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Since mentioning other versions of d&d and d&d-alikes is verboten in the 5e thread and I really don't wanna just poo poo on it in the d&d thread I'll ask this here/rant about a game I played tonight. Am I just really off base or is 5e just a mix of design goals that didn't mesh and in execution captures the worst of modern editions? I finally played a non-test packet version with an experienced dm who pregened us stuff. We were 4th level and it just felt unsatisfying. Even the character gen tool/CSes were pretty worthless since half of the stuff was 'consult book x' I know plenty of people who have a whale of a time playing the game. Does this just kinda hammer home d&d was never the game for me and 4th was a fluke? Like all the fun felt like it was in spite of our ruleset not because of it or amplified by it. But maybe that's just because I was a tank so didn't get to do much except hope the DM deigned to hit me, since I couldn't really force it with my paladin. I can also totally drop this since it's been years since I posted in tg and I'm sure this has been litigated to death a billion times. It just feels like I'm crazy since I seemed to be the only one who noticed this at the table (and no I wasn't grogging out about why ~my editions~ were better. Though for reference everyone at the table had either played no d&d ever or last played 3x)
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Sep 17, 2018 09:03
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Yeah but it's so popular now. Like friends who never touched rpgs back in the day and even others who've tried everything and like a bunch of stuff even sing its praise. Which is why I thought maybe I was just really wrong. Although since some of those folks singing its praise are now literally sponsored by or got hired by wotc or other companies that really wanna raise up all TG publishers- I guess that should answer why to me. I really just hoped it was a matter of 'oh yeah that was d&d 2 years ago. It's been majorly reworked since then and Mearls is long gone.' Or 'well you see level 5 is when tanks get to have fun too'
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Sep 17, 2018 09:21
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:has there ever been a time when the current edition of d&d wasn't the most popular rpg on the market? Brief window in the mid 90's saw white wolf eating late TSR's lunch. But it's hard to tell how much of that was just due to TSR's poor health combined with Vampire/WoD having a different emphasis. Also didn't pathfinder overtake 4th at least during the 'lol game is dead check back in a few years for 5th' window? Since WotC didn't officially kill 4th then.
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Sep 17, 2018 16:18
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That Old Tree posted:Also, the PDFs that were circulating had bleed and color palette information, and were showing up on chans before opening up for sale on DTRPG, meaning they weren't from people just buying them and then distributing them. At "best" DTRPG had a hole in their security, but I don't think anyone else's books were getting pirated like that, so it was either bad security or even an employee at Wizards itself. I had pdfs of the core 3 books since it was easer to search a pdf in session than flip through books. All of them had stuff like the pallet info and/or dye-lines. So I always assumed it came from a printer they contracted. Plus all my purchases from DTRPG had the whole pages and hyperlinked sections, which those  did not.
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Sep 18, 2018 06:30
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Basically, WotC had a good product and no idea what to do with it. No wonder the remaining staff fled straight back into the arms of grognards and nostalgia, they have no idea and no interest in selling a modern product. I always thought the problem was more hasbro and budgeting vs sales expectations. Like even when 3rd had record sales there were stories of WotC folks bragging and elated, but Hasbro shrugging since that record year was the equivalent in pushed units for a dud GI Joe or other brand year. So by 4th's release it was just viewed as the dorkly little side project WotC could do as long as Magic still printed money. It wasn't a priority and recieved lackluster promotion. This was paired with setbacks like the murder suicide that took out their webtools team. By the time we get to 5th they sorta realize it's a legacy brand and IP to get people interested in their other poo poo and a tie in gimmick (remember by this point there are loving MtG action figures). But yeah it also follows that much like disney or wb don't care much about the quality or state of their comic books as long as they keep the ip going, hasbro doesn't care that d&d has bad devs now. Plus now we have all that twitch and other stream stuff, which sorta existed with 4th (hell the penny arcade guys got a roommate of mine to play some gamma world with me) but the wave hadn't quite crested. They're putting decent money into that promotion and have sponsored some very talented and passionate folks to be the faces of d&d -instead of just sorta relying on the skeleton crew of developers to also fill that role.
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Sep 18, 2018 08:08
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Countblanc posted:Honestly hearing that a game doesn't have minis should make you MORE confident in its quality these days no no no I paid 200 bucks for the deluxe backer kit 3 years ago, let's test out this new game I got! Hey guys come back! Wait! Guys?
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Sep 18, 2018 21:53
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It's way, way easier. And less cat-herding. Yeah, most games boggle my mind with the 'rather watch than play' thing, but it's pretty dang clear why you'd watch a group play tabletop rpgs. Besides the fact it's not always practical to wrangle those cats, there are amazingly talented GMs and players showing off in some of those games. Hell even professional costume fabricators getting involved in some of the streamed games.
