PDA

View Full Version : Gamer Humor RPG concepts that make no sense



supergoji18
2016-06-05, 11:59 PM
Partially inspired by the The Most Rediculous Rules in RPGs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490175-Most-Ridiculous-Rules-in-RPGS) thread, I began to think of some things that make no sense to me in RPGs no matter how much I think about them. These dont just apply to D&D or other tabletop games, they apply to almost any type of Sci-Fi or Fantasy RPG out there. They are common tropes, themes, or mechanics that boggle the mind as to why they were not only implemented, but also popularized.

So far, I have a small list of 3 such concepts that make no sense to me:

1. Scaling Difficulty. As you get stronger or better at what you do, so too does everything else in the world get harder to defeat or accomplish. While this is more of a problem in video games due to a number of different factors, it can sometimes be seen in tabletop games such as D&D 4e. For some odd reason, leveling up only makes things harder for yourself. Suddenly, every enemy you encounter is tougher than they were before, every task you need to complete that should be child's play for you by this point is instead made frustratingly difficult for inexplicable reasons. It can occasionally be justified by saying that it only seems this way because the character is purposely seeking out greater challenges, but sometimes that just doesnt hold up. Let's take a look at a few examples:
- Skyrim. As you level up throughout the game, your enemies level up with you on top of you encountering higher ranking enemies more frequently (which also level up with you). You could go back to a nordic crypt you explored back at level 1 and find that you're actually having a HARDER time clearing it out now as a level 50 character, despite the fact that you are leagues stronger than you were at the start and you have much more experience clearing these places out. Eventually this problem becomes less of an issue because most creatures have a level cap of some sort, meaning they stop leveling up even as you keep increasing in level, but the one creature that doesnt becomes a pain in the butt to fight at higher levels because it has so much HP and it NEVER STOPS LEVELING WITH YOU! It's a bizarre case where becoming stronger somehow makes one worse in a fight. And that makes no sense to me.

2. Minotaurs are great at finding their way around mazes. At some point in the development of modern fantasy RPGs, some developers decided that because the Minotaur of greek mythology lived in a maze, they must be great at finding their way out of them right? These people clearly never read the original myth, because the whole point of the monster living in the maze was so that it couldn't find its way out! Daedalus built the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur and it worked! For a long time the minotaur was contained! The only reason it ever became a threat was because some butthole king who conquered people forced them to send their children into the labyrinth as a way to keep them in line. Never once did the minotaur, in all the years that these sacrifices were going on, set foot outside of the labyrinth. Somehow though, modern minotaurs are naturally good at mazes and recalling exactly the path they took to and from somewhere. Over the course of over 2000 years, the major weakness of the minotaur was somehow turned into a major strongpoint. How would you feel if, some 20 years down the line, the legends about werewolves and vampries changed so that they were best buddies that wear silver jewelry because the silver feels extra nice against their skin/fur? I'm sure lots of people would find this to be a strange deviation from the original legends.

3. High strength = hitting more often. Having trained in martial arts for over 12 years now, I can say with absolute certainty that a high muscle strength means jack squat when it comes to trying to land a punch. I don't care if you are so strong you can bench press a 10 ton bolder. If you don't have speed or hand-eye coordination, little old me will happily run circles around you laughing as all your punches end up being wasted effort. Honestly, Dexterity should be the ability that determines how often you hit, and strength should determine damage. Maybe i'm missing something about the way AC works in tabletop games, but i've always seen AC as how good someone is at evading damage (hence why the Dexterity modifier is added to AC and not Strength or Con).

That's all I care to post for now. I'd like to hear form some of you guys though. Have you ever felt that a certain common RPG trope makes no sense? If so, post it below and feel free to discuss it. I also welcome any attempt to rationalize the above three things I listed, or explain any fallacies in my logic. Have fun! :smallsmile:

JNAProductions
2016-06-06, 12:26 AM
To address point 1-a good DM will not have that happen, or rather, it'll happen because the PLAYERS make it happen. Any given goblin is a threat at level 1, but not at level 5. But at level 5, you aren't going after goblins-you're going after hobgoblins, who are much tougher.

Two and three, though. Sure, I'll give you them.

InvisibleBison
2016-06-06, 01:13 AM
3. High strength = hitting more often. Having trained in martial arts for over 12 years now, I can say with absolute certainty that a high muscle strength means jack squat when it comes to trying to land a punch. I don't care if you are so strong you can bench press a 10 ton bolder. If you don't have speed or hand-eye coordination, little old me will happily run circles around you laughing as all your punches end up being wasted effort. Honestly, Dexterity should be the ability that determines how often you hit, and strength should determine damage. Maybe i'm missing something about the way AC works in tabletop games, but i've always seen AC as how good someone is at evading damage (hence why the Dexterity modifier is added to AC and not Strength or Con).

At least in D&D, AC is part being able to dodge attacks and part being able to avoid taking damage when you are hit. That's why armor increases your AC - wearing full plate doesn't make you more nimble, it makes it more likely that you can get hit without getting hurt.

Mechalich
2016-06-06, 01:50 AM
Scaling difficulty is a funny thing that makes a certain degree of sense in sandbox-style games as a way of avoiding railroading - because if there's set difficulty then your open world turns into a functionally linear pathway until you reach so minimal level to wander around. Fallout New Vegas kind of has this problem, where you can't actually adventure in the northern half of the map for quite some time. This really shouldn't happen in tabletop, because a GM can dynamically re-scale areas to be appropriate and when the players go back to an area the GM can just make those areas easy and ignore standard combat encounters so that you don't pointlessly fight absurdly weak enemies (note that in Fallout 4, which can't do this all that well, you do get radiant quests to fight absurdly weak enemies late in the game).

Skyrim was particularly egregious with scaling difficulty because all your abilities were on the same scale in terms of enemy difficulty when many of them might have zero impact on combat. As a result time spent increasing secondary skills you weren't using, like learning magic when principally a beatstick, made you comparatively weaker against your enemies.

As for strength increasing to hit - D&D 'attacks' are an abstraction that are meant to represent any number of individual strikes. A 'hit' isn't an attack that makes contact with the enemy, but one that actually penetrates to cause damage. D&D presumes that combatants are armored and that most 'misses' actually strike the target but simply clang off/fail-to-breech in a non-damaging way. Simply trying to make contact with your opponent is a touch attack.

GorinichSerpant
2016-06-06, 02:07 AM
The thing about minotaurs is that in the original myth, there are no minotaurs there is a single Minotaur. Originally it was a monster that was born one time in a single time and place. Minotaur (and many other greek monsters) don't make sense if we approach them from the view of their original myths. As different counterpoint many people overcompensate in certain skills they start off lacking. For example, do to having difficulty learning to read, when I finally acquired the skill I started to read a lot. I don't know if this can be applied to species however, and it seems the standard fantasy minotaur's natural home is ironically the labyrinth.

RyumaruMG
2016-06-06, 02:26 AM
Assuming I'm remembering the hazy memories of nearly ten years ago properly, I recall reading the stat block for the minotaur in 2nd Edition AD&D mentioning an immunity to the maze spell. At first I was like "huh," but then realized it was that way for a specific reason: to mess with players when they try to be smartasses.

It occurs to me that a lot of monsters in D&D as a whole have had features like that at some point or another. Just as a way for DMs to deal with players getting too big for their boots.

supergoji18
2016-06-06, 08:58 AM
Assuming I'm remembering the hazy memories of nearly ten years ago properly, I recall reading the stat block for the minotaur in 2nd Edition AD&D mentioning an immunity to the maze spell. At first I was like "huh," but then realized it was that way for a specific reason: to mess with players when they try to be smartasses.

It occurs to me that a lot of monsters in D&D as a whole have had features like that at some point or another. Just as a way for DMs to deal with players getting too big for their boots.

Gygax, giving players the finger for metagaming since 1974.

Yes scaling difficulty is not likely to happen in tabletop, which in my opinion is one of the major advantages of it. But the concept itself I find to be silly because as you improve yourself you only succeed in making things harder for yourself. Honestly, all it would take to rectify this problem is a simple justification of why this is and it would be easy to accept.


The thing about minotaurs is that in the original myth, there are no minotaurs there is a single Minotaur. Originally it was a monster that was born one time in a single time and place. Minotaur (and many other greek monsters) don't make sense if we approach them from the view of their original myths. As different counterpoint many people overcompensate in certain skills they start off lacking. For example, do to having difficulty learning to read, when I finally acquired the skill I started to read a lot. I don't know if this can be applied to species however, and it seems the standard fantasy minotaur's natural home is ironically the labyrinth.
Unless those minotaurs are teaching their children how to solve mazes like a pro, it wouldn't apply to the species as a whole.

And I had a feeling that would be the case for the third one, i just never really thought of it that way

CharonsHelper
2016-06-06, 09:10 AM
3. High strength = hitting more often. Having trained in martial arts for over 12 years now, I can say with absolute certainty that a high muscle strength means jack squat when it comes to trying to land a punch. I don't care if you are so strong you can bench press a 10 ton bolder. If you don't have speed or hand-eye coordination, little old me will happily run circles around you laughing as all your punches end up being wasted effort. Honestly, Dexterity should be the ability that determines how often you hit, and strength should determine damage. Maybe i'm missing something about the way AC works in tabletop games, but i've always seen AC as how good someone is at evading damage (hence why the Dexterity modifier is added to AC and not Strength or Con).

In addition to what InvisibleBison said above, I think that you're mixing up Dex & BAB. In D&D Dexterity isn't the main large scale hand-eye coordination stat: BAB is. Dex is only for fine motor control & Agility.

As a martial artist myself, I think that you're also DRASTICALLY overestimating how easy it is to dodge a punch. You need to mix in blocks/parries, and if their blows are stronger, it's harder to block/parry the blow. There's a reason that boxing & MMA both have weight classes.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-06, 09:33 AM
Assuming I'm remembering the hazy memories of nearly ten years ago properly, I recall reading the stat block for the minotaur in 2nd Edition AD&D mentioning an immunity to the maze spell. At first I was like "huh," but then realized it was that way for a specific reason: to mess with players when they try to be smartasses.

It occurs to me that a lot of monsters in D&D as a whole have had features like that at some point or another. Just as a way for DMs to deal with players getting too big for their boots.

More like being *that* DM/GM.

Players like to listen at doors before opening them? There's a terrible brain parasite that lives in dungeon doors!

Players like to bulk up in as much metal armor as they can justify? Create a monster that causes metal to rust at a touch!

Etc.

There are many places in the Gygax-era D&D where I think his favorite word was "Gotcha!"

Khedrac
2016-06-06, 09:40 AM
Tbh, the main cross-genre RPG concept that makes no sense is "the adventurer".

The life expectancy of people who actively go out looking for trouble, particularly the sort of trouble that the military cannot deal with, is tiny, yet such people are the basis of most games, whether fantasy or sci-fi or something else.

Now some GMs run the games in a way that make more sense, and a few games (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) are more based on the premise that the characters are (or were) normal people who find themselves in nasty circumstances, but for most games the characters have to be mad to make their career choice.

Flickerdart
2016-06-06, 09:51 AM
The life expectancy of people who actively go out looking for trouble, particularly the sort of trouble that the military cannot deal with, is tiny, yet such people are the basis of most games, whether fantasy or sci-fi or something else.
The PCs are adventurers, but they are also protagonists. In my experience there are relatively few non protagonist adventurers in RPGs. It's mostly video games that put on the whole "Adventurers Guild" nonsense.

