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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? I bet terrible things might happen if you change the rules to Call of Cthulhu.
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May 1, 2024 05:00
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http://www.lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/456 this isn't the same essay i was thinking of, but... Vincent Baker posted:You could blame the players, for being lazy and for bringing bad habits. (As though they might not!) You could blame the text, for not being clear or emphatic enough. (As though it could be! No text can overcome laziness and bad habits.) Me, I blame the design, for not being self-enforcing. Vincent Baker posted:"Hey Vincent, what about designing a game to be flexible, to adapt to whatever habits its players bring, but not to shape their play to itself?" ... if nothing else, I'm pretty sure I haven't misattributed his overall attitude towards game design 
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May 1, 2024 05:10
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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? Objectively the funniest example is Synnibarr 2nd edition, which strictly bars the GM of the game from using house rules, noting that the game is perfect as-is. Bottom Liner posted:
This is hilarious because it's already assumed, it doesn't need to be printed. Like sure Lord of the Rings would be weird if it had a preface of "Hey there, it's me Jolkein, if you see a big chunk of italics it's probably a boring lay about ancient elves, that's my hyperfocus and I don't expect you to give a poo poo about it, feel free to skip, it's why I italicized those parts, have fun!" but you can already read it that way if you want, it's a perfectly safe and legal thrill! Hooray for death of the author. Honestly this whole thing is funny to me because I already read every RPG as just a big old pile of suggestions that are free for pruning, so it reads like people getting mad that even though they don't smoke, gently caress the Surgeon General for printing this poo poo on the side of the carton. theironjef fucked around with this message at 05:18 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 05:14
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Kestral posted:At the risk of summoning up dumb drama, what is going on with Shawn Tomkin (Ironsworn / Starforged author) getting dogpiled about something in a Sundered Isles excerpt? Why are you dumping some random twitter argument in here that has absolutely nothing to do with the industry in any way beyond "someone said a thing about a designer's game and the designer responded?"
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May 1, 2024 05:25
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That entire rant just reinforces the truth of the "Mayhap you have slandered me with that ad hominem!" tweet. The person who wrote that seems incredibly unpleasant to be around.
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May 1, 2024 05:26
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TG as an Industry: someone said a thing about a designer's game and the designer responded
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May 1, 2024 05:31
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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? The Burning Wheel games are pretty up-front about wanting to be played RAW, at least until the group is experienced with all of the game systems and can make some educated modifications to fit their play. I'm not 100% sure if they actually come out and say that in the rules, but I wouldn't put it past Luke Crane.
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May 1, 2024 05:32
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Kai Tave posted:Why are you dumping some random twitter argument in here that has absolutely nothing to do with the industry in any way beyond "someone said a thing about a designer's game and the designer responded?" They didn't, they asked what was going on and why Sean was being targeted, I found what I assumed was the hoopla and linked it. And given that Sean is now a prolific designer if he had done something bad it'd be newsworthy, luckily this was just someone being way too up their own rear end and using his game to rant. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 05:36 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 05:34
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Bottom Liner posted:They didn't, they asked what was going on and why Sean was being targeted, I found what I assumed was the hoopla and linked it. Calling this "being targeted" or "dogpiling" strikes me as kind of hyperbolic to begin with, but regardless this strikes me as pretty grogs.txt in how the whole thing boils down to someone posting a hot take about a game on twitter, a thing that happens approximately 10000000 times a day.
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May 1, 2024 05:39
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:there are some pretty decent "if you're a nazi, gently caress off, don't even play my game" disclaimers in recent memory I think my favorite one was from Jerry D. Grayson's Godsend Agenda. Godsend Agenda posted:If diversity and acceptance offend you, good. I don't need you holding this book. You are garbage. Please gently caress off; actually, forget the "please." You don't deserve my civility.
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May 1, 2024 05:40
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Kai Tave posted:Why are you dumping some random twitter argument in here that has absolutely nothing to do with the industry in any way beyond "someone said a thing about a designer's game and the designer responded?" i mean, regardless of how we got here, i'm actually very happy to have been introduced to @StrigaRosa / Lucrécia Ludo as a designer and critic 
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May 1, 2024 05:44
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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules?  
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May 1, 2024 05:44
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COntinuum, Roleplaying in the Yet. You have to do it correctly or you create a paradox.
