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90s Cringe Rock posted:"May as well inject straight-up Communism into the book while they're at it. Jesus Christ!" There's literally no sack in anything Venger ever says. He just types like he's bored. It feels like he's just doing some kind of "Well, I wanna be a reactionary too. Ummm..yeah..uhhh back the blue or something, I guess. :/" and it's really strange. The Pundit is a seething rage ball and it feels genuine, Venger just seems very milquetoast.
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Nov 11, 2021 10:07
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:There's literally no sack in anything Venger ever says. He just types like he's bored. It feels like he's just doing some kind of "Well, I wanna be a reactionary too. Ummm..yeah..uhhh back the blue or something, I guess. :/" and it's really strange. The Pundit is a seething rage ball and it feels genuine, Venger just seems very milquetoast. When you've made your lifestyle brand some goofy Satan/Cthulhu slashfic and nobody cares, it probably does a number on you. Darrick probably thinks his mere existence should offend and outrage people (and it does, but not for the reason he thinks it should) so he doesn't put in any extra effort.
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Nov 11, 2021 15:57
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In wrestling terms, he thinks he has heat but it's just go-away heat
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Nov 11, 2021 16:03
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Not that it excuses it, but I'm guessing they lifted the genocide spell from Nethack, where it became a component of high level play. As for Dishaw: Halloween Jack posted:He's very much a creature of that early 2000s "if I mock Christianity, no one will notice that my politics are really the same as Rush Limbaugh's" type of white guy
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Nov 11, 2021 16:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:yes, you could also do that. AFB, but I seem to recall the PHB 1 is somewhat rich in artwork. Slimming down the artwork (as befitting a clone), as well as more efficient formatting, might help shrink page count. Also, my recollection of 4e powers were that they were somewhat... formulaic. You might give each class a menu to develop powers (which also avoids copyright concerns).
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Nov 11, 2021 18:05
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I think gradenko was shooting for a rough estimate of word count as a means of gauging required effort. Format wouldn’t matter that much because that’s a presentational issue after the actual text is written ; 30,000+ words of well thought out rules text is the same amount of work to write no matter the font size. And I’m incredibly leery of trying to naively pull apart powers into component parts. I think you’re over-estimating how simple the “formula” is, as demonstrated when people have tried to make their own classes and it’s turned into a pile of clownshoes. And we’ve seen that it’s always easier to balance discrete options against each other vs more freeform components, that’s pretty much the point of class-based design. I love classless systems and like the freedom they give, but it’s insane to pretend like they aren’t significantly harder to design well.
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Nov 11, 2021 18:38
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Cutting out all the other classes in a 4E retroclone would be an incredible mistake, considering party composition is fairly rigidly defined by role (i.e. you need a Defender, a Leader and 1-2 Strikers or the DM will be forced to throw out half of their options for encounter design) and the fact that the number of options within each role is one of the system's strengths. You would need to offer a minimum of two classes (preferably three) for Defender/Leader, and double that for Strikers since players will be doubling up on the role. The good news is all of that already exists, so it's just a question of picking which classes you want to include (and for those with Power book support, which two builds you want to offer). Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 18:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:And I’m incredibly leery of trying to naively pull apart powers into component parts. I think you’re over-estimating how simple the “formula” is, as demonstrated when people have tried to make their own classes and it’s turned into a pile of clownshoes. This is true, but I was struck recently when looking over the 4e powers by how repetitive they were between tiers. Even if there are 30 levels of powers for PCs, most of the 11+ ones are just repeats of the powers from 1-10 but with bigger numbers. That's still a ton of work, but a little less than it looks like.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:57
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OtspIII posted:This is true, but I was struck recently when looking over the 4e powers by how repetitive they were between tiers. Even if there are 30 levels of powers for PCs, most of the 11+ ones are just repeats of the powers from 1-10 but with bigger numbers. That's still a ton of work, but a little less than it looks like. No I’d argue the exact opposite. It looks like a lot less work than it is.
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Nov 11, 2021 20:01
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Making a tactical combat game is easy if you don't care about balance. If you care about balance, it's really a lot of work. So many revisions. Since RPGs sell mainly based on art and presentation, instead of balance and playability, it's very easy to see why so many games have terrible garbage for rules.
