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skeleton warrior posted:::looks in trepidation at the copy of HōL on his shelf:: Wonders if he’d have to use Buttery Wholesomeness, or the insert of Freebase.
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Dec 21, 2022 13:01
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| # ? May 23, 2024 12:53 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Imagine if we were sentenced to run the systems we own. You are a monster for even implying that people might be forced to play FATAL.
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Dec 21, 2022 13:13
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jokes on you all, I only buy games I am interested in running and are good no bathroom readers on my shelf
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Dec 21, 2022 13:59
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i think the worst of my fate is i would have to run Dungeon World
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Dec 21, 2022 14:04
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We all laugh, but, oh, six years ago or so, I was part of a group at a local gaming club. It was me and a buddy I went to high school with; I learned D&D from the white box, and he and I played all sorts of poo poo together in high school, with AD&D2e and Shadowrun 2E being the big ones. The rest of the members were new players who learned on D&D5e. So they decided they wanted to try something really different, and I'd just gotten the Deadlands 20th Anniversary book, so I said 'hey, lets go old school, you might find it interesting to see how RPG systems used to work.' I ginned up a cheat sheet of just the basic rules procedures. Eight pages in Notepad, no fancy formatting. Combat: First, roll your cognition check to see if you're even capable of doing anything this round. Next, roll initiative. This involve drawing actual playing cards, because Deadlands. Several paragraphs on how these cards work for figuring initiative, including keeping one up your sleeve, interrupts, fate chips, etc. Ok, lets shoot something. First, figure out range. Figure out if you're walking, running, riding, apply modifier. Figure out size of target, apply modifier. Figure out if target is moving, apply modifier. Figure out lighting conditions, apply modifier. Figure out if you're calling a shot or just blasting away; apply modifier. Figure out if you're taking some time to aim, apply modifier. Figure out if you're drawing and firing, fanning, etc. Modifier. Automatics, shotguns, go read a different section. Ok, lets say you hit. Now you figure out which body part you hit. There's modifiers on that roll based on distance, how well the to hit succeeded, relative positioning, etc. Next, figure out if that body part happens to have been behind cover, and if so, what happens. Now, figure out damage versus armour. Different types of armour do different things. Add some damage if you hit the noggin or gizzards. Figure out what actually happens. The poor kids were seriously floundering.
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Dec 21, 2022 14:20
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TheCenturion posted:
I'm guessing some of those modifiers would be just flat modifiers for the entire combat (lighting conditions I can't see changing too much unless something bursts into flames) or stuff you would have decided before making a roll and already know the modifiers, but... cognition check to see if you can even act? So it's possible to just spend an entire fight staring off into space? Multiple armor types? What if you roll that you hit the left shoulder, but their left side is turned away from you? Does the right shoulder and torso provide cover and can cause you to miss (because you... hit them in the torso/right shoulder?).
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Dec 21, 2022 14:43
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About modifiers.
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Randalor posted:You are a monster for even implying that people might be forced to play FATAL.
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Dec 21, 2022 14:51
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There's a bunch of philosophical choices being made at every level when writing an RPG, because it all started as a wargaming simulation and those games were all about simulating all the minutiae down to Italian units using more water because they had to boil their pasta (not a joke) Some designers wanted to keep that cruft instead of ditching it where it belongs (in computer games that could calculate all that in the background) and it leads to some interesting choices by players with system mastery who will optimize every encounter to have the fewest variables possible. It's one of the reasons I love FIASCO! and other GM-less games that don't have combat rules at all and are more explicit about being shared-narrative storytelling over adversarial objective-overcoming.
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Dec 21, 2022 14:54
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Shrecknet posted:There's a bunch of philosophical choices being made at every level when writing an RPG, because it all started as a wargaming simulation and those games were all about simulating all the minutiae down to Italian units using more water because they had to boil their pasta (not a joke) Wargames have changed a lot since the 70s too.