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May 1, 2024 05:57
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It's been a hot second, but I vaguely recall that Wild Talents and/or some associated ORE game is extremely explicit about how dice pools never go higher than 10 no matter what, and that if you want guaranteed successes (which going higher than 10 dice on the pool would give you, since you're looking for matched sets) that this is what special dice types are for (i.e. locking certain dice in your pool as guaranteed 10's, paying resources to let you set dice in your pool to any result, etc). Something I know Reign did, I can't remember if any other ORE games did, was have designer sidebars where Greg Stolze did things like give basic statistical breakdowns of dice probabilities or explained why certain rules were set up the way they were, including advice along the lines of "if you don't want to risk your sorcerer being all weird and hosed up from botching the roll to permanently attune yourself to a school of magic, that's what buying this 5 point advantage during character creation is for." Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 06:06 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 06:04
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Kai Tave posted:Calling this "being targeted" or "dogpiling" strikes me as kind of hyperbolic to begin with, but regardless this strikes me as pretty grogs.txt in how the whole thing boils down to someone posting a hot take about a game on twitter, a thing that happens approximately 10000000 times a day. Considering the tweet has 60k views, hundreds of likes/retweets/replies in support of it, and the writer is a podcaster with an obvious audience, it's not just someone dropping a random hottake. It's a big effort post dragging him as the sole author. Also, you calling someone asking what's going on grognards.txt and not the person that wrote this given the context is hilarious: quote:I don't know, and now I cannot trust anything in your contributions to the artistic endeavour. I have to scrutinize every single thing you add. This overempathic reassurance actually erodes trust and confidence. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 06:41 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 06:13
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gently caress this nerd lol Real cones of dunshire energy
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May 1, 2024 06:22
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HackMaster is a genre parody game. That poo poo's all tongue in cheek.
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May 1, 2024 06:29
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Yeah that reads like someone who read Gygax's "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept" and went "haha what an rear end in a top hat."
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May 1, 2024 06:34
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Twitter “game critics” being weird Gygaxian fundamentalists is incredibly funny.
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May 1, 2024 06:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:as someone who came across Lu's tweet in the wild and had an inclination to agree with it, I think it comes from a broader context where this idea of "just tear out whatever rules you don't like" is pervasive in particularly D&D 5e and 5e-adjacent discourse, where a game cannot possibly be considered bad so long as you're willing to fix it yourself with a houserule. Yeah, that specific tweet is right, IMO (I'm not reading the rest of the thread). If you put "rule 0" in your game you are a coward. Stand by the game you designed. 
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May 1, 2024 07:18
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And suddenly, we are back to 2002.
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May 1, 2024 07:20
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welp, summoned dumb drama.Tuxedo Catfish posted:I would think that in a solo RPG submitting to restrictions on your agency before you understand exactly what sort of experience they're guiding you towards, and trusting that they were designed with intent, would be even more important. This has some merit, yeah. I've played, uh, a lot of Ironsworn and a decent amount of Starforged, and I find that my experience with solo RPGs in general and those games in particular is better when I let the structure of the system do its thing. The game should know better than me, because even though I've played a lot of it, it didn't spring from my brow and there's always going to be parts of it I haven't fully integrated. That said, the designer in this case is explicitly saying that these things that are being called out won't diminish your enjoyment of the game if you fiddle with or ignore them. That's a conscious decision on his part, to call those things in a fairly crunchy game and say "this is optional," implying that the rest is not and should be played rules-as-written to have the best experience. Applying that statement to the entire body of the rules would be "the coward's rule," I have to agree with Lu there. But carving out a specific exception? That's just game design. mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? Burning Wheel takes this stance very strongly, because it is an elaborate Swiss watch of a system that is also one of the most extensively and rigorously playtested games ever made. The odds are very good that if you tamper with it without having a whole lot of experience with the rules-as-written, 1) You will make the experience worse 2) You may never connect this with the change you've made because the mechanics tend to ripple through one another so much You can hack and house-rule Burning Wheel, but it's very easily to hack it badly and make the game worse. Burning Empire takes that stance even more strongly, because it's an even more tightly-wound mechanism with an explicit structure and resource economy. It works extremely well at what it's trying to do, but it's a game you need to take or leave on its own terms, not yours, unless you've played quite a bit of it. Kai Tave posted:Why are you dumping some random twitter argument in here that has absolutely nothing to do with the industry in any way beyond "someone said a thing about a designer's game and the designer responded?" This tends to be where random twitter drama involving RPG creators get posted, for one. For another, it seems to be a current Thing In The Discourse given the people involved and how much discussion is happening on it.
