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Infinity uses D20s for basically all of its randomness and it's fine but I also would not at all say it is "part of the D20 system." Especially because the practical probability curves are not flat. "The D20 System" is a pretty specific phrase in the same way that "Forged In The Dark" doesn't just mean using d6s (or even "use d6s and take the highest"). Anyway I appreciate this discussion about OSR stuff because it's never really held any appeal for me but I'm glad to learn some things.
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Dec 10, 2021 04:44
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The GLOG is weird to me because I feel like I see way more people discussing/lamenting the supposed omnipresence of the GLOG than I see actual GLOG-related material. I remember a guy on the OSR subreddit (yeah, yeah, I know) typing out multiple rants about how every single time he looked for new OSR classes or rules or whatever, all he found was GLOG content that he didn't want to use. This is completely counter to my experience with GLOG stuff, which I feel like I only even see mentioned outside of Goblin Punch itself once a week or so, including on the subreddit where that fellow so expressed his ire and the blogs on Arnold's blogroll. Is there just a whole separate, GLOG-crazy circle of old school gaming that I've just never seen? e: the GLOG itself looks fine to me at a glance, but it also kind of looks like one of those systems where you have to do way too much work to enjoy all the great elegance it supposedly has (see also Whitehack) Johnny Landmine fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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Dec 10, 2021 06:13
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Johnny Landmine posted:The GLOG is weird to me because I feel like I see way more people discussing/lamenting the supposed omnipresence of the GLOG than I see actual GLOG-related material. I remember a guy on the OSR subreddit (yeah, yeah, I know) typing out multiple rants about how every single time he looked for new OSR classes or rules or whatever, all he found was GLOG content that he didn't want to use. for context, I'm on the big GLOG discord and there are ~230 people there (combined online and offline). it's big but it's not that big, it probably feels bigger than it is because there's tons of content for it so if you go looking for D&D dead corpse class or whatever you're gonna find some GLOG results.
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Dec 10, 2021 06:19
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Halloween Jack posted:You prompt a really important question, though--what is the goal here? I haven't thought enough about it. For games in the D&D mold, I like class and level systems because classes help codify PC roles and prevent them from being too similar, while a level system provides a certain baseline of PC ability. (IME in most games, you can't craft an adventure for "characters with 6,000-10,000XP" the same way you can craft a Lvl. 4 adventure in D&D. Stuff like the Challenge Rating system can be executed badly, but when done correctly it's a big help. I've played games like Shadowrun where a common problem is how to challenge the Combat Guy without vaporizing the rest of the party. The problem I see with some classless games that allow for too much gimmicking is that for someone who wants the feel of classes, those systems have abandoned it entirely. What I think the classless system wanter often wants is a system that basically lets them make something that feels like their own class, but in my experience, systems that have fully abandoned the idea don't have the things that make characters feel like they have a class. So, taking this problem for example, what usually defines a class? To me, a class is baseline of my character, before aftermarket upgrades like rings and magic swords and blessings and stuff. I think the question to answer is how a player can be given a system that lets them feel like they designed their own class, and I think that the way most games make their class selection feel impactful is by giving you big ticket items along the way. There are plenty of big ticket items used in d&d like dual or two-handed proficiency, and if you intersect those with a variety early unique occupational feats, like stuff that would have been learned in your character's background, then you've got the beginning of an adventurer's career. As the player works that character up, choices for how to get stronger might have them want to be a little more underhanded. Why not allow that barbarian to branch out from where they are in life, and instead of learning pocket sand like a level 1 rogue, they learn GLASS MUSH because they are already a killer of great renown, and they know just where to apply such tricks It would take a lot of work to do, but I think once you get a good system in place, which is helped greatly by a good visualization, the labels kind of write themselves
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Dec 10, 2021 07:25
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Arivia posted:for context, I'm on the big GLOG discord and there are ~230 people there (combined online and offline). it's big but it's not that big, it probably feels bigger than it is because there's tons of content for it so if you go looking for D&D dead corpse class or whatever you're gonna find some GLOG results. See, that's interesting to me, because there are more than twice that many people online on the Mörk Borg discord right now, but I almost never see anyone complaining about how they can't swing a dead cat without hitting a bunch of MB content. (Well, not anyone other than fashy blog grogs with an axe to grind about "artpunk," I guess)
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Dec 10, 2021 07:56
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signalnoise posted:The problem I see with some classless games that allow for too much gimmicking is that for someone who wants the feel of classes, those systems have abandoned it entirely. What I think the classless system wanter often wants is a system that basically lets them make something that feels like their own class, but in my experience, systems that have fully abandoned the idea don't have the things that make characters feel like they have a class. This seems like a pretty big assumption seemingly out of nowhere. Perhaps of we're only taking a very particular kind of game, it's true, but I don't think it's what anyone wants from, say, vampire the masquerade. Or fate. Or exalted (you could argue that castes are like classes but I wouldn't buy it). Or Ars Magica. Or why number of excellent games.
