Trad Games Chat: squabbled over drafts, forked, and disbanded

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Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Not sure this is the right thread for this, but: I remember "Death to ability scores!" being a common catchphrase here at one point. What I find odd about it is that I can't actually think of any tabletop RPGs (aside from maybe some ultra-rules-lite ones) that don't have ability scores. I can think of a few systems that superficially don't have them, but actually have them in disguise. What are these ability-score-less systems that people were calling for D&D to imitate?

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 02:23

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 11:13

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Griddle of Love posted:

Both LANCER and Strike! RPG are heavily 4e inspired and don't have anything that comes with nearly half the baggage of the big six. Blades in the Dark also does it so very differently that I would struggle to call insight prowess and resolve ability scores in the d&d sense.

I guess you could argue that BitD has "saves" rather than "ability scores," and they're derived from skills instead of the other way around. But they're still broad categories of competence tied to skills.

I admit I'm not very familiar with the rules of LANCER and Strike!

Come to think of it, I guess FATE doesn't have ability scores, although I don't often see FATE held up as a model to be emulated.

Edit: There's also some games that have "skills" but not "ability scores," though the fewer skills you have, the more they resemble ability scores (and the more skills you have, the more complex character creation becomes). I think FATE dodges this dilemma by leaving skill lists up to the GM instead of having a fixed list.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Dec 29, 2023

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 03:04

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

As a matter of genre emulation, I would expect a mecha RPG to have stats for pilots along the lines of �Reflexes,� �Technical Knowledge,� �Hot-Bloodedness,� and maybe some sort of stat for Newtype/Geass powers. How does LANCER model those things?

Edit: I guess the mech pilot skills Runa mentions would cover some of those, although they mostly seem like subsets of technical knowledge.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Dec 29, 2023

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 03:30

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Panzeh posted:

And that is pretty true- if you're dumping people with a package deal anyway, it is kinda weird to have this thing on top of it.

I can see this, although I feel like the logical conclusion of this is likely to be reinventing ability scores in the guise of classes or subclasses. (E.g., all Warriors are strong, but they come in six types: Fighters are even stronger, Swashbucklers are also dexterous, Barbarians are also tough, MacGuyvers are also intelligent, Rangers are also wise, and Warlords are also charismatic.) Though maybe that�s a pro rather than a con.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 17:58

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

LANCER isn't a Gundam RPG, it's an Armored Core RPG.

Ah, a mecha game in the sense that it has giant robot fights, not in the sense that it has masked antiheroes and idealistic princesses and so forth.

Now I�m wondering if there�s a mecha game that does lean into those kinds of tropes. I assume someone has made one, although most of the mecha RPGs I�m familiar with seem to draw on Evangelion rather than Gundam for some reason (often with rather tasteless results).

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 18:08

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

What really annoys me about 5e�s class balance is that it re-broke the things 3.5 eventually fixed. Even the Bard, the only core class that wasn�t broken in the first place (it was the only �Tier 3� class in the 3.5 PHB). We already had Tier 3 versions of everything from the Monk (the Swordsage) to the Druid (the Wild Shape Ranger). Just use those as the basis for the 5e core classes!

Now to be fair, there�s some tension between balance and simplification here. Some of the Tier 3 and high-Tier 4 classes got much of their power from sourcebook-diving and rules loopholes (the Factotum comes to mind). But that feels like an inadequate explanation for the way 5e ended up.

Several explanations (not mutually exclusive) come to mind here. One is that WotC�s staff turnover meant that the late-3.5 and early-4e designers were almost all gone by this point, so there was no one left who actually understood how past editions worked. The second, which I believe Ferrinus has argued in the past, is that it�s poorly balanced on purpose to pander to people who like being overpowered casters. I don�t really buy this; I think it�s rooted in a strawman. The third, most charitable, explanation is that 5e was trying to imitate TSR-era D&D, deliberately moving away from 3e as well as 4e (but with some 3e-isms sneaking in anyway). The final explanation (which I think is the actual main reason) is that 5e was designed in a half-assed way, with more attention paid to marketing than to actual game design; it wasn�t deliberately unbalanced, but very little thought was paid to balance, or to how past editions actually worked beyond the superficial nostalgia-appeal level.

