|
Splicer posted:Those are pretty good ability scores. Genuinely interested now.
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 03:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
I think the more interesting but is that there's the class and then kits. And it seems like your class or hard locked but you can swap kits around whenever?
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 03:58
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:I'm in for the books, even though I don't know much about it, and barely know who Matt Colville is. It seems to hit some solid notes for me. I've paid more for things I was less interested in. (I make bad financial crowdfunding decisions.) I had to stop buying physical books because I am out of space. I should probably throw out/recycle my old text books. haven't used them in 20 years, probably never will.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 04:13
|
|
|
dwarf74 posted:Looking deeper I think I might be wrong? I don't want to lead you astray, friend goon!
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 12:37
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Look we all know the specific question I'm not quite asking. Is there a separate con score y/n Yes. The abilities appear to be relatively 1 to 1 with D&D.  I'm strained to figure out why.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 12:48
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Those are pretty good ability scores. Genuinely interested now. DalaranJ posted:Yes. The abilities appear to be relatively 1 to 1 with D&D. Looks like you're going to have to go to Ryuutama for the str/dex/int/cha spread. (it's Spirit instead of charisma, though, but still)
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 13:02
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:Yes. The abilities appear to be relatively 1 to 1 with D&D. Splicer posted:Yeah it's going to be heartbreaker city but you know what I'm here for that. If we get some good stuff out of it great, if not we'll have some laughs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 13:17
|
|
|
https://nitter.net/mattcolville/status/1615254083165908993 This is the garbage reason why
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 13:19
|
|
|
Griddle of Love posted:Looks like you're going to have to go to Ryuutama for the str/dex/int/cha spread. (it's Spirit instead of charisma, though, but still)
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 13:20
|
|
|
Splicer posted:https://nitter.net/mattcolville/status/1615254083165908993 so 3x3=9 classes? Guess how many classes you get if you allow any 2 picks from 4 stats, including repeats? A cool ten.  I have some fundamental misgivings about this strict "1 class per stat combination" thing. It'll both eliminate the in-class variability that A and V classes were bringing to the table in 4e (like how both your sorcerer's secondary and your ranger's primary stat could be either str or dex), as well as put a damper on the fun character customization you could have with hybrids and power swapping by never having both of your stats align with any option outside your starting wheelhouse. And it being stated so explicitly as a design principle, it'll make it a lot weirder for new classes with the same stat combinations, like they're committing identity theft. On the other hand maybe we should appreciate it as an on-boarding tool, to say to first time players "hey, if you want your character to be both really charismatic and dexterous, then this system does not support you playing a wizard. I don't need to see any more people asking about character generation advice for their robe-wearing paladins with unconventional stat spreads who did not take anyone's word for it that 4e puts so much emphasis on combat that handicapping yourself so severely in fights sets you up for a poor first experience in the system and will actually end up running counter to you realizing the cool character you imagine. Splicer posted:Spirit is good. Give me nice broad stats over "this is the talking stat" every day. I agree. What's more, having only one stat for all the vagaries of one of the more important activities in the game is really one-dimensional and can be quite limiting, if not mechanically, then at least in player's minds.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 14:02
|
|
|
Griddle of Love posted:Looks like you're going to have to go to Ryuutama for the str/dex/int/cha spread. (it's Spirit instead of charisma, though, but still) Or Fabula Ultima, since it started out as a Ryuutama hack. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 16:44
|
|
|
Griddle of Love posted:so 3x3=9 classes? Guess how many classes you get if you allow any 2 picks from 4 stats, including repeats? A cool ten. Meanwhile a str/con merge and a quick reshuffle of the three mental gives you 10 or 20 potential classes. This slices nicely for releases; Core has 10 classes, each score getting two classes as primary and two other as secondary. You can then let the game run for a while to feel out gaps and feedback and release a second set of the other 10, or two staged releases of 5 and maybe a final weirdo run of 5 single-stat classes. Or go the 4E route where each class has a primary and two secondaries, and you decide which one to tertiary depending on what flavour you want to go. (5*4*3)/(3*2) = 10 total classes if you want absolutely 0 repeats, or 5*((4*3)/2) = 30 classes if Might & (Agility & Reason) is considered different to Agility & (Might & Reason). For the latter you can again have 10 in the core and two to four additional release cycles, or 10 in the core, 10 released in one or two followup cycles, and either another 10 to round things out or a final release cycle of adding a third secondary to all 20 released classes. But sure, deliberately include one of the biggest flaws dragging down 4E because you want to limit your game's potential design space on purpose. Top notch smartitude, absolutely fills me with anticipation to try your game. I have only very small reserves of hope and enthusiasm left Dwarf74, how dare you waste them like this 