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Dec 21, 2022 14:58
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Halloween Jack posted:You, what, printed it out? No, but I do know people who, if they knew FATAL existed, would either print out a copy for the morbid fascination of being able to say they have a copy of the most hosed up RPG ever made, or for doing the RPG version of the Eye of Argon challenge. I don't want them to have to play it if they did learn FATAL was a thing since I fell out of touch with them.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:05
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Randalor posted:I'm guessing some of those modifiers would be just flat modifiers for the entire combat (lighting conditions I can't see changing too much unless something bursts into flames) or stuff you would have decided before making a roll and already know the modifiers, but... cognition check to see if you can even act? So it's possible to just spend an entire fight staring off into space? Multiple armor types? What if you roll that you hit the left shoulder, but their left side is turned away from you? Does the right shoulder and torso provide cover and can cause you to miss (because you... hit them in the torso/right shoulder?). Well, bear in mind that it's a supernatural setting, the Weird West, but yeah, they're trying to kinda model the flight or fight response, some people freeze up when the shooting starts, and as you become a grizzled old veteran, fewer and fewer things faze you. Yeah, some armour stops damage, some armour reduces damage. What can I say, the system is crunchy. I made a similar cheat sheet for Savage Worlds, which is the very stripped down, streamlined, more modern version of the system, and it's only a few pages long. But there's also something satisfying about lazily flipping a poker chip into the pot to guarantee a success on a roll. Or a huckster dealing out an actual hand of poker to see how well their spell works. The system is par for it's time, like how Shadowrun had no problem with the table simply coming to a halt while you run the decker through a system.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:25
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Randalor posted:I'm guessing some of those modifiers would be just flat modifiers for the entire combat (lighting conditions I can't see changing too much unless something bursts into flames) or stuff you would have decided before making a roll and already know the modifiers, but... cognition check to see if you can even act? So it's possible to just spend an entire fight staring off into space? Multiple armor types? What if you roll that you hit the left shoulder, but their left side is turned away from you? Does the right shoulder and torso provide cover and can cause you to miss (because you... hit them in the torso/right shoulder?). The first round of a fight where you're caught flat footed, yes. After that, you figure out it's gun-time. Multiple armor types: YES! Some are just a flat -1 or -2 damage. REAL armor reduces the TYPE of dice rolled. 4d10 damage hitting ARMOR:2 becomes 4d6. This can sometimes backfire with the exploding dice mechanics, because d4s have a flat 75% to explode and reroll. FUN! 🤓 The hit location stuff, iirc, told you to fudge things w/r/t positioning given any situation. I love that clunky system.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:47
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Complexity is a budget. A simple game doesn't have much room for improvement as a player (if that's something the designer values) but a complicated game where most of the overhead is only tangentially related to the player's decisions, or where the player doesn't have much control over or interaction with the complexity, is the worst of both worlds.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:58
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Shrecknet posted:It's one of the reasons I love FIASCO! and other GM-less games that don't have combat rules at all and are more explicit about being shared-narrative storytelling over adversarial objective-overcoming. I'd love to try FIASCO some day. I feel that farces are something that sings to each of our own inherent nature as fuckups.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:59
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Father Wendigo posted:I love that clunky system.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:13
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I think most people don't enjoy over complexity. It's just a question of where that level comes in for a lot of people.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:37
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There definitely needs to be a name for the fallacy of 'more complex=better'.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:50
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The fallacy is that it generalizes in either direction. It's a question of elegance or efficiency with respect to design goals, not where you stand on the spectrum taken by itself.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:59
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Ghost Leviathan posted:There definitely needs to be a name for the fallacy of 'more complex=better'. The Board Gamer's Fallacy.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:00
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My specific issue is with gamers who are like "My game has more complicated rules than your game, so I'm smarter than you." As I said to the guy who told me this in a store, you are not smart for buying Palladium products.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:04
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Xander77 posted:That's probably the first time I've ever read anything along these lines. I've wasted so much time reading TRPG discussions and it was all entirely negative about whatever mechanics were discussed at the moment. And cards are a frequently superior option to dice; particularly when it's thematically appropriate.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:09
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cards are good as surfaces to put text on, as ways to privately convey information to some players but not others, as reminders that you have something or that something applies to you, and (while good shuffling is a much rarer and more difficult skill than people assume) useful for history-dependent bounded randomness where e.g. you eventually want every outcome to happen once in some period they are, however, an absolutely garbage replacement for dice, e.g. tools for generating history-independent randomness
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Dec 21, 2022 17:14
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
