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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, part of the fighter dilemma to remember isn't how much damage they do versus other classes - a properly built 3.5 fighter can do a lot of damage and run their role - it's two issues. One, that's all they do. A fighter in many F20 games (not just d20) is reduced to twiddling their thumbs in social scenes, exploration scenes, investigative scenes, etc. Two, they don't deal well with "puzzle conflicts" (that is, dealing with foes with extraordinary abilities like flight, invisibility, mind control, incorporeality) unless they've prepared and kitted for it. Another way to look at this problem is that damage numbers are 1) the most mutable aspect of designing encounters and 2) don't affect the fiction nearly as much as other abilities. A group that does too much damage is very easy to adjust for without significantly altering the game fiction. And specifically a fighter that does 2d8 instead of 1d8 isn't really altering the fiction because it's usually abstracted the same way ("the fighter fought and was good at it, or at least let's say he was"). Being able to carve any shape you want out of the ground or turn invisible affects the game fiction on a fundamental level that can't really be handwaved away like damage is. Those effects exist very concretely in the fiction of the game not as much in the abstracted reality that damage lives in.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:53
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Vinchenz posted:Hopefully I'm not intruding but I'm looking for a system recommendation and I'm not sure the right place to ask. This sounds like exactly what Dungeon Crawl Classics was made for. Shadow of the Demon Lord is also fantastic if you want a more fleshed out advancement system. The nice thing is you can always take the aspects of DCC you like and apply them to other games.
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Sep 30, 2017 22:58
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Vinchenz posted:Hopefully I'm not intruding but I'm looking for a system recommendation and I'm not sure the right place to ask. Oh also look into 13th Age's living dungeons for some cool dungeon setting inspiration; they're a fun idea.
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Sep 30, 2017 23:08
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It's a little more expensive, but I favor the Commander products for "decks I will leave alone and use as a stand-alone product." There's a lot of randomness that tends to help out with the inevitable balance issues that will pop up, and they're usually designed for multiplayer which is also nice.
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Oct 15, 2017 14:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:I mean this is totally off the rails of the point of this thread but : I feel like I need to go to bat for pedagogy here because I think it's really important. I've spent a lot of time with professors who have a ton of experience in private industry and were hired to teach me law because they're famous. And I've spent a lot of time under professors who went out of their way to study the art of teaching. The gulf in effective technique can be enormous. Pedagogy is often taught in a way linked to the subject matter, but it really depends on the field because there is more work done in some areas than others. For example, my wife and a few of my friends did language pedagogy for teaching specific languages, the result of that research formed the basis for the language program I did my undergrad in. It's got its flaws like any other, but when I traveled abroad and interacted with students from other programs I realized that the structural understanding the program instilled in me of that language gave me a tool I had to figure the rest out intuitively that others didn't. And it wasn't because I was smart, it was because people spent their entire PhDs trying to figure out the minutiae of how to build the schema I needed to understand the language in very specific and applied ways. Then I went to law school, where I did not have the benefit of there being a well developed field of effective law education (which boggles my mind, because now as a lawyer it's my loving job to teach law to judges so that seems like an important skill). It was often a total crapshoot as to whether I was going to get professors who would just assign readings in the order the book gave it, or whether I would get professors who actually tried to research effective ways to teach their subject matter. I found it immeasurably easier to stay engaged and build a more complete understanding of the law in the classes where the professors cared about and pursued information on pedagogy. In the case of law this is usually in the form of conferences because a formal field of law pedagogy isn't a thing as far as I know. All this is to say that having a way to learn techniques for conveying information and ensuring that it's properly internalized is absolutely a vital thing. And while I think there's a limit to how well that can happen with generalized education classes, it definitely needs to happen in specific areas of study. Of course we'll have good teachers who learn from experience, even without that. But the point is to build more consistency so that that some kids don't get shafted because their teacher isn't the one who was smart enough to figure it out intuitively.
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Nov 8, 2017 16:57
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I'm not disputing that a book should do what the author wants it to do, but I think we've kinda "solved" reference materials for the most part, no? Most popular systems have a wealth of reference charts, rules-on-a-page, spell cards, etc. You tend to be spoiled for choice when it comes to having convenient ways to look up rules once you understand them overall. It's the learning the rules and what the game is about/how it should be played part that is really difficult and generally something an author gets fewer shots at having her audience willingly do before they give up. I probably will never go back to Exalted 3e, for example, because the book has very little interest in getting me oriented to what the gently caress it's even about. Meanwhile Tales From the Loop is all about getting you on board and having an eagle eye view of what the game is about and understanding what the hell it's talking about when it mentions Loops and Mysteries. We're discussing how important it is for RPG book writers to get this only because we're acknowledging that most of them want their game to be played, and learning the game is a much bigger hurdle to jump than referencing it. Theoretically an author could, as part of their artistic design, want only the most dedicated reader to be able to play their game, yes. I think this conversation is mostly about the people who want their book to be accessible. Nickoten fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 19:11
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I was assuming it was the fact that it was live action and involves actually acting as the characters rather than just describing what they do. That means you need words to say to stop what's happening.
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Dec 6, 2017 04:40
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Didn't 13th Age's system let you decide how much of the total bonus they'd get to apply, based on how on-point it was? That seems like an easy solution.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:48
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Splicer posted:It comes back down to a numbers game again though. If you stretch the +5 to apply but you're getting a -2 penalty why not just use the +3? And if you don't know you're going to get the -2 until after your justification then it ruins the whole flow of the game. It increases the mother may I. Same with increasing the DC. That's always been the big problem with a binary success, single information track system, the mechanically most optimal choice is always the one which requires the lowest die roll to succeed. Flexible skills just make it even harder to judge what is going to get you the best roll. Coming up with an explanation as to why "Dad Lessons +3" applies only to have it knocked down below "Owned a pub +2" just wastes everyone's time. Being able to add a reached "Dad lessons +3" but with a higher chance of complications than rolling your ability score straight makes life easier and more fun for everyone. I could see how taking the highest numbers and going for the Hail Mary every time would get tedious. But I also don't like the flipside where your veteran sailor doesn't get to add their proficiency bonus to tying knots because the designers didn't want to have too many skills. I like the idea of there being a devil's bargain associated with using your background though, that seems like it could help.
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Jan 1, 2018 01:29
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