Millstone85
2016-06-06, 10:23 AM
2. Minotaurs are great at finding their way around mazes. At some point in the development of modern fantasy RPGs, some developers decided that because the Minotaur of greek mythology lived in a maze, they must be great at finding their way out of them right? These people clearly never read the original myth, because the whole point of the monster living in the maze was so that it couldn't find its way out! Daedalus built the labyrinth to contain the Minotaur and it worked! For a long time the minotaur was contained!How about snake-haired women being vulnerable to their own petrifying gaze as reflected by a mirror? Perseus' great feat was beheading Medusa while looking at her through a mirrored shield, meaning it was a plot point that her reflection did not share her power.

PersonMan
2016-06-06, 11:38 AM
Tbh, the main cross-genre RPG concept that makes no sense is "the adventurer".

The life expectancy of people who actively go out looking for trouble, particularly the sort of trouble that the military cannot deal with, is tiny, yet such people are the basis of most games, whether fantasy or sci-fi or something else.

There were plenty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador) of people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary#Medieval_warfare) who sought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order) out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonian_Brothers_of_the_Sword) situations that led them outside the world of safety and security far from the fronts (of war, expansion, etc.) - I don't see why you wouldn't have them in a fantasy world. Maybe instead of crusading armies looking to conquer and convert, or raiders out to pillage, more of these people hope to follow the footsteps of the legendary few who do survive a life of constant violence, fighting monsters and finding treasures to become unimaginably wealthy and powerful.

Sure, most of them would die horribly, or stick to the 'small game', leading mercenaries in rooting out nests of owlbears or tracking goblin burglars, but their lives aren't (generally) what stories are told about. If I run a fantasy game about heroes who go out into the world seeking glory and find it, becoming legends, I'd rather do that right away rather than spend 90% of the game going through the stories of those who tried but failed to do that.

Khedrac
2016-06-06, 11:43 AM
The PCs are adventurers, but they are also protagonists. In my experience there are relatively few non protagonist adventurers in RPGs. It's mostly video games that put on the whole "Adventurers Guild" nonsense.Oh I totally agree, and when you look at fantasy fiction it tends to split between characters with interesting events thrust upon them (Tolkein's hobbits) and genuine adventurers who look for excitement and danger (Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser).
If one removed all the "adventurer"-type characters fiction would be a lot more boring to read, and we probably would not have this hobby.

All that said, I still think the concept of adventurers does not make sense. It goes back to a comment about Basic D&D attitudes and potions:
"If I handed you a bottle of an unknown liquid and said that drinking it might make you stronger, but it also might kill you, would you drink it?"
Very few sane people in the real world would take the risk. In B/Ex D&D the main method to identify potions was to sip it (which was enough for a fatal dose of most poisons).
Other posters have commented on the lethality of new-character play (I don't say low level as it also applies to RuneQuest etc.) even with experienced players. With a high chance of being dead I'll take the boring job and read about the adventurers (or play Papers'n'Paychecks).

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-06, 11:58 AM
There were plenty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquistador) of people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary#Medieval_warfare) who sought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order) out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonian_Brothers_of_the_Sword) situations that led them outside the world of safety and security far from the fronts (of war, expansion, etc.) - I don't see why you wouldn't have them in a fantasy world. Maybe instead of crusading armies looking to conquer and convert, or raiders out to pillage, more of these people hope to follow the footsteps of the legendary few who do survive a life of constant violence, fighting monsters and finding treasures to become unimaginably wealthy and powerful.

Sure, most of them would die horribly, or stick to the 'small game', leading mercenaries in rooting out nests of owlbears or tracking goblin burglars, but their lives aren't (generally) what stories are told about. If I run a fantasy game about heroes who go out into the world seeking glory and find it, becoming legends, I'd rather do that right away rather than spend 90% of the game going through the stories of those who tried but failed to do that.

"Adventurers":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morton_Stanley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ing%C3%B3lfur_Arnarson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Harrison_Fawcett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-06, 12:14 PM
How would you feel if, some 20 years down the line, the legends about werewolves and vampries changed so that they were best buddies that wear silver jewelry because the silver feels extra nice against their skin/fur? I'm sure lots of people would find this to be a strange deviation from the original legends.

The original myth of these beasties are so corrupted to begin with, why does it matter? The original vampires were closer to zombies anyway. Many werewolf tales don't actually have them transform, but think they can. Also, where exactly does it say they're hated enemies?

I am not of the camp that one cannot change mythological beasties because no one even remembers or cares about the originals so someone in the past already changed them. Just change them in a way that is internally consistent, isn't stupid, and adds to the game.

Let's take the example of the 4e Dryads, who became more like treant protector of the forests. This is a change I like, because the original dryads didn't really work in DnD as they were often far too human looking for being a tree-thingy, and it stops people from trying to sleep with them constantly. It suits the game, why do I care that they are no longer demigods who usually served the purpose of damsel in distress?

ComaVision
2016-06-06, 12:19 PM
1. Scaling Difficulty.
- Skyrim.

I made Oblivion virtually unplayable for myself by doing the Thieve's Guild/Assassin's guild as soon as I could. I'd run out of arrows before I could kill anything "my level".

Not much of an issue in TTRPGs though. If my players really want to muck about in Starting Forest Town they can keep fighting the giant spiders for silvers.

CharonsHelper
2016-06-06, 01:28 PM
I made Oblivion virtually unplayable for myself by doing the Thieve's Guild/Assassin's guild as soon as I could. I'd run out of arrows before I could kill anything "my level".

I remember doing that. The only way to kill stuff in Oblivion itself was to zoom in with my bow from extreme range so that they didn't react, and I'd go through dozens of arrows per foe. The only way to kill stuff indoors was to lure it outdoors & then run away.

As strange as it was, the only way to make a combat viable thief was to not make any of the thief skills class skills. (That way jacking them up wouldn't cause you to level.)

Xuc Xac
2016-06-06, 02:17 PM
"If I handed you a bottle of an unknown liquid and said that drinking it might make you stronger, but it also might kill you, would you drink it?"
Very few sane people in the real world would take the risk.

"Do you even lift, bro?" You think people wouldn't taste it? In the real world, macho idiots use needles to inject all kinds of questionable things into their bodies just to cause swelling and look stronger. If it actually made their muscles stronger and not just bigger, there would be even more.

kyoryu
2016-06-06, 02:22 PM
I made Oblivion virtually unplayable for myself by doing the Thieve's Guild/Assassin's guild as soon as I could. I'd run out of arrows before I could kill anything "my level".

Not much of an issue in TTRPGs though. If my players really want to muck about in Starting Forest Town they can keep fighting the giant spiders for silvers.

I totally screwed myself in Oblivion. Went into the picture thing, had non-combat primary skills, and ended up leveling up so the monsters were tougher than I was capable of defeating. And since I needed to defeat them to get out....

Yeah.

Flickerdart
2016-06-06, 02:27 PM
I totally screwed myself in Oblivion. Went into the picture thing, had non-combat primary skills, and ended up leveling up so the monsters were tougher than I was capable of defeating. And since I needed to defeat them to get out....

Yeah.

While you're posting on the forum, the draugr are training (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/9245-Skyrim-Tales) (mild language warning).

wumpus
2016-06-06, 02:48 PM
I remember doing that. The only way to kill stuff in Oblivion itself was to zoom in with my bow from extreme range so that they didn't react, and I'd go through dozens of arrows per foe. The only way to kill stuff indoors was to lure it outdoors & then run away.

As strange as it was, the only way to make a combat viable thief was to not make any of the thief skills class skills. (That way jacking them up wouldn't cause you to level.)

First, Oblivion's skill system was so broken this tends to happen to anyone who dares to level without obsessing over powergaming tricks (i.e. efficient leveling). From what I remember about my stealth/archer character, archery was primarily a means of delivering poisons over a distance (train alchemy over archery).

They kind of swung back too hard in Skyrim. Especially if you find the bound arrow tome, you can pretty much carve through anybody and still have time to level up crafting (and eventually make a bow even better than your bound bow, but that takes a ton of leveling).

But Oblivion's leveling and skill system really hurt an otherwise excellent game. Certainly stay away from the thing on consoles, and grab a mod that fixes it (or at least the "skill notebook" that tells you exactly what you need to work on without "cheating").

The Glyphstone
2016-06-06, 02:52 PM
"Do you even lift, bro?" You think people wouldn't taste it? In the real world, macho idiots use needles to inject all kinds of questionable things into their bodies just to cause swelling and look stronger. If it actually made their muscles stronger and not just bigger, there would be even more.

Not entirely the same, though - the posited scenario is a binary blind risk - you might get super strong, or you might die horribly. Things like steroids are known quantities, with a specific more or less guaranteed effect, and for users the similarly known side effects are an acceptable price to pay.

Your point is still valid, I'm sure plenty of foolhardy risk-takers exist. I'd just have used something like the Jack*** franchise rather than steroids as my example - the 'hold my beer and watch this' demographic.

razorback
2016-06-06, 02:55 PM
As a martial artist myself, I think that you're also DRASTICALLY overestimating how easy it is to dodge a punch. You need to mix in blocks/parries, and if their blows are stronger, it's harder to block/parry the blow. There's a reason that boxing & MMA both have weight classes.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Been training in martial arts for over 20 years and the guy I end up having to spar regularly lately (I'm 5'9' and just over 200 lbs and he is 6'4" and probably pushing 350, maybe 400, lbs), mostly because no one else wants to take the beating, makes me pay for moving in on him. He has at least 8 inches of arm reach and even more with his legs. While I'm faster, mores skilled and more agile than him, I don't have a combination of all three in excess to get in without blocking or parrying something, which most of the time I'm absorbing quite a bit of energy even with a good block. So, in essence, even though I didn't get hit I did take damage, in game terms.

ComaVision
2016-06-06, 03:07 PM
"Do you even lift, bro?" You think people wouldn't taste it? In the real world, macho idiots use needles to inject all kinds of questionable things into their bodies just to cause swelling and look stronger. If it actually made their muscles stronger and not just bigger, there would be even more.


Not entirely the same, though - the posited scenario is a binary blind risk - you might get super strong, or you might die horribly. Things like steroids are known quantities, with a specific more or less guaranteed effect, and for users the similarly known side effects are an acceptable price to pay.

Not to mention that steroids help hypertrophy and strength, which is why strongmen and powerlifters use it instead of just bodybuilders. I thought Xuc Xac may mean Synthol, an oil that gets injected for bodybuilders to appear bigger, but that's not causing swelling either. I'm unaware of anything that gets injected to cause swelling.

Mordar
2016-06-06, 03:11 PM
Not much of an issue in TTRPGs though. If my players really want to muck about in Starting Forest Town they can keep fighting the giant spiders for silvers.

Having recently finished the National Geographic issue on the management of Yellowstone and the ecosystem including the park...I am suddenly of the mind that a great world-buildy campaign could spawn from exactly this...PCs radically change the ecosystem of Starting Forest Town by cleansing the area of humanoid-threatening beasts...does this:


Lead to chain reaction causing proliferation of other flora/fauna that threaten humanoid-kind?
Create a very safe and "profitable" area for natural resource "exploitation" leading to Starting Forest Town becoming a major economic hub in the world?
Attract attention from potentates outside the expected area...be it spider gods or ancient druids...that come to reassert the "balance"?
Form the crux of a PC-kingdom building effort that walks them into the "Halls of Power" kind of story?


