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Tuxedo Catfish posted:this isn't as weird as you might think Splicer posted:D&D should have no ability scores. You've got races, classes, archetypes, skills, backgrounds, and feats to say how strong, agile, tough, smart, wise, or charismatic your guy is. All the scores do is get in the way. Meinberg posted:There's a part of me that does like random generation in character creation, but I am a firm believer that it needs to be for non-essential stuff. Or alternatively, if you're going more OD&D where most of the game is combat, most ability scores have no effect on combat, and there's an intentional churning of PCs in killer dungeons, which allows the strong to rise to the top. In a more character-driven game (either mechanically or narratively), it just doesn't make any sense. dwarf74 posted:If you're doing point-buy, they basically are created equal already - or close enough for the differences to be irrelevant. This is the DTAS argument in a nutshell.
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Jan 24, 2020 22:23
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Zaphod42 posted:So all elven rangers are created equal? Not sure I like that. Hard disagree, Race should have a mechanical effect otherwise there's not much point in including them
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Jan 24, 2020 23:26
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Every species has a different and unique 4e power, no matter what game you're actually playing.
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Jan 24, 2020 23:45
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drrockso20 posted:Hard disagree, Race should have a mechanical effect otherwise there's not much point in including them races don't have a mechanical effect IRL but they're still included here
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Jan 24, 2020 23:57
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Meinberg posted:races don't have a mechanical effect IRL but they're still included here
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Jan 25, 2020 00:07
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Meinberg posted:There's a part of me that does like random generation in character creation, but I am a firm believer that it needs to be for non-essential stuff. Or alternatively, if you're going more OD&D where most of the game is combat, most ability scores have no effect on combat, and there's an intentional churning of PCs in killer dungeons, which allows the strong to rise to the top. In a more character-driven game (either mechanically or narratively), it just doesn't make any sense. Thread convergence: check out the Conan online character generator: https://conan.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/index.html You don't need to know the game rules to try this out. Click character generator, then you can select all or just core or whatever (doesn't matter for our purposes at the moment), and under Options, check out the four different options for "how random" you want generation to be. Then you can select any of the levels of randomness, such as "Play the Hand you are Dealt" . This is a really really good set of random character generation principles at work. In general unless you go the fullly non-random options, you are A) generating something at random, and then B) still having a choice or two that follows on from the previous selections. In some cases, you're offered a choice between rolling and selecting from a list - this is because this character gen option still has sub-options (in the rulebook) for what exactly is being selected. For example, you roll for an archetype ("Scholar") which adds a couple of points to a career skill (Lore), adds a career talent (Scribe), adds points to some mandatory skills (Animal Handling, Linguistics, Persuade, Society), and then lets you select a couple more skills from a shortlist (using "Play the Hand you are Dealt, you pick one from a list of three (Alchemy, Healing, Sorcery), then roll to randomly select a second from that list), and then get some assigned equipment plus a couple of dropdowns to pick two more equipment items. If you use the "Normal" generation option, it's fully modular; at every step, you can either pick, or roll. This is the most flexible option and I really like it for when I have some idea of my character (I think I wanna play a traveling merchant's daughter who had a falling out with her family) but would like inspiration from some random stuff (ooh, I'll roll for Aspects - I got Eagle Eyed, and Wise & Friendly... maybe after being kicked out of her family's seafaring business, she took up a short career as a scout, that fits Eagle Eyed well, so I'll choose Awareness for the +1 attribute and Coordination for -1, and then boost Personality and Brawn with my optional attribute bonuses to represent her willfulness and good physical fitness.) But then I'll select my Caste rather than rolling for it, because I've already decided she's a Merchant (Social Standing 1, Tradesman/Vagabond talents, Persuade skill) and then select my Story (Hard-won Profits, which gives the Divided Family trait, really seems to fit, etc. And then for Archetype I rolled Pirate, but I'm gonna re-skin this package. Observation career skill, Sharp Senses talent, Melee/Parry/Resistance/Survival mandatory skills and two of Sailing/Stealth/Thievery can work for my ex-merchant-daughter-become-scout backstory I'm developing here. Then I roll Nature and I get Cautious, which also gives Lore, Parry and Stealth so that's some nice synergy, and I can't decide between Animal Handling or Athletics so I'll flip a coin on that, and then that gives me a choice of four talents... I could double-up on Scribe (Lore) but maybe I'll go with Living Shadow (rank 1) which I can take because I have Stealth from my "Pirate" skills. etc. etc. etc. You get the idea. By the way I think just walking through two or three characters is a great way to get the start of a feel for how well this game's character mechanics support the genre, and how wide open that genre is for character types. Also gently caress it generating characters is fun as hell, everyone who likes generating characters should give this one a try.