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Dec 10, 2021 07:57
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I like a d20 because you can easily translate numbers into percentage, and 5% increments feel just granular enough to be able to eyeball them without getting too bogged down in detail. Maybe a d10 would work even better. Contrast: d10: "Steve's got about a 60% chance to climb that wall. He's too good at climbing for just 50, wall's too smooth for 70." d20: "Steve's got about a 65% chance to climb that wall. I reckon he's too good for anything under about 60, wall's too smooth for over say 70, let's call it in the middle." d100: "Steve has precisely a 67% chance to climb that wall. Not 66%, not 68%. Probably because of wall structure tables and poo poo." That being said in practice I go for setups where there are easy/medium/hard DCs for a task and I try to resolve things along a scale, with failure/only just made it/made it/made it with a bonus outcomes, so I really might as well go for a Strike!-like system with the d6 or even straight a d4 and all the hogwash about eyeballing chances is probably more than half justifying that I just plain like the tradition and the shape and seeing a 20 before me 
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Dec 10, 2021 08:14
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Arivia posted:for context, I'm on the big GLOG discord and there are ~230 people there (combined online and offline). it's big but it's not that big, it probably feels bigger than it is because there's tons of content for it so if you go looking for D&D dead corpse class or whatever you're gonna find some GLOG results. I'm assuming you mean the one that's linked on the subreddit for GLOG right? Johnny Landmine posted:The GLOG is weird to me because I feel like I see way more people discussing/lamenting the supposed omnipresence of the GLOG than I see actual GLOG-related material. I remember a guy on the OSR subreddit (yeah, yeah, I know) typing out multiple rants about how every single time he looked for new OSR classes or rules or whatever, all he found was GLOG content that he didn't want to use. Not really seeing where you have to do a whole lot of work to use Whitehack, outside of maybe making or converting monsters but that's fairly easy due to how simple a system it is
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Dec 10, 2021 08:22
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Magnusth posted:This seems like a pretty big assumption seemingly out of nowhere. Perhaps of we're only taking a very particular kind of game, it's true, but I don't think it's what anyone wants from, say, vampire the masquerade. Or fate. Or exalted (you could argue that castes are like classes but I wouldn't buy it). Or Ars Magica. Or why number of excellent games. I'm not sure which assumption you're talking about, I made a few. I didn't say good classless games don't exist though, that's for sure and I wanna make sure you don't get that impression. To paraphrase, I referenced my own observations with people in my own experience to say there exist some people who want to freestyle but don't like going whole hog without any class-like structures to make them feel like they have a class, even though they want to believe they want the full classless experience. Then I made a big assumption in thinking there are probably a good amount of other people who feel similarly. The rest of it was just an example of picking a starting goal of a feeling after identifying the feeling, and then changing the level of abstraction and seeing where it goes. Of course, no system will be right for every game, or for every set of players, or for every DM, etc. This is just pushing some outlines of thought processes for how to tackle a question like "how could I genuinely work multiclassing into a game in a way I think is satisfying" or whatever. You gotta start with figuring out what you're really trying to do. That's all I'm saying.
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Dec 10, 2021 09:01
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My Lovely Horse posted:I like a d20 because you can easily translate numbers into percentage, and 5% increments feel just granular enough to be able to eyeball them without getting too bogged down in detail. Maybe a d10 would work even better. Contrast: What the gently caress how did I fall with solid odds like this??
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Dec 10, 2021 09:02
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What is GLOG?
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Dec 10, 2021 09:37
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Angrymog posted:What is GLOG?
