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Nessus posted:Darth Vader is a failed Jedi Knight. What the hell good is that supposed to be? It just means he's gonna take a penalty on Force Use checks. I feel like that's a bit of a poor faith take on the complaint. Like, "failed knight," what does that suggest to you that said character is going to be good at, if that's all you've got to roll with for a descriptor?
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Oct 16, 2022 09:22
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Antivehicular posted:All issues with hyphz's table aside (but don't get me wrong, hyphz's table stories read like an anxiety dream), I feel like the question of "are we okay with broad character archetypes being used to describe a character's skill set, or do we want stricter technical definitions of what characters know and can do?" is a reasonable one for a table to ask, and for the answer to guide system choices. (I know I've seen earnest good-faith discussion of whether "players will try to apply their backgrounds to every possible skill check" is a bug or a feature of the 13th Age background system, to think of the first example that comes to mind.) I personally think archetype-based skillsets are great, but I can believe that some tables might want things more spelled out, and that's fine!
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Oct 16, 2022 09:32
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PurpleXVI posted:I feel like that's a bit of a poor faith take on the complaint. Like, "failed knight," what does that suggest to you that said character is going to be good at, if that's all you've got to roll with for a descriptor? Hm, I mean the nature of the failure matters right? My first thought is that they're tougher than they look, able to bounce back from setbacks few others face. I'd also use it for fighting well, though arguably dirtier than a proper knight. If they failed due to dishonor I'd probably interpret "failed knight" as also covering tricking people through pretending to be more honorable or upright than you are, and to fitting in at least briefly in high society. Basically I'd assume "failed knight" means a character is good at being mean, duplicitous, and resourceful.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:37
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Tulip posted:Hm, I mean the nature of the failure matters right? My first thought is that they're tougher than they look, able to bounce back from setbacks few others face. I'd also use it for fighting well, though arguably dirtier than a proper knight. If they failed due to dishonor I'd probably interpret "failed knight" as also covering tricking people through pretending to be more honorable or upright than you are, and to fitting in at least briefly in high society. Basically I'd assume "failed knight" means a character is good at being mean, duplicitous, and resourceful. That's not a bad interpretation, but I feel like that could be made clearer with some better wording. Like make it obvious that the failure was a moral failure. Like if it was "Dishonoured Knight" instead, which implies something about what talents they bring to the table. "Failed Knight" could just mean "can't ride a horse, can't hold a sword, can't figure out how to put on a fancy tabard without ripping it in half."
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Oct 16, 2022 09:41
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PurpleXVI posted:That's not a bad interpretation, but I feel like that could be made clearer with some better wording. Like make it obvious that the failure was a moral failure. Like if it was "Dishonoured Knight" instead, which implies something about what talents they bring to the table. "Failed Knight" could just mean "can't ride a horse, can't hold a sword, can't figure out how to put on a fancy tabard without ripping it in half." Yeah there's multiple angles to it for sure. Like my actual first instinct was just 'masterless,' not in the sense of a bachelor knight but more in the sense of like a ronin. I'd definitely want to like, flesh the character out from that concept and probably nail it down a little more for what the "failure" means. And I've def played games where "can't ride a horse etc" would be no impediment to an effective character - "fool" classes have been a lot of fun for me in the past and frankly I tend to be better at piloting them than more straightforward killers.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:48
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I would have figured 'Failed Knight' meant like Cyan Garamonde of FFVI. A knight who failed his people and everyone died around him. So excellent marks at all knightly duties, and also blaming himself and making silk flowers.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:49
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"Failed Knight who is extremely good at honor, courtly love, and generally navigating the social and spiritual space of knighthood, but is extremely bad at the parts where you ride a horse and engage in violence" sounds like kind of a baller character concept, honestly.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:54