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Jan 25, 2020 01:11
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I should probably mention one cool thing about FF14, compared to something like WoW, is how race is almost entirely cosmetic. Stereotypes exist but they're cultural and this is extremely stark when introduced to other worlds with the same races and completely different cultures. And they're all considered "humanity." Elezen are just tall pointy-eared humans. Lalafell are just tiny pointy-eared humans with cutesy features. Miqote are humans with cat features. I guess Hrothgar are just even moreso? Viera are very long-lived humans with bunny ears. Roegadyn are just very big and buff humans. Hyur are basically real-life baseline humans though the Mandervilles clearly go beyond. When a genocidal horde of dragons say they want to wipe out all of humanity, they mean all of the above. More ttrpgs should be willing to flex their creativity re: populating their worlds with fantastic races but, if they're fundamentally just human, to treat them as human and race as a largely cosmetic matter.
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Jan 25, 2020 04:19
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FF14 is a bad example to pick here, because "humanity" in Eorzea is explicitly a political construct with no basis in reality that exists purely to give the alliance moral and legal justification to steal from, exploit and murder the peoples they have arbitrarily decided are "not human" (the ones they label "beast tribes" so you're extra sure to know that they're animals, not people). Hyur and miqo'te are different species and the only thing they share that e.g. hyur and goblins don't is that they had enough power to force each other to recognise the other as being sapient species of equal standing. Goblins don't get that, so instead they get to suffer helplessly with no legal recourse while Limsa openly breaks the treaties it signed with them in order to grab more and more of the goblins' lands and resources. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 04:32
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Meinberg posted:races don't have a mechanical effect IRL but they're still included here In a world with actual physical differences between the different peoples, should the bird people not be able to fly, the fish people not be able to breathe underwater, and the human people not be able to declare these differences racist?
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Jan 25, 2020 05:00
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Xarbala posted:More ttrpgs should be willing to flex their creativity re: populating their worlds with fantastic races but, if they're fundamentally just human, to treat them as human and race as a largely cosmetic matter. I kinda prefer the opposite, I want things to be clear and different funky species, rock people, plant people, devils, celestials, weird outsiders, and not just 'humans, but short,' 'humans but strong and dumb,' and 'skinny pretty humans' Although I can just as easily go with 'race/species/whatever is just fluff and social, not a mechanical bonuses' or making them hardcoded in interesting ways. -It just sucks when a race I have no interest in has the ideal mechanics I wanna use, or something I wanna play is a subpar match up. Hell same with classes if they're meant to have an in-setting meaning with lore attachments.
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Jan 25, 2020 05:01
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My Lovely Horse posted:I dislike the D&D idea of ability scores where you generate them, then derive a set of values from each, then derive the numbers you actually use playing the game from those. My ability scores in D&D should be Fortitude, Reflex and Will and flow directly into any attacks, defenses and skills there are. Probably rename them to be a bit more broadly applicable, but as far as mechanics are concerned. Then you would just adore an old SPI RPG called Universe (no you wouldn't)
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Jan 25, 2020 05:34
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If you absolutely have to have stats, the only good ones are Mind, Body, and Soul (ie Int, Str+Dex+Con, and Cha+Wis).
BinaryDoubts fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 05:45
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Lemon-Lime posted:FF14 is a bad example to pick here, because "humanity" in Eorzea is explicitly a political construct with no basis in reality that exists purely to give the alliance moral and legal justification to steal from, exploit and murder the peoples they have arbitrarily decided are "not human" (the ones they label "beast tribes" so you're extra sure to know that they're animals, not people). Hm, and where else is race a political construct with no basis in reality? And one where it exists purely to support the colonization and subjugation and dehumanization of the outgroup? Flail Snail posted:In a world with actual physical differences between the different peoples, should the bird people not be able to fly, the fish people not be able to breathe underwater, and the human people not be able to declare these differences racist? Because it almost always starts then and the becomes “and so the ones that are stand-ins for racial minorities get an intelligence penalty.” To be more generous, different species with legitimate physiological differences are cool and neat. It’s just important that these species are present as different species and don’t become coded as represented different races. Avoiding monocultures is a hugely important step here. And it’s also important to not frame things in term of weaknesses and strengths, and instead to think of it as purely biological permissions. It is then useful if there are tool- or magic-based options that also open up these permissions for those that wish to invest in them. If you’re playing a game with underwater fish people, you need to have some way for surface folks to breathe underwater through artificial means.