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Nov 11, 2021 20:59
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They (RPGs as a whole) don’t have to be balanced though, by the very nature of having a DM and the nature of coop play most of them involve. It makes things easier for the DM if the game has decent balance, but in most games having say a weak party or a single player that’s min-maxing and the rest of the party building for RP or fun concepts is not much of an issue. The more tactical the game leans, the more time should be spent on not only balancing but making things not feel samey. That was my main problem with 4E; as someone else said a lot of it felt formulaic.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:28
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Bottom Liner posted:They (RPGs as a whole) don’t have to be balanced though, by the very nature of having a DM and the nature of coop play most of them involve. It makes things easier for the DM if the game has decent balance, but in most games having say a weak party or a single player that’s min-maxing and the rest of the party building for RP or fun concepts is not much of an issue. The DM should not be responsible for plastering over lovely design, and the existence of a gm doesn't justify it.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:32
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Yeah, but design is inclusive of a lot of things, not just mechanical balance. I think for many players the math is not as important as style and choice, and luckily it’s easier to fudge numbers than to create the latter for your table. I don’t know of any mainstream system that doesn’t have balance issues, and that’s not surprising. I fully understand the desire to have a functioning game that doesn’t require extra legwork, but my point is that it’s not as big a deal as it would be in a board game, competitive tabletop games, etc where that is the whole game. RPGs are about a lot more than just numbers and mechanics. RPGs can and do work despite critical balance flaws, where other games don’t or can’t. I would prefer designers acknowledge this and give guidance to balancing things because it’s almost impossible to design a system that will get the players to a similar power level while still letting them have meaningful choice in character creation that includes and excludes combat effectiveness. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 21:36
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having fun variety in builds and such is important but it is neither as or more important than giving every DM who runs your game a secret homework of "do the math on all player abilities to make sure no one can run away with the game"
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Nov 11, 2021 21:37
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Bottom Liner posted:They (RPGs as a whole) don’t have to be balanced though, by the very nature of having a DM and the nature of coop play most of them involve. It makes things easier for the DM if the game has decent balance, but in most games having say a weak party or a single player that’s min-maxing and the rest of the party building for RP or fun concepts is not much of an issue. My car doesn’t have to have airbags but gently caress if I’m gonna buy one without.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:46
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah, but design is inclusive of a lot of things, not just mechanical balance. I think for many players the math is not as important as style and choice, and luckily it’s easier to fudge numbers than to create the latter for your table. I don’t know of any mainstream system that doesn’t have balance issues, and that’s not surprising. The thing to keep in mind is that balance doesn't only matter in combat scenarios. One of the main balance issues in D&D 5e, for example, is that casters frequently have narrative options that martials don't. That's a major balance issue, and it has nothing to do with what happens when you pull out the grid and miniatures to start swinging imaginary swords.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:54
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Has anything interesting happened in the industry lately?
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Nov 11, 2021 21:55
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Xiahou Dun posted:My car doesn’t have to have airbags but gently caress if I’m gonna buy one without. What if every airbag in the world was defective and needed to be recalled and wasn't? Probably better off just installing extra seat belts lol King of Solomon posted:The thing to keep in mind is that balance doesn't only matter in combat scenarios. One of the main balance issues in D&D 5e, for example, is that casters frequently have narrative options that martials don't. That's a major balance issue, and it has nothing to do with what happens when you pull out the grid and miniatures to start swinging imaginary swords. Yeah, no argument there. Magic systems are often extremely lazily implemented into the worlds of games and broken on every level.
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Nov 11, 2021 22:42
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Tarnop posted:In wrestling terms, he thinks he has heat but it's just go-away heat This is apparently known as X-Pac Heat. People don't love to hate you, they would like you to please just get out of the ring and stop wasting everyone's time, they paid a lot for these tickets and they didn't realize you were on the card if they'd known you were they'd likely have not come
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Nov 11, 2021 22:46
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Has anything interesting happened in the industry lately? Is there another zinequest coming?
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Nov 11, 2021 22:51
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Bottom Liner posted:Yeah, no argument there. Magic systems are often extremely lazily implemented into the worlds of games and broken on every level. Right, but the issue here isn't just a lazy magic system, it's balance. Narrative options are fun, everyone should have them, and they should be distinct per class. Balance is hard, and some level of imbalance is tolerable, but no matter what game you're playing, the important thing is to make every class have varied, effective, and flavorful options to choose from. This applies to all aspects of the game.