The annoying thing is that despite the zillions of D&D-inspired games out there, the game that strikes me as the natural evolution of 3.5 has never been made (maybe in part because non-WotC companies don�t want a lawsuit for copying non-SRD material too closely). PF2 comes the closest, but PF2 PCs are more Tier 4 than Tier 3. (Which makes sense in terms of Paizo�s business model, to be fair; PCs with too much agency are an awkward fit for Adventure Paths.)

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 21:07

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Leperflesh posted:

BUT that doesn't mean that I have to be the best at surviving a harsh blizzard, or lifting a heavy gate, or swimming. Those things should be optional for my character, or maybe for any character, unless there's a character class that is specifically about being an athlete or specifically about being an unkillable hardass.

This is where I disagree. 3e didn�t go far enough in this regard; 4e, PF2, and other games with a unified Athletics skill had the right idea. Having a separate skill for every action involving physical strength is needlessly fiddly and needlessly makes Fighters and similar classes worse. Yes, in real life there are strong people who don�t know how to swim, but do they exist in the kind of genre fiction D&D is supposed to be emulating? And how often does swimming come up in an actual campaign? A separate swim skill makes sense in only two contexts: 1) a game based on One Piece, specifically; 2) a GURPS-style �realistic� game.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 21:31

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Silver2195 posted:

This is where I disagree. 3e didn�t go far enough in this regard; 4e, PF2, and other games with a unified Athletics skill had the right idea. Having a separate skill for every action involving physical strength is needlessly fiddly and needlessly makes Fighters and similar classes worse. Yes, in real life there are strong people who don�t know how to swim, but do they exist in the kind of genre fiction D&D is supposed to be emulating? And how often does swimming come up in an actual campaign? A separate swim skill makes sense in only two contexts: 1) a game based on One Piece, specifically; 2) a GURPS-style �realistic� game.

That said, I do agree that Wisdom, specifically, ties together a bunch of things that have no real connection to each other aside from tabletop RPG tradition. I guess the logic is �they need to be covered by something and Intelligence covers enough things already.�

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 21:55

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Ferrinus posted:

In On Contradiction, Mao Zedong lays out the difference between the metaphysical worldview of liberalism, which holds that things are driven by fundamentally static and eternal essences which can only change in quality, and the dialectical worldview of Marxism, which holds that things are in a process of constant transformation driven by the clash of internal forces. It's the liberal conception of reality, and therefore of history, that classifies people by supposed essential natures that then render those people civilized or savage, smart or stupid, innocent or criminal, and so on. This is why ability scores are not simply bad game design but a manifestation of the racial ideology that underlies western hegemony.

This strikes me as wrong, incidentally; I would say that �things change� is the liberal worldview and �things are static� is the pre-liberal, feudal worldview.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 22:01

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Ferrinus posted:

"Had Mao died in 1956, his achievements would have been immortal. Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?�

Even 1966 is four years after the end of the Great Leap Forward; I think we�re beyond �a great man but flawed� territory at that point. Even by 1956 he�d had millions of people killed without anything that could seriously be called due process.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 22:40

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Ferrinus posted:

My question for you is this: what's your theory of mind for the countless people, largely not westerners, who feel differently and instead count him as a national if not world-historical hero? Do you think you know something they don't, or that they're gripped with some kind of nationalistic or ideological fervor that your cool objectivity protects you from, or that they're the subjects of some kind of cultural or governmental brainwashing that you've been lucky to escape?

Some of the second and some of the third, I guess. I make no claim to cool objectivity in general, only on this particular point.