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Sep 19, 2018 06:31
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TG 20015: LOL we're the grognards now! TG 2018: actually those people really are having the badwrongfun.
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Sep 19, 2018 19:09
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yeah you're the one running really fun dungeon world stuff and you're okay with people enjoying podcasts, you're not someone I'm making fun of there.
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Sep 19, 2018 20:55
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ha I didn't even catch that! I hope we wind up cool and chill about dumb games again after our planet bakes to death tho
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Sep 19, 2018 21:28
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Xiahou Dun posted:Can you listen to all those clarinets and seriously look me in the eye and tell me that you don't want to rob a train with a sawed-off magic wand? Can confirm, train robbery/old west with guns replaced by wands is a really great hook, haven't listened to that podcast but I ran that as a short game nearly a decade ago and friends still talk about it. And I'm a lovely DM, so I can imagine someone who actually preps could make it sing.
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Sep 19, 2018 23:37
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Xiahou Dun posted:This is really dumb and random and off topic, but I just vaguely remembered that there was something awesome and hilarious about how the Ducks in Glorantha worship Humakt that involved someone wearing a fake duckbill? But I can't actually remember what it was. There might be something like that in the setting but there was the event in king of dragon pass where another tribe is pissed you're so friendly with the ducks so they tar and feather one of your villagers and put a fake bill on him. http://kingofdragonpass.wikia.com/wiki/Tarred,_Feathered,_Billed
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Sep 20, 2018 04:14
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does every joke get mistaken for fightin' words now? or am I still just being too generous and assuming we're a chill forum?
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Sep 20, 2018 21:34
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Wait what's happening to netrunner? A new edition under a different publisher? Lost licence like what happened with games workshop stuff?
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Sep 21, 2018 17:34
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oriongates posted:It's more common for it to be an albino red dragon, players gear up for a relatively weak white dragon and load up on fire-based attacks and cold resistance only to be dumped into a harder fight with a fireproof opponent. The whole 'actually it's an albino <different dragon type>' is the dumbest loving grog thing and I know there had to be plenty of smug assholes who did it. And of course was all part of an arms race of trying to work in rules as physics which if course the dm wins because when you know something they don't they can smugly say 'well achtually in this world that's not how gunpowder works....'
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Sep 24, 2018 23:22
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:How dare you besmirch the good name of the hitchhikers guide text adventure by quoting the fake example dialogue in the manual !! Didn't know the manual was so honest about how dickish the game was gonna be.
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Sep 25, 2018 02:30
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drrockso20 posted:That's how they did the Shadow Elves in Mystara rather than using the Drow Wasnt that also the setting wherw they worshipped a magic a-bomb as a nod to planet of the apes?
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Sep 25, 2018 06:58
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01011001 posted:Yeah, not the smartest decision overall. Idk, how many of the old infinity engine games let you make your entire party and at the start of the game? It makes a lot of sense to limit you to mostly pregens, both to ensure some difficulty by limiting toolkit and also to make up for any lack of system mastery the player might lack (or counter their urge to build something optimal in tabletop that just doesn't work on the pc) Like nwn was a pretty fun game, but powerwise you the scary 'I win' wizard build was more like what Monte Cook and the early 3rd devs thought would dominate the table, going for all the charm spells not so much.
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Sep 26, 2018 04:31
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lol and I remember thinking it was pretty cool when I first read sourcebooks that defaulted to 'her' or used examples of male and female characters and even *gasp* sometimes had player gender not match character. For all of White Wolf's very cringe-y poo poo, they were at least ahead of the curve there, back in the 90's RE: kingmaker chargen, but pillars is pretty well balanced isn't it? I'm just assuming kingmaker at least has roots in d&d and more fiddly bits but I haven't played it so I'm just speaking from assumptions and genre norms, rather than comparing it to best in genre. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 05:12
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I don't think PS:T lets you do it? And the BG method is arguably an exploit. Nope torment didn't and neither did the fallouts (which I thought were infinity too but maybe not)
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Sep 26, 2018 07:18
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ProfessorCirno posted:From what I understand you come across enemies immune to all physical damage real early on, so I guess at least it's teaching you the important things of Pathfinder, such as "don't be a non-caster." That is such lovely design without the game screaming at you not to go there or giving a ton of consumables. But then again I really hate poo poo like that. Hell the game I was at a few weeks ago sorta did that. Our new player was really excited to try unconventional stuff like using heat metal in combat at random times, and the dm cheerfully explained that's not really the use for that, but that it's really effective on things like constructs. Sure enough later on we fight constructs. But these ones are immune to that spell because their creator was smart and built in safeguards against the most common ways to disable constructs. Like I don't think he was being actively malicious and egging her on to waste spellslots, but he was operating in the groggy 'simulationist' mindset when building the adventure and generating the characters for us.