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May 1, 2024 07:32
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Board gamers butt up against inclusive vs exclusive rulesets all the time with players inferring what they think a design intends or they should be able to do even though the rules don't explicitly allow whatever it is. Of course, the rules don't say you can't palm some extra tokens, but that is implied because board games rules are inclusive to tell you how to play the game. RPGs are a different beast entirely, because they simply can't allow for roleplaying beyond freeform collaborative storytelling without some set of rules that are also inclusive of what players can do. They give you mechanics to set up and resolve things, but there's a limit to what can be covered and they inherently include guidance of how to apply the rules to cover as much ground as possible for the game they are trying to be. There is not much difference in listing primary attributes with guidance of how players/GMs should apply them to checks and the solo book saying "if you don't like these restrictions feel free to skip them" because at the end of the day RPGs require players (and especially GMs) to make those editorial decisions constantly. We all know that basically no table plays 5e or PF2 or CoC 100% by the book, including carry weights, spell components, and all the other stuff that most players and GMs gloss over. The very act of playing an RPG is an editorial process at every level regardless of the ruleset you're using. That doesn't mean there isn't room for different, tighter experiences that push to more structured play (like BitD Downtime being a full time-skip system that glosses over a lot of what bogs down campaigns), but I'm not sure you can ever make a game that is fully rigid with an inclusive ruleset that is still an RPG, especially without removing all GM agency. I really don't understand how a game encouraging that very editorializing is a giant red flag for the entirety of the design, doubly so when it is a note in a supplemental mechanic and not even part of the base game. Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 09:23 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 09:20
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GURPS really does want you to feel willing to take out things that don't suit the game you're trying to play, though also some of the rules like encumbrance, which are important in that game kinda need you to use GCS to be practical to implement. While I think it'd be onerous to include "maybe this is optional if you don't like it" all over the rules, i don't think it's an incorrect principle in general. Though I also agree that you should generally give a game a chance first before you start changing things a lot.
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May 1, 2024 09:49
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Sundered Isles is out, I take it. Is it good? Is it standalone or do you need Starforged?
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May 1, 2024 09:52
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mellonbread posted:What are some RPGs that tell you NOT to change the rules? World of Synnibar. The players can even demand a rewind and more XP if they catch the GM bending the rules.
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May 1, 2024 10:01
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Megazver posted:Sundered Isles is out, I take it. Is it good? Is it standalone or do you need Starforged? Starforged is required, Sundered Isles is sort of an expansion and reframing of the base system. I haven't had a chance to dig into it yet, but just skimming it you can tell it's a labor of love. Tomkin really wants you to know what all the Ship Parts are, and why they're cool and can be used to make cool story moments. There's a bunch of useful bits that are going to be trivial to port back to Starforged and Ironsworn, too. Also, it's probably going to be The System To Run Spelljammer in now for small groups or solo. One of the base setting concepts is just straight-up Spelljammer stuff, which means that setting finally has a game that will do good ship combat/exploration/chase sequences. Angrymog posted:World of Synnibar. As terrible as Synnibar is, I honestly kind of like this. It's not a good rule in and of itself, but it feels like something you could put in a better game, with a table where everyone has bought into it, and have fun with it. It would encourage system mastery, if nothing else. Kestral fucked around with this message at 10:32 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 10:30
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admanb posted:Yeah that reads like someone who read Gygax's "You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept" and went "haha what an rear end in a top hat." Which is basically true - the character of Gary Jackson is a parody (minus the racism) - although I think Jolly Blackburn probably has a bit more respect for Gygax than I would these days.
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May 1, 2024 11:42
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I'm quite broadly in agreement with Lu, the tweeter, although not necessarily in every detail. - Putting Rule 0 in your game is in itself a bit cowardly. We already know we can house rule games: the author doesn't need to tell us that and it shows a lack of confidence in the design. - After you've already put Rule 0 in your game, calling out one particular rule to say "and an extra rule 0 to this rule" undermines the rule completely. If anything, the author should be doing the opposite: highlighting which specific rules absolutely should not be modified because they are core to the design. - Putting that disclaimer on this particular rule is really odd! Does the rest of the design assume a cap of 3 or not?? If yes, then this is a rule you really shouldn't ignore! If not, then why is this here? - Including optional rules is fine. Good, even! I like modularity. But you should say "here is an optional rule you can use if you want X in your game." You're the designer: tell the player what the purpose of the rule is. I think that is the main thrust of the tweet thread, and I think it's all completely correct. Lu does word things very aggressively on Twitter, so the thread comes off as quite harsh. Certainly it's more harsh than I would be in expressing the same thoughts. I think that's why she gets in Twitter fights. (And why her tweets are loved by the algorithm.)