Could be kind of fun to play out...

- M

Dienekes
2016-06-06, 03:21 PM
On Strength and Dexterity.

You have to understand that D&D ability scores make no sense. The most obvious one is Wisdom, which is somehow a mixed bag of being religiously attuned, being good at your job, and having good eye-sight. But Strength and Dexterity are like that as well.

Strength, as D&D uses it, is how much force your muscles can exert, except when that's not at all what D&D means by Strength. Dexterity, as D&D uses it, is your fine finger manipulation, except of course, when it isn't.

For some games that use the D&D ability system, running fast was based off your Strength, because you need strong leg muscles to do that. Others have it based off of Dexterity, because they think being agile is inherently dexterous.

As to throwing punches and waving swords. If you take Dexterity to be your agility, your hand-eye coordination, and your speed, then yes it is pretty important to attacking.

If you say that the goal of all punches and attacks are to move your arm from point A to point B, and the more force you can exert on your arm the faster it will go, then Strength is your stat.

Both of these are ridiculously dumbed down versions of all the bodily mechanics necessary to move your arm. Though, I would say, the entire system places much, much too high a priority on your ability scores. Give the world's strongest man an appropriately sized sword and have him face against a moderately strong man who knows what they're doing, I'll put my money on the guy with actual skill. Give the world's most nimble acrobat a dagger and have him face against a moderately nimble man who's been training for 5 years with a dagger, and I'll put my money on the one who has been training.

I think the same can be said for most skills and abilities in the game.

SimonMoon6
2016-06-06, 03:27 PM
The PCs are adventurers, but they are also protagonists. In my experience there are relatively few non protagonist adventurers in RPGs. It's mostly video games that put on the whole "Adventurers Guild" nonsense.

Well, 3.x has the suggested concept of there being high level spellcasters in every city. And since the only way to get experience is to be an adventurer, that suggests that cities are full of adventurers.

And even 1e/2e seemed to support the idea of adventurers as being fairly common when it would suit the plot. You could go to any tavern and find an "adventurers wanted" job posting... which would be very weird if adventurers were rare. It would be like having job postings for "cowboy astronauts" all over the place.

But to me, nothing is stranger than the concept of a mimic. Here is a creature that waits alone in a dungeon all by itself. It takes a form that will only fool sentient beings, adventurers in particular. However, the concept of a dungeon is usually such that the dungeon has been unvisited by any humans for hundreds of years. So, its entire life cycle is devoted to encountering humans in a location where humans are virtually never found. And it just sits there in the form of a treasure chest waiting... waiting... waiting...

It *could* change into a form that would fool the actual inhabitants of a dungeon (your basic rats and spiders and what have you), but no. A treasure chest is the only shape it needs.

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

Khedrac
2016-06-06, 03:57 PM
But to me, nothing is stranger than the concept of a mimic. Here is a creature that waits alone in a dungeon all by itself. It takes a form that will only fool sentient beings, adventurers in particular. However, the concept of a dungeon is usually such that the dungeon has been unvisited by any humans for hundreds of years. So, its entire life cycle is devoted to encountering humans in a location where humans are virtually never found. And it just sits there in the form of a treasure chest waiting... waiting... waiting...Nice one!

Another one for people is magic items in games without item creation rules (most of the items in early RuneQuest being a classic example). Where did all those items come from?
In fact, for AD&D, just why are there so many magic swords floating around? In this the fantasy fiction trope of special swords makes a lot more sene (if more complex gameplay).

Cluedrew
2016-06-06, 04:14 PM
Dungeons: No really, dungeons. Your averaged dungeon manages to maintain a stable population of monsters, most carnivorous and highly violent, sentient and primitive beings who live without contact to the outside world. They do this in an environment of filled with lethal and inactivated traps. This population can remain undisturbed for hundreds of years, unbroken by attempts from the outside world. They also do this without sunlight, fresh air or water. Then about 4-6 people wander through, all they way to the bottom.

Note: Some dungeons do make sense, and even those that don't rarely check all of these boxes. They can be done right (in terms of narrative consistency) but most of the time that is hand waved for gameplay. A reasonable trade off but one that means things really break down if you look too close.

Chauncymancer
2016-06-06, 04:44 PM
"It is said that in the Dawn Time, Our Father, the First Minotaur, escaped after a century the prison of The Maze. When he conceived us, his children, he swore a great oath, that his spawn should never again be bedeviled as he was. And thus he gave to us our First Gift, to see ever the way Home."
-A Minotaur Creation Myth.

hamishspence
2016-06-06, 04:48 PM
The thing about minotaurs is that in the original myth, there are no minotaurs there is a single Minotaur. Originally it was a monster that was born one time in a single time and place. Minotaur (and many other greek monsters) don't make sense if we approach them from the view of their original myths.

I think the move to "minotaurs are good at solving mazes" might have been based on an assumption that the maze has only one entrance, which is a barred door. The Minotaur lives there - it's his home and he's lived there long enough to know every inch of it.


Then, when you have multiple Minotaurs - with "maze" being their signature environment - maybe we get to "Minotaur architecture is always mazelike" - their lairs are traps created by them to punish anyone who goes in other than them.

InvisibleBison
2016-06-06, 04:57 PM
On Strength and Dexterity.
Though, I would say, the entire system places much, much too high a priority on your ability scores. Give the world's strongest man an appropriately sized sword and have him face against a moderately strong man who knows what they're doing, I'll put my money on the guy with actual skill. Give the world's most nimble acrobat a dagger and have him face against a moderately nimble man who's been training for 5 years with a dagger, and I'll put my money on the one who has been training.

I don't see how these scenarios put too much of a priority on ability scores. The first one is a normal guy - so probably a 1st level commoner - who happens to have 18 Strength against a 2nd or 3rd level Warrior with maybe 14 Strength. It's a pretty one-sided fight. The second scenario is similar, though the world's most nimble acrobat probably is an expert, not a commoner.


And since the only way to get experience is to be an adventurer

This is not actually true. Firstly, the rules for awarding XP only apply to PCs, so the DM can simply decide NPCs are whatever level he wants them to be. Secondly, even if you want NPCs to follow the same XP rules as PCs, the DM can simply give NPCs roleplaying XP. So it's entirely possible for an NPC blacksmith or weaver or whatever to earn experience by working their trade.

Milo v3
2016-06-06, 06:51 PM
How would you feel if, some 20 years down the line, the legends about werewolves and vampries changed so that they were best buddies that wear silver jewelry because the silver feels extra nice against their skin/fur? I'm sure lots of people would find this to be a strange deviation from the original legends.
I find this funny, since silver wasn't a problem for werewolves or vampires in the original legends.

Dire Roc
2016-06-06, 07:43 PM
Another one for people is magic items in games without item creation rules (most of the items in early RuneQuest being a classic example). Where did all those items come from?
In fact, for AD&D, just why are there so many magic swords floating around? In this the fantasy fiction trope of special swords makes a lot more sene (if more complex gameplay).

For the setting I'm working on for my next campaign I plan on justifying this with dungeons being created by the gods to challenge mortals, with magic items and rare materials (like mithril and rare reagents) being the rewards. A number of the settings' problems will come from the fact that said deities aren't very good at balancing the dungeons and monsters, meaning mortals were on their collective back foot for most of history.

goto124
2016-06-06, 09:08 PM
spend 90% of the game going through the stories of those who tried but failed to do that.

There's a DnD game for that, I think...


For the setting I'm working on for my next campaign I plan on justifying this with dungeons being created by the gods to challenge mortals, with magic items and rare materials (like mithril and rare reagents) being the rewards. A number of the settings' problems will come from the fact that said deities aren't very good at balancing the dungeons and monsters, meaning mortals were on their collective back foot for most of history.

The gods are GMs and the mortals are PCs... now more literally!

Cluedrew
2016-06-06, 09:19 PM
To Dire Roc: Did the gods make dungeons as a challenge as well? Because that would explain so much (including mimics).

Arbane
2016-06-07, 01:14 AM
Nobody mentioned D&D style hit points yet?

D&D style escalating hit points. They can ALMOST be rationalized as luck and defensive effort....until the fighter falls in lava and swims to shore. When you have 10th level characters who shrug off battleaxe blows and 1st level characters who fear housecats, something has gone a bit awry.
(I'm actually OK with the notion of HP as Ablative Plot Armor... until the spellcasters cut right through said Plot Armor with a save-or-cry spell.)

goto124
2016-06-07, 01:34 AM
(I'm actually OK with the notion of HP as Ablative Plot Armor... until the spellcasters cut right through said Plot Armor with a save-or-cry spell.)

That's the point of Save-Or-Cry spells! They're anti-plot-armor!

hamishspence
2016-06-07, 06:28 AM
I find this funny, since silver wasn't a problem for werewolves or vampires in the original legends.

And the Bowie Knife that killed Dracula wasn't silver either, as I recall.

That said - apparently shapeshifters in general were vulnerable to silver in some English folklore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf

English Folk-lore, prior to 1865, showed shape shifters to be vulnerable to silver. "...till the publican shot a silver button over their heads when they were instantly transformed into two ill-favoured old ladies..."[39]

snowblizz
2016-06-07, 07:03 AM
Very few sane people in the real world would take the risk. In B/Ex D&D the main method to identify potions was to sip it (which was enough for a fatal dose of most poisons).
Other posters have commented on the lethality of new-character play (I don't say low level as it also applies to RuneQuest etc.) even with experienced players. With a high chance of being dead I'll take the boring job and read about the adventurers (or play Papers'n'Paychecks).
In high-school the chemistry teacher didn't have trouble of finding 1 (one) person willing to test if the white stuff was in fact salmiak (ammoniumchloride) and not just ammonia and hydrocloric acid.

Same guy would have to be told, repeatedly, to put on safety-goggles for experiments.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-07, 08:46 AM
Nobody mentioned D&D style hit points yet?

D&D style escalating hit points. They can ALMOST be rationalized as luck and defensive effort....until the fighter falls in lava and swims to shore. When you have 10th level characters who shrug off battleaxe blows and 1st level characters who fear housecats, something has gone a bit awry.
(I'm actually OK with the notion of HP as Ablative Plot Armor... until the spellcasters cut right through said Plot Armor with a save-or-cry spell.)

I kinda lump that in with classic level-and-class, which now that you mention it, isn't entirely accurate.

But you're right, wondrously escalating HP is absolutely ridiculous.

SimonMoon6
2016-06-08, 10:37 AM
For me, the weirdest thing about D&D hit points (which even in first edition was explained away as something like luck or skill that gets used up in a fight) is the way it interacts with healing spells. When you take "damage" that isn't damage and that "not-damage damage" can be healed by a spell for healing light wounds... what is going on?

"Help, cleric, I've been badly injured!"

"You don't look injured. You have a few minor cuts and scrapes. That's all."

"No, you don't understand. I've lost... um... luck. And skill. And, oh, yeah, energy, I'm really tired."

"I can only heal injuries! I don't have a spell for any of that! "

"Sure you do, sure you do. Just trust me. Try casting that Cure Light Wounds spell on me!"