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Sep 26, 2018 07:24
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The Crotch posted:4e had take 10. 4e also had the DMG advice of 'fail forward' and never locking story progress behind dice rolls. With succeeding just being they advance further or with more advantages for the future. Also had the half damage on whiffs and/or recharging misses on the daily and some encounter powers because they devs real8zed how thrill8ng waiting 15-30 minutes to do absolutely nothing, then waiting again was. 13th age also had the escalation die, which was a d6 that started at 1 and every round went up. So in combat players got +1 and eventually +6 to all rolls -as long as they kept the momentum going.
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Sep 27, 2018 17:48
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dread is jenga blocks instead of dice, isn't it? But that's also not gonna work for heroic adventuring, though I guess you could make it fit a comedy game instead of horror
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Sep 27, 2018 21:52
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hyphz posted:The Jenga in Dread is representing a diminishing resource of unknown quantity, not acting as a randomizer. yeah, but aren't we talking about non-dice conflict resolution and tests of success vs failure mechanics? Not just strictly non-dice randomization. Hel posted:For heroic games you can take inspiration from "muscle marines in space" where you have to arm wrestle the GM to determine if you succeed or not. oh or the old LARP standby of rock paper scissors
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Sep 27, 2018 22:48
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fool_of_sound posted:I actually can only think of two games off the top of my head with non-dicepool critfails. Dnd doesn't have them on most rolls, before you point there. But every idiot loves house ruling them in. Even in editions of d&d where the devs specifically tell you not to.
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Sep 29, 2018 19:20
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Imagined posted:If you're talking about 5e -- 5e only mentions them on attack rolls, but does specifically mention in the DMG that you CAN use them for skill checks and such if you want. Which is not the same as "devs specifically tell you not to" in my book. Both 3.5 and 4th if I recall correctly removed critical fails/botches. Like 3.5 had "natural 1 on attack rolls only (and not skills)" is an autofail but no critical failures. -Though you probably wouldn't know that from playing since practically every 3.5/pathfinder DM I knew would count a 1 as a critical failure, and of course unlike critical hits didn't require 'confirming' because it just seemed 'fun' and they had no concept of the math. so fool_of_sound posted:This is because the central design element of 5e is '3.5, as lazy idiot gms ran it'
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Sep 29, 2018 20:25
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potatocubed posted:D&D 3.5 had a condition where if you rolled a natural 1 on a saving throw against a magical attack "an exposed item is harmed (if the attack can harm objects)". lol I never knew that rule existed, man no wonder so many people thought monks were OP, they were the only non caster immune to half of the lovely gotcha traps.
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Sep 29, 2018 22:21
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senrath posted:Yeah, Vow of Poverty was another one of those "this is so broken!!!!" things that was a power downgrade 99% of the time. The other 1% of the time was on a Druid in one of those ill conceived "low magic" games where finding a +1 weapon was supposed to be a huge deal. wasn't it weird the way 'low magic' games of d&d rarely banned casters? Or rarely made adjustments for the fact higher hit dice classes don't benefit from those hit dice without having full hp? Or do anything to 'simulate' the fact your adversaries would also generally be running around at partial hp too?
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Sep 30, 2018 05:49
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But don't most good games suggest in their gm sections only requiring rolls where there should be a chance of failure? Hell even games with shakey math like exalted 2nd e had bits about that and some of d&d 4th's dmg 2 I think also cautioned against bogging the game down with rolls and challenges that don't meaningfully contribute to the story on a success AND failure.
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Sep 30, 2018 07:44
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Bedlamdan posted:There's Weird War 1 and Weird War 2 for Savage Worlds but those are more oriented towards Horror. As any WW1 game should be. Wraith: The Great War is also set in WW1, but you're playing as the actual war dead during a civil war among the dead spanning WW1. Also Wraith is one of those games that seems really cool in concept and to read, but is hell to get playing, since by the base rules either A. Every player is playing both their character and another player's character's death-drive, or a second GM to play and manage that aspect for the players. It could be all ran and controlled by a single GM to avoid some chaos, but that also sort of turns the shadow into a plot device for the GM that can rob players of agency. Increasingly I'm thinking if I ever ran a game of wraith again, because the politics and theme of its underworld were really neat I'd just Have every character play a ferryman and have them help generate a pasiphae. Or otherwise crib the general theme of "Yeah you spawned an actual evil twin essence as determined to undo everything you want to do. What's that mean?" rather than having regular shadows. Then just run them as a full NPCs. Or hell alternate sessions and have the players run their own pasiphae in different parts of the underworld. and yeah I totally just used spoiler tags for a game that's been dead for almost 20 years, just in case someone plays it again and never read the GM chapters/learned some of the bigger secrets of one of the big mystery factions of plot device NPCs from the most niche oWoD bookline.