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Tulip posted:Yeah there's multiple angles to it for sure. Like my actual first instinct was just 'masterless,' not in the sense of a bachelor knight but more in the sense of like a ronin. I'd definitely want to like, flesh the character out from that concept and probably nail it down a little more for what the "failure" means. Even "Masterless Knight" I can more easily come up with ideas than "Failed Knight," there might be intimidation("oh no! masterless knights are all dangerous and unstable people that challenge you to a duel at the drop of a hat!") or provocation("a masterless knight???? a mockery of our grand and noble traditions! en guarde, fiend!") in some situations, and if the game permits for it a general fighty bonus(maybe he DOES really fight duels at the drop of a hat and has plenty of experience with it). And I love me a good "fool," but most games end up in combat at some point, and having an entire part of the game you have to check out from unless it robustly allows you to use non-combat skills for something funky there, isn't particularly fun to me. Like in social situations and the like, you can usually get some comedy out of not being too good at things without being actively disruptive, but in a fight it takes a very specific system and a very good GM for "being bad at fighting" to not just be "you accomplish nothing, go stand in the corner and tick down your HP." I wish more games provided some incitement to play to your weaknesses, like take a thing you're objectively poo poo at. Every time you try to do this thing and fail, you get some metacurrency. Every time you do something stupid because of this vice you picked, you get some metacurrency. Something of that sort. So people who are bad at things are encouraged to still try them, for the sake of stocking up metacurrency for the things they want to succeed at, like the combat incompetent who's a great face or hacker or turtle rider whatever.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:59
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"I use 'failed knight' to reroll my horse roll" *rolls a 1* "Well it doesn't say 'successful knight'"
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Oct 16, 2022 10:14
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PurpleXVI posted:I feel like that's a bit of a poor faith take on the complaint. Like, "failed knight," what does that suggest to you that said character is going to be good at, if that's all you've got to roll with for a descriptor? Are you Anakin Skywalker (incredible at the actual position, flawed as a person, manipulated by evil?) Are you a perfectly fine knight who failed a cruel master on trivial causes, leading you to support some infant inheritor of the rightful throne? etc. To me, "failed knight" suggests that my character is a knight in terms of skills and abilities and background, but one who is defined by having failed at some key test, rather than someone who tried to become a knight and washed out. This wouldn't invalidate other options, but even someone who attempted to become a knight and failed might be an excellent fighter and knowledgeable in the skills; maybe they were Jewish, maybe they have some subtle health flaw that made them swoon during the vigil, whatever. You can apply similar logic to a failed diplomat. You could take it in the direction of farce - some pompous high-status rear end who is incompetent in general - but you could also have a Jean-Luc Picard who had simply failed at some key test, for whatever reason. Indeed it could be a campaign driver; "inexplicably the Rigellians did something that wasn't in character for them, and it wasn't orders from on high, nor was it some single diplomat's whim. But why?"
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Oct 16, 2022 10:19
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PurpleXVI posted:That's not a bad interpretation, but I feel like that could be made clearer with some better wording. Like make it obvious that the failure was a moral failure. Like if it was "Dishonoured Knight" instead, which implies something about what talents they bring to the table. "Failed Knight" could just mean "can't ride a horse, can't hold a sword, can't figure out how to put on a fancy tabard without ripping it in half." I mean yes it could, but it could equally mean "failed because of one specific thing, but still great at the rest". You're the one who decided that it had to mean "useless at everything". Anyway, even then you can roll on Failed Knight to do stuff like "well, I may be a failed knight, but even a failed knight knows that the heraldry of Duke Windermere is red on black. That guy's an impostor!"
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Oct 16, 2022 10:27
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Or, hell, even if it does mean "I'm bad at everything a knight should be good at," like... okay, what did you do to get by instead? You're good at all that stuff. "I'm a failed knight so I'm good at scrounging and surviving on the road since no lord will give me hospitality." "I'm a failed knight, so I'm good at shanking people in the back since I'm useless in a straight up duel." "I'm a failed knight, so I'm good at giving the appearance of being a wealthy aristo so no one realizes I'm actually destitute." "I'm a failed knight, but I had enough of the knightly code drilled into my head that I know how actual knights will act, and how to exploit that." Etc.