"Why bother? It's not called Cure Light Luck, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, do it anyway!"

(casts spell)

(it works)

CharonsHelper
2016-06-08, 12:07 PM
For me, the weirdest thing about D&D hit points (which even in first edition was explained away as something like luck or skill that gets used up in a fight) is the way it interacts with healing spells. When you take "damage" that isn't damage and that "not-damage damage" can be healed by a spell for healing light wounds... what is going on?

"Help, cleric, I've been badly injured!"

"You don't look injured. You have a few minor cuts and scrapes. That's all."

"No, you don't understand. I've lost... um... luck. And skill. And, oh, yeah, energy, I'm really tired."

"I can only heal injuries! I don't have a spell for any of that! "

"Sure you do, sure you do. Just trust me. Try casting that Cure Light Wounds spell on me!"

"Why bother? It's not called Cure Light Luck, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, do it anyway!"

(casts spell)

(it works)

That was actually one thing that I liked about 4e. Healing was % based.

Douche
2016-06-08, 03:44 PM
1. Scaling Difficulty.

Most RPGs don't have scaling difficulty though. Skyrim is a terrible example because Bethesda progressively dumbs down each game they make, to the point where Fallout 4 is a trash-sifting simulator. Furthermore, the game actually gets easier as you progress in levels, because you are unlocking more skills and becoming stupidly OP while the strength of the enemies stays relatively the same, despite them going up in levels. If you fight a dragon priest at level 10, only having a longsword, it's going to be a lot harder than when you're level 70 and have a soul-stealing greataxe of undead bane, and a host of buff spells (as well as 3000 potions stocked up) to go with it.

Anyway, I can think of way more RPGs without scaling (in the strictest sense). World of Warcraft, the enemies are fixed levels (any MMO, really - with the notable exception being Guild Wars 2 which has reverse scaling, to keep lower level areas challenging. The Witcher. Final Fantasy. Diablo. Dark Souls. None of those have any sort of scaling.


Unless, you mean scaling in the sense that you're always fighting rats in the first quest, and demon lords by the end of the game, in a linear sense. Then yeah, you have a point... But there are lots of open world RPGs (that aren't worst-example Skyrim) where you can stumble into the wrong dungeon and get your butt kicked. In that situation, you're just too powerful to waste your time going to exterminate rats when you should be saving the world or whatever. But you did remind me of one special case... In this game I used to play a while ago, "Avernum", you can walk into random encounters and the enemies will realize you're way too powerful and will destroy them. You have the option to let them flee in terror, skipping the encounter altogether, or you can engage in the fight anyway if you want.

I also feel like RPG scaling isn't as big as it seems numerically. In other words, Crono (from Crono Trigger) at level 99 might be able to destroy 900 level 1 Cronos in a single attack, but that's just mechanics. In "reality" level 99 might only be 10 times stronger than level 1, or something like that.

veti
2016-06-08, 06:02 PM
I find this funny, since silver wasn't a problem for werewolves or vampires in the original legends.

The "original legends" were a bunch of stories told by grannies to keep their kids in bed, or at a slightly higher level, by storytellers (bards) to explain why theirs was the Good side and the enemy was Evil. It wasn't until the invention of mass media, in the 19th century, that anything like 'standard' versions came into existence.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-08, 07:05 PM
The "original legends" were a bunch of stories told by grannies to keep their kids in bed, or at a slightly higher level, by storytellers (bards) to explain why theirs was the Good side and the enemy was Evil. It wasn't until the invention of mass media, in the 19th century, that anything like 'standard' versions came into existence.

It makes even less sense when you realize that some vampires are based on the odd quirks of a dead body...Which somehow became a symbol for the dangers of naughty fun time?

CharonsHelper
2016-06-08, 07:21 PM
The "original legends" were a bunch of stories told by grannies to keep their kids in bed, or at a slightly higher level, by storytellers (bards) to explain why theirs was the Good side and the enemy was Evil. It wasn't until the invention of mass media, in the 19th century, that anything like 'standard' versions came into existence.

Yeah - Grimm is probably the first standardization of more than a couple of stories.

Though I thought that the silver/werewolf thing has been around since at least the mid-late 18th century with The Beast of Gévaudan.

Silver was also at times associated with killing witches. I think all of them have to do with silver traditionally being symbolic of purity etc.

hamishspence
2016-06-08, 10:11 PM
Though I thought that the silver/werewolf thing has been around since at least the mid-late 18th century with The Beast of Gévaudan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf

The claim that the Beast of Gévaudan, an 18th-century wolf or wolf-like creature, was shot by a silver bullet appears to have been introduced by novelists retelling the story from 1935 onwards and not in earlier versions.[38]

CharonsHelper
2016-06-08, 10:43 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf

The claim that the Beast of Gévaudan, an 18th-century wolf or wolf-like creature, was shot by a silver bullet appears to have been introduced by novelists retelling the story from 1935 onwards and not in earlier versions.[38]

Fair enough. I knew when that story originated, and I knew that it had a silver bullet. I just didn't know that it had been rewritten to have the silver bullet. >.<

MesiDoomstalker
2016-06-09, 01:24 AM
Experience points, how they are earned, and how they are spent/leveling up

Mainly, its weird that killing rats can make you better at sewing a dress. Pretty much any system or game that has experience grants it for a variety of different ways that can be applied to a series of completely unrelated attributes. For example, Fantasy Flight Games set of Star Wars RPG's grant exp at the end of the session. Somewhere between 5 and 15, depending on the GM. This EXP can be spent on any of the following;


Ranking up skills, which include as many diverse things as shooting blasters, piloting vehicles, general education and athletics
Gaining a Talent, equivalent of class features that each are a wide variety depending on your specialization(s)
Taking on a new Specialization, which is equivalent of gaining a new class
Gaining or upgrading Force Powers (assuming one is part of a Force-Sensitive Specialization)


Now, the GM awards EXP to everyone more or less equally. Some PC's may get a bonus EXP around 2-3 in a session if they did something particularly noteworthy. But the bulk of EXP awarded to PC's is rewarded for the same reasons. "You guys get 5 EXP for convincing the King to join the Resistance and another 5 EXP for foiling the assassination plot." It would make sense that the Diplomat used that 5 EXP to up his Charm skill, but not for the Tech to up his Computer skill for the Diplomat's skillful wordsmithing.


That being said, I realize its a matter of balance and fun for all. If only the people who actively helped or was the major contributor to the group success got EXP, then PC's would advance in odd jumps and spurts and rarely would be in the same league as each other. It also makes PC's be competitive with each other to gain the limited EXP given out.

obryn
2016-06-09, 08:12 AM
But to me, nothing is stranger than the concept of a mimic. Here is a creature that waits alone in a dungeon all by itself. It takes a form that will only fool sentient beings, adventurers in particular. However, the concept of a dungeon is usually such that the dungeon has been unvisited by any humans for hundreds of years. So, its entire life cycle is devoted to encountering humans in a location where humans are virtually never found. And it just sits there in the form of a treasure chest waiting... waiting... waiting...
AD&D is chock full of monsters that exist specifically to mess with adventurers.

Lurker Above - a fake ceiling, but it's really a monster.
Trapper - A fake floor, but it's really a monster.
Cloaker - It looks like a magic cloak, but it's really a monster.
Piercer - It looks like a stalactite, but it's really a monster.
Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing - It looks like a bunny rabbit sitting on a tree stump, but it's really a monster.
Gas Spore - It looks like a beholder, but it's really explosive floating fungus
Ear Worm - It's a worm that hides in doors, so when an adventurer listens to it, it eats their brain.
And of course the Gelatinous Cube, which is an invisibile monster adapted to 10' square graph paper.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-09, 08:21 AM
AD&D is chock full of monsters that exist specifically to mess with adventurers.

Lurker Above - a fake ceiling, but it's really a monster.
Trapper - A fake floor, but it's really a monster.
Cloaker - It looks like a magic cloak, but it's really a monster.
Piercer - It looks like a stalactite, but it's really a monster.
Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing - It looks like a bunny rabbit sitting on a tree stump, but it's really a monster.
Gas Spore - It looks like a beholder, but it's really explosive floating fungus
Ear Worm - It's a worm that hides in doors, so when an adventurer listens to it, it eats their brain.
And of course the Gelatinous Cube, which is an invisibile monster adapted to 10' square graph paper.


The Rust Monster, a monster that lives on eating metal by corroding it... or something... especially loves weapons and armor?

obryn
2016-06-09, 08:37 AM
The Rust Monster, a monster that lives on eating metal by corroding it... or something... especially loves weapons and armor?
Oh yeah, that one too, absolutely.

It pretty clearly shows the focus of AD&D, though, and all of these make sense in that context. While Dragon Magazine would have "The Ecology of..." articles, as far as the designers were concerned, it was all about making cool adventures and throwing weird challenges at players, ecology be damned.

LordFluffy
2016-06-09, 08:45 AM
And the Bowie Knife that killed Dracula wasn't silver either, as I recall.
Jonathan Harker cut his throat and the cowboy stabbed him in the heart.

But yeah, both were steel. It helped they did this in the daylight.

SimonMoon6
2016-06-09, 11:34 AM
AD&D is chock full of monsters that exist specifically to mess with adventurers.

Lurker Above - a fake ceiling, but it's really a monster.
Trapper - A fake floor, but it's really a monster.
Cloaker - It looks like a magic cloak, but it's really a monster.
Piercer - It looks like a stalactite, but it's really a monster.
Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing - It looks like a bunny rabbit sitting on a tree stump, but it's really a monster.
Gas Spore - It looks like a beholder, but it's really explosive floating fungus
Ear Worm - It's a worm that hides in doors, so when an adventurer listens to it, it eats their brain.
And of course the Gelatinous Cube, which is an invisibile monster adapted to 10' square graph paper.

But at least most of those are equally efficient at "tricking" whatever wanders by. The Trapper and Lurker Above (and don't forget the Stun Jelly... it's a fake wall, but it's really a monster) could capture any small creature that wanders by. Piercers could fall on anyone. But a mimic-- which has an average intelligence score-- is trying to trick sentient creatures in a dungeon environment where those typically aren't around.

The Ear Worm is closest to a "this will only affect adventurers and nobody else" kind of monster like the mimic... but the mimic is *intelligent*. It should know better than to sit there for hundreds of years as a chest.

ClintACK
2016-06-09, 12:30 PM
But at least most of those are equally efficient at "tricking" whatever wanders by. The Trapper and Lurker Above (and don't forget the Stun Jelly... it's a fake wall, but it's really a monster) could capture any small creature that wanders by. Piercers could fall on anyone. But a mimic-- which has an average intelligence score-- is trying to trick sentient creatures in a dungeon environment where those typically aren't around.

The Ear Worm is closest to a "this will only affect adventurers and nobody else" kind of monster like the mimic... but the mimic is *intelligent*. It should know better than to sit there for hundreds of years as a chest.

Who says it was sitting there for hundreds of years as a chest?

Who do you think reset all those traps you were working your way past? Or made sure the Lurker Above got fed and was ready for you? Or re-locked the secret door? Heck, who do you think planted the rumors that lured you to the dungeon in the first place?

The dungeon makes a whole lot more sense when you realize there's an insane but intelligent creature setting it all up for you, because it absolutely loves nothing more in all the world than to leap up and yell, "Surprise!" and then eat you.