Edit: And I guess some of the first, too. I�m not making any claim to special knowledge, only to access to the Internet outside the Great Firewall.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Dec 29, 2023

# ¿ Dec 29, 2023 22:56

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Lurks With Wolves posted:

This also kinda brings me to the other message behind Death To Ability Scores: D&D's attribute spread is just kind of bad. The strength of having a small spread of stats like most attribute systems is that it's easy to tell at a glance that a character is good at X and Y but weak in Z. Conan is omnicompetent at the kinds of things D&D stats put emphasis on, which is why it's really hard to make him in D&D-derived games. (Other than games like M&M that have moved far enough away from caring about equal stat spreads to have it be something that really matters, of course.) If you made a Conan game with ability scores like Might/Cunning/Arcana/Civilization (or something similar that wasn't written in five minutes in a random forum post), you could make Conan without having to go "well, to be lore accurate he needs to have 14 at minimum in everything".

There are a few issues with D&D's specific stat spread, I think.

Are Strength and Constitution interesting enough to justify them being separate stats (especially since Constitution is so passive)? Maybe there's a case to be made that the answer is "yes" in the context of a pseudo-medieval fantasy game, but sometimes the D&D stats are used in games with sci-fi settings (e.g., Stars Without Number) where the answer is clearly "no."
In 5e specifically, Strength is useless even for most martials, since it's so easy to use Dex instead.
Spellcasting being purely tied to mental stats, with no distinct Magic stat, contributes to (but isn't the primary cause of) balance issues in some editions; maybe Wizards should need Intelligence to learn spells but Magic to actually cast them, or something like that.
Intelligence is maybe too broad in theory, although this isn't much of a problem in practice to due to things that would be covered by Intelligence in, say, GURPS being covered by Wisdom or Charisma instead.
Wisdom works decently in purely "gamist" terms, but it's very strange conceptually, as I said earlier.
Spontaneous casting being Charisma-based makes sense for Bards and Favored Souls, but it's a bit odd for Sorcerers conceptually.
The trade-off between Charisma and other stats creates obstacles to participation in social situations that pose issues for some campaigns.

An idea off the top of my head (I'm sure an existing game has something like this, and I'm sure there's a big problem with it I'm not noticing): 9 stats (no skills): Muscle, Agility, Sciences, Humanities, Magic, Willpower, Senses, Eloquence, Cunning. Most characters will max two stats, invest somewhat in three or four, be mediocre at one or two, and be bad at one or two. Muscle covers endurance as well as strength, but doesn't affect hit points, which are determined directly by class. Eloquence is the most "social" stat, but Cunning, Willpower, and even Humanities can have social applications. Fighters use Muscle and Agility. Rogues use Agility and Cunning. Wizards (whose magic is based on theoretically objective principles) use Sciences and Magic. Clerics (who worship anthropomorphic deities) use Humanities and Magic. Bards use Eloquence and Magic. Sorcerers use Willpower and Magic. Rangers use Agility and Senses. Paladins use Muscle and Willpower.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Dec 30, 2023

# ¿ Dec 30, 2023 01:58

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

ActingPower posted:

I've wondered myself if there's space in the design world for a game where the primary stats are things like DPS, Tank, Support, etc. It always seemed to me like "wizard who hucks powerful spells" and "Fighter who cuts guys innhalf" should have the same stats, and "wizard with utility spells" and "rogue with utility skills" should too, etc.

I think there are some PbtA games that work sort of like this, but they're generally a bit less on-the-nose with the stat names.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2023 02:41

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

I haven't read it, but Pendragon's "madness" rules are sometimes discussed in this context as interesting because they're trying to emulate tropes very different from the Cthulhu ones.

Gorelab posted:

Honestly, I think Pendragon is the only game with 'madness' rules I like. And that isn't trying to be some specific mental illness and more is 'Dramatic Arthurian tantrum for a year or so'.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

And usually resolved by running naked into the woods and coming back a year later having been taken care of by a kind maiden, a mysterious holy hermit and/or the fairies, possibly having gone on some stranger than usual adventure.