Splicer fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Dec 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 18:03
|
|
|
Keeping in mind that I don't do and will never do twitter, is there anywhere I can easily dump a screed at these idiots entirely for my own satisfaction.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 18:11
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Oh I remember this system now. This is the point where I realized nothing interesting was going to come from the system. If one of your big first ideas was "run the names of D&D attributes through a thesaurus" then you tried nothing and are out of ideas.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 18:13
|
|
|
As far as I can see, classes seem to use two ability scores for combat and both start at +3. So it should be pretty straightforward to separate the ability scores from the combat if someone wants to make a muscle wizard It would be better if we didn't have to do that ourselves of course
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 18:31
|
|
|
Tarnop posted:As far as I can see, classes seem to use two ability scores for combat and both start at +3. So it should be pretty straightforward to separate the ability scores from the combat if someone wants to make a muscle wizard From my exposure to the 4e community I had the impression that a lot of people there were cool with wildly changing the flavor while diligently adhering to the mechanics of classes, powers, etc. This is not encouraged but still facilitated by the system through the strict separation of flavor text and rules text. I wonder what micdim system's stance on that is, but from the emphasis on attributes and the strong link to classes, it's not looking promising.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 18:58
|
|
|
Honestly, the coupling between attributes and classes is about as tight here as it was in 4E. Perhaps more forgiving even. You've got 2 stats that give you your combat modifiers, so it's easy to just say "oh you want to be a strong and wise character, no problem, replace one stat in your powers with Might, one with Intuition, flavour appropriately and off you go". I should mention that I'm basing this just off the stuff that's been shown so far and the videos on their YouTube channel so I might well be proven wrong when we see more. The other big part of mechanical class identity here is resource management which is significantly different from 4E. You have at-will powers which might generate a resource and then stronger powers that spend that resource. You also have a passive way to gain it (I think for the roguish class it's whenever anyone crits, for example) which more heavily ties your resource gen to the class's flavour. So in my example the rogue learns about their enemies' strengths and weakness by seeing them hurt people and get hurt in combat. That sounds trickier (but not impossible) to reflavour than At-will, Encounter, Daily. We'll have to see more classes to find out whether expected per round resource income is similar for each class, allowing a mixing and matching of resource systems and class powers, or if say the cleric gets half as many resources per round than the rogue but has cheaper powers. Of course if you're happy just saying that your muscle wizard is a battlefield commander who casts spells that inspire his allies then you can change the flavour text on the Tactician and off you go
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
Urg. Randomised resource generation is a big black mark.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 20:19
|
|
|
i like builder/spender dynamics but yeah re-inventing mana screw is not the way
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 20:20
|
|
|
When I said that at-wills might generate a resource, I meant that some do and some don't, not that they do it randomly. Rogues generating resources from crits is random though, you're right. That's only the passive part of their resource gen though, so you aren't running on empty if no one crits (also crits are 11+ on 2d6 so more common than d20). I agree that randomised resource gain sounds rough though but I'd like to see it in play. Apparently the rogue class has been very well liked in playtesting The other class we've seen, Tactician, has deterministic resource gain. You get focus for using your main at-will power, and you get increasing amounts of start of turn focus as you "see the movement of the battlefield more and more clearly" Tarnop fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Dec 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 20:32
|
|
|
Tarnop posted:Honestly, the coupling between attributes and classes is about as tight here as it was in 4E. Perhaps more forgiving even. You've got 2 stats that give you your combat modifiers, so it's easy to just say "oh you want to be a strong and wise character, no problem, replace one stat in your powers with Might, one with Intuition, flavour appropriately and off you go". e: Like is "determining your attack score" the only class impact of your ability scores? Or if I'm an Endurance class will a bunch of stuff work off my HP total or require healing surges to activate, so subbing out for Agility and thereby dropping my total Endurance will keep my to-hit the same but still wreck my class abilities indirectly? Splicer fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Dec 27, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 22:35
|
|
|
I don't know enough about game design to actually provide a perspective here, but Colville does talk a bit more in depth about why they're using six ability scores at the beginning of this video. In case it clarifies anything.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 22:47
|
|
|