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Jan 25, 2020 06:07
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Coolness Averted posted:I kinda prefer the opposite, I want things to be clear and different funky species, rock people, plant people, devils, celestials, weird outsiders, and not just 'humans, but short,' 'humans but strong and dumb,' and 'skinny pretty humans' I mean specifically in those situations where the different races are basically just humans with different cosmetic traits, cultures, and the occasional token "weird power" like darksight or the ability to enter a trance instead of sleeping to rest or whatever. I'm not talking like situations where there's Stellaris-level species differences. If they're that different, I would call them species instead of races. Lemon-Lime posted:FF14 is a bad example to pick here, because "humanity" in Eorzea is explicitly a political construct with no basis in reality that exists purely to give the alliance moral and legal justification to steal from, exploit and murder the peoples they have arbitrarily decided are "not human" (the ones they label "beast tribes" so you're extra sure to know that they're animals, not people). The fact that lalafells on the Source are considered "spoken" while lalafells on the First are called dwarves and are considered a beast tribe does a lot to highlight the issues with social and racial inequality in FF14, and even in-lore and in-world the politics of dehumanizing other sapient peoples are noted as being deeply hypocritical and self-serving. Much like in real life. From what I've seen, though, hyur, elezen, au ra, and roegadyn are capable of interbreeding, however rare such instances are. And I could've sworn G'raha Tia was a miqote descendant of an infamous hyuran emperor. Runa fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jan 25, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 07:07
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Xarbala posted:From what I've seen, though, hyur, elezen, au ra, and roegadyn are capable of interbreeding, however rare such instances are. And I could've sworn G'raha Tia was a miqote descendant of an infamous hyuran emperor. Nah, not actually a descendent just a bunch of magitechnobabble.
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Jan 25, 2020 07:31
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Meinberg posted:Nah, not actually a descendent just a bunch of magitechnobabble. Huh. Welp.
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Jan 25, 2020 07:35
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slap me and kiss me posted:Every species has a different and unique 4e power, no matter what game you're actually playing.
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Jan 25, 2020 07:49
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Hey folks. Just a heads up that the resolution thread is going away soon, so get those resolutions in if you haven't already!
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Jan 25, 2020 11:12
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Even so, we have evidence that at least Elezen and Hyur can interbreed because there's an NPC who's half and half. They haven't introduced any other canon crosses but they're at least all physically compatible from tavern talk and fireside japes.
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Jan 25, 2020 20:52
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They've stated that they can all interbreed, but only barely.
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Jan 25, 2020 22:34
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BinaryDoubts posted:If you absolutely have to have stats, the only good ones are Mind, Body, and Soul (ie Int, Str+Dex+Con, and Cha+Wis). Correct. And obviously the best system would be the one that uses those three attributes. Oh. Ohh.
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Jan 25, 2020 22:45
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Strength, skill and magic should be the ability scores, just like in flawless video game series Fable
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Jan 25, 2020 22:46
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The four true ability scores are as follows: Gravity Electromagnetism Weak Nuclear Strong Nuclear
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Jan 25, 2020 23:54
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Meinberg posted:The four true ability scores are as follows:
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Jan 26, 2020 00:13
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Eh, Rules As Physics doesn't do it for me.
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Jan 26, 2020 00:25
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My Lovely Horse posted:Eh, Rules As Physics doesn't do it for me. Boo
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Jan 26, 2020 00:34
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Meinberg posted:The four true ability scores are as follows: so what happens if I have a high weak nuclear and a low strong nuclear, I don't know physics but that feels like a poorly optimized build
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Jan 26, 2020 00:36
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sexpig by night posted:so what happens if I have a high weak nuclear and a low strong nuclear, I don't know physics but that feels like a poorly optimized build 
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Jan 26, 2020 00:49
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My Lovely Horse posted:Eh, Rules As Physics doesn't do it for me. 
