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Okay that's two mentions in a row of my dumbass show, I'll chill out. It's tonal, I can get behind that. I'm not sure I can think of a game off my head that matches without a doubt the "We don't know if this works but also we already got your money" model of rule zero suggestions (I guess stuff like everything in 5e being optional now? Though that's hardly new, both of the skill systems in 2e were "optional"), but it's a tone thing and I am rarely quiet about those myself, so sure.
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May 1, 2024 17:45
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theironjef posted:Generally Gygax was afraid of the whole "Well, elves live for a thousand years, if they don't have a level cap, won't they just all be level 20 everythings?" argument, because he was the original grog-rear end weirdo simulationist, who couldn't conceive of answering that question with "No, because it's a shared heroic narrative and not an elaborate thought experiment." The really compelling argument against "Rule 0" is that changing stuff on the fly can specifically kill some types of fun that people at the table were specifically hoping for. If people are playing a game with really tight tactical combat like Lancer, handwaving the combat may well please people at the table who are bugged by it and aren't here for that, but it's going to kind of kill the point for people who wanted to build a cool mecha and have tactical mecha fights. There's some changes where if you and your group are contemplating making those changes, you should probably just take a step back and ask the more fundamental question of "Are we playing the right game, with the right group of people, or should we change tack?". For similar reasons, I'm often a touch salty about the GM advice of "change up the resolution to a mystery in your setting if the players come up with a theory which is more appealing to you the one you came up with". If I'm playing a investigative game about solving a mystery I want there to be an actual solution, which the clues point to, and I want to have the chance to be wrong and experience the consequences of being wrong - if you're Calvinballing it, even if it's in favour of my character's guesses, you're robbing me of that experience I specifically wanted and opted into when I sat down to play your mystery game. [1] It's the sort of advice which comes from a very modern "Oh yeah, everyone's in it for a heroic narrative with lots of Rule of Cool stuff going on" perspective which is great for those who like it but is poison if it's presented as the correct way to run every type of game. [1] This is kind of why I don't like GUMSHOE: I don't think failing at an investigation is the gameplay-stopping problem Pelgrane think it is, I think poo poo scenario design which decides "oh, you didn't get the clue, so the mystery just sort of stops static until you find it"/"you didn't get the clue, so the world explodes before you can correct for that because you didn't stop the cult" are acceptable outcomes is the gameplay-stopping problem, failing at investigation is fine so long as that failure has interesting results which create new opportunities to track down information. Warthur fucked around with this message at 17:51 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 17:46
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theironjef posted:Okay that's two mentions in a row of my dumbass show, I'll chill out. It's tonal, I can get behind that. I'm not sure I can think of a game off my head that matches without a doubt the "We don't know if this works but also we already got your money" model of rule zero suggestions (I guess stuff like everything in 5e being optional now? Though that's hardly new, both of the skill systems in 2e were "optional"), but it's a tone thing and I am rarely quiet about those myself, so sure. If it helps, I wasn't bringing it up as an organized own or anything. Just... I wanted to be clear about it and then oh god so many people are posting in this thread right now. Keep up the good work on the podcast. I'm friends with fans of the show, so I trust that there hasn't been a random dip in quality since I drifted away from the show for no good reason. :p
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May 1, 2024 17:57
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So has anyone actually read the book this discussion is supposedly about, or are people just trying to get catharsis by venting about past elf games trauma?
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May 1, 2024 17:58
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El Fideo posted:So has anyone actually read the book this discussion is supposedly about, or are people just trying to get catharsis by venting about past elf games trauma? Yeah, it’s an optional rule in an expansion book for a solo game where the player is constantly choosing what to use and what to not use because they are both GM and player. It’s asinine to hyperfocus on it as a design flaw because the entire basis of a solo RPG of this type is rule zero.
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May 1, 2024 18:03
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tanglewood1420 posted:I'm sorry, but actually if you play a Solo RPG and don't follow the rules to the letter, the RPG police will come to your house and arrest you. Just imagining people out there playing differently to me impacts my own enjoyment! So many video game developers believe this wholeheartedly. There is only one way to play our game!.