A standard deck of 52 playing cards is absolutely superior to a fixed die (d20) or set of dice (usually 2d6). Assuming it's not shuffled after every draw, it allows for a more predictable set of results over a long period of time. You're not going to draw five duces unless something very untoward is going on.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:34
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Cards shouldn't just be thematically appropriate; using them as random number generators is a pain in the rear end. I'd like to see more games that actually use cards for the things cards are good for--a pool of resources you can spend, where the resources have traits that let you combine them or do specific things with them, etc. Cards are inferior to a d20 for doing the specific thing that a d20 does: generating a random number between 1 and 20
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Dec 21, 2022 17:35
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Father Wendigo posted:A standard deck of 52 playing cards is absolutely superior to a fixed die (d20) or set of dice (usually 2d6). Assuming it's not shuffled after every draw, it allows for a more predictable set of results over a long period of time. You're not going to draw five duces unless something very untoward is going on. "a more predictable set of results over a long period of time" is exactly what's being purposefully avoided in the line you quoted; that's the whole point which one you need and when varies but cards are very bad at doing it unless you shuffle them every time, which is super tedious and has a high risk of human error contaminating the results
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Dec 21, 2022 17:36
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This wouldn't be a problem if modern schools still taught card shuffling.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:48
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Maybe it's the... Melodrama Villain Fallacy where a ridiculously circuitous plot is considered superior and more likely to succeed the more ridiculous moving parts it has. Certainly a thing in both Victorian-era lit and anime. At least the Count of Monte Cristo was both hands-on and able to improvise, despite being the world's biggest drama queen. The thread title does amuse me still, and y'know what, that game does strike me as the kind of thing that's more Christian nerds being nerds about the Bible and, rarely for most vocal religious people, open to exploring it through the medium, taking on alternate interpretations and letting people explore that particular historical and mythological space rather than expecting unquestioning adherence to dogma. ...that said, I feel like that's the kind of thing a lot of churches will let you play with while you're still in the recruitment phase, and when they think they have your hooks in you you're expected to shut up and toe the line.
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Dec 21, 2022 18:00
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I consider it also akin to the belief that long books in even longer series are a Good Thing, too. More plot, rules, lore, etc. to acquire a command over as if that's a primary virtue. I'm still somewhat susceptible to that but oh man I was incredibly bad about it in my teens and early 20s.
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Dec 21, 2022 18:05
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Some of that “more complex = better than” is an artifact of D&D being the first RPG to really make it big. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was designed to be complex, because: * the original designers were largely wargamers, and the emphasis on realism and simulation in wargames led to an inherent preference and respect for complexity; * game design was still an unrefined, amateur process, and amateurs doing something tend to create unplanned and novel systems which tend to be more complex; * many of the original designers believed in an adversarial system relationship between GM and players, which prevents simpler collaborative answers, and instead pushes for even more complexity as mastery of the rule set becomes another avenue for competition. There was a big section in the front of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide that basically told all new DMs to embrace complexity and system mastery, because the system wasn’t going to get any simpler, and a lot of gamers took that as gospel. I think we’ve seen a huge movement away from that in the last twenty years as the community has changed and gotten broader.
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Dec 21, 2022 19:05
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I don't think that's quite the case, according to my reading of the series of Jon Peterson books that cover and recover the era through various official magazines, zines, and other contemporary written communications. Gygax was actually on the playability side vs. realism. What did happen is that a lot of people asked for clarification, both on basic gameplay (because OD&D was more of a toolkit than a full game), as well as a whole variety of edge cases once more substance was ruled on, and instead of taking a step back to build a simpler system, he kind of collated all of those into a ruleset. This was a combination of not wanting to break backwards compatibility (I think there was an expectation that you could just use the MM with OD&D until the PHB and then the DMG came out), and wanting to have an authoritative ruleset so he could tell people "you're not playing THE D&D which you should totally buy instead of playing by your own rules or buying from the competition."
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Dec 21, 2022 19:48
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't think that's quite the case, according to my reading of the series of Jon Peterson books that cover and recover the era through various official magazines, zines, and other contemporary written communications. Gygax was actually on the playability side vs. realism. What did happen is that a lot of people asked for clarification, both on basic gameplay (because OD&D was more of a toolkit than a full game), as well as a whole variety of edge cases once more substance was ruled on, and instead of taking a step back to build a simpler system, he kind of collated all of those into a ruleset. This was a combination of not wanting to break backwards compatibility (I think there was an expectation that you could just use the MM with OD&D until the PHB and then the DMG came out), and wanting to have an authoritative ruleset so he could tell people "you're not playing THE D&D which you should totally buy instead of playing by your own rules or buying from the competition." I've heard one indie RPG writer comment that it's generally easier to add a rule than to remove or condense it. And over time this trend leads to rules bloat if you aren't conscious of it.