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Dec 10, 2021 09:40
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a grotesque little pile of goblins
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Dec 10, 2021 09:41
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Angrymog posted:What is GLOG? GLOG stands for "The Goblin Laws of Gaming", which originated as the homebrew* house rules for OSR style games on the blog Goblinpunch(one of the most acclaimed blogs in the OSR sphere) back in 2016, which quickly caught on in the wider OSR community^ due to its compact and highly modular nature, and due to its origins on Goblinpunch(who has a reputation for coming up with weird concepts) that in turn inspires many people to come up with equally weird ideas when making homebrew content for it(lots of weird variant wizards for example, plus appropriately enough more than a few different weird goblins) *as author Arnold K notes in that initial post about it, everyone has their own little homebrew rule set they work on, he just managed to work up the courage to actually post it ^particularly when in 2018 & 2019 when another notable OSR blog Coins & Scrolls released their own take on the GLOG in an expanded and more user friendly package
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Dec 10, 2021 10:13
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drrockso20 posted:I'm assuming you mean the one that's linked on the subreddit for GLOG right? Yes. There's also a lot of people on the one that's listed as outdated, but that's got a lot of other stuff going on that's not GLOG and most of the gretchlings/discussion has moved to Phlox's server anyway. Speaking of an intro to GLOG, there's a module posted on Goblin Punch (Arnold's website) called the Lair of the Lamb which is an introductory GLOG funnel kind of thing. I ran it earlier this year and it was a lot of fun, but it was not complete (a PC can pick up a class with no rules provided, there's a couple rooms in the dungeon itself with no details) so I'd recommend it if you want to give GLOG a try, with the knowledge you'll have to do some asking on the aforementioned discord about what the rules for necromancers are. (It's also where my piss joke came from, as it's the flagship GLOG dungeon currently and it is gross and disgusting and involves the PCs working with a lot of monster piss as a game mechanic.)
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Dec 10, 2021 10:24
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I must be getting old because I remember when that would have been a positive sales pitch and I can't understand how.
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Dec 10, 2021 10:37
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I was not expecting that post to take a sudden turm into the magical realm
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Dec 10, 2021 11:06
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Splicer posted:I was not expecting that post to take a sudden turm into the magical realm Its probably supposed to be more in the vein of "Goblins are gross and weird" than intentionally magical realm, I'll have to take a look at that module in question to properly judge though
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Dec 10, 2021 11:11
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drrockso20 posted:Its probably supposed to be more in the vein of "Goblins are gross and weird" than intentionally magical realm, I'll have to take a look at that module in question to properly judge though ... I realise what I just typed and I'm not changing it.
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Dec 10, 2021 11:44
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drrockso20 posted:Its probably supposed to be more in the vein of "Goblins are gross and weird" than intentionally magical realm, I'll have to take a look at that module in question to properly judge though Nah, it's not goblins. The titular Lamb is a horrible maggoty thing that's the child of a god, and its various fluids have magical or poisonous effects. The dungeon is a temple built up around it to kind of farm the Lamb's products, and dealing with the Lamb itself (with the PCs starting off as sacrificial captives) is the main hook of the dungeon. Inside of about three rooms, you find someone who's been captured to serve as the Lamb's personal idk, groomer? keeping it as clean as possible and collecting the stuff off it (who can be saved and be a new PC for one of the players, remember it's a funnel), then a bunch of old priests literally laying in pools of Lamb piss. The priests have gone senile due to the poison of the piss pools, but there's one in an adjacent room who's drinking different piss and has a claw for an arm and magic spells who turns all of them on the PCs. After the fight, the different piss can be collected for various uses, from extremely crucial to surviving the dungeon to instadeath for a PC. (none of these uses involve drinking it, just throwing it like a grenade or making an improvised lantern using some as lamp oil) It's very gross but it's specifically a gross-out weird horror thing, definitely not a magical piss realm thing. It's three rooms out of about 40 on the map I'd say? Is on the critical path though.