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May 1, 2024 18:14
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El Fideo posted:So has anyone actually read the book this discussion is supposedly about, or are people just trying to get catharsis by venting about past elf games trauma? sorry you can't form an opinion unless you've played the game 
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May 1, 2024 18:23
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Semantics: I always thought "Rule 0" referred to a singular, overriding rule like at the beginning of a rulebook that means that all other rules... i.e., those rules that begin with 1 and count up from there... are subject to this important underlying principle. That principle being the hobbyist construction nature of an RPG, an explicit admission of the necessity of flexibility, a recognition that the bounds of collaborative fiction far exceed the capacity of a ruleset to anticipate and codify. So I am confused at seeing "Rule 0" being used as a term for a disclaimer of optionality affixed to a specific rule or mechanic. Surely that's just an "optional rule" and not a "Rule 0" case? I feel this distinction may be important because the narratives and objections and history around the actual-Rule-0 as I've defined it above, are being applied perhaps inappropriately to the latter? I suspect a lot of people actually don't object in principle to the notion of an optional game rule, but because an optional game rule has been flagged as "Rule 0 culture" it becomes weighted by that baggage and thus subject to The Discourse. Whether a specific rule's optionality is good or bad oughtn't to be evaluated on the basis of whether or when unbridled GM fiat is good or bad. If the question is whether a given game's author has been rigorous about testing a rule or understanding its impact, surely that's a case-by-case basis? In other words, reading this specific game and understanding its specific optional rule and how it fits is the only way to understand if it's authorial laziness, or good game design?
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May 1, 2024 18:37
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I have read the book and that part is there to say, "Adding more than +3 on your rolls might reduce the tension, but if that's actually what you want (because it fits your narrative) then knock yourself out." I guess he said it in the wrong way though.
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May 1, 2024 18:47
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The underlying principle that is Rule Zero is “all of the rules are optional, you’re at a table with dice pretending to be elves and nothing can force you to follow a rule.”
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May 1, 2024 18:47
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it would be weird if it were common practice for authors to write "if you don't like part of this book you can imagine something else" at the beginning of their books.
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May 1, 2024 18:57
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Impermanent posted:it would be weird if it were common practice for authors to write "if you don't like part of this book you can imagine something else" at the beginning of their books. Books aren’t games.
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May 1, 2024 18:59
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Warthur posted:This is kind of why I don't like GUMSHOE: I don't think failing at an investigation is the gameplay-stopping problem Pelgrane think it is, I think poo poo scenario design which decides "oh, you didn't get the clue, so the mystery just sort of stops static until you find it"/"you didn't get the clue, so the world explodes before you can correct for that because you didn't stop the cult" are acceptable outcomes is the gameplay-stopping problem, failing at investigation is fine so long as that failure has interesting results which create new opportunities to track down information. GUMSHOE is designed in such a way that it's more difficult to write an investigative scenario where a single, failed roll stops everything dead. If that's a problem you're having, GUMSHOE can be useful, but it's also just a good design practice not to write a scenario such that a single, failed roll stops everything dead--you hardly need GUMSHOE to avoid this pitfall if you already know it's there.
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May 1, 2024 19:03
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Narsham posted:Arguing about system mastery and well-designed rules generally without having even read the rules to this game seems potentially ironic. If the rules are crap, this is just part of the rules being crap. If they aren’t, and this “opt out” rule shouldn’t be opt out, I’d expect discussion of specific rules mechanics. El Fideo posted:So has anyone actually read the book this discussion is supposedly about, or are people just trying to get catharsis by venting about past elf games trauma? There's a lot more in Narsham's post than I have time to address right now, but this part I can speak to while also answering El Fideo's question. The product in question, Sundered Isles, is an expansion book for Starforged. Basically it takes the premise of "you're a starship captain (and possibly crew) roaming around having space adventures" and does the logical pivot to "you're a sailing-ship captain (and definitely crew) roaming around having watery adventures," with a whole lot of work put in to making that more than just a lazy reskin. Not a lot of people have read the new book because it just came out, but a ton of people have read Starforged (which is excellent) and Ironsworn (the game Starforged is based on, which is also excellent and free!). The core dice mechanic of all of these games is identical and it's such a good design that people have been praising it for years and making all kinds of hacks for Ironsworn, kind of like a little PbtA / Forged in the Dark scene unto itself. The excerpt that Lu is all hot and bothered about is describing how character assets (something like feats) can stack into a roll. In the first two bullet points it's instructing you to limit what you apply to a roll, because the math behind the system breaks if you can stack your entire character sheet into something - which is a problem that Sundered Isles, as an expansion, runs in to more than Starforged/Ironsworn, but which did exist there as well. This effect on the math is well-known to people who've played the earlier games, and to the designer: what Lu excluded from that excerpt is the long paragraph beforehand talking about why these rules should exist. Actually here, I'll just post it:  This is actually a great piece of game writing. Explaining why your rules work the way they do and what happens when you fiddle with them is under-utilized in RPG writing, and this is a good example of how to do it. TL;DR, lots of people have read the rules being affected by that excerpt, even without reading Sundered Isles, because the rules are shared by the games SI interacts with. They've probably experienced that exact interaction in their own play, and there's a decent chance they have Opinions about it. The excerpt in question is uncharitably removed from its context, but its core point of "or you could just ignore all this and say 'I win' by stacking all the modifiers I want" is accessible to people familiar with these games. Narsham posted:And why do a subset of people seem to think there’s “good RPG rules” when at the high end of quality, designers are left with choices and they’re not min/maxable ones? I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the last part of that sentence, and I'm quite curious about it. What I can say is that there are in fact "good RPG rule," which is to say, rulebooks that are well-written, but they're vanishingly rare.