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Oct 3, 2018 01:39
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Oh and double posting but was Nobilis 2nd edition better than 3rd? So worth actually checking out? Or just something that makes for a cool bonus when buying this bundle of holding for Chuubo's? I'm totally buying the bundle either way, just because Jenna worked on some of my favorite RPGs growing up, and was usually the one contributing some of the best and most unique aspects to settings and cosmology.
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Oct 3, 2018 01:52
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Skelettin posted:We don't need to rehash this here Better it be shorter blurbs here than derails in the 5e thread I'd say. Plus there really are a bunch of people who dont follow this subforum that closely and wouldn't know that dude is a slimeball and has had a hand in harassment. Hell I met the guy in real life once or twice and he seemed fine (and was also a close friend of one of the most genuinely decent people I knew from the industry) His online antics seemed utterly out of character with someone from that circle. Heck back in the grognards.txt days goons were the ones who came off as the weirdos whenever they engaged with him or his girlfriend. -So I think it's okay to occasionally rehash the dude is garbage and Mearls and WotC don't mind. But I'm also not a regular here anymore so I don't know what's completely overplayed and fruitless.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:10
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Doorknob Slobber posted:for just reading I like digital but for poo poo where I'm going to have to flip back and forth I gotta have that physical I'm the opposite, I prefer reading from an actual book, but an indexed pdf (and especially one with clickable hyperlinks) is so much better for referencing. Hell you can even just keyword search.
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Oct 4, 2018 19:57
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Kai Tave posted:I'm not even a huge WoD fan but I'm gonna have to hard disagree on this one. funny, I'm a big WoD fan and I actually think it's a completely fair statement. I'm going by oWoD, especially pre-3rd edition though. The era of "whatever, raising or lowering the DC is the exact same as adjusting target number of successes" level of math from many of their designers. But I think we can all admit both are games sold on their theme and setting, rather than functional systems that support said theme or setting, right?
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Oct 9, 2018 00:56
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xiw posted:I always enjoyed rock stars being next to mercs in the archetype list in 1e. Wasn't 1st e largely a cyberpunk knock off with d&d races added? So that makes sense. They had rockstars, security, reporters, and suits among their more normal classes.
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Oct 10, 2018 02:54
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So I'm reading nobilis 2e and man does it just roll up everything I loved about stuff like WoD, In Nomine, monomyth and just odd contradictory cosmology. I wish my friends and I had more time for rpgs these days. Though it also looks like this would he a harder game to get some of my more hidebound system heavy friends to transition to, but would be a great introduction to those just getting into rpgs not quite as indoctrinated into 'the gm controls everything' or adversarial systems. I hope Moran gets enough money from that bundle of holding sale to help with whatever issues she's having.
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Oct 10, 2018 07:38
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Kai Tave posted:If you haven't you should take a look at Gamma World 7E (the D&D 4E derived one) because it's got something kind of similar to this. A lot of the more power-esque winds up breaking/burning out through use, mutations go away and get replaced with new ones throughout play, etc. It's not very RPS in execution, but it does the "scavenging for gear in a weird post-apocalyptic setting" in a way that doesn't result in people having exhaustive equipment lists accumulate over time. Ha glad I wasn't the only one who thought of gamma world reading that post.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:21
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Why not just use fate for superhero games? It's specifically designed around narrative control and balancing superman, batman, and Commissioner Gordon all having the same amount of story impact
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Oct 11, 2018 00:23
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dwarf74 posted:Hey remember when everyone was saying that WotC couldn't really mean eSports when they were talking about eSports? Ya know I was gonna comment on that being such a shitshow with how unbalanced and subjective d&d is, but most fighting games and MOBAs have only a small fraction of competitive characters from their rosters and a bunch of real sports are entirely subjective with judging even if they have scoring metrics, like say figure skating.
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Oct 15, 2018 21:15
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I'd also like to point out I wasn't making GBS threads on mobas, figure skating, fighting games, or RPGS -just pointing out we've had professional competitions in the past that worked despite the obvious difficulties with characters/mechanic balance or vagaries of the winner being open to judge interpretation. That's without even getting into the  with refs and umpires in sports with more clear cut rules and direct competition/win scenarios also being highly subjective and very easily swaying outcomes.Lemon-Lime posted:Modern FGs and most MOBAs go to great lengths to balance their rosters and make every character viable (depending on match-up/picks and bans, obviously). It doesn't work 100% of the time but that statement isn't even remotely true.
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Oct 15, 2018 23:33
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