Oddly enough one of the better ways to handle sensitive topics in genre media is to go the opposite way from trying to apply modern frameworks to them, because the latter often ends up with the worst of both worlds.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2024 17:35

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

The list of influences is weird because it doesn't give me an impression more specific than "generic fantasy RPG." I guess the mention of Sabriel suggests there might be an interesting necromancer class?

I'm curious enough to check out the playtest, but not especially optimistic.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 16:02

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Silver2195 posted:

The list of influences is weird because it doesn't give me an impression more specific than "generic fantasy RPG." I guess the mention of Sabriel suggests there might be an interesting necromancer class?

I'm curious enough to check out the playtest, but not especially optimistic.

I guess the absences are interesting from a certain point of view: the only pre-D&D sources are LotR and Earthsea, and the only non-Anglophone source is The Witcher.

As tempting as it is to dunk on them for this, I do appreciate that they don't do the common TTRPG thing of genuflecting to sources the writers obviously haven't actually read (the "Appendix N" pulp fantasy writers when your actual inspiration is old-school D&D, the "Appendix N" pulp fantasy writers plus a few token non-white writers when your actual inspiration is D&D 3e, ancient epics when your actual inspiration is anime).

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 16:39

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

OK, thoughts what I've read of the playtest so far:

It's 377 pages long. That's short compared to the D&D-style multi-book approach, but long compared to the OSR games I've been reading lately - and I assume the final version will be even longer.
Table of Contents: The list of classes looks pretty standard, assuming Guardian corresponds to Paladin and Seraph to Cleric. I admit that the class list, along with the mention of something called the Arcana Domain, inspired a knee-jerk "ugh, generalist spellcasters" reaction in me. No obvious Monk or Barbarian equivalent, though I suspect this is the kind of game that will add them later (probably called something like Adept and Berserker) along with Psions and Warlocks.
More Table of Contents: The ancestries look pretty standard too. We have elves, dwarves, halflings, goblins, and orcs. Slightly less expectedly, we have faeries and fauns. I assume clanks, daemons, drakona, fungril, ribbets, and simiah are, respectively, warforged, tieflings, dragonborn, mushroom-people, frog-people, and ape-people. From the Critical Role wiki I gather than galapas and katari are, respectively, turtle-people and cat-people. Playable giants are unusual, at least, though with good reason; I hope this setting has either small giants or large doorways. Having playable giants and firbolgs is especially odd; I'll have to see how they distinguish them.
Introduction: This is sort of ambiguous about whether the game is meant to be played in a trad, neo-trad, or storygame style, though given the connection to Critical Role I assume the intent is neo-trad. The promise of rules-lightness is a bit odd for a game that's 377 pages long.
Core Realms: This is basically the standard D&D cosmology, minus some alignment-related baggage.
Step 3: Assign Character Traits: A slight variation on the standard 6; in effect, Str is merged with Con, while Dex is split into Agility and Finesse. Seems good for Fighter-types and bad for Rogue-types. Then again, Agility covers some things that fall under Strength in some other games, so maybe not that good for Fighter-types.
Step 7: Choose Your Experiences: Ugh, 13th Age-style freeform skills. Most of the examples given are fine, but I Won't Let You Down is the sort of vague thing players will try to apply to everything.
Domains: The two-domain approach to classes implies the existence of 36 possible classes, leaving plenty of room for splatbooks if they want to go that route. The descriptions of Arcana and Codex are a bit vague, but I guess Arcana is for blasting and Codex is for divination and illusion magic?
Domain Cards: The loadout/vault approach is interesting. It combines what many games do separately as Vancian preparation and retraining. The limit of eight total cards at once reins in the complexity that high-level characters (especially casters) suffer from in some games - though maybe it doesn't rein it in that much, if you have magic items that grant possible actions too.