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May 1, 2024 19:04
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Impermanent posted:it would be weird if it were common practice for authors to write "if you don't like part of this book you can imagine something else" at the beginning of their books. An rpg isn't a novel. It's not even a board game. It's by definition a creative enterprise with a framework. Usually shared, usually pretty open, usually social. And the goal is to have a good time with friends.
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May 1, 2024 19:06
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I wouldn't call the famous Wild Talents "you can turn off the sun with a six dice power, everyone is trying to have a good time so please do not build stupid game-ruining poo poo" that. Acknowledging bad rules, sure, but it's a very frank admission that they're there because they wanted to leave as much control in players' hands as possible and this is a side effect that players need to avoid for their own good.
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May 1, 2024 19:08
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Impermanent posted:it would be weird if it were common practice for authors to write "if you don't like part of this book you can imagine something else" at the beginning of their books. One of the Scott Pilgrim books had "this is the right way to read the book, but hell, start at chapter 15 for all we care. You presumably paid for the book." Amused me at the time.
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May 1, 2024 19:11
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Kestral posted:
That gives so much more context. That's clear and well-explained. This isn't a guy who lacks faith in his rules, this is a guy acknowledging that (a) this is an expansion, and you have history; (b) people want different things out of their game time. I'm firmly on team "this guy" now and the tweet feels like pure, distilled, bad faith Twitter outrage now. Leaving the intro off feels super dishonest.
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May 1, 2024 19:13
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LatwPIAT posted:GUMSHOE is designed in such a way that it's more difficult to write an investigative scenario where a single, failed roll stops everything dead. If that's a problem you're having, GUMSHOE can be useful, but it's also just a good design practice not to write a scenario such that a single, failed roll stops everything dead--you hardly need GUMSHOE to avoid this pitfall if you already know it's there. And sometimes you just have players that will ignore every clue no matter how blatant or how the rule system works so they can't miss it.
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May 1, 2024 19:14
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edition war brain is all consuming, everything that bears a resemblance to one of 5e's major failings is a curse 5e directly put on the form
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May 1, 2024 19:19
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This has been bugging me, but Ironsworn/Starforged/Sundered Isles aren't just solo games; they also have explicit stuff for GM led play.
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May 1, 2024 19:19
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Kestral posted:[A GOOD POST] Thanks for making a way better version of the post I was too lazy to make on my phone.
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May 1, 2024 19:25
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This all boils down to a difficulty option in an RPG which is pretty funny that it inspired the OP to attack the writers “contribution to the artform”.
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May 1, 2024 19:26
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Bottom Liner posted:This all boils down to a difficulty option in an RPG which is pretty funny that it inspired the OP to attack the writers “contribution to the artform”. People get real weird about difficulty options too, tho
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May 1, 2024 19:28
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Mors Rattus posted:People get real weird about difficulty options too, tho Yeah, this reminds me of the outrage over Celeste in particular.
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May 1, 2024 19:29
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Impermanent posted:it would be weird if it were common practice for authors to write "if you don't like part of this book you can imagine something else" at the beginning of their books. Yeah. This isn't narrative, though.
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May 1, 2024 19:55
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I agree 100% There's a clear lack of understanding or perspective beyond just tossing out "Elves are old" and not thinking about the implications of a being born in the 1500s living from then to the present day, and what expecting to live 10 times the length of a human would do to your views on society, culture, time, and aging elf abbots dont let you out of the cloyster until youve sung 10000000 hymns to Corellon Larethian with perfect pitch.
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May 1, 2024 20:05
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The Red Markets dev said that if he does a second edition he's going to slim down the number of choices offered to the GM in the base game. 1e had many systems that asked the GM to choose between more generous or punishing rules based on their preference. But people running the game for the first time had no context for which option they preferred, they told him they wanted a "default" experience to start with before modifying things. This was especially important for rules that affected long term progression, since those were the most tightly balanced part of the game.