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Dec 10, 2021 11:50
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I get that my personal experience is hardly representative, but I think it's funny seeing people talk about how something that I had never even heard of until right now is everywhere and is dominating discussion and crowding everything else out. edit: Or I guess talking about how people elsewhere talk about it like that BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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Dec 10, 2021 12:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Totally spitballing here: what about a D&D variant where classes go to level 5, and after that you take another one? I don't mean SotDL's Path system, exactly--there could be "advanced" careers that you can't start with but a Fighter 5/Purple Dragon Knight 3 wouldn't be objectively better or worse than Fighter 5/Thief 3. this is not a "bad" idea per se, but you'd have to make the later "advanced" classes that much more powerful, to account for the fact that you're only getting them from level 6 onwards (and so on) the problem with 3e's prestige classes (that you already touched on in your parenthetical) is that an Eldritch Knight at character level 6 was competing with a Fighter 6, but the Fighter 6 was intended to be a competitive choice, instead of the PDK (or whatever other class) being objectively better. Like, if this idea were to work, taking EK 1 at char level 6 should mean getting everything a Fighter gets PLUS offensive spellcasting, and so on.
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Dec 10, 2021 12:45
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signalnoise posted:I'm not sure which assumption you're talking about, I made a few. I didn't say good classless games don't exist though, that's for sure and I wanna make sure you don't get that impression. To paraphrase, I referenced my own observations with people in my own experience to say there exist some people who want to freestyle but don't like going whole hog without any class-like structures to make them feel like they have a class, even though they want to believe they want the full classless experience. I lost the thread around this assumption and was never able to recover it after this part: quote:What I think the classless system wanter often wants is a system that basically lets them make something that feels like their own class I'm not sure that classless system wanter is a distinct type of person. Personally, when I had only played DnD for years, I got curious about "what is the game without classes" but the reality is very mundane: there are many many games without classes, I think the majority of games I own lack classes. For the most part they lack classes because adding a class system to the game in question doesn't advance the goals of the game. And of course now I'm wondering about what the line is for something being a class system. I have games that have "classes," but the classes have no mechanical effect at all, it's just field like name where you write in whatever.
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Dec 10, 2021 13:03
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quote:What I think the classless system wanter often wants is a system that basically lets them make something that feels like their own class Do you mean that people who play classless systems want their character to still feel distinct from the others and have their own roles and niches in the group?
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Dec 10, 2021 13:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:this is not a "bad" idea per se, but you'd have to make the later "advanced" classes that much more powerful, to account for the fact that you're only getting them from level 6 onwards (and so on)
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Dec 10, 2021 13:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:this is not a "bad" idea per se, but you'd have to make the later "advanced" classes that much more powerful, to account for the fact that you're only getting them from level 6 onwards (and so on) It got brought up before but WHFRP's career system is basically like this and works quite well. One of the neat things in it is that since each Career is a list of advances you can buy (and places you can go after, plus you always have the option to spend some EXP to jump immediately to a new 'starting' career on a track without finishing your current even if you wish) someone in a 'long' career is still going to be on par with someone doing several short ones, because you have the same amount of EXP and thus the same amount of actual advances generally. This leads to hilarity in the Lure of the Liche Lord's premade party, because they're 'balanced' by number of careers rather than EXP, leading to insanity like their Explorer having over twice the actual EXP and advances as their Fighter, because the backstory they came up with for the Fighter has him slumming around basic fighter careers and never advancing and also everyone had exactly 3 Careers. A complete misunderstanding of how to 'balance' PCs against one another and of how the mechanics of the Career system work.
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Dec 10, 2021 14:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:this is not a "bad" idea per se, but you'd have to make the later "advanced" classes that much more powerful, to account for the fact that you're only getting them from level 6 onwards (and so on) Gosh but it seems like a nightmare to balance all that such that it invokes the image of one class complete in itself though, both mechanically and in flavour. Then again, when a Red Mage's capstone in FFV is double cast, the mechanical effect is all anyone levels that for, too...
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Dec 10, 2021 14:44
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This talk of class systems makes me want to play FFT hacks again. Is there an RPG that has a modular class system that feels as good as FFT? All I can think of is LANCER.