So far, nothing obviously awful (so long as the GM is sensible regarding allowable Experiences), but nothing special. The thing that stands out most is probably Hope/Fear. It has the potential to bog down the game with bookkeeping, but I don't want to prejudge that; it's something to evaluate in actual playtesting, I guess.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 18:48

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

OK, first up: the Bard.

The class items seem overly specific. Every single Bard starts with either a romance novel or an unopened letter? I guess it makes sense in a world where player characters are assumed to be unique-ish, rather than every city having a Bards' Guild full of people exactly like player character Bards.
The Rally class feature is not assuaging my concerns about Hope/Fear bookkeeping.
Characters in this game are more complex than I realized. You eventually get three subclass cards instead of just one, and the Troubadour's Foundation feature is actually three separate daily spells.
Next up: the Druid. This class is maybe a bit too versatile. If I understand correctly, you get a winged scout form automatically at level 2.
Next up: the Guardian. Wait a minute, this is a reskinned and more defensively-oriented version of the Barbarian! I guess the Seraph is going to be the Paladin equivalent, so no Cleric. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Clerics myself, conceptually (despite currently playing one in a PF2 game); they come with a lot of weird setting baggage about gods, religion, health care, and death, which if not carefully addressed will turn any setting that includes them into the Forgotten Realms.
Next is the Ranger. It's fine, I guess. Making the animal companion a subclass feature rather than a class feature seems like a good way to allow for variable complexity.
The Rogue: I think the Syndicate Foundation feature leaves too much to GM adjudication compared to other abilities in the game so far.
The Rogue's class items are actually useful items rather than flavor things, which is an odd difference from other classes.
The Seraph is a Paladin, with the twist of a subclass option of flight at level 1. Though there's a substantial chance to drop out of the sky the next time you make a skill check, so better be careful!

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Mar 13, 2024

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:34

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

YggdrasilTM posted:

Honestly, no. Guardian is a tank/warlord hybrid

Daggerheart Playtest posted:

Once per Long Rest, you can become Unstoppable. Your Unstoppable die begins as a d4. Place it on your
character sheet in the designated section of your Class Features, starting with the die�s highest value
facing up. While Unstoppable, you:
● Gain resistance to physical damage.
● Add an additional d6 to any damage rolls you make.
● Can spend stress to reroll any single die you�ve rolled.
Anytime you roll your damage dice, reduce the Unstoppable die value by one. When you would reduce
the value below 1 or the scene ends, remove it and drop out of Unstoppable. At Level 3, upgrade your
Unstoppable die to a d6. At Level 7, upgrade it to a d8.

Sounds like Rage to me.

Also, one of the class item options is "A Stone Totem from Your Mentor."

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Mar 13, 2024

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 20:51

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Looking through the ancestries, it's sort of weird how minimal their benefits are compared to the lore. We're told that Faeries "may possess additional arms, compound eyes, lantern organs, chitinous exoskeletons, or stingers," but there's no actual mechanical representation of this. Same for the Firbolg's super strength and the Halfling's super senses.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 21:24

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Kestral posted:

I mean, you can't bring up the idea of different species having different stats in discussions around here without being called a racist, I imagine it's even worse for these folks. The idea has become toxic in the part of The Discourse where these people make their living.

Then why include lore about these species having super strength or super senses in the first place?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 22:00

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

YggdrasilTM posted:

You can add them mechanically as Experiences anyway.

Sure, you can, but that comes at the opportunity cost of I Won't Let You Down.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 22:06

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Other things in Daggerheart I don't like:

Spellcaster-only magic weapons. Spellcasters should have to either pay a Domain Card tax for reliable damage-dealing or just use a quarterstaff.
Rogues are spellcasters for some reason. Actually, I know the reason: it's because the Domain system means they have to share half their Domain Cards with Bards and the other half with Sorcerers. So now Rogues are sneaky, edgy Bards instead of having their own identity. (Maybe they did read the Appendix N stuff after all, because they only precedent I can think of for this interpretation of the Rogue is Jack of Shadows.) I guess this approach does mitigate class balance issues: making martials equal to casters is just a matter of powering up the Warrior and Guardian, because those are the only two actual martial classes.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 23:00

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Wait, I just realized that the Wizard gets the Splendor Domain. So the reason there's no Cleric is because the Wizard is already the Cleric.

