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Niek
2011-09-23, 12:22 PM
Several months ago a game slot opened up in my group, so I decided to run something. At the time the only systems I knew were D&D and GURPS, and as the entire group had gotten rather tired of how long it took to resolve anything in GURPS I defaulted to using D&D 3.5

After a few sessions, it became apparent to me that D&D does not really fit the story and setting I have in mind at all. Magic and especially magic items are too high-power for the setting, combat is too all-or-nothing in its results, the class-based nature of the game discourages organic character growth in favor of planning a character's trajectory entirely ahead of time, and the system in general is too combat-centric for what I intend to do.

Luckily, I have since become familiar with the FATE system, which is a much conducive to the narrativist-style game I want to run. The problem is, I'm in a group with mostly gamist-leaning players, one of whom is extremely enthusiastic about the mechanics of D&D specifically. Every time I have brought up the issue with them they have suggested I alter the setting to fit the game system, which in my mind is an entirely backwards way of doing things (not to mention it would require a total rewrite of all of my plans).

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can convince my group to transition to a system betting fitting the intended style of my game or, failing that, advice on running a narrativist game in the D&D system?

Kol Korran
2011-09-23, 01:08 PM
not sure if this would help, but here are some thoughts:
- depending on the age and gaming experience of the players, and mostly their personalities, it might be very hard, or impossible to get them to switch their preferences. people like different things in games, and that's about it. in time people may learn to like other aspects of game, or be more open to other styles, but in general people tend to stick to their preferred style of play. my suggestion is to try to mix and match elements of the game to suit most moods. sometime it works, sometimes it doesn't.

- D&D can be played sort of narratively (is that a word?) but it requires one (or a combination of) the following: like minded players, specific setting, and specific game mechanics. the players however are by far the most important part i think. still, there are some setting with low magic, deeper and more complicated cultures plots and the like, and more. as to rules- try looking up E6, it is said to keep the high magic at bay, it's quite simple, and moves some of the focus of the character towards roleplay (though this last point is argued)

- Yora on this boards is developing a setting which you might like, with a set of rules that seem simple, variable, and fun. try looking her signature up.

- all that said, my suggestion would be to tell the guys "look, i want to try something. we'll run a short adventure by Fate rules, it's character creation (aspects) are really cool, and you can stack them for cool effects. give me 3-5 sessions, and if you don't like it, we go back to D&D. what do you say?"
get them to experiment, try the system at least. it's the best you can do.

hope this helped.
kol.

Reluctance
2011-09-23, 01:27 PM
The problem is, I'm in a group with mostly gamist-leaning players, one of whom is extremely enthusiastic about the mechanics of D&D specifically. Every time I have brought up the issue with them they have suggested I alter the setting to fit the game system, which in my mind is an entirely backwards way of doing things (not to mention it would require a total rewrite of all of my plans).

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can convince my group to transition to a system betting fitting the intended style of my game or, failing that, advice on running a narrativist game in the D&D system?

Switching systems isn't going to change player personalities. You might be able to interest them in another game with a decent amount of crunch, but you sound like you won't be able to stop them from seeing things in terms of win conditions, and wanting GP/XP equivalents to keep score.

And yes, D&D does hand the players too many tools to casually break plots/campaigns. Try to work around it where you can*, and if your players monkey wrench too much, don't think a system change will stop them.

*(Idea: The fluff says that other planes are more magical places. If you can't cast spells above third level on the prime, sixth level on the ethereal/inner, and are uncapped on the astral/outer, that'd allow you low-level primes without taking away all the players' toys. Assuming you make it easy enough for them to take extraplanar excursions when the time is right.)

Tyndmyr
2011-09-23, 03:19 PM
Does anyone have any suggestions for how I can convince my group to transition to a system betting fitting the intended style of my game or, failing that, advice on running a narrativist game in the D&D system?

Sometimes a given campaign doesn't match a given system. Then, you have three options.

1. Swap systems. This requires talking everyone into it. I suggest leaving shiny new books around the table, and slowly building interest. This will not work on all player types. Some hate learning new things.

2. Swap campaign to fit. Don't have to dump it entirely....but adjust the concept to work better with the system. In this case, it sounds like making the campaign higher magic and so on. This is generally the easiest solution, as it does not require convincing anyone other than yourself. Still, depending how invested you are in the campaign, it may not be desirable.

3. Keep playing any way, and house rule things as they come up. This is included mostly for completeness, as it is roughly akin to solving the peg/hole issue by finding a sledgehammer.

I like going with #2 myself, as mid campaign system swaps can be...problematic, and then, in the future, carefully selecting system on the basis of what campaign I've got planned. The good news is, you now know a lot more about which campaigns go with which systems! Also, getting people into a between-campaigns one shot with pregenned charsis a much easier way to convince them to give something a try.

kaomera
2011-09-23, 08:20 PM
You're in pretty much the same situation I've found myself in lately, only one step ahead of where I was in that you've correctly identified the problem...

I have to say I'm not sure running a more narrative version of D&D would work for this group, unfortunately. IMO, you need to put your foot down and state that you just don't want to run D&D. I know that technically you just don't want to deal with some of the standard clichés of D&D, but those are probably the exact reasons why some or even all of your players want to play D&D. You might possibly have better luck with your group than I did with mine (it all does depend on the players), but I think if you try to do something different with D&D you are likely to end up with a situation where the players are really putting all of their energy into fighting against and/or subverting your attempts to run a more narrative game.

The players may or may not be willing to go for FATE, but IME if you give them any option to play D&D then those who want to play the standard clichés of D&D will simply attempt to do that, and any players who might be on board will likely find it easier to just go along with the other players... It's difficult if not impossible to take the same group and the same system and come up with different results, unless all of the players are really behind giving it a serious try.

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-09-23, 09:03 PM
Hmm. Burning Wheel is a fantasy RPG that still has interesting crunch whilst introducing story and character elements into play. Character growth is certainly pretty organic, and magic is much lower-powered. It might be a great midway point to them, as it still has lots of crunch to fiddle with.

Burning Wheel Gold is the latest version (preview .zip file is here (http://www.burningwheel.org/pdf/BWG_Preview.zip)), and here (http://www.burningwheel.org/?p=276) is the main post explaining BWG.

Xefas
2011-09-23, 10:32 PM
Burning Wheel has everything you want in this, really. Its heavy crunch with a good amount of narrative mechanics, high on tactical decisions (more so than D&D, in my opinion), has equal support for physical combat and social engagements, isn't class based, character advancement is organic (using skills improves them), magic items are rare and interesting but not more important/powerful than your actual character's skills, spellcasting has its place but isn't gamebreaking, and so on.

And, I guess just tell them that. This game isn't your typical hippie lovefest like Primetime Adventures. You will have to make legitimately hard mechanical decisions. More than you ever did with D&D. The elegance of the game is that it will take your drive to play optimally and turn it into compelling storytelling whether you intended it to be that way or not.

If you try to go in and play a "Kick down the door, kill the orcs because they look different than us, loot the bodies, get XP, and now lets go find bigger orcs" sort of game, you'll end up getting it, plus accidentally telling a much more awesome story on top of it. Just, effortlessly. It will just happen, independently of your group doing anything to make it happen.

(If you actually try to tell an amazing story - good lord.)

Its hard to explain. But, having been in a similar situation, I'm confident that if you can get your group to just stomach it for a session or two to get over their "OH MY GOD IT'S NOT D&D" attitude, it will make everyone happy and solve all your problems.