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Dec 21, 2022 20:02
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I haven't done the reading to see how the AD&D ruleset developed, but the impression I got was that as problems came up, Gygax and his contemporaries came up with patch rules, and these all got incorporated into AD&D without much regard for the fact that these rules often used different die mechanics and didn't interact with each other intuitively.
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Dec 21, 2022 20:17
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You also get the issue where you need to come up with something to justify your splatbooks, and those are all now part of the game. So, Shadowrun 2E corebook, you have cyberware, heremetic magic, shamanistic magic, decking and rigging. Thirty splatbooks later, you now have cyberware, custom cyberware, bioware, cybermancy/cyber zombies, basic magic, initiation magic, all of the paramagics where you're not hermetic or a shaman, but think you're psychic or a superhero, toxic shamans, insect totems, twelve new types of adepts, decking, whatever the hell they are that deck without cyberdecks, the name escapes me, riggers, security riggers who control buildings, all sorts of optional combat rules, blah blah blah, and come 3e, those all need to be accounted for in the base rules. Oh, and by the way, the Matrix is now wireless. I mean, 2e had, if I recall correctly, two decking books, two rigger books, three magic books, just expanding the base character archetypes. Let alone the 'new' stuff. poo poo, the rule that lets you die from a single attack wasn't added to 2e until the Fields of Fire sourcebook. In base 2e, the rules intentionally state that no single attack will kill you. Troll cleaves you in half? Panther assault cannon to the face? Mage drops a grenade at your feet and puts a wall of force around you? You're bleeding out, hope Doc Wagon gets there in time, chummer, and your account's all paid up.
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Dec 21, 2022 20:50
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TheCenturion posted:whatever the hell they are that deck without cyberdecks, the name escapes me
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Dec 21, 2022 20:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"a more predictable set of results over a long period of time" is exactly what's being purposefully avoided in the line you quoted; that's the whole point The Deadlands card based initiative is bit more complex than DnD initiative. First everyone rolls quickness test for initiative, that results gives them 1-5 action cards from the deck. Typically you get 1-2 cards, but deadlands core rule is 'exploding dice' (If you roll a max result on a die, you re-roll it and add it to the result. Repeat this until you don't roll the max result), which occasionally results you doing 5 actions within 5 second combat round. Each initiative card you get is one action that happens in card value order. Aces first, then kings and so on. Red Joker is an interrupt card that can be used any time and drawing the Black Joker gives advantage to bad guys and doesn't give action at all. Black joker also shuffles the deck, otherwise you keep using the same deck. In Deadlands case the use of gaming cards, or more accurately poker deck is flavour that permeates the whole game system. You create your characters stats by drawing cards that give you results from 1d4 to 4d12. Deadlands "wizards", called Hucksters are card sharks that cast their spells by playing poker with devil. Better poker hands power more stronger spells. Or when your character dies, he gets a final deck cut, that reveals whether they die or comes back as harrowed corpse possessed by an evil spirit.
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Dec 21, 2022 21:43
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The Deadlands rules remind me of The Everlasting, where every contested action (including any combat action) is subject to a mechanic where anyone and everyone else at the table can bet experience points on the outcome. This triggers a process where the two combatants actually involved lay their cards face-down on the table and reveal them one by one, and can spend experience points to redraw them. That game has a lot of rules that were clearly never really meant to be used, at least not all at once.
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Dec 21, 2022 22:22
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It's loving wild how many professional-looking products there were back in the day that had clearly not gotten any real play-testing
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Dec 21, 2022 22:46
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Xand_Man posted:It's loving wild how many professional-looking products there were back in the day that had clearly not gotten any real play-testing God, so many of the D20 shovelware era products read like they were written in a single sitting with zero playthrough, like panicking college freshmen realizing their term papers were due tomorrow. Hard to imagine that AD&D C2 Ghost Tower Of Inverness actually represents some kind of peak in the quality of published adventures despite forty years of alleged progress, but it kind of does.
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Dec 21, 2022 22:59
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Xand_Man posted:It's loving wild how many professional-looking products there were back in the day that had clearly not gotten any real play-testing I have bad news about 90% of the professional-looking products today.
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Dec 21, 2022 23:37
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| # ? May 23, 2024 12:53 |
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I'm reminded of Exalted 2e Sidereals and of Scion 1e, which were both literally unplayable, not in the sense that the mechanics were unbalanced or awkward or led to undesirable outcomes, but in the sense that the mechanics literally had basic pieces missing and you couldn't actually use them as presented without first rewriting them to actually work in some way.
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Dec 22, 2022 00:05
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