Very strange.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 23:22

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Splicer posted:

To cut a big long post down to its core: race-specific fantasy nonsense like wings, regeneration, supernatural luck etc are all perfectly fine, because there's not a lot of real world racists arguing that black people do or do not have an acid spit attack.

I thought some real-world racists did believe in rubbing a black man's head for luck. Which makes the way "halfling luck" works in some RPGs a bit uncomfortable, come to think of it.

Anyway, my point wasn't that trolls need to get a bonus to Strength. My point is that if you're not going to give trolls a bonus to Strength, don't precede the troll mechanics by saying that trolls are super-strong!

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 01:54

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

PuttyKnife posted:

I remember Orkworld being this whole
John Wick super RPG after he got fired from
AEG. It has a whole anthropological account thingy going on in it.

It tries to answer a lot of the orc stuff from Tolkien by making orcs the protagonists but it always felt a bit too far but also not far enough.

Decent read now though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkworld

Actually, as Ron Edwards pointed out in his review of Orkworld, it's about D&D orcs, which have surprisingly little resemblance to Tolkien orcs.

Ron Edwards posted:

The primary concept relies on a shared RPG concept of "ork" that will be familiar from Earthdawn, Harn, and AD&D, including an old Mayfair supplement called Dark Folk. These creatures are basically humanoid pigs - hungry, crude, rude, tribal, not especially clean, and regarded as animals with no right to live by all and sundry. As Wick acknowledges, the foundation for this concept is probably Glorantha's famous trolls; furthermore, again as he acknowledges in the text, this concept has little or nothing to do with Tolkien's orcs and is entirely a product of RPG culture.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Mar 14, 2024

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 02:12

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

I always disliked Size stats because it seemed ludicrous to have Strength, Constitution, and Size stats. It�s a little too fussily simulationist.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 14:47

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

It�s interesting that, while few games remove ability scores entirely, the general trend in both �OSR� and �story game� circles is towards fewer of them. Most PbtA games, for example, have four ability scores. I�ve seen an OSR game that had four, called something like Body (Str and Con), Skill (Dex and the perception aspects of Wis), Mind (Int), and Personality (Cha and the willpower and divine magic aspects of Wis). Into the Odd and related games reduce ability scores to three by removing Int entirely in accordance with the OSR �player skill� mentality, and making perception mostly automatically successful, leaving Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower or Charisma.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Mar 14, 2024

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 15:00

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

I wouldn�t say never; there�s a reason we ended up with the now-traditional six in published D&D, despite Arneson�s original campaign using a really bizarre set of eight or so. But the six we ended up with were definitely chosen with things like prime requisites and hirelings in mind, as well as a dungeon-crawl scenario in a pseudo-medieval setting. The higher-tech the setting, the less sense separating Str and Con makes, while the more �talky� the scenario, the less sense Cha being treated as only equal to the other five in importance makes.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 15:40

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Nessus posted:

I would be inclined to say that all organisms who are meant to be human peers do not have different "raw intelligence" values.

One potential issue here is that organisms not originally intended as human peers can become player character options if they�re popular enough and the system/setting gets enough splatbooks.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 20:08

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

YggdrasilTM posted:

The campaign used a fan made GURPS module for JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, and It was set by our GM in the middle ages. It was really loving strange.

So you were Iggy�s ancestor?

Also, do you have a link to the GURPS JoJo rules?

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 20:39

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Intelligence isn�t unitary, but neither are the things represented by the other ability scores. (Wisdom in particular has some really bizarre implications, like aging in 3.5 actually improving your senses.)