Totally Guy
2011-09-24, 01:49 AM
I ran a Burning Wheel game last year for a blogger called Chatty DM. He's part of Critical Hits, the D&D blog that won the Ennie this year.

After looking at some other games, Mouse Guard, Leverage and Apocalypse World he wrote about how to take the things he liked from them and incorporate them into the D&D games he ran.

His advice on how he now runs D&D games can be found here (http://critical-hits.com/2011/02/18/mouseburning-it-hacking-a-rpgs-skill-system-small-press-style/).

Unfortunately it's inadvisable to change the game system of an existing campaign when someone isn't bought into change. If you can set aside time for a one shot then players can try before they buy. Even the doubters have to say "Let's give this a fair shot." This is true whether it's FATE of any of those I mentioned.


Edit: Most of us have made assumptions about what you want the game to do instead of being D&D. What do you see your game being about that the system isn't supporting?

BayardSPSR
2011-09-24, 08:21 AM
D&D does not at all sound like the right system for what you want to do. You might want to try something like Destiny of Heroes: https://sites.google.com/site/argopublications/documents

It's not hard to take a look at, since it's free to download.

Niek
2011-09-24, 07:50 PM
I ran a Burning Wheel game last year for a blogger called Chatty DM. He's part of Critical Hits, the D&D blog that won the Ennie this year.

After looking at some other games, Mouse Guard, Leverage and Apocalypse World he wrote about how to take the things he liked from them and incorporate them into the D&D games he ran.

His advice on how he now runs D&D games can be found here (http://critical-hits.com/2011/02/18/mouseburning-it-hacking-a-rpgs-skill-system-small-press-style/).

Unfortunately it's inadvisable to change the game system of an existing campaign when someone isn't bought into change. If you can set aside time for a one shot then players can try before they buy. Even the doubters have to say "Let's give this a fair shot." This is true whether it's FATE of any of those I mentioned.


Edit: Most of us have made assumptions about what you want the game to do instead of being D&D. What do you see your game being about that the system isn't supporting?
Thematically, the game is supposed to be largely about internal strength and things not being what they seem. The former goal is impeded by the heavy gear-dependence imposed by the system, and the latter by how the system forces characters into fixed roles and cripples anyone who tries to change the trajectory of their character's development mid-game. The combat-oriented nature of the game also makes it very difficult to have the players suffer any direct failures that don't result in character deaths, which puts me in a position of having to choose between short-changing the competence of NPCs and removing narrative tension, or risk losing the people who are supposed to be the main drivers of the plot (the PCs)
Mechanically, the default economy assumed by the D&D system, wherein adventurers routinely carry around the net worth of entire towns on their person, thoroughly breaks my suspension of disbelief as a worldbuilder. It also feeds the players' sense of entitlement towards magical gear. The high power level of the magic system is also a problem, especially the availability of resurrection magic, since the ways in which death and the afterlife function in my setting are one of the two most important things about it (the other being divine politics). Also, in this setting all spellcasting is divine in nature either directly (clerical magic, shamanism) or indirectly (scholarly magic learned by solving riddles left by the god of knowledge). This makes it an external power source, something which, while useful, I do not want players to have as their sole source of ability. Within D&D however, if I take away the cleric or the wizard's magic they have little to no ability to achieve much anymore, since the system encourages hyper-specialization to such a degree.

Totally Guy
2011-09-25, 04:13 AM
Yeah, those are pretty deeply imbedded properties of D&D which probably makes the advice I posted insufficient to handle you problem.

I think you need to talk to the group about switching games using those tight few points as the fundamental problems that you have.

Also read more games until you find one that really excites you that'll play the game that you want to play.

Knaight
2011-09-25, 04:23 AM
Also read more games until you find one that really excites you that'll play the game that you want to play.

The first post handled this. It was called FATE.

Autolykos
2011-09-25, 04:54 AM
It sounds like D&D is the wrong system for you, but the right system for your players. If you don't want to switch groups, you'll have to find a modus vivendi (which can also be letting someone else DM). Mechanics alone won't solve the problem of incompatible playing styles.
IMHO the main appeal of D&D is "hacking" the system to build the character or concept you want in a mechanically sound way. It has rather inflexible rules, but lots of them (sometimes contradictory, sometimes multiple solutions for the same problem that only differ in technicalities). This puts it pretty far in the "gamist" corner of systems ("narrativism" is IMHO an attribute that can't be applied to systems, only to play styles - you can have a narrativist approach to D&D, but a pure gamist won't find it enjoyable - and a pure simulationist won't find D&D enjoyable anyway).
Also, don't think too much about "your story", as this tends to lead to railroading. And while gamists usually don't care too much about railroading in a purely story-wise sense, they WILL be upset once you limit their mechanical choices without good reason or present them with "unfair" encounters.

Totally Guy
2011-09-25, 05:05 AM
The first post handled this. It was called FATE.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Cespenar
2011-09-25, 07:02 AM
I believe that with enough system familiarity on the DM's side, one can tweak D&D 3.5 to fit more setting ideas than one first thinks it possible.

Totally Guy
2011-09-25, 10:57 AM
I believe that with enough system familiarity on the DM's side, one can tweak D&D 3.5 to fit more setting ideas than one first thinks it possible.

I don't think this is a setting issue. It looks like the issue is what is happening during play.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-25, 11:13 AM
I don't think this is a setting issue. It looks like the issue is what is happening during play.

Agreed. A wild number of settings can exist in D&D, but gameplay in any of them tends be remarkably similar. Hell, you even see some bleed over in D&D modern because of the similarities. Some adventures in there sound a great deal like D&D games with renamed features.

D&D is fantastic at certain types of games. If you want to crawl through a dungeon, kill monsters, and take off with the loot...it's a solid choice. It can dabble in other things as well, but the focus is mostly on that.

If you want to run a non-combat, tense social investigatory game...D&D is not a particularly good choice. Oh, you can try to force it, but the system is fighting you, not helping. It's much more painful that it needs to be.

Another_Poet
2011-09-25, 11:21 AM
Best advice I can give is to ask them to give you a three-session chance. Which means:

1. Put the current game on pause,

2. Run a mini-campaign on FATE over three sessions,

3. See what they think.

Maybe they'll like it enough to let you transition the long-term campaign over. If they don't, no amount of debate is going to change things.

Cespenar
2011-09-25, 02:26 PM
Meh. I've been in enough D&D 3.5 games to know that its forte lies not with catering to dungeoncrawlers alone, but rather with its flexibility if you just are brave enough to tweak a couple of (or more) rules. But since the general idea seems to be suggesting new systems, I'll not argue further.

Knaight
2011-09-25, 02:56 PM
Meh. I've been in enough D&D 3.5 games to know that its forte lies not with catering to dungeoncrawlers alone, but rather with its flexibility if you just are brave enough to tweak a couple of (or more) rules. But since the general idea seems to be suggesting new systems, I'll not argue further.

Have you played enough of other systems to see what they do for comparison? There are things D&D doesn't do as well as other systems, at least not without enough tweaking for it to be unrecognizable. D&D can't imitate Fiasco, and won't imitate FATE well.

Kiero
2011-09-25, 02:59 PM
Switching systems isn't going to change player personalities.

No, but it will change the behaviours that the system rewards and punishes. Most people aren't so stupid as to carry on doing something that isn't being rewarded.

kaomera
2011-09-25, 03:13 PM
I think that Knaight is arguing mechanics, whereas Cespenar is arguing results. System does matter, but so do the players. The problem with a purely "system matters" approach is that in discarding the (pointlessly disparaging) idea that "you aren't getting the results you want because you just aren't a good enough gamer" it also can tend to toss out the fact that how the players approach the game definitely does affect the outcome. Most system-matters games seem to approach this by punishing the "wrong" play style (usually indirectly). Which is fine as far as it goes - they're also (IME pretty universally) pretty upfront about what they're trying to do. The usual stumbling point will be players who are used to reading any instructions on how to use a game system as vague suggestions at best.