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Oct 16, 2022 10:59
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13A does have issues in play as written because it wants you to allocate points to 3 different backgrounds, and applicability of them does vary a bunch - it's a weird case where at chargen the backgrounds are doing one job, fleshing out your character's history, and during play they do something different. It was very easy for players to pick flavorful and evocative backgrounds that either subsumed each other or your weaker background was the one that happened to come up, and it realllly felt odd in the case where you had +4 something vaguely related and +1 something clearly related to the situation. Easy patch for 13A at least was to say 'allocate +4 to 2 backgrounds' instead of letting you spread the points, and let people rewrite them at will after play starts. I was tempted to get people to rewrite them each session and give bennies for the ones that got used.
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Oct 16, 2022 11:39
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xiw posted:13A does have issues in play as written because it wants you to allocate points to 3 different backgrounds, and applicability of them does vary a bunch - it's a weird case where at chargen the backgrounds are doing one job, fleshing out your character's history, and during play they do something different. Incidentally quote:Fabula Points can be gained in four different ways: quote:NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS Splicer fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 12:46
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Leraika posted:not translated yet and I think the wiki's dead 
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Oct 16, 2022 13:58
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Antivehicular posted:"Failed Knight who is extremely good at honor, courtly love, and generally navigating the social and spiritual space of knighthood, but is extremely bad at the parts where you ride a horse and engage in violence" sounds like kind of a baller character concept, honestly. It is, and you can also see how that starts out as "failed knight" and grows into what you wrote through the background being applied to stuff in play, the player explaining how it applies, and other players building on those explanations. This is why I'm always sceptical of criticism of backgrounds like this because even the laziest poo poo can be spun into gold if the system makes you add layers to it in play
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Oct 16, 2022 15:07
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good news! I found where the wiki moved! bad news! still not translated https://w.atwiki.jp/exapicotrpg/ https://ux.getuploader.com/hymmmetrics/
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Oct 16, 2022 15:17
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In the context of most RPGs, "Failed X" means "you're an X who is an adventurer instead of an X"
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Oct 16, 2022 15:49
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Leraika posted:good news! I found where the wiki moved! bad news! still not translated I deffo should look into that!
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Oct 16, 2022 16:46
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Also
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Oct 16, 2022 16:47
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wow, really don't like that
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Oct 16, 2022 16:57
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I mean, I turned this over a few times and what I guess is bothersome is the idea that you have a limited number of these things to pick from, with different themes, and they can be arbitrary phrases. Thing is, as we see the idea of a limit has no meaning, because a phrase can pull in any amount of context. Is Darth Vader a "failed Jedi"? Technically he is, but he's not the same as any number of kids who dropped out of the Academy. Why did the character stop being the captain of the Skyraiders? What is a Skyraider, anyway? In Fabula Ultima there is a bit more background included on these, and why they stopped is listed as a question for the player to suggest an answer to. Is a "Princess without a kingdom" someone who grew up with a royal background and then escaped from an invading army? Or is she a member of a royal family that lost any status generations ago and persists with the delusion? Why did you fail at being a Diplomat? Is it because you're socially inappropriate, or is it because your latent skill as a berserker awakened at the wrong moment and you tore an emissary to shreds? So given all that - why bother with the limits on number of Aspects? Why not just say "your character can spend a benny for a reroll on anything they would reasonably be good at given their backstory?" You have to pull in their entire backstory anyway in order to understand what an Aspect means, so how is that practically different?
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Oct 16, 2022 16:59
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Because limitations are often good for creativity. Being handed a blank piece of paper and being told "draw anything" will make a lot of people freeze up.