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May 1, 2024 13:14
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I fail to see why someone going "just a quick thing, but if this is impacting your enjoyment of the game it can be tweaked/removed if you'd like". It's not damaging to art, it isn't destructive, it's just letting people know that they can twiddle with stuff and not get in trouble. I appreciate the fact that it is there, far more than being told "this is the way that it is done and under no circumstances must it be changed". "You don't believe in your product if people are encouraged to make changes to it" is just kind of an insane statement, it proposes a kind of Authorial Fiat that is antithetical to game playing as a communal experience.
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May 1, 2024 13:19
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Josef bugman posted:I fail to see why someone going "just a quick thing, but if this is impacting your enjoyment of the game it can be tweaked/removed if you'd like". Ok, lots of people disagree, mainly because of the lovely culture around D&D - this hard stance is kind of a pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture. But yours is a perfectly reasonable opinion. But still, why put that disclaimer on this rule? As a reader, doesn't it make you wonder what the point is? Isn't it confusing? What happens if I have a cap of 3 and what happens if I don't have a cap? Does something else break? Could I abuse the lack of a cap somehow? Why would I want to use this rule and why would I want to ignore it? Wouldn't you at least agree that the author should provide some guidance to the player about the effects of optional rules?
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May 1, 2024 13:26
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Jimbozig posted:- Putting Rule 0 in your game is in itself a bit cowardly. We already know we can house rule games: the author doesn't need to tell us that and it shows a lack of confidence in the design. So much here I don’t understand. It keeps being called “cowardly”, but what is the thing that Shawn is supposed to be afraid of and avoiding with this? Also, I don’t agree that everyone who plays role playing games knows that house ruling is a thing that is done. Many people treat the rule books as non-negotiable edict, whether that’s a logical position or not. But if everyone already does know that, then why is it bad to say it explicitly? Is this some element of RPG decorum, where everyone knows a thing but it’s gauche to say it explicitly? I think it’s fine when in the middle of a bunch of prescriptive-sounding text to remind the reader that it’s just an authorial style and that it is OK to try doing things a different way if that feels like it’s going to lead them to a more fun outcome. But I haven’t cracked open Sundered Isles yet to see that piece in context, so maybe it really is destructive to all of humanity’s creative pursuits in a way I can’t imagine yet.
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May 1, 2024 13:26
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Jimbozig posted:Wouldn't you at least agree that the author should provide some guidance to the player about the effects of optional rules? I think it might be better for the author to do that if there is an important tradeoff to keep in mind, but I don’t think that it is “cowardly” or an abdication of the author’s responsibilities or a red flag for bad design if they don’t.
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May 1, 2024 13:28
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Jimbozig posted:Ok, lots of people disagree, mainly because of the lovely culture around D&D - this hard stance is kind of a pendulum swing against the excesses of Rule 0 culture. But yours is a perfectly reasonable opinion. Why not? Is there a better place to put it than amongst the rules that people are probably going to read? What the complaint is about with D&D, at least from my own read, is that it does virtually nothing for a lot of money and then expects time and effort to be expended by GM's to fix a fundamentally broken product. This discussion seems like an entirely separate thing in my head, that has become conflated with the D&D thing because it has superficial similarities but fundamental differences to the core problem. I can understand not wanting people to think that "oh you don't think your game engine is good enough so you included this", it's something I would disagree with but I get. I think however that the conflation of the D&D thing with this diminishes the problems inherent with D&D.