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Jan 26, 2020 00:52
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My Lovely Horse posted:Eh, Rules As Physics doesn't do it for me. Yeah, but this one still has a strong grasp of the fundamentals.
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Jan 26, 2020 01:47
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Lemon-Lime posted:FF14 is a bad example to pick here, because "humanity" in Eorzea is explicitly a political construct with no basis in reality that exists purely to give the alliance moral and legal justification to steal from, exploit and murder the peoples they have arbitrarily decided are "not human" (the ones they label "beast tribes" so you're extra sure to know that they're animals, not people). Ok this sounds really neat and better than "Wlves get +2 to bows, live in the woods and hate Dwarves." One of the things I think was a good idea in Strike! Was removing the race part of origin, but making it your culture. Infact, I'm putting together cultural liefepaths for my next 4e game for that reason, which role several different "races", backgrounds and themes into a geographic setting. I get that D&D races are closer to species, but it sucks having mono-racial societies as a setting conceit.
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Jan 26, 2020 03:34
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Moriatti posted:Ok this sounds really neat and better than "Wlves get +2 to bows, live in the woods and hate Dwarves." yea FF14 actually does a very good job examining this stuff, including a bit an expansion ago where the leader of the evil empire basically hits the heroes' pride by going 'oh yea I'm the bad guy but you guys do genocide and call it noble just as much'. Like, obviously no poo poo he is the badguy because he's a magic nazi, but still, it's a major popular MMO that directly addresses race as a purely political tool more than biological determinism.
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Jan 26, 2020 03:57
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The idea that "definition of a species" = can't interbreed is pernicious and incorrect. IRL taxonomists struggle to define clear species boundaries, and in order to function, classifications in different branches of the life tree have to have different sets of guidelines and determinitive factors, and even then, deeply nerdy but intense arguments between biologists abound. IMO roleplaying games with multiple different "kinds of people" (whether you call them races or species) are way too intent on explicitly deciding "well, can they gently caress? and make babies?" anyway, but if you're going to address that question in your game, it'd be great if you'd not then describe your decisions as defining species boundaries. And if you assign different mechanical abilities to your "races" and then also decide they can have babies, now you've painted yourself into a really lovely game design corner when it comes to stats for the offspring. So maybe just don't do that.
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Jan 26, 2020 04:02
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Wasn't there a game that had a ridiculous chart of who could breed with what but had like pixies on it.
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Jan 26, 2020 04:11
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Kwyndig posted:Wasn't there a game that had a ridiculous chart of who could breed with what but had like pixies on it. ah, the book of erotic fantasy...
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Jan 26, 2020 04:12
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Kwyndig posted:Wasn't there a game that had a ridiculous chart of who could breed with what but had like pixies on it. Sounds like Ardwin, an alternate setting for REIGN. The two gimmicks were that it was a fantasy setting with no humans, and literally all the playable races could have offspring with each other leading to some nature/nurture arguments.
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Jan 26, 2020 05:50
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Is it me or would Earthdawn work kinda well with a Dark Souls style setting? Mostly the way Karma mechanics function.
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Jan 26, 2020 09:39
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In my experience, the only time treating races/species as a good, meaningful choice was in Burning Wheel where it had a whole separate life-path mechanic that let you meaningfully distinguish one random elf from another, but also when you made a character of one "race" it really felt differently from making another. But I also hate most implementations of race-as-mechanics and am a sucker for Burning Wheel's life-path system so I might be biased.
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Jan 26, 2020 09:55
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TheArchimage posted:Sounds like Ardwin, an alternate setting for REIGN. The two gimmicks were that it was a fantasy setting with no humans, and literally all the playable races could have offspring with each other leading to some nature/nurture arguments. “Some” nothing, the setting foregrounds it by making the two main axes of character creation the skill & ability package you get from your ethnicity (born an orc) and the one you get from your culture (raised as a dwarf).
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Jan 26, 2020 10:28
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Moriatti posted:Ok this sounds really neat and better than "Wlves get +2 to bows, live in the woods and hate Dwarves." Technically, the races do have a stat adjustment, it's just the numbers get so high so quickly that they become irrelevant.
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Jan 26, 2020 17:22
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