but massively overestimating how much information you actually need to bake into the game to arrive at the sense of verisimilitude it's after. Finally, RuneQuest shows the world how you actually bake setting assumptions into a game system (particularly with the way you're enticed into investing in cult membership for magic), as well as finding a level of setting description which is light enough that it isn't daunting whilst being rich enough to deliver a lot of flavour. Fantasy Imperium really takes the cake; it strives for *~Historical Fantasy Role Playing in Medieval Europe~*. It makes you roll for social class and profession. It has a complex and fiddly system for piety and prayers, including specific benefits depending on whether you're praying to God the Father or the Trinity or the Virgin mary, because it takes it for granted that Christianity is the true religion. It gives an extremely Judeo-Christian and Islamophobic history of the Western world from ancient Greece to the Schism of 1054. It does insane poo poo like take ancient sources at their word (The death toll of the Siege of Jerusalem was over a million), believes common canards (no one minted coins for centuries after Rome fell), blames everything wrong with the Catholic Church on a Satanic conspiracy, and begins its section on Islam with "The history of Islam is a river of blood." Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jun 21, 2019 |
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Jun 21, 2019 15:47
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That doesn't sound Judeo-Christian. That just sounds Christian.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:20
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Yeah FI sounds like it'd have some uncomfortable handling of Jewish content.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:24
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friendlyfire posted:That doesn't sound Judeo-Christian. That just sounds Christian. To be fair, when people say 'Judeo-Christian' they usually just mean Christian anyway.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:26
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, when people say 'Judeo-Christian' they usually just mean Christian anyway. Yes. I wish they'd stop.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:31
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Fair. It's pretty bad.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:35
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Terrible Opinions posted:Yeah FI sounds like it'd have some uncomfortable handling of Jewish content. Fantasy imperium was a dogshit game made by a man whose brain does not process reality in the same way as everyone else. The author tracked me down about a bad review I wrote too. Never made any real trouble for me but still. I went to a game shop in Santa Monica, I cant remember the name, and it warmed my heart to see multiple copies of the FI corebook being used as structural support for bookshelves. Apparently the guy finally realized that both he and his product were abject failures and dumped boxes of the corebook off.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:37
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I say Judeo-Christian because it promulgates that weird sort of history where Roman emperors are evaluated as good or bad based entirely on how friendly they were to Jews and/or Christians. And it only discusses Jews in the context of saying that Islam (and the odd secular monarch like Ferdinand II) is evil and committed atrocities against the Jewish people. It's very strange in that regard. The Inquisition is blamed on a Satanic conspiracy that infiltrated the Church, and to which most secular monarchs belong. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 21, 2019 |
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Jun 21, 2019 17:38
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When most people say "Judeo-Christian" they actually mean "just the white people".
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Jun 21, 2019 17:50
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A distressing number of Christians only care about Jewish People in as much that rounding up enough of them in the holy land is supposedly the cheat code that activates the rapture.
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Jun 21, 2019 18:53
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Weapons of the Gods does the 'integrate characters into the world and its history and lore' better than any other game. Pity the dice system is so awful. i love weapon of the gods but is there a way around having everyone have to read half of the core book and make notes during chargen because it sounds inpossible to do
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Jun 21, 2019 18:53
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Pocky In My Pocket posted:i love weapon of the gods but is there a way around having everyone have to read half of the core book and make notes during chargen because it sounds inpossible to do Yes, but it requires you to play Hearts of Wulin or Tianxia instead.
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Jun 21, 2019 19:03
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TheArchimage posted:When most people say "Judeo-Christian" they actually mean "just the white people".
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Jun 21, 2019 19:14
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Weapons of the Gods does the 'integrate characters into the world and its history and lore' better than any other game. Pity the dice system is so awful. Hey now! WotG has its issues but I'll not hear any slander against the dice system. Matching up sets is fun!
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Jun 21, 2019 19:25
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Sage Genesis posted:Hey now! WotG has its issues but I'll not hear any slander against the dice system. Matching up sets is fun! It's a bitch to do with a VTT system.
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Jun 21, 2019 20:06
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:It's a bitch to do with a VTT system. Oh. I've never played with a VTT, I wouldn't know. But that does sound plausible.
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Jun 21, 2019 20:14
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Warthur posted:I think it's starker in the core OD&D booklets, where there is a dungeon and a hexmap wilderness and that's literally all that's defined of the world. I don't really disagree with you, mind, though I think "social/setting context" and "hooks into the setting" amount to the same thing - if the characters don't have those hooks then the setting isn't a society they live in, it's a painted backdrop for their adventures to play out against. I think part of this is the wargaming background from which OD&D was written, where the game doesn't exist to provide the context, the game exists to facilitate an existing context. You're interested in gaming out a pseudo-historical battle between Castile and Cordoba, and you can use Chainmail for this. Chainmail doesn't need to establish the entire historical context of the rise of Islam, the Umayyad conquest of Spain, and the Reconquista, because that's what the players bring with them: Chainmail just provides the rules for soldiers and horses crashing into each other. I think there's a half-formed, unwritten, possibly unconscious assumption behind OD&D that the players will have a context, and the rules are just there to let them play heroic tomb raiders and real estate developers in the context of their choice. (This is of course somewhat at odds with the very specific assumptions about magic and monsters made, but if there's one thing OD&D is not it's consistent.) There aren't lists of weapons and armour from wildly divergent historical periods and geographic locations because D&D is a world where all these somehow coexist, but because D&D needs to support play in all the divergent historical periods and geographic locations. (The Rules Cyclopedia gets outright explicit about this, with equipment divided by historical period.)