3.5 (or whatever edition) D&D is actually far more useful for some players in running a story-based game (whether this is narativism or not I don't really know; g/n/s tends to break down when you're talking about actual systems / actual play) in that they do not want the system to have much direct impact on how they tell the story. I think this group seems to be diminishing, so perhaps that was simply a reaction to dealing with the desire for that type of game before there where systems that really handled it, mechanically.

Anyway, back around to the OP, I think that while I agree with Cespenar that you can get the results you're looking for from 3.5, the willingness not just to accept rules tweaks, but to try a different mode of play at all, seems absent from these players (AFAICT). Just as the simplest example that I can come up with - awarding "story XP" doesn't help if the players are willing to forgo that XP because they find story stuff too much of a chore to bother with.

The basic issue is that we game to have fun, and XP, FATE points, or whatever are strictly secondary (or at least should be - I have encountered players who have stuck it out with games they just weren't having fun with; heck, I've been that player once or twice...). No system is actually "sprinkled with magical pixie dust" to the extent that it actually produces great results regardless of the players.

bloodtide
2011-09-25, 06:10 PM
Thematically, the game is supposed to be largely about internal strength and things not being what they seem. The former goal is impeded by the heavy gear-dependence imposed by the system,

So the characters have a lot of stuff? So what? Say they each have ten magic items, as long as they don't have 10 rings of wishing, then they won't have stuff for every conceivable thing that might happen. Try not to think of magic items as 'external', but more 'internal' parts of a character.




and the latter by how the system forces characters into fixed roles and cripples anyone who tries to change the trajectory of their character's development mid-game.

Not true. You can make a character any way you want too. When you say 'cripples' your sounding like a min/maxing roll player. There is nothing wrong with playing an archer with a dex of 11 or a wizard that is bad at casting spells.



The combat-oriented nature of the game also makes it very difficult to have the players suffer any direct failures that don't result in character deaths, which puts me in a position of having to choose between short-changing the competence of NPCs and removing narrative tension, or risk losing the people who are supposed to be the main drivers of the plot (the PCs).

Any drama needs to have loss and/or failure, or it's pointless. If the good guys can just blink and save the day, why bother playing?

Other then death, you have three big failures to use in the game:

1.Loss of stuff. Simple enough, the magic sword breaks or the ring falls into a volcano or such.
2.Afflictions. Things such as curses and magical effects.
3.Drama stuff. Sure they can kill Mr Bad, but if he kills princess Joy first, then it's a failure.





Mechanically, the default economy assumed by the D&D system, wherein adventurers routinely carry around the net worth of entire towns on their person, thoroughly breaks my suspension of disbelief as a worldbuilder. It also feeds the players' sense of entitlement towards magical gear. The high power level of the magic system is also a problem, especially the availability of resurrection magic, since the ways in which death and the afterlife function in my setting are one of the two most important things about it (the other being divine politics). Also, in this setting all spellcasting is divine in nature either directly (clerical magic, shamanism) or indirectly (scholarly magic learned by solving riddles left by the god of knowledge). This makes it an external power source, something which, while useful, I do not want players to have as their sole source of ability. Within D&D however, if I take away the cleric or the wizard's magic they have little to no ability to achieve much anymore, since the system encourages hyper-specialization to such a degree.

This is a common problem with many players, and most feel the answer is to go 'low magic'. The idea is that a 'gritty, dirty setting is better. But I have a better way to go.....go high magic. This very nicely balances things out. The characters might have tons of magic stuff, but so does everyone else. Even just giving the world common access to low level magic is great.

Why not change the way raising the dead works? Sure the PH says 'snap your fingers' and your alive...but you can change that.

And Divine Politics....make them more active in the world. My gods are, and it works out great.

Gavinfoxx
2011-09-25, 08:02 PM
Not true. You can make a character any way you want too. When you say 'cripples' your sounding like a min/maxing roll player. There is nothing wrong with playing an archer with a dex of 11 or a wizard that is bad at casting spells.

In a heroic miniatures tactical battlemat game where survival hinges on competence at combat? Yes, yes there IS a problem with playing characters which can't pull their weight. 1.) Your character dies. Or you cause the party to die. 2.) Verisimilitude of the game setting breaks when, due to your 'PC Halo' the party keeps on traveling with you and giving you a full share of the loot, and doesn't kick you out, even though you are a liability to the party.

Niek
2011-09-25, 08:24 PM
So the characters have a lot of stuff? So what? Say they each have ten magic items, as long as they don't have 10 rings of wishing, then they won't have stuff for every conceivable thing that might happen. Try not to think of magic items as 'external', but more 'internal' parts of a character.

I don't see how I can do so. Magic items are something someone has, not something they are. Anyone else could pick up those items and get the same effect out of them, so what about them makes the PCs so special?





Not true. You can make a character any way you want too. When you say 'cripples' your sounding like a min/maxing roll player. There is nothing wrong with playing an archer with a dex of 11 or a wizard that is bad at casting spells.

When half of the party are hardcore min/maxers, it becomes an issue. In this particular case, one of them was all set to begin playing a half-fey sorceress who I thought had a rather interesting backstory, but then changed his mind as soon as he heard that another player was going to be a druid (he ended up playing a human cleric, begging me to allow him to apply the favored weapon bonus from his War domain to greatswords despite his deity's favored weapon being a lance).




Any drama needs to have loss and/or failure, or it's pointless. If the good guys can just blink and save the day, why bother playing?

Other then death, you have three big failures to use in the game:

1.Loss of stuff. Simple enough, the magic sword breaks or the ring falls into a volcano or such.
2.Afflictions. Things such as curses and magical effects.
3.Drama stuff. Sure they can kill Mr Bad, but if he kills princess Joy first, then it's a failure.

1. A couple of the players are already frustrated with me over the perceived "weakness" of their magic items compared to those of others (I gave each character a special magic item at the end of their first adventure). Taking them away altogether is unlikely to help me there, and besides I have given each of the items some degree of quest-relevance that would be wasted if I took them away.
2. D&D doesnt make it very easy to give a character any long-term afflictions that arent easily solvable via magic, especially since there is a cleric in the party.
3. One of my main sources of frustration is how preoccupation with the mechanics is keeping the players from so much as remembering the names of quest NPCs. Part of the reason I want to switch to a system like FATE where the mechanics are more closely tied to the narrative is to force the party to care more.



This is a common problem with many players, and most feel the answer is to go 'low magic'. The idea is that a 'gritty, dirty setting is better. But I have a better way to go.....go high magic. This very nicely balances things out. The characters might have tons of magic stuff, but so does everyone else. Even just giving the world common access to low level magic is great.

Why not change the way raising the dead works? Sure the PH says 'snap your fingers' and your alive...but you can change that.

And Divine Politics....make them more active in the world. My gods are, and it works out great.

But doing such would require dramatic changes to the setting to account for the effect such high magic access would have on society.

kaomera
2011-09-25, 08:31 PM
I think the example of a character who is bad at what they're supposed to do is just kind of a bad example. While you can certainly make an interesting character for which this holds true, I think that there's going to be something more significant that makes the character cool / interesting / dramatic; quite possibly that's going to be why the character is attempting a role they aren't really suited for in the first place.