Leith
2016-06-09, 01:19 PM
3.X and 4e D&D actually do suggest scaling challenges using not just the levels of monsters but the DCs of the obstacles. If your party does dungeon crawls they're not gonna encounter hard to penetrate doors until they hit higher levels cause it doesn't make sense for the DM to put them there if you, as a player cannot penetrate them.
I noticed this weirdness early in my DMing career but chose not to do anything about it until recently. The solution is to assume than any obstacle that can be overcome by a 20th level character can be overcome by a 1st level character. The difference is merely in the likely-hood of success and how long it takes.
A 20th level thief type can probably pick any lock with ease, instantly. While a 1st level thief can pick any lock, in theory, but may not succeed at harder ones. Or it may take him a really long time.
This works for monsters too. Low level characters can significantly increase their ability to fight baddies by hiring lackeys, buying equipment and so forth. Theoretically it should be possible for an army of peasant level soldiers and spellcasters to defeat an ancient dragon. Four of them, though, will die a horrible, horrible death. So as long a the players know what's up, they can choose not to try to kill an uber-powerful wizard without either practising a bit more or getting some backup.

How do you kill a werewolf? Any way you want, they're fictional. Why are minotaurs good at mazes? Because I felt like it, they don't really exist.

Ability scores are abstract. They really don't make any sense. Check out the old AD&D charts. That said, there are actually lots of games that use dex-type stats for hitting people and str-type for damage. Shadowrun 5e comes to mind, where building an archer or a swordsman is unnecessarily complex and even gunmen use strength to counter recoil.

Most of the things that don't make sense in RPG are either the same things that don't make sense in any fictional storytelling medium or they're the things that make the game fun and/or possible.

GorinichSerpant
2016-06-09, 01:20 PM
Who says it was sitting there for hundreds of years as a chest?

Who do you think reset all those traps you were working your way past? Or made sure the Lurker Above got fed and was ready for you? Or re-locked the secret door? Heck, who do you think planted the rumors that lured you to the dungeon in the first place?

The dungeon makes a whole lot more sense when you realize there's an insane but intelligent creature setting it all up for you, because it absolutely loves nothing more in all the world than to leap up and yell, "Surprise!" and then eat you.

Well, now I know exactly what dungeons and mimics are going to be for in my world from now on.

kyoryu
2016-06-09, 01:49 PM
The dungeon makes a whole lot more sense when you realize there's an insane but intelligent creature setting it all up for you, because it absolutely loves nothing more in all the world than to leap up and yell, "Surprise!" and then eat you.

I thought that was the GM.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-09, 02:18 PM
How do you kill a werewolf? Any way you want, they're fictional. Why are minotaurs good at mazes? Because I felt like it, they don't really exist.


And down that road lies terrible fiction and rotten RPG settings.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-09, 02:22 PM
And down that road lies terrible fiction and rotten RPG settings.

Or...Anything that isn't stagnant, outdated, or hard for modern audiences to grasp. Risk taking is a necessity to creating settings, else you're just rehashing things everyone has seen.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-09, 02:27 PM
Or...Anything that isn't stagnant, outdated, or hard for modern audiences to grasp. Risk taking is a necessity to creating settings, else you're just rehashing things everyone has seen.

Look again at what I was responding to -- it has nothing to do with taking risks vs being stagnant, or whatever.

To me, it read as no less than saying "Make up whatever you want, it's fiction, and in fiction anything goes, because it's not real and it doesn't matter -- no need for backstory, or worldbuilding, or consistency, or coherency."

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-09, 02:30 PM
I read that 'I felt like it' as more of a statement of wanting to try something new with the concept, not outright laziness. I mean, it's hard to explain the entire backstory in and out of character of a race during a session or even during a campaign.

Regitnui
2016-06-09, 02:49 PM
"It is said that in the Dawn Time, Our Father, the First Minotaur, escaped after a century the prison of The Maze. When he conceived us, his children, he swore a great oath, that his spawn should never again be bedeviled as he was. And thus he gave to us our First Gift, to see ever the way Home."
-A Minotaur Creation Myth.

I've got a Lawful Good minotaur running the local gladiatorial arenas. One is one on one, and anybody who cheats gets the sharp end of his sword. The Third and largest is a Colosseum-type arena that's used for big martial showcases. The second one is designed to test participant's ingenuity and resourcefulness as well as combat prowess; it's a changeable labyrinth! He designs and remembers every single maze he's built.

Oh, and I am so borrowing that little story for him.

Leith
2016-06-09, 02:51 PM
It's neither lazy, nor risky. The point I'm trying to make is that debating why fictional creatures in a fantasy setting aren't consistent with other fictional creatures of the same name from another fantasy setting is a waste of time. They are how they are because the people made them up needed them to be that way to tell the story they needed to tell. Which is why it is not nonsensical that minotaurs in D&D are awesome at mazes, just a bit weird.

Takewo
2016-06-09, 03:01 PM
I thought that was the GM.

Wait. Game masters are mimics!?

kyoryu
2016-06-09, 03:21 PM
Wait. Game masters are mimics!?

Oops. I wasn't supposed to let that out. I'll be over in the corner, looking like a chest.

Jay R
2016-06-09, 03:21 PM
Fair enough. I knew when that story originated, and I knew that it had a silver bullet. I just didn't know that it had been rewritten to have the silver bullet. >.<

It should be clear that werewolves, who pre-date bullets, must also pre-date silver bullets.

[Yes, slings existed, but their stones weren't called bullets, a word that only dates back to the 16trh century.]

CharonsHelper
2016-06-09, 03:24 PM
It should be clear that werewolves, who pre-date bullets, must also pre-date silver bullets.

Not necessarily silver bolts/arrows/blades though. (Though it does sound like silver vulnerability is a more recent addition.)

Knaight
2016-06-09, 03:36 PM
It should be clear that werewolves, who pre-date bullets, must also pre-date silver bullets.

[Yes, slings existed, but their stones weren't called bullets, a word that only dates back to the 16trh century.]

The word only dates back that far, but it is perfectly capable of describing things older than it - see also, the word "rock", which can be used to describe any number of things much older than the entire human species. It's a bit of an odd name for a sling glande, but there have been things slung that were pretty similar to minnie balls and the like, even if more oblong shapes were often preferred.

Delusion
2016-06-09, 05:06 PM
It should be clear that werewolves, who pre-date bullets, must also pre-date silver bullets.

[Yes, slings existed, but their stones weren't called bullets, a word that only dates back to the 16trh century.]

Well obviously. You have to have werewolves before you can figure out ways to kill the werewolves :smalltongue:

Themrys
2016-06-09, 05:15 PM
Silver kills bacteria. So, if we think of werewolves in terms of infection, that makes some sense.


An entire species of minotaurs makes no sense if you take into consideration the backstory. The original minotaur was the result of some king keeping a bull he should have sacrificed. For some reason I can't recall, the god he had pissed off was apparently owed a favour by the goddess of love, and she made the king's wife fall in love (lust) with the bull. The queen then forced the genius inventor dwelling at the court to build a mechanical cow suit for her so that she could have sex with the bull. And that's how the minotaur came into being.

There is only one minotaur, and the likelihood of this happening ever again is minimal. Sure, you could assume he raped some of the virgins he was supposed to eat, and then left them alive long enough to give birth, but even then the offspring would become gradually more human. (Granted, allegedly baby centaurs come into being by centaurs raping women or female horses, but ... oh, I give up. Greek Mythology doesn't make sense.)


I don't play D&D, but apparently DSA has this horrible, waterless desert ... that is so small that you can see the mountains surrounding it from every point in the desert, and it is virtually impossible to get lost in there.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-09, 05:25 PM
Silver kills bacteria. So, if we think of werewolves in terms of infection, that makes some sense.

Some, but then you have to remember these people thought that bad smells caused dieases, so I wouldn't give them that much credit.


The original minotaur was the result of some king keeping a bull he should have sacrificed. For some reason I can't recall, the god he had pissed off was apparently owed a favour by the goddess of love, and she made the king's wife fall in love (lust) with the bull.

"Hey, Aphrodite, c'mere, I've got a great idea on how to mess with mortals again!"


The queen then forced the genius inventor dwelling at the court to build a mechanical cow suit for her so that she could have sex with the bull. And that's how the minotaur came into being.

I really just want some sort of grand myth explaining how she convinced him to do that one.


There is only one minotaur, and the likelihood of this happening ever again is minimal.

"Hey, Aphrodite, c'mere, I've got a great idea on how to mess with mortals again!"

Seriously, I want someone to explain how the minotaurs feel about that aspect of their creation along the same vein as the myth posted earlier about never getting lost.

veti
2016-06-09, 05:44 PM
But a mimic-- which has an average intelligence score-- is trying to trick sentient creatures in a dungeon environment where those typically aren't around.

In the first place, there's plenty of sentient critters in most dungeons. Anything from kobolds to illithids, depending on level of dungeon. Of course, it'd take a pretty confident mimic to have a go at an illithid, but still.

In the second place, D&D mimics don't only mimic chests. That's a video-gameism, because programming a beastie that can change shape is way more trouble than anyone is going to go to for the sake of an encounter that'll be over in 30 seconds. The mimic is capable of mimicking anything made from stone or wood. "Door" is another favourite shape I've seen more than once.

I daresay, among themselves, mimics have contests to see who can assume the silliest or most intricate shape. In fact, I'm pretty sure if I ever get to run a game again, the PCs are going to encounter a troupe of acrobats that includes a mimic as one of their number. I can imagine mimics being a big success in human society, if they can only manage to stay in the reasonably-dark.

Knaight
2016-06-09, 06:51 PM
Some, but then you have to remember these people thought that bad smells caused dieases, so I wouldn't give them that much credit.

Things like the dangers of unboiled water were understood, and it's worth understanding what the source of a lot of those bad smells were. Rotting meat? That's a disease vector. Human and animal waste? Disease vector. Swamps and marshes? Disproportionately full of disease vectors. On top of that, it's worth observing that food in general is a potential disease vector, and that silverware made of silver was well established among wealthy people. That it was an antimicrobial was unknown, but all that needs to be known is that you get sick less often using it.

bulbaquil
2016-06-09, 08:07 PM
And of course the Gelatinous Cube, which is an invisibile monster adapted to 10' square graph paper.

I would like to sig this line. May I?

As for why abstractions like STR/DEX exist, it's because a realistic modeling of the physics and biology involved in actually slicing someone with a sword is horribly complex and would be impossible to do without a computer well beyond 1970s-era tech and a decent amount of programming knowledge.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-09, 08:10 PM
Any use of dice and whatnot to model reality is going to be an abstraction of some sort.

The question is whether that abstraction usually gives us a "yeah" reaction or a "... whu?" reaction.

LordFluffy
2016-06-09, 11:41 PM
The whole concept of advancing in level due to combat is strange when you think about it. Sure, fighters get better by fighting, but why does it help thieves get better at climbing? Or help mages unlock the secrets of the universe? Or help clerics get closer to their god?

Would it make sense if you worked in an office, went out, got in bar brawls, and woke up with a promotion?

multilis
2016-06-10, 12:09 AM
Oh I totally agree, and when you look at fantasy fiction it tends to split between characters with interesting events thrust upon them (Tolkein's hobbits) and genuine adventurers who look for excitement and danger (Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser).
If one removed all the "adventurer"-type characters fiction would be a lot more boring to read, and we probably would not have this hobby.