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Oct 16, 2022 17:08
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Tulip posted:all i know about ar tonelico is that the music is really baroque, does the rpg require that you sing at the table cuz that would be p rad It's not exactly singing at the table, but consider 99c Chamber of Death
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Oct 16, 2022 17:11
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OK, gripes about the system: The dice system base is fine. You roll your two dice, add them together, equal or beat the TN, fine. There's three TNs - easy (7) average (10) and hard (13). The GM can also give you 1 or 2 to add or subtract from your roll depending on circumstances, not a lot of guidance but eh it's a quickstart. Fumbles are on a double 1, something bad happens but you get a point. That's all fine. I don't like that rerolling based on traits is a straight reroll. Even rerolling a 1 and only needing a 2 has decent odds of you just wasting a bennie. Also since your dice are different sizes it can be hard to tell what the best reroll option is; if you have a d6 and a d8 and get 4 and 5 respectively for a TN of 10 what's your best reroll option? (Reroll the d8, that gives you 37.5% chance. Rerolling the d6 is only a 33.33% recurring, while rerolling both dice is only 31.25%). Using bonds is almost always going to be strictly better except during hail mary rolls, which eh, if that's what they're going for fine but it leaves your traits I also really don't like the crit system. Rolling a double where the doubled number is 6 or higher (so rolling two 6, not two 3s) is an auto success and also you get a side bonus. 1) Your minimum auto success is 12, which is already a success on an average TN with a -2 modifier. Kind of weird mental overhead. 2) 2d10 has the highest crit chance, when I'd prefer it to be better the shittier your dice so as to reduce the incentive to always use your best dice. 3) The crit chances are really low, ranging from 1 in 20 for 2d10 all the way down to 1 in 72 for 1d6 + 1d12. 4) Finally "Oh hey I got doubles oh wait they're lower than 6 that means nothing" is weird gamefeel. Ditching the wholly unnecessary auto success qualifier and making it all doubles except 1s would give higher odds of a sidegrade to lower die rolls: pre:d6 d8 d10 d12 d6 13.9% 10.4% 8.3% 6.9% d8 10.4% 10.9% 8.8% 7.3% d10 8.3% 8.8% 9.0% 7.5%% d12 6.9% 7.3% 7.5% 7.6% Splicer fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 17:13
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hyphz posted:So given all that - why bother with the limits on number of Aspects? Why not just say "your character can spend a benny for a reroll on anything they would reasonably be good at given their backstory?" You have to pull in their entire backstory anyway in order to understand what an Aspect means, so how is that practically different?
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Oct 16, 2022 17:17
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PurpleXVI posted:Even "Masterless Knight" I can more easily come up with ideas than "Failed Knight," there might be intimidation("oh no! masterless knights are all dangerous and unstable people that challenge you to a duel at the drop of a hat!") or provocation("a masterless knight???? a mockery of our grand and noble traditions! en guarde, fiend!") in some situations, and if the game permits for it a general fighty bonus(maybe he DOES really fight duels at the drop of a hat and has plenty of experience with it). Well, I mean, this is making me think a lot about the fact that the venn diagram of the games you and I have both played is...paranoia? Not trying to be like critical or anything, its just kind of funny that my baseline norm for RPGs is very different from yours. Cultural sharing! Among the systems I play, the one that is the most combat heavy is Apocalypse World, where it's basically 20% of what a character is good at. Characters are Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, and Weird, and Hard is just the combat stat. Characters that are not hard often have tricks to make up for it in violent situations, but being more Hard just makes you better at combat and the class that focuses most straightforward on being Hard, the Gunlugger, not only has the most Hard but also has excellent combat tricks. There's just no attempt to make every character good at combat, if you have -2 Hard you just accept that you are going to gently caress up more often than not when you try and kill people. But combat isn't more important to the system that social rolls or endurance or knowledge. A good example of a game that I consider very typical and straightforward to explain is Blades in the Dark. There's 12 stats, one of which (Skirmish) is a straightforward combat stat and several others can be used for limited forms of combat (like a gunfight can always be Skirmish, but you can usually use Hunt to shoot people, arguably Prowl or Finesse, sometimes even Wreck, but all of those are going to limit your options). But fights aren't unique, they aren't strictly more dangerous than other things. A "desperate" position is a desperate position, whether its fighting people or climbing a building or trying to intimidate somebody. If you're in a desperate position, then 3 harm is generally considered fair. Like I can imagine off the top of my head scenarios that would get you shot and take 3 harm for Skirmish (shootout), Prowl (trying to move cover-to-cover across an area that a sniper is overwatching), or Command (trying to intimidate a person holding a gun to back down). Fail any of those and you took the same harm, whether its combat or not. And similarly a combat can be a controlled position where you're taking very little harm even if you totally fail the roll - you're armed and they're not, you got the jump on them, they're already hurt, they're surrounded. As for that last part, I'm used that being standard issue - like many systems I play, failing rolls is the #1 source of XP. The fool type characters I'm referring to are from Dungeon World and Legend of the Elements, where that's exactly the core of their gameplay loop. DW's Fool can roll for being "gullible" and "out of depth" and "lost," and they gain a metacurrency that they can spend to improve others rolls or autosucceed on other things. LotE's Peasant gains metacurrency and XP for taking consequences from others and has more metacurrency but cannot use to help themselves and stuff like that. It's neat!