One of D&D strengths is that it doesn't really do anything to stop you from roleplaying any way you want to (well, possibly alignment), but that also means that it has nothing that really encourages anything particular. You can award "story XP" and such, but I've generally found that it's not really a serious incentive as much as just a "reward" for players who came to the table wanting the same things the DM did. And the problem with XP (and magic items, and any other power-ups) in D&D is that there has developed a real expectation of a particular rate of progress that IMO tends to be a really significant push towards seeing power acquisition as the major or even only significant measure of progress in the game. Characters don't tend to get played as if they had any desires or goals beyond that.

Edit: you posted this while I was typing...

3. One of my main sources of frustration is how preoccupation with the mechanics is keeping the players from so much as remembering the names of quest NPCs. Part of the reason I want to switch to a system like FATE where the mechanics are more closely tied to the narrative is to force the party to care more.
I really hope this works out for you. Unfortunately it's been my experience that you really can't force players to care more about NPCs or the world or the story. What you can do is give them more room to care, and I think that ideally FATE does this: Since more of the story-stuff ends up getting on the character sheets, where the players not only have to but hopefully want to pay attention to it (they want FATE points, yes?), it becomes less of a chore to remember such stuff. Hopefully this leads to the players finding that they enjoy this style of game.

Niek
2011-09-25, 08:35 PM
Yeah, and the sheer rate at which characters advance in power under D&D completely breaks my immersion, as I cant help but think of them as mary sues when they can achieve in a few months what 99.9999% of the world takes decades to do.

Darkone8752
2011-09-25, 08:39 PM
Might want to try and resolve why the group is trying to optimize so much. Did they try to do this before in GURPS? It sounds like this isn't an issue with making the game fit the campaign, but making your players fit the campaign. For whatever reason, they see "D&D" and think "We need to be optimized!"

On the topic of magic items: They're a part of the character like a warriors sword is, and a mages spells are. Worst comes to worst, use a leveling items system and make their equipment literally part of them. The Fighter has his ancestral sword, some cool armor, and a couple of 'trinkets' that fit him in some way. It's fairly easy to create/price up new magic items using Pathfinder rules, not sure about 3.5 as I haven't looked in a while - one of my recent characters, as part of his gear, had a ring that let him use Cure Light Wounds 3/day, rather than disposable wands or potions or whatnot.

Ninja Edit: Then slow it down. Less experience. Give them rewards in the form of LOOT loot - more disposable items, petty cash, and so on, rather than magic items, tons of gold, etc. Once again, cool trinkets are always interesting, and don't have to be potent or combat enhancing to be well liked and useful.

kaomera
2011-09-25, 08:44 PM
Yeah, and the sheer rate at which characters advance in power under D&D completely breaks my immersion, as I cant help but think of them as mary sues when they can achieve in a few months what 99.9999% of the world takes decades to do.
That's (potentially) one of the big secrets of D&D: the players really are Mary-Sues. The kind of wish fulfillment that you can get with D&D doesn't always come up the same way in other games, although it's almost always there in some way. This really ought to be / is supposed to be a significant strength of the system, and for a lot of players (probably most / nearly all) it is.

Niek
2011-09-25, 08:57 PM
I know, but it rubs me the wrong way. I take it as an insult to all of the other people in the setting who don't happen to be controlled by players, since it leads the players to considering them dumb and useless, and I find it removes any sense of meaning from the power gain when it comes so easily. Mastering a skill or spell should be an achievement, not something that can be taken care of with a few weeks of dungeon crawling.

kaomera
2011-09-25, 10:03 PM
I know, but it rubs me the wrong way. I take it as an insult to all of the other people in the setting who don't happen to be controlled by players, since it leads the players to considering them dumb and useless, and I find it removes any sense of meaning from the power gain when it comes so easily. Mastering a skill or spell should be an achievement, not something that can be taken care of with a few weeks of dungeon crawling.
Both of these issues work both ways. It's OK to insult, denigrate, injure, or even kill characters (both NPCs and PCs). It's not ok to do these things to the players or the DM (of course). If the players are really that dismissive of the NPCs then I think you have to ask them why you even need to be there. If you're just meant to push around monsters on the battlemat for them to kill (or the social equivalent when in town), then they'd be just as well served playing one of several board games that don't require a DM.

"Ease of leveling" is a more thorny issue. It's not just your perception that matters here - although conversely I don't think it's something the DM should be completely unconcerned with. But I really haven't seen many D&D games where the PCs reached their actual zenith of power in a few weeks... You could talk to the players about expected rate of advancement (or even just put your foot down as DM and make the decision yourself), and perhaps setting aside numerical XP in favor of leveling on some other kind of schedule could work.

IME most players don't really, in the end, want to get to the next level as much as they always want to be getting to the next level. There are cool experiences that they want their characters to have, often even if they don't have a good idea of exactly what those experiences will be. But the focus on boosting power levels over any other kind of change can be a bit tough to deal with. I think that in terms of real character growth a lot of players don't really know how to proceed, and there often isn't a lot of really juicy stuff built into most D&D characters anyway. But from the standpoint of having a real and lasting impact on the campaign world, I think it's often more of an issue that the players don't really know what's possible and would tend to equate it with power gain anyway. (Why figure out which rock to move that will bring the whole pile down if you can just go get a bulldozer?)

IME a big part of what makes this hard to deal with directly in D&D is a tendency to look at everything as a balance issue. It's hard to have a constructive conversation when you're talking about how you want the story to progress and the dramatic impact of the PCs' actions, and the players are arguing play-balance. Magic items is an obvious example of this. It's quite possible to run D&D so that you just don't need much if anything in the way of magic stuff, but players are more likely to argue from a standpoint that if you'd just not run it that way (they think) it wouldn't be an issue if they had all their normal toys... Personally I feel that magic items are much more fun when they're special and mean something, and I find that when each character has a list of them that gets completely undermined.

Knaight
2011-09-25, 10:44 PM
So the characters have a lot of stuff? So what? Say they each have ten magic items, as long as they don't have 10 rings of wishing, then they won't have stuff for every conceivable thing that might happen. Try not to think of magic items as 'external', but more 'internal' parts of a character.
D&D also is built for the gradual gain of power - or very rapid gain of power, magic items being a part of that. Which is as stated above, an issue.




Not true. You can make a character any way you want too. When you say 'cripples' your sounding like a min/maxing roll player. There is nothing wrong with playing an archer with a dex of 11 or a wizard that is bad at casting spells.
D&D is clearly built for targeting a specific concept, and gradual character improvement within that concept. Multiclassing doesn't interact well with the rest of the system unless careful - see the spell casting mechanics - and the whole monsters, CR, experience, WBL, and other subsystems also encourage mechanical character change that pretty much boils down to "more, better". For some stories, that simply doesn't work.



Any drama needs to have loss and/or failure, or it's pointless. If the good guys can just blink and save the day, why bother playing?

Other then death, you have three big failures to use in the game:

1.Loss of stuff. Simple enough, the magic sword breaks or the ring falls into a volcano or such.
2.Afflictions. Things such as curses and magical effects.
3.Drama stuff. Sure they can kill Mr Bad, but if he kills princess Joy first, then it's a failure.

Points 1 and 2 are basically character penalties, and the third is narrative stuff. FATE, the alternative presented to D&D, provides a very good way to interact with narrative stuff, and handles point 3 significantly better than D&D does, provided that mechanical interaction is desirable. It is also a generic system, which means it can handle far more than D&D can - D&D pretty much sucks at modeling science fiction for example, FATE can handle it. Historical fiction? Same deal. D&D is built for constant improvement, FATE for a back and forth around a point, where the characters may or may not improve over time.