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Nov 11, 2021 22:51
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think gradenko was shooting for a rough estimate of word count as a means of gauging required effort. Format wouldn’t matter that much because that’s a presentational issue after the actual text is written ; 30,000+ words of well thought out rules text is the same amount of work to write no matter the font size. It seems like gradenko was looking at actual page count from phb1, not approximate word counts. And I'll absolutely concede that my knowledge of powers died sometime around 2010. I wound up buying the powers books a few years back when I had a wild thought of designing monk and ranger shades for 5e by using the warlock chassis. My recollection of reading the books was that the powers seemed interchangeable. (They may have been at that point.) Nevertheless, I'll defer to your experience in the edition that outstrips my own.
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Nov 11, 2021 23:03
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Eastmabl posted:It seems like gradenko was looking at actual page count from phb1, not approximate word counts. A lot of them “looked” the same but wound up being much more significant in play, even just in PHB1. Cleric vs warlord is a classic example because they both look like they’re just aiding allies, but one is more like a vanilla buffbot who also hits and the other is buffing their own attacks that happen to use friends as weapons. This true inside individual classes too, I’m just using a cross class example because it’s more salient. And gradenko can obviously state their own intention, but I read it as them using page count as a rough estimate because word-count on a pdf or a physical book is annoying as hell while page count is just subtraction.
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Nov 11, 2021 23:22
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Has anything interesting happened in the industry lately? Mothership hit Kickstarter and is just shy of cracking a million dollars. Which is pretty good for its kind of game, I think. That's the only big event I can think of recently in the industry, but I'm not terribly plugged in to the scene any more.
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Nov 11, 2021 23:41
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Really? Good for them! Their modules are great.
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Nov 12, 2021 00:08
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Has anything interesting happened in the industry lately? https://medium.com/@gabrielleweidli...es-f92204d99fc3 Another game designer/company owner is getting called out for being abusive to his employees. This one strikes close to home for me, I know Mike pretty well, we've played games and gotten drunk together, I always thought he was one of the good ones who was managing to run a successful tabletop game company without resorting to exploiting people. Guess I was wrong. I did have a business related conversation with him once, and he got really defensive about the idea that artists would like to know how much he was offering to pay for their work before they took the time to submit their portfolio to him.
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Nov 12, 2021 00:17
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Bucnasti posted:I did have a business related conversation with him once, and he got really defensive about the idea that artists would like to know how much he was offering to pay for their work before they took the time to submit their portfolio to him. 
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Nov 12, 2021 00:28
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Xiahou Dun posted:I think gradenko was shooting for a rough estimate of word count as a means of gauging required effort. Format wouldn’t matter that much because that’s a presentational issue after the actual text is written ; 30,000+ words of well thought out rules text is the same amount of work to write no matter the font size. Yeah I was basically just trying to eyeball "how many pages of stuff would you need to retype if you wanted to get the most basic skeleton of a 4e retroclone out there" I wouldn't even think about doing anything NEW with the material, save the math fixes for inherent bonuses (and the monster math, but that obviously isn't going to be part of a cloned PHB). Like, just take all the Fighter powers as-is-where-is, except when they need to be renamed to avoid running into legal trouble. Yes, cutting out all the art would cut down on the estimated page-count even further Yes, cutting it down to just the four classes would be a disservice to the diversity of playstyle in the game, but I was just aiming for one of each role to get the game into a playable state asap
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Nov 12, 2021 02:34
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I gotta be honest, as much as people complain about this thread going on hundred page tangents about Star Trek or 4E or whatever, I have to say I find it better than my immediate thought whenever I see this thread get a hundred new posts which is "who got outed as a horrible abuser/sex pest this time."
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Nov 12, 2021 04:34
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Yeah I actually like it tbh. People mostly are talking civil and not being dicks.
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Nov 12, 2021 04:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Really? Good for them! Their modules are great. I find most of them drat near unusable, but I did run Ypsilon 14 to some decent success with two friends, one of whom had never played an RPG before. A Pound of Flesh has a lot of good ideas that I just find struggle in the whole package. I can already tell I'm going to be a MoSh grog, though, based on the 0e to 1e changes announced so far. Less hype for that. (But digging into that is maybe territory for another thread?)