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Oct 16, 2022 17:24
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I am one of those who doesn't like those sorts of backgrounds determining your roll bonus and things like "princess without a kingdom" are exactly why. A. That is a very cool background to have and I want people to pick backgrounds like that. but... B. I can't think of a single thing that someone with that background is inarguably good at. Which means that they can argue for its use on kind of anything. and... C. If the intention is that people will always be able to argue for using a background and getting a bonus on everything they do, just wrap that into the game math. Reduce all TNs by 3 and delete the background bonus. It's the same as D&D driving attacks off of your class primary stat: it mechanically limits your choices by essentially forcing you to have a 20 in your primary. Better would be to just give you a +5 to attack at level 1 and go up from there. Then you could play an absent-minded wizard with mediocre INT who could still hit with attacks. Removing the thing tying the bonus to stats opens up people to be more creative about the characters they create in D&D, and the same goes for backgrounds: removing the mechanical incentive to pick a vague and broad background opens the space up for them to pick a cool background that might not have a lot of applications to skill rolls.
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Oct 16, 2022 17:34
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PurpleXVI posted:I wish more games provided some incitement to play to your weaknesses, like take a thing you're objectively poo poo at. Every time you try to do this thing and fail, you get some metacurrency. Every time you do something stupid because of this vice you picked, you get some metacurrency. Something of that sort. So people who are bad at things are encouraged to still try them, for the sake of stocking up metacurrency for the things they want to succeed at, like the combat incompetent who's a great face or hacker or turtle rider whatever. The former is pretty common, but in my experience it's usually bribing players with metacurrency to voluntarily fail rather than as a consolation prize for trying and failing. This is because voluntarily failing is still a form of narrative control; you chose to send the narrative down a less optimal but more in-character path (and you were rewarded with sweet sweet metacurrency). Rolling for something you want to succeed at but choosing to reduce your odds of doing so is the opposite of narrative control; in order for that to work you need the assumption to be failure, as in the player has chosen to fail, with success as an added surprise bonus. That's tricky because once success is a possibility then human nature makes you hope for the success no matter how unlikely. The only game I've seen pull it off is With Great Power, where you choose to fail by playing a bad card from your hand to get rid of it. So you've already gotten what you wanted (ditched a bad card), and your bonus goal isn't "Will I succeed anyway" but rather "How good of a card is the GM going to waste on the four I just threw down". This makes the GM hucking down a 3 and you actually succeeding not just an unexpected win, but an unexpected category of win. I'm not sure how you could achieve the same thing in a dice roll system. Maybe get a metacurrency for choosing to "fail", then make a dice roll to get a side-benefit like a second bennie or something but critical success on the side benefit roll means your side benefit is "Actually you did it well done". Oh also obviously you have to make failure have teeth so you can't just fail the read runes roll and then the next player goes "OK yeah and now I do it properly". The latter, encouraging people to use things they're bad at to succeed, is even harder because you're completely ditching any pretence of "failure is good". The best you can do is what I was doing up there with those dice tables; something where your "bad" stats are still "good" stats, it's just that what they're good at isn't successfully accomplishing tasks. e: Or fiddling the DC so that your bad numbers are the good numbers in this specific circumstance which kind of defeats the purpose of having bad numbers! Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 18:49
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Jimbozig posted:I am one of those who doesn't like those sorts of backgrounds determining your roll bonus and things like "princess without a kingdom" are exactly why.