More seriously, though, there are trade-offs here. Once you�ve removed the concept of �my character has a higher smartness than another character� from an RPG, you�ve removed part of the appeal of playing a wizard or a psychic or a detective or whatever.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 01:13

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

ninjoatse.cx posted:

Even in the early fanzines, they pointed out that intelligence doesn't really make a character intelligent, it was just a limiter on spell casting ability. If you define intelligent as "avoids doing dumb things" and "able to deduce things quickly", most RPG's implementation of intelligence doesn't assist them at all, compared to the strength attribute which lets them actually lift heavier rocks (or gives them a higher probable chance of lifting heavier rocks lol).

Some RPGs do have ways to apply Intelligence or similar stats in an "avoids doing dumb things" (Common Sense in GURPS) or "able to deduce things quickly" (Idea rolls in Call of Cthulhu, IIRC) way. Though yeah, most don't, for good reason: it means the GM is playing your character for you. This line of thought is probably why there's no Intelligence stat in Into the Odd.

I think it was in this thread that I floated the idea (somewhat tongue-in-cheekly) of Sciences and Humanities stats instead of an Intelligence stat. Clerics use Humanities because they're drawing their power from anthropomorphic deities, while Wizards use Sciences because they manipulate impersonal forces. I guess Druids are also on the Sciences side of the "two cultures" divide (biology and geology).

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Mar 15, 2024

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 02:59

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Sometimes I think GURPS would actually work better with the D&D ability scores; one mental ability and three physical ones is probably too lopsided.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 04:10

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

I just decided to look at the full GURPS skill list. It includes Falconry, Fire Eating, Main-Gauche, Smith (Copper), Smith (Lead and Tin), and Monowire Whip.

Yes, I�m aware that you�re not actually supposed to use them all in the same campaign.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 04:25

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

Antivehicular posted:

I think this is a matter of personal preference, but I tend to believe that these sorts of skills and abilities are valid play tools if you specifically want to play a character who has this sort of flash of insight. Tradgames almost universally allow for abstraction of physical acts by characters that are much more physically skilled than their players, and usually allow for Charisma checks to be abstracted for characters who are more eloquent than their players, so why force things like insight and problem-solving to be entirely dependent on the player's intelligence? Obviously this should be opt-in, so people who prefer to solve puzzles and the like fully on their own can do that, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to say "I want a way to get hints that my character might pick up on but I wouldn't."

Even with Charisma checks, though, I thought it was generally agreed that while players don�t need to actually be eloquent (or even to do any in-character talking at all), they should be able to explain to the GM what their character wants out of the NPC and the general lines of argument or whatever they�re using to do it, not just �I use Diplomacy on the guard.�

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 15:18

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

I decided to take a look at the Discourse about Daggerfall on Twitter, and there's a lot of annoying fannishness, though I do see some more meaningful discussion as well. A lot of the discourse focuses on the lack of traditional initiative, with the defenders accusing the critics of being unfamiliar with non-5e games and/or being concerned with player spotlight problems that supposedly only arise when playing with assholes, while the critics either bring up player spotlight issues or argue that even if a lack of fixed turn order works in other games, it requires more emotionally mature players than Critical Role fans tend to be. :v:

The most thoughtful criticisms, which I largely agree with, are that the game is an awkward mix of �crunchy�/�traditional� and �rules-light�/�storygame� elements that don�t quite fit together. Basically the same as common criticisms of 13th Age and Dungeon World (not surprising, as 13th Age and Apocalypse World (albeit not Dungeon World) are listed as influences).

I'm surprised I haven't seen more discussion about class identities. The Rogue being a full caster and the Wizard getting traditionally divine magic from the Splendor Domain struck me as bizarre in a game where classes otherwise stick fairly close to their traditional D&D-like identities.

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Mar 18, 2024

# ¿ Mar 18, 2024 03:13