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May 1, 2024 13:36
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I always feel weird about these discussions of Rule 0, because I both think that being able to mod rulesets on the fly is super core to role-playing but also think that the way most discussions of it frame it is unhelpful. RPGs simulate a situation that the players move through. Inevitably, moments pop up when the rules don't make sense given the narrative or playstyle of the group. Being able to adjust rules on the fly when this comes up is super valuable. Rule zero stuff tends to get framed as 'ignore the rules if you think ignoring the rules would be fun', but 'fun' is a really ambiguous word (as countless arguments on this very forum have demonstrated). Ignoring rules because they provide friction in the moment is as likely to reduce long term fun as it is to increase short term fun, so I think it's way more productive to think about if the rules match the type of play you want to run than to just ask if breaking the rules would be fun or cool in the moment This example is a weird one because the rule seems purely mechanical. "Abstract number can only go up to three" isn't the type of rule that seems likely to contradict the narrative, and ignoring it doesn't seem like it would streamline play significantly (in the way that, like, ignoring encumbrance in a situation where it doesn't matter would). It feels like the omission option would have gone over way better if it explained the reasons you might want to drop it better. "Omitting this rule will allow the player to gain truly high rolls, potentially ending the scenario much more quickly" would immediately let the player make an informed decision as to if the customization fits their goals or not, but I can see how giving no guidance on it might give an impression the rule just wasn't added with that much thought behind it (although that would be a very uncharitable interpretation--it could be a red flag, but it's the type of red flag you should be able to confirm or clear after just a bit more reading)
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May 1, 2024 13:41
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I agree that "rule 0" stuff should usually be more pointed than saying "if you didn't like this, you can change it", but I also think that introducing even such basic concepts can be very eye-opening in the right place and time. Is it a little superfluous in an indie darling solo rpg? Probably. Oh well. I'm frankly casting about to think of any game that the original tweets could actually reasonably apply to, where someone writes a whole bunch of "please don't hit me, you can house rule this" clauses. Or even just one. I'm sure someone's done it but someone wrote Black Tokyo and we don't have to mention it every time anime or Japanese RPGs come up. I think the OP has a not entirely unreasonable opinion that they hot taked into what is absolutely just a pointlessly mean screed, and it blew up to the point that the cited author quite understandably responded "come on, what the hell is this."
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May 1, 2024 13:44
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The customer is always right in the sense that they really do feel what they feel about a product or service (satisfied, dissatisfied, whatever), rationally or not. Right now we have one group of customers who are right that it's the game designer's job to curate the game experience(s), and one group of customers who are right that the reader's ability to ignore rules includes the trivial ability to ignore a rule 0. I am on team "Design Your drat Game, Designer." Adding Rule 0 does nothing but take up space; "Yes, my game gives playable space Nazis extra stat boosts because they're just neato and so much better, but it says you can ignore that on page 4" excuses nothing. But it's just a paragraph, and the rest of the game can be evaluated per se. And as someone pointed out a long time ago, even a tacit agreement at the table to follow the rules as written is itself a house rule.
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May 1, 2024 13:55
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Wasn't Rule 0 more a "the GM is Always Right" kind of thing anyway? It's quite different from "You can change a rule if you think it would be more fun for your game"
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May 1, 2024 14:00
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the quote is “the customer is always right in matters of taste”, indeed this is like people excusing “just a few bad apples” E: it’s a solo game! the player is the GM!
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May 1, 2024 14:02
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Josef bugman posted:Why not? Is there a better place to put it than amongst the rules that people are probably going to read? I can imagine reasons, but those reasons should be made clear to the reader. Maybe it could have said "Stacking points can potentially be abused. If you feel like you're the type of player who might abuse that, you can put a cap at 3 to keep yourself honest." Or it could have said "Some players have a tendency to hoard potions instead of spending them. If you feel like you might be that type of player, putting a cap of 3 will get you spending. Use it or lose it!" Or maybe there's another reason for the rule. I don't know! But I think it is a failure to have a rule that is explicitly optional where the player has no idea whether they should or should not exercise that option. quote:What the complaint is about with D&D, at least from my own read, is that it does virtually nothing for a lot of money and then expects time and effort to be expended by GM's to fix a fundamentally broken product. That Old Tree posted:I think the OP has a not entirely unreasonable opinion that they hot taked into what is absolutely just a pointlessly mean screed, and it blew up to the point that the cited author quite understandably responded "come on, what the hell is this." I'm smiling over here because I broadly agree with what you just said, but it's a much harsher way than I would have said it. Which is also how I feel about Lu's posts. I tend to understate and caveat my criticism, but I also enjoy reading takes from people who don't. On this forum, we've got lots of people like that who make good points but are way harsher than I would be, and that's one of the things I like about this place.
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May 1, 2024 14:29
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