All that said, I still think the concept of adventurers does not make sense. It goes back to a comment about Basic D&D attitudes and potions:
"If I handed you a bottle of an unknown liquid and said that drinking it might make you stronger, but it also might kill you, would you drink it?"
Very few sane people in the real world would take the risk. In B/Ex D&D the main method to identify potions was to sip it (which was enough for a fatal dose of most poisons).
Other posters have commented on the lethality of new-character play (I don't say low level as it also applies to RuneQuest etc.) even with experienced players. With a high chance of being dead I'll take the boring job and read about the adventurers (or play Papers'n'Paychecks).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman%27s_dilemma - possible in later years that elite athletes would be scared to tell a survey that they would take illegal drugs, may also be tied to wording of question, whether you could be "caught" after matters.

Forum rules, can't bring out examples of "real world religions" in past, not that hard for many of us to think of them. In OOTS, Thor, Odin and friends like those who die fighting.

People who are strongest and best at fighting and conquering tend to get titles like "The Great", and are idolised/remembered hundreds of years later... more of others died trying to become "The Great".

I see young people risk their lives over cheaper thrills like alcohol, drugs, snowmobiling in dangerous way, climbing trees when drunk, etc. I think many people do not fit definition of "sanity" that includes strong sense of self preservation.

Themrys
2016-06-10, 04:37 AM
Some, but then you have to remember these people thought that bad smells caused dieases, so I wouldn't give them that much credit.

That was just the scientists. Ordinary people knew that putting a silver coin in the milk would make the milk keep longer. And perhaps also swallowed silver coins to cure diarrhea. (Not sure if that's an invention of mine, but I seem to remember that Roman soldiers were given a silver coin for all-purpose medical treatment.)
It's like back when male doctors in hospitals thought it was a good idea to poke around in the vaginas of women who had just given birth with their unwashed hands, just after dissecting the corpses of women who had died from childbed fever.
Pretty sure midwives at that same time (and a long time ago) did wash their hands. Washing hands is rather intuitive, you need a lot of science to think you don't have to, especially after touching something icky.

The bad smell theory was probably believed by most people, but that didn't mean they'd stop doing things they knew worked.

@LordFluffy: Well, the Unseen University used to have promotion by killing the original holder of the position. That way, it makes sense. :smallbiggrin:s Otherwise, not so much.

Fex
2016-06-10, 07:48 AM
To me, the thing in RPG that is mostly likely to kill sense of immersion and suspension of disbelief is the turn.

Acting in turns makes no sense at all, and yet, it's a problem really hard to work around in table games, specially in combat focused games like D&D.

I don't know about the new editions, I'm stuck in 3.5, so I don't know if they solved this issue. But the initiative order throughout a battle makes the game simpler and more playable, but not at all resembles realistic situations.

When in a real stressing situations, like combat, things happens continuously, so most of your actions are, in fact, reactions. And the more elements there are, the more random events are likely to influence the results. Plus, as things go, you may not be the fastest in one specific instance, but then be able to turn that around or be , depending on your skill, your wits, your agility, your experience and your capacity to keep cool and not panick. Combats, ryots, battles, games, stampedes, these are all messy situations, they don't fit an "you have to wait for your turn" mechanics.

Jay R
2016-06-10, 08:09 AM
The whole concept of advancing in level due to combat is strange when you think about it. Sure, fighters get better by fighting, but why does it help thieves get better at climbing? Or help mages unlock the secrets of the universe? Or help clerics get closer to their god?

Why stop there? A fighter can go up in levels if the party cleverly swindles every encounter and never draws a sword.

The assumption is that thieves are climbing and backstabbing, wizards are casting spells, and clerics are praying for spells and then casting them.

Your paragraph could have been re-written as "The whole concept of advancing in level due to theft and sneaking around is strange when you think about it. Sure, thieves get better by sneaking, but why does it help fighters get better at fighting? Or help mages unlock the secrets of the universe? Or help clerics get closer to their god?"

Yes, they should get better at their own specific adventuring skills if they spend time adventuring using their own specific adventuring skills. And we're not going to do the bookkeeping necessary to track exactly how much each skill is used.

Takewo
2016-06-10, 08:19 AM
Why stop there? A fighter can go up in levels if the party cleverly swindles every encounter and never draws a sword.

The assumption is that thieves are climbing and backstabbing, wizards are casting spells, and clerics are praying for spells and then casting them.

Your paragraph could have been re-written as "The whole concept of advancing in level due to theft and sneaking around is strange when you think about it. Sure, thieves get better by sneaking, but why does it help fighters get better at fighting? Or help mages unlock the secrets of the universe? Or help clerics get closer to their god?"

Yes, they should get better at their own specific adventuring skills if they spend time adventuring using their own specific adventuring skills. And we're not going to do the bookkeeping necessary to track exactly how much each skill is used.

The difference is that a wizard gets experience for blasting a goblin with a fireball but not for boiling water or turning into a cloud. The cleric gets experience for killing somebody with power word: kill, but not for healing somebody. The thief gets experience for stabbing someone from behind but not for breaking into a house with a difficult lock. The fighter gets experience for cutting an orc in half with his sword but not for teaching somebody how to use a sword. And so forth and so on.

The only thing that kinda solves it but not really is that you can solve encounters with something other than violence, like diplomacy, mind control or sneakiness. But still, it's all pretty much focused on killing enemies.

CharonsHelper
2016-06-10, 08:25 AM
To me, the thing in RPG that is mostly likely to kill sense of immersion and suspension of disbelief is the turn.

Acting in turns makes no sense at all, and yet, it's a problem really hard to work around in table games, specially in combat focused games like D&D.

I don't know about the new editions, I'm stuck in 3.5, so I don't know if they solved this issue. But the initiative order throughout a battle makes the game simpler and more playable, but not at all resembles realistic situations.

When in a real stressing situations, like combat, things happens continuously, so most of your actions are, in fact, reactions. And the more elements there are, the more random events are likely to influence the results. Plus, as things go, you may not be the fastest in one specific instance, but then be able to turn that around or be , depending on your skill, your wits, your agility, your experience and your capacity to keep cool and not panick. Combats, ryots, battles, games, stampedes, these are all messy situations, they don't fit an "you have to wait for your turn" mechanics.

That's true of nearly all but the more abstract RPGs.

A few exceptions. I understand that Exalted uses 'ticks' with each move taking a certain # of them. (I've never played Exalted, but I've also heard that it's rather clunky.)

I'm actually working on a system which as a somewhat more fluid initiative system. (First everyone moves & picks their Action, and then they do their Action. Then re-roll initiative for the next turn. It's interesting tactically because the last to go knows what everyone's Action is going be by the time they move so that going last has advantages too.)

But a game has to be designed around such a system from the ground up.

CharonsHelper
2016-06-10, 08:27 AM
The difference is that a wizard gets experience for blasting a goblin with a fireball but not for boiling water or turning into a cloud. The cleric gets experience for killing somebody with power word: kill, but not for healing somebody. The thief gets experience for stabbing someone from behind but not for breaking into a house with a difficult lock.

If making a cloud, healing someone, or breaking into a house beats a challenge, it should give them experience.

Fex
2016-06-10, 08:33 AM
The whole concept of advancing in level due to combat is strange when you think about it. Sure, fighters get better by fighting, but why does it help thieves get better at climbing? Or help mages unlock the secrets of the universe? Or help clerics get closer to their god?

Would it make sense if you worked in an office, went out, got in bar brawls, and woke up with a promotion?

These thing don't make sense in a common daily situation, as you stated, but D&D isn't about common daily situations: it's about adventuring. It's the story context that counts.

As the adventurers dig deeper in catacombs and participate on battles, they're expected to encounter challenges and dangers, mostly in the form of monsters and creatures they have to defeat, which makes them more and more "veterans", as to say.

So the level of difficulty monsters present to them is taken as an objective way to measure their experience and translate them in points. But it's not combat per se that makes them, it's the challenge. It's so that traps and non-fighting solved problemas are also to be taken in account to the amount of XP earned. You don't have to kill every single monster you encounter, you have to pass whatever challenge it presents: a sphynx enigma, a diplomacy convinced constable and a subdued duergar that gives information of what lies ahead, all these instances should influence experience.

And then, there's context: clerics don't strenghten their faiths by killing creatures, they do so by carrying on their deities tasks, defeating their enemies and being part of a bigger plan; wizards become more powerful as they discover ancient hidden knowledge in places the normal person wouldn't go; the rogue is given many opportunities to train theirs skills in dungeons (as they're kinda designed to them), rangers get to track and scout, druids learn things about nature and their enemies, sorcerers get to practice their magic abilities in stressful situations and learn about their magic natures, and so on.

It's like AC and BAB: you're not giving one blow each six seconds and perhaps hitting your target. You crossing swords, and getting one real chance of a hit in a round, in a manner manageable by gaming mechanics.

Takewo
2016-06-10, 08:44 AM
If making a cloud, healing someone, or breaking into a house beats a challenge, it should give them experience.

And a challenge is usually a bunch of people who want to kill you.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for non-combat challenges. In fact, in the last campaign that I DM'd in D&D I came up with an experience system that didn't reward for killing monsters but for achieving things, so combat was a way to solve things and gain experience, but you wouldn't earn experience based on how tough to kill monsters were.

What I'm saying is that the system as written is pretty much all about combat. Yes, you can bypass enemies and some GMs will grant you experience, you can talk people into being your friends and some GMs will grant you experience as if you had overcome them in combat.

And, frankly, combat needn't be the main focus of a wizard, a cleric or a thief.

LordFluffy
2016-06-10, 08:53 AM
If making a cloud, healing someone, or breaking into a house beats a challenge, it should give them experience.
Of course, but I'm talking about a concept that's odd just RAW. Good GM's have been handing out XP for non combat activities for ages.

The answer to why they do it that way is 1)Combat is a frequent part of adventuring life and 2)The XP from combat makes a reasonable benchmark of all the things you're doing behind the scenes that wouldn't be fun to play (fighter/thief practicing, mage studying, cleric meditating). It's a placeholder for a lot of petty bookeeping.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-10, 08:58 AM
It's like AC and BAB: you're not giving one blow each six seconds and perhaps hitting your target. You crossing swords, and getting one real chance of a hit in a round, in a manner manageable by gaming mechanics.


Speaking of abstractions that produce, at least for me, a "Whu?" reaction.

Gnoman
2016-06-10, 09:50 AM
Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for non-combat challenges. In fact, in the last campaign that I DM'd in D&D I came up with an experience system that didn't reward for killing monsters but for achieving things, so combat was a way to solve things and gain experience, but you wouldn't earn experience based on how tough to kill monsters were.


This. Is. The. Official. Rule.

It is entirely possible to go from level 1 to level 20 without ever touching a weapon in most D&D versions, by the rules printed in the rulebook.

SimonMoon6
2016-06-10, 10:11 AM
To me, the thing in RPG that is mostly likely to kill sense of immersion and suspension of disbelief is the turn.