If Endurance doesn't impact my ability to, I dunno, barbarian, other than it being the source of my class modifier, then swapping out for a more broadly useful verb is always going to be the better deal. If Endurance boosts secondary stats for everybody and my barbarian relies on these secondary stats to function then it's no longer easy to swap out. If someone with +3 Endurance and someone with +3 Agility are identical other than how wide you draw their shoulders, then why have defined ability scores at all instead of free-form descriptors? If ability scores do have other, cross-class effects then Endurance is going to have significantly less proactive uses than Agility, or the proactive uses are going to be far less intuitive, or they're going to heavily step on Might's toes. There's no way to break out of these problems. Strength and Constitution combined cover about the same archetype/action/verb space as Dexterity (or, to go further into D&Disms, Wisdom) covers on its own. You can't mechanics your way out of the problem and there's no good reason to put yourself into the position where you need to try. God I hate how this one, half-century old design decision continues to gently caress up the entire crunch-heavy RPG design space. It's never going to change. I'm genuinely sad now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 23:02
|
|
|
Detective Eyestorm posted:I don't know enough about game design to actually provide a perspective here, but Colville does talk a bit more in depth about why they're using six ability scores at the beginning of this video. In case it clarifies anything. https://youtu.be/fPpGNJ-zPcw?t=120
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 23:06
|
|
|
Splicer posted:If anyone still had any hope for this game, listen to the following 20 seconds of video: Oh. That... uh. Wow. He's literally just telling anybody who plays the classes with those stat focuses, "gently caress you, you don't get to play the game with everyone else," huh?
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2023 23:58
|
|
|
Who on earth initially came up with the design concept of "I'm going to make certain player options bad to play on purpose?" Like Gygax had some suboptimal poo poo in original D&D, but I think that was more ineptitude than just making stuff lovely and wrong intentionally.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:07
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Who on earth initially came up with the design concept of "I'm going to make certain player options bad to play on purpose?" Like Gygax had some suboptimal poo poo in original D&D, but I think that was more ineptitude than just making stuff lovely and wrong intentionally.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:13
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Who on earth initially came up with the design concept of "I'm going to make certain player options bad to play on purpose?" Like Gygax had some suboptimal poo poo in original D&D, but I think that was more ineptitude than just making stuff lovely and wrong intentionally. There's also the like "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" theory, also known as "wizards are bad at the start of the game, but fighters are bad at the end of the game." Which doesn't really work, since people want to play with both classes throughout the game, so they want to try and paper over those flaws. With wizards it's easy--just take more rests--but fixing martials at end-of-game is harder.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:17
|
|
|
I remember reading that the creators of third edition admitted to having certain feats as being newbie traps, in order to reward what they called "system mastery". Whether that was intentional design or after the fact BS I have no idea.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:33
|
|
|
Local indie group is trying a game of mutant crawl classics. Utterly weird rule: if your dice modifier goes above a dice type, it is added to dice type and subtracted from the modifier. So if you’re on d20+3 and get another +1, your roll becomes d24+0. So you can now roll 1-3 and couldn’t have before. Someone thought this was a good idea. I don’t think any of these old designs can be trusted.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:33
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Local indie group is trying a game of mutant crawl classics. Moving up and down the dice chain is indicated by "+1d" or "-2d." It's much less common than applying straight up bonuses or penalties. Also MCC is not an old game. Edit - I checked all the applicable rules, pages 14-15. This sounds like a table house rule. Don't blame the system for it. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Dec 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:43
|
|
|
FLIPADELPHIA posted:I remember reading that the creators of third edition admitted to having certain feats as being newbie traps, in order to reward what they called "system mastery". Whether that was intentional design or after the fact BS I have no idea. Posting a reddit link because the top comment excellently describes Monte Cooke's failure to understand Timmy cards.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 01:57