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Jun 21, 2019 20:47
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LatwPIAT posted:There aren't lists of weapons and armour from wildly divergent historical periods and geographic locations because D&D is a world where all these somehow coexist, but because D&D needs to support play in all the divergent historical periods and geographic locations. (The Rules Cyclopedia gets outright explicit about this, with equipment divided by historical period.) I don't know anything about OD&D but in 2nd edition Advanced D&D it's like this, too. There's a chart of what weapons are available to you based on time period and culture. There's a giant page with several different cultures political/religious titles, I think it even listed the word for money in several different languages. I remember in particular one full page drawing that depicted two Greek soldiers carrying a third into a temple while an old man in a toga watched. It showed young-me that D&D wasn't only meant to be played in Tolkien-esque European fantasies. I still have that book somewhere.
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Jun 21, 2019 22:22
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WFRP has some fun handling of the societal context thing by having most of the entry careers explicitly be pretty mundane and boring, with just enough quirks to hang some character traits off (small but vicious dog, etc), and the second and onward careers are where you get the "cool" stuff. I feel like you could get a similar effect in D&D but you'd need to create a lot of of 3-level classes or whatever to represent the "mundane" start.
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Jun 22, 2019 03:24
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Mandatory 3 levels of a martial class before you’re allowed to be a caster 
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Jun 22, 2019 05:00
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Mode 7 posted:Mandatory 3 levels of a martial class before you’re allowed to be a caster I see you've played D20 Modern
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Jun 22, 2019 06:31
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Mode 7 posted:Mandatory 3 levels of a martial class before you’re allowed to be a caster No, no, it's 3 levels of mystical apprentice who has status condition-inducing incense but no spells or weapons.
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Jun 22, 2019 07:37
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Beyond the Wall does a great job of creating a social context for the PCs as a D&D game by having you create your village and backstories as a group and having that play into your characters stats.
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Jun 22, 2019 17:00
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LatwPIAT posted:There aren't lists of weapons and armour from wildly divergent historical periods and geographic locations because D&D is a world where all these somehow coexist, but because D&D needs to support play in all the divergent historical periods and geographic locations. (The Rules Cyclopedia gets outright explicit about this, with equipment divided by historical period.) I've flipped through my PDF of the Cyclopedia, and I'm pretty sure the opposite is true. The equipment is in big old lists, and the default campaign setting is Mystara, which is very much a kitchen sink setting.
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Jun 22, 2019 23:02
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Advanced D&D in specific seems to have been where they got the idea of "use this for any fantasy world!" In particular 2nd leaned on this heavily, and with 3rd it got extended into "use the d20 system for everything!" That has been dialed back since, 4th was very much "this is about dungeon heroics", though with 5th you do see a lot of "let's use this for random concept I have" due to its popularity.
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Jun 22, 2019 23:20
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/Greg-Staffords-Office-RuneQuest-Movie-Script-Chaosium/133089597802?hash=item1efcc2196a%3Ag%3AbOEAAOSwmgVdCXb%7E Turns out there was a runequest movie in the works. It was in the financing stage but Conan came out and took all that heat. Also apparently the script wasn't great but what did you expect.
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Jun 22, 2019 23:36
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Emrikol posted:I've flipped through my PDF of the Cyclopedia, and I'm pretty sure the opposite is true. The equipment is in big old lists, and the default campaign setting is Mystara, which is very much a kitchen sink setting. Yeah, my mistake. I was thinking of AD&D 2e, which operates with the categories Ancient World, Dark Ages, Medieval, and Renaissance.
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Jun 23, 2019 00:54
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LatwPIAT posted:Yeah, my mistake. I was thinking of AD&D 2e, which operates with the categories Ancient World, Dark Ages, Medieval, and Renaissance. Was that in the core or are you thinking of the Combat and Tactics guide. Because I know thats in the latter but I think its just a big table again in the core. I really loved Combat and Tactics when 2nd edition was my only game. 3E felt very familiar to me because of that book when it came out.
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Jun 23, 2019 01:23
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Maxwell Lord posted:Advanced D&D in specific seems to have been where they got the idea of "use this for any fantasy world!" In particular 2nd leaned on this heavily, and with 3rd it got extended into "use the d20 system for everything!" That 'lets use this for random concept I have' is the brain-sick musings of people who have never been exposed to any other system and refuse to leave the comfort of their mud hovels.
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Jun 23, 2019 03:45
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Liquid Communism posted:That 'lets use this for random concept I have' is the brain-sick musings of people who have never been exposed to any other system and refuse to leave the comfort of their mud hovels. The OGL's shadow is long and dark.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:04
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remusclaw posted:Was that in the core or are you thinking of the Combat and Tactics guide. Because I know thats in the latter but I think its just a big table again in the core. I really loved Combat and Tactics when 2nd edition was my only game. 3E felt very familiar to me because of that book when it came out. You're both kinda right. It's a big table that sorts all equipment into four time periods, plus a paragraph or so of text about each period. Page 53 in the AD&D 2E DMG. There are also notes in the PHB on certain pieces of equipment like the arquebus, advising players that they may only be allowed in specific settings.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:44
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Liquid Communism posted:That 'lets use this for random concept I have' is the brain-sick musings of people who have never been exposed to any other system and refuse to leave the comfort of their mud hovels.
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Jun 23, 2019 06:31
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