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Dec 10, 2021 14:50
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Tulip posted:This talk of class systems makes me want to play FFT hacks again. I don't believe so, but drat, there should be. I think modular class isn't that much harder to balance, because every class system inevitably comes with a multiclass system, and multiclass systems are hosed for balance. If you just assume everybody is going to take 3+ classes, then I actually think it's easier to balance because you're being honest with yourself.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:11
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I think a big part of the issue with classless games is the rush of point-buy based D&D heartbreakers in the 90s. That established the idea that classless equates to point-buy, and that point-buy ultimately is "solved" by specialising and synergising in the same way a class would, so it's a bunch of work for the same result.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:12
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The irony being that 3e basically ends up being a really lovely point-buy system in the long run.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:20
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The irony being that 3e basically ends up being a really lovely point-buy system in the long run. especially when you consider that 3e was at least partially derived from Rolemaster, which was itself a quasi-point-buy system
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Dec 10, 2021 16:23
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CitizenKeen posted:I don't believe so, but drat, there should be.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:35
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Splicer posted:The problem with the OGL d20 system framework wasn't that it used a d20. It had uncountable flaws and didn't use a d20 effectively but assuming you're fine with a single channel of information a d20 is perfectly fine where suitable. I have a love/hate relationship with D20. I only started playing it because it was the only local game running, and I came to D&D 3e with the kind of visceral loathing that you can only have when you're a teenager who gets way too invested in pop culture. Before I played D&D, I thought the very concept of classes and levels was intolerably stupid, and that caring too much about rules meant you were "rollplaying not roleplaying." Teenagers are stupid. But picking apart everything wrong with D&D taught me more about game design than any other game. When done right, it's an amazing platform for managing character balance and encounter balance. It usually isn't done right. Johnny Landmine posted:The GLOG is weird to me because I feel like I see way more people discussing/lamenting the supposed omnipresence of the GLOG than I see actual GLOG-related material. I remember a guy on the OSR subreddit (yeah, yeah, I know) typing out multiple rants about how every single time he looked for new OSR classes or rules or whatever, all he found was GLOG content that he didn't want to use. Tulip posted:Infinity uses D20s for basically all of its randomness and it's fine but I also would not at all say it is "part of the D20 system." Especially because the practical probability curves are not flat. "The D20 System" is a pretty specific phrase in the same way that "Forged In The Dark" doesn't just mean using d6s (or even "use d6s and take the highest"). How does it play? Like, how tactically intricate is the combat, and how long does it take?
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Dec 10, 2021 16:54
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What games treat classes like a license, award, or degree so that they are more or less just showcases of what you are educated or experienced in and are free to mix and match? As opposed to the more strictly defined class systems where you're basically just a specific character archetype that doesn't work well with multiclass game mechanics.
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Dec 10, 2021 16:57
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FirstAidKite posted:What games treat classes like a license, award, or degree so that they are more or less just showcases of what you are educated or experienced in and are free to mix and match? As opposed to the more strictly defined class systems where you're basically just a specific character archetype that doesn't work well with multiclass game mechanics. It was a LARP system, not an RPG, but when I was at university I played in a homebrewed system like that. To gain levels in a class your character had to achieve something during a game -- so to level up as a warrior you had to defeat an enemy in personal combat, to level up as a wizard you had to encounter magical phenomena related to your school of magic, to level up as a scholar you had to make scientific discoveries. Then the higher class levels allowed you to spend your XP on higher-level skills. It was a system that had its flaws -- most notably that balancing things between classes was a nightmare, and that the lowest class levels were really easy to get, so to prevent people from getting level 1 in everything there was a limit to how many class levels outside your two primaries you could have -- but it added a lot of fun flavour to the game.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:04
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Halloween Jack posted:I was brushing my teeth last night and suddenly thought "Infinity is a cool setting. I wonder how the Infinity RPG actually plays. Maybe I should ask in the Chat thread." The rulebook sucks. My goto anecdote is that the rules for (1) grenades, (2) grenade launchers, and (3) explosions are all in different chapters. If you can get past that, it's my favorite 2d20 system. I think 2d20 runs best when it's crunchy, and Conan <-> Infinity is probably the best spectrum. Combat is interesting and fast, and you can mix in cool non-combat actions with the combat (e.g., defend a player while they hack, and have that be mechanically and narratively interesting).
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Dec 10, 2021 17:17
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And then there's Fallout 2d20 which I'm playing in a campaign for and like. It sucks but it's at least alright to play and judging from what I barely managed to grok from Conan is a much more stripped-down and tolerable Conan. The current Fallout rulebook is just plain incomplete in a lot of ways and missing stuff but if you have a GM willing to give it a shot it's at least pretty playable.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:29
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The dilution and increasing crappiness of 2d20 games makes me so angry/sad.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:35
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CitizenKeen posted:The dilution and increasing crappiness of 2d20 games makes me so angry/sad. The 2d20 Dune looks pretty neat, but I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around its dueling system.
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Dec 10, 2021 18:12
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