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May 1, 2024 20:12
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Bottom Liner posted:This all boils down to a difficulty option in an RPG which is pretty funny that it inspired the OP to attack the writers “contribution to the artform”. Is it a difficulty option, though? It's not clear from the text that's what it is or does. Like, absolutely it might be. My first thought was that it might help keep certain kinds of players from ruining the game despite themselves (e.g. hoarding potions type of thing). But difficulty setting is plausible, too. Like I've been saying, just a brief explanation of why a player might or might not choose this option would make the whole issue moot. mellonbread posted:The Red Markets dev said that if he does a second edition he's going to slim down the number of choices offered to the GM in the base game. 1e had many systems that asked the GM to choose between more generous or punishing rules based on their preference. But people running the game for the first time had no context for which option they preferred, they told him they wanted a "default" experience to start with before modifying things. This was especially important for rules that affected long term progression, since those were the most tightly balanced part of the game. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 20:25 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 20:22
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Jimbozig posted:Is it a difficulty option, though? It's not clear from the text that's what it is or does. Like, absolutely it might be. My first thought was that it might help keep certain kinds of players from ruining the game despite themselves (e.g. hoarding potions type of thing). But difficulty setting is plausible, too. Like I've been saying, just a brief explanation of why a player might or might not choose this option would make the whole issue moot. See the above post for the full section that the twitter poster left out. It’s a section about not stacking duplicate abilities that can make checks almost impossible to fail and what that adds to the game (tension, drama, etc).
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May 1, 2024 20:30
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Jimbozig posted:Is it a difficulty option, though? It's not clear from the text that's what it is or does. Like, absolutely it might be. My first thought was that it might help keep certain kinds of players from ruining the game despite themselves (e.g. hoarding potions type of thing). But difficulty setting is plausible, too. Like I've been saying, just a brief explanation of why a player might or might not choose this option would make the whole issue moot.
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May 1, 2024 20:35
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So really the analogue is: "Thanks for buying the new edition of my board game! I know some of you got all the expansions for the previous edition, and you want to throw them in. Well I can't guarantee that'll work very well, but here are some rules you might try to make that work. But really, you do you." loving hell. What a thing to get angry about, such a coward.
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May 1, 2024 21:02
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El Fideo posted:So really the analogue is: it's literally just magic words that catalyzed edition war brain.
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May 1, 2024 21:27
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https://x.com/strigarosa/status/1784944640757551209?s=46 They even went on to admit it was more about broader perceived issues they have despite writing like 50 hyper focused tweets about Sundered Isles and Shawn as a designer and artist. Also I want to push back on the notion that game design (be it rpg or board games) has to be considered or approached only as art and not the spectrum of skills that go into the design and playing of them. One of the best parts of these hobbies is seeing the variety and specific mix of those skills that people bring to the table.
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May 1, 2024 21:29
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I need you to explain how all art isn’t “the spectrum of skills” that go into them and how it’s unfair to the unique creation of TTRPGs to critique them like an art form.
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May 1, 2024 21:33
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"This is the work of a coward" "Whoa hey that's not super nice." "Oh well I didn't mean this work, you're not a coward. I just said your work was the work of a coward. I called it the coward's work. But that's not you." Okay so who is it? Because it sounds like it's just anyone that won't notice or push back at all.
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May 1, 2024 21:40
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You’re right, any combining of skills and creation is inherently artistic. I brought that up that in reference to all the metaphors people are using in this conversation. “Imagine if a writer told you to ignore parts” “imagine if a painter told you to ignore colors you don’t like” is such a false dichotomy to the editorial process playing RPGs is. I think maybe a better way to phrase it is that if you only view rpg design through the artistic lens as a critic you can’t ignore that the playing of them is also artistic in nature so calling for purely inclusive and prescriptive rulesets falls apart as soon as any game hits the table.
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May 1, 2024 21:41
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Bottom Liner posted:https://x.com/strigarosa/status/1784944640757551209?s=46 You write a Substack lady, fuckin calm down about the weight of the RPG world being on your shoulders.
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May 1, 2024 21:52
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Twitter should be destroyed.
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May 1, 2024 21:52
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Lumbermouth posted:You write a Substack lady, fuckin calm down about the weight of the RPG world being on your shoulders. You have no idea how strongly we have to read texts here on the RPG review circuit. Sometimes I need a spotter.
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May 1, 2024 22:00
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