For me, the strangest thing about this is trying to model a "race" or a "chase". Instead of people being in roughly similar positions, with one slightly ahead or behind another, running becomes very "jerky", with one person way ahead before the next person instantly catches up. And then it gets really weird if there's an explosion centered on the person who's in front that doesn't come anywhere near the person who is chasing after him (because the second person hasn't gotten the chance to go yet and therefore hasn't caught up to the first person).

The closest solution I've seen to something like this was in the DC Heroes RPG, where people had to "announce" their actions for the turn, in reverse initiative order, so that the faster people could see what the slower people were about to do, before they actually got a chance to do it. And, while the rules didn't explicitly allow for a solution for the "jerky" movements problem, one can easily extrapolate and see that things are happening relatively simultaneously, since we know what everyone is doing for the turn before anybody does anything, and so people who are chasing each other could be considered to be nearly adjacent to each other for the entire turn.

Takewo
2016-06-10, 11:14 AM
This. Is. The. Official. Rule.

It is entirely possible to go from level 1 to level 20 without ever touching a weapon in most D&D versions, by the rules printed in the rulebook.

Of course. That's why challenge ratings are based on how hard a monster is to kill and experience points are earned based on the challenge rating of defeated monsters.

I'm not arguing whether it's possible or not to level up without combat. I'm saying that to earn experience you've got to either defeat monsters in combat or do something that effectively counts as defeating them in combat.

Gnoman
2016-06-10, 11:57 AM
Of course. That's why challenge ratings are based on how hard a monster is to kill and experience points are earned based on the challenge rating of defeated monsters.

I'm not arguing whether it's possible or not to level up without combat. I'm saying that to earn experience you've got to either defeat monsters in combat or do something that effectively counts as defeating them in combat.

Challenge ratings are how difficult it is to get past an obstacle, which is why traps have a CR, you are instructed to assign CR to puzzles or other barriers, and if you get past an encounter in any way that results in you accomplishing your goals you get exactly as much XP as you would have if you'd had butchered everything in your path.

Mordar
2016-06-10, 12:07 PM
I really just want some sort of grand myth explaining how she convinced him to do that one.

"Do it and I will give you gold and resources. Don't do it and I will chop off bits of your fingers and feed them to you."

Probably not too grand though, huh? :smallwink:

HidesHisEyes
2016-06-10, 02:55 PM
On the thing about strength being used for landing attacks: the whole combat system is very abstracted. A 'hit' in terms of game mechanics might really mean a miss, or a near miss or glancing blow, in terms of what's being represented. Equally a miss might represent a hit that just doesn't do any damage because you're not strong enough. If you're fighting with a heavy weap like an axe or a long sword, your physical strength is what decides how well you do, generally speaking. Sure in real life all sorts of things are involved, but certainly in the case of D&D and I think with most games, it's not and never was intended as a simulation of reality.

Having said that, the rather obscure 3.x game True20 had Dex as the 'to hit' stat and Str as the damage stat. It also does away with hit points and had a 'damage track' whereby you get a condition ranging from like 'shaken' to 'wounded' to 'dead' depending on how badly damaged you are, and one hit can be enough to get you all the way to dead if you get hit hard. Worth a look if you like simulationism.

flare'90
2016-06-10, 04:59 PM
Having said that, the rather obscure 3.x game True20 had Dex as the 'to hit' stat and Str as the damage stat. It also does away with hit points and had a 'damage track' whereby you get a condition ranging from like 'shaken' to 'wounded' to 'dead' depending on how badly damaged you are, and one hit can be enough to get you all the way to dead if you get hit hard. Worth a look if you like simulationism.

Star Wars SAGA Edition also has a condition track system.

goto124
2016-06-10, 10:06 PM
I daresay, among themselves, mimics have contests to see who can assume the silliest or most intricate shape. In fact, I'm pretty sure if I ever get to run a game again, the PCs are going to encounter a troupe of acrobats that includes a mimic as one of their number. I can imagine mimics being a big success in human society, if they can only manage to stay in the reasonably-dark.

Then you get (http://41.media.tumblr.com/7c51c56dfe3aced674f019cb85dd12c5/tumblr_memme8pxnU1r5rysxo1_500.jpg) the Dittos (http://i.stack.imgur.com/Qkg9n.jpg)...

Regitnui
2016-06-11, 12:23 AM
Star Wars SAGA Edition also has a condition track system.

As does FATE System, along with the Serenity RPG.

Takewo
2016-06-11, 02:51 AM
Challenge ratings are how difficult it is to get past an obstacle, which is why traps have a CR, you are instructed to assign CR to puzzles or other barriers, and if you get past an encounter in any way that results in you accomplishing your goals you get exactly as much XP as you would have if you'd had butchered everything in your path.

Exactly, it's only active opposition and traps that grant experience points. However you pass them is a whole different matter, but you get experience points basically for overcoming monsters and traps (not necessarily by fighting them). If the game master is nice, maybe for solving some things that are not deadly.

However, I've never seen a game master awarding experience points to a character for falling off a cliff and being able to cast feather fall before reaching the ground (a deadly challenge) or a source book suggest that they should receive any experience points.

Milo v3
2016-06-11, 03:25 AM
Exactly, it's only active opposition and traps that grant experience points.
3.5e DMG has a section on awarding XP to non-combat XP. This section is for doing things that aren't opponents (that has a seperate section), that aren't traps (that has a separate section), that isn't roleplaying XP (that has a seperate section), that isn't story XP (that has a seperate section. You get XP for doing things like solving traps and climbing up mountains.

If you look at the gamesmastery chapter on the PRD, you get the following as the first paragraph:

The heart of any adventure is its encounters. An encounter is any event that puts a specific problem before the PCs that they must solve. Most encounters present combat with monsters or hostile NPCs, but there are many other types—a trapped corridor, a political interaction with a suspicious king, a dangerous passage over a rickety rope bridge, an awkward argument with a friendly NPC who suspects a PC has betrayed him, or anything that adds drama to the game.

etc., etc.

Thinking about I think 5e might be the only RPG I've ever played where opponents and traps are the only things that grant experience.

goto124
2016-06-11, 07:13 AM
I've never seen XP actually awarded for such encounters...

Milo v3
2016-06-11, 07:19 AM
I've never seen XP actually awarded for such encounters...

I know I gave XP out for non-combat encounters (at least, I did before I stopped bothering with XP all together).

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-11, 07:35 AM
I've never seen XP actually awarded for such encounters...


The group here that I played and GMed with for years never gave XP directly for "encounters" -- but we'd all abandoned the D&D tree before we started gaming together.

Jay R
2016-06-11, 08:15 AM
For me, the strangest thing about this is trying to model a "race" or a "chase". Instead of people being in roughly similar positions, with one slightly ahead or behind another, running becomes very "jerky", with one person way ahead before the next person instantly catches up. And then it gets really weird if there's an explosion centered on the person who's in front that doesn't come anywhere near the person who is chasing after him (because the second person hasn't gotten the chance to go yet and therefore hasn't caught up to the first person).

Yes, if you look at the figures on the board, it does look jerky. But now look at the overall effects.

1. If the slower person is being chased, he will eventually be caught.
2. If the faster person is being chased, he will get away, unless the chaser is close enough to catch him before he really gets going.
3. If they are the same speed, then the chaser will catch her quarry if she's close enough at the start.
4. Until the person is caught, anybody with an area effect can manage to catch one of them but not both in it, or catch both in it, as he or she chooses. It might take losing some initiative, but that's normal in careful aiming.

So it's not that bad a simulation.

Yes, we know that we are trying to simulate a continuous, infinitely complex process with a discrete, simpler system. *ALL* simulations are simpler than the action they simulate. That's the point. (My Simulations professor said, "If we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality.")

The proper measure of a simulation is whether it gives good results. Chasing in D&D usually gives good results. The only time it doesn't is when casting an area effect and there are other people around. (If there are only two people, it should always be possible to catch one but not the other in the fireball; the only difference is that it's "really" centered 15 feet in front of the chased, instead of on him. But unless there are other people within 20 feet, that doesn't have any incorrect effect.)

Knaight
2016-06-11, 09:15 AM
Yes, if you look at the figures on the board, it does look jerky. But now look at the overall effects.

1. If the slower person is being chased, he will eventually be caught.
2. If the faster person is being chased, he will get away, unless the chaser is close enough to catch him before he really gets going.
3. If they are the same speed, then the chaser will catch her quarry if she's close enough at the start.
4. Until the person is caught, anybody with an area effect can manage to catch one of them but not both in it, or catch both in it, as he or she chooses. It might take losing some initiative, but that's normal in careful aiming.

This is selective at best. Lets look into these a bit more.

1. If the slower person is being chased, they will eventually be caught. That one holds pretty well.
2. If the faster person is being chased, they will get away, unless they happen to start close enough to the person chasing them that the person chasing can catch them before they react. If the chaser is a standard person out of armor, that's a good 60 feet if they need to actually do something substantial at the end of the chase, and a good 120 feet otherwise. The odds of initial escape aren't meaningfully affected by the speed of the chased person, and it's no easier to elude someone who starts chasing you from 60 feet away than it is someone who starts chasing you from 10 feet away, despite how you should have at least 6 times as long to react (and that's assuming effectively instantaneous acceleration to full speed).
3. If they are the same speed, then it comes down entirely to who reacts marginally faster. Much as in the case of the faster person being pursued, that 60 ft and 120 ft figure still hold up in general.
4. Throughout the chase, third parties can hit targets with all sorts of area attacks that have completely bizarre targeting. Things like pressure sensitive explosion traps are the best here, where the person in the lead runs ahead, triggers it, and blows up. Then the person behind runs after them, and either triggers it and blows up or doesn't trigger it. If the trap is near the beginning or end of the movement, then the two trigger situation is either that it goes of twice when the two go over it, hitting the pursuer twice and the quarry once (near the beginning), or the quarry twice and the pursuer once (near the end), in a way totally inconsistent with the setting reality of one of them being whatever the distance between them is when both or neither have acted. Really, bringing area attacks into this reveals a place where the simulation breaks down pretty badly.

Darth Ultron
2016-06-11, 12:27 PM
The concept of the players are the only heroes around. The idea that the rest of the world just sits around and waits for the PC heroes to show up just makes no sense to me. It's even worse when the PC's are like say 21 at 1st level and you ask, um, well who saved the day for the like 21 years?

Cluedrew
2016-06-11, 03:46 PM
To Darth Ultron: I was actually going to mention this (or something like it) before but it actually does work in a particular frame. That is the PCs are special, they are living in a special time and events never seen before are unfolding. Heroes of prophecy, the demon king is rising again after 1000 years kind of story. So who saved the world? Well it didn't need saving then (or perhaps it wasn't saved) so no one.

The other way to do it is that this is just part of the world, in which case the PCs really work out to be above average rather than extraordinary. When you go to the inn for quests this is the type of story you are probably dealing with. Here if the PCs save the world at all you are probably being overly dramatic. They might save parts of it but that is usually as far as it goes.

Mixing these two frames leads to problems like the one you mentioned, or the opposite which boils down to "Why aren't you going for help?"

CharonsHelper
2016-06-11, 05:47 PM
The concept of the players are the only heroes around. The idea that the rest of the world just sits around and waits for the PC heroes to show up just makes no sense to me. It's even worse when the PC's are like say 21 at 1st level and you ask, um, well who saved the day for the like 21 years?

That's true of any story that has protagonists. An author doesn't need to write thirty stories about average farmers/craftsmen before he's allowed to write about the awesome guys who save the world. And he might start before they're badasses too. Even having a few chapters when they're a kid is pretty common as backstory.

If a GM is planning a 'save the XXX" style campaign and starts at level 1, he should just think of the first few levels as backstory as they get badass enough to go save the XXX.

Milo v3
2016-06-11, 06:03 PM
I've never actually played in a game where the PC's are the only heroes strangely.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-11, 10:40 PM
That's true of any story that has protagonists. An author doesn't need to write thirty stories about average farmers/craftsmen before he's allowed to write about the awesome guys who save the world. And he might start before they're badasses too. Even having a few chapters when they're a kid is pretty common as backstory.

If a GM is planning a 'save the XXX" style campaign and starts at level 1, he should just think of the first few levels as backstory as they get badass enough to go save the XXX.


The author or GM can in some ways acknowledge that the rest of the world's population isn't useless and inept, however -- or even that there are other heroes.


For example, in any Star Wars RPG campaign that's set during the Rebellion era and doesn't blow up canon, there's this group of heroes out there doing other heroic stuff, in some stories you might have seen at least once.

Jay R
2016-06-13, 07:19 AM
The concept of the players are the only heroes around. The idea that the rest of the world just sits around and waits for the PC heroes to show up just makes no sense to me. It's even worse when the PC's are like say 21 at 1st level and you ask, um, well who saved the day for the like 21 years?

That concept makes no sense to me either, but I don't find it in most games or most stories. Stories about a great hero in Metropolis don't carry an idea that there is no great hero in Gotham City.

[Or even that there are no other heroes in Metropolis. When I was growing up, both Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane had their own adventures in their own comics, and later, Crimebuster showed up in Metropolis.]


That's true of any story that has protagonists. An author doesn't need to write thirty stories about average farmers/craftsmen before he's allowed to write about the awesome guys who save the world. And he might start before they're badasses too. Even having a few chapters when they're a kid is pretty common as backstory.

Agreed completely.


If a GM is planning a 'save the XXX" style campaign and starts at level 1, he should just think of the first few levels as backstory as they get badass enough to go save the XXX.

I think I agree with your intent, but that's not what "backstory" means. Backstory is the actions and life of the character before the book, movie or game started.

The Harry Potter books end with a campaign to find and destroy the horcruxes to defeat Voldemort. But the word "horcrux" doesn't even appear until book six. That doesn't mean the first five books were backstory; they were stories.

The backstory was the rise of Voldemort, the war, the death of Harry's parents, and the creation of his scar, all of which happened before the first book.

Similarly, half of the first Tarzan book is about him growing up in the jungle. That means it isn't backstory.

If you are playing through it, it's not backstory. It's story.

obryn
2016-06-13, 09:21 AM
I would like to sig this line. May I?
Since I pretty well plagiarized it from a list of dumbest D&D monsters, I probably wouldn't :smallbiggrin:

obryn
2016-06-13, 09:33 AM
Silver kills bacteria. So, if we think of werewolves in terms of infection, that makes some sense.
Yeah, but silver-kills-werewolves is nevertheless a modern insertion into the werewolf myth (http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monstertalk/09/10/28/transcript/).

Gygax and his crew weren't even remotely beholden to traditional folklore; they were more than happy to go with popular modern versions of monsters.

Regitnui
2016-06-13, 12:48 PM
That concept makes no sense to me either, but I don't find it in most games or most stories. Stories about a great hero in Metropolis don't carry an idea that there is no great hero in Gotham City.


One of the easiest ways to solve this is to set the campaign after a devastating event; Eberron puts away all the great heroes of the old time as victims of the Last War, leaving it open for the PC party and their rivals to make their mark.

Jay R
2016-06-13, 07:35 PM
One of the easiest ways to solve this is to set the campaign after a devastating event; Eberron puts away all the great heroes of the old time as victims of the Last War, leaving it open for the PC party and their rivals to make their mark.

In the 2e game I'm currently running, most monsters are from another dimension, closed off from prime world much of the time. Since there have been no high-level monsters on the PCs' earth for the last 200 years, there have been no really high level characters. There are a few soldiers who have reached 3rd or 4th level, and a very few extremely old casters. (I've identified one high-level wizard and two clerics, all far too old to be adventurers.)

The monsters are coming back slowly, and the Death Lord is trying once again to break through. The PCs are currently 3rd or 4th level, and have not met anyone else who is (except a 5th level wizard eho attacked them).

But there are others out there fighting the monsters, and slowly moving up. These rivals will become more important at high levels.

Sam113097
2016-06-13, 09:16 PM
The game Dungeon World doesn't have turns and initiative, the action is more "free flowing" and sounds more like storytelling than a tactical board game, which I enjoy. It helps with immersion.

Multi-classing had always bugged me. It's acceptable if you plan your character around it from the start, but fighters suddenly gaining wizard spells without the years of training a first-level wizard would go through is strange. It reminds me of Order of the Stick #126 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0126.html)

CharonsHelper
2016-06-13, 10:25 PM
In the 2e game I'm currently running, most monsters are from another dimension, closed off from prime world much of the time.

Curious - were you inspired by the world of The Witcher here? (Not exactly the same thing - but similar.)

TeChameleon
2016-06-14, 06:15 AM
In the 2e game I'm currently running, most monsters are from another dimension, closed off from prime world much of the time. Since there have been no high-level monsters on the PCs' earth for the last 200 years, there have been no really high level characters. There are a few soldiers who have reached 3rd or 4th level, and a very few extremely old casters. (I've identified one high-level wizard and two clerics, all far too old to be adventurers.)

The monsters are coming back slowly, and the Death Lord is trying once again to break through. The PCs are currently 3rd or 4th level, and have not met anyone else who is (except a 5th level wizard eho attacked them).

But there are others out there fighting the monsters, and slowly moving up. These rivals will become more important at high levels.
One question I feel compelled to ask- why didn't anyone attain high level by fighting in wars, or even just hunting dangerous natural beasts? Monsters are hardly the only dangerous things that attempt to kill humans; heck, arguably the most dangerous things that try to turn people into corpses are other people.


That concept makes no sense to me either, but I don't find it in most games or most stories. Stories about a great hero in Metropolis don't carry an idea that there is no great hero in Gotham City.

[Or even that there are no other heroes in Metropolis. When I was growing up, both Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane had their own adventures in their own comics, and later, Crimebuster showed up in Metropolis.]

Not to mention Supergirl, Guardian, Black Lightning, the Newsboy Legion, Steel, Booster Gold/Supernova, occasionally the Forever People, the third incarnation of the Teen Titans, Rose Forrest/Thorn, and Agent Liberty... Metropolis is a busy town, apparently :smalltongue:

And if anyone cares, Gotham boasts not only the Batman and his crew (Nightwing, Red Hood/Wingman, Red Robin, Robin, Batgirl/Oracle, Black Bat, Spoiler, Huntress, Batwoman, Flamebird, sometimes Azrael, sometimes Catwoman, Batwing, Bluebird, and Lark... yeah, Batman 'works alone'. *snerk*), but the GCPD, Ragman, the Birds of Prey, Black Canary, the occasionally-heroic-ish Anarky, and Golden-Age GL Alan Scott.

Interestingly, my DM tended to run multiple groups at a time, at least for a while, and all of them were in the same world, with consequences from one or the other party's actions spilling over every so often.

As an aside, I find it a bit odd that no-one's mentioned one of the most obvious reasons for STR being the basis for to-hit for a lot of beatstick-type characters; Fighters tend to have enough problems without needing to splash out into yet another stat to be semi-viable.

Hrm. On-topic, most of the things that make next to no sense to me in RPGs have been covered earlier on the thread, often in considerable detail.

Jay R
2016-06-14, 09:52 AM
Curious - were you inspired by the world of The Witcher here? (Not exactly the same thing - but similar.)

Nope. Never heard of it. The goal was to have the PCs be relevant early on. They have put down the first big push into our world, which was mostly goblins, gnolls, and a magical amulet.

Also, since there are almost no casters, people have forgotten that some items are magic, and old relics can sometimes be found. In the loot goblins had gotten from a village, the PCs found a Pearl of Power.


One question I feel compelled to ask- why didn't anyone attain high level by fighting in wars, or even just hunting dangerous natural beasts? Monsters are hardly the only dangerous things that attempt to kill humans; heck, arguably the most dangerous things that try to turn people into corpses are other people.

It's 2e. Defeating a 1st level fighter earns you 15 experience points, and you need 2,000 xps to get to 2nd level. It takes the equivalent of 134 one-on-one combats to reach that level. (A brigade could do it by defeating 134 brigades, for instance.)

A very few have reached 3rd and 4th level, as commanders in victorious battles with larger goals, but going up by combat alone is prohibitive in that game.

Besides, I wanted the PCs to matter. When they came on a fort under siege by a force of 100 goblins led by 4 ogres, the six second-level PCs turned the tide, won the battle, and became the heroes of the fort.

At third level, they have saved a village from a force of gnolls and kobolds.

Besides, in a world that is sometimes attacked by waves of monsters, the safer periods are times for peace and prosperity. There was a pretty big human-only war eighty years ago, but not much since.

Braininthejar2
2016-06-15, 05:40 AM
And even 1e/2e seemed to support the idea of adventurers as being fairly common when it would suit the plot. You could go to any tavern and find an "adventurers wanted" job posting... which would be very weird if adventurers were rare. It would be like having job postings for "cowboy astronauts" all over the place.

I was thinking about it, when I suddenly realised that there are licenced bounty hunters in the modern US. You can totally make a living by being an adventurer.

Mugwort
2016-06-15, 07:29 AM
- INT or other illogical stats damage scaling (more inteligence you have more damage you do with weapon for example) - this is Dark Souls speciality, you can bound basically any stat to any weapon and you can improve scaling of that stat - all it requires is a crafting item to do that

It looks cool and allows you to think of MANY gameplay possibilities, but its also kinda stupid and highly unrealistic. For example you can have a huge and heavy sword or a huge club and its damage scales with your dexternity cuz you've made it "sharp" (thats how the improvement is called).

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-15, 11:41 PM
I was thinking about it, when I suddenly realised that there are licenced bounty hunters in the modern US. You can totally make a living by being an adventurer.


Jeremy Wade, the host of River Monsters, could be considered a sort of modern-day adventurer. He's part explorer, part anthropologist, part biologist, part documentarian... he goes to new and often hard-to-reach places, searching for things few people have ever seen or done. There are several fish in the world that (on record at least) he's one of the few people to have ever caught in the wild.

Regitnui
2016-06-16, 01:58 AM
Jeremy Wade, the hose of River Monsters, could be considered a sort of modern-day adventurer. He's part explorer, part anthropologist, part biologist, part documentarian... he goes to new and often hard-to-reach places, searching for things few people have ever seen or done. There are several fish in the world that (on record at least) he's one of the few people to have ever caught in the wild.

It's an entirely viable career path in the Eberron setting, to the point where there was a prestige class that specifically gave the ability "lionized in the press". You could, in the mainland, get buffs to social interactions and earn a living because you were an incredibly awesome explorer. Jeremy Wade is probably the best modern example.

Actually, this makes me want to write a bard known for scandalous nudity referencing Kardashians...