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Who on earth initially came up with the design concept of "I'm going to make certain player options bad to play on purpose?" Like Gygax had some suboptimal poo poo in original D&D, but I think that was more ineptitude than just making stuff lovely and wrong intentionally. Setting aside people going "I'm making this bad because I don't like it but people are making me do it >  ", a lot of intentionally making trap choices began with misapplying MtG design principles to D&D while designing 3e. The extremely quick and dirty version is that MtG would occasionally make cards that aren't good but are important to give people so they play with them and realize why they aren't good. The best example of this today is maybe Marvel Snap, because its card acquisition structure means you get all the cards for a suboptimal strategy and then gives you the cards that show why they aren't good enough to keep being played after you've used them a bit. I probably explained that badly (or possibly remembered it wrong in the first place), but the point is that 3e's designers also got it wrong.You see, they treated individual feats like individual magic cards. A feat like Toughness is bad the way a creature that sounded cool but is actually overcosted and just gets removed is bad, and once you use it you get to feel clever for realizing it's bad and not taking it again. The problem is that... well, taking a card out of a deck is easy, the only hard part is getting another card to replace it. But if you take a bad feat, you only get to take it out when you retire the character completely and bring a new one in because 3e had no retraining rules. (Also, even with the increased number of splatbooks they made in those days, character options that were bad were pretty much always just a waste of space compared to a few intentionally clunky commons in a whole set.) So, even if you did learn that a feat is fundamentally bad, you're mad because you're stuck with it for the rest of the 1-20 campaign you signed up for and not satisfied that you learned more about the game. Splicer posted another person's explanation while I was writing this, but gently caress it. I'll hit post anyway, more  never hurt anyone.EDIT: Looking at Cook's post on ivory tower game design again, and I was too generous when I was remembering which cards he considered bad for the sake of teaching. Also: that he took the idea of "options that sound cool but are undertuned so you learn how strong cards need to be" which is what he thought the concept of Timmy cards were and gave us a feat that just gives you a few HP. Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Dec 28, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 02:10
|
|
|
Splicer posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/fx0ms0/ivorytower_game_design_read_this_quote_from_monte/ On the one hand, that commenter has a good definition for Timmy cards. On the other hand, “only wizards get mic-drop moments” is a statement that says “I don’t actually know 5e very well at all.”
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 02:22
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Local indie group is trying a game of mutant crawl classics. This sounds like someone trying poorly to adapt the Cypher rule where if you accumulate +3 in static bonuses, each +3 becomes - 1 roll level instead (technically better since that's - 3 TN and it can take you to 0, making you not roll at all)
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 03:52
|
|
|
"2/3 of the attributes are passive and 1/3 is active" is such a horrific condemnation of the system and the lack of core principles that went into making it. So, to talk about something fun instead, Kamigakari also has four (plus one) attributes, and only half (plus one) of them are passive. (luck is a gratuitous addition to the line up with a comparatively marginal mechanical impact). The game also has rules writing that will make you say "yuck, is this code that's being parsed by a really inflexible algorithm?". It also has a wealth of character options that easily brings it into the ivory tower zone, with how potent the strong abilities and the strong combinations are. I say all of that, and yet that game is some of the most fun with tactical combat I had in a long while. In our last session we fought a huge leaping fish thing and the
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
hyphz posted:
Trying to remember where I found it but one of my favorite unintended dice rules was a game where your rolls were all just single dice. So like if you were terrible but theoretically at least trained in archery, you'd have a D4 in it, and the dice scaled to D12. Difficulty could be as low as 4 or as high as 12, that sort of thing. But there was a catch which was that you succeeded in skill checks on a max die roll. Which meant that if the difficulty was 11 or 12, your best bet was always to roll with your worst stat that you could argue into, because the 25% chance to crit off a D4 was higher than the 17% chance to succeed off a D12.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 04:09
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Trying to remember where I found it but one of my favorite unintended dice rules was a game where your rolls were all just single dice. So like if you were terrible but theoretically at least trained in archery, you'd have a D4 in it, and the dice scaled to D12. Difficulty could be as low as 4 or as high as 12, that sort of thing. But there was a catch which was that you succeeded in skill checks on a max die roll. Which meant that if the difficulty was 11 or 12, your best bet was always to roll with your worst stat that you could argue into, because the 25% chance to crit off a D4 was higher than the 17% chance to succeed off a D12. Sounds like a great addition to the Murphy's Rules thread, lol.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 05:08
|
|
|
Also remember that as gary originally wrote the game attributes only affected you experience rate and your ability to qualify for some classes. It wasn't until later that attributes did anything at all in the game. If you want some wild reading check out some old strategic review and dragon articles where people propose battshit rules for ability checks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 05:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 13:39 |
|
|
that feels weird, because the 3-18 range seems pretty much designed for the roll-under type skill checks, right? so that even at your best you have a slim failure chance, and vice versa
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2023 05:24
|
|