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Nov 12, 2021 05:12
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Eastmabl posted:And I'll absolutely concede that my knowledge of powers died sometime around 2010. KotSF with 3 defenders, a cleric, and a striker did not make for the best introduction to the system.
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Nov 12, 2021 07:37
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dwarf74 posted:Oof. Hard disagree on most counts. The problem is that it’s hard to think of a game that hasn’t had this problem no matter how tactical it tried to be. D&D 5e has caster supremacy and bardzilla. D&D 4e had orb lock. Pathfinder 2e has pick and flick fighters. Admittedly I have yet to find out what’s wrong with Fragged, Zafir or Level Up. But it doesn’t matter because nobody seems to stop buying/playing those games even after their flaws showed up.
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Nov 12, 2021 08:05
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I honestly sometimes think what made 4e do so much worse comparatively was not being as fun to read in the bathroom, even if it was a lot easier to read ruleswise.
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Nov 12, 2021 08:24
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hyphz posted:The problem is that it’s hard to think of a game that hasn’t had this problem no matter how tactical it tried to be. When people say they like balance in games, they don't mean "the balance has to be objectively perfect on every axis or it's trash garbage for idiots," there's a huge gulf of difference between a game where an entire subset of characters might as well not even take up pagespace because the other half can do their jobs better and a game where optimization exists but it's also hard to fall backwards into a bad time because you made the mistake of picking something that looked cool. Every single time balance in games comes up someone has to go "well perfect balance doesn't exist" and like yeah no poo poo it doesn't, but the less bad the balance is then the less preemptive work the GM has to do going "don't pick this, don't pick that, this set of options we're not using, please don't combine X and Y," etc. Insofar as making the problem completely nonexistent is probably impossible, the degree to which the problem exists is an issue that is possible to address. I also think the idea that tabletop roleplayers don't notice or care about this sort of thing as long as it's flashy and cool-enough looking is kind of spurious, it sort of rests on an assumption that roleplayers just somehow aren't concerned with balance, which has never really been true in my experience, even if it didn't keep them from playing the game people still notice this stuff, and honestly a lot more people nowadays seem capable of noticing it given how readily available tons of "let's crack games open under the hood to see what makes them tick" material is available for even the casually interested gamer to peruse.
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Nov 12, 2021 08:36
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Ego Trip posted:KotSF with 3 defenders, a cleric, and a striker did not make for the best introduction to the system. "Combats take HOURS to finish!" That said, we started playing other games when we dropped 4e.
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Nov 12, 2021 08:38
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Eastmabl posted:"Combats take HOURS to finish!" If I was doing a 4E retroclone, once the "clone" part of the equation was sorted the next things I'd look to bolt on would be: - much more forceful guidance about party composition by combat role, including honest breakdowns of how much longer an average fight will take for each striker that you replace with a leader or defender - some sort of morale system for enemies - a starter adventure that actually follows the DMG's guidance on how to build an adventure and encounters, using the rebalanced MM3 stats
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Nov 12, 2021 08:51
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Eastmabl posted:"Combats take HOURS to finish!" Took hours to finish with no uncertainty as to the outcome. Maybe we were doing something wrong, but the triple defender made most things ignore the other two and the cleric had a healing circle spell that kept everyone standing. Then it was just a slow grind as the enemies bounced off the meatshields while dieing to a thousand paper cuts. Now we play better games, so it all worked out.
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Nov 12, 2021 09:07
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We had a similar experience with 4E. We'd spend all afternoon and into the night on Sundays playing and get through maybe 3 combat encounters with a party of 4-5. At the time, I thought it was an issue with our GM/group, but years later I realized the fault was none of ours'.
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Nov 12, 2021 09:30
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I have found at least one attempt at a 4e retroclone that's gotten a decent part of the way: Orcus. Has classes written up, some powers, monsters, etc. The framework at least seems to be there. Is it sufficiently different to 4e-as-written that it would survive a legal challenge (not that anyone can afford to defend against such a lawsuit anyway)? I have no idea. But there it is. Seems to be the farthest anyone's got making a pure clone.
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Nov 12, 2021 09:43
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