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Oct 16, 2022 18:54
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Sounds like I'll be sticking with Fellowship, then. Thanks for the dice math, Splicer! someday I wanna do an effortpost talking about the dice in kamigakari and how I think that's a cool system, but I'm not really invested enough for it to be a F&F and I don't think it'd be particularly interesting just shouted into the aether here.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:22
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One thing I like to do with background systems is ask people to specifically define what it doesn't cover. I find it's easier to list gaps than to try and list all the things a background can cover. And by doing so, the GM can just let backgrounds apply unless those gaps come up, instead of the player asking all the time if a background applies. Defining gaps for skills in RPGs is something I haven't really seen around, and I think it's interesting design space. I've wanted to do something like that for a superhero setting, where instead of picking out all the things your powers can do, you specifically define its limits. Then over the course of play and advancement, you can temporarily (and later permanently) expand those limits.
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Oct 16, 2022 19:52
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LimitedReagent posted:One thing I like to do with background systems is ask people to specifically define what it doesn't cover. I find it's easier to list gaps than to try and list all the things a background can cover. And by doing so, the GM can just let backgrounds apply unless those gaps come up, instead of the player asking all the time if a background applies. It's interesting. Like RPGs have sometimes had "flaws" like in OWOD, and at least I've seen some systems where characters are defined by their obligations (Hardholder in AW is my favorite), or by some sort of vow (I'm thinking like Vow of Poverty in DnD, or even I guess like Paladins and Druids depending on edition/GM). A sort of interesting element of this IMO is that in most systems characters are by default incompetent and then are modified/built into being competent at a few things. Which is to say that the default stance of this style of design is that PCs are inept. You mention supers but honestly could be any sort of system where the PCs are generically strong but then have weaknesses, which TBH is a more common type of character for litfic. Start with a baseline of competence and then carve out weakness like a sculpture.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:11
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Leraika posted:Sounds like I'll be sticking with Fellowship, then. Thanks for the dice math, Splicer! Also I forgot to say that even on a 2d6 roll the odds of rolling a fumble is only 1 in 36, and on a 2d12 rolls is 1 in 144. Why even have that as a mechanic? e: It's a shame because a lot of the actual stuff seems good it's just the core resolution mechanic that's ehhhhhh Splicer fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 20:45
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Splicer posted:It's shorthand. The player knows their backstory, the trait is just a couple of words on their sheet to remind them of it when they're frantically scanning for something to help them out. Everyone arguing about this, re-read Splicer's post until it's burned into your eyeballs. The players at the table know what the trait means, it does not need to be clear to outside observers what "Failed Knight" or "Princess Without a Kingdom" means. This is how Aspects and suchlike have always worked, the context is what matters. Splicer posted:e: It's a shame because a lot of the actual stuff seems good it's just the core resolution mechanic that's ehhhhhh It really is a shame, because a bad core mechanic sinks the whole game. You can't patch fundamentally broken math, the whole system is based around it so even if you manage to tweak it a bit, the echoes of it will be in every part of the system and your work will never end.