This is a common problem with many players, and most feel the answer is to go 'low magic'. The idea is that a 'gritty, dirty setting is better. But I have a better way to go.....go high magic. This very nicely balances things out. The characters might have tons of magic stuff, but so does everyone else. Even just giving the world common access to low level magic is great.

Why not change the way raising the dead works? Sure the PH says 'snap your fingers' and your alive...but you can change that.

And Divine Politics....make them more active in the world. My gods are, and it works out great.
Yes, because clearly a high magic fantasy setting with active gods is the only setting worth playing. The setting already exists, D&D clearly doesn't fit it, and the options come down to changing the system or changing the setting. Why is changing the setting the better option here?

Cespenar
2011-09-26, 01:24 AM
Have you played enough of other systems to see what they do for comparison? There are things D&D doesn't do as well as other systems, at least not without enough tweaking for it to be unrecognizable. D&D can't imitate Fiasco, and won't imitate FATE well.

No, I haven't, and I never said it would do those things better than other systems anyway. I just said that it could also do things that are outside its original genre.

Knaight
2011-09-26, 01:34 AM
No, I haven't, and I never said it would do those things better than other systems anyway. I just said that it could also do things that are outside its original genre.

True, but not particularly well unless it is just barely outside. D&D is actually pretty limited as a system, all things considered.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 07:13 AM
Yes, because clearly a high magic fantasy setting with active gods is the only setting worth playing. The setting already exists, D&D clearly doesn't fit it, and the options come down to changing the system or changing the setting. Why is changing the setting the better option here?

The only reason is that it might be easier to sell to the players.

It's unfortunate, but it appears that in addition to the system/setting mismatch, we likely also have a difference in expectations between DM and players. If the players really do WANT to kill piles of stuff, level up, and ignore the narrative, then we have more difficulties than a single system switch can handle.

Personally, I address such situations by giving them more or less what they want through the conclusion of the arc, then suggesting trying a different sort of game for a bit. A piratical one. Everyone loves pirates. Then, I bust out 7th Sea, with one minor change(spending drama die gets you xp instead of saving them). Now, players are pretty blatantly rewarded for both paying attention to the story and doing narratively interesting things.

Nothing wrong with either hack and slash OR narrative games in my opinion...but I enjoy exposing people to a good mix of both.

Gullintanni
2011-09-26, 07:29 AM
Thematically, the game is supposed to be largely about internal strength and things not being what they seem. The former goal is impeded by the heavy gear-dependence imposed by the system, and the latter by how the system forces characters into fixed roles and cripples anyone who tries to change the trajectory of their character's development mid-game. The combat-oriented nature of the game also makes it very difficult to have the players suffer any direct failures that don't result in character deaths...

Within D&D however, if I take away the cleric or the wizard's magic they have little to no ability to achieve much anymore, since the system encourages hyper-specialization to such a degree.

These are the reasons I switched to E6 D&D. In E6, Magic Items are not the solution to every problem, and neither are reality breaking spells. You're much less gear dependent at level 6 as well.

Speaking to hyper-specialization, E6 character progression is by feats. As the E6 primer correctly points out, there are only a certain number of feats you'll ever be able to leverage in any given situation, so at some point, more feats stops meaning more power, and starts meaning power in a greater number of situations. The aforementioned cleric and wizard can branch out much more.

In addition, E6 is a lot more narrative focused. In E6, a CR 10 Pyrohydra is an exceptional challenge. Players will have to bring along potions for resistance to fire, and most likely, bring some of the local town militia to accomplish their goals. 12 Level 1 Fighters with Crossbows will still land a couple of hits every round and mitigate the Hydras rapid healing. You could also have them tossing vials of acid or fire at the parties direction. The result: A narrative where the Hydra is slain, but in the process kills many...not necessarily PCs. There's a sense of community involvement because even though the town guard isn't extremely effective, every point of damage counts when you're so outmatched by a monster of clearly legendary origin.

In this narrative, combat can still feel like a significant loss, if the story's told right, despite the party emerging ultimately victorious. The reason I suggest E6 is because it seems to be able to meet your requirements, while simultaneously satisfying your party's desire to continue in a 3.5 D&D environment.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 07:40 AM
These are the reasons I switched to E6 D&D. In E6, Magic Items are not the solution to every problem, and neither are reality breaking spells. You're much less gear dependent at level 6 as well.

Speaking to hyper-specialization, E6 character progression is by feats. As the E6 primer correctly points out, there are only a certain number of feats you'll ever be able to leverage in any given situation, so at some point, more feats stops meaning more power, and starts meaning power in a greater number of situations. The aforementioned cleric and wizard can branch out much more.

I actually disagree with that. I've played E6 a fair bit, and all it really does is changes the speed and type of progression. Anyone with a bit of optimizing sense can find more feats to make him awesome for long enough that it's irrelevant.

If you're a metamagic reducer kind of guy...you know how many possible feats you can pour into a single combo? How many CL boosters?

Also, the various toughnesses stack, and can be taken indefinitely, so that's a fairly trivial refutation.

Also, with decent op-fu and a coupla feats, a pyrohydra isn't a big deal. Last time I DMed E6, my players killed one of those in a single round.

Gullintanni
2011-09-26, 07:52 AM
I actually disagree with that. I've played E6 a fair bit, and all it really does is changes the speed and type of progression. Anyone with a bit of optimizing sense can find more feats to make him awesome for long enough that it's irrelevant.

If you're a metamagic reducer kind of guy...you know how many possible feats you can pour into a single combo? How many CL boosters?

Also, the various toughnesses stack, and can be taken indefinitely, so that's a fairly trivial refutation.

Also, with decent op-fu and a coupla feats, a pyrohydra isn't a big deal. Last time I DMed E6, my players killed one of those in a single round.

I suspect my E6 is a lot more limited than yours :smalltongue:

There aren't a lot of metamagic reducers available before level 6 in my games. Frankly, you'd be lucky to get one level of metamagic mitigation in one of my games. I also treat CL listed in the DMG as a hard limitation on what kinds of items can be created in the E6 environment...which puts a lot of the standard CL boosters out of reach. Beads of Karma for example are CL 9th, and therefore don't exist.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 08:39 AM
I suspect my E6 is a lot more limited than yours :smalltongue:

There aren't a lot of metamagic reducers available before level 6 in my games. Frankly, you'd be lucky to get one level of metamagic mitigation in one of my games. I also treat CL listed in the DMG as a hard limitation on what kinds of items can be created in the E6 environment...which puts a lot of the standard CL boosters out of reach. Beads of Karma for example are CL 9th, and therefore don't exist.

Why would it matter if they were available pre level six? They're almost all feats. So, at level six, you gleefully slap Arcane Thesis on something and start taking metamagic feats. Fireball can be pretty crazy in E6 with some metamagics. That's pretty strict RAW, too. You don't even need the other reducers unless you want flexibility.

And since it gives you a whopping +2 to CL of that spell, all you need is a reserve feat, and you've hit CL 9. This unlocks further CL boosters like Craft Magic Tattoo.

So, a maximized CL 10 fire/cold/etc ball pretty much tends to solve all sorts of problems. If not, quicken another one.

I'm ignoring all the RAW legal ways of getting spells >3rd level, but those are also quite potent.

On the melee front, there is essentially no end of feats that make you tougher or make you deal more damage. Some are less effective, yes. This just slows the rate of progression. It does not make you actually versatile. The same is true of the generally slower gold.