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Oct 16, 2022 21:26
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Jimbozig posted:B. I can't think of a single thing that someone with that background is inarguably good at. Which means that they can argue for its use on kind of anything. You can sit down and have an actual conversation about what it means, and that way you can define it before the game starts and not just arbitrarily use it for everything, if you want the application to be narrow(er). Jimbozig posted:C. If the intention is that people will always be able to argue for using a background and getting a bonus on everything they do, just wrap that into the game math. Reduce all TNs by 3 and delete the background bonus. Splicer posted:Yup. You can have bonuses with unlimited uses but strictly defined areas of application, or undefined areas of application but strictly limited number of uses, or even strictly defined areas of application and strictly limited uses, but you can't have unlimited uses and fuzzily defined areas of application because mechanically that's just an always-on bonus with extra steps. There's a big difference in gamefeel between those two options - this isn't equivalent to a player option everyone takes because it's too good or a maths-fix feat that's optional-but-not-really. The extra step matters! The actual solution is for the game to be 100% upfront about the expectation that people invoke their background constantly for everything, that way you get the intended design of "people bring their character's background into everything all the time" and there's no risk that some people will end up with backgrounds that are too narrow in their application. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 22:51
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Lemon-Lime posted:You can sit down and have an actual conversation about what it means, and that way you can define it before the game starts and not just arbitrarily use it for everything, if you want the application to be narrow(er). e: Like this hypothetical system where you have a few traits that it's assumed you will almost always be referring back to to describe your actions is absolutely fine as a concept and a perfectly serviceable rules-light RP prompt system, but it's not how the games in question actually roll. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 23:23
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Kestral posted:It really is a shame, because a bad core mechanic sinks the whole game. You can't patch fundamentally broken math, the whole system is based around it so even if you manage to tweak it a bit, the echoes of it will be in every part of the system and your work will never end. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 23:39
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Lemon-Lime posted:There's a big difference in gamefeel between those two options - this isn't equivalent to a player option everyone takes because it's too good or a maths-fix feat that's optional-but-not-really. The extra step matters! Yes! Absolutely, it is a different gamefeel, 100%. Do you get a different mechanical result from choosing background A instead of background B? No. But you looked at your sheet and you picked one. So you are reminded that you are playing that aspect of your character. You're a princess without a kingdom, not a robot looking for his creator! It makes no mechanical difference, but every time you act, you act as a princess, while your buddy acts as a robot. And the mechanics tell you that you have to say that and remember that. And moreover, that feeds back into the action you take because when you look at your sheet and see your background but realize it doesn't fit very well, you'll rephrase or reflavor or tweak your action to be more princess-y. So the mechanic reinforces you in playing your character in line with your chosen archetype. It works well. Cortex is built on that completely. Each action you take, you do that same thing multiple times. You pick an affiliation, then a training, then a background (I'm sorry, I don't remember the cortex names for these things, but you get the idea), and you build a little dice pool. And one dice pool is very much like the next, so mechanically it tends largely to come out in the wash (as they remind you, small dice and large each have their own advantages.) And personally, I kind of just don't like it. I can't say it's bad because I know it works well for lots of people and as a designer, I can see what it's doing and how it works, and I find it very cool and interesting, and I learned good design lessons from it. It's just not to my taste. The kinds of decisions you are making in those games are the kinds of decisions I have very little interest in. In RPGs, I like decisions with a lot of mechanical weight, and I like decisions with a lot of narrative weight (which you can of course make in any game). Choosing which of two flavors applies best to my already-chosen action and whether it gets me a d6 or a d8 just isn't either of those things, and making that kind of decision multiple times per action rubs me wrong somehow.
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Oct 17, 2022 04:32
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| # ? May 24, 2024 16:39 |
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I really like backgrounds as skills in systems where there's a cost to failure - systems with "success at a cost" mechanics and so forth. Because then, a background is essentially an approach. Whether you're using your "Failed Knight" background or a "Princess of a Forgotten Kingdom" background - you obviously have both - matters. Because the fallout from one versus the other matters. Choosing which background you're rolling is telling the GM "if I fail, these are the kind of complications I invite, and these are the kind I'm not interested in engaging with". In these systems, backgrounds are flavorful versions of "Quick" and "Careful" and so forth. In a system with binary success/failure, like 13th Age, then backgrounds just become an "argue for your best stat" system. And sure, you can have a session zero about "what does the phrase Failed Knight even mean", but whatever backstory it encapsulates, clever players can find a way to make it relevant. Creative players will casually explain why their "lonely botanist" background is relevant for flying an X-wing, befriending a robot, and disarming a trap. In these systems, backgrounds as skills are kinda dumb.
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Oct 17, 2022 05:21
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