Gullintanni
2011-09-26, 09:03 AM
Why would it matter if they were available pre level six? They're almost all feats. So, at level six, you gleefully slap Arcane Thesis on something and start taking metamagic feats. Fireball can be pretty crazy in E6 with some metamagics. That's pretty strict RAW, too. You don't even need the other reducers unless you want flexibility.

And since it gives you a whopping +2 to CL of that spell, all you need is a reserve feat, and you've hit CL 9. This unlocks further CL boosters like Craft Magic Tattoo.

So, a maximized CL 10 fire/cold/etc ball pretty much tends to solve all sorts of problems. If not, quicken another one.

I'm ignoring all the RAW legal ways of getting spells >3rd level, but those are also quite potent.

On the melee front, there is essentially no end of feats that make you tougher or make you deal more damage. Some are less effective, yes. This just slows the rate of progression. It does not make you actually versatile. The same is true of the generally slower gold.

As I said, my game is a lot more limited than yours. Arcane Thesis and Easy Metamagic simply don't exist. Damage boosts tend to be situational (ie. the oft thwarted Uber-Charger). Stacking the various toughnesses is less than ideal for reasons that I think are obvious enough (and that you're probably well aware of yourself).

The idea is a martial class can build a tripper and a charger with the feats available so that they can be effective in scenarios where one or the other simply won't work.

E6 really only functions as advertised when you ban the things that prevent it from functioning as advertised. Metamagic reducers tend to increase the power of a given spell above what you'd expect of an average third level spell.

Assuming that there are RAW legal ways to cast spells above third level, in order for E6 to work as advertised, then spells above third level simply don't exist, assuming you're committed to keeping the game at the 6th level of play.

It's like...for vanilla D&D, assume there was a RAW legal way to cast level 10 spells pre-epic...level 10 spells simply don't exist. In theory you could research a new level 10 spell, but they simply don't exist. If you want E6 to function as advertised, then you've gotta assume that the same is true for spells of fourth level and up.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 12:29 PM
As I said, my game is a lot more limited than yours. Arcane Thesis and Easy Metamagic simply don't exist. Damage boosts tend to be situational (ie. the oft thwarted Uber-Charger). Stacking the various toughnesses is less than ideal for reasons that I think are obvious enough (and that you're probably well aware of yourself).

This is not a trait of E6, sir. In fact, quote from the author, in the rules for E6: "A diverse selection of feats should be made available in any E6 campaign"

Also, hp loss is a common source of death at low levels. While Toughness proper is a poor choice, it's a common prereq, and imp toughness/dwarf's toughness(for those with solid fort saves) ARE quite useful. I suppose giant's toughness or epic toughness are also technically available with sufficient cheese.


The idea is a martial class can build a tripper and a charger with the feats available so that they can be effective in scenarios where one or the other simply won't work.

So, a situation in which charging is impossible, but tripping is effective? This indicates you built your charger poorly. Otherwise, if you can't pull off the charge, it's probably because you can't get to them.

Edit: Note that there is essentially no limit to the number of feats that can improve a charger. Some of them might not be great...but enough situational boosts add up. Snap Kick? Hell yes. The ToB feat that gives extra damage in the first round of combat? Sure. Powerful charge? It's not great, but why not after we get the better ones?


E6 really only functions as advertised when you ban the things that prevent it from functioning as advertised. Metamagic reducers tend to increase the power of a given spell above what you'd expect of an average third level spell.

Oddly enough, it was created to have a slower power progression, not to enforce flexibility.


Assuming that there are RAW legal ways to cast spells above third level, in order for E6 to work as advertised, then spells above third level simply don't exist, assuming you're committed to keeping the game at the 6th level of play.

There are. Sanctum Spell will technically get you casting a 4th level spell without knowing one, for instance. This has a number of repercussions by itself, but crazier combos are available.

Note that E6 does not actually contain the restriction against 4th+ level spells existing in it's ruleset.


It's like...for vanilla D&D, assume there was a RAW legal way to cast level 10 spells pre-epic...level 10 spells simply don't exist. In theory you could research a new level 10 spell, but they simply don't exist. If you want E6 to function as advertised, then you've gotta assume that the same is true for spells of fourth level and up.

There is such a way. Ur Priest and say, legacy champion would do it. Having tenth level slots is still valuable even if you don't have tenth level spells known. Very valuable.

In short, this isn't "E6 promotes versatility", it's "Banning everything that hinders versatility promotes versatility".

Gullintanni
2011-09-26, 01:51 PM
This is not a trait of E6, sir. In fact, quote from the author, in the rules for E6: "A diverse selection of feats should be made available in any E6 campaign"

Also, hp loss is a common source of death at low levels. While Toughness proper is a poor choice, it's a common prereq, and imp toughness/dwarf's toughness(for those with solid fort saves) ARE quite useful. I suppose giant's toughness or epic toughness are also technically available with sufficient cheese.

Note that E6 does not actually contain the restriction against 4th+ level spells existing in it's ruleset.


You're putting a lot of words in my mouth. I didn't say that E6 explicitly said that there was a restriction against 4th level spells existing, nor did I say disallowing a wide variety of feats was a component of E6.

What I said, and what I'm STILL saying is that my E6 is more limited than yours. I dont like Metamagic reducers or sanctum spell shenanigans because they permit players access to abilities normally not available to sixth level characters, or rather abilities that are in my view above the intended power threshold of E6. I take the Cautious approach suggested by the author when dealing with PC spellcasters in my E6.

We obviously differ philosophically here. My goal was to let the OP know that with the correct limitations, you can, in E6, free 3.5 D&D from dependence on the magic item christmas tree, limit dependence on high magic and play a narrative focused gritty game. That's all.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 02:09 PM
And, in my experience, regardless of flavor, E6 is still pretty D&D like. Getting the magic weapon is still critical, even if it's a +1 instead of a +5. And the game's still mostly about going into dungeons to score some loot.

Arbane
2011-09-26, 02:10 PM
Annnnd...here we go again....

I just thought of something: You know the way 3.5 snobs feel about 4th ed? That's pretty much the way other RPGs' snobs see 3.5.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-26, 02:18 PM
Annnnd...here we go again....

I just thought of something: You know the way 3.5 snobs feel about 4th ed? That's pretty much the way other RPGs' snobs see 3.5.

I don't think it's really the point that 3.5 is bad as such. It is, however, bad at doing some things.

This is true of essentially any system. If it wasn't, we'd all play the one perfect system and merrily agree with each other all the time. I won't hold my breath for that, though.

Knaight
2011-09-26, 02:24 PM
Annnnd...here we go again....

I just thought of something: You know the way 3.5 snobs feel about 4th ed? That's pretty much the way other RPGs' snobs see 3.5.

Except not. The system matters, which is why we have such a plethora of them. D&D has its place, and its place is combat heavy, tactical gaming in a world with heroes who are far larger than life, in a high fantasy setting. Acknowledging that D&D 3.5 can't do absolutely everything and isn't the best game for everything ever is not snobbery. Its being realistic about the system, instead of fanatical.

For that matter, not liking D&D 3.5 isn't necessarily snobbery either. It won't be to everyone's taste. That isn't a bad thing, a variety of tastes is another one of those reasons we have a ridiculously high number of games.

bloodtide
2011-09-27, 09:54 PM
I don't see how I can do so. Magic items are something someone has, not something they are. Anyone else could pick up those items and get the same effect out of them, so what about them makes the PCs so special?

The special part comes from how you use the item, not just the fact that use the item. You can give any goblin a magic item, and they can use it just fine. But they won't use it in and special way. Anyone can swing a sword of flaming at a creature, but a clever PC can find lots of uses for a sword that can make fire on command.

Plus add in some unique items. They don't need to be artifacts, even a couple weak abilities can make an item special. For example, a ring of protection that can also detect poison.







When half of the party are hardcore min/maxers, it becomes an issue. In this particular case, one of them was all set to begin playing a half-fey sorceress who I thought had a rather interesting backstory, but then changed his mind as soon as he heard that another player was going to be a druid (he ended up playing a human cleric, begging me to allow him to apply the favored weapon bonus from his War domain to greatswords despite his deity's favored weapon being a lance).

A high magic world fixes all of this type of problem.






1. A couple of the players are already frustrated with me over the perceived "weakness" of their magic items compared to those of others (I gave each character a special magic item at the end of their first adventure). Taking them away altogether is unlikely to help me there, and besides I have given each of the items some degree of quest-relevance that would be wasted if I took them away.

Note that when you take stuff away, it need not be a magic item. Any item will do. Most PC's have exotic or hard to find items, that if lost can't be replaced.




2. D&D doesnt make it very easy to give a character any long-term afflictions that arent easily solvable via magic, especially since there is a cleric in the party.

Yes and no. By the book even a low level cleric can 'cure' a whole group in one second. But you don't have to go by that 100%. You can just say 'the curse is too powerful for lowly remove curse'. And there are things that are not so easy to get rid of, so use them.

Out side the box afflictions work great too. For example, an imp or pixie that follows a character and makes trouble. No cleric spell can cure that. Or a magic chain that is wrapped to a characters leg and makes noise.




3. One of my main sources of frustration is how preoccupation with the mechanics is keeping the players from so much as remembering the names of quest NPCs. Part of the reason I want to switch to a system like FATE where the mechanics are more closely tied to the narrative is to force the party to care more.

A simple thing to do is make the names easy. Don't have Olpermeltrion the Diviner, have Divinikus the Diviner.





But doing such would require dramatic changes to the setting to account for the effect such high magic access would have on society.

Not at all. You can make it any way you like.

Some examples:

--The high level magic is everywhere, but very few know how to use it. The idea would be something like there once was a great magical empire, and now no one knows quite how to work the stuff.

--Or maybe the mages/clerics keep the 'know how' secret.

--You could make 'high magic' illegal in many places. And that is why the players have not seen it yet. But have plenty 'underground' magic.

--Introduce 'high magic' say from friendly elves (or ilithids). Make it cheap..but maybe sinister.

Totally Guy
2011-09-28, 01:21 AM
A high magic world fixes all of this type of problem.

*facepalm*

I'm sure there's a good sound effect for this.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-28, 01:47 PM
*facepalm*

I'm sure there's a good sound effect for this.

While the exact quote looked like something more easily handled by a simple refluffing, his overall theme of higher magic fixing a lot of problems is not unreasonable.

D&D mostly expects a certain, fairly high, degree of magic, wealth, and specifically magic items. If you stray too far from that level, especially on the low side, a number of subtle problems crop up. So, sticking with D&D, but changing the setting to be more high magic is one possible solution.

Of course, it's not the only possible solution.

bloodtide
2011-09-28, 07:36 PM
*facepalm*

I'm sure there's a good sound effect for this.

I've always run a ultra high magic game and have never had a 'min/max problem'.

It's simple enough: in a 'normal' 8th level game the palace guards are '4th level human male warriors', but in my game they are 4th level Aasimar warlocks.

Totally Guy
2011-09-29, 01:04 AM
I don't think this is a setting issue. It looks like the issue is what is happening during play.

I just think that you've taken the conversation back to square 1.

Xefas
2011-09-29, 02:10 AM
I just think that you've taken the conversation back to square 1.

Which is appropriate, considering the answer was given by post #6. This guy is a redpill, I just know it. He just has to see the rabbit hole.


http://i.imgur.com/alGhn.png

Let me tell you why you're here, Niek. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire roleplaying life. Like there's something wrong with D&D, but you don't know what it is. But it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

Do you want to know what it is? You see it, every time you spend 2 hours rolling dice and moving around a grid without actually achieving anything; every time you realize that your favorite sessions are the ones that never interact with the system. Every time you plop down another $40 for a hardback book filled with rows of numbers describing slightly differing variations of stabbing someone, despite the fact that the cover says "Roleplaying Game".

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. The truth that you're playing a tactical skirmish based fighting game while drifting in roleplaying that never existed within the system itself. Like everyone else, you were brought into D&D as your first roleplaying game. Born into a prison that won't let you see things for what they are. A prison for your mind.

Unfortunately, no one can tell you what playing a true story game is like. You have to see it for yourself.

Seek the Wheel, Niek. Follow the white rabbit.

king.com
2011-09-29, 04:45 AM
SNIP

Seek the Wheel, Niek. Follow the white rabbit.

Thankyou so much sir.

Also, am I the only one that reads these threads to make me feel good about my players? Sure they're not amazing roleplayers and not the most strategic thinkers but they care about whats going on and that me makes me feel good.:smallsmile:

Niek
2011-09-29, 10:28 AM
So I talked to my players about the issue and yeah, we're not making any progress on it. The cleric's player builds his character concept and roleplaying out of the mechanics of D&D, and is adamant that the setting should be altered to fit them, whereas I see the mechanics solely as a tool with which to facilitate player interaction with the setting.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-29, 10:41 AM
So I talked to my players about the issue and yeah, we're not making any progress on it. The cleric's player builds his character concept and roleplaying out of the mechanics of D&D, and is adamant that the setting should be altered to fit them, whereas I see the mechanics solely as a tool with which to facilitate player interaction with the setting.

Well, it's a two way street, really. Setting affects mechanics to some degree, and mechanics will almost certainly affect setting. For instance, water shortages are not going to be a huge deal in any setting where clerics are common and can simply create water, and thus, you cannot build a plot based on that without being a bit ridiculous.

If they're not amenable to change, how do you feel about changing the setting to fit the system for the remainder of this campaign?

Niek
2011-09-29, 10:45 AM
My ultimate goal in running games is, given an existing story I have in mind, seeing how it turns out differently when the protagonist role is given to PCs rather than my own characters. Allowing the setting to change due to factors other than the players' own actions would interfere with that goal.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-29, 10:53 AM
My ultimate goal in running games is, given an existing story I have in mind, seeing how it turns out differently when the protagonist role is given to PCs rather than my own characters. Allowing the setting to change due to factors other than the players' own actions would interfere with that goal.

Well, if both of you chase different goals, neither of you will achieve yours. It's not terribly pleasant, but in this case, they appear to be fairly exclusive goals.

Knaight
2011-09-29, 12:20 PM
I've always run a ultra high magic game and have never had a 'min/max problem'.

It's simple enough: in a 'normal' 8th level game the palace guards are '4th level human male warriors', but in my game they are 4th level Aasimar warlocks.
One point of data is not enough to make sweeping conclusions. I could say that I've run low magic games and never had a min/max problem, and based on that, that the min/max problem clearly doesn't exist in low magic games. Or, I could acknowledge that it can exist anywhere, as has been demonstrated.


Which is appropriate, considering the answer was given by post #6. This guy is a redpill, I just know it. He just has to see the rabbit hole.


http://i.imgur.com/alGhn.png

...Every time you plop down another $40 for a hardback book filled with rows of numbers describing slightly differing variations of stabbing someone, despite the fact that the cover says "Roleplaying Game".
...
Seek the Wheel, Niek. Follow the white rabbit.
Burning Wheel Gold is some 600 pages of rules. It has three combat systems, and all of them, with the exception of Bloody Versus, are about 50 pages long. Fight! in particular is immensely complicated, and there are entire game systems with fewer mechanics than weapons and armor rules alone. Rows of numbers describing slightly different variations of stabbing someone are in effect. Now, lets talk about the rabbit hole:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/images/3109/79933-thumb100.png

So I talked to my players about the issue and yeah, we're not making any progress on it. The cleric's player builds his character concept and roleplaying out of the mechanics of D&D, and is adamant that the setting should be altered to fit them, whereas I see the mechanics solely as a tool with which to facilitate player interaction with the setting.
Its probably best to GM a short D&D campaign, then insist that new characters be made in FATE, for a FATE game.

Arbitrarious
2011-09-29, 12:48 PM
If you haven't, I'd give the BESM d20 a look. The system is a little shaky but it gives some class structure with a bit of free points to help flesh out a character the way you want. It can be broken, easily, but if you players all agree on the power level that shouldn't be a concern.

Niek
2011-09-29, 01:13 PM
One point of data is not enough to make sweeping conclusions. I could say that I've run low magic games and never had a min/max problem, and based on that, that the min/max problem clearly doesn't exist in low magic games. Or, I could acknowledge that it can exist anywhere, as has been demonstrated.


Burning Wheel Gold is some 600 pages of rules. It has three combat systems, and all of them, with the exception of Bloody Versus, are about 50 pages long. Fight! in particular is immensely complicated, and there are entire game systems with fewer mechanics than weapons and armor rules alone. Rows of numbers describing slightly different variations of stabbing someone are in effect. Now, lets talk about the rabbit hole:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/images/3109/79933-thumb100.png

Its probably best to GM a short D&D campaign, then insist that new characters be made in FATE, for a FATE game.

Burning Wheel sounds like the wrong system for our group then, since the reason we abandoned GURPS was its mechanical cumbersomeness slowing everything down.

I'm not sure what you mean by the second part of your post. Are you suggesting that I abridge my current game so that a FATE game can be started sooner?

Knaight
2011-09-29, 01:31 PM
I'm not sure what you mean by the second part of your post. Are you suggesting that I abridge my current game so that a FATE game can be started sooner?

You were trying to start a new game, correct? I'm suggesting you finish the current one, abridged or no, and see that characters are made in FATE so a FATE game can start. If there are already new D&D characters, a one shot or similar can deal with that problem. Then FATE.

kaomera
2011-09-29, 05:37 PM
So I talked to my players about the issue and yeah, we're not making any progress on it. The cleric's player builds his character concept and roleplaying out of the mechanics of D&D, and is adamant that the setting should be altered to fit them, whereas I see the mechanics solely as a tool with which to facilitate player interaction with the setting.
I've dealt with this myself - players want to be able to create whatever character they want. They have a tendency to feel that anything published ought to be fair game and that only "play balance" could possibly be a factor in limiting their choices. This plays into the high-magic idea that bloodtide mentioned: it avoids some problems by simply giving many players what they want.

Now, my own take on the idea was to try and let the players make their characters first, and then build a reasonable setting around those characters and the choices they where based on. While I find that altering an existing setting to accommodate otherwise inappropriate character concepts is quite a chore and prone to failing in any case, I'm pretty sure that I'm creative enough to come up with something that interests me that will wrap around most concepts (there are some things that just don't interest me). That way, hopefully, everyone gets what they want.

Unfortunately I never actually got to put this to the test. The group I wanted to try this with simply refused to create characters in advance (or at least to show them to me). They also skipped out on or refused to participate in character-creation and campaign-planning sessions, only wanting to show up when we where "really playing". Unfortunately, for all that, they all seemed to already have their next characters (or perhaps a few options in some cases) picked out beforehand and refused to be flexible about it...

I think part of it may be a trust issue. Players may feel that they can't trust the GM with that kind of info in advance (since you can stack things against them? Like you couldn't just do that anyway...), and at the same time they can feel like it's a sign of mistrust on the part of the GM... So then it becomes a circular argument of "I can't trust you with my character concept if you can't trust me to come up with one on my own..." (I also found a disappointing tendency to mistake or maybe to try and re-frame any question of a concept being appropriate to the setting as a balance issue.)

But I think that the way to make this work would simply be to hand out as little info as possible - just what you absolutely need to (write down the answers that you give to any questions that are asked) - before or during the first session, and then figure out everything else thereafter. You can tell the players that there may be special things about the setting that would normally be secret that their characters know, and then provide individualized campaign backgrounds... This would involve doing an awful lot of campaign planning work in a fairly short amount of time, but I think it would be more efficient than doing all that work for nothing.

The character-building mechanics of 3.5 are why a lot of players like that system. And if that's where they get a significant amount of their enjoyment of the game from, then asking them to put that aside (even if you aren't really, you're asking them to do things differently from what they currently enjoy) may cause problems. That applies both to asking them to build characters to the setting and to asking them to play a different game. Hopefully you can get them interested in trying something different for a change.

stainboy
2011-09-29, 09:35 PM
After a few sessions, it became apparent to me that D&D does not really fit the story and setting I have in mind at all. Magic and especially magic items are too high-power for the setting, combat is too all-or-nothing in its results, the class-based nature of the game discourages organic character growth in favor of planning a character's trajectory entirely ahead of time, and the system in general is too combat-centric for what I intend to do.

-Loot-driven progression
-Classes are straitjackets
-Overly focused on combat
-PCs can't lose a fight without dying

People have been talking about these same limitations since the eighties. If you can't sell your players on a Forge-approved "narrativist" game it's not hard to find a traditional skill-based game that addresses these problems. Check the Savage Worlds / Alternatives to D&D thread for options that might be more palatable to your players.

If you like FATE's core mechanic your players might also be more receptive to FUDGE than FATE.

Knaight
2011-09-29, 10:34 PM
If you like FATE's core mechanic your players might also be more receptive to FUDGE than FATE.

Fudge, not FUDGE. The acronym was dropped years ago. Also, it is very possible, as FATE is far more narrativist than Fudge has ever been - the introduction of aspects saw to that. I'd also argue the Fudge is a better game in general, though my signature has hints as to my reliability and lack of bias.

stainboy
2011-09-30, 07:37 PM
Don't know what Niek thinks of this option, but can you recommend a good resource for Fudge fantasy? I apparently don't know what the game is called, but I at least know it doesn't come with a pre-written skill list or magic system.

king.com
2011-09-30, 09:58 PM
My ultimate goal in running games is, given an existing story I have in mind, seeing how it turns out differently when the protagonist role is given to PCs rather than my own characters. Allowing the setting to change due to factors other than the players' own actions would interfere with that goal.

I follow that method except, major NPCS are doing just as much as players and they can alter the world too.

I really hope you get the situation resolved, sounds like your the kind of GM I would enjoy playing with.

Knaight
2011-10-01, 03:36 AM
Don't know what Niek thinks of this option, but can you recommend a good resource for Fudge fantasy? I apparently don't know what the game is called, but I at least know it doesn't come with a pre-written skill list or magic system.

The 10th Anniversary edition has a complete fantasy game built in. Deyrini Realms is a complete fantasy game built with Fudge that is significantly longer - I personally am not a fan, but it is well liked. Then there is Fudge Factor, the e-zine, which has plenty of stuff, the default Five Point Fudge skill page, which includes a fantasy list, so on and so forth. Plus, you can always build your own version, which is pretty easy if you have help from people who know what they are